The boys told me to choose my own place in the haymow, and I lay down
before a big window, left open in warm weather, that looked out into the
stars. Ambrosch and Leo cuddled up in a hay-cave, back under the eaves,
and lay giggling and whispering. They tickled each other and tossed and
tumbled in the hay; and then, all at once, as if they had been shot, they
were still. There was hardly a minute between giggles and bland slumber.
I lay awake for a long while, until the slow-moving moon passed my window
on its way up the heavens. I was thinking about Antonia and her children;
about Anna's solicitude for her, Ambrosch's grave affection, Leo's jealous,
animal little love. That moment, when they all came tumbling out of the
cave into the light, was a sight any man might have come far to see.
Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not
fade--that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of
such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer:
Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came
home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as
she stood by her father's grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with
her work-team along the evening sky-line.
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