‘I can’t believe it’s you, sitting here, in my own kitchen. You wouldn’t have known me, would you, Jim? You’ve kept so young, yourself. But it’s easier for a man. I can’t see how my Anton looks any older than the day I married him. His teeth have kept so nice. I haven’t got many left. But I feel just as young as I used to, and I can do as much work. Oh, we don’t have to work so hard now! We’ve got plenty to help us, papa and me. And how many have you got, Jim?’
When I told her I had no children, she seemed embarrassed. ‘Oh, ain’t that too bad! Maybe you could take one of my bad ones, now? That Leo; he’s the worst of all.’ She leaned toward me with a smile. ‘And I love him the best,’ she whispered.
‘Mother!’ the two girls murmured reproachfully from the dishes.
Ántonia threw up her head and laughed. ‘I can’t help it. You know I do. Maybe it’s because he came on Easter Day, I don’t know. And he’s never out of mischief one minute!’
I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered—about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown and hardened, had not that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had been secretly drawn away.
While we were talking, the little boy whom they called Jan came in and sat down on the step beside Nina, under the hood of the stairway. He wore a funny long gingham apron, like a smock, over his trousers, and his hair was clipped so short that his head looked white and naked. He watched us out of his big, sorrowful grey eyes.
‘He wants to tell you about the dog, mother. They found it dead,’ Anna said, as she passed us on her way to the cupboard.
Ántonia beckoned the boy to her. He stood by her chair, leaning his elbows on her knees and twisting her apron strings in his slender fingers, while he told her his story softly in Bohemian, and the tears brimmed over and hung on his long lashes. His mother listened, spoke soothingly to him and in a whisper promised him something that made him give her a quick, teary smile. He slipped away and whispered his secret to Nina, sitting close to her and talking behind his hand.
When Anna finished her work and had washed her hands, she came and stood behind her mother’s chair. ‘Why don’t we show Mr. Burden our new fruit cave?’ she asked.
We started off across the yard with the children at our heels. The boys were standing by the windmill, talking about the dog; some of them ran ahead to open the cellar door. When we descended, they all came down after us, and seemed quite as proud of the cave as the girls were.