Devotion BY Hannah Kent
THE FIRST DAY
my heart is a hand reaching
Thea, there is no line in your palm I have not traced, no knuckle cracked unheard, and the blue of your eyes is the coffin-lining of the world. I would they sing psalms to you and the down upon your thighs, and the eyelashes that have fallen to the fields you have worked. I would they lay boughs upon knees bent to the soil-hum of any place you have rested upon. Thea, if love were a thing, it would be the sinew of a hand stretched in anticipation of grasping. See, my hands, they reach for you. My heart is a hand reaching.
testimony of love
It is time, I think, to tell my story.
In this moment, as the sun stretches its burnished hands upon the world, I feel myself finally pulling apart with time. Something is coming and I feel surrender approaching. A gentle giving-in.
I am not afraid. Not now. I’ve seen enough to know that fear scrapes feeling from hearts and I have no desire to scour mine down to bare and trembling muscle. Still, after what has happened, in this moment of honey-light, the air a censer of eucalyptus, I wonder how many days remain to me and whether, if I pass out of existence without testament, something necessary will be lost.
I could not remain with her. I think – and the thought lathes a yawning hole of grief within me – that it is over. I think I have already seen her face for the last time. That is what is hard. That is what has brought me up here amongst the trees. And now, one of these days, I will be gone.
Perhaps that is why I want to bear witness. I feel it as an urgency within my body. If I rest my fingers against my mouth, I feel my lips move in readiness to speak.
The light is rising. The wind rises. I lift my face to the sun as it fills the world.
If I testify, no one will hear me. Is a story unheard a story diminished? I cannot believe that. The wind may hear me, perhaps. The wind may yet carry my voice down to the valley, might press it against the ear of a child who will one day wonder at deeper mysteries, the inheritance of miracles. I can be satisfied with that.
The testimony of love is the backbone of the universe. It is the taproot from which all stories spring.
Listen, wind. Here is my small filament.
BEFORE
federschleissen
One night, years ago, in the autumn of 1836, I was lying under the walnut tree in my family’s orchard, listening to the tapping of raindrops sliding from leaves to soil. I heard them as a muted concord of bells. The trunk drummed black, the sky was chanting low cloud and I was bathed in hymns of water. Somewhere, beneath it all, I could hear my father calling my name. I stayed where I was. The wind scattered droplets upon my face. The damp soaked through my clothes.
‘Hanne!’
I closed my eyes. For the past two evenings, and this night too, my mother had been at the Radtkes’ house for a Federschleissen, and I was determined to make the most of my freedom. I had escaped outside as soon as she had left. I was fourteen, nearly fifteen, and not yet used to the burdens of womanhood and its inert domestic companions of needle and thread, bucket and cloth. Our cottage with its low ceiling and cramped rooms suffocated me. I missed the livingness of things.
‘Hanne!’
The walnut tree was singing to me. Stay.
‘Hanne.’
A different voice this time, louder. I opened my eyes and saw my brother, Matthias, looking down at me with a bemused expression, lantern in hand. The tree’s song subsided.
‘What does he want?’ I asked, shielding my eyes from the glare of the light.
‘If you go inside now, he won’t see you. He’s looking for you in the lane.’ Matthias set the lantern on the ground and helped me to my feet, and together we walked through the orchard, heady with the smell of rain on loam and fallen leaves, to the mud of the yard. I could make out the pale bulk of our pig in the dark of her sty. She lifted her head to look at us as I turned the doorknob.
‘Are you coming in?’ I asked Matthias.
‘No. I’m to bed,’ he said, nodding towards the side of the house where the ladder led to the loft. He hesitated. ‘Were you listening again?’
‘It’s better at night.’
‘What could you hear this time?’ he asked. He was eye-bright in the glow of the lantern.
‘Singing,’ I said. ‘Like the tree was singing to the water and the rain was singing to the earth.’
Matthias nodded. ‘You’d best get in. Goodnight, then,’ he said, and he moved off into the dark.
As I pulled the door shut behind me, Papa appeared in the corridor, holding a candle. He paused, frowning with his good eye.
‘Hello, Papa.’
‘Where have you been, Hanne?’
‘Getting ready for bed,’ I said, easing my feet out of my clogs.
‘But you weren’t in your room.’
‘No, I had to . . .’ I flicked a thumb in the vague direction of our outhouse.
My father lifted a hand to guard the flicker of the candle flame. ‘Put your shoes back on. I need you to fetch Mutter home.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s late.’
‘She’s been late the past two nights.’
‘Ja, exactly. Too late.’ He turned and headed towards the kitchen, the candlelight throwing his silhouette against the walls of the corridor. ‘Go get her,’ he muttered over his shoulder. ‘Bring her home.’
The night had cleared and deepened into delicious cold. At that hour in the village, everything smelled of pickled pork and kitchen fire. I walked a little down the lane and then, when I was sure my father would not see me, turned into our neighbours’ allotment so that I might walk beside the fields. I passed close by the Pasches’ cottage, bending over to avoid being seen through the window by Elder Christian Pasche, who I could hear at prayer within. I pictured his bald head shining in the firelight as he intoned over his Bible, his sons, Hans, Hermann and Georg, slumped and drowsy at the table. The Federschleissen was being held for Elder Pasche’s second bride, a narrow-eyed woman called Rosina with terrible breath and a mole on her forearm that she scratched at during services. Rosina was closer in age to Hans than his father, but as she and Christian were both dour and humourless, the match was generally agreed to be a good one. ‘They will be able to spend many wonderful evenings not laughing together,’ my mother had commented on hearing the news.