Devotion(87)

Winter settled in, squatting over the landscape and pissing down more freezing rain until the creek took on a wild, agitated look, creeping up its banks and threatening to flood. Often, after a heavy rain, small groups of ‘Eingeborene’ walked through Heiligendorf, looking in the makeshift shelters and observing the clearing of the land, before gathering by the creek to remove fish from traps they set there. They never stayed long and it was presumed by the elders that the valley was not favoured by them. When MacFarlane, one of the landowners who had negotiated the contract, drafted men from the congregation to fence his station, Matthias and Hans returned describing campsites they had seen higher up in the ranges, snug homes of stone and others abutting tree hollows built from branches, bark and leaves.

‘Cosy as you like,’ Hans said to Thea, visiting one Sunday afternoon. ‘Beds with possum skins, all sewn together. Much better than the hovel we’re living in.’

‘I heard Rosina complaining about it yesterday,’ Thea admitted.

‘I told my father we ought to spend the time making a better shelter, but no. “Wheat first, a house later.”’ Hans rolled his eyes. ‘Now he asks me why I’m doing so little to keep out the weather.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Thea murmured.

‘That’s why I’ve come,’ Hans explained. ‘I was wondering if your father might let me take some of those saplings by the border?’

‘Ask him yourself,’ Thea said. ‘You don’t need to go through me.’

Hans smiled, and there was something in it that unsettled me.

‘I also wanted to give you this.’ He handed her a small cat, whittled from wood.

Thea turned it in her hands.

‘You can have it, if you like.’

‘What good is a false cat to a witch?’

‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I made it for you.’


Thea did not speak of Hans to her mother. The wooden cat was placed in her canvas bag and not drawn out again, and although I watched her carefully for the flush and self-consciousness that attended Christiana and Henriette when they spoke of marriage and dowry chests and children, Thea seemed unruffled. Still, it wasn’t until I walked the track through the village and saw Magdalena Radtke yoked to their family’s new cow, Samuel Radtke behind, pipe in one hand and reins in the other, that I was able to distract myself from a lingering sense of discomfort. Christiana, following the plough with a basket of seed potatoes, was so red-faced with embarrassment that I sang myself into the Radtkes’ vegetable garden for the joy of it.

Sweet euphoria, to be an onion seedling in well-turned earth. To feel the swelling of our tiny bulb was to feel the universe within.


The valley grew damp with a rising water table and mornings soon brought a chorus of coughing from those who had been unwell on the ship. Passengers whose teeth ran bloody, or who hobbled around on ankles fat with sickness, stopped work altogether. The leftover rations from the ship had dwindled, and there was no Sauerkraut left, only rice which was ground and mixed with ever-smaller amounts of wheat flour. Matthias mentioned to Mama that Augusta’s husband was unable to work his own land. I noticed that he began to take a portion of his own breakfast for Wilhelm.

I was not bothered by the cold or frost or rain. If anything, I liked the sharpness of the winter wind on my face and the droplets that flew from the tossed clusters of wet gum leaves. I cupped my hands in the creek and felt the ache driving into my knuckles. But I could see the way the winter rain was worming into the living. They were hungry. Cold. Conversation turned to the chests of winter clothing left behind on the docks at Altona, the woollen stockings and flannel they thought they would not need.

‘Who knows if we will ever see them again,’ remarked Elize Geschke, filling pails at the creek, voice muffled by the thick scarf she had wound around her head.

‘Work makes me warm enough,’ said Beate Fr?hlich. ‘Besides, there is no snow.’

‘It’s not the cold which bothers Karl, but the wet,’ murmured Augusta to my mother. ‘He says his bones are paining him, and it is worse when it rains. He’s short of breath.’ She lowered her voice even further. ‘He hasn’t passed any water for days. This morning he asked for the pastor.’

Mama nodded. ‘I’ll come and see him.’

‘What about Anna Maria?’

Several of the women glanced up at the name. There was a moment of uneasy silence.

My mother cleared her throat and, though I saw her cheeks rise in colour, her voice when she spoke was calm and sure. ‘I’ll ask her to come too.’

Beate Fr?hlich shook her head, mouth hard.

‘Is there something you’d like to say, Beate? Or would you like to come and treat Karl yourself?’

‘It’s not for me to say anything,’ said Beate. ‘It’s for the pastor.’

‘I agree. Let us leave Pastor Flügel to discern what is best for us all.’ Mama hooked her pail onto the yoke across her shoulder and made her way back up the muddied creek bank. ‘I’ll fetch her now, Augusta.’


A child’s wail could be heard long before Anna Maria, Thea and my mother arrived at Augusta and Karl’s campsite, which was the hollow tree I had peered inside when I first saw the valley. Rain was puddling under the canvas awning, the campfire smoking badly under a black kettle. Wilhelm was sitting up in the ship’s chest, bawling, while Karl lay still under a heap of blankets and spare clothing.