Devotion, page 29
‘They’re for the church,’ Elize said, passing them two apiece. ‘Elder Pasche has asked us to bring some back each time we come here. The pastor suggested it.’
‘Small church,’ muttered Amalie, hoisting her basket up onto her back.
Elize rolled her eyes. ‘In time we will have enough.’
‘How many bricks will it take?’ asked Elsa Pfeiffer.
Elize shrugged. ‘It’s not for me to question Pastor Flügel.’
‘In the meantime,’ Thea mused, weighing the heavy bricks in her hands, ‘we stand a better chance against the Tiersmen.’
It wasn’t until the girls returned to Heiligendorf that I understood what had happened. What I had done.
As soon as they were all walking down the track into the valley the next day, Magdalena Radtke appeared, sweeping an arm around Christiana. ‘Now, he’s all right,’ she said, casting an inscrutable eye back to where Thea followed behind, ‘I don’t want you to worry for him, but your father had a very near miss this morning.’
Elize, hearing the last of this, stepped forwards and placed a hand on Magdalena’s shoulder. ‘Elder Radtke?’
‘A tree,’ Magdalena spat out. ‘A great tree nearly crushed him to death.’
Christiana paused, eyes wide. ‘What?’
‘By God’s grace, it missed him,’ her mother said. ‘But by inches.’
The girls glanced at each other.
‘Which one?’ ventured Thea.
Magdalena turned to face her. ‘One of the gums on Herr Nussbaum’s allotment.’
As the women made their way back into the heart of the village and Thea peeled off to her parents’ allotment, I could hear the distant rasp of saws ringing out on the air. Thea stopped at the fence line. The smallest of the sister gums had fallen to the earth with such force that its huge branches now lay gouged deep within the wheatfield like an abandoned plough, the root ball lifted high into the air, exposed in a vast, tangled mass of earth. Matthias, Papa, Samuel Radtke and Hans were already at work, sawing the huge trunk into rounds. I noticed my mother hauling smaller branches into a pile, thick with dead leaves, ready to be burned.
My sister gum. The tree I had been. I stood next to Thea and remembered running with rivers of sap. I felt, too, the falling of wood, as though it were a memory held within my own body. A crack upon the earth, a boom that sent birds screeching into the air. I imagined the reverberation in my own bones, felt them splinter into dust.
I had done this.
The broken branch. The dead onion seedlings. And now, the sister gum. As these trees and plants had admitted me and let me join to them, had let me feel again the rush of being and let me swallow light and grow, I had poisoned them with my own lifelessness.
I thought of the banksias and the tea-trees and the stringybarks along the old trail from the plains to the ranges. I had moved from one to another to canopy Thea since the night of the tree, to love her with leaf and blossom and gumnut. Were they all dead now?
I had not known.
pig
Matthias and Augusta were married by Pastor Flügel under the remaining two sister gums on my father’s allotment. Stumps and rails from the fallen tree were used in the absence of proper church pews, the men and women separated with an aisle between. I climbed up into a crook in the lowest branch of one of the trees and watched Augusta walk towards my waiting brother in her best black dress, given away by Elder Pasche in the absence of a father. Matthias, I noticed, wore Papa’s Sunday trousers, and I smiled to myself imagining my mother hemming them to suit his smaller stature. As Pastor Flügel conducted the long and sombre ceremony, I picked gum leaves and dropped them spiralling down upon the heads of the bride and groom, each a blessing.
May you learn to love her, I thought.
May she learn to love you.
Giblets and bacon.
I pulled apart the fibres of blossom and sprinkled them upon the air. And if you do not love each other, I hope you are happy in the soil she gives you. I hope you are happy, brother.
‘“Two are better than one,”’ intoned Flügel, ‘“because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”’
Matthias lifted his gaze to the trees towering above him and I saw his gap-toothed smile. A vision of him spitting at me from between his teeth, eyes almost shut from laughing so hard, came back to me, and I had to grip the branch to stop from falling in a sudden welling of love.
I hope you can find happiness with her, brother, I whispered, and my tears, when I tasted them, were salt.
The wedding breakfast was boiled parrots and new potatoes eaten on sheets and blankets spread under the trees. In Kay, even in lean times, wedding feasts had been extravagant. Giblet noodle soup, chicken, goose and duck. Wine and beer and hot plum cake if fruit were in season. Still, Matthias seemed content, sucking parrot meat off tiny bones, Augusta next to him, Wilhelm on her lap. The day was warm. Insects were loud in the wheat. Below me, Gottfried Volkmann held court in a group of men, pipe smoke issuing from his purple lips. ‘The track goes right past my door, you know! All these men and their animals on the way to Melbourne and what do they have to drink? Water from the creek. What do they eat? Whatever filthy English food is rolling around in their saddlebags. I would be a fool – no, it would be a disservice to God not to take advantage of such opportunity!’
‘But what do you know about coffee shops?’
‘Make it fresh and pour it hot!’ shouted Gottfried.
‘But what if it does not succeed? How will you eat while you try to finally clear your patch?’
Gottfried smiled and pointed to the trees. ‘I can spend another year boiling these little noisy parrots. The more I eat the less noisy they will be! These stockmen will be throwing their shillings at me. Have you tasted Eleonore’s bread?’
Some of the men rolled their eyes as Gottfried grinned and looked about him. He gestured with his pipe then, raising his eyebrows, and I noticed that he and several other men were watching Hans approach Thea as she kneeled on a blanket next to Henriette.
Something stilled in me. I was sunk in a mire of sudden, dreadful understanding. Then, panicking, I half climbed, half fell to the ground and threw myself down next to Thea just as I heard Hans ask if he might walk with her a little. I wrapped my arms around her middle, pulling her close to me. ‘Don’t go,’ I whispered in her ear.
Henriette nudged Thea with her knee.
‘Don’t go. Please.’ I placed my lips against Thea’s earlobe.
Thea picked at the stitches of the blanket’s hem, colour creeping up her neck. ‘If you like,’ she murmured.
‘Sorry?’ asked Hans. ‘Sorry, you speak so quietly today.’
Don’t come so close to her, I thought. I was scowling. I felt myself as a blackening in their midst, and as the women smirked at each other, I glared crow-black at Hans until he glanced to where I thunderstormed.
‘What is it?’ asked Henriette, turning.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘She said you’re welcome to walk with her,’ Henriette announced, slyly squeezing Thea’s elbow.
Christiana stared, mouth open.
Hans stood up a little straighter. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I would like that.’ He stood for a few more excruciating moments before bowing and stepping backwards, away from the girls exchanging knowing expressions. Henriette gave Thea excited little nudges as she rose and allowed Hans to lead her away from the wedding, down towards the waterhole.
I could not move. I could feel my very being flicker, could feel myself dissipate into the weave of the blanket beneath me, the heat of the sunshine, the dappled shadow of the remaining sister gums behind me. I looked at my body; grass seeds were falling from my hair, my toes were crumbling into soil. My skin flowed with water, and I could feel the slight, white lines of mycelium creep around my knees. I was dissolving into the earth.
I stood, then. I ran after them. I wanted to feel force, needed to feel the hard slap of my feet hitting the ground, arms propelling myself forwards as though I were running from wildfire, as though I were running for my life. I wanted to run the distance of the world and never stop. I wanted distance and oblivion because this was too much, seeing the woman I loved, would bleed for, being drawn into a life I had no place in. How could I guard her at night if she had a husband? I could not sit there and watch him sleep beside her. I could not watch her serve him his dinner, pour his coffee. That would be true suffering, loving Thea as I did while another stepped through life with her. She would forget me. She would be taken up into that woman’s life and leave behind all things of her unformed self, all of me and what I was to her.
I stumbled to a stop just before I fell down the bank to the waterhole. I could feel the force of my movement still running up my heels, felt my ankles bleeding, saw the blood lifting off my skin into nothingness.
Hans and Thea stood by the water’s edge, staring at the reflection of the sky and canopy. Thea was absently pulling at the tops of reeds as Hans spoke to her, hands deep in his pockets.
‘You are a hardworking and respectable girl . . .’
Salt water rose in my throat, tidal through the marrow of my bones.
Hans smiled at Thea uncertainly. ‘The land here is good, but it isn’t mine. I am a man now. I would like to make my own life. And I will need someone to . . . Well, to manage a home. To . . .’ He cleared his throat and took off his hat. ‘Thea, I know . . .’ He faltered, tried again. ‘I know that there are suspicions against your mother. I know that there are some who would see your family lose their place in this congregation. Lose their allotment . . .’
Thea stiffened, lips parting in understanding. I could see she was thinking, see that there was a storm under her skin. I knew her; I knew what her stillness meant.
‘Thea, I will be good to you,’ he said softly, looking down at the water before them. ‘They would not send you away.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘My father is an elder. He . . .’ Hans sighed.
Thea glanced at Hans, eyes moving over his face.
‘We could be great friends,’ he added.
Thea scattered the seeds from the bulrushes into the air. They floated down and settled on the skin of the water. ‘Are you asking me to marry you, Hans?’
‘Have I made a fool of myself?’
‘No.’ Thea’s voice was so faint I wondered that Hans could hear her at all.
Hans broke into a smile. ‘You will?’
Thea hesitated.
I was breaking into pieces. I was being knifed apart. The sea was sweeping in.
Thea nodded.
Hans laughed and dropped his hat, snatching it up just before it rolled into the water. ‘We had best get back,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘They will wonder where we’ve gone!’
‘In a moment. You go on ahead. I . . .’ Thea motioned that he should walk on without her.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ Thea smiled at him and I thought that she had never been so beautiful. I was breaking.
Hans left reluctantly, turning and smiling at her and throwing his hat in the air before he rounded the bend and was gone from sight.
Alone, Thea’s smile vanished. I stared at her as she studied her shaking fingers. She was trying not to cry.
And then, as I reached for her, sought to hold her to me and find reassurance in her closeness, in the smell of her skin, Thea ran splashing into the water, skirts billowing out with air as she waded in. Her face disappeared below the surface and she emerged again, gasping, chest racked with sobs, wet hair slick across her forehead, surrounded by a distorted reflection of eucalyptus and reed.
I could not tell if she was crying from happiness or sorrow. My own heart was broken.
I walked. I walked away from the waterhole, up past the celebrations and onwards through the wheatfields. I walked until dusk fell, groping my way up the escarpment, away from the village, not knowing where I was going, following only an urgency to move, to flee. I stumbled through the bush beyond Heiligendorf until it was dark, and then I sank to the ground and curled into a ball. My suffering was so acute I felt that I was on the cusp of tearing, as though my skin would rend and my insides come blowing out like feathers. Thea does not love you as you love her, I told myself. Thea does not love you. She does not love you.
And yet, and yet.
Again and again I remembered Thea throwing her arms around me, her laughter making me feel the same as when I saw light glance off a body of water. The sun warm on our shoulders. Hands brown from summer, fingers entwined with my own. Her face before she bent to me in the forest.
She had kissed me.
A sudden memory of Thea in our berth, in the darkness, burned through me. Neither of us speaking, our heads so close together I could feel her breath upon my skin. Thea slowly sliding her finger across my cheek, then her tongue.
‘Salt.’
One word whispered, hot and held. In the morning I had woken with my heart racing, wondering if it had happened at all, unable to ask her, the thought of it knotting inside me so that I felt tight and bound and waiting.
Her hands briefly, wondrously upon my body in the darkness of the ship.
I felt betrayed and ashamed and unsure about everything. The thought of her wedded to Hans made me feel utterly forgotten.
Dawn came. I watched sunlight split the land from sky and then, in the corner of my eye, I saw a black creature emerge from behind a blue gum, something wet and feathered in its mouth.
Hans’s cat, I thought.
She stared at me, a growl wavering in the back of her throat, before vanishing into the bush.
The ocean rose in my mind. I thought of my bones in that vast coldness, and when the darkness came, I let it take me.
That was the first time I came up here. And now I am here again, waiting for an end.
The summer continued despite my constant, aching grief. While I cried for my own broken heart, the congregation of Heiligendorf filled every damned hour with work. While I spent days singing myself into the scaly leaves of she-oaks for the consolation of keening with the wind, knowing I was harming them but, in my misery, caring not, the mood amongst the congregation lifted.
The cows were giving good quantities of milk and the fields of wheat turned from green to gold. Labour outside the settlement – shearing, laundering, fencing – quietly addressed the collective debt, and soon Fachwerk frames of red gum walled with pug replaced the little shelters of saplings. Adzed slabs were turned into tables and chairs, animal pens improved with sod. Matthias began building a home from the wood of the fallen sister gum for himself and Augusta. Wells were dug under the watchful eye of Mutter Scheck, and Samuel Radtke constructed a wagon in the image of the one he had regretfully left behind.
I watched it all, ever in orbit around the one I loved.
Believing a Schwarzekuchen a stupid idea in a land so hot, Anna Maria enlisted Thea’s help in making an oven and smokehouse outside her back door, cutting curved branches then applying stones and a thick mud plaster before firing it into hardened clay.
‘I need to show you these things now,’ Anna Maria said to her, scraping out the ash from the burned wood. ‘You’ll have a home of your own before long. When will Pastor Flügel return?’
‘This Friday,’ Thea replied, picking fragments of dried mud from her wrists. ‘Hans will speak with him then.’
‘How are you feeling?’
Thea shrugged.
‘You don’t talk with me like you used to.’
Thea came up behind her mother and, wrapping her arms around her, laid her head on Anna Maria’s back. ‘There’s nothing to say,’ she murmured.
That Friday evening Thea and Hans walked to the church. They lingered by the doorway until Flügel appeared and shook Hans’s hand.
‘Come in,’ he said, turning back inside and seating himself on a chair between the pews. I sat next to Thea, sick to my stomach. She was anxious – I could see it in her jaw, in the way she pressed her feet into the floor – but I still did not know if her nerves spoke to fear or excitement.
The pastor leaned forwards, gaze moving from Hans to Thea. ‘You wanted to speak with me?’
Hans cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, Pastor. We would like to be married. In the autumn,’ he added. ‘After harvest.’
Flügel smiled at him. ‘You would like to be married. Let us do this with the necessary formalities.’ He rose from his chair and took out a sheet of paper, a pen and ink from an inkstand at the side of the room. ‘Your full Christian names?’
Hans glanced happily at Thea. ‘Hans Reinhardt Pasche.’
‘And the bride to be?’
‘She is Dorothea Anna Eichenwald.’
I lifted my legs up onto the pew beside Thea.
‘The names of your fathers?’
‘Her father is Friedrich Eichenwald, and mine is Elder Christian Gottfried Pasche.’
The pastor looked up from his paper. ‘Do you both actively, willingly consent to this union?’
‘We do,’ said Hans.
‘Dorothea?’
‘I consent.’
