The Testament of Yves Gundron by Emily Barton Page B

offense at this disruption, but even an ordinary Sunday was a circus, and I took pleasure in watching my neighbors respond to this new thing. Dirk and Bartholomew bowed so low their foreheads nearly touched the ground; rosy-cheeked Prugne Martin waved shyly; Tansy Gansevöort, carrying her fat new bairn, let her eyes go round as the moon; and Wido Jungfrau simply looked away. But Ruth acknowledged them all with the quiet happiness of a father greeting the guests at his daughter’s wedding, and as they returned from the railing, they all looked at her more warmly. If any man communed with God that Sunday, it is surely a sign of God’s never-ending grace.
    Ruth was a stranger, but no more than a fortnight passed before she began to seem one of my own, as ordinary as sodden weather, if no more dearly loved. Her clothing, affect, and manner of speech still gave me a start from time to time, for her habits were unlike any I had known. She used as much water in washing herself as we did to cook, each day ministered devotedly to her white teeth, and, as Mandrik said, “toasted” her bread. “Don’t you know I already baked that?” Adelaïda asked each morning. These peculiarities began, however, to seem a natural part of her presence; and indeed, her presence began to seem as unremarkable as the fire’s. Elizaveta, at her start, had been fragile as a dewdrop on a spider’s web, but Ruth was as strong as history. What could daunt her, if a sojourn alone in our wilds had not? She ate at my table, slept on my floor, peeled potatoes with my wife, spread feed to the chickens, and gallantly shared her warm tub with my splashingdaughter, who else would not consent to be bathed. Only four days after her arrival, Elizaveta followed me into the yard and declared, “Papa, I wrote a song.”
    â€œReally?” I asked. “What kind?” For she had long since been reciting nonsense in imitation of her mother’s odd talent.
    She stood firmly atop her tiny red shoes, raised her chin, and opened the petals of her mouth to squawk:
    Roof, Roof ,
    She tells the troof .
    My heart fell through my stomach—my brother, in his infancy, had begun with such songs, and it seemed quite an accomplishment for a child but two years named, barely as tall as the wash tub. “That’s a beautiful song,” I said, knowing that my words could not convey the depths of my admiration.
    â€œI did it myself.”
    â€œI’m very proud of you.”
    The two dark moons of her eyes examined me for further praise and deemed it not forthcoming before she ran away.
    Ruth Blum, spinster native of Cambridge, a world away, inspired my daughter to song. All the admiration that had once been mine for harnessing the horse was now upon her, both for her double-axle cart, which increased capacity and made the carts easier to drive on the bumpy High Road to Nnms, and for her strange and luminous self. I did not mind the attention my countrymen paid her—the time for my own celebrity, perhaps, had passed—but I wondered who this woman was, this emissary from a place beyond the known world.
    While we waited to understand her, my wife hesitantly undertook to teach her the basic tasks of the kitchen, and showed her how to card wool. She was not yet skilled enough with her hands to spin or to weave, but she could wind spun thread into an even ball, and when learning a new task, smiled broadly despite the clumsiness of her fingers. It clearly both irked and amused my wife to have so inexpert and yet so dogged a helper; perhaps when our daughter grew, she would be just such a young woman. The more Ruth learned the tasks of the household, the fonder I grew of her; and as I grew fond, I began towonder, would she leave, and bring back to her country stories as fanciful as those Mandrik told of the Orient, and trail shreds of our hearts and our imaginations out behind her? Who could say if she would like