The Russlander by Sandra Birdsell Page B

accentuated the relief pattern of vine leaves rimming the bottom of the cup, and its engraved letters, LS .
    â€œIt made my teeth hurt when I drank from it,” Lydia said as she put the cup back onto the shelf.
    Katya remembered the cup being pushed across a table towards her, how much cooler milk seemed to be when drunk from it. She remembered her tongue tracing the grooves of the engraved initials on its side.
    â€œThe best there is, Wells Fargo,” Dietrich said as the safe door closed with a thud, as if to remind Katya and Gerhard that he’d been to America, and how much he savoured the English words,
Wells Fargo
.
    Just then the closed door across the room suddenly opened, startling them. Abram stood on the threshold scowling, his bushy grizzled beard almost covering his entire chest. His bare feet were puddles of flesh on the dark floorboards.
    â€œWe didn’t know you were there,” Dietrich said lamely.
    He had already got up from the floor and moved away from the safe when his father surprised them. Now he went over to the table and touched the half-carved horse, as though to imply to his father that he had brought them to the office to admire this latest carving.
    â€œThat, I don’t question. Lydia, be useful. Come and help your papa, yes?” Abram said as he held up a pair of socks. Lydia hurried to comply, waited for her father to settle in his chair before lifting his feet onto a hassock.
    â€œGo tell Mama to bring my boots,” Abram called after Dietrich as he made his hasty retreat.
    While Lydia struggled to pull on and garter her father’s socks, he studied Katya and Gerhard, his eyes half shut. “What makes you happy these days?” he asked, his voice rumbling with phlegm.
    â€œWe – we – we -” Gerhard stuttered.
    â€œWhat does he want to say?” Abram asked.
    â€œWe like to go exploring,” Katya said.
    â€œIt seems that everyone these days wants to go exploring,” Abram said, as if referring to her father’s desire to be his own man. He was going to do as promised. He was going to Ekaterinoslav, where he would meet with his brothers and discuss the sale of the land. Be still for the next few days, their mother had told them. Your father is anxious.
    As she, her brother, and Lydia joined up with Greta at the rondel, horses whinnied in the carriage house, and then its doors flew open, letting out a team of chestnut bays hitched to a
federwoage
. The coachman sent the team galloping about the yard, testing the harnesses and hitches before he would drive to the front entrance and wait for Abram.
    Everyone wants to go exploring, Abram had said, in such a way to imply he scorned such a desire. Forgetting that he’d taken his family to America during the time when Russia’s navy was being humiliated in the Strait of Tsushima. They’d toured a soap factory and the Pillsbury flour mill in Minneapolis. Travelled south on a train to see cotton fields, and ranch lands, and had eaten watermelons that were oblong and not round, and weren’t nearly as sweet as what they were used to.
    Abram returned with an appreciation of the size of the Pillsbury mill, and its efficiency at moving grain and flour in and out on railway cars. He brought home the wide-brimmed Stetson hats worn by the cowboys, and as they had at the Christmas gathering, the brothers wore the hats when they met to report on their variousbusiness endeavours. The English, however, were ahead of the Americans when it came to steam engines, and so on the return trip, Abram had stopped in Ipswich, England, to visit the gentlemen at Namsons, Sims & Head, and purchased one of their engines for his brother’s flour mill in Ekaterinoslav.
    It was years later that Katya learned the stories behind the Sudermanns’ long absence during the war with Japan. She and her sister had been sent away: her father left in charge of Privol’noye to fight off the Red Cock