Devotion(106)

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?’