‘He’s made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar that he buttons on outside his coat. They ain’t got but one overcoat among ‘em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scared of cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers2.’
‘All but the crazy boy,’ Jake put in. ‘He never wears the coat. Krajiek says he’s turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must be getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfield yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he’d shot. He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a face and took on, to scare him, but he just looked like he was smarter’n me and put ‘em back in his sack and walked off.’
Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke3 to grandfather. ‘Josiah, you don’t suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs, do you?’
‘You had better go over and see our neighbours tomorrow, Emmaline,’ he replied gravely.
Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts and ought to be good for food, but their family connections were against them. I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they belonged to the rat family.
When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake packing a hamper4 basket in the kitchen.
‘Now, Jake,’ grandmother was saying, ‘if you can find that old rooster that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we’ll take him along. There’s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn’t have got hens from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I reckon she was confused and didn’t know where to begin. I’ve come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no matter what you don’t have.
‘Just as you say, ma’m,’ said Jake, ‘but I hate to think of Krajiek getting a leg of that old rooster.’ He tramped out through the long cellar and dropped the heavy door behind him.
After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and climbed into the cold front wagon5-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas’, we heard the frosty whine6 of the pump and saw Antonia, her head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over her shoulder, and, catching7 up her pail of water, started at a run for the hole in the bank.
Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs8 of smoke came from the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the wind whisked them roughly away.
Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother’s hand. She did not say ‘How do!’ as usual, but at once began to cry, talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at everyone.
The old man was sitting on a stump9 behind the stove, crouching10 over as if he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing up at her mother, hid again. Antonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunny-sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered, he threw a grain-sack over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was stifling11, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer12.
Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had been frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour. Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment13, but the Bohemian woman laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and, catching up an empty coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively14 vindictive15.
Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting their stark16 need or her own remissness17, until Jake arrived with the hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda’s reproaches. Then the poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed18 to her, but called Antonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.
‘You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad,’ she whispered, as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother handed her.
The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.
‘Haven’t you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Antonia? This is no place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?’
‘We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office what he throw out. We got no potatoes, Mrs. Burden,’ Tony admitted mournfully.
When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth grey hair, as if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took grandmother’s arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room. In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger than an oil barrel, scooped19 out in the black earth. When I got up on one of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw. The old man held the lantern. ‘Yulka,’ he said in a low, despairing voice, ‘Yulka; my Antonia!’
Grandmother drew back. ‘You mean they sleep in there—your girls?’ He bowed his head.
Tony slipped under his arm. ‘It is very cold on the floor, and this is warm like the badger1 hole. I like for sleep there,’ she insisted eagerly. ‘My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie. See, Jim?’ She pointed20 to the narrow bunk21 which Krajiek had built against the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.
Grandmother sighed. ‘Sure enough, where WOULD you sleep, dear! I don’t doubt you’re warm there. You’ll have a better house after while, Antonia, and then you will forget these hard times.’
Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed his wife to a stool beside her. Standing22 before them with his hand on Antonia’s shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated. He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he made good wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with more than a thousand dollars in savings23, after their passage money was paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm machinery24, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother to know, however, that he still had some money. If they could get through until spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens and plant a garden, and would then do very well. Ambrosch and Antonia were both old enough to work in the fields, and they were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter weather had disheartened them all.
Antonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them in the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek25 where they had been felled.
While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the floor with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously toward us and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his queer noises for me—to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse—but he did not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up for his deficiencies.
Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over, and, while Antonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy began to smack26 his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent27, even among the other odours of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.
‘For cook,’ she announced. ‘Little now; be very much when cook,’ spreading out her hands as if to indicate that the pint28 would swell29 to a gallon. ‘Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat better in my country.’
‘Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda,’ grandmother said dryly. ‘I can’t say but I prefer our bread to yours, myself.’
Antonia undertook to explain. ‘This very good, Mrs. Burden’—she clasped her hands as if she could not express how good—‘it make very much when you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in the gravy—oh, so good!’
All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good Christian30 people could forget they were their brothers’ keepers.
‘I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep. Where’s a body to begin, with these people? They’re wanting in everything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give ‘em that, I guess. Jimmy, here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?’
‘He’s a worker, all right, ma’m, and he’s got some ketch-on about him; but he’s a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and then, ag’in, they can be too mean.’
That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that looked like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating31, earthy odour. We could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.
‘They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain’t dried fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I’m afraid of ‘em. Anyhow, I shouldn’t want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with old clothes and goose pillows.’
She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of the chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian forest....
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1
badger
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| v.一再烦扰，一再要求，纠缠 | |
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badgers
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| n.獾( badger的名词复数 )；獾皮；（大写）獾州人（美国威斯康星州人的别称）；毛鼻袋熊 | |
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3
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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4
hamper
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| vt.妨碍，束缚，限制；n.(有盖的)大篮子 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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6
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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7
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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8
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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9
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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10
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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11
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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12
glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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13
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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14
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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16
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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17
remissness
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| n.玩忽职守；马虎；怠慢；不小心 | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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24
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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26
smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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27
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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28
pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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29
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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30
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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31
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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