VIII
WHILE THE AUTUMN COLOUR was growing pale on the grass and cornfields,
things went badly with our friends the Russians. Peter told his troubles
to Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to meet a note which fell due on the first
of November; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on renewing it, and to give a
mortgage on his pigs and horses and even his milk cow. His creditor was
Wick Cutter, the merciless Black Hawk money-lender, a man of evil name
throughout the county, of whom I shall have more to say later. Peter could
give no very clear account of his transactions with Cutter. He only knew
that he had first borrowed two hundred dollars, then another hundred, then
fifty--that each time a bonus was added to the principal, and the debt grew
faster than any crop he planted. Now everything was plastered with
mortgages.
Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself lifting timbers
for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such a gush of blood
from the lungs that his fellow workmen thought he would die on the spot.
They hauled him home and put him into his bed, and there he lay, very ill
indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the
log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away. The
Russians had such bad luck that people were afraid of them and liked to put
them out of mind.
One afternoon Antonia and her father came over to our house to get
buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun was low. just
as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad, he said,
and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had come to fetch
them. When Antonia and her father got into the wagon, I entreated
grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without my supper, I
would sleep in the Shimerdas' barn and run home in the morning. My plan
must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was often large-minded about
humouring the desires of other people. She asked Peter to wait a moment,
and when she came back from the kitchen she brought a bag of sandwiches and
doughnuts for us.
Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Antonia and I sat in the
straw behind and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After the sun sank, a
cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the
weather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed down in
the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die out of
the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. Peter kept
sighing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was afraid Pavel would
never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up there the stars grew
magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different parts of the
world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition that those shining
groups have their influence upon what is and what is not to be. Perhaps
Russian Peter, come from farther away than any of us, had brought from his
land, too, some such belief.
The little house on the hillside was so much the colour of the night that
we could not see it as we came up the draw. The ruddy windows guided
us--the light from the kitchen stove, for there was no lamp burning.
We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and
I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in
front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the
thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept
moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently,
then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore
down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They made me
think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghosts who were trying
desperately to get in for shelter, and then went moaning on. Presently, in
one of those sobbing intervals between the blasts, the coyotes tuned up
with their whining howl; one, two, three, then all together--to tell us
that winter was coming. This sound brought an answer from the bed-- a long
complaining cry--as if Pavel were having bad dreams or were waking to some
old misery. Peter listened, but did not stir. He was sitting on the floor
by the kitchen stove. The coyotes broke out again; yap, yap, yap--then the
high whine. Pavel called for something and struggled up on his elbow.
`He is scared of the wolves,' Antonia whispered to me. `In his country
there are very many, and they eat men and women.' We slid closer together
along the bench.
I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hanging
open, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow bristle, rose and fell
horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to his feet, caught up the
teakettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smell of
spirits went through the room.
Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottle and
slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if he had outwitted
someone. His eyes followed Peter about the room with a contemptuous,
unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despised him for being so
simple and docile.
Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr. Shimerda, scarcely above a whisper.
He was telling a long story, and as he went on, Antonia took my hand under
the table and held it tight. She leaned forward and strained her ears to
hear him. He grew more and more excited, and kept pointing all around his
bed, as if there were things there and he wanted Mr. Shimerda to see them.
`It's wolves, Jimmy,' Antonia whispered. `It's awful, what he says!'
The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to be cursing people who
had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda caught him by the shoulders, but could
hardly hold him in bed. At last he was shut off by a coughing fit which
fairly choked him. He pulled a cloth from under his pillow and held it to
his mouth. Quickly it was covered with bright red spots--I thought I had
never seen any blood so bright. When he lay down and turned his face to
the wall, all the rage had gone out of him. He lay patiently fighting for
breath, like a child with croup. Antonia's father uncovered one of his
long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically. From our bench we could see
what a hollow case his body was. His spine and shoulder-blades stood out
like the bones under the hide of a dead steer left in the fields. That
sharp backbone must have hurt him when he lay on it.
Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was, the worst was over.
Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel was asleep. Without a word Peter got
up and lit his lantern. He was going out to get his team to drive us home.
Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the long bowed back under
the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe.
On the way home, when we were lying in the straw, under the jolting and
rattling Antonia told me as much of the story as she could. What she did
not tell me then, she told later; we talked of nothing else for days
afterward.
When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they were
asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle of another
village. It was in the dead of winter and the groom's party went over to
the wedding in sledges. Peter and Pavel drove in the groom's sledge, and
six sledges followed with all his relatives and friends.
After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner given by the
parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all afternoon; then it became a
supper and continued far into the night. There was much dancing and
drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said good-bye to her and
blessed her. The groom took her up in his arms and carried her out to his
sledge and tucked her under the blankets. He sprang in beside her, and
Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and Peter!) took the front seat. Pavel drove.
The party set out with singing and the jingle of sleigh-bells, the groom's
sledge going first. All the drivers were more or less the worse for
merry-making, and the groom was absorbed in his bride.
The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they heard
the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had too much
good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up and echoed
and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming together. There
was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A black drove came
up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves ran like streaks of
shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them.
Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control-- he
was probably very drunk--the horses left the road, the sledge was caught in
a clump of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over the snow,
and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks that followed
made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed their horses. The
groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest-- all the others
carried from six to a dozen people.
Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were more terrible
to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed to check the
wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear; the people who
were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those who were already lost.
The little bride hid her face on the groom's shoulder and sobbed. Pavel
sat still and watched his horses. The road was clear and white, and the
groom's three blacks went like the wind. It was only necessary to be calm
and to guide them carefully.
At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and looked
back. `There are only three sledges left,' he whispered.
`And the wolves?' Pavel asked.
`Enough! Enough for all of us.'
Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed him down
the other side. In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind them a
whirling black group on the snow. Presently the groom screamed. He saw
his father's sledge overturned, with his mother and sisters. He sprang up
as if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him back. It was
even then too late. The black ground-shadows were already crowding over
the heap in the road, and one horse ran out across the fields, his harness
hanging to him, wolves at his heels. But the groom's movement had given
Pavel an idea.
They were within a few miles of their village now. The only sledge left
out of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel's middle horse was
failing. Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge;
Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves got abreast of the horses, and the
horses went crazy. They tried to jump over each other, got tangled up in
the harness, and overturned the sledge.
When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was alone
upon the familiar road. `They still come?' he asked Peter.
`Yes.'
`How many?'
`Twenty, thirty--enough.'
Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel gave
Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge. He
called to the groom that they must lighten-- and pointed to the bride. The
young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away.
In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the
sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered exactly
how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in the front
seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was a new sound
that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever heard it
before--the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing for early
prayers.
Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been alone ever
since. They were run out of their village. Pavel's own mother would not
look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when people learned
where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the two men who
had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went, the story followed
them. It took them five years to save money enough to come to America.
They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but they were always
unfortunate. When Pavel's health grew so bad, they decided to try farming.
Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, and was
buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, and left the
country--went to be cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of
Russians were employed.
At his sale we bought Peter's wheelbarrow and some of his harness. During
the auction he went about with his head down, and never lifted his eyes.
He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk money-lender who held
mortgages on Peter's livestock was there, and he bought in the sale notes
at about fifty cents on the dollar. Everyone said Peter kissed the cow
before she was led away by her new owner. I did not see him do it, but
this I know: after all his furniture and his cookstove and pots and pans
had been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and
bare, he sat down on the floor with his clasp-knife and ate all the melons
that he had put away for winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in
their wagon to take Peter to the train, they found him with a dripping
beard, surrounded by heaps of melon rinds.
The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda.
When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit
there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows
penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party
was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secret to anyone, but guarded
it jealously--as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long
ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a painful and
peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep, I often found myself
in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through a country that looked
something like Nebraska and something like Virginia.
