The Russlander Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR

  The Russländer

  “Masterful. … She weaves historical fact and domestic detail into a meticulous portrait of a tightly knit community driven to the brink of existence. … It’s impossible not to see Katya and her family in the faces of the fleeing refugees as world events once again sweep innocent people into a maelstrom.”

  – Ottawa Citizen

  “Compelling. … We think not so much of the story as the process of memory and reflection, the ability of language to convey a remembered reality.”

  – Toronto Star

  “Birdsell has reached deep for her story, and that of countless immigrants to a new land, and come up with treasure as precious as that silver, two-handled cup that serves as a totem throughout this novel about remembrance and redemption.”

  – Hamilton Spectator

  “Superb.”

  – Edmonton Journal

  “An important book. … It shows how easily we can destroy our world, but also that we have the ability to rebuild it.”

  – Globe and Mail

  “I think it’s both beautiful and brave, and very, very moving.”

  – Ann Jansen, CBC Radio

  “[Birdsell] documents in chilling, unsentimental prose man’s unspeakable capacity for cruelty towards his fellow man. … As relevant as today’s headlines.”

  – Maclean’s

  BOOKS BY SANDRA BIRDSELL

  NOVELS

  The Missing Child (1989)

  The Chrome Suite (1992)

  The Russländer (2001)

  SHORT FICTION

  Night Travellers (1982) and Ladies of the House (1984),

  reissued in one volume entitled Agassiz Stories (1987)

  The Two-Headed Calf (1997)

  Copyright © 2001 by Sandra Birdsell

  Cloth edition published 2001

  First Emblem Editions publication 2002

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Birdsell, Sandra, 1942-

  The Russländer / Sandra Birdsell.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-686-8

  I. Title.

  PS8553.176R87 2002 C813′.54 C2002–901238–4

  PR9199.3.B4385R87 2002

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

  EMBLEM EDITIONS

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  The Canadian Publishers

  481 University Avenue

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5G 2E9

  www.mcclelland.com/emblem

  v3.1

  For my mother,

  Louise Schroeder Bartlette,

  and

  in memory of

  Judy Scott

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I: In Green Pastures

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part II: In The Presence of Enemies

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part III: Surely Goodness and Mercy

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  No foreign sky protected me,

  no stranger’s wing shielded my face,

  I stand a witness to the common lot,

  survivor of that time, that place.

  – ANNA AKHMATOVA

  ODESSAER ZEITUNG November 15, 1917

  Massacre at Privol’noye

  Eleven people were piteously slain by bandits at the Abram Jacob Sudermann estate of Privol’noye on November 11.

  The dead are: Abram Sudermann 57

  Aganetha Thiessen Sudermann 55

  Peter Vogt 38

  Marie Schroeder Vogt 37

  Margareta Vogt 18

  Gerhard Vogt 13

  Johann Vogt 7

  Peter Vogt 5

  Daniel Vogt 3

  Mary Wiebe 42

  Martha Wiebe 43

  Ältester Wiebe (no relation to the Wiebe sisters) brought news of the massacre to Nikolaifeld church members on November 13. Kornelius Isaac Heinrichs of Arbusovka happened upon the murders late in the day of November 11. All who were slain were found outside on the yard, with the exception of the young Gerhard Vogt, who was found slain on a field near a haystack, where it is believed the bandits caught up with him as he attempted to escape. The victims had either been shot, or had had their throats cut. Abram Sudermann’s head had been severed, and lay some distance from his body. Kornelius Heinrichs heard a noise coming from inside the house and looked through a window where he saw a baby crawling around on the floor amid broken glass, its night-clothes bloodied. There are three other survivors who managed to hide, and escaped with their lives.

  I

  IN GREEN PASTURES

  And they shall say, This land that was

  desolate is become like the garden of Eden …

  –EZEKIEL 36:35

  he would always remember the awe, the swelling in her breastbone when she’d first seen her name written, Lydia guiding her hand across a slate. When she had learned to make her name she began to put herself forward, traced K.V. in lemon polish on a chair back, through frost on a window, icing on a cookie. K.V. Which meant: Me, I. Which was: Her. A high-minded child, body small for her age, and so alive. She had come to realize that she’d been small from the size of her own children and grandchildren. She’d been a tiny yeasty and doughy person going to and fro with a huff and a puff, as though the day was all she had, and at the same time, thinking the day would go on for good. As though she were living in eternity.

  More than likely she had been born near-sighted, and her nest of yellow hair grew long and wispy, too fine for anything but a single plait that her mother intertwined with spun wool so the braid would not curl like a pig’s tail and expose the nape of her neck to the chill of a witch’s kiss. Being near-sighted was not a hindrance. She learned this from early on, through inference and the attitudes of people around her. What went on beyond the borders of her Russian Mennonite oasis was not worth noticing.

  Because she was born female she could expect to dwell safely within the circumference of her privileged world. Her time would be consumed by the close-up busyness of a girl learning to be like the virtuous woman of Proverbs, by the work of becoming a ruby. Young girl busyness, such as noticing that the sun had overheated the classroom in which she sat, a corner room of the east wing of the Big House
. Potted geraniums on the sills had begun to exude their distinct odour, and a Swiss clock hanging on a wall between two windows ticked unobtrusively. She was Katherine Vogt, the second-born daughter of the overseer of the Abram Sudermann estate, Privol’noye. Daughter of Peter Vogt and Marie Schroeder Vogt; Katya, her parents called her, the diminutive an expression of their affection.

  While Abram Sudermann and his brothers Isaac, Jakob and David held their annual business meeting in an office at the front of the Big House, Katya supposed that her father, Peter, was impatient for their meeting to end and for his anticipated visit with David Sudermann to begin. She didn’t know that her father’s anticipation was for more than a visit, that he waited to hear whether or not the brothers had decided to fulfill his longed-for dream to farm his own land. She didn’t know that the outcome of their meeting would set her father planning a future that wouldn’t come to pass. But this was not the only story about to be interrupted. She was seated with children at a table in the classroom, studying a blank sheet of paper her tutor had given her and rehearsing silently what she was expected to recite at a Christmas Tree program that evening. Ihr Kinderlein kommet, o come one and all, to Bethlehem haste to the manger so small.

  “Dear children, listen to me,” their tutor, the spinster Helena Sudermann, said. Her voice rose effortlessly above the give and take of the children’s conversation that had turned sleepy-sounding in the heat of the sun.

  “Ja, I’m listening,” Katya was quick to assure her tutor, and remembered not to rattle the bells that were strung through the laces on her boots and further annoy Helena Sudermann.

  Katya’s older sister, Margareta, was there, too. Greta, she was called. She and Lydia Sudermann, Abram’s daughter, were joined at the head, and they sat now on the same chair, each with a behind cheek planted firmly on it. They had tied their braids together with a ribbon to demonstrate to Lydia’s girl cousins, who were visiting over Christmas, just how close they were. The cousins were daughters of Jakob Sudermann who, like his brothers, came to Abram’s estate at Christmas when an accounting of their various enterprises took place. Lydia and Greta had tied a braid together to remind the sister cousins that they were best friends, and the cousins were not to try and come between them. It was 1910; Katya Vogt was eight years old. Her sister Greta and Lydia Sudermann were eleven, Lydia the oldest by ten days: twins, one light and one dark.

  “We’re listening, also,” Greta and Lydia said, their eyes lifting from the pictures they had already begun to draw. Greta’s eyes were the colour of hazelnut; Lydia’s, a field of flax blooming beyond the meadow in summer.

  “I generally pay attention when someone speaks. But usually that someone has something worthwhile to say,” Dietrich Sudermann intoned in his new voice, causing Katya’s little brother, Gerhard, to chortle. Gerhard was as sturdy as the oak-plank table in the kitchen of the Big House. Like the table, the Big House, the workers’ houses lining the roadside of the compound, like the barns, sheds, and equipment buildings, her brother Gerhard had been built to last. He shared a bench with Dietrich, who was home from school for the Christmas holiday, and whose presence made Gerhard act older than six years.

  “I want you to think of an oasis,” Helena Sudermann said.

  The odour of pipe smoke drifted into the room, and they heard a woman begin to cough. A door closed loudly, muting what had been a brood of women clucking. Ja, ja. What do you think, Jakob says, even though Abram – their conversation had spilled out into the hall outside the classroom all afternoon.

  Beyond the window Katya could see the parade barn, and a boy, one of the coachman’s sons, coming past the barn, leading a team of ponies hitched to the kindersleigh. White smoke streamed from the animals’ nostrils and hung in a cloud for a moment before drifting away, and so she knew that while there was a wind, it wasn’t a strong one, and so it shouldn’t be too cold to go skating.

  “Now, you all go on little trips, yes? With your papa, isn’t that so?” Helena Sudermann was saying, hoping to snare their attention with questions.

  “Ja, Papa took me along on a trip before Christmas. We went to Lubitskoye, and this is what came of it,” Katya said and swung her feet, making the bells on her boots tinkle.

  “Of course we go on trips,” Dietrich said, the tone of his adolescent voice conveying to his spinster aunt that he wasn’t going to be taken in by her questions. Besides, she knew very well that he went on trips. He had gone as far away as America, and could remember touring the Pillsbury flour mill in Minneapolis with his father.

  “Yes, we do too. We go on trips, too,” Greta and Lydia said. They were like two bells; one person with two heads, Greta’s being shiny black, and Lydia’s white gold.

  “Ja, ja. Everyone here around goes on little trips,” Helena conceded, relieved to have gained their attention. And the next time they went on a trip they were to be sure and notice how green the steppe was around the Mennonite villages in the colony of Yazykovo, in comparison to the land owned by Russians, proof of how God had blessed them.

  They should notice how the glorious colours of spring burst forth so suddenly, and then from the month of June and throughout the summer, the sun scorched the land, an iron left standing on an ironing pad and turning it the drab colour of sand. However. A person needed only to travel a few versts in any direction from the Chortitza road, and they would soon notice that Mennonite land stayed green all year round, she went on to say to her overheated and lethargic charges as they sketched and coloured and waited for Sophie Karpenko to return from Ox Lake and announce, “The fire is lit, the skating hut will soon be warm. They can come now.”

  “Wait a minute. When we came here for Christmas, we didn’t see any such thing,” one of Lydia’s cousins droned. She was drowsy-eyed, and her mouth hung open as though she didn’t possess the energy to close it.

  “We only saw snow,” her sister concluded in a tone that suggested she couldn’t understand why that should be. The girl cousins wore identical wine-red velveteen dresses with scalloped linen collars which had become palettes stained with Christmas food and drink.

  They only saw snow, Lydia whispered to Greta, who rolled her eyes, and they broke into giggling. They only saw snow, Katya said, and laughed, too, while the sister cousins made pickle faces. As if on cue Greta and Lydia stopped laughing. Monkey see, Lydia said, monkey do, Greta finished, although she’d never been anywhere near a zoo and seen the mimicking antics of such an animal.

  Helena Sudermann ignored them as she went on to say that the fields owned by Mennonites were oases of green in a semi-arid Russian land. Half black, half chestnut soil; the same sun, snow, rain; but God had chosen to bless the Mennonite farmer, including her brother, Abram, owner of the estate of Privol’noye and the chairs they sat on, the pails of lebkuchen and gruznikie – honey cookies and peppermint cookies – they had consumed over Christmas, the cocoa milk they would later drink when they went skating. God blessed the Mennonite farmer who prayed and gave credit, in godsholyname, amen. And that was what they had to be thankful for at Christmas, she concluded.

  “Give credit?” Dietrich asked. He was the second youngest of Abram and Aganetha Sudermann’s children, Lydia being the youngest. They had two older married sons living in Ekaterinoslav, and a daughter, Justina. Dietrich wasn’t bothered that his hair covered his eyes. It came forward from the crown and at the sides, and when he was at home he was a blond sheepdog. But once he returned to the Zentralschule in the town of Chortitza, he wore his hair slicked back, a high-buttoned tunic belted at the waist. He resembled a well-to-do Russian, and not a Mennonite farmer’s son. A gutsbesitzer’s son.

  “Who does the Mennonite farmer give credit to?” he now asked his aunt.

  “To God, of course.”

  “And at what interest does the Mennonite farmer give credit?” he asked, his eyes wide with a feigned innocence.

  Helena’s hand came up to hide her irritation, and to stroke a silky fringe of hair that grew above her lips a
nd which she kept trimmed evenly with embroidery scissors. They sometimes called Helena “Moustache,” Schnurrbart-Len, when they thought she couldn’t hear. She now pretended not to have heard Dietrich.

  “What picture will you make, Katya?” Helena asked, having noticed that the girl’s paper remained untouched.

  “I don’t know. It’s so terribly hard,” she said with genuine anguish. She feared spoiling the sheet of paper, and at the same time, not being able to imagine what to draw, she feared betraying more than a weakness of her eyes.

  “What have we been talking about so far?” Helena asked.

  “Oases.”

  “Being thankful for God’s blessings, yes? God sent his son at Christmas, did he not? To save us. And so the greatest blessing of all is Christmas.”

  “I would think Easter was the greatest,” Dietrich said.

  “Well, yes. Easter. But Jesus had to come first, did he not? He had to be born as a man and live among us, isn’t that so?”

  “Being born wasn’t as difficult for Jesus as being crucified, was it,” Dietrich countered.

  “I’m sure that’s so. But think of it. Knowing. Having to leave heaven, knowing what was in store for him. Having to leave his father,” Helena said, with strained patience.

  “Yes, but when he was a baby, when he was born, he wouldn’t remember that, would he? And so the actual birth, Christmas –” Dietrich, was not allowed to finish.

  “That’s not what I was talking about. I was talking about God’s greatest blessing,” Helena said.

  “Yes, but …”

  While the aunt and nephew sparred, Katya thought of the recitation she was expected to deliver later that evening at the Christmas Tree, grateful when the word manger sparked her imagination, and she began to draw.

  Now male voices rolled down the parquet hall floor from the front of the house as the Sudermann brothers ended their annual business meeting and Abram, no doubt, brought out a bottle of good Mennonite brandy to toast their decision. All right, then. So be it. Abram had likely concluded that this was the third year he’d prevailed on his overseer, Peter Vogt, to be patient. In all fairness, a promise had been made before God, and it should now come to pass. The youngest Sudermann brother, David, must have declined the ceremonial drink, choosing instead to go and find Katya’s father and bring him the good news. He came to the classroom door and stood for a moment looking in at them, a man the same age as her father, but his slight frame, and his face, untouched by the weather, made him appear younger.