The card may have been in the china cupboard,
tucked in behind a teacup. Do you like it?
Grandma asked. You can have it.
We didn’t have really too much peace there at
all in the village . . . the revolution had broken
out . . .1
Or possibly, she brought it out one day
and said, I found this among some letters.
I thought you might like it—
In 1921 we had a year of famine . . . the
harvest failed completely. Besides this, a
typhoid fever epidemic broke out.
the blue postcard, gilt-edged, with strange
gold print, and on the back, handwriting
I couldn’t read.
. . . and we didn’t have bedding to lie the
people on, really, the sick ones . . . There were
doctors; there was no medicine available.
The handwriting, I now know, is German Gothic.
An afternoon’s work deciphers the message,
addressed to a friend: I am
nice and healthy, and I sincerely
wish the same for you.
I was the first one to take sick, and I was
unconscious, I’ve been told, for three days
and three nights . . . and then I was sleeping
for about the same time, and then I woke up.
And my first impression was a funeral
procession going past my window, that hit
me, and it was my teacher . . . and one of my
school friends . . .
The gold print, I now know, is Russian:
Christ is Risen.
After that, when I got well I nursed the whole
family.
Note
1. Text in the right-hand column is found material from the reminiscences of my grandmother, Elisabeth (Pauls) Klaassen.
Joanne Epp is the author of Eigenheim (2015) and Cattail Skyline (2021). She lives in Winnipeg.