Devotion(23)

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.