The Testament of Yves Gundron Read Free

health around her gap-toothed grin. Her long braid shone, and she rocked her round hips slightly as she spun; Elizaveta fixed her gaze on her doll with a grown woman’s intensity. Thus to observe their morning activities—so different, yet so intimately tied—brought me great pleasure and renewed dedication to my project.
    I watched the horse as I worked, wondering if she would give me a sign how my invention should progress. I had acquired her from the dealer three years since, and she was the best, most intelligent horse I had yet owned—not the most delicately featured, but a solid work beast, bay of hue, with a silky black mane, beautiful white feathering over her hooves, and a white star between her brown eyes that gave her a thoughtful air. She switched her tail, and wagged her head expectantly, but she could give me no advice.
    With all the combined efforts of my intellect and soul, I could imagine no way to secure a strap around the horse’s breastplate. Every position, it seemed, caused the thong to slip back up to her windpipe. In any position she would choke.
    Adelaïda spun her flax into a long thread as fair as her heavy plait. “That doesn’t seem to be working,” she offered.
    â€œI can see that.”
    â€œIt’s too bad the horse doesn’t wear an apron, because you could tie the ends of the straps to it and that’d be that.”
    â€œA fine point, but one which I must qualify,” I said, mindful that my wife’s tutelage was among my duties upon this earth, “by reminding you that horses, who do no women’s work, require no aprons.”
    â€œI was only remarking how much easier for you it would be if they did,” she replied. “I’ve more wit about me than a suckling child.”
    I was chastened by her saying, for, either by accident or by God’s grace, Adelaïda had solved the problem as she spun. The horse had no need for an apron, true, but if I provided her a tight-fitting girdle, then I could attach a strap to it across the breastbone; from this, in turn, would emanate the traces that bound it to the cart, thus distributing theweight of the load over a more solid area of the horse’s body. I measured the horse’s girth with a length of twine, and with another the distance about her breastplate, and retired to the barn to cut leather to those lengths. This leather I sewed to its own edge, so that it made a long, hollow shape, like entrails; and this I stuffed with straw, so that the straps could cushion the horse even further against the blow of labor. Elizaveta continued to roll about the front garden, gurgling her native song of praise. Although I shut the barn door to ensure the stillness necessary for work, I could faintly hear Adelaïda singing a song she oft sings as she works:
    Well, I love Yves Gundron ,
    Tell you, Lord, I do .
    Yes, I love my old man Yves ,
    Yes, indeed, it’s true .
    But the fact that he don’t listen ,
    Lord, it makes this woman sad and blue .
    Yves, he leaves me ’lone
    And plows his fields all day .
    Yes, he leaves me ’lone
    While he plows all day .
    But I wouldn’t feel so lonesome
    If he’d just listen to what I say. 2
    Though she intended her music as a reproach, it reminded me of my mother, who had ever a song upon her lips; it aided me in my thinking, and spurred me to complete my work. I stitched the breast strap firmly to the girding strap, so it would hold tight, and furnished the girding piece with an old iron buckle and multiple holes, so I could adjust it. The two ends of the breast strap I left long, that I might tie them to thecart. Fashioning the device, a labor of love unlike any I had yet known, took the better part of the day, but the sun sped past in what seemed an hour.
    He had not yet reached the western edge of the horizon when I brought my work out and showed it to the puzzled horse, who was nibbling the scant grass of the near