Bab Bab 3 · Chapter III

On Sunday morning Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the

acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them some

provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no

garden or chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up

a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and

grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday’s bread, a jar of butter,

and several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up

to the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the

road that climbed to the big cornfield.

I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there

was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high

wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a

wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide

and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the

sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great

rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made

a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would

tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along

munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down

toward them.

The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought

the homestead of a fellow countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him

more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they

left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative

of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come

to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and

could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English

to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. One

son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land;

but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was

a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and

upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which

wouldn’t be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it at

home.

‘If they’re nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in

that cave of Krajiek’s,’ said grandmother. ‘It’s no better than a

badger hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he’s made them pay

twenty dollars for his old cookstove that ain’t worth ten.’

‘Yes’m,’ said Otto; ‘and he’s sold ‘em his oxen and his two bony old

horses for the price of good workteams. I’d have interfered about the

horses—the old man can understand some German—if I’d I a’ thought it

would do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.’

Grandmother looked interested. ‘Now, why is that, Otto?’

Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. ‘Well, ma’m, it’s politics. It would

take me a long while to explain.’

The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw

Creek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas’ place and made the

land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy

clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the

glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the

ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow

leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver

trees in fairy tales.

As we approached the Shimerdas’ dwelling, I could still see nothing but

rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots

hanging out where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one

of those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same

wine-coloured grass that grew everywhere. Near it tilted a shattered

windmill frame, that had no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie

our horses, and then I saw a door and window sunk deep in the drawbank.

The door stood open, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and

looked up at us hopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The

woman had on her head the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that

she wore when she had alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was

not old, but she was certainly not young. Her face was alert and

lively, with a sharp chin and shrewd little eyes. She shook

grandmother’s hand energetically.

‘Very glad, very glad!’ she ejaculated. Immediately she pointed to the

bank out of which she had emerged and said, ‘House no good, house no

good!’

Grandmother nodded consolingly. ‘You’ll get fixed up comfortable after

while, Mrs. Shimerda; make good house.’

My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if

they were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda understand the friendly

intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of

bread and even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively

curiosity, exclaiming, ‘Much good, much thank!’—and again she wrung

grandmother’s hand.

The oldest son, Ambroz—they called it Ambrosch—came out of the cave and

stood beside his mother. He was nineteen years old, short and

broad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face.

His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother’s, but more sly

and suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food. The family had been

living on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days.

The little girl was pretty, but Ántonia—they accented the name thus,

strongly, when they spoke to her—was still prettier. I remembered what

the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full

of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was

brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark colour. Her

brown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom they

called Yulka (Julka), was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I

stood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the

barn to see what was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even

from a distance one could see that there was something strange about

this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and

held up his hands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the

first knuckle, like a duck’s foot. When he saw me draw back, he began

to crow delightedly, ‘Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!’ like a rooster. His

mother scowled and said sternly, ‘Marek!’ then spoke rapidly to Krajiek

in Bohemian.

‘She wants me to tell you he won’t hurt nobody, Mrs. Burden. He was

born like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer.’

He struck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled knowingly.

At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore no

hat, and his thick, iron-grey hair was brushed straight back from his

forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and made

him look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia. He was tall

and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at us

understandingly, then took grandmother’s hand and bent over it. I

noticed how white and well-shaped his own hands were. They looked calm,

somehow, and skilled. His eyes were melancholy, and were set back deep

under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like

ashes—like something from which all the warmth and light had died out.

Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner.

He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted grey vest, and,

instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully

crossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was

translating for Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia came up to me and held out her

hand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up the steep drawside

together, Yulka trotting after us.

When we reached the level and could see the gold tree-tops, I pointed

toward them, and Ántonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me

how glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did

not stop until the ground itself stopped—fell away before us so

abruptly that the next step would have been out into the tree-tops. We

stood panting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and

bushes that grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my

hat on, and the girls’ skirts were blown out before them. Ántonia

seemed to like it; she held her little sister by the hand and chattered

away in that language which seemed to me spoken so much more rapidly

than mine. She looked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she

could not say.

‘Name? What name?’ she asked, touching me on the shoulder. I told her

my name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She

pointed into the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and

said again, ‘What name?’

We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like

a baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. Ántonia pointed up to the

sky and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was

not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the

word, making it sound like ‘ice.’ She pointed up to the sky, then to my

eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that

she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her

knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her

head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.

‘Oh,’ I exclaimed, ‘blue; blue sky.’

She clapped her hands and murmured, ‘Blue sky, blue eyes,’ as if it

amused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind, she learned a

score of words. She was alive, and very eager. We were so deep in the

grass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold

tree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant. After Ántonia had

said the new words over and over, she wanted to give me a little chased

silver ring she wore on her middle finger. When she coaxed and

insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I didn’t want her ring, and I

felt there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to

give it away to a boy she had never seen before. No wonder Krajiek got

the better of these people, if this was how they behaved.

While we were disputing ‘about the ring, I heard a mournful voice

calling, ‘Ántonia, Ántonia!’ She sprang up like a hare. ‘Tatinek!

Tatinek!’ she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming

toward us. Ántonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When

I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my

face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used

to being taken for granted by my elders.

We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother was

waiting for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of his

pocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English

and the other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother’s hands,

looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall

never forget, ‘Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Ántonia!’