Women Talking Page 8

  Salome turns away from the window to face the women. She says to Neitje, You must run now to every house and tell the women to tell the men, if they encounter them and if the men ask, that some of us are working late into the night to finish the quilting order, and that others of us are attending to the difficult birth of one of our sisters in Chortiza. The men will want to eat. Remind the women to tell the men, if they are the menfolk of any of us here in this loft, that we have left containers of soup and loaves of bread in the larders. The men will leave again in the morning and will understand that we are working at these various things all night long and won’t be available to see them off.

  Neitje doesn’t move immediately.

  Salome prods her, Go, go!

  Neitje languidly gets up from her pail, in silence, stretching first, fixing her hair until Salome is apoplectic and barks her name, Neitje!

  By now Mariche has successfully removed the cherry pit from Julius’s nose, using her mouth to suction it out as one would to remove venom from a snake bite, or to siphon gas illicitly from a police vehicle, and Julius is happily chewing on a rotten piece of leather from an old bridle once belonging to Earnest Thiessen’s team. Agata informs Nettie that she is free to go, and should return to the other children. Julius will remain in the loft for the time being.

  But Mariche asks Nettie to stay for a minute. How did Julius come into the possession of cherries? she asks.

  Then she asks, Was it Klaas? (Mariche’s own husband.)

  Nettie answers, again speaking to Julius, looking only at him while he plays and chews, oblivious. She explains that Julius and a few of the older children were in the yard, and that one of the children spotted the buggy on the mile road, and that this older child, likely Benny Eidse, encouraged the others, including Julius, who rode on the shoulders of one of the stronger children, to go and meet the buggy. When they returned they had a paper sack of cherries that they were passing around, sharing, and Julius was afflicted with the pit.

  Mariche asks Nettie: So you don’t know who was in the buggy?

  Nettie speaks to Julius: I do not.

  Mejal says, I am worried about the women who have voted to do nothing (in response to the attacks). If the men have returned, there is a high risk that these women will inform the men that we are plotting this insurrection.

  Mariche scoffs. It’s not an insurrection, that is not the correct word.

  Salome sighs, exasperated. Mariche, you continuously sabotage our meetings by positioning yourself as the authority on something, anything, always something arbitrary and ridiculous. And if you counter no opposition, you insist you are right. And you become hysterical when you are challenged.

  No, Mariche interrupts. It is you, Salome, or maybe some other Friesen woman present, who is always extolling the glory of precise, accurate language, of using the correct word. And in this case the word “insurrection” is blatantly incorrect because insurrections involve violence, and what we women of Molotschna are planning does not include violence.

  Ona beseeches the women to remain calm. Our meeting must proceed, she says. And Mariche is correct. “Insurrection” is not the right word to describe our plan. We will name it properly when we have the details in place.

  She returns to Mejal’s earlier point, about the risk of the Do Nothing women informing on us to the men. It’s true, she says, that these women will refuse to commit the sin of lying. We will simply have to have faith that these women, to remain innocent of prevarication, will plead ignorance if asked about our whereabouts, or that they will creatively, though piously, evade the question altogether.

  (I force myself not to speak to this point, not to chastise, not to challenge, not to haughtily disabuse Ona of her trust, not to give any single indication that I am concerned about betrayal, about dark hearts, about Scarface Janz in particular. And I beg God, silently, to forgive me my trespasses, my suspicions, and to imbue me with the same faith that Ona has in her sister colonists, in all of us, in goodness.)

  Ona goes on to say that she is concerned that the men who have returned temporarily to Molotschna will take horses and/or livestock that the women will later need, either to sell or to provide support along the way.

  Mariche asks: Along the way? I was not aware that we have made a final decision about staying or leaving. The only thing I’m aware of having decided is that the women are not animals. And even that conclusion was arrived at without solid consensus amongst the women.

  Yes, Ona admits, it is true that we haven’t fully made a decision to leave. But if we do leave we will need as many animals as we can get.

  How can we prevent the men from taking some of the animals, Greta asks Ona, considering that this is the only reason the men have returned in the first place?

  Ona has a suggestion: perhaps through Nettie (who is lingering still in the hayloft) we could convey the message that the animals have taken sick since the men first departed for the city and that they have been quarantined?

  Mejal reminds Ona that Nettie does not speak to adults.

  Mariche points out that the story of the quarantine is yet another lie, a profound transgression. Not only have we committed the sin of lying, she says, we have tutored our daughters to do the same. If we spur Nettie on to lie as well, we’ll be guilty of taking advantage of a dummkopf.

  Salome raises her hand. Nettie is not a “dummkopf,” she declares. Nettie’s unusual behaviour—giving herself a boy’s name and speaking only to children—is an understandable response to the prolonged and especially horrific attack she endured.

  We are all victims, says Mariche.

  True, Salome says, but our responses are varied and one is not more or less appropriate than the other.

  Mariche waves this objection away. She continues to expound her thesis on lying. Surely, she says, encouraging others to lie on our behalves must be a worse sin than lying ourselves. And how will we be forgiven for this lie (about the whereabouts of the women, quilting, attending to childbirth, etc.) if not by the elders whom we have lied against, and whom, if our plan to leave becomes a reality, we will never see again, therefore leaving us unforgiven, bereft of mercy, with black hearts, and unable to enter the kingdom of God?

  Perhaps, says Greta, there will be other elders or men of God that will be able to forgive us our sins, individuals we have not yet met.

  At this, Salome erupts. She raises her voice, causing Miep to awaken and Julius to stop chewing on the leather. We do not have to be forgiven by the men of God, she shouts, for protecting our children from the depraved actions of vicious men who are often the very same men we are meant to ask for forgiveness. If God is a loving God He will forgive us Himself. If God is a vengeful God then He has created us in His image. If God is omnipotent then why has He not protected the women and girls of Molotschna? If God, in the book of Matthew, according to Peters, our wise bishop, asks: Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, then mustn’t we consider it a hindrance when our children are attacked?

  Salome pauses, perhaps to rest …

  No, not to rest. Salome continues to shout: She will destroy any living thing that harms her child, she will tear it from limb to limb, she will desecrate its body and she will bury it alive. She will challenge God on the spot to strike her dead if she has sinned by protecting her child from evil, and furthermore by destroying the evil that it may not harm another. She will lie, she will hunt, she will kill and she will dance on graves and burn forever in hell before she allows another man to satisfy his violent urges with the body of her three-year-old child.

  No, says Agata softly, not dancing. Not desecration.

  Miep has begun to cry and little Julius is laughing, unsure of himself, eyes shining, tiny pearls.

  Mejal goes to Salome, as Salome went to Mejal earlier, and takes Salome into her arms.

  Ona picks Miep from the straw and sings to her, a song about ducks. (Does Ona remember the happiness and consolation I feel when I hear the sounds ducks make?)
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  Agata, aside from whispering to Nettie to return now to the other children, is silent. Greta and Mariche, too, are quite silent.

  Nettie climbs down the loft ladder.

  Ona’s voice is all we/I hear. She is playful as she sings, speeding up the lyrics as the fish winnow and race, slowing them down as the fish bask in the sunlight close to the surface of the water. The children are calm, enthralled. Ona continues to sing the song about ducks swimming in the sea, one, two, three and four.

  Ona asks the children if they know what a sea is, and they stare at her with four enormous blue eyes, sea-like. Ona describes the sea as another world, one that is hidden from us, one that lives underwater. It is the life in the sea that she defines as the sea, and not the sea itself. She talks about fish and other living things.

  At last, Mariche interrupts. The sea is a vast expanse of water, and nothing else, she tells the children. They’re children, Ona, she explains. How can they be expected to understand what goes on invisibly? Besides, you have never seen a sea.

  Salome begins to laugh. She says: The life underwater is not invisible. It isn’t unable to be seen. We just can’t see it from here. My God.

  You are ignorant of a child’s sensibilities, Salome, says Mariche.

  Oh, says Salome, am I? If I allowed my child to be beaten black and blue by a shit for brains, like your Klaas, would I be considered less ignorant of how a child perceives a hidden life?

  Mariche is silent, shocked.

  Salome, says Mejal, that doesn’t make any sense. She advises Salome to have a drag from her cigarette.

  Ona agrees, silently. I know that she thinks Salome’s attack was unclear and beneath her. I know it because she looked at Salome and furrowed her brow in a way that I witnessed earlier (the disappearing rail tracks that line her forehead). Overall, Ona is tolerant of her sister’s rages and circumspect in her response to them. Perhaps she has learned over the years that no good comes from crossing her younger sibling.

  As if reading my thoughts, Agata now suggests that we think of what is good. She recites a verse from Philippians: Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things … and the peace of God be with you.

  The other women wait for each other to speak first, to answer Agata’s call for suggestions of goodness. In truth, the women seem not to be actively engaged in this endeavour.

  Salome bypasses the question altogether. I will become a murderer if I stay, she says to her mother. (I assume that she means if she stays in the colony, and is here when and if the captured men are granted bail and return home from the city.)

  What is worse than that? Salome asks Agata.

  Agata nods. She continues to nod. Her lips are pursed and she is blinking and nodding. The heels of her hands rest on the table but her fingers are vertical, reaching towards the beams of the hayloft, towards God, towards meaning. The other women do not speak. Unusual.

  I have seen Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in a book of famous paintings left at the co-op by a Swiss tourist. The book was passed around the colony discreetly, by my father, but Peters Senior eventually discovered it and destroyed it. Rumour has it that he tore out every page and lit them on fire one by one—if only for the opportunity to lay his eyes on all the paintings. A busier man with clearer intentions would have ignited the thing in one go and tossed it into the fire bin.

  The women are still eerily silent.

  I only mention the book of famous paintings because of Agata’s fingers pointing towards God. This reminds me, in a way, of The Creation of Adam. And because it is silent in the hayloft and I want to appear to be industrious and my job here is to write—this is something to write, my first thought.

  The women remain silent, thinking about what is good, just, pleasing, pure, etc. Or perhaps about other things. I don’t know what they are thinking. About arson, perhaps. I’m reminded, by thinking of The Creation of Adam, of another fact about human fingers.

  Human fingers can feel objects as small as thirteen nanometres, which means that if your finger was the size of the earth you could feel the difference between a barn and a horse. I want to remember to mention this to Ona. I want to mention, too, Michelangelo’s The Creation of Eve (the fifth panel of the Sistine Chapel work), which is not nearly as well-known or as popular a painting as The Creation of Adam. In The Creation of Eve, Adam lies passed out on a stone and Eve is standing, naked, begging to God for something. What could it be? God has come down to earth in this painting, no longer drifting around on a cloud and casually reaching out His finger. This time God looks stern, intense. He has come to earth to speak to Eve … or has He come at her request? Why has He left his cloud of cherubs?

  In the painting, Eve is beseeching God, begging, imploring … perhaps reasoning, as though she has it within her power to restore Christianity to its original grandeur. She’s working behind the back of Adam, who is sleeping on the ground, as if to suggest that she knows he’d disapprove. But disapprove of what? Of her meeting privately with God? Or of what she is saying?

  Another fact regarding the co-op: There is a faded photograph tacked to the south-facing wall. It is a photograph published by The Guardian newspaper in England, and it was snapped by a professional photographer who had come to Molotschna, many years ago, to look at Mennonites. It was this photographer who first mentioned the idea of England to my father. The photograph depicts several young men and women from our colony. The caption beneath the photograph reads: Mennonites like to spend some time chatting under the stars before going to sleep.

  In the photograph, taken at night, we see Mennonite girls sitting outside in plastic chairs in the darkness under an eminently starry night. It appears as though something cataclysmic, and yet unnoticed, has just occurred above these chatting Mennonites. The sky is beginning to turn a mustardy yellow. There are two men in the background, talking. And there are two buggies and two horses. There is a house and a tree and a silo. One of the women in the photograph is Ona. She’s slim, young, leaning forward to hear what the other girls are saying. Her long fingers are clutching the armrests of the plastic chair she’s sitting in as though she’s prepared to launch forward at any moment, or perhaps to shoot up into the yellow sky above her.

  Ona has not seen this photograph, of course, but someday I would like to tell her about it. After the attacks there were many photographers from all over the world stopping in at the co-op asking for directions to the colony. Peters decreed that no one at the co-op would speak to these individuals. Heinz Gerbrandt, a blacksmith whose forge is next to the co-op, told me in church that a newspaper clipping from an American newspaper had been mailed to the co-op. It had originally been dropped off at his forge because the door to the co-op was locked. Heinz Gerbrandt walked with the letter to the co-op. He remembered holding it away from his body, like something hot, dangerous. The headline read: In 2011 the Devil Appeared, in the Shape of Seven Ghosts, to the Girls and Women of the Molotschna Colony. Heinz Gerbrandt told me that Peters, upon discovering this clipping, had nodded his head in agreement. Yes, he had said, according to Heinz Gerbrandt. That is true. “Dump men in the middle of nowhere, confine them, abuse them, suspend them in limbo, and this is what you get.”

  I asked Heinz Gerbrandt if Peters had really said that? And Heinz confirmed it. Heinz told me that this is what Peters had said to him, with tears in his eyes, while the two of them were re-shingling the church roof.

  But then how can he carry on here as the bishop of Molotschna, the way he does? I asked Heinz.

  Heinz shook his head. He didn’t know. He suggested we analyze the statement: “Dump men in the middle of nowhere, confine them, abuse them, suspend them in limbo, and this is what you get.”

  Heinz and I stood on the road that leads out of Molotschna, towards the border, and whispered these words over and over, trying to come
to an understanding of what Peters meant. Or, of why he had said them with tears in his eyes. Or, of why he had said them.

  Heinz Gerbrandt has left Molotschna. He took his wife and children with him. It is said that he became frightened after hearing Peters say it was true that the devil had visited the girls and women of Molotschna. It is said that Heinz Gerbrandt is not enough of a man or believer to accept the truth. It is said that Heinz Gerbrandt is easily discouraged and that the world will shatter him. Peters has officially excommunicated Heinz Gerbrandt, but everyone knows that ruling is weak as Heinz Gerbrandt left the church and the colony of his own initiative.

  Heinz Gerbrandt gave me a gift once, of a horseshoe. They are said to bring luck, he said. In Molotschna luck does not exist. It is a sin to believe in luck. It is shameful to cry. All is God’s will, nothing is left to chance in God’s creation. If God created the world, why should we not be in it?

  I will remember Heinz Gerbrandt.

  The women remain silent. Ona has come to where I am sitting and is looking over my shoulder. Will she put her hand on my shoulder? She is looking at me while I write. My pen is shaking. She can’t read, so I could write the words, Ona, my soul belongs to you, and she would not know.

  She breaks the silence. August, she says, I know what these are (she points at the letters). They are letters. But what are these little things?

  I tell her that they are commas, that they signify a short pause, or a breath, in the text.

  Ona smiles, then inhales, as if to take back her words, to take them back inside her body, perhaps to give to her unborn child words, the narrative, hers … she says nothing more and I struggle to respond in some way.

  Did you know, I say, that there is a butterfly called the Comma?

  Ona gasps.

  It’s such an untoward reaction, so comical.

  Is that so? she asks.

  Yes, I say, it’s called the Comma because—but Ona stops me.