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Authors: Sandra Birdsell
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gaped.
The forest had once been a park with formal gardens and an orchard, and the mausoleum had held the remains of members of the Orlov family, Lydia said. Its crypt had been moved to a cemetery in Odessa long before her father had bought the land. A growth of weeds marked the cracks in the steps, weeds that were all of the same height, as though theyâd been shorn with cutters. Dried leaves had been swept into piles along the perimeter of the clearing. Beyond the clearing were dead and falling-down apple trees, the giant lindens, all of them planted years ago by the Orlovs.
Katya sat with the others on the steps, feeling the chill of stone, listening as a carriage went by on the Chortitza road. Abram, on his way to Ekaterinoslav. A dog barked in the distance as the carriage passed, and was joined by another, their voices rising and falling away.
She thought of her father singing âPraise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow,â thankful in advance for his piece of land; his back young-man straight, as though he were wearing a new pair of shoes and trying not to notice. She thought of the stone theyâd come upon near the entrance to the forest, a large smooth stone the colour of wet sheepskin. Around Privolânoye the stones the plough turned up were small, about the size of sugar melons. Sheâd heard of large stones far out on the steppe, as large as the one near the entrance into the forest, stone people with sledgehammer jaws, their hands holding up their protruding stomachs. Baba stones.
Her grandfather had told her about the Baba stones, about a storekeeper in one of the colonies whoâd brought in such a stone from the land, and put it outside his store for the elderly to lean on when they used the mud-scraper. Heâd also told her about a time when there hadnât been as many trees. No Lombardy poplars, no slender women waltzing along town and village streets, no acacia, mulberry, chestnut, and walnut trees, all of which had been planted by Mennonites.
They, the first Mennonite settlers, had come to an almost treeless land, and spent their first winter of 1789 in the north, at Dubrovno, a Potemkin estate. They believed they would farm near to Berislav, where the soil was a rich loam, and not as arid as that where they eventually wound up. The oldest villages in the Chortitza Colony, Chortitza and Rosenthal, were surrounded by a plateau of sandy soil, and grew up among hills and ravines, and among the giants who populated them. Giants who carried watermelons around in their wide trouser legs. Trousers that were made with enough fabric to sail a ship. What a comical sight those giant men must have been, swinging their legs as they walked, and the melons rolling around inside their trousers. But those men in the wide pantaloons had the last laugh. When the settlers went to the dock on the Dnieper to claim their trunks, they found them to be either half-empty, or emptied and refilled with melons.
âI spy,â Gerhard said as the sound of the dogsâ baying grew louder; a pack of hounds seemed to be nearing the forest. He made binoculars of his hands and scanned the treetops.
âSomething blue that is the sky, yes?â Lydia said.
âI spy something that is red,â Gerhard said and pointed to a piece of fabric snagged onto the lower branches of a tree.
Gerhard brought the piece of cloth to them. Lydia recognized her own embroidery, a chain of yellow daisies, the scarf the usualbirthday gift given to the women workers, made by Aganetha from leftover scraps.
Abram Sudermannâs forest wasnât really a forest, but three
desiatini
of overgrown parkland that heâd purchased, thinking it would be an inviting place for his family to spend a late Sunday afternoon. Just as Katya hadnât known about the presence of the mausoleum, she hadnât known that occasionally a gypsy caravan would camp there. That the sounds she sometimes heard werenât the witch
The forest had once been a park with formal gardens and an orchard, and the mausoleum had held the remains of members of the Orlov family, Lydia said. Its crypt had been moved to a cemetery in Odessa long before her father had bought the land. A growth of weeds marked the cracks in the steps, weeds that were all of the same height, as though theyâd been shorn with cutters. Dried leaves had been swept into piles along the perimeter of the clearing. Beyond the clearing were dead and falling-down apple trees, the giant lindens, all of them planted years ago by the Orlovs.
Katya sat with the others on the steps, feeling the chill of stone, listening as a carriage went by on the Chortitza road. Abram, on his way to Ekaterinoslav. A dog barked in the distance as the carriage passed, and was joined by another, their voices rising and falling away.
She thought of her father singing âPraise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow,â thankful in advance for his piece of land; his back young-man straight, as though he were wearing a new pair of shoes and trying not to notice. She thought of the stone theyâd come upon near the entrance to the forest, a large smooth stone the colour of wet sheepskin. Around Privolânoye the stones the plough turned up were small, about the size of sugar melons. Sheâd heard of large stones far out on the steppe, as large as the one near the entrance into the forest, stone people with sledgehammer jaws, their hands holding up their protruding stomachs. Baba stones.
Her grandfather had told her about the Baba stones, about a storekeeper in one of the colonies whoâd brought in such a stone from the land, and put it outside his store for the elderly to lean on when they used the mud-scraper. Heâd also told her about a time when there hadnât been as many trees. No Lombardy poplars, no slender women waltzing along town and village streets, no acacia, mulberry, chestnut, and walnut trees, all of which had been planted by Mennonites.
They, the first Mennonite settlers, had come to an almost treeless land, and spent their first winter of 1789 in the north, at Dubrovno, a Potemkin estate. They believed they would farm near to Berislav, where the soil was a rich loam, and not as arid as that where they eventually wound up. The oldest villages in the Chortitza Colony, Chortitza and Rosenthal, were surrounded by a plateau of sandy soil, and grew up among hills and ravines, and among the giants who populated them. Giants who carried watermelons around in their wide trouser legs. Trousers that were made with enough fabric to sail a ship. What a comical sight those giant men must have been, swinging their legs as they walked, and the melons rolling around inside their trousers. But those men in the wide pantaloons had the last laugh. When the settlers went to the dock on the Dnieper to claim their trunks, they found them to be either half-empty, or emptied and refilled with melons.
âI spy,â Gerhard said as the sound of the dogsâ baying grew louder; a pack of hounds seemed to be nearing the forest. He made binoculars of his hands and scanned the treetops.
âSomething blue that is the sky, yes?â Lydia said.
âI spy something that is red,â Gerhard said and pointed to a piece of fabric snagged onto the lower branches of a tree.
Gerhard brought the piece of cloth to them. Lydia recognized her own embroidery, a chain of yellow daisies, the scarf the usualbirthday gift given to the women workers, made by Aganetha from leftover scraps.
Abram Sudermannâs forest wasnât really a forest, but three
desiatini
of overgrown parkland that heâd purchased, thinking it would be an inviting place for his family to spend a late Sunday afternoon. Just as Katya hadnât known about the presence of the mausoleum, she hadnât known that occasionally a gypsy caravan would camp there. That the sounds she sometimes heard werenât the witch
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