Chapter Chapter 10 · Chapter X

For several weeks after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the

Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold

which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad

to have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen

Mr. Shimerda out hunting.

‘He’s made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar

that he buttons on outside his coat. They ain’t got but one overcoat

among ‘em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful

scared of cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers.’

‘All but the crazy boy,’ Jake put in. ‘He never wears the coat. Krajiek

says he’s turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must

be getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the

cornfield yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie

dogs he’d shot. He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a

face and took on, to scare him, but he just looked like he was

smarter’n me and put ‘em back in his sack and walked off.’

Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. ‘Josiah, you

don’t suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs,

do you?’

‘You had better go over and see our neighbours tomorrow, Emmaline,’ he

replied gravely.

Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts

and ought to be good for food, but their family connections were

against them. I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they

belonged to the rat family.

When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake

packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.

‘Now, Jake,’ grandmother was saying, ‘if you can find that old rooster

that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we’ll take him

along. There’s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn’t have got hens

from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I

reckon she was confused and didn’t know where to begin. I’ve come

strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good

thing to have, no matter what you don’t have.

‘Just as you say, ma’m,’ said Jake, ‘but I hate to think of Krajiek

getting a leg of that old rooster.’ He tramped out through the long

cellar and dropped the heavy door behind him.

After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and

climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the

Shimerdas’, we heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Ántonia, her

head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her

weight on the pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon,

looked back over her shoulder, and, catching up her pail of water,

started at a run for the hole in the bank.

Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the

provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy

path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came

from the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the

wind whisked them roughly away.

Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized

grandmother’s hand. She did not say ‘How do!’ as usual, but at once

began to cry, talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her

feet which were tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at

everyone.

The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as

if he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet,

her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing

up at her mother, hid again. Ántonia was washing pans and dishes in a

dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a

gunny-sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered, he threw a

grain-sack over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the

cave was stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung

over the stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer.

Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door,

and made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had

been frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour.

Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman

laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and, catching up an empty

coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively

vindictive.

Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting

their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with the

hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda’s reproaches. Then the

poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son,

hid her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no

heed to her, but called Ántonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony

left her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this

before.

‘You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad,’ she

whispered, as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things

grandmother handed her.

The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and

stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of

potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.

‘Haven’t you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Ántonia? This is

no place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?’

‘We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office what he throw out. We got no

potatoes, Mrs. Burden,’ Tony admitted mournfully.

When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the

door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from

behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth grey hair,

as if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean

and neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took

grandmother’s arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the

room. In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much

bigger than an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got

up on one of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a

pile of straw. The old man held the lantern. ‘Yulka,’ he said in a low,

despairing voice, ‘Yulka; my Ántonia!’

Grandmother drew back. ‘You mean they sleep in there—your girls?’ He

bowed his head.

Tony slipped under his arm. ‘It is very cold on the floor, and this is

warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there,’ she insisted

eagerly. ‘My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in

Bohemie. See, Jim?’ She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had

built against the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.

Grandmother sighed. ‘Sure enough, where WOULD you sleep, dear! I don’t

doubt you’re warm there. You’ll have a better house after while,

Ántonia, and then you will forget these hard times.’

Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed

his wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his hand on

Ántonia’s shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter

translated. He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old

country; he made good wages, and his family were respected there. He

left Bohemia with more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their

passage money was paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New

York, and the railway fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected.

By the time they paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and

oxen and some old farm machinery, they had very little money left. He

wished grandmother to know, however, that he still had some money. If

they could get through until spring came, they would buy a cow and

chickens and plant a garden, and would then do very well. Ambrosch and

Ántonia were both old enough to work in the fields, and they were

willing to work. But the snow and the bitter weather had disheartened

them all.

Ántonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them

in the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but

the logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had

been felled.

While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the

floor with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously

toward us and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to

make his queer noises for me—to bark like a dog or whinny like a

horse—but he did not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was

always trying to be agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind

that he must make up for his deficiencies.

Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over,

and, while Ántonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own

account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she

heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and

brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack

and half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy

boy began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and

stirred the contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell,

very pungent, even among the other odours of that cave. She measured a

teacup full, tied it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it

ceremoniously to grandmother.

‘For cook,’ she announced. ‘Little now; be very much when cook,’

spreading out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to

a gallon. ‘Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat

better in my country.’

‘Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda,’ grandmother said dryly. ‘I can’t say but I

prefer our bread to yours, myself.’

Ántonia undertook to explain. ‘This very good, Mrs. Burden’—she clasped

her hands as if she could not express how good—‘it make very much when

you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken,

in the gravy—oh, so good!’

All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good

Christian people could forget they were their brothers’ keepers.

‘I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep.

Where’s a body to begin, with these people? They’re wanting in

everything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give ‘em that, I

guess. Jimmy, here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they

are. Do you reckon that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?’

‘He’s a worker, all right, ma’m, and he’s got some ketch-on about him;

but he’s a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world;

and then, ag’in, they can be too mean.’

That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package

Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that

looked like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers,

and the most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthy

odour. We could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.

‘They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain’t dried

fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I’m afraid of ‘em. Anyhow,

I shouldn’t want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with

old clothes and goose pillows.’

She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of

the chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot

the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those

little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and

treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered,

probably, in some deep Bohemian forest....