Devotion, p.32
Devotion, page 32
I stared at it as Flügel began his sermon behind me.
Don’t forget me.
It was real. The shell was real.
As the pastor preached about God’s earthly gift of marital attachment and its teachings of restraint and love, I held Thea’s face in my palms and I spoke over him. I filled her ears with my own breathless pleading.
‘Don’t forget me,’ I said. I was breaking apart. ‘Thea, do not cast me out of your heart. Listen, listen, I know the word of God. “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is as strong as death.”’ I drew myself closer to her, I brought my voice to her ear. ‘“Jealousy is as cruel as the grave.”’
‘And so, as we celebrate these two young –’
‘“The coals thereof are coals of fire.”’ I buried my face in her neck, cried into the cloth that had been meant for my own wedding. ‘Thea, listen to me. Please hear me. “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it . . .”’ I brought my mouth close to hers. ‘“Thy love is better than wine. Honey and milk are under thy tongue.”’
‘Dorothea Anna Eichenwald . . .’
‘“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, upon thine arm.”’
‘Hans Reinhardt Pasche . . .’
‘“Love is as strong as death.”’ I kissed the shell between her fingers as she rose and tucked it into her palm. ‘“Love is as strong as death.”’ Heard the ocean issue from it as she was married. Eternal. Ancient.
‘“Love is as strong as death.” Remember, Thea. Remember me.’
She was ever my song of songs.
As Thea and Hans returned down the aisle, I was bled dry of all feeling. My vision swam. Some part of me was aware of the congregation leaning over each other to congratulate Hans, jubilant, laughing and shaking his hand. Thea smiled as the women bent towards her. The sound of voices lifting and falling washed over me in a discordant cadence and I closed my eyes to try to centre myself, to summon one single clear thought.
Let her go.
I could not move. I sank back on my heels, aware of Flügel shepherding everyone out into the soft morning light. His robes brushed past me. I closed my eyes and waited until silence descended and the church was finally empty. Then I laid down in the aisle.
‘Dear Lord, into your hands I commit my soul.’
No summons upon my spirit.
I looked up at the celestial body painted on the strung bedsheet above me.
No heavenly host. Only a long-limbed spider scurrying along, worrying the stretch of stars with frantic silhouette.
I left.
I did not keep the same direction. The sun was at once above me, now dawning to my right, now setting in the same place. Days and nights passed and though I kept moving – compulsively, urged on by some sense that I must place as much distance as possible between myself and Thea – I dwelled almost wholly within myself. I woke some nights and saw that the moon had changed and realised that it had waxed bold since its husking light the previous evening, and then I understood that I had forgotten the rhythm of days and they had bled by unnoticed. There was no handbell rung by Elder Pasche or Pastor Flügel to mark the time of day. No devotional services to begin the week. I felt neither chill nor sun, hunger nor thirst. My mind ran to a different measure; it forgot the steady turning of the earth.
I saw things. I saw the two Tiersmen kissing in their cabin. The cave of ochre and the shore that took the Ramindjeri woman home. I saw things that sickened me and aged me and made me weary of ongoing, but I continued. I didn’t know what else to do.
I thought of Thea and bled into trees. I did not care if they fell. I became birds so that I might explode with song and fill hollow bones with longing, and woke in sunshine, their feather-light bodies in my fingers. I crawled into a dingo for the satisfaction of blood on my tongue, when blood was all there was to meet my grief: holy beat of marsupial heart crunching into silence beneath my teeth. I blacked out in iron-rich ecstasies of woe and hunger, woke back into this world with blood on my chin and ears furred. I stroked them at night till they faded and I became once again myself, unbeating heart, unbreathing lungs. Just shadow quickening with love and memory of pale head bending to me, lips pressing her seal in the molten wax of my being.
Distance and time affected nothing upon my heart.
Years passed. I believed I had seen her for the last time. I thought our story was done.
And then. And then.
THE
THIRD
DAY
THEN
incarnations
Thea, in all incarnations, wherever my soul has resided, I have loved you, am loving you, will love you. If the earth one day burns out its charge, you will find me in the ash. If the sea dries, find me in its sand. Fingers forever writing your name in ash, in sand, over and over in a love-patterned wasteland.
tributary
It is nearly dawn now. The hour of the first birds and their summoning of light and warmth. I feel the night leaving over the edge of the world, like a tablecloth slipping to the ground.
I am nearly finished. This will be the third morning I have seen the sun rise in the east. Here it comes. It rises so golden the world seems an altar to its glory. Here it comes.
My voice is held by the wind. Let me write my story on the air, and when it rains, let it pool upon the earth so that the valley may drink of it. Let this testament return to soil. Bones in the water. Voice on the land.
When I am gone, these things will remain.
My thoughts circled Thea, always.
But one evening as I lay on a slab of rock in stony high country, feeling the warmth of the day within it, my mind saw her face and my ears heard her voice in such a way that I sat up. I had spent so much time committing her to memory, and now memory unmade me. In my mind I saw again her lips, the curve of her chin, the sun on her eyelashes, fringing her gaze with light. The evening sky became the looming softness of pines.
‘Hanne.’
I heard her. My skin prickled.
‘Ersurgant mortui, et ad me veniunt.’ Her voice, again. I felt her leaning above me, eyes moving upon me, and when I reached into the dark to touch her face, I felt fire.
Thea, alight, my flame swimming in the dark. Calling me. Summoning me.
The warmth of the stone deepened and grew warmer, until it was so hot I had to stand.
‘Hanne!’ Her voice was there again, but this time it carried distance. Thea was calling me from some place far away. It was not in my mind, it was not imagined. I could hear my name thrown again and again into the air, miles away, but it reached me. I heard her.
I did not imagine it. It was not the work of a broken heart. She was calling me.
And so I left to find her.
I walked all night, following the sound of my name. I didn’t know where I was headed, only that I must keep going. Dawn rose red and violent; the sky was on fire. I was compelled. The day widened into a glory of sunlight. And then I heard children’s voices calling in German and, looking up, saw that I stood at the upper shelf of a valley at once strange and familiar to me.
It took me some moments to assure myself that I had returned to Heiligendorf. It had changed since I had left it, and the realisation was like a blow to the heart. I had not understood just how much time had passed; I had fallen out of pace with the steady footfall of the world.
The slopes surrounding the village had been cleared of remaining bushland in my time of absence, the wheat crops extended. As I walked down into the cluster of houses, I saw that most had been replaced or improved beyond recognition. Thatch was now straw, not kangaroo grass, and I could see none of that bronze grass anywhere, nor the yellow flowers of the yam daisies I remembered from that first summer. Every available space had been given over to farming and pasture for sheep and cattle. Houses had been built right to the road to allow more space for vegetable gardens; orchards were now in full blossom behind. All had outbuildings of silvered red gum slab with haylofts, horse tack and wagons, hand ploughs and harrows beneath. Piles of manure beside pig sties. There were squat chimneys on pitched roofs, barns made of sapling rail, outdoor bake ovens.
They have recreated Kay, I thought. All this way and they have disfigured the land back into Prussia.
The only marked difference came from the gum trees still dotting the settlement. Yet these were fewer than I remembered, and I found myself unsure of exactly where I was without their old, familiar bearings. Adding to my sense of disorientation were the animals everywhere, the noise of them loud and unrelenting. The milking cows were more than I could count, and as the children herded them past me, their voices sweet with laughter, I could hear a background chorus of triumphant crowing, goose gabble against the higher sweetness of singing magpies.
The afternoon was full of spring haze. Everything growing was young green but the song of the place was different. Muted, somehow. Only the red gums and the occasional untouched acacia chanted deeper, older notes. Then the sound of hammer on anvil rang out and spoiled it all.
‘Hanne.’
Her voice again. A sudden riptide of need dragged through me. Somewhere in this valley of rough gables and neat gardens was Thea. I said her name out loud and it was a prayer filling my body, already moving me closer to her.
The Pasches’ farm teemed with activity. I could see Hermann and Georg in the yard with Christian, the brothers now older than Hans had been at his wedding. They were strong, upright men, and I noticed Georg pause to speak to a woman I did not recognise but who seemed to be his wife. I watched her raise a hand as he left, then duck her head under the door to a lean-to.
I hesitated then. I had envisioned walking to that lean-to and find ing Thea there, stepping out of its shadow into the sunlight, but as I waited, only Georg’s wife emerged, a wailing newborn over her shoulder.
I approached the homestead. The lean-to was empty. Inside the house, Rosina was cooking, a girl of five or six waiting next to her.
‘Bertha, go and see what Frieda is doing,’ she said, sweeping peelings from the table into a bucket.
‘The baby woke. I heard him crying,’ Bertha replied.
‘Give all this to the pigs then.’
I passed Rosina and stepped into the room coming off the kitchen. It was a bedroom, a wooden cross above the narrow bed. Empty. Through that room lay another, with two more beds pushed together. Thea was nowhere to be seen.
I returned to the kitchen, unsure of what to do. Rosina was pouring water into a pot on the fire.
‘Mama, they’re back!’ From the back door came the clatter of a bucket being dropped on the ground.
‘Where, Bertha?’
‘In the potatoes.’
Rosina wiped her hands on her apron, then ran out the back door. I followed her, somehow thinking the child had meant Thea and Hans, already picturing the two of them walking through the potato ground. But outside I saw, instead, several Peramangk men and women on their knees, digging up the new potatoes and dropping them into net bags.
‘Get on with you,’ Rosina shouted, running towards them, flapping her hands. ‘Thieves!’
The women looked up but did not stop. Rosina motioned to Bertha, who was staring open-mouthed from the doorway. ‘Go and get your father.’
Before she could do so, however, Georg’s wife came running over with a stockwhip. She was red-faced, furious. I watched, horrified, as she ran at the women, cracking the whip and catching one of the older women on the face. The woman screamed, dropping the potatoes and bringing her hands to her eyes, as the others rose to their feet and, pulling her along with them, ran, woven bags held tightly in their fists, soles of their feet flashing. The men followed, shouting angrily at Georg’s wife over their shoulders.
Rosina watched them leave, hands on her hips, breathing heavily. ‘Thank you, Frieda.’
Frieda tossed the whip on the ground and sat down beside it, wiping the sweat from her face and neck. ‘That is how my father did it in Neu Klemzig,’ she said.
‘In broad daylight, too.’
Bertha’s voice came from the house behind them, full of warning. ‘Mama . . .’
I looked up as Rosina did, saw a man stepping back through the potato field, spear in hand. He lifted his free palm and I saw that it was covered in blood.
‘Frieda . . .’ Rosina pulled the younger woman to her feet. Frieda paused, bending for the stockwhip, then thought better of it and ran with Rosina to the house, slamming the door shut after her.
I watched the spear pierce the air. The throw was so liquid, so sure, it seemed the spear was not only an extension of the man’s arm, but a pure, darting exhalation of his anger and contempt. It was a ribboning of power and frustration. An act of assertion. The wood licked knife-hot through the air, splitting the afternoon light.
The spear hit the centre of the door with a small wooden thud. It quivered against its buried point, shaking still, it seemed, with the man’s disgust.
I turned to see his reaction, but he had already turned away and was walking back to his family on the periphery of the village, all of them silent except for the wailing of the woman whom Frieda had blinded with her whip.
Thea is not here, I thought to myself. And then I turned and saw Anna Maria beyond the farm border, one hand on her hip, the other held over her mouth.
‘Hanne.’
Thea’s voice came to me again, filled with distance and yet, so close, so urgent, my knees went weak with anticipation.
I stumbled towards the Eichenwalds’ cottage, body-soft with hope.
Anna Maria was alone, setting out earthenware jars on her wooden table. The air smelled of dried herbs and liniments. I took in the empty house, then watched her work, strong hands wrapping beeswax in a cloth. She raised a mallet to break it into pieces, but something stopped her. She stood there for a moment, hammer raised, eyes lifting slowly from her work of salves.
‘It’s only me,’ I told her. ‘Hanne. I’ve come back.’
I felt her hesitate, felt the air prickle with the intensity of her listening.
‘I’ve come for Thea,’ I said. I touched her hand. Her bare forearms rose in gooseflesh.
Anna Maria put the mallet down on the table. Her voice, when she spoke, was a whisper. ‘What do you want?’
‘Thea,’ I said. ‘She’s calling for me.’ I reached out to touch her again but the Wend drew back and looked around the room. I brought my mouth to her ear. ‘Where is Thea?’
Hair rose on the back of Anna Maria’s neck. She breathed in sharply and, placing a hand over her heart, closed her eyes.
I paused, then asked the question again.
The Wend brought the tips of her fingers to her lips. ‘She’s not here,’ she murmured, and in that instant I heard the strange words again.
‘Ersurgant mortui, et ad me veniunt.’
A summoning from outside the cottage, from somewhere in the grey-green throat of bush beyond the village.
Anna Maria opened her eyes as I left the room. Before I stepped out the door, I saw her pick up her mallet and hold it to her chest, a shadow of a smile on her lips.
I could smell new-baked bread and frying bacon on the afternoon air, and as I hurried back onto the lane I saw it was coming from Gottfried Volkmann’s place. Gottfried himself was outside, standing next to a sign written in English, The German Arms, talking with a fellow with his back to me. I could see several men inside through the open window, smiling at a woman offering a coffee pot.
The door opened and Elizabeth Volkmann stuck her head out, waiting for a lull in the conversation to summon her father inside.
‘There’s a man with a question about the mail cart,’ she said. She had grown out of her baby face and looked like a thinner, quieter version of Henriette.
At that moment the man turned and my heart rose up into my throat. The man was Matthias. He was black-bearded now, stockier than I remembered, but his gap-toothed smile was the same. He held a baby in his arms and called out to a boy who suddenly ran from the front door of the Volkmanns’ place into the laneway, chasing a puppy. Wilhelm, I thought, looking at the baby, and then, heart in mouth, realised that, no, Wilhelm must be the child with the dog. Life had flown on, unstemmed: Wilhelm held the measure of seven or eight years in his body. I stared at him, overwhelmed by the way children kept time and the realisation that the baby in my brother’s arms was my niece or nephew.
I felt Thea’s call on me like a hand around my heart, but I wanted to see my brother. I could hardly believe it was him. I followed Matthias as he rounded the side of a small, wood-shingled house, Wilhelm and the dog running in front of him. And as I followed my brother into his garden, I saw two little boys, no more than four years old, collecting eggs and placing them carefully in a basket held by Augusta, and something broke in me, for the boys carried Matthias’s and Gottlob’s faces as I had known them in my own childhood. Dark-haired, small.
‘Papa, this one is broken,’ said one of the boys, lifting an egg.
‘Is it spoiled?’ Matthias asked.
The boy lifted the egg to his brother’s nose, laughed when he recoiled in disgust. ‘Can I throw it?’
My brother nodded, smiling at Augusta as the two boys turned and ran through the small orchard beyond the vegetable garden and fowl house. Wilhelm followed after them, the puppy at his heels.
You’re a papa now, I thought. Matthias, you are a father.
‘Shall I take her?’ Augusta asked, setting the basket of eggs on the ground and extending her arms for the baby.
My brother shook his head. ‘She’s sleeping.’
‘You’re soft on her,’ Augusta said.
Matthias carefully lowered himself down onto the grassy verge of the vegetable garden, tucking the swaddling around his daughter, still nestled in his elbow.
