Devotion(115)

Hans took up the lantern again, his other arm holding Johann, already shuddered into sleep, exhausted, relieved to be held finally.

‘Thea?’

She did not move and he said her name again.

And then he set the lantern on the floor so that he could touch her.

I saw the touch confirm for him what he must have feared the moment he stepped into the house and heard the screams of his son. I saw him understand that his wife was gone.

Still, he gently lay Johann on the bed between Thea’s body and the wall, and leaned over to kiss her. Then he sat and, for a long time, looked at her. I wondered if he knew what had happened.

Eventually, in that silence of deep night, he stood and put on his coat, then picked his son up and wrapped him in a blanket, before leaving, lantern in hand.



All that long night I hoped that Thea would remain as I have. I held her body and remembered the albatross, and wondered whether Thea, too, might find herself outside the cottage by the fig tree, listening to the rare sound of a magpie singing the midnight hour, wondering at angels. Even as I held her body, I listened for her footfall, and there was a moment, when the birdsong summoned the dawn and I heard voices, that I thought I might see her again. But the grey light brought with it only Hans, Flügel and Anna Maria, cradling Johann in her arms.

The pastor found the strike marks and fit his lips around prayer and condolence. Anna Maria broke down and cried with such undisguised grief that Hans left the cottage. Flügel reached for Johann, but Anna Maria would not relinquish the boy, and the child and the woman cried together, over the pastor’s assertion of grace. When Flügel stepped outside to give her a moment with her daughter, I watched the Wend wipe her eyes and go to the cold fireplace. She was still when she saw the bricks upon the hearth, the keeping hole uncovered and empty. I watched her kneel and extend a hand over the ashes, then slowly, as though it were still alight, pick out a small, charred fragment of paper. She brought it to her chest and howled.

I left, then.

I kissed Thea’s forehead through the sheet that had been pulled up over it, and without knowing quite what I was doing, knowing only that I must leave, must go, I walked outside, past Flügel waiting by the door, past Hans hurling stones at the sky, and climbed up to this ridge. I sat and watched the sun rise over the world. I felt surrender approaching.

And then I felt within me the urge to speak.





NOW





heart-shimmer, heart-shiver


Thea died three days ago, and since then I have felt a change within me. Even this sunlight on my skin feels strange, as though it pours through me, as though it cannot settle its warmth upon my body. I sense time at work too, when for so long I have felt adrift on endlessness. My bones feel as though they have been kneaded by years. I think, perhaps, I am finally waiting for a folding-up. Dissolution.

I think back to the darkness that held me after the whale song on the Kristi, and it no longer seems like an abstract memory, but a promise. That great benevolence. That suspension of nothing and everything. Something coming. A happening.

This will all end soon.


And so I have spoken. These passing days I have described what has happened to me, and what I felt, and what I continue to feel. Gathered up and thrown on the wind to be wound on the air. To stir leaves and gutter candles and fill the sails of ships. I am unthreaded of it. I am the empty eye of the needle.

That two girls might meet and already know each other. Might already love each other.

One hand finding the other.

I thought that if I placed my palm against the rush of quickened wind and swore to our love, made myself an apostle of it, wondered at the miracle of it, I might inure myself to the pain of severance. I wanted to bear witness but perhaps, too, I was searching for a way to understand that it is all over. I wanted to say goodbye to her. Testimony as farewell.



Down in the valley the bell is tolling, and not for the hour.

The bell only rings at this time for the dead. It rings in the day’s labour and it knells its close. It summons the faithful and disperses them. Warns of bushfire, flood. And when someone dies, it announces each year of life blessed to them, tolls in steady, slow rhythm until the age of death is reached.

Twenty-one. Twenty-two.

Each strike of the bell is a year of seasons, sorrow and joy. Of meals eaten and prayers offered. Leaf burst and flourish and fall and rot.

Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.

There. It has stopped. The deep echo floods the valley floor for a moment before fading. There, the span of a life wrung out in sound.

They will bury Thea now.

I will go and I will see her lowered into this earth, and then I will know she is gone. There will be no reason to stay and I will wait for timelessness to come for me. I imagine it already lapping at each hour.



Down and down and down into the valley. There is the scar line of fence posts, emptied now of her stones, her promises of together, and as I follow them to the house I see the mourners in black gathering outside in the yard.


Hans is one of six bearers holding the coffin on the funeral bier, Matthias behind him, an arm on the shoulder of his friend. Augusta and Matthias’s eldest boy leads the procession to the graveside, carrying his black wooden cross with such solemnity that I would smile if it were not Thea dead, Thea in the coffin, Thea no longer here, gone where everyone else has gone.