Devotion, p.7
Devotion, page 7
‘She said I’d meet my ghost.’ Thea did not look at me. Her skin glowed in the firelight. ‘She says understanding comes to her in riddles, like that. Like poetry.’
‘Like when I hear the trees speak.’
‘It must be the way of mysteries.’
We fell into silence. Thea shuffled close to me and I felt her like a fire, warmer than anything flickering in the hearth. The groaning intensified, there was a low and guttural cry, then, seconds later, the wail of a newborn child. Thea looked at me, a smile spreading on her face, as footsteps sounded down the corridor and Anna Maria entered the room with the baby in her arms.
‘Hanne, hold your sister.’ Without waiting for my reply she gently placed the baby, crumpled and waxen and crying, in my arms and then, glancing at Thea with tight lips, returned to the bedroom.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked Thea. ‘Is it Mama?’
‘I’m sure she will be well,’ Thea said. ‘Try not to worry. No, don’t get up. My mother has been doing this since she was my age. Here,’ she said softly. ‘Give her your little finger to suck on.’
I did as she suggested, and Thea smiled at my astonishment. ‘She’s so strong,’ I said, gazing down at the tiny, working mouth. In the quiet I heard Anna Maria’s voice sound from the room, low and rhythmic and loud.
‘Ich ging über eine Brücke, Worunter drei Ströme liefen.’
‘What is she doing?’ I whispered. ‘Why is she talking about a bridge?’
Thea said nothing, only stroked the damp wisp of hair on the baby’s head.
‘Der erste hies Gut, Der zweite hies Blut, Der dritte hies Eipipperjahn, Blut du sollst stille Stahl. In Namen Gottes, Javeh.’
‘“Blood you shall be silent”?’ I asked, panic striking through me. ‘Is Mama bleeding? Thea, what is Anna Maria saying?’
Thea opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She gave me a heavy look. ‘My mother, she . . .’
The baby broke away from my finger and, mouth wide, chin shaking, began to cry again.
‘What is she saying, Thea?’ I was on the cusp of tears myself.
‘It’s like a prayer,’ Thea said. She reached for my sister and placed her own finger in the baby’s mouth. ‘It’s like a prayer,’ she said again. ‘It is a prayer. A prayer of healing. In the name of God.’
At that moment Papa and Matthias returned indoors and, seeing Thea holding the child, approached us wide-eyed. Thea offered the baby up to Papa and, as he held her in his arms, I saw that his good eye was filled with tears. He cupped her tiny skull in his hands and looked at me.
‘How is Mutter?’
There was the sound of a door opening and a moment later Anna Maria entered the room, wiping blood from her forearms with a balled-up apron that seemed just as red. As my stomach dropped, Anna Maria offered a wide smile, teeth shining in the low light. ‘All is well.’
‘Johanne?’ My father’s voice was oddly thin, as though it might snap in half.
Anna Maria nodded. ‘She lost some blood, but’ – she glanced at Thea – ‘I was able to stop it. With the help of the Lord.’
‘Praise His name,’ said my father, and tears slipped from his cheeks to the crying baby in his arms. ‘Praise His name.’
stones into water
I have been thinking about the dead up here. Already the light is growing rich and the sun is sinking below the horizon. Already a day is nearly gone. I think about all the bodies buried with the heads facing east, the better to greet Christ. All the sunsets they are missing.
In the congregation it was customary to give the dead an opportunity for resurrection. Three days for the body to rise, as Jesus’s did, and then, when it did not, they made space in the earth and laid the unrisen to rest until the time trumpets sound and all four corners of the world are shaken like a sheet to upend the buried, so that their sins might be tallied and the chosen called home. Home to silver orchards. Holy honey and magdalen milk.
The three days lent a sort of cruelty to Gottlob’s passing. Seven weeks of dying in bed and even then he had to wait to be buried. I hardly remember those three days, only that the flowers placed in his coffin by visitors wilted within the hour.
I do remember the seven weeks.
Gottlob never opened his eyes again after he fell. He was insensible to the world. Still, it took him some time to die. Hans took Otto to his new farm in Skampe and my father was released from prison at Züllichau in time for harvest. Without a horse and without Gottlob, harvesting took twice as long, and so Mama and Matthias joined Papa to bring in the crop. I was suddenly responsible for cooking my family’s meals, for washing their clothes and keeping house. When I was not doing these things, Mama made me sit sentry over my elder brother’s body.
The curtains were always drawn; I sat in endless half-darkness. I no longer wandered when my chores were completed but remained indoors, changing Gottlob’s bedclothes, dribbling gruel into the corners of his mouth, turning his man’s body and attending to the sores that erupted on his skin. For weeks I sat next to my dying brother and, as I sat, my own body was altered. In the time it took for Gottlob to die, my own vigour made itself certain. It was as though my physical being, forced to dwell in such close proximity to approaching death, sought to assert its own vitality. As I sat and watched my elder brother’s ribs emerge, I felt my own chest swell painful against the stitching of my clothes. My wrists stretched beyond my cuffs. My toes strained against my stockings. Already tall, I grew taller, but where once I was sleek, epicene, utterly at one with my frame, I now felt a fracture between myself and my body. I did not recognise the new weight, the new shapes I felt under my hands or glimpsed in the glass of my mother’s framed wedding myrtle. I was suddenly softer than I knew myself to be. My skin smelled different. One night, lying in bed after a long day listening to my brother’s lungs lift and fall in awful gurgling slowness, I realised that I now possessed the body of a stranger.
Gottlob died in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, seven weeks after he fell from Otto’s great height. I was seated at his side, dozing, bare feet resting on the edge of the bed. The room was lit only by moonlight escaping through the curtains; I had long blown out the candle. In my half-sleep, I realised that I could no longer hear Gottlob’s rattling breath and the awful certainty that he was gone pierced through me. I was immediately awake. I leaned over him. My brother’s chest was still.
It seemed impossible, despite his weeks of unconsciousness, that he was gone, and yet it had happened. Gottlob had always seemed much older than me – there were five years between us – and we had not been especially close. Matthias had always been my favourite brother. But in the minutes after Gottlob’s death I climbed into the bed and cradled his head and imagined him walking my father’s holy orchard.
It was not until the morning of the funeral procession, Gottlob in his coffin and ready for the waiting Totenbahre, the bier, that Mama noticed my body fighting my clothes. The buttons were straining at the back of my best dress, my breasts pressing uncomfortably against a panel of material sewn to fit a child. I appeared at breakfast, mortified. Mama took one look at me, quickly stood up from the table and swept me into my bedroom, where she made me undress and try on one of her own dresses. It didn’t fit. I sat on her bed in my shift, on the edge of tears, while she went to ask Beate Fröhlich if she could find something suitable amongst the women of the congregation within the hour. Eventually Beate came into the bedroom with an old dress from Eleonore Volkmann, the only woman in Kay who was of my height. There was no time to take it in at the waist and it smelled of mildew, and as Gottlob was returned to God by wagon and service and soil, I felt hot with shame. Shame that my grief for my brother on the day of his burial was so easily usurped by grief at the loss of my child’s body.
That afternoon, as the congregation ate in the shelter shed of the cemetery, I felt a new slipperiness between my legs. I sought a private place behind the wall of yews, and there I lifted my dress. My fingers came away bloody. Only then did I cry.
My sister Hermine was a pink, unpleasant baby. My father could not abide her crying at night. He and the other elders of our village had received word from Pastor Flügel, secretly fled to London, that they should renew their petitions and applications for emigration, and the work – requiring much letter writing and intellectual argument – taxed him and left him emotionally and spiritually worn. Mama was anxious he get his sleep, and so Hermine’s cot was placed in my room. Every two or three hours I would be roused by her rising wail and would stumble from my bed and pick her up, bouncing her listlessly until Mama came in and fed and settled her. It was expected that I change my sister and bathe her, soothe her and hold her, as well as complete my usual chores, and I grew to deeply resent Hermine’s presence, the cloths streaked with mustard shit, the spumy trails of sick down my back. It was no longer easy to visit Thea on my day of rest. When I told Mama that caring for Hermine seemed as much work as any other chore forbidden on a Sunday, she paused, swept Hermine out of my arms and placed her in her little cradle.
‘Let us leave her until Monday, then,’ she said.
I do not know how she bore the screaming that followed, but she did not touch Hermine. I waited for as long as possible, dark and angry and exhausted, and considered setting out for the forester’s cottage, but I did not dare test Mama’s stubborn streak and nor could I bear the grating cries of my sister. I picked her up and she rewarded me with a sudden eruption of curdled milk.
Deprived of our pastor, it was up to my father to baptise my baby sister. Samuel Radtke had baptised his youngest child, Elizabeth, but word had reached the local authorities and he had been imprisoned for insubordination. We could not afford for Papa to be jailed again, but my father pointed out that the price of delaying Hermine’s baptism was a far greater one to pay, and so one warm night my bawling little sister was ceremoniously sprinkled with well water at our kitchen table.
One week later the elders gathered at our house to discuss the matter of Christian and Rosina’s wedding, and it was agreed that, out of duty and necessity, my father, again, must perform it in Flügel’s absence.
‘It matters not that we have no church,’ I overheard Christian say. I was in the kitchen, frying bacon for their supper. ‘“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” My marriage shall be recognised by the Lord, if not the King.’
There was a murmur of agreement from the table.
‘Will we have it in your home?’ Samuel Radtke asked him.
‘I think so. In the morning. Will you ask your wives to prepare a wedding breakfast?’
The morning of the wedding I arrived with my parents at the Pasches’ early, buttoned and bonneted, my feet blistering in a pair of Elder Fröhlich’s leather shoes intended originally for my mother. As my father sat with Elder Pasche and discussed whether they ought to risk singing hymns, Mama ushered me through to the barn which, scraped of manure, was to accommodate both the service and wedding breakfast. Magdalena Radtke and Beate Fröhlich were already there, decorating the place with garlands of early wildflowers and branches of spruce.
‘Hello, Johanne.’ Magdalena nodded to Mama, her hands full of corn poppies. ‘We could use your help.’
Mama passed Hermine to me. ‘Take her outside will you, Hanne?’
I did as I was told, bouncing my sister against my shoulder, pacing up and down the Pasches’ orchard, which was filled with new, green leaves whispering amongst themselves. Underneath the soft sound of the trees, I could hear Christian Pasche’s raised voice travel from the cottage’s open back door and, a few moments later, saw Hans march out, cheeks red, new-cut hair still damp. He looked as though he were about to hit someone and, not wanting him to see me, I tried to hide behind a peach tree. In my haste, however, I jostled Hermine’s head against a twig and she began to cry.
I lifted my hand sheepishly as Hans saw me standing there. He was dressed in his best shirt, but it was unbuttoned at the throat and there was a wild look in his eye.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.
Hans hesitated, then walked up to me. ‘Is Matthias here?’ he asked. I could feel the anger pouring off him.
‘No,’ I said, lifting Hermine and nuzzling her with my chin. ‘No, he’s finishing the animals and then he’ll come for the ceremony.’
‘Right.’ Hans glanced back at the house. ‘Did you hear any of that?’
‘I heard your father shouting,’ I offered. ‘But not what he was saying.’
‘He’s a hypocrite.’ Hans crossed his arms over his chest. It unnerved me to see him this way. ‘“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”’
‘Chapter four of 1 John,’ I replied.
‘Verse twenty.’ Hans ran a hand around his neck. ‘My father hates me, you know.’
Hermine wailed in my ear. I bounced her harder, giving Hans a look of sympathy. ‘My mother doesn’t like me much either.’
‘See here,’ Hans said and, face livid, hands working furiously, he unbuttoned his shirt and showed me a bruise across his ribs.
My mouth fell open. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh, I don’t think . . .’
Hans buttoned his shirt again, cheeks red.
‘Hanne?’
I looked past Hans and saw Thea peeling off from the steady stream of people now arriving in the lane beyond the cottage. She lifted her hands in greeting then, checking over her shoulder, slipped down the side of the house and ran towards us. Hans stepped aside as she approached and threw her arms around me, face shining.
‘Oh, I haven’t seen you for weeks!’
I glanced at Hans over Thea’s shoulder. He was standing there, staring at the ground, shirt buttoned to the neck, hands jammed into his pockets.
Thea untangled herself from me and faced him. ‘Good morning, Hans,’ she said.
‘Hello, Thea,’ Hans muttered. He nodded to us, then turned and walked away.
‘Is he all right?’ Thea asked, reaching for Hermine.
‘No,’ I said. I placed my arm around Thea’s shoulders. ‘I don’t think he is.’
The service was brief that morning. Christian and my father had decided against hymns, and so once the sermon – written by Elder Pasche himself and delivered by my father – was completed and the vows made, the congregation settled around the barn and began to help themselves to the wedding feast: fresh bread, boiled potatoes, Wurst and bacon, salads, pickled cucumbers and vegetables. There was beer, too, and as soon as the surrounding hum of conversation had eased away from formal beginnings, rousing into celebration, I left Hermine with my mother to find Thea. I found her watching the younger children climbing the haystacks.
‘Having fun?’ I asked her.
‘Not really,’ Thea said, frowning. ‘Christiana was asking me odd questions.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, about Mama.’
‘Do you want to tell me?’
Thea hesitated. ‘I’d rather just leave, to be honest.’ She leaned closer to me. ‘Do you want to go to the river?’
I smiled. Thea placed her hand in mine and, glancing around, pulled me quietly away from the benches of adults eating and talking in the barn and out into the joy of sunlight.
We could hear the river before we saw it, hidden as it was by a thick copse of birch. The familiar murmur of water grew louder as we walked between the slender trunks, tripping occasionally on fallen branches. Thea had kept her hand in mine, and every time I stumbled, she laughed at her failed attempts to keep me upright. ‘You’re like a newborn foal,’ she said. She peered to where the river lay, straining against its banks. ‘There’s someone there,’ she whispered.
‘It’s Hans,’ I replied. Thea and I watched as he bent to the ground, picked something up and hurled it into the water.
‘We should leave,’ I whispered.
‘Has something happened?’ Thea asked. ‘He seemed upset before. Oh, he’s seen us.’
‘Hanne?’ Hans’s voice called out over the sound of water.
Thea tugged at my arm. ‘Let’s go talk to him.’
Reluctantly, I followed her to the riverbank.
Hans was holding a stone in each hand and his face was red and sweaty, as though he had just run a long way. He wore the same expression I had seen on Matthias when our father, spine and heart Christ-filled, admonished him for falling asleep during the evening sermon: a combination of weariness, shame and anger.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
Hans shrugged and offered me one of his stones.
I hesitated, then turned and hurled it into the river. The three of us watched as it disappeared into the current.
‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ Hans asked.
I nodded.
‘We can do better than that,’ Thea said, and walked to a heavy stone wedged amongst pebbles and mud and grass. She squatted and dug at the sides of the boulder with her fingers.
Hans and I dropped to our knees beside her and together we scraped away the soil at the stone’s base, loosening it from the bank.
Breathing hard, we lugged it awkwardly to the water’s edge then, together, swung it out as far as we could. As we all let go, I stumbled and fell into the shallows. Thea and Hans waded in and hauled me to the bank, doubled over in laughter, and I felt a surge of happiness that made me want to cry.
We walked back to the Pasches’ in the afternoon, sodden, throwing stones at trees. As we approached, however, we could hear no sound of celebration from the barn, and inside there were only a few members of the congregation sitting in tight bunches, talking intently. Reinhardt Geschke looked up and, seeing Hans, beckoned him over. Elize stood and came up to Thea and me.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked, eyes wide.
‘Nothing,’ Thea said. ‘We were at the river. Hanne fell in and we pulled her out.’
