第 十三 章 · Chapter XIII

The week following Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year’s Day

all the world about us was a broth of grey slush, and the guttered

slope between the windmill and the barn was running black water. The

soft black earth stood out in patches along the roadsides. I resumed

all my chores, carried in the cobs and wood and water, and spent the

afternoons at the barn, watching Jake shell corn with a hand-sheller.

One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Ántonia and her

mother rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit.

It was the first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ran

about examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the while

commenting upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone.

In the kitchen she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back of the

stove and said: ‘You got many, Shimerdas no got.’ I thought it

weak-minded of grandmother to give the pot to her.

After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes, she said,

tossing her head: ‘You got many things for cook. If I got all things

like you, I make much better.’

She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not

humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Ántonia and

listened unsympathetically when she told me her father was not well.

‘My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music

any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for

dance. Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some

days he take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers on the

strings, like this, but never he make the music. He don’t like this

kawntree.’

‘People who don’t like this country ought to stay at home,’ I said

severely. ‘We don’t make them come here.’

‘He not want to come, never!’ she burst out. ‘My mamenka make him come.

All the time she say: “America big country; much money, much land for

my boys, much husband for my girls.” My papa, he cry for leave his old

friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play

the long horn like this’—she indicated a slide trombone. “They go to

school together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want

Ambrosch for be rich, with many cattle.”’

‘Your mama,’ I said angrily, ‘wants other people’s things.’

“Your grandfather is rich,” she retorted fiercely. ‘Why he not help my

papa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very

smart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here.’

Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs.

Shimerda and Ántonia always deferred to him, though he was often surly

with them and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his mother

had everything their own way. Though Ántonia loved her father more than

she did anyone else, she stood in awe of her elder brother.

After I watched Ántonia and her mother go over the hill on their

miserable horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned to

grandmother, who had taken up her darning, and said I hoped that

snooping old woman wouldn’t come to see us any more.

Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole in

Otto’s sock. ‘She’s not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old to you.

No, I wouldn’t mourn if she never came again. But, you see, a body

never knows what traits poverty might bring out in ‘em. It makes a

woman grasping to see her children want for things. Now read me a

chapter in “The Prince of the House of David.” Let’s forget the

Bohemians.’

We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle in the corral

ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it for them, and we

hoped they would be ready for an early market. One morning the two big

bulls, Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they

began to tease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that

separated them. Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the

soft earth with their hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their

heads. Each withdrew to a far corner of his own corral, and then they

made for each other at a gallop. Thud, thud, we could hear the impact

of their great heads, and their bellowing shook the pans on the kitchen

shelves. Had they not been dehorned, they would have torn each other to

pieces. Pretty soon the fat steers took it up and began butting and

horning each other. Clearly, the affair had to be stopped. We all stood

by and watched admiringly while Fuchs rode into the corral with a

pitchfork and prodded the bulls again and again, finally driving them

apart.

The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the

twentieth of January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake

and Otto came in white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping

their feet. They began to laugh boisterously when they saw me, calling:

‘You’ve got a birthday present this time, Jim, and no mistake. They was

a full-grown blizzard ordered for you.’

All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this time, it simply

spilled out of heaven, like thousands of featherbeds being emptied.

That afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought in

their tools and made two great wooden shovels with long handles.

Neither grandmother nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed the

chickens and brought in a pitiful contribution of eggs.

Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn—and the

snow was still falling! There had not been such a storm in the ten

years my grandfather had lived in Nebraska. He said at dinner that we

would not try to reach the cattle—they were fat enough to go without

their corn for a day or two; but tomorrow we must feed them and thaw

out their water-tap so that they could drink. We could not so much as

see the corrals, but we knew the steers were over there, huddled

together under the north bank. Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by

this time, were probably warming each other’s backs. ‘This’ll take the

bile out of ‘em!’ Fuchs remarked gleefully.

At noon that day the hens had not been heard from. After dinner Jake

and Otto, their damp clothes now dried on them, stretched their stiff

arms and plunged again into the drifts. They made a tunnel through the

snow to the hen-house, with walls so solid that grandmother and I could

walk back and forth in it. We found the chickens asleep; perhaps they

thought night had come to stay. One old rooster was stirring about,

pecking at the solid lump of ice in their water-tin. When we flashed

the lantern in their eyes, the hens set up a great cackling and flew

about clumsily, scattering down-feathers. The mottled, pin-headed

guinea-hens, always resentful of captivity, ran screeching out into the

tunnel and tried to poke their ugly, painted faces through the snow

walls. By five o’clock the chores were done just when it was time to

begin them all over again! That was a strange, unnatural sort of day.