Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass. Our neighbours burned off their pasture before the new grass made a start, so that the fresh growth would not be mixed with the dead stand of last year. Those light, swift fires, running about the country, seemed a part of the same kindling4 that was in the air.
The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then. The neighbours had helped them to build it in March. It stood directly in front of their old cave, which they used as a cellar. The family were now fairly equipped to begin their struggle with the soil. They had four comfortable rooms to live in, a new windmill—bought on credit—a chicken-house and poultry5. Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather ten dollars for a milk cow, and was to give him fifteen more as soon as they harvested their first crop.
When I rode up to the Shimerdas’ one bright windy afternoon in April, Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her, now, that I gave reading lessons; Antonia was busy with other things. I tied my pony6 and went into the kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppy seeds as she worked. By this time she could speak enough English to ask me a great many questions about what our men were doing in the fields. She seemed to think that my elders withheld7 helpful information, and that from me she might get valuable secrets. On this occasion she asked me very craftily8 when grandfather expected to begin planting corn. I told her, adding that he thought we should have a dry spring and that the corn would not be held back by too much rain, as it had been last year.
She gave me a shrewd glance. ‘He not Jesus,’ she blustered9; ‘he not know about the wet and the dry.
I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting for the hour when Ambrosch and Antonia would return from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda at her work. She took from the oven a coffee-cake which she wanted to keep warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed with feathers. I have seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keep it hot. When the neighbours were there building the new house, they saw her do this, and the story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their food in their featherbeds.
When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw with her team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had come to us a child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although her fifteenth birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as she brought her horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the boots her father had so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and his old fur cap. Her outgrown10 cotton dress switched about her calves11, over the boot-tops. She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor’s. Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees that draught-horse neck among the peasant women in all old countries.
She greeted me gaily12, and began at once to tell me how much ploughing she had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on the north quarter, breaking sod with the oxen.
‘Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day. I don’t want that Jake get more done in one day than me. I want we have very much corn this fall.’
While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each other, and then drank again, Antonia sat down on the windmill step and rested her head on her hand.
‘You see the big prairie fire from your place last night? I hope your grandpa ain’t lose no stacks?’
‘No, we didn’t. I came to ask you something, Tony. Grandmother wants to know if you can’t go to the term of school that begins next week over at the sod schoolhouse. She says there’s a good teacher, and you’d learn a lot.’
Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they were stiff. ‘I ain’t got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mother can’t say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can work as much as him. School is all right for little boys. I help make this land one good farm.’
She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her, feeling vexed13. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, I wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in her silence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her face from me and looked off at the red streak14 of dying light, over the dark prairie.
I climbed up into the loft15 and threw down the hay for her, while she unharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambrosch had come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at the tank.
Antonia took my hand. ‘Sometime you will tell me all those nice things you learn at the school, won’t you, Jimmy?’ she asked with a sudden rush of feeling in her voice. ‘My father, he went much to school. He know a great deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. He play horn and violin, and he read so many books that the priests in Bohemie come to talk to him. You won’t forget my father, Jim?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I will never forget him.’
Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Antonia had washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basin by the kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the mush we had fresh bread and sorghum16 molasses, and coffee with the cake that had been kept warm in the feathers. Antonia and Ambrosch were talking in Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done more ploughing that day. Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling17 while she gobbled her food.
Presently Ambrosch said sullenly18 in English: ‘You take them ox tomorrow and try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart.’
His sister laughed. ‘Don’t be mad. I know it’s awful hard work for break sod. I milk the cow for you tomorrow, if you want.’
Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. ‘That cow not give so much milk like what your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send him back the cow.’
‘He doesn’t talk about the fifteen dollars,’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘He doesn’t find fault with people.’
I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I began to wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable to me. Antonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often at the table and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached. Grandmother had said, ‘Heavy field work’ll spoil that girl. She’ll lose all her nice ways and get rough ones.’ She had lost them already.
After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight20. Since winter I had seen very little of Antonia. She was out in the fields from sunup until sundown. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing, she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then gripped her plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded21 on down the furrow22, making me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. On Sundays she helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfather was pleased with Antonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled and said, ‘She will help some fellow get ahead in the world.’
Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. I knew, too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not to do, and that the farm-hands around the country joked in a nasty way about it. Whenever I saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her dress open at the neck, and her throat and chest dust-plastered, I used to think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet managed to say so much when he exclaimed, ‘My Antonia!’
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1
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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2
impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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3
blindfold
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| vt.蒙住…的眼睛；adj.盲目的；adv.盲目地；n.蒙眼的绷带[布等]； 障眼物，蒙蔽人的事物 | |
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4
kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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5
poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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7
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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8
craftily
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| 狡猾地，狡诈地 | |
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9
blustered
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| v.外强中干的威吓( bluster的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮；（风）呼啸；狂吹 | |
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10
outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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11
calves
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| n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解 | |
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12
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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13
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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14
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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15
loft
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| n.阁楼，顶楼 | |
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16
sorghum
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| n.高粱属的植物，高粱糖浆，甜得发腻的东西 | |
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17
chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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18
sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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19
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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20
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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21
waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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furrow
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| n.沟；垄沟；轨迹；车辙；皱纹 | |
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