My Antonia Read online

  XI

  DURING THE WEEK before Christmas, Jake was the most important personof our household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmasshopping. But on the twenty-first of December, the snow began to fall.The flakes came down so thickly that from the sitting-room windowsI could not see beyond the windmill--its frame looked dim and grey,unsubstantial like a shadow. The snow did not stop falling all day, orduring the night that followed. The cold was not severe, but the stormwas quiet and resistless. The men could not go farther than the barnsand corral. They sat about the house most of the day as if it wereSunday; greasing their boots, mending their suspenders, plaitingwhiplashes.

  On the morning of the twenty-second, grandfather announced at breakfastthat it would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases.Jake was sure he could get through on horseback, and bring home ourthings in saddle-bags; but grandfather told him the roads would beobliterated, and a newcomer in the country would be lost ten timesover. Anyway, he would never allow one of his horses to be put to such astrain.

  We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. Ihad wanted to get some picture books for Yulka and Antonia; even Yulkawas able to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-coldstoreroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cutsquares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. Webound it between pasteboards, which I covered with brilliant calico,representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-roomtable, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka. We had filesof those good old family magazines which used to publish colouredlithographs of popular paintings, and I was allowed to use some ofthese. I took 'Napoleon Announcing the Divorce to Josephine' for myfrontispiece. On the white pages I grouped Sunday-School cards andadvertising cards which I had brought from my 'old country.' Fuchs gotout the old candle-moulds and made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted upher fancy cake-cutters and baked gingerbread men and roosters, which wedecorated with burnt sugar and red cinnamon drops.

  On the day before Christmas, Jake packed the things we were sendingto the Shimerdas in his saddle-bags and set off on grandfather's greygelding. When he mounted his horse at the door, I saw that he had ahatchet slung to his belt, and he gave grandmother a meaning look whichtold me he was planning a surprise for me. That afternoon I watchedlong and eagerly from the sitting-room window. At last I saw a dark spotmoving on the west hill, beside the half-buried cornfield, where thesky was taking on a coppery flush from the sun that did not quite breakthrough. I put on my cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to thepond, I could see that he was bringing in a little cedar tree acrosshis pommel. He used to help my father cut Christmas trees for me inVirginia, and he had not forgotten how much I liked them.

  By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling little tree in acorner of the sitting-room, it was already Christmas Eve. After supperwe all gathered there, and even grandfather, reading his paper by thetable, looked up with friendly interest now and then. The cedar wasabout five feet high and very shapely. We hung it with the gingerbreadanimals, strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fittedinto pasteboard sockets. Its real splendours, however, came from themost unlikely place in the world--from Otto's cowboy trunk. I had neverseen anything in that trunk but old boots and spurs and pistols, anda fascinating mixture of yellow leather thongs, cartridges, andshoemaker's wax. From under the lining he now produced a collection ofbrilliantly coloured paper figures, several inches high and stiff enoughto stand alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his oldmother in Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace;there were the three kings, gorgeously apparelled, and the ox and theass and the shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a groupof angels, singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the blackslaves of the three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of thefairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.Grandmother said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheetsof cotton wool under it for a snow-field, and Jake's pocket-mirror for afrozen lake.

  I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working about the table inthe lamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so rudely moulded that hisface seemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with his half-ear and the savagescar that made his upper lip curl so ferociously under his twistedmoustache. As I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; theirvery roughness and violence made them defenceless. These boys had nopractised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at adistance. They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with.Otto was already one of those drifting, case-hardened labourers whonever marry or have children of their own. Yet he was so fond ofchildren!