Devotion(82)

‘It’s good, Friedrich,’ Anna Maria said. ‘Not bitter at all.’

Friedrich shook his head. ‘I’ll have ship’s biscuit,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Anna Maria raised her eyebrows. ‘You’d rather eat from what little stores we have? Our preserves? When all we have is debt?’

Friedrich hesitated. I could see him bristle at Anna Maria’s words, but he could not deny the truth of the matter. He took a root and ate it quickly, eyes closed.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ Thea asked.

Friedrich swallowed.

‘Your daughter asked you a question,’ Anna Maria murmured.

Friedrich sighed. Then he lifted a hand and gently cupped Thea’s cheek. ‘It’s good,’ he said.

‘I didn’t hear that,’ Anna Maria interjected.

Friedrich ran at his wife. I braced myself for violence, closing my eyes, but I heard only a loud shriek of delight, and when I looked again I saw Friedrich had lifted Anna Maria in his arms, was spinning her in the clearing as Thea looked on, chewing and grinning.

‘Why did I marry you?’ Friedrich was shouting, swinging his wife so that she had to grip onto his shoulders. ‘Such a nag and harridan!’

Anna Maria threw her head back and laughed. ‘Because you love me,’ she said. ‘And you know I’m always right.’


From that night onwards, Thea spoke to me. Through the long and upward climb she whispered my name under her breath. Her voice tied me to her. I could not have walked away even if I had wanted to. During the day she stayed close to her parents. Even though there was a faint track to follow, the possibility of becoming lost hung over them on every misty morning, or whenever, in their fatigue, they imagined other tracks, other ways, and found themselves sliding down steep embankments, slippery with leaves. But at night, when Anna Maria and Friedrich fell asleep, Thea crawled out of their improvised shelter and walked from tree to tree, placing her hands on trunks glowing ghost-white in the dark, fingers tracing coarse bodies of bark. Only then, in her solitude, did she whisper my name into the night air.

‘Hanne.’

Saying my name as though she were calling me. As though she were not the moon and I the ocean, tidal with longing, ever turned to her.

‘Hanne . . .’ She paused. ‘I feel you like a knot in my throat.’

I placed my hand on top of hers, splayed my fingers between her knuckles.

‘Today there was a fire burning. I smelled the smoke first. There were ashes in the air. I climbed the rise and saw the plume, some flames beneath it. Papa thought it was a wildfire and became anxious – Pastor Flügel’s warnings and so on. “The breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone . . .” But it was a ring. The fire was burning inwards from all directions. Coming together upon itself. And when we had climbed the next rise and could see again, the fire was out.’

She turned towards a tree and placed her forehead against it. ‘Hanne,’ she whispered. ‘Hanne, that is what I feel like when I think of you. A fire closing in upon itself.’

I did not dare speak for fear of missing a word, a breath, a hesitation.

She closed her eyes, turning her head so that her cheek lay upon the pale trunk. ‘Show me,’ she whispered. ‘Show me you are here.’


I do not know how it happened. Not that first time. I shivered at her voice in the dark. The tree she was touching was smooth, radiant in the moonlight, and all I wanted was for her to rest her hand upon my face as she rested it upon the tree. I wanted to feel her touch me. The longing grew in me until I felt a strange trembling at the edges of myself, as though I was dissolving into air.

Thea’s skin pressed against the tree. The tree. Silver streak soaring into night sky, dripping with leaves still and slender, foaming fragrance into quiet air. I could feel that tree and its deep sinking into soil. I could feel it sending its hum deep under the earth, felt the air between its branches and knew that the tree was not only itself but many others, that the growing of the tree was the growing of everything else around it.

And then I was the tree. Rivers of sap rolled through us; I could feel everything we were and everything we would be. Leaves not yet unfurled, blossom capped in gumnut, roots needling moisture from the soil. We were everything that had passed, and we were what would come, the waited-for. Oh, we were waiting. Waiting for fog. Waiting for leaf-drop. Waiting for drip and bird call and waiting for heat and soaring and touching of sky.

I was the tree. It was sharing itself with me.

And somewhere, in the great unbellying of time, we were aware of the pressure of a living thing.

Little pale sapling. Her shiver at all night-shifting and wind-stirring. Breathing against us.

Thea.

I wanted to touch her. I wanted to bend to her.

All living wood, all stem and years ringing the heart of us bent to her breath, bent to her voice, and there was a giving-way, a crack, and as the branch fell, I fell with it. I blacked out and passed out of time.

I was the tree, and then I was not.


When I woke, I was alone, curled on the floor of the bush, moonlight making a mockery of the darkness. I sat up and felt oddly faint, and when I brought my palms to my face they were beaded with sap, blossom threads suspended in sticky trails. My feet ached. I cradled one in my hands and examined the sole. Beneath each toe a whisper of fibre. A tendril of root.