My Ántonia
stick or a corn-knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her way
back and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road was
bitten on the ankle and had been sick all summer.
I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside
my grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early September
morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me,
for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the
fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the
shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild
buffalo were galloping, galloping...
Alone, I should never have found the garden—except, perhaps, for the
big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering
vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted
to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the
world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me
that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left,
and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and
one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over
our heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the
pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while
I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag,
I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily
do.
When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there
in the garden awhile.
She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. ‘Aren’t you afraid of
snakes?’
‘A little,’ I admitted, ‘but I’d like to stay, anyhow.’
‘Well, if you see one, don’t have anything to do with him. The big
yellow and brown ones won’t hurt you; they’re bull-snakes and help to
keep the gophers down. Don’t be scared if you see anything look out of
that hole in the bank over there. That’s a badger hole. He’s about as
big as a big ‘possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He
takes a chicken once in a while, but I won’t let the men harm him. In a
new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him
come out and watch me when I’m at work.’
Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down
the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of
the draw; when she came to the first bend, she waved at me and
disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and
content.
I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely
approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin.
There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of
fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the
berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as
any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines.
The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the
sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear
it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall
grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it
through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow
squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black
spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect
anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it,
like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was
entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part
of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and
knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into
something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as
naturally as sleep.
III
On Sunday morning Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the
acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them some
provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no
garden or chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up
a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and
grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday’s bread, a jar of butter,
and several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up
to the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the
road that climbed to the big cornfield.
I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there
was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high
wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a
wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide
and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the
sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great
rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made
a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would
tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along
munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down
toward them.
The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought
the homestead of a fellow countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him
more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they
left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative
of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come
to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and
could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English
to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. One
son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land;
but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was
a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and
upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which
wouldn’t be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it at
home.
‘If they’re nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in
that cave of Krajiek’s,’ said grandmother. ‘It’s no better than a
badger hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he’s made them pay
twenty dollars for his old cookstove that ain’t worth ten.’
‘Yes’m,’ said Otto; ‘and he’s sold ‘em his oxen and his two bony old
horses for the price of good workteams. I’d have interfered about the
horses—the old man can understand some German—if I’d I a’ thought it
would do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.’
Grandmother looked interested. ‘Now, why is that, Otto?’
Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. ‘Well, ma’m, it’s politics. It would
take me a long while to explain.’
The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw
Creek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas’ place and made the
land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy
clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the
glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the
ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow
leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver
trees in fairy tales.
As we approached the Shimerdas’ dwelling, I could still see nothing but
rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots
hanging out where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one
of those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same
wine-coloured grass that grew everywhere. Near it tilted a shattered
windmill frame, that had no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie
our horses, and then I saw a door and window sunk deep in the drawbank.
The door stood open, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and
looked up at us hopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The
woman had on her head the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that
she wore when she had alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was
not old, but she was certainly not young. Her face was alert and
lively, with a sharp chin and shrewd little eyes. She shook
grandmother’s hand energetically.
‘Very glad, very glad!’ she ejaculated. Immediately she pointed to the
bank out of which she had emerged and said, ‘House no good, house no
good!’
Grandmother nodded consolingly. ‘You’ll get fixed up comfortable after
while, Mrs. Shimerda; make good house.’
My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if
they were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda understand the friendly
intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of
bread and even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively
curiosity, exclaiming, ‘Much good, much thank!’—and again she wrung
grandmother’s hand.
The oldest son, Ambroz—they called it Ambrosch—came out of the cave and
stood beside his mother. He was nineteen years old, short and
broad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face.
His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother’s, but more sly
and suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food. The family had been
living on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days.
The little girl was pretty, but Ántonia—they accented the name thus,
strongly, when they spoke to her—was still prettier. I remembered what
the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full
of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was
brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark colour. Her
brown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom they
called Yulka (Julka), was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I
stood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the
barn to see what was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even
from a distance one could see that there was something strange about
this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and
held up his hands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the
first knuckle, like a duck’s foot. When he saw me draw back, he began
to crow delightedly, ‘Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!’ like a rooster. His
mother scowled and said sternly, ‘Marek!’ then spoke rapidly to Krajiek
in Bohemian.
‘She wants me to tell you he won’t hurt nobody, Mrs. Burden. He was
born like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer.’
He struck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled knowingly.
At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore no
hat, and his thick, iron-grey hair was brushed straight back from his
forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and made
him look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia. He was tall
and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at us
understandingly, then took grandmother’s hand and bent over it. I
noticed how white and well-shaped his own hands were. They looked calm,
somehow, and skilled. His eyes were melancholy, and were set back deep
under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like
ashes—like something from which all the warmth and light had died out.
Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner.
He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted grey vest, and,
instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully
crossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was
translating for Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia came up to me and held out her
hand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up the steep drawside
together, Yulka trotting after us.
When we reached the level and could see the gold tree-tops, I pointed
toward them, and Ántonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me