My Ántonia
guess. I shouldn’t care for a family of that size myself, but somehow
it’s just right for Tony. She’d love to show them to you.’
On my way East I broke my journey at Hastings, in Nebraska, and set off
with an open buggy and a fairly good livery team to find the Cuzak
farm. At a little past midday, I knew I must be nearing my destination.
Set back on a swell of land at my right, I saw a wide farm-house, with
a red barn and an ash grove, and cattle-yards in front that sloped down
to the highroad. I drew up my horses and was wondering whether I should
drive in here, when I heard low voices. Ahead of me, in a plum thicket
beside the road, I saw two boys bending over a dead dog. The little
one, not more than four or five, was on his knees, his hands folded,
and his close-clipped, bare head drooping forward in deep dejection.
The other stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, and was comforting
him in a language I had not heard for a long while. When I stopped my
horses opposite them, the older boy took his brother by the hand and
came toward me. He, too, looked grave. This was evidently a sad
afternoon for them.
‘Are you Mrs. Cuzak’s boys?’ I asked.
The younger one did not look up; he was submerged in his own feelings,
but his brother met me with intelligent grey eyes. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Does she live up there on the hill? I am going to see her. Get in and
ride up with me.’
He glanced at his reluctant little brother. ‘I guess we’d better walk.
But we’ll open the gate for you.’
I drove along the side-road and they followed slowly behind. When I
pulled up at the windmill, another boy, barefooted and curly-headed,
ran out of the barn to tie my team for me. He was a handsome one, this
chap, fair-skinned and freckled, with red cheeks and a ruddy pelt as
thick as a lamb’s wool, growing down on his neck in little tufts. He
tied my team with two flourishes of his hands, and nodded when I asked
him if his mother was at home. As he glanced at me, his face dimpled
with a seizure of irrelevant merriment, and he shot up the windmill
tower with a lightness that struck me as disdainful. I knew he was
peering down at me as I walked toward the house.
Ducks and geese ran quacking across my path. White cats were sunning
themselves among yellow pumpkins on the porch steps. I looked through
the wire screen into a big, light kitchen with a white floor. I saw a
long table, rows of wooden chairs against the wall, and a shining range
in one corner. Two girls were washing dishes at the sink, laughing and
chattering, and a little one, in a short pinafore, sat on a stool
playing with a rag baby. When I asked for their mother, one of the
girls dropped her towel, ran across the floor with noiseless bare feet,
and disappeared. The older one, who wore shoes and stockings, came to
the door to admit me. She was a buxom girl with dark hair and eyes,
calm and self-possessed.
‘Won’t you come in? Mother will be here in a minute.’
Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle
happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take
more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. Ántonia came in
and stood before me; a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly
brown hair a little grizzled. It was a shock, of course. It always is,
to meet people after long years, especially if they have lived as much
and as hard as this woman had. We stood looking at each other. The eyes
that peered anxiously at me were—simply Ántonia’s eyes. I had seen no
others like them since I looked into them last, though I had looked at
so many thousands of human faces. As I confronted her, the changes grew
less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full
vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me,
speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.
‘My husband’s not at home, sir. Can I do anything?’
‘Don’t you remember me, Ántonia? Have I changed so much?’
She frowned into the slanting sunlight that made her brown hair look
redder than it was. Suddenly her eyes widened, her whole face seemed to
grow broader. She caught her breath and put out two hard-worked hands.
‘Why, it’s Jim! Anna, Yulka, it’s Jim Burden!’ She had no sooner caught
my hands than she looked alarmed. ‘What’s happened? Is anybody dead?’
I patted her arm.
‘No. I didn’t come to a funeral this time. I got off the train at
Hastings and drove down to see you and your family.’
She dropped my hand and began rushing about. ‘Anton, Yulka, Nina, where
are you all? Run, Anna, and hunt for the boys. They’re off looking for
that dog, somewhere. And call Leo. Where is that Leo!’ She pulled them
out of corners and came bringing them like a mother cat bringing in her
kittens. ‘You don’t have to go right off, Jim? My oldest boy’s not
here. He’s gone with papa to the street fair at Wilber. I won’t let you
go! You’ve got to stay and see Rudolph and our papa.’ She looked at me
imploringly, panting with excitement.
While I reassured her and told her there would be plenty of time, the
barefooted boys from outside were slipping into the kitchen and
gathering about her.
‘Now, tell me their names, and how old they are.’
As she told them off in turn, she made several mistakes about ages, and
they roared with laughter. When she came to my light-footed friend of
the windmill, she said, ‘This is Leo, and he’s old enough to be better
than he is.’
He ran up to her and butted her playfully with his curly head, like a
little ram, but his voice was quite desperate. ‘You’ve forgot! You
always forget mine. It’s mean! Please tell him, mother!’ He clenched
his fists in vexation and looked up at her impetuously.
She wound her forefinger in his yellow fleece and pulled it, watching
him. ‘Well, how old are you?’
‘I’m twelve,’ he panted, looking not at me but at her; ‘I’m twelve
years old, and I was born on Easter Day!’
She nodded to me. ‘It’s true. He was an Easter baby.’
The children all looked at me, as if they expected me to exhibit
astonishment or delight at this information. Clearly, they were proud
of each other, and of being so many. When they had all been introduced,
Anna, the eldest daughter, who had met me at the door, scattered them
gently, and came bringing a white apron which she tied round her
mother’s waist.
‘Now, mother, sit down and talk to Mr. Burden. We’ll finish the dishes
quietly and not disturb you.’
Ántonia looked about, quite distracted. ‘Yes, child, but why don’t we
take him into the parlour, now that we’ve got a nice parlour for
company?’
The daughter laughed indulgently, and took my hat from me. ‘Well,
you’re here, now, mother, and if you talk here, Yulka and I can listen,
too. You can show him the parlour after while.’ She smiled at me, and
went back to the dishes, with her sister. The little girl with the rag
doll found a place on the bottom step of an enclosed back stairway, and
sat with her toes curled up, looking out at us expectantly.
‘She’s Nina, after Nina Harling,’ Ántonia explained. ‘Ain’t her eyes
like Nina’s? I declare, Jim, I loved you children almost as much as I
love my own. These children know all about you and Charley and Sally,
like as if they’d grown up with you. I can’t think of what I want to
say, you’ve got me so stirred up. And then, I’ve forgot my English so.
I don’t often talk it any more. I tell the children I used to speak
real well.’ She said they always spoke Bohemian at home. The little
ones could not speak English at all—didn’t learn it until they went to
school.
‘I can’t believe it’s you, sitting here, in my own kitchen. You
wouldn’t have known me, would you, Jim? You’ve kept so young, yourself.
But it’s easier for a man. I can’t see how my Anton looks any older
than the day I married him. His teeth have kept so nice. I haven’t got
many left. But I feel just as young as I used to, and I can do as much
work. Oh, we don’t have to work so hard now! We’ve got plenty to help
us, papa and me. And how many have you got, Jim?’
When I told her I had no children, she seemed embarrassed. ‘Oh, ain’t
that too bad! Maybe you could take one of my bad ones, now? That Leo;
he’s the worst of all.’ She leaned toward me with a smile. ‘And I love
him the best,’ she whispered.
‘Mother!’ the two girls murmured reproachfully from the dishes.
Ántonia threw up her head and laughed. ‘I can’t help it. You know I do.
Maybe it’s because he came on Easter Day, I don’t know. And he’s never
out of mischief one minute!’
I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered—about her
teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things
that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was
gone, Ántonia had not lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown and
hardened, had not that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had
been secretly drawn away.
While we were talking, the little boy whom they called Jan came in and
sat down on the step beside Nina, under the hood of the stairway. He
wore a funny long gingham apron, like a smock, over his trousers, and
his hair was clipped so short that his head looked white and naked. He
watched us out of his big, sorrowful grey eyes.
‘He wants to tell you about the dog, mother. They found it dead,’ Anna
said, as she passed us on her way to the cupboard.
Ántonia beckoned the boy to her. He stood by her chair, leaning his
elbows on her knees and twisting her apron strings in his slender
fingers, while he told her his story softly in Bohemian, and the tears
brimmed over and hung on his long lashes. His mother listened, spoke
soothingly to him and in a whisper promised him something that made him
give her a quick, teary smile. He slipped away and whispered his secret
to Nina, sitting close to her and talking behind his hand.
When Anna finished her work and had washed her hands, she came and
stood behind her mother’s chair. ‘Why don’t we show Mr. Burden our new
fruit cave?’ she asked.
We started off across the yard with the children at our heels. The boys
were standing by the windmill, talking about the dog; some of them ran
ahead to open the cellar door. When we descended, they all came down
after us, and seemed quite as proud of the cave as the girls were.
Ambrosch, the thoughtful-looking one who had directed me down by the
plum bushes, called my attention to the stout brick walls and the
cement floor. ‘Yes, it is a good way from the house,’ he admitted.
‘But, you see, in winter there are nearly always some of us around to
come out and get things.’
Anna and Yulka showed me three small barrels; one full of dill pickles,
one full of chopped pickles, and one full of pickled watermelon rinds.
‘You wouldn’t believe, Jim, what it takes to feed them all!’ their
mother exclaimed. ‘You ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays and
Saturdays! It’s no wonder their poor papa can’t get rich, he has to buy
so much sugar for us to preserve with. We have our own wheat ground for
flour—but then there’s that much less to sell.’
Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept shyly pointing out to
me the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing, but, glancing at me,
traced on the glass with their finger-tips the outline of the cherries
and strawberries and crabapples within, trying by a blissful expression
of countenance to give me some idea of their deliciousness.
‘Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don’t have those,’ said
one of the older boys. ‘Mother uses them to make kolaches,’ he added.
Leo, in a low voice, tossed off some scornful remark in Bohemian.
I turned to him. ‘You think I don’t know what kolaches are, eh? You’re
mistaken, young man. I’ve eaten your mother’s kolaches long before that
Easter Day when you were born.’