doesn’t tally with your own.”
My brother raised his eyebrows. “And does she hail from Indo-China?”
“No.”
“Well, then.”
I worked on in silence a moment, but I was not done. “And when twice I said to her, ‘Indo-China,’ she said back, ‘Vietnam.’”
“There’s no accounting for the ways of strangers.”
“Mandrik, when yesterday she told you where she was from—”
“From Boston.”
“Yes. Had you really heard of such a place, or did you dissemble?”
He put down his hammer and separated the good nails from those yet to be tried. “Of course I had heard of it, brother. I see no reason to tell her lies.”
“And yet Boston is no place I’ve ever heard you speak of.”
“I heard tell, in my travels, of a thousand thousand places. I will be glad, if it please you, to name you all their names, but it would take a fortnight—”
“Nay—”
“—and a great expenditure of breath. Still, whatever your pleasure.”
“Nay, Mandrik, nay. I see that you’re right.”
Soon our banging and grunting brought both women and my daughter to the barn door, where they stood silhouetted against the bright morning. Ruth was attired in a looser, more modest pair of trousers—a thing that but the day before I could never have imagined remarking about a woman—of a soft, faded blue, and a shirt that covered her with due propriety to the wrists and hips. Dimples of light still shone through her slender legs.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We’re rebuilding the cart the way you said.”
“With four wheels? I never should have mentioned it.”
Mandrik hammered delicately at a nail. “I can hardly believe we didn’t think of it sooner.”
Ruth said, “I’m eating myself with guilt about this cart.”
“Why?” I asked.
She shook her head in a brooding fashion. “I suppose you would eventually have figured it out yourselves.”
“Aye,” said Adelaïda, “Yves is always at his inventing.”
“And,” I added, “I am glad for your inspiration.”
My brother continued with the nails, three light, expert strokes to each head. “Indeed, in every culture there are stories of foreigners and other fanciful beings with strange knowledge. Surely not all the tales of our grandmother can be true; it was her status as an outsider that made her so fruitful a topic. Every culture does this; you are simply our first opportunity, this generation. And we appreciate your fine idea.”
“Are there more cultures,” Adelaïda asked, “than hers, ours, and Indo-China?”
Mandrik smiled. “More than you can dream of. But you cannot see them from here.”
Elizaveta bolted into the yard, and Adelaïda turned to follow her.
“Where can you see them from, then?” Ruth came to sit near us on the ground.
“From the seas, of course, and the imagination.”
“But none of you goes to the sea.”
“I have.”
She waved her hand. “None of the rest of you.”
“Imagination will have to suffice, then, won’t it?”
“Besides,” I said, searching through wood scraps for possible wheel spokes, “the sea is too far. No one wants to go all the way to the sea.”
Ruth said, quietly, “Indo-China.”
Mandrik said, “Indeed.”
“I’d like very much to talk to you about your journey.”
“Perhaps in due time.”
Ruth watched his work, and only on occasion glanced upward at his face. “Whenever you think it’s right.”
“The tale of my travels is longer than Midwinter’s Night, and I wouldn’t want to bore a stranger.”
“Perhaps when I’m no longer a stranger, then.”
“Yes. Ruth,” my brother said, barely looking up at her, “have you any skills? Can you turn a spoke on the lathe, or work with metal?”
“I could learn—I could be useful. I don’t want to be in your way.”
“I was only wondering about your line of work, back home.”
I tossed a stick at him. “She’s my age if she’s a day, Mandrik, sure. What would she be besides a wife?”
“Any number of things.”
“I’m not married,” she said. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”
“Is it because you’re so tall?”
She grinned. “I think of myself as being medium-sized.”
“You must come from a land of giants. Why are you not married?”
“I’ve had boyfriends.”
I’m sure I raised my eyebrows. “More than one?”
“Not at the same time.”
“What was wrong with them?” I asked. “Had they no land?”
“To answer your question, Mandrik—I’m still in school. I’m a grad student.”
“A student of what?”
“Anthropology. Peoples and civilizations.”
He nodded as if she made good sense, his lips pressed tight in concentration. “Well, then. We must be quite a boon.”
She said, “Yes,” then paused. “I am so anxious to learn everything you’re willing to teach me.”
“We will do our best to oblige.”
She stood and brushed nonexistent particles from her clothes. “If it’s no bother, then, I’d like to make notes on your work on the cart. Would you mind?”
I graciously shook my head no.
“Great. Let me get my notebook.”
I
