THE snow was almost a foot deep. Little Peter constantly stumbled and fell, so that finally Katrinka lifted him, and, with her eyes fixed on the gray blur which she knew was the house of the nearest neighbor, went stumbling through the drifts. She wore a sheepskin coat, the fur on the inside. A gay, red woolen handkerchief was tied over her head. She had taken off her bark sandals and had slipped on a pair of knee-high leather boots that belonged to her mother. Her feet slipped up and down in them, and as now and then she sank in a drift, they scooped up quantities of snow in their loose tops. This melted, and running down inside, wet the cloth bandages and made her feet and ankles cold. Her eyelashes and brows were white with frost. Even the curls of hair that clung about her forehead as they escaped from the woolen head wrapping were frosted.
KATRINKA LIFTED PETER AND WENT STUMBLING THROUGH THE DRIFTS
Peter was crying softly for his mother. His tears froze on his round cheeks and hung from his chin in tiny icicles. Katrinka was too cold and heartsick to try to pacify him. For seven hours she had waited for her parents to return and at last, despairing, was on her way to the house of Ivan Drovski to ask advice.
When she set out, the house looked like a faraway gray blur through the veil of snow; but as she stumbled on, the blur took shape until at last she could distinguish a single window in the front of it and a low door with the snow piled high against it.
"See, Peter," she cried, her eyes fixed on the friendly shelter, "we are almost at the house of Ivan Drovski. Dry your eyes, we shall soon have news of mother."
She staggered through the gate and set Peter down for a moment, to get breath enough to go on. While she waited a face appeared at the window, another joined it and another, until presently six pairs of eyes were peering through the tiny panes at Katrinka and Peter. Then, suddenly, the low door at the side of the house opened and Ivan Drovski, big and bearded, wrapped in his great sheepskin coat, kicked away the snow and came striding down the path towards the exhausted children.
"Why, Katrinka, my little lamb, what brings you out in such a storm? Is the good mother or father ill?"
His voice rumbled like a bass drum. He tossed little Peter to his shoulder and taking Katrinka by the hand, started towards the house.
At the door he set Peter down, for he was so tall he had to bend almost double to avoid striking the beam in the top of the doorway. After he had crossed the threshold he reached back for Peter, placing him in the crook of his elbow and holding out a hand for Katrinka.
It seemed to Katrinka, who was blinded by the snow, that the room they entered was as dark as night, and she stumbled and would have fallen had she not struck a warm, furry body that she knew belonged to a young calf which lived in the cottage with Ivan Drovski and his family. As she righted herself there was a great whirring and fluttering of wings above her head, made by the pigeons that built their nest among the rafters in the outer room of the Drovski cottage. She was wading through straw to her ankles but the air was warm and felt grateful to her half-frozen face.
Clinging to Ivan Drovski's great hand she made her way through the darkness, almost stumbling over the hens and chickens scratching in the straw and a little family of sleeping pigs that set up a shrill squealing which delighted Peter.
Presently Ivan Drovski opened another door, a trifle higher than the one which had admitted them to the outer room, and entered the kitchen, which was lighted by the small window through which six pairs of curious eyes had watched Katrinka and Peter.
A large woman with a broad good-natured face stood in front of the whitewashed clay oven, which was set in the wall so that it heated both the kitchen and the outer room. As Ivan threw open the door she hurried to meet him, taking Peter from his arms and unfastening his wadded coat while she questioned Katrinka.
"What has brought you out in such a storm, my child?" she asked, shaking Peter's coat vigorously over the oven.
"Mother and father have gone away. They have been gone since early morning and Peter and I are very much afraid."
Mother Drovski stopped shaking Peter's coat and stood looking at Katrinka with her mouth open. Three small children clung to her skirts, staring shyly.
"What do you mean, child?" demanded Ivan, shaking himself like a bear and unfastening Katrinka's coat. "Have your parents gone for a visit?"
"I do not know," said Katrinka, her lips quivering. "They were there last night. There was a meeting. Some strange men and women talked. Peter went to sleep in his basket. 7 Then mother put him to bed on the oven and told me to lie down beside him. They closed the door to the other room. By and by somebody rapped and then there was more talking. Father and mother did not come to bed with us on the oven and this morning I could not find them. The cow has not been milked although I fed her with straw. Peter and I have waited all day for father and mother. When it began to grow dark I was afraid. The printing press is gone."
"Ah," breathed Ivan Drovski, as his thick brows puckered into a frown, "the printing press is gone, is it? I warned your father that it would make trouble for him. Now it has come. Who knows when we shall see him again?"
Ivan thrust his fingers through his long yellow beard.
"My poor lambs, what will become of you?" cried Mother Drovski, gathering the children into her arms, while her own family huddled in the corner under the image of the Virgin and crossed themselves, frightened at the anxious note in their mother's voice.
Katrinka, who had kept her tears back all day, felt her eyes fill as Mother Drovski's arms closed about her.
"Is it the Cossacks who have taken them away?" she asked, her voice smothered against her kind neighbor's shoulder.
"I saw strangers in town last night," rumbled Ivan. "They stopped at the store for tea. Somebody said they were secret police from St. Petersburg. Now our good neighbor and his wife are gone. That is what comes of learning reading and writing, and holding meetings." He shook his head dolefully. "They will find a grave in Siberia while their children starve."
Katrinka tore herself from the sheltering arms of Mother Drovski and looked despairingly into the face of Ivan. At last she understood what was meant by the disappearance of her parents. The police had taken them away. Even now they were on their way to that mysterious place called Siberia of which she had heard so much. Many of her father's friends had gone there. She had heard often, how, chained to one another, they had crossed the frozen desert, never again to come back, but to spend their lives working far under the ground in the Siberian gold mines.
There flashed through her mind a picture of her mother's face as she had seen it on the last Easter, her cheeks rosy, her dimples flashing. She had worn a dress of vivid blue, the color of the corn flowers, and her hair was confined under a lace handkerchief. Around her waist was tied a wonderful apron made of strips of crocheted lace and white linen. Her full plaited skirt was short and gave one a glimpse of her ankles bandaged in white cloth and of her slippers of black leather, the only leather slippers in all the village. How gayly she had laughed as she stopped to exchange kisses and Easter eggs with all whom she met!
Katrinka felt her chin quiver. Could it be that she should never again see the pretty, sweet-voiced mother of whom she had been so proud, the mother who had sat at home spinning while the other women in the village went to the fields to be hitched beside the oxen or the horses at the plows?
The tears rolled down Katrinka's cheeks. She hid her face in Mother Drovski's apron.
"Do not worry, my little one," said Mother Drovski, laying her arm about the child's shoulders. "You and Peter shall not go hungry. Your stomachs shall be filled and you shall sleep with us–here in the izba 8 of Ivan Drovski–with him and his own little ones. It has been a hard winter. The cattle are suffering for food but with the help of the good Father we shall find enough for two more mouths."
Mother Drovski crossed herself with her thumb and two first fingers, her eyes on the pictured face of the Virgin framed in a wreath of tin flowers that hung in a corner of the kitchen.
"Dry your tears. We will light the samovar, and have tea at once."
She motioned to a tall girl, who immediately set to work preparing the big samovar which stood in the middle of the pine table. Then, turning to Katrinka, she went on kindly.
"Come, we will go down cellar."
She took Katrinka's hand and drew her to the door that led into the storeroom under the house. At the head of the stairway she stopped to light a candle while Katrinka bravely blinked back her tears.
"We will have some beet-root soup with slices of cucumber in it," she said as they reached the foot of the stairs. "And there is a loaf of black bread in the oven." She paused and bent over the potato bin. By the light of the candle Katrinka could see that it was almost empty. For some moments Mother Drovski stood looking into it, then, with a sigh, she filled a wooden bowl with potatoes. "They will not last through the month, but you shall have some to-night," said the good woman, trying to speak cheerfully. After filling the bowl, she held up the candle and looked around the storeroom. Katrinka looked too, her brown eyes wide and filled with wonder. The room was less than half the size of the storeroom at home. Against its walls hung no strings of dried and salted fish. There were no jars of preserved berries on the shelves. A single barrel of salted meat stood on the floor. Mother Drovski shook her head sadly, then, going to a jar that stood in the corner, uncovered it and took out a single cucumber. Near the jar was a box filled with beets and turnips.
The flickering candle lighted up Mother Drovski's troubled face. She was wondering if the scanty supply of winter provisions would be sufficient to feed two more mouths.
Katrinka, seeming to read the good woman's thoughts, caught her rosy underlip between her teeth. She looked around dubiously at the bare storeroom, her mind conjuring up a picture of the storeroom at home with its supply of good things, and of the kitchen with hams, sides of bacon, strings of mushrooms and dried fruits hanging from the rafters.
Suddenly she clapped her hands. Her feet in their big boots, wet with snow water, felt light. She sprang into the air and coming down whirled around on her toes. It was Katrinka's way to express her feelings through her feet, which were like thistledown, and very small.
"Oh, Mother Drovski," she cried, "Peter and I will eat with you to-night and then you and Ivan and the children shall come home with us and stay until father and mother come back. We have a big house and there are hams and fish and potatoes and cabbages enough to feed the whole village."
As she finished speaking she felt a moment's misgiving over the generosity of her invitation. She was not sure that her father would be pleased to come home and find Ivan Drovski and his family installed in the house, which was the largest and lightest, as well as the cleanest, in the entire village.
She wondered if the Drovskis would bring the chickens and the calf and the little pigs to live in the sitting room and if they would scatter straw over the shining floor. Appalled by the picture she laid her forefinger against her lip, shrinking into the shadows for fear kind Mother Drovski would read her thoughts.
That good woman breathed a sigh of relief. "I have heard of the riches of your father," she said. "Surely it would be but right for us to take a few dried fish and some barley meal in return for the care of his children. And, Katrinka," she continued, starting towards the stairs, "is there an abundance of straw in your stable?"
"I heard father say that it would last until spring. Do you need some straw?"
"Ivan began pulling straw from the roof to feed the cattle two days ago. But if we use up the entire thatch there will not be straw enough to last until the snow is gone," replied Mother Drovski as she bent to close the cask in which the pickled cucumbers were kept. "I am sure your father would willingly allow us a little straw to pay us for sheltering his children."
"But, Mother Drovski, you are to live with us. Our house is large and there is room in it for all of us. Besides, if Peter and I come here to live with you, there would be nobody left at home to water the geraniums and to milk the cow, and keep the fire burning."
Mother Drovski patted Katrinka's head, dripping a splash of hot tallow on the child's upturned face as she did so.
"We will leave those questions until later," she said, moving towards the stairs.
This chapter has been put on-line as part of the
BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the
Celebration of Women Writers.
Initial text entry and proof-reading of this chapter were the work of volunteer
Patricia Heil.
