Читать книгу The Mandrake Root - Martha Ostenso - Страница 5

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Guri Kvam sat by the kitchen table while Lydie made coffee. Andrew and Esther Larch were in the living room, discussing the forthcoming meeting of the Beacon Light Society, of which Andrew was president.

“I haven’t an egg for the coffee, Guri,” Lydie said apologetically. “The hens haven’t been laying very well.”

“Egg! Salt and cold water—yust so good.” The old woman hobbled over to the stove and jerked her head significantly toward the other room. “Her in there! Making out so she means about the meeting T’ursday night! Phuff! That Esther—she’s so crazy to see Andrew she make up excuses to come. I don’t have to look in any coffee cup for to see so. And you, Lydie—well, you go on make supper for your man. Give me a cup coffee, yust.”

“I have some fresh jelly roll,” said Lydie. “You must sample it. There’s no hurry about supper. We’re going to have hash tonight, and that won’t take long to fix. Sit down, now, and rest yourself.”

From the pantry, Lydie brought the cake in its cheesecloth wrapping, cut off a couple of generous portions, then poured two cups of coffee from the white enamel pot.

“A wisitor you have here soon,” Guri said finally, when she looked into the cup that Lydie had drained and set aside. She was sipping her own coffee slowly, expertly dipping her lump of sugar and sucking it with a little whistling noise between her toothless gums.

“A visitor, Guri?” Lydie said absently. The old woman was forever telling fortunes and Lydie had long since ceased to pay more than passing heed to them.

At the moment, Lydie’s attention was elsewhere. From the inner room Esther Larch’s voice was rising in giddy rapture in response to some wise and slow suggestion that had come from Andrew. She really ought to go to his rescue, Lydie thought, but on other occasions when she had done so Esther had let it be known in the neighborhood that Lydie Clarence was green with jealousy of her and Andrew. It was generally believed, indeed, that Lydie watched her husband with the eye of a hawk.

“Yah, a wisitor,” old Guri was prattling on. “You hass here a sadness, too. You go some place, soon now. But the wisitor, he come here. A big storm, maybe. No—it iss not’ing. Not’ing big no more, Lydie. Peoples come—peoples go. Make no difference.”

Lydie smiled. “No, Guri—it makes no difference, does it? People come and people go. Let me fill your cup again.”

“Yah! One time here it vass different. When Doctor Edvard Stene he settle here—that was the great time! I am too old to tell about that time. The days pass wit’ the men and women and the enimels som went wit’ them. And the coffee grounds—pht! You tells a fortune from in your head, or your heart—or your belly, might be. But the coffee iss good, Lydie. Home, Egbert’s vife she say it ain’t good for me. Vell, I tell her I still live, no matter what. So I had it to do over again, Lydie, I vould take all I could get, coffee and everyt’ing else! What use iss it to save yourself—yust for the grave?”

Lydie responded with a preoccupied laugh, then went to the doorway of the living room. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of coffee, Esther?” she asked graciously. “Andrew?”

“Oh—no, thanks!” Esther replied, goggling. “Doctor Blane says I mustn’t have it except for breakfast. I’m too tense and high-strung, he says.”

“I agree with Doctor Blane,” Andrew grinned. “As long as Esther is secretary of the club, she’ll have to be careful of her health.”

Lydie caught his sly wink as she withdrew. Esther wouldn’t want to be secretary of the Beacon Light, she thought to herself, if Andrew weren’t president. She went back and sat down at the kitchen table.

“Why don’t you wear your new store teeth, Guri?” she asked the old woman, irrelevantly.

“Oh—them! They’re no good to chew wit’. Yust for show. I been getting along twenty year now on my gooms. So my grandsons want to give me a present, they could’ve made it somet’ing useful. But, no! They got to give me teet’!”

The old woman settled back comfortably in her chair and looked admiringly about the big, immaculate kitchen with its shiny linoleum, its nickel-trimmed range, its crisp red and white curtains, its old oak cupboard, and above all its electric light in a fine white bowl in the center of the ceiling.

“Goodness me!” she exclaimed. “It iss a palace you have here, Lydie! When I t’ink of the sod house Edvard and Johannes had first they come here—and so the log house later on—it iss too much to t’ink about. Then wit’ candles for light, and now you wit’—”

“We wouldn’t have electricity, of course, if we weren’t so close to town,” Lydie reminded her. “But it is a nice place. I only wish we could buy it.” She drew a quick, impatient breath and gathered up the cups and saucers. “But this Eric Stene won’t sell.”

Old Guri chuckled to herself. “That boy—I guess he iss a Stene, yust so!”

“What is he like, Guri?” Lydie asked. “He was here about five years ago, wasn’t he, when his granduncle died?”

“Yah, he wass to the funeral. Big, good-looking feller. Teaching in a college, he iss.”

“Yes, I know. It’s funny that he has never been back here since his uncle died.”

“Them Stenes wass always funny,” Guri said. “So I told you before, I wass here in diss house the night Eric wass born and his mother died. A Dutch girl she wass. I knowed him till he wass a big feller and went away to school. His fahder died before, and so it wass only his granduncle Johannes so wass left. Eric say to me when he come to Johannes’ funeral, he say, ‘Somet’ing iss finished, Guri. Might be I never come back. But I keep diss place anyhow, so long I can.’ Funny, them Stenes.”

“He probably fancies himself being landed gentry some day when he makes enough money to settle down here and lord it over the county!” Lydie observed with a hint of acrimony. “After Andrew has broken his back keeping the place productive. Oh, I know I’m unreasonable. Andrew always tells me I am. And of course we could go somewhere else and buy a few acres. But we came here when we were first married, and no other place will ever seem the same to me. No other place will be Solbakken!”

“Yah, yah, yust so—I understand. I wass lucky my brother he take over our farm so I live on it till I die. But might be Eric he give in after a while. Might be Andrew should go and talk to him.”

“Andrew?” Lydie stood at the sink, cutting up onions for the hash. Tears came into her eyes and she laughed as she rubbed the back of her hand roughly across her cheeks. “Me, perhaps—but never Andrew. It was my idea in the beginning, you know, Guri—it was my idea to buy this land. I’m afraid I’m the possessive one. I’ve talked to Andrew about it until he thinks it’s his idea now. But he’s far too sensitive to go and force himself on a person like Eric Stene. But when this place is worth twice what it is now, your beautiful Eric won’t wait long before he forces himself on us. He’ll kick us off without—”

The door to the inner room opened and Esther Larch came into the kitchen, Andrew following her. Lydie gave her husband a glance of veiled and humorous commiseration while he paused near the doorway, smoking his pipe in the patient way he had of showing her that he wished the two women would take themselves off without delay. When they had gone at last, after effusive good-bys, Andrew walked quietly over to the stove and knocked the ashes from his pipe. His thin, dark face bore a dry and weary smile.

“Even the pipe tastes moldy,” he said with a lugubrious laugh.

Lydie wiped her hands and came to him. She threw her arms about his high, narrow shoulders. For a moment she studied him, his twisted, enduring smile, his steep forehead beneath the dark, somehow helpless-looking, gray-threaded hair, his eyes, deep-set, more dark and constantly burning with that strange, mystical zeal of his mind which she had never been able to comprehend, and which had always made her feel grossly physical and unworthy of him.

“Isn’t it too much for you, Andrew?” she asked him. “Why can’t somebody else be president of that darned old club? You started it—and you’ve kept it going. It’s time somebody took it off your hands.”

He grinned down at her. “Are you trying to tell me I’m getting too old to—”

“They depend on you too much, Andy,” she interrupted. “And that Esther Larch—I felt like going in and stuffing her mouth with a dish-rag!”

Andrew laughed suddenly as if a weight had been lifted from his thoughts. He gathered Lydie into his arms and kissed her with an intense fervor that left her almost breathless.

“If I didn’t have you,” he muttered, “nothing would be worth a damn!” He thrust back her hair and stared into her eyes in a way that sent a running tremor through her body. “You’re like a flower, Lydie.” She could feel him trembling as he held her closer and closer. “And yet—you’re so strong, too—sometimes you scare me.” He laughed again and released her. “Now, don’t go worrying about Esther Larch. She means well—and she’s really working hard for the Beacon. She has a batch of new members all lined up for the next meeting—people from Axford. We’ll just have to put up with Esther. Anyhow, she doesn’t bother us much. This is the first time she has been here in two weeks.”

Lydie moved away and abstractedly stirred the hash in the deep pan over the fire, then set it to one side at the back of the stove, beside the stewed tomatoes.

“You’d better call Bob and Lucky,” she said quickly. “Supper will be on by the time they get washed up. And you go and change those wet shoes. With two men being paid to do the work around here, I don’t see why you have to go tramping through the wet grass all afternoon.”