Under Ground Read online

  Under Ground

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Under Ground

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  EPILOGUE

  A NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY OF THIS NOVEL

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  UNDER GROUND

  Megan Marsnik

  Flexible Press

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  2019

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. Although many of the locations in this book are real, they are used in a fictitious manner, and the people associated with them are purely the product of the author’s imagination.

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 Megan Marsnik

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or resold in whole or in part in any form without the prior written consent of the author, except by a reviewer quoting a brief passage in a review.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7339763-1-2

  Flexible Press

  Editor: Vicki Adang,

  Mark My Words Editorial Services, LLC

  For my father, Bernard “Fuzzy” Marsnik,

  who always fought for the underdog.

  And for Iron Range women everywhere.

  The woman holds up three corners of the house.

  Tell the truth and run.

  —Slovenian proverbs

  CHAPTER 1

  There was plenty of dust, plenty of whiskey, plenty of red earth, trees, and rock. There were not enough women. So they were sent for.

  The women came from many countries. Italy, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Croatia, and Slovenia. They mostly traveled alone, but some dragged along small children or nursing babies. The lucky ones had been sent for by their husbands, who had been living in the iron mining community for a year, perhaps more. They had someone to greet them when they arrived.

  The least lucky were sent for by the brothel owners. Their passages out of the old country were paid in exchange for a year of service. Most of these immigrant women thought they would be tending bar, serving pints to the exhausted miners and lumberjacks. When they arrived, they quickly learned that other services were expected. They had no money and could not turn back.

  Sixteen-year-old Katka Kovich did not fall into any of the usual categories. Her parents died on March 30 and April 7, 1915, both from cholera. Five weeks later, a young man with an unruly mass of black curls and a thick mustache arrived on the doorstep of the tiny cottage where she lived, suddenly alone, at the foot of the mountains in the small village of Zirovnica, Slovenia. No one had visited in weeks, and Katka’s long brown hair was shamefully unbraided. A few unwashed strands blew in wisps across her sunburned face, indicating an innate wildness about her. She was eating very little, and as the fleshiness of youth and comfort disappeared, it was as if that wildness magnified. Her skinny body was covered with an old, torn frock that had belonged to her mother. The elders from town told her to burn all of her parents’ clothing, but she had been wearing this garment for days and had not become remotely sick.

  “Paul Schmidt,” the young man said, bowing politely. “So sorry to hear about your ma and your ata. I had people, too, who caught the fever.”

  Katka stared at him. Paul Schmidt was clean and smart looking. She wished she had washed her face in the morning, the way her mother had always instructed her to do. The wildness had been speaking to her lately, drowning out the voice of her dead mother. Her hands were smudged with dirt and blackberries. Katka buried her hands in the pocket of her apron.

  Paul Schmidt peered back at her, curiously. “Are you mute?” he asked.

  “Not mute,” she said, clearing her throat. Her voice felt scratchy from lack of use.

  “Here,” Paul said. He fumbled around in his coat pocket until he found what he was looking for. He thrust a letter into her hands. The same message was written twice, once in Slovenian and once in English.

  Dear Niece,

  Words cannot express my sorrow. What a terrible accident. My wife and I are prepared to offer you a home in the town of Biwabik, in the state of Minnesota in America. I am sending passage and hope you will accept.

  Sincerely,

  Your uncle, Mr. Anton Kovich

  Biwabik, Minnesota, United States of America

  Katka folded the letter and handed it back to Paul. “Why didn’t he mention you?”

  “If something happened to me, I would have given the letter to someone else to deliver. Your uncle and I had a tough crossing ten years ago, when I first went to America. It is better now.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “My mother died.”

  Katka said nothing but her eyes softened. “What was her name?” He told her, and she took his hand in hers, for just a moment. When she offered a blessing, he squeezed her hand once and let it go. In that instance, she felt a slight jolt. He had a bit of the wildness in him, too, she realized. Grief. It was love with no place to go. Too powerful to keep subdued underneath skin.

  “My people live not far from here,” Paul said. “Your uncle Anton and his wife begged me to look after you, persuade you to come back with me. They are good people, and Anton cared a great deal for your father.”

  “Why did he call their deaths an accident?”

  “You may need that letter when you accompany me to the States. Cholera is not a word you should mention.”

  “It’s not a word I enjoy to mention,” she said. She looked around the rickety cottage where she and her grief had lived alone, feeding off each other for weeks. Although the place was relatively clean now, to her it would always smell of diarrhea, urine, and death. After the burial Masses, none of her distant family had offered to take her in because, she supposed, of the word she was not mentioning.

  “I leave from Trieste on the vessel Lapland in two days,” Paul said. “Will you accompany me?”

  Katka’s eyes widened. “Two days?”

  “I know. It’s not a lot of time to make a decision.”

  She beckoned him into the cottage. A skeletal mouse ran across the dirt floor and disappeared into a tiny hole near a mostly empty bag of dried food.

  “Ugly critter,” Paul said, shivering in queasy disgust. “I hate vermin.”

  “It’s just a mouse.”

  The day after her mother’s burial, the mouse had emerged from under the woodpile. He didn’t
run along the walls of the shack; he ran straight across the floor, quickly making his way toward the slowly diminishing bags of rice and grain. The first time she saw it, Katka picked up a book and threw it at the mouse. She missed. Over the next few days she threw more books. She also threw a clay bowl, a rock, the broom. The mouse eluded her every time. After more than a week of this, she gave up trying to kill it. “You again,” she would say, watching. And her voice, surrounded by the unfamiliar silence that follows new death, sounded barbarically loud no matter how quietly she uttered the words.

  “Do you want me to kill it?” Paul asked.

  She smiled, ever so slightly. “It’s not doing anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “It’s eating your food.”

  “What’s a grain or two to me? I have half a sack.”

  “To last how long?”

  Katka shrugged. “I’m sorry I have no coffee to offer you, Mr. Schmidt.”

  “Never cared for coffee,” Paul said. “Gives me a gut ache.”

  “How about some water? I came from the well just a bit ago. And I did some picking. Please. Rest your weary feet.”

  They sat at the small wooden table. Katka poured water from a pitcher into two goblets and put a basket of blackberries between them. She popped a berry in her mouth. “Eat,” she said. He grabbed a few berries.

  “Who owns your land, girl?” Paul asked.

  “I’ve never seen him,” Katka said. “Can’t remember his name. But the man who collects the lease, he will come in five days. He demands fifteen krona.”

  “How much do you have?”

  “Seven.”

  “If you like, I’ll give you the money. The money your uncle sent.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Enough for three months’ rent. Maybe four. Ah!” The mouse was on the loose again. Paul stood up, looked around for something to throw.

  Katka laughed and gestured him to leave it alone. “I wish I were like that strange little mouse. Always, he knows where he’s going. I’d run in a straight line and not stop until I got there.”

  Paul pointed to the letter from her uncle that she had placed on the table. “There’s no straight line to get to your uncle’s house. There are only crooked lines, but I know them well enough.”

  “Perhaps a crooked line is better than no line,” Katka said softly.

  “It is cold where your uncle lives. Colder than the coldest day of your life. Pack your valuables in warm clothes. Dress in many layers. Bring cookware and utensils. Books, if you have any. Lots of books. Your baptismal papers. Do you have any photographs?”

  “I have one of all of us, when I was a baby. And the coffin pictures. Cost me twenty-two hellers.”

  “You won’t be sorry. Most have no photographs at all. You will come?” He stood up to leave.

  “What choice do I have?”

  “You have many choices, Miss Katka.” He bent down slightly and kissed her on her left cheek. “But I will send word to Anton today. I will purchase your passage directly. I will meet you at sunup at the train station in two days.”

  Katka thanked him, this stranger who had arrived like a ghost. She stood in the doorway and watched as he slowly walked down the mountain pass, his masculine silhouette growing smaller and smaller as he approached the bend in the soft road that was lined with violet crocus flowers. She watched as he stopped and picked something up off the road. A toad, she suspected. He held it up to his face, as if saying hello, before putting it down gently. His rambunctious locks escaped from the back of his hat. When she was alive, her mother used to joke about handsome men. “Best to find a plain one,” she had told Katka. “They make better husbands.”

  A few hours later, after combing and braiding her tangled mane of hair, Katka walked three miles to the market square to buy provisions for her journey. She spent three hellers and filled her basket with dried meat, canned beans, walnuts, and rice. On the way home, she stopped at the church. She said goodbye to Father Leo. Of all the people left in the village, he would be the one she would miss. He was a kindly man with seventy-two years. She had worked for him as a cook and secretary since she was nine years old.

  “Father Leo?” She peered into his private quarters and saw the old man crumpled in his chair, a blanket over his legs, his eyes closed.

  When he heard her voice, he took to his feet and embraced her. “What is it, my child?” She told him the news, and he hugged her tight. He didn’t speak for a long time. “It is to be expected, I suppose. Every day, another of God’s children leaving the homeland. How I will miss you, my little pony! Now who will I talk to during the long days? Only God. He’s a good listener, but not much of a conversationalist.”

  Father Leo gave her some books and a blessing. Finally, he stood on a chair and grabbed a simple clay chalice that was resting on top of a bookshelf. He got off the chair and told Katka to open her apron pocket. He emptied the chalice. As she walked back up the pass, the coins clinked optimistically.

  The next day Father Leo arrived at her cottage with a wheelbarrow. “Father!” Katka bellowed when she saw the old man pushing such a lugubrious load. “Did you haul that all this way?”

  “A present,” he said, smiling his toothless smile. “To bring to America.” Inside the wheelbarrow, draped in wool blankets, was Father Leo’s typewriter; the one Katka had used to type his sermons.

  CHAPTER 2

  Katka’s steamer trunk was heavy. She had fastened a leather strap on one end, which enabled her to drag the burdensome chest when she could no longer manage to carry it. As for Paul, he carried no trunk to speak of. He had a small suitcase that seemed weightless under his large hands. At the station in the beautiful city of nearby Ljubljana, they boarded the train that took them to a seaport in Trieste.

  They waited on the docks at the port for nearly three hours before the captain allowed passengers to board. A small man in a seaman’s uniform yelled, “All aboard!” and the mad dash began. Paul grabbed Katka’s trunk in addition to his own small suitcase.

  “Hold on to me,” he commanded. “Keep up and do not let go.”

  Paul bandied his way through the other passengers, as if he were playing a ball game. Katka held fast to the back of his coat. Paul joggled his way, with Katka at his back, to the staircase at the rear of the ship that led to the sleeping quarters for steerage passengers. Katka grimaced at the odor, which hit her like a slap in the face. Paul quickly found a berth not far from the staircase, where the air was less foul. He deposited Katka’s trunk on the stained bed. “You will sleep here,” Paul said. “Sit on your mattress and do not let anyone take it from you. If anyone asks, you are traveling alone.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t explain. Not yet.”

  “But where will you be?” Katka asked, suddenly terrified.

  She had been in her cabin for less than a minute, but her stomach was already churning. The berths had been quickly cleaned out, the straw on the mattresses replaced, but she swore she could smell the people who had been in here before. The air was thick with an aroma of rottenness. It was a like a torturous stew of feces and rotten eggs. She wanted to hold her nose. She wanted to run back, against the crowds, and leave this stranger who had promised to take care of her, but was now saying goodbye with no reasonable explanation.

  “Katka?” Paul tenderly put his hand on her cheek. He smiled. “It’s no palace, this I know. But you must remember it is also not a prison. We are at the start of a journey! Anything and everything can happen. We’re like birds! Isn’t that exhilarating?”

  “Birds?”

  Paul spread his arms like wings. “Eagles, we are. I will check on you every single day.”

  ***

  A Slovenian woman shared Katka’s cramped sleeping quarters. She had four children. The baby, who was six months old, was surprisingly quiet, easily lulled by his mother’s capable breasts. The next youngest boy, who looked to be about three, cried constantly on the first day and began vomiting on the
second. The two older girls were in charge of cleaning up and washing out the soiled diapers.

  Katka could have helped, but instead, she felt herself harden. She would not get attached to this boy, to this mother. She turned her skin into a wooden door that no one could open because she knew with certainty that the boy was going to die. Katka could smell it. An odd smell, death. It was nothing like sickness, and nothing like health. It was like bread, soaked in sour milk, but frozen solid in snow. You had to get close to detect the rottenness. For weeks she had done nothing but care for her parents, but when she smelled that undeniable stench, there was nothing left to do but watch. Stay away, she told herself. You are a bird. She imagined herself flying out of the cramped quarters and into a fresh blue sky.

  Finally, after four days, the young boy had nothing left to spew. He lay down, rested his head on his mother’s chest, and within an hour, he stopped breathing. Two hours later, the tiny body was thrown overboard. While the family was still on deck, Katka sat on her cot and gathered her knees to her chest. When her knees started to shake, she pulled the wool blanket over her head and sobbed uncontrollably.

  Afterward, Katka’s little berth was much quieter. The mother cried. When her tears were gone, she laid, stomach down, on the scratchy straw, and her shoulders convulsed quietly, as if struck with the fits. The baby remained calm as ever. The older girls, eight and six, began to look like old women who carried their sorrow in their dark black eyes.

  One night, Katka awoke to find Alenka, the six-year-old girl, standing over her bunk.

  “Do you think the sharks ate Franc?” she asked.

  Katka rose to an upright position. “Your brother?”

  “Yes. Franc.”

  Katka hesitated. “Did someone tell you that?”

  “A boy on the deck. He said children, they have more juice. That’s why sharks like them.”

  “What kind of boy said that?”

  “Italia boy. With fat cheeks.”

  “That explains it. Italians do have more juice,” Katka said slowly. “But sharks don’t like Slovenians one bit. No fish do. Slovenian kids are too skinny. They get whisked up to heaven straight away.”