Read Online The Russlander by Sandra Birdsell - Free Book Online

while the Sudermann brothers visited the royal palace in Berlin. From there they went off to America, where people gathered at a train station in Kansas expecting to find them wearing rags, while “the truth be known,” Aganetha had said, “we were dressed much better than they.” Katya and Greta had been sent to the safety of their grandparents’ village, Rosenthal, where Katya acquired a sweet tooth. She became so plump that even the rolls of fat on her legs had rolls, her father teased. And yet she returned with the notion that she’d grown smaller while she was away, and was relieved to see, once again, her reflection in her parents’ eyes.
    Now, as they went through the orchard, they came upon fruit pickers, women and children, working up on ladders. “We’re going to explore the forest,” Gerhard called, his chest suddenly becoming barrel shaped. One of the women pickers beckoned for him to come over.
    â€œTake some,” she said, indicating the sling of pears at her hip. Their journey would be more pleasant with a full stomach. As Gerhard scooped up a pear, she urged him to take several more.
    â€œWe could take them all, if we wanted. They’re our pears,” Lydia said.
    â€œFor sure, go ahead. Take all of them. Eat as many as your little stomach has room for, but you’ll fill your underpants tomorrow,” the woman said to Lydia. Then she laughed at her own humour, her face crinkling like a walnut.
    The children around the fruit picker burst into laughter, their shaved heads bobbing. On the ground near the tree where she worked, a baby lay asleep on a shawl. The laughter had awakened the child, and the woman’s attention was taken by its fussing, and she came down the ladder to tend to the infant.
    They went across the meadow of wild thyme, grasshoppers clicking and springing up before their feet while Dietrich, mounted on his palomino, went riding down the road. Off to see Michael Orlov, Lydia said and pulled a face. Dietrich had become such a gadabout since he’d gone to
Zentralschule
. Her white-blond plaits were wound about her head, making her neck appear long and stemlike. She was either puffed up with excitement, or let down, and seldom in between. She had travelled to America and had seen more than her little eyes could take in. She had stretched her eyes, and now they needed to be filled with something new all the time, or she would put on a big lip, and sigh like an old woman who had known better days. Katya and Greta were dressed alike that day, in percale print smocks and wide white collars, black socks rolled to their ankles. Greta’s sandal strap had broken earlier in the day and flapped as she walked, completing her fly-away and loose look, a collar button undone and her collar askew, hair rising from her head like tendrils of dark smoke.
    Katya watched her shadow travel alongside her, felt her breath jolting in her chest with each hard step, arms swinging with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel as her father began to sing, the sound coming from near the ox barns, his round baritone voice singing
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him above, ye heavenly host, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
. In summers past they had picnicked in the meadow but had never ventured into the forest, a dark band of trees that seemed to finger the land, as though the meadow was a tablecloth the forest would draw into its lap.
    There was a clearing deep inside the forest, beyond the path, filled with mottled light. Two columns stood in the clearing, a set of steps leading up to a platform on which they stood, Corinthian columns, their stone rough and porous looking, and tinged halfway up with moss. High above, the leafy crowns of linden trees swayed in a gusting wind, opening up holes of light, the light warming the air where Katya had stepped from the path; like Greta, her mouth hung open as she