Chapter Chapter 16 · Chapter XVI

Mr. Shimerda lay dead in the barn four days, and on the fifth they

buried him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging the

grave, chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday we

breakfasted before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin.

Jake and Jelinek went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the

pool of blood in which it was frozen fast to the ground.

When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas’ house, we found the

womenfolk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat

crouching by the stove, Ántonia was washing dishes. When she saw me,

she ran out of her dark corner and threw her arms around me. ‘Oh,

Jimmy,’ she sobbed, ‘what you tink for my lovely papa!’ It seemed to me

that I could feel her heart breaking as she clung to me.

Mrs. Shimerda, sitting on the stump by the stove, kept looking over her

shoulder toward the door while the neighbours were arriving. They came

on horseback, all except the postmaster, who brought his family in a

wagon over the only broken wagon-trail. The Widow Steavens rode up from

her farm eight miles down the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the women

into the cave-house, and it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow was

beginning to fall, and everyone was afraid of another storm and anxious

to have the burial over with.

Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to

start. After bundling her mother up in clothes the neighbours had

brought, Ántonia put on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skin

hat her father had made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerda’s box up

the hill; Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide for

the door, so it was put down on the slope outside. I slipped out from

the cave and looked at Mr. Shimerda. He was lying on his side, with his

knees drawn up. His body was draped in a black shawl, and his head was

bandaged in white muslin, like a mummy’s; one of his long, shapely

hands lay out on the black cloth; that was all one could see of him.

Mrs. Shimerda came out and placed an open prayer-book against the body,

making the sign of the cross on the bandaged head with her fingers.

Ambrosch knelt down and made the same gesture, and after him Ántonia

and Marek. Yulka hung back. Her mother pushed her forward, and kept

saying something to her over and over. Yulka knelt down, shut her eyes,

and put out her hand a little way, but she drew it back and began to

cry wildly. She was afraid to touch the bandage. Mrs. Shimerda caught

her by the shoulders and pushed her toward the coffin, but grandmother

interfered.

‘No, Mrs. Shimerda,’ she said firmly, ‘I won’t stand by and see that

child frightened into spasms. She is too little to understand what you

want of her. Let her alone.’

At a look from grandfather, Fuchs and Jelinek placed the lid on the

box, and began to nail it down over Mr. Shimerda. I was afraid to look

at Ántonia. She put her arms round Yulka and held the little girl close

to her.

The coffin was put into the wagon. We drove slowly away, against the

fine, icy snow which cut our faces like a sand-blast. When we reached

the grave, it looked a very little spot in that snow-covered waste. The

men took the coffin to the edge of the hole and lowered it with ropes.

We stood about watching them, and the powdery snow lay without melting

on the caps and shoulders of the men and the shawls of the women.

Jelinek spoke in a persuasive tone to Mrs. Shimerda, and then turned to

grandfather.

‘She says, Mr. Burden, she is very glad if you can make some prayer for

him here in English, for the neighbours to understand.’

Grandmother looked anxiously at grandfather. He took off his hat, and

the other men did likewise. I thought his prayer remarkable. I still

remember it. He began, ‘Oh, great and just God, no man among us knows

what the sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge what lies between him

and Thee.’ He prayed that if any man there had been remiss toward the

stranger come to a far country, God would forgive him and soften his

heart. He recalled the promises to the widow and the fatherless, and

asked God to smooth the way before this widow and her children, and to

‘incline the hearts of men to deal justly with her.’ In closing, he

said we were leaving Mr. Shimerda at ‘Thy judgment seat, which is also

Thy mercy seat.’

All the time he was praying, grandmother watched him through the black

fingers of her glove, and when he said ‘Amen,’ I thought she looked

satisfied with him. She turned to Otto and whispered, ‘Can’t you start

a hymn, Fuchs? It would seem less heathenish.’

Fuchs glanced about to see if there was general approval of her

suggestion, then began, ‘Jesus, Lover of my Soul,’ and all the men and

women took it up after him. Whenever I have heard the hymn since, it

has made me remember that white waste and the little group of people;

and the bluish air, full of fine, eddying snow, like long veils flying:

‘While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high.’

Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were over, and the red

grass had been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared

from the prairie; when all the fields were under fence, and the roads

no longer ran about like wild things, but followed the surveyed

section-lines, Mr. Shimerda’s grave was still there, with a sagging

wire fence around it, and an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather had

predicted, Mrs. Shimerda never saw the roads going over his head. The

road from the north curved a little to the east just there, and the

road from the west swung out a little to the south; so that the grave,

with its tall red grass that was never mowed, was like a little island;

and at twilight, under a new moon or the clear evening star, the dusty

roads used to look like soft grey rivers flowing past it. I never came

upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot

most dear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the propitiatory intent,

that had put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that

could not carry out the sentence—the error from the surveyed lines, the

clemency of the soft earth roads along which the home-coming wagons

rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I

am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper.