Demise of the First Generation
“ARE YOU REALLY SURE that Klemper’s Hannelore wants a wedding in September?” asked Karin. The sun was about to set after a searing hot August day in 1789. She sat with Paul in the garden on a small bench that barely held the two people. The bench was flanked by tall, triangular pole structures covered with the green vines of pole beans. She often sat here alone, praying in the morning or evening, preparing vegetables for their meals, or mending clothes.
This evening she had lured her boy into the garden with a cool drink of buttermilk.
“Because,” she said, “I need to gain certainty about your designs on the future.” Paul, a tall, intelligent and very mischievous young man, had turned nineteen in spring and recently told the family that he wanted to get married. Not that she harbored uneasiness in her mind about this ménage. She knew Hannelore, a fine, upstanding, pretty girl, knew her family as well. Nothing detrimental was known about the family; to the contrary, they were some of Walter’s finest citizens. They were known to be as industrious, church going, moral and upstanding as the Meiningers. Walter was a village, smaller by half than Norka, on the Medveditsa. Besides water it had little else to offer, for a good part of its allocated acreage was poor, rocky and saline, producing no crops. The villagers owned two hundred desyatinas of forest. That stand, however, was protected for future need. Furthermore, the village was devoid of artisans, necessitating services from other villages. Very little pastureland was available, and the villagers had to rent meadows for their livestock from neighboring villages. Walter was so poor it could not afford its own church, belonging instead to the parish of Frank, a village with a church and a pastor.
Karin knew these inauspicious facts and resented her first-born’s desire to live in such a poor place. However, these were not the things weighing on her mind today. What bothered her was the wedding date, at the end of September. This was a date she deemed unfortunate, because the capricious weather could ruin the great event. And yet, great, good weddings still had to be celebrated outdoors. For the bride’s family had to invite most citizens of both villages to the event, and there was not a covered place large enough to hold such a crowd.
“Do not worry, Mother,” laughed Paul. He was nineteen, good looking, imbued with the irrepressible spirit of youth. His handsome face, so like his father’s, turned to Karin, smiling with an optimism that brooked no impediments.
“Everything is well in hand. We have had such a great summer and the spring rains lasted until June. That leads us to think that September will be sunny, same as it was last year.”
Karin seemed mollified by his explanation, but instantly brought up another concern. “But the house, what about the house? Will it be ready in time?”
“Yes, Mother,” averred Paul, suddenly serious, because he sensed that all of Karin’s questions stemmed from deeper, unacknowledged emotions. Was it possible that his mother regretted the match because he would be leaving the village? Intuitively, he began comfortably to chat about his situation.
“You know that I bought the Krämer house with Father’s help.”
Karin knew that very well, as she had been the driving force behind the plan to help the young people attain a home. She liked Hannelore very much, for the girl suited her son to a tee. She, too, was tall, a dark-haired beauty with a vivacious, practical nature. Each time Ute had observed the young people at church functions, picnics or family events, she felt with certainty that the two were right for each other. So why did she suddenly have such feelings of uncertainty?
“Are you concerned about the Krämer house, about the circumstances of his death?” Everyone knew that Herr Krämer, former owner of the house, had died of inexplicable causes. No one knew what had ailed him. Even the district doctor had no idea what to put on the death certificate. He settled for heart attack, and left it at that. Hilda, Krämer’s wife, had remarried soon after his death and the house became available.
Fortunately Christoph had some savings to give to Paul at that time. Some of the sum had been given as a gift, the rest as a loan, for Christoph had to think of his other three children.
“No, I have no ill feelings about the house. That’s not it,” said Karin reluctantly, unwilling to admit the truth. Sensing her uncertainty, Paul pressed on, “Hannelore’s parents have given her a fine dowry. By the end of September we will have the house cleaned and refurbished. It will be safe and sound. I assure you.”
Reassured on this point, his mother instantly brought up another worry.
“But what about the fields? Will you have enough land?”
“Yes, Mother, yes. You know that Hannelore is an only child and will inherit, and the elders promised to allocate me a man’s entitlement. I am a good farmer. Father taught me well and although their ground is not as fertile as Norka’s, we shall not want.”
At that point the real reason for Karin’s worry’s came to the fore, lying before them naked and raw: “Walter is a poor ramshackle place! Their houses are not built from stone, not even wattle-and-daub constructed, and no one has an orchard.”
When Paul reassured her that he could change all that and be the first planting an orchard, selling fruit to his neighbors and building with stone, his mother feebly, defeated, cried out:
“They are poor and do everything different than we do!”
Paul suddenly understood that Karin could not bear his leaving Norka to live in Walter, a place the Russians called Grechinnaya Luka.
“So that’s what is behind all your worrying,” exclaimed Paul, “you just want to keep your chick in the same coop as the others.”
He put his arm around his mother’s shoulder and said comfortingly, “Don’t fret, Mama. I will not become a stranger to my own family. It’s only thirty kilometers – a distance my horse can make in a morning without breathing hard.”
“That’s what you tell me now. But once the work and children take up your time – when will I see you then?”
Karin knew all the while that her fretting was silly. Had she not raised this boy to become an independent man? She had always known that he might leave for another village. Yet, in her mother’s heart she always hoped he would choose to live in Norka.
Never in her life would she forget the horrors of the year 1774, although her family had been blessed, surviving unscathed. However, though many years had passed, the terrible memories of the Kirghiz killings stayed vividly in her mind. The villages destroyed by Kirghiz had been located on the other side of the Volga, the meadow side. The Bergseite had been spared the worst. When the blood-curdling news reached Norka that the hapless settlers of Keller, Leitsinger, Cäsarsfeld and Chasselois had been slaughtered and their villages burned, Karin had instinctively gathered her children in her arms, as a hen shelters chicks. Even much later she could not bear for even one of her children to leave.
“Mother, you must know that I will always be your son. You must trust me to come often and bring Hannelore, so that she, too, will truly belong to our family. Also,” he smiled his mischievous smile, “I know of no law against parents visiting.”
They both laughed, suddenly happy in their closeness, freed from the bittersweet thoughts of parting.
“I feel better now,” admitted Karin as they walked back to the house. Somehow Paul had reassured her that they would stay close, that she would know her grandchildren well.
Life on the steppe could only be endured by women who were supported by God’s grace and a close family. As she stood in her small kitchen, a room dominated by a large, black stove that devoured every kind of fuel it was offered – wood, straw, hay and wood shavings – she thought about her family.
Of all her children Paul was most like Christoph, and perhaps for that reason so dear to her. Yet, the favorite of her children probably was tall, slender Katharina. The girl was cast in her image, but endowed with a mindset considerably less pliable than her own. Whenever Katharina’s stubborn trait came to the fore, Christoph reminded her without fail that hazel switches were also worked on girls. It spoke for his power to convince that he never had to use the switch on her. The boys, though, especially Paul the prankster, knew the hazel well.
Maria, a pretty girl of medium height, reminded everyone of Ute, her grandmother. Yet she was gentle, without Ute’s commanding presence. They had buried Ute a few years ago in the cemetery behind the church. Thinking back to her mother-in-law’s death, Karin still marveled at the suddenness of her demise.
Until her last moment Ute had appeared as strong and hale as ever. Then, on a gloomy, cold day in November, she’d gone to feed the stock. She came back into the kitchen. Taking a few steps and grasping the edge of the table, she said, “My God,” and, reaching for her heart, fell to the floor.
They had been unable to revive her. She had joined her Maker, as if her cry had been a call for him to take her. Ute had barely been sixty years old. Yet, they’d been hard years, and she’d never held back, keeping strength in reserve. She had died in an instant, the way a well-made clock breaks after its spring has been wound too tightly.
Martin was disconsolate. At first he seemed unable to understand what had happened. He would walk from the house at odd moments to look for her in the garden, the stalls, the orchard. Once he comprehended – he had withdrawn. He forgot to feed the animals, clothed himself sometimes only partially, and neglected to eat.
Karin and the girls stuck to him like burrs, because everyone was afraid of losing him, too. They performed his chores, clothed and fed him, and cleaned his house. The youngest, Kurt, went almost daily to his house, taking him for walks, leading him by the hand. Often Kurt was obliged to gently insist that Martin put on his shoes and a coat, because the old man’s mind dwelled elsewhere. The girls, too, bossed him sweetly, taking him to church and his elder meetings. However, although for a while he was returned to family and church life, he seemed to have lost his vigor.
“He reminds me of the old apple tree behind the house,” remarked Christoph to his wife one evening when they walked home from church. They’d gone there to join in their most beloved activity – saying prayers and singing the old German hymns. After the regular meeting the congregation, in a gregarious mood, had stayed on, singing folk songs that praised the beauty of the old Heimat, so they had lingered.
Martin had left quite early and gone home, leading Christoph to comment, “Father and my tree are much alike. When the wind broke the tree’s crown it struggled back to life, but its heart was gone and soon it died. Father now lives as that tree did for a while, barely hanging on.”
His words were prophetic. For it was only three months thereafter that Martin, having chopped wood in the rain, caught cold and died during the second night confined to his bed. His was sixty-four years old.
Karin’s own father, having lost his wife early in life, during Norka’s beginning, had never married again. He had looked after Beate, her sister, for many years, although the girl had spent much of her time with Ute and Annelis, learning the art of being a good Hausfrau. He had kept up his house and acreage, which he handed to his son-in-law upon Beate’s marriage.
In that respect Kurt Halberstamm had been unlike many men in the colonies, who replaced wives without observing the mourning period observed in Germany. The villagers commonly excused such doings with the hardships of frontier living, saying that a farm needed a woman’s hands in order to survive.
There were women, however, who caustically commented among their friends, that “these men just use the frontier as an excuse to sample as many bodies as possible.” There was a large drop of truth in the observation, for some of these men had buried several wives in just a few years. Childbirth, with its multiple possibilities of treacherous outcomes, killed more women of childbearing age than any other illness. The dreaded Kindbett fever, a vicious infection of the uterus, carried off many a young, strong woman.
In such cases public opinion was kindly disposed toward the young father, and everyone helped to find him a mate, for the children needed a mother.