Spring Gladdens the Heart

IN APRIL EERIE SIGHING sounds, traveling for many miles, announced that the ice on the Karamysh and the Medveditsa was breaking up. The days became frost-free and the nights, although frosty, were tolerable. After the trying winter months the settlers brought the livestock into the open, to exercise their stiffened, slack bodies in the fenced yards. In their fields the thawing ground was much too wet to prepare by stripping off the wild sod. Also, it was too muddy to till the fields already stripped. Therefore the men worked to repair the winter damage sustained by their houses; they went into the hills returning with saplings to make fences. The women washed uncounted loads of laundry that had been neglected during the freeze; then they aired their homes. The birds returned, singing from early morning until night. Green sprang from the ground, cheering everyone. As the sun shone warmer, the starved people wandered over hill and dale, searching for edible greens and roots, tapping the sap in likely trees.

The slacking hens began laying again. Soon they led peeping chicks about the yards, scratching wherever they went. Cows calved, making for an abundance of milk, butter and cheese. A number of foals, goats, sheep, and pigs gladdened their owners’ hearts by arriving during this auspicious time. It was the time for shearing the sheep, and the village women began the wool treatment by washing and dying, in preparation for the spinning in winter.

By May not only the trees were bursting with sap; the young men, too, were overflowing with new hormonal juices. They were fairly strutting about like the roosters. Christoph was plagued by uncomfortable, ambiguous feelings. On one hand he was much intrigued by the patrician looking Carolina Hergert, whom he could not get out of his mind – she was so fine a woman; on the other hand, he became silly with happiness whenever Karin appeared.

The lithe girl treated him with a nonchalant friendliness that left him unsettled. Secretly he would have liked it if she’d shown a bit more than mere friendliness, but she did nothing of the sort. He was restless, easily disturbed, and his skin did not seem to fit him anymore.

The spring idyll did not last long. Rain set in, turning the street into a dirty bog, keeping everyone indoors. It rained without cease for a week.

Martin and the elders decided that any break in fieldwork during the year must be used for the improvement of the road, which had become impassable during the rain. Neighbors wanting to visit were likely to lose their shoes in the mire – all social life came to a stand still.

Then, from one day to the next, it got unseasonably hot. Perhaps it was unseasonably hot for Hessen, but not for the mid-continent. Almost overnight the street turned to concrete. The fields dried out in such a hurry that the plowing could barely be completed. The women frantically worked their gardens to get a vegetable crop started. Soon after the rains stopped they already needed to water their crops.

However, not all life in the village revolved around slavish work, although most days were a backbreaking drudge for all of them. Because the village majority was young there were get togethers after the Sunday service, which was led by the deacon. On these occasions everyone contributed food that was communally eaten in the open air. After work, at sunset, when the air was balmy, the men enjoyed taking the horses to a nearby stream, where the animals drank and rolled in the water, washing off the day’s sweat. The women would stop their garden work for a chat over the fence, and then, in July, Norka had its first wedding.

For months, Katrin, and Alphonse Huber had shared the care of the little boy, baptized Hans, and had grown very fond of each other; so fond, that neither wanted to live alone in their respective houses anymore. Their wedding took place in a pristine meadow, not too far from the village. It was a glorious day. A breeze kept the heat tolerable. Meadowlarks were singing, wild flowers were everywhere, smelling sweet. The people were glad, their faces shining. The bride wore a simple little dress made from old lace curtain. In her hair sat a wildflower crown that the women had braided together, in her hands she held a bouquet of field flowers and greens, so pretty it could have done for a queen. She was young, happy, and beautiful. The groom wore a clean suit of dark cloth with a nosegay of deep blue cornflowers tied to his lapel.

Since their pastor had not yet arrived, Albert Brunner read their vows to them and they exchanged rings. Somehow they had managed to trade their old wedding rings for a new pair. They said: “I do!” and then walked through the crowd, while a jolly, curly haired fellow, smiling brightly like the sun, played a wild, sweet folk tune on his fiddle.

Of course, there was plenty of food, for one could not have a wedding without good things. Somehow the men had managed to have a barrel of beer shipped down from Saratov, which led to even greater ease and well being, to the singing of many songs von der Heimat, and dancing on the green. Next day everyone agreed that this had been an exceptionally fine wedding, and the grandest day so far in their new country.

Because Katrin moved into Alphonse’s house, the one Wolfgang had built for her stood empty. It was a fine, well-constructed house on the upper end of the village, not far from the two-acre lot that had been designated for the new church building. Katrin had moved her cow, a pig with six piglets and her chickens to their new barn, because she got tired running back and forth between two households.

Almost immediately Martin approached the couple with a proposition.

“I have a son who soon will be wanting a wife and home of his own, and you have one house too many. Perhaps you would like to sell the empty one. I have a few rubles as a down payment, and Christoph could pay you after every harvest in cash, with livestock or seed grain.” This was a satisfying arrangement for both parties. They agreed on a price, struck a deal, and soon Christoph moved into his own abode. Part of the bargain was that his grandparents would come to live with him until his marriage, because the original Meininger house had become extremely crowded.

Christoph’s new house, as it turned out, had a most superior location. When they’d first come to Norka, Martin and the other settlers had chosen to build close to a spring, half way up a gentle hillside. For some reason, perhaps because a fire had ravaged it, the slight hill sported few trees but was instead a living meadow. When the settlers graded the street, they began working from the church acreage downhill, so that the last houses were at the foot of the incline. Martin’s house was slightly above midway.

Soon, people being so inclined, they named the part close to the church das Oberdorf, the Upper Village, as if its location conferred superiority upon those living there. Was this part not favored, they argued, by its view and good drainage? The lower portion of the road was boggy much longer than the upper, they complained, conveniently forgetting that the lower portions of the small hill stayed greener and lush longer than the top.

With the move to his own house Christoph had become a man. He owned his own acreage, paid on a house and husbanded a small menage of livestock in the stalls behind the house.

One evening, having just moved the last of his few belongings and those of his grandparents into the new house, he was standing before his own door. To his surprise, he beheld the tall figure of Carolina Hergert as she stepped from the house next door. He could have sworn that at this moment his heart missed more than a few beats. The very breath stayed in his lungs, turning him beet-red in an instant.

“So you will be our new neighbor,” smiled the mysterious woman, welcoming him to the “upper part,” as she laughingly put it.

“How is it that you are my neighbor now?” she wanted to know, and “how did you get this very nice place?”

In her easy manner she drew him out of his self-conscious state. Tongue-tied, almost stuttering at first, he answered her as well as he could. Although late in the day, it was still very warm. Without a word or thought to the matter, they began walking up to the very top of the hill, where they stopped, looking toward the faraway tree-lined banks of the Karamysh.

Carolina was easy to talk to. Therefore, soon and unabashed, he asked her boldly what she intended to do with her life. “Forgive me for speaking so brashly, but you are much too learned to dig in the dirt,” he ventured. He was astonished when she quite sharply rebuffed him by saying, “No one, no one is too good or too learned to work and plant the earth. If we are worthy to feed off her, we are good enough to till her.”

“Now I have made you angry, that is not what I meant. I just thought you could do things here others cannot, because they neither read nor write extensively or say their prayers in Latin.”

She thought for a while, and then rather pensively she admitted that she had a secret dream, the hope that one day she would teach the village children.

“I would like that very much,” she said, turning her steps back to her house, where she wished him a good night, dismissing him.

Wherever Christoph was in the fields, in the meadow making hay, sharpening saplings for a stockade fence, he thought about the two women forever preying on his mind. Carolina was older by six years, not too old for him, he thought. Her presence was mature, intimidating – and yet so exciting. She was beautiful with her tall figure, her creamy, white skin and black hair, so beautiful as to arouse him in his dreams.

Further down in the village, close to his parents’ house, was Karin, the other one in his dreams. One was a dark beautiful vision, the other a vision in light. He knew that sooner or later he would have to make a choice and ask one or the other to become his wife. He could not run a thriving farm alone – this much he knew already.

For now, Grandfather Franz and Grandmother Anna were a great help. However, their strength was waning, and they could not be relied upon to contribute the way a young woman would. In his mind he tossed the pictures of the two women about as the men tossed a coin for a bet: one side was dark, gorgeous, sophisticated and strong, the other lithesome, blond, impish and fair. It was enough to drive a young man to distraction. Fortunately for Christoph, his daily work was so demanding that he slept rather well, considering his conundrum.