The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [2]
This Sunday she feels strong throughout the morning and the service, until after the meal of dumplings and a chicken boiled in carrots and parsnips, when the nowfamiliar wave of fatigue overtakes her. So, she is given a reprieve from the dishes at her sister-in-law’s and sent to lie down in a small room built like a porch off the back of the flat.
But she doesn’t sleep, only lies listening to the women banter in their slangy • ari• and the dull clack of ceramic china as they dry and stack plates. Occasionally, like a breeze rising and falling at unexpected intervals through an open window, the laughter of children playing rises from the street, along with the metronomic clop of a horse on which rides some stranger inattentive to the Sabbath. Who could afford a horse on this side of town? she wonders. Or even want to ride it here for leisure on a Sunday?
Sunday is the only day the air isn’t ashy and sulfurous, and on this day the weather remains pristine, even in the afternoon, when cloud cover often crests the mountains and sweeps down toward the plains. She stands, moves the child carefully as he dozes from his basket to a sling she wears across her chest, and steps out into the kitchen to say that she is going for a walk.
Tobias, the youngest Hudak boy, hears this as an invitation for the family in its entirety to go out, and he tugs at his mother’s dress.
Matka, pod’me!
But his mother tells him that they can’t go because there is work still to do, and it is Auntie Liz who wants to go with baby Jozef so that the two can get some air.
If he’s underfoot, she says to Anna, I don’t mind taking him with me.
Oh, Lizzie, he’s always underfoot, Anna says, wiping her hands on her apron. She is pregnant, too, now, and near term, and bears her condition heavily not just at the hips but in her face and eyes with a visible disquiet. Go by yourself before it gets too late.
Tobias insists. Prosím, Matka. Pod’me, he pleads.
Anna wonders why the pull is so strong. If she hasn’t paid him enough attention in the last several months? Or if it’s her sister-in-law to whom her son is attracted, which is likely, she thinks as she considers the young woman before her as though for the first time, a face that shows no lines yet of age, a voice that speaks in notes of affection, which grace her infant son continuously and without conscious effort, and the angelic quality of possessing strength beneath a slight beauty, so that she seems to become a different woman altogether whenever she so much as turns her head or changes position.
At the table, the men talk and drink as though in another room, and Ondrej Vinich, who is indifferent to their company, rises and excuses himself. He hears the conversation between his wife and sister, sees them through the open curtain, and for a moment wonders who the beautiful woman with the sleeping child is. The distance between them pains him, and he regrets his harsh tone that morning and other mornings, so that he feels for an instant the desire to forgo his trip to Leadville and to walk with his wife for the few hours of quiet she seeks, but the thought dissipates. He says good day to the men and leaves the women and children to themselves.
Anna kneels down and says to her son, Toby, stay here with Mama and we’ll have a treat of poppyseed and milk. You and me.
But Tobias begins to cry, and Lizzie, who