The Shuffling of Souls
Image: *Preservings* Issue Number 47, FALL 2023: “Marriage of Russlaender Maria Pauls and Old Colony Corneilius Driedger, March 1927. JAKE BUHLER PRIVATE COLLECTION
“The indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education.”—MC Gabriel’s thoughts in “The Dead” from Dubliners (Public Domain).
Could Irishman Gabriel not just as easily be a Russlaender attending some inelegant affair in prairie places like Gruenfeld or Neubergthal?
“That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Men made the truth and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts… There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon.” —Author Sherwood Anderson from the prologue of Winesburg Ohio (Public Domain).
Again, we can hear the distant cannon fire of class and gender warfare.
“I had heard about Mennonites all my life, about the brawls, the fist-fights at socials and hockey games. The hypocrisy as they kept liquor out of their town, but then drove to La Broquerie or Ste, Anne for booze. How they’d look down their noses at us for doing in the open what they did in the dark,” —MC Richard’s acute observations from Matthew Tétreault’s Hold Your Tongue (NeWest Press, 2023) summarizes the abrasive relationship common between Francophone/Métis Ste. Anne, Manitoba and its nearby, predominantly Mennonite neighbour, Steinbach.
“I hear them (the ‘wealthy church ladies’) get up from the living room and walk past the kitchen. They’re coming down the stairs now, all talking at once. Like cedar waxwings, in a flock, turning in the sky, then landing as one. Beautiful in a way, but still capable of turning on you. Hurting you to make things better for themselves.”—MC Justy Zehen’s thoughts in “Willa Hund” from Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press, 2023).
“This book is a double bun, doughy anecdotes from a spirited childhood coupled with the realisation that manhood is a more complex goal than just being strong, especially when strength translates into bullying, especially of women, the archetypal bakers of the author’s imagination.” —Linda Rogers van Krugel in her REVIEW of Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press, 2023).
The quiet shuffling of souls—betraying different classes, genders, racial origins, and beliefs (and more) together with their ironfast allegiances—appear to be present in all groups, denominations, and Gemeinde: from the Ha’Penny Bridge to the dusty small towns of Southern Manitoba to Ohio and beyond.
