Sweeter Than All the World (17 page)

Susannah says, straight and calm, “I’ve had a very successful time in Europe, now I have to start work in Calgary.”

Trish says quickly, “I’m glad, Mom, you deserve a really good job, finally. But you both seem to…”

Adam says, into the intent, lengthening silence of both their children, “I’d like to take a long break this summer. Maybe Japan or Korea.”

He touches Trish’s left hand. “You want to come with me?”

Her fingers curl, and drift along his. Then she reaches across his arm and draws the two coffee spoons, the knife and the fork together and moves them around on the table, this way and that. Sometimes it seems she is shaping a circle, sometimes as if the cutlery radiated from a centre, were splayed out and flying away in the four cardinal directions.

I WAS BORN ANNA WIEBE
on June 13, 1842, in the village of Herrenhagen, West Prussia. I know God has a particular call for an oldest daughter, but I never thought my hopes would turn to dust and water just before I was twenty-one. What will happen now? God knows. If I write down what I can, perhaps the thorns of separation will be softened.

Our mother died last year. I am her oldest daughter. Our family made the dikes to build Herrenhagen over 150 years ago, four Wiebe brothers moving up the delta from the villages near Elbing. But now Father says wars and kings change laws, no matter what their forefathers have sworn is forever. King Wilhelm has made Otto Bismarck his Chancellor in Berlin and there will be war, he says, more and more war. And our family has three tall sons.

Which is not many for Mennonites. But there is nowhere
on the Vistula delta to make more land now, and if a man has no land he is drafted into the Prussian Army, Mennonite or no Mennonite.

“Let Heinrich have the farm,” said Johannes, the oldest. I’m second, two years before Heinrich, and then Franz, and Käthe, only twelve, and small Margaret. “I’ll go to school in Berlin.”

“If they see you there, they’ll just grab you and shove a bear hat down on your face in the King’s Guard.”

Johannes said, “Not if I’m smart enough. Smart in university like Eduard Friedrich Salomon Wiebe.”

“So smart,” Father said. “And what about Franz?”

They were both too tall for the Prussian generals not to take them, both too strong. No Wiebes, Father said, have ever been lost in an army, not even when Napoleon made killers out of the whole world. We had to find new land, as Mennonites always have, for our faith.

So Father has sold our farmstead to young Hans Claassen with only one boy living and three girls. He sent 350 taler to the Russian embassy as a guarantee we will not starve on the road, and bought long wagons and bigger horses. We will leave with a trek for Russia. Elder Claus Epp is the leader and Aaron Ewert the wagon master.

I felt Frederich Ratzlaff of Heubuden was going to speak to Father about me, and I had hopes. But Father said, “Dearest Anna, you are the oldest daughter. If you don’t come and cook, how will we eat?”

June
3,
1862:
The last night in our home. Lord, abide with us. A huge fire in our kitchen stove, burning, burning. Before bed
I draw my “Daily Watchword” from its small box. The card gives me the First Commandment: Exodus 20:2—“I am the Lord, your God. You shall have no other gods before me.”

I memorized the verse in catechism, did it always say that? There are other gods?

June 4:
Watchword, Galatians 5:16—“Walk in the Spirit, do not satisfy the lusts of the flesh.”

Käthe and I laid our last flower bouquet on our mother’s grave. Aunt Anna and I cried together saying goodbye. It is all too much, my heart feels so heavy. My only hope is to leave all hopes behind and carry my duty. The wagons were ready, the drivers too. Käthe and Margaret and I walked around the yard. The flowers bloomed bright like stars in heaven. But brother Heinrich was hard. “Time to go, silly girls, come, come!” We drove along the dike roads under the trees of the green Werder, all the villages and the people we know coming to their gates. Down the street of Heubuden too, but only little Liesjki waved at the Ratzlaffs.

Thorns and tears. Goodbye forever in this world.

June 6:
Watchword, Romans 8:23—“All creation groans with us for the redemption of our bodies.”

Morning. Our wagons drove over the Nogat River towards the Castle at Marienburg on the railroad bridge. Horribly frightening, but solid. The wood and iron was black, with boards for horses. The horses had to be blindfolded and led. The castle like a black mountain over the grey water.

Johannes said our relative Eduard Frederich Salomon Wiebe designed and built that bridge. The whole railroad too,
from Berlin six hundred kilometres to Eydtkuhnen on the eastern border. This Wiebe is now minister of public works for the Kingdom of Prussia in Berlin. Käthe said, “We’ve never seen him,” and that’s true.

I could not look, passing the castle. Over a year ago, a Sunday afternoon in April, I walked there with ER. Never again. I want to remember only the rusting bars across every stone slit, for shooting people. Johannes crawled into the wagon and told us about Josef von Eichendorf who visited Marienburg Castle sixty years ago. It was leased by a Mennonite then. “The great hall,” he wrote, “where the Teutonic Knights held their Round Tables for three hundred years now clatters and screeches with Mennonite looms weaving cotton.”

My little sisters laughed. It was not funny for me.

Johannes tells wonderful stories, but I hear only: You Must.

June
7: Watchword, Galatians 6:8—“He who sows to his flesh will of his flesh reap corruption.”

A good Prussian road. Over big fields near Elbing we saw the roofs of the Einlage villages among the trees across the river. Hundreds of our Wiebes, Johannes said, still live there, though many more have moved to Russia. Their dikes were built by Adam Wiebe and his sons over two hundred years ago. They have been opened only once, to see if Napoleon had taught his soldiers how to swim. He hadn’t.

June 8:
Watchword, I Cor. 2:10—“But the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

I made breakfast coffee with hot water from the guest house
where we stayed. This place was so dirty, worse than yesterday. I could hardly cook our beer-soup on their dirty stove. I slept alone in the wagon, they are guarded all night. Never seen such filth in a kitchen. The woman of the house, really a servant herself, screaming all the time at her sour-faced maid. Today the sun shone, black clouds along the horizon with lightning.

We passed Elbing early. Such church spires, like a city praying always. At night I cooked sweet plums for Pentecost and Elder Epp preached. He sits on a chair that folds flat.

Auguste Ewert sat on the ground with her two little children. We were closest friends before she married the Widower Ewert, his wife dead three weeks. She has four stepsons, the oldest a year younger than she or I. I stood near her. She looked up and smiled. Her Agnes has such beautiful golden hair.

June 12:
Rain and mud. This guest house was quite clean. Father let the woman make breakfast. Someone was rude to me, but I feel safer and I told him what I thought.

We stopped in Eydtkuhnen, the last night in our homeland. I wrote a long letter I did not send. My sisters went with Johannes to the railroad station, which is very big but not yet finished. Käthe said, “That’s the last we’ll see of Eduard Frederich Salomon Wiebe.” Small Margaret said, “I‘ve never seen him yet,” and they laughed.

Johannes looks sad. Not even eldest sons can do what they most want.

June 13:
Watchword, Hebrews 12:1—“Seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with patience the race set before us.”

A year ago today our loving mother’s eyes closed forever.

And we crossed the border, the last Prussian eagle, on my birthday. The border search was short, but made me angry. Such dirty hands digging in our things. Auguste Ewert let them, as if she didn’t care. All her careful bundles pulled open.

The hills shone in the distance yesterday, today the high churches shine over village roofs in the sun. Beautiful. But no good houses, everything is ugly, dirty, horrible disorder. Most of the people seem to be Jews. They swarm around us yelling we have to pay them border fees. Father threatened to call the guard and they disappeared fast as rats. Käthe sang a song from school, “All that is good, all that is beautiful, is in our Fatherland.”

I have had no time to go into any cemetery. But Johannes went to one we passed and brought me small red flowers. I pressed one between my Watchwords. I have our portable iron oven, I can cook better beside the road even in evening rain. No stinking kitchens.

June 14:
Watchword, Galations 6:8—“He who sows to the Spirit will reap life everlasting.”

Rain on rain. From far away, towns shine with the pointed onion domes of Russian churches, but driving into them they are so ugly. I feel unwell. I cannot even walk into a cemetery we pass, though there is time. Streets full of mud and Jews yelling. We escaped around Marienpol without being robbed. Such filth, all so poor. Men scream to sell anything, young Jewesses run around in rags with nets over their bound heads. “O Israel, you foolish people of God,” as Jeremiah prophesied. We never saw so many on the Werder. They have rejected their Messiah, what else can they expect but poverty?

Father bought oats from a Jew. The road becomes sand and hilly, the horses labour. I walk behind in the rain. O Lord have mercy on us and our cattle.

June
15: Watchword, Psalm 9:20—“Arise, O Lord, put them in fear, that the nations know they are only men.”

Sabbath. I laid out our wet wash behind bushes to dry in the sun. Sat on a rock to write. My Watchword for today leaves no room for my thoughts, though they never leave me. Only men. Elder Claus Epp preached sitting under birch trees and we on the ground. I thought of Jesus and his disciples. Only men—did women listen?

In the evening we sisters sat with Auguste in a meadow and sang songs. Then all the Ewert and Epp and Wiebe children came, Auguste’s little Benjamin and Agnes too, and it was noisy. They played, running, their voices calling each other. High and sweet as if they were at home.

“Now rejoice, poor, sighing creation. Soon your eternal Sabbath will dawn which no day of labour will follow.”

June 18:
Watchword, II Corinthians 13:13—“The grace of Christ, the love of God, the communion of the Spirit be with you.”

Rose very early today. The wagons drove long before breakfast. I felt so unwell, but tried to walk to spare the horses. We want to reach Vilna. Very stony land and the sun hot.

Today I did walk in a cemetery. There were no gravestones, only wooden crosses rotting on the ground. Weeds, every grave sunken and deep, a picture of life collapsing. I wanted to write letters, but too many mosquitoes. Little Agnes
Ewert leaned against me after I finished cooking and we ate. Her bright hair.

June 19:
Heart, how long will be your longing?

Vilna rises so high on a cliff above the river, it frightens me. Always farther away. A Jew gave us directions, but his road turned to sand through a valley, our men furious. Lucky he was gone or Heinrich would have beat him and got us in trouble. But Father said the Jew sold us a good horse, which helped pull us through.

Father walked in to mail letters, Johannes and we sisters went to see the railroad station. High cut stone. Many oak trees, and fine, white Russian church towers with red and running green cupolas. Beauty without true faith. The cult of priests who stare at us as long and black as their clothes. We bought bread and two more good horses from Jews and drove on.

Toward evening Father pointed out a high, ruined castle. We sisters and brothers, except Heinrich, climbed up. No building, rough stones everywhere as if thrown by giant children. A ruin. There was no time, we had to run down and catch up with the wagons.

Within me I feel dry as sand in a rain.

June
23: Watchword, Zinzendorf: “O Saviour! Weave your holy flames of love through my frozen heart.”

Rain upon rain. A Russian postal road only, sand and long hills. Our poor Fox can no longer pull, he can hardly walk tied behind the wagon. My sisters and brothers, not Johannes, scolded me. They say I am unwell because I eat too much. But I think it is because I always have to walk in wet shoes.

And thoughts, too many to carry. All hopes and plans of Heubuden hang so heavy. They must be thrown away. Oh, for the strength. And still they sit like crows. Black and waiting.

June
25: A tiny stream in a deep valley. Johannes and Käthe climbed down to see it. The narrow road hangs on the edge, leading forever up and down. The sun set behind a distant shower, like light through tears.

June 28:
I want peace. To think only of noodles. Minsk is far behind. Could not walk today. Very stony and rough, but bumping in the wagon I was able to mix dumplings. Everyone ate except me. Miserable Russian towns, churches shine in the rain surrounded by rotten sheds under rotting shingles. Endless soldiers with guns, nothing to do but hold guns and stare. We could find no drinking water. Drove very late and stopped in woods. Beautiful evening light, with many mosquitoes. Double night watch set, this is deepest Russia, Heinrich said. Franz laughed. “Wait,” he said, “there’ll be more, wait.”

June 29:
Sabbath morning, shining with dew. I slept a little in the wagon yesterday driving, and still weak. Without Käthe and Margaret I could not have made coffee for breakfast. Elder Epp preached from Luke, the lost sheep, the ten lost coins. We rested. It was good for us and the poor horses. Good sun.

After noon all the men sat around Elder Epp in his folding chair and talked about Mennonite non-resistance, how to love enemies. I had to laugh. Every day we meet so many dirty, screaming, stealing people, and the men speak as close to cursing them as they dare. Johannes saw me, and I was ashamed
at what he saw on my face. He knows how close I feel to cursing too.