Letters From the Lost (9 page)

Meanwhile Ludwig and my father cultivated the fields. They had purchased a workhorse to pull the rusty old plough, and they trudged along behind it. Ludwig gradually repaired a few farm implements, often tying them together with bits of binder twine. I spent many hours watching him patiently figure out how things worked. I also loved to walk with my father as he inserted single kernels of corn into the ground, rhythmically depressing the planter handle until it gave a satisfying click.

Aunt Anny took on the outside world. Armed with her dictionary, her ready smile, and her willingness to use gestures, Anny learned English. In Europe, people had frowned upon her refusal to bow to convention. Now her traits were seen as entrepreneurial. She decided to raise chickens. Each week she stood on the highway to hitchhike her way into Hamilton where she trudged door to door with a basket of eggs.

Helen wandering alone by the lift that became the henhouse

There were many setbacks, but gradually the farm began to produce a better yield. Anny added fresh-killed chickens to her load, and I was allowed to help clean them. First, they had to be eyed for plumpness and caught. This involved much squawking and ruffling of feathers with chickens darting madly about the henhouse. Ludwig did the actual killing by inserting a very sharp knife into their open beak. He explained that this was faster and more humane than cutting off their heads, which often resulted in headless chickens running about in crazed circles.

Next, the chickens were dipped into very hot water. It needed to be just the right temperature to soften the feathers without burning the skin. Then the chickens were hung by their legs from a long pole, and I was allowed to help pluck them, taking great care to not tear the delicate skin in the process. When even the most stubborn of pinfeathers had been removed, my mother would take the chickens to the stove where the iron lid would be lifted and the last small, almost invisible hairs would be singed over the open flame. Finally, my mother would slice open the hen’s bum and insert her hand deep into the cavity, pulling out guts, stomach, and liver all in a single quivering mass. Sometimes there would be eggs without a shell, and these would be scooped into a bowl for our meals as would stray bits of fat that could be scraped from the intestines. Any lumps of good fat along with the stomach, heart, and liver would be returned to the washed cavity as a treasure for the lucky purchaser.

The fields too began to produce increasingly respectable crops. Some fields grew wheat that had to be cut and bundled with twine into bunches that were propped against each other to form stooks, the little tent-like structures that many an artist has romanticized in paint. To me, the bundling and propping took forever, and I spent endless days sitting at the edge of the field under a tree that gave minimal shelter from the relentless sun. I watched as Anny and my mother, wearing high rubber boots to shield their legs from snakes as well as from the rough stubble, joined the men in this nerve-racking task. Rain at this point would ruin the harvest, and haste was of the essence.

Only when the wheat was dry could it be loaded upon a wagon and brought to the threshing machine, a gigantic contraption that needed to be booked far in advance along with its owner-operator. This in itself was a problem. Book too early and the grain might not yet be dry; book too late and a sudden rain meant disaster. Moreover, not only the thresher but also all the neighbouring farmers had to be available on that date, for threshing was very much a communal activity.

Ready for work in the fields,
mother in rubber boots to protect her legs from snakes

There was always much excitement on threshing day. Once the neighbours had been recruited to help, it was time for the women to start planning the food. This invariably threw my mother and Anny into a state bordering on panic. In their first year of threshing, the two women had prepared European food for the big midday meal. It was the best meal they had to offer:
Kraut, Knödel, Schweinfleisch,
and
Kuchen
. The farmers had taken one look, pushed away their plates, and walked out. They expected roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, and two boiled vegetables. Worst of all for Gretl and Anny, they wanted pie for dessert.

Although they eventually learned to “cook Canadian,” the art of pie making remained a mystery to both women. Their cookbooks were stuffed with loose bits of paper on which they had copied recipes from Robin Hood and Five Roses flour, from the backs of blocks of Crisco and lard, and even from bottles of cooking oil. Still their crusts remained rock hard. Neither woman ever succeeded in making the flaky mixture that seemed to be the innate gift of every Canadian farm wife. Finally, Mrs. Bates, our kindly neighbour took pity on them and offered to prepare the pies oven-ready for threshing day.

Mrs. Bates really was a dear, sweet woman. I spent many days tagging behind her as she worked her magic in the kitchen. Unlike my family, she never seemed too busy to let me watch, and my questions did not bother her. I don’t know how we communicated, for in those days, I spoke no English.

So that I could learn English as soon as possible, my parents sent me to First Grade at the one-room schoolhouse at Glanford Station when I turned five rather than wait until I was six as was the norm.

Before I was allowed to attend school, my parents made me promise never to say that I was Jewish. If a teacher asked for my religion, I was to answer, “I am Czech.” There had been several long debates at home about
whether people would believe that there was a Czech church. In the end, my parents decided that Canadians knew so little about Czechoslovakia that no statement about the country and its people would sound too far-fetched.

I do not remember my first day of school. I suspect that I have blocked it from memory. Children who have not been taught kindness can be cruel. These children of Ontario farmers who had never encountered a non-English speaker must have viewed me as a rare bird indeed.

I do remember the years of being taunted at every opportunity. My very name gave rise to great hilarity, especially after my parents were overheard using its affectionate form. “Helly” works fine in German, but not in English. Put this together with Waldstein, so close in sound to Holstein (the black and white cows that many of my classmates milked before and after school as part of their daily chores), and you have the makings of endless mockery.

My lunches were another source of daily amusement. I dreaded opening the little red pail that my mother so proudly packed with leftover treats. While others removed crisp new waxed paper from their coveted lily-white sandwiches, I’d have meat on thick slices of rye. To make matters worse, my meat was not thinly sliced roast beef or ham, but slabs of tongue and other cheap cuts. I never got used to the fake barfing of my classmates as they watched me open the brown butcher-paper wrapping so carefully saved to last out the week.

Except in unusually warm weather, lunches were eaten at our desks. There was nowhere else in the school, except that one room and a little cloakroom where, in winter, we hung our sodden coats and lined up our boots. All winter long, our lessons were accompanied by the smell of drying woollens. The wood stove adjacent to the cloakroom always seemed to be lit. Many a morning, I welcomed its glow after ploughing my way through ever-shifting snowdrifts. How early those poor teachers must have arrived to ensure us of this cozy welcome!

The teacher I remember most fondly is Miss Martindale. I picture her as having glasses perched upon a small nose, fluffy brown hair, and a very warm smile. Somehow, despite the clamouring of a roomful of students of all different grades and abilities, she managed to find time for me. Once I had learned to read, Miss Martindale just kept giving me more books and skipping me ahead until I was more than two years younger than were the others in my grade. While my interest in books has never waned, skipping two years unfortunately increased my social isolation even further.

Helen sets off for her first day at school, September 1941

After school, I would rush home in search of Ludwig. At least I did until my mother told me how much I hurt my father by not seeking him out first. Hurting my father was the last thing I intended.

Still, Ludwig was so much more fun. Ludwig took me by the hand and introduced me to each of the cows by name as he made the rounds, doling out the pre-measured quantity of food to each. Ludwig allowed me to scramble up the ladder and sit on a bale while he pitched straw through the chute. Sometimes he’d manage to catch one of the cats we kept in the barn and hold it gently while I buried my face in the soft fur. Some afternoons when he had harnessed old Dolly to the stone sledge to fetch the empty milk cans from the highway, he’d lift me way, way up, onto her broad white back and let me ride. But this only happened if my mother wasn’t around because she’d start screaming,
“Careful, she’s going to fall”
until he’d lift me off and deposit me far from the menacing horse.

In the evening, I loved to sit and watch Ludwig peel apples, the paper-thin peel curling unbroken in long spirals onto the plate. Neighbours with an orchard let us take all we wanted of the apples that had fallen to the ground, and we collected enough to last through the long winter evenings. Ludwig knew endless jokes and riddles and he never seemed too busy or too preoccupied to talk to me. Sometimes he’d teach me Czech tongue twisters:
“Strc prst skrz krk,”
the classic all-consonant line that means roughly, “Stick finger through neck,” and my all-time favourite
“Trsta trstetz tria tribernek,”
which involves three thousand three hundred and thirty-three red fire engines. Ludwig would laugh and laugh until I joined him.

As he sat peeling, I’d often count freckles on the back of his hands until the dots blurred. To me, Ludwig was so handsome. A head of tight red curls framed large green eyes, and a huge dimple sat squarely in the middle of his chin.

Both Anny and Ludwig had more patience than my parents did. They also seemed to be more cheerful, and certainly, they knew how to cheer me up. I still remember the little ditty Anny used to sing whenever tears gathered in my eyes:

Neither of my parents could have coped without the help of these two amazing people. Ludwig the fixer was the real glue that held everything together. Whatever was broken, eventually he’d figure out how to repair it. To this day, I keep every bit of string that comes my way, partly as a frugal habit that does not die easily, partly in memory of the way Ludwig could tie things together. The same knack that he brought to broken machinery, he also brought to human relationships.