Bab Bab 8 · Chapter VIII

While the autumn colour was growing pale on the grass and cornfields,

things went badly with our friends the Russians. Peter told his

troubles to Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to meet a note which fell due

on the first of November; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on renewing

it, and to give a mortgage on his pigs and horses and even his milk

cow. His creditor was Wick Cutter, the merciless Black Hawk

money-lender, a man of evil name throughout the county, of whom I shall

have more to say later. Peter could give no very clear account of his

transactions with Cutter. He only knew that he had first borrowed two

hundred dollars, then another hundred, then fifty—that each time a

bonus was added to the principal, and the debt grew faster than any

crop he planted. Now everything was plastered with mortgages.

Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself lifting

timbers for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such a

gush of blood from the lungs that his fellow workmen thought he would

die on the spot. They hauled him home and put him into his bed, and

there he lay, very ill indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil

bird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning

human beings away. The Russians had such bad luck that people were

afraid of them and liked to put them out of mind.

One afternoon Ántonia and her father came over to our house to get

buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun was low.

Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad,

he said, and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had

come to fetch them. When Ántonia and her father got into the wagon, I

entreated grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without

my supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas’ barn and run home in the

morning. My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was

often large-minded about humouring the desires of other people. She

asked Peter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen

she brought a bag of sandwiches and doughnuts for us.

Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Ántonia and I sat in the

straw behind and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After the sun sank,

a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the

weather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed down

in the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die

out of the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky.

Peter kept sighing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was

afraid Pavel would never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up

there the stars grew magnificently bright. Though we had come from such

different parts of the world, in both of us there was some dusky

superstition that those shining groups have their influence upon what

is and what is not to be. Perhaps Russian Peter, come from farther away

than any of us, had brought from his land, too, some such belief.

The little house on the hillside was so much the colour of the night

that we could not see it as we came up the draw. The ruddy windows

guided us—the light from the kitchen stove, for there was no lamp

burning.

We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony

and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the

table in front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that

supported the thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he

breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and

windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big

spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off

like the others. They made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or

of ghosts who were trying desperately to get in for shelter, and then

went moaning on. Presently, in one of those sobbing intervals between

the blasts, the coyotes tuned up with their whining howl; one, two,

three, then all together—to tell us that winter was coming. This sound

brought an answer from the bed—a long complaining cry—as if Pavel were

having bad dreams or were waking to some old misery. Peter listened,

but did not stir. He was sitting on the floor by the kitchen stove. The

coyotes broke out again; yap, yap, yap—then the high whine. Pavel

called for something and struggled up on his elbow.

‘He is scared of the wolves,’ Ántonia whispered to me. ‘In his country

there are very many, and they eat men and women.’ We slid closer

together along the bench.

I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hanging

open, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow bristle, rose and

fell horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to his feet, caught up

the teakettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smell

of spirits went through the room.

Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottle

and slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if he had

outwitted someone. His eyes followed Peter about the room with a

contemptuous, unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despised

him for being so simple and docile.

Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr. Shimerda, scarcely above a

whisper. He was telling a long story, and as he went on, Ántonia took

my hand under the table and held it tight. She leaned forward and

strained her ears to hear him. He grew more and more excited, and kept

pointing all around his bed, as if there were things there and he

wanted Mr. Shimerda to see them.

‘It’s wolves, Jimmy,’ Ántonia whispered. ‘It’s awful, what he says!’

The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to be cursing people

who had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda caught him by the shoulders, but

could hardly hold him in bed. At last he was shut off by a coughing fit

which fairly choked him. He pulled a cloth from under his pillow and

held it to his mouth. Quickly it was covered with bright red spots—I

thought I had never seen any blood so bright. When he lay down and

turned his face to the wall, all the rage had gone out of him. He lay

patiently fighting for breath, like a child with croup. Ántonia’s

father uncovered one of his long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically.

From our bench we could see what a hollow case his body was. His spine

and shoulder-blades stood out like the bones under the hide of a dead

steer left in the fields. That sharp backbone must have hurt him when

he lay on it.

Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was, the worst was

over. Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel was asleep. Without a word

Peter got up and lit his lantern. He was going out to get his team to

drive us home. Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the long

bowed back under the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe.

On the way home, when we were lying in the straw, under the jolting and

rattling Ántonia told me as much of the story as she could. What she

did not tell me then, she told later; we talked of nothing else for

days afterward.

When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they

were asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle of

another village. It was in the dead of winter and the groom’s party

went over to the wedding in sledges. Peter and Pavel drove in the

groom’s sledge, and six sledges followed with all his relatives and

friends.

After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner given by

the parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all afternoon; then it

became a supper and continued far into the night. There was much

dancing and drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said

good-bye to her and blessed her. The groom took her up in his arms and

carried her out to his sledge and tucked her under the blankets. He

sprang in beside her, and Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and Peter!) took

the front seat. Pavel drove. The party set out with singing and the

jingle of sleigh-bells, the groom’s sledge going first. All the drivers

were more or less the worse for merry-making, and the groom was

absorbed in his bride.

The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they

heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had

too much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up

and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming

together. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A

black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves

ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there

were hundreds of them.

Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control—he

was probably very drunk—the horses left the road, the sledge was caught

in a clump of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over the

snow, and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks that

followed made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed their

horses. The groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest—all the

others carried from six to a dozen people.

Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were more

terrible to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed to

check the wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear;

the people who were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those who

were already lost. The little bride hid her face on the groom’s

shoulder and sobbed. Pavel sat still and watched his horses. The road

was clear and white, and the groom’s three blacks went like the wind.

It was only necessary to be calm and to guide them carefully.

At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and

looked back. ‘There are only three sledges left,’ he whispered.

‘And the wolves?’ Pavel asked.

‘Enough! Enough for all of us.’

Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed him

down the other side. In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind

them a whirling black group on the snow. Presently the groom screamed.

He saw his father’s sledge overturned, with his mother and sisters. He

sprang up as if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him

back. It was even then too late. The black ground-shadows were already

crowding over the heap in the road, and one horse ran out across the

fields, his harness hanging to him, wolves at his heels. But the

groom’s movement had given Pavel an idea.

They were within a few miles of their village now. The only sledge left

out of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel’s middle horse was

failing. Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge;

Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves got abreast of the horses, and

the horses went crazy. They tried to jump over each other, got tangled

up in the harness, and overturned the sledge.

When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was

alone upon the familiar road. ‘They still come?’ he asked Peter.

‘Yes.’

‘How many?’

‘Twenty, thirty—enough.’

Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel

gave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge.

He called to the groom that they must lighten—and pointed to the bride.

The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her

away. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side

of the sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered

exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in

the front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was

a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever

heard it before—the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing

for early prayers.

Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been alone

ever since. They were run out of their village. Pavel’s own mother

would not look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when people

learned where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the

two men who had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went, the

story followed them. It took them five years to save money enough to

come to America. They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but

they were always unfortunate. When Pavel’s health grew so bad, they

decided to try farming.

Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, and

was buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, and

left the country—went to be cook in a railway construction camp where

gangs of Russians were employed.

At his sale we bought Peter’s wheelbarrow and some of his harness.

During the auction he went about with his head down, and never lifted

his eyes. He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk

money-lender who held mortgages on Peter’s livestock was there, and he

bought in the sale notes at about fifty cents on the dollar. Everyone

said Peter kissed the cow before she was led away by her new owner. I

did not see him do it, but this I know: after all his furniture and his

cookstove and pots and pans had been hauled off by the purchasers, when

his house was stripped and bare, he sat down on the floor with his

clasp-knife and ate all the melons that he had put away for winter.

When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in their wagon to take Peter to

the train, they found him with a dripping beard, surrounded by heaps of

melon rinds.

The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr.

Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log

house and sit there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the

winter snows penned him in his cave. For Ántonia and me, the story of

the wedding party was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel’s secret

to anyone, but guarded it jealously—as if the wolves of the Ukraine had

gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to

give us a painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to

sleep, I often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing

through a country that looked something like Nebraska and something

like Virginia.