The Testament of Yves Gundron (32 page)

“I like the mowing better,” she said, “when it's but our family, as ever it was before.”

“Tut,” I told her, for I could think of nothing more profound to say.

From where we stood, still far west in our southern fields, we could see none of our neighbors, though earlier in the day I had seen Friedl Vox out gleaning her winter's meager sustenance from Yorik's mown rows. I lay Adelaïda's scythe gently down on the ground, and led her to the shelter of our uncut stalks, that we might enjoy the pleasures of matrimony we could lately steal but upon occasion. Still she seemed subdued; though she allowed my caresses, she did not encourage them.

We were blessed with a first week without rain, so the stalks bore no extra weight and were easy to shock; the sun shone brightly and dried the grain thoroughly in the field. Ruth's hands quickly scabbed over, after which she joined us again, scything for a while at a time, then gathering sheaves behind us like a child and awkwardly standing them up together to dry. Mandrik's new work proved tedious to Adelaïda's ears, so he brought forth something older and grislier about the end of the world, which satisfied her better. Some mornings he simply sang to us, accompanying himself with the harmonious sweetness of the psaltery.

“What would you know about wives?” Adelaïda asked.

“It's a ballad,” my brother said, shaking his head. “One's allowed to say things that aren't strictly true.”

“Nay,” said Adelaïda, “you might pay dear for that, someday.”

Ruth began to write down his songs. “If I had a tape recorder,” she said, scribbling. “I'm an idiot not to have taken one of their tape recorders.” As it was, when she caught up to us in the sheaving (as sometimes, despite her inexperience, she did, because she was tall and hale) she was full of questions: How long would it take? Would we plant the same crops to the same plot of ground next year? Who had invented the scythe? (And who, I demanded in return, had invented her impertinence?) Where did we get oats if we weren't growing them? (Clearly, she had never encountered a system of crop rotation so sophisticated as our own.) I had lived with my brother's fierce questioning all my life, but it was easier to understand someone who wanted to know where the soul went after death than to understand someone who wanted to know if one grows winter wheat in the summer wheat's field. It is man's nature to seek after that which he does not—perhaps cannot—know; but to seek after that which is but ordinary knowledge? Certain I could spend half the days for the rest of my life asking Ruth how things are done in her homeland, but I do not see what would be the profit of such inquisition.

We finished our southern fields late one afternoon, and decided, rather than cross the High Road to the northern fields, to leave off laboring for a few hours. I felt tired to my marrow, and glad of a few
hours' respite. Out came my pipe, the ale, and the psaltery, and it had never felt more a pleasure to lie down in our dirt yard, the barn looming to one side with the shorn fields behind, and across the road our still-untouched wheat fields, resplendent. Mandrik's labors, which consisted mostly of giving lessons and bringing in some occasional sheaves, had been far less tiring, but he, too, collapsed out in the yard, his instrument standing by untouched. Elizaveta, God bless her, had spent some of the earlier days of the harvest with Ruth in learning to sew, and from her mother's scrap basket had fashioned a whole crooked wardrobe for Pudge. She sat in the barn's long shade, pulling first one misshapen dress and then the next over the doll's scarred wooden head, and showing us each of the fruits of her newfound talent. Adelaïda began to hum as if she meant to sing, but never got around to the idea's execution. And Ruth, who had hitherto shown no particular gift for the affairs of the kitchen, brought forth a vegetable soup that tasted nearly as good as my wife's own cooking, and served it out with the modesty and pride of an ordinary wife. In short, my belly was full, my crop more than half in, and I felt the right to be satisfied.

When she brought our emptied bowls back to the house, Ruth returned thence with a writing tablet and a pen. I could not help the feeling of despair that rose in my breast at the sight of them. “Oh, Ruth, must you use those now?”

She looked uncertain if I were in jest. “You don't want me to?”

Adelaïda drew nearer to me. “If only you weren't always asking so many questions, and about the strangest things.”

“I'm sorry. I'm trying to learn what I can.”

“Then look about you,” my wife said sleepily. “What's to know that you can't see with your own two eyes?”

I propped one arm under my head that I might better watch them both.

“I don't know,” she said.

“Ruth,” said Adelaïda, “you've been after us since springtime. When will you run out of things to ask?”

She tucked a loose strand of her wild hair behind her ear, a gesture of humility. “I don't know.”

My brother reached lazily to pluck the strings of his psaltery.

“Perhaps, since it's bothering you, Adelaïda, I should begin asking my questions of Mandrik. Would you mind?” She was either blushing or too much in the sunlight.

“I know far less of the things of this world than Yves does.”

“Less about farming, but you could tell me about your journeys. If you think it's time.”

Mandrik sat up and crossed and recrossed his legs. “It would take too long.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

Adelaïda woke up enough to cast her a dark glance.

“Tell her about the silk boats,” I coaxed, “and the men in dresses.”

“I cannot tell you of my journeys now. Not with this audience.”
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“But later. In addition to reading the manuscript. If you no longer think me too much a stranger.”

“Nay, as time passes, you come to seem more our own.”

“Thank you.”

Mandrik nodded to her. “I will like immensely to speak with you of the far world.”

Adelaïda said, “You always tell tales of Indo-China.”

“But never the whole tale. Never.”

Despite that she was lying prone, Adelaïda ventured the following snippet of verse:

Ruth kept tucking at her hair, though by now it was well behind her ears. “I have to go talk to the Archduke, too. He wants me to write that story.”

“Then you'd best,” Adelaïda said. “He won't let you go back on your word.”

“I don't want to, though. I'm not interested.”

Adelaïda said, “He'd feed you better than we ever could.”

“You could go to the Archduke's in the morning,” I told her, “and visit with Mandrik when he's finished sermonizing us, in the late afternoon.”

“Do you think?” she asked. She clipped her implement to the front of the tablet—always a good sign—and set it back behind her.

“Else I wouldn't say it.”

She turned to Mandrik. “I look forward to it so much. It would make it much easier to go talk to the Archduke, to know that I could also talk to you.”

“I, too, look greatly forward,” he said. My brother's blue eyes were gone nearly black in the fading light, and were wide open, regarding her. Even in childhood, Mandrik had been tranquil—though he was our family's seeker, his hunger was ever for the soul's knowledge. Now his eyes had, ever so slightly, changed. In their expression, in their fervent desire to tell and to be heard, I recognized that something had long gone unsaid. Why had he not told me all of his adventures? Why this burning need, this pleasure so otherwise unlike him, to talk to her? I watched him in silence, and tried to reconcile myself to this new idea. But I could not; Mandrik had always been my closest confidant, and look what had passed unsaid between us, and would pass into the
greedy ears of one I barely knew. Months of fellowship were nothing compared to a lifetime of relation, but look, now, to whom he turned.

The next morning, Ruth set off, her implements and a hunk of bread in my carrying sling. “You're quite certain,” I asked her, “you remember the traveling spells? Who knows what might befall you if you forgot them.”

“Yves, I'm fine.”

Adelaïda spat to the west. “So they all say, until the wrath of God rains down upon them.”

As we worked the northern fields, I could see Ruth trudging down the High Road, her gait still uneven, toward the city. So pleasant an occupation she had, I thought, to write things down while the rest of the village sweat. All that week she gathered words, and returned home at nightfall with pages covered in her large hand. Had it not been harvest, I would have trained her in the setting of traps, that her long day's labor might also have brought home something to roast.

She was home before our work was through, her stride slower and her back bowed under the weight of her papers. One would think, at least from my brother's clear brow, that the work of the mind was less taxing than the work of the body. Ruth, however, would find us in the fields come evening, drop her burden to the ground, follow behind us gathering for perhaps half a row, and collapse exhausted to the earth.
⁵

“Fie on you!” I teased her when I had only three rows left to bring in.

“You don't know the half of it.”

“My brother tires you?”

She remained on the ground. I moved to a different row and scythed there. “Your brother is a delight, always. The Archduke.”

Adelaïda shook her tired blond head. “The only person in the village with the opportunity to talk to the nobility, and she complains about it.”

“He's boring, Adelaïda.”

“What could be boring about the man who rules us all?”

“His mind, for one thing. His interests.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself. Preferring the company of farmers and mystics to the company of the Archduke? Think, woman. You stand to make an excellent match.”

“Oh, please.”

“So you say now, but you'll cast a cold eye my way when you're the Archduchess.”

Ruth's face darkened, but she kept her peace, and eventually, as she did now each day, fell asleep to the rhythmic cutting of the scythes. Elizaveta had napped half the day in the shade, so she was working then, gathering bundles as thin as spiderwebs. As her hands grew, so would what she saw fit to carry. Adelaïda's cut was every bit as quick and strong as mine. “Do you really think the Archduke intends to marry her?” I asked her.

“I don't know. It was clear he was smitten, the day he was here.”

“Smitten and married are such different things.”

She reaped faster than I did. “Far better for a woman to marry an Archduke, who'll take care of her properly, than a farmer who wastes half his time dreaming.”

I stood still, caught my breath, listened to her scythe sing. “Adelaïda.”

“Well, it's true.”

“But you wound me.”

“I'd have nothing to worry about if you'd invent less and work the fields more.”

I wanted to apologize, to offer to give up my idleness, but my heart rebelled. My life was for tinkering, for making new things, for
examining what we had and making it better. What great profit could come from year after year of plowing, sowing, and reaping? There were scores in our village who did that, and nothing changed for them, year in, year out. The grain would disappear—baked, made into porridge, or gone to rot—by this time next year, but Manfred's and Jowl's sons would continue to drive in four-wheeled carts, perhaps even with brakes. And who knew what next I would invent to make our lives better? There was no comparison between the two activities. Still, I did not want to argue with my wife. Instead, I thought with pleasure as I mowed how I was killing the delicate stalks—killing them outright, that they would never, without my intervention and care, grow again.

“Why must you always think of things, Yves? We haven't time for ideas.”

“Adelaïda, please. Let's put down our tools. We'll finish tomorrow. I don't want to talk about it.”

My brother, now, was lodged in my mind. Despite my better nature, I kept imagining him standing down the row before me, that when I passed, my instrument might tear the hem of his robe or cut his ankle. I had always known him, fought with him, trusted him, turned to him for advice. Now he followed his inclinations and I followed mine; but his were lauded, respectable in their way, while mine were a mere fancy that drew me from my work. And I thought about him, telling stories to the stranger in the afternoons. I had always assumed that he told me all that he knew and thought; as I had confessed my youthful escapades, so had he confessed his. Why had this stranger come among us to cast me into doubt? I finished my day's work with fierce intensity. Let her sleep while I toiled. Let both of them rot in my fields.