Gottlob died in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, seven weeks after he fell from Otto’s great height. I was seated at his side, dozing, bare feet resting on the edge of the bed. The room was lit only by moonlight escaping through the curtains; I had long blown out the candle. In my half-sleep, I realised that I could no longer hear Gottlob’s rattling breath and the awful certainty that he was gone pierced through me. I was immediately awake. I leaned over him. My brother’s chest was still.
It seemed impossible, despite his weeks of unconsciousness, that he was gone, and yet it had happened. Gottlob had always seemed much older than me – there were five years between us – and we had not been especially close. Matthias had always been my favourite brother. But in the minutes after Gottlob’s death I climbed into the bed and cradled his head and imagined him walking my father’s holy orchard.
It was not until the morning of the funeral procession, Gottlob in his coffin and ready for the waiting Totenbahre, the bier, that Mama noticed my body fighting my clothes. The buttons were straining at the back of my best dress, my breasts pressing uncomfortably against a panel of material sewn to fit a child. I appeared at breakfast, mortified. Mama took one look at me, quickly stood up from the table and swept me into my bedroom, where she made me undress and try on one of her own dresses. It didn’t fit. I sat on her bed in my shift, on the edge of tears, while she went to ask Beate Fr?hlich if she could find something suitable amongst the women of the congregation within the hour. Eventually Beate came into the bedroom with an old dress from Eleonore Volkmann, the only woman in Kay who was of my height. There was no time to take it in at the waist and it smelled of mildew, and as Gottlob was returned to God by wagon and service and soil, I felt hot with shame. Shame that my grief for my brother on the day of his burial was so easily usurped by grief at the loss of my child’s body.
That afternoon, as the congregation ate in the shelter shed of the cemetery, I felt a new slipperiness between my legs. I sought a private place behind the wall of yews, and there I lifted my dress. My fingers came away bloody. Only then did I cry.
My sister Hermine was a pink, unpleasant baby. My father could not abide her crying at night. He and the other elders of our village had received word from Pastor Flügel, secretly fled to London, that they should renew their petitions and applications for emigration, and the work – requiring much letter writing and intellectual argument – taxed him and left him emotionally and spiritually worn. Mama was anxious he get his sleep, and so Hermine’s cot was placed in my room. Every two or three hours I would be roused by her rising wail and would stumble from my bed and pick her up, bouncing her listlessly until Mama came in and fed and settled her. It was expected that I change my sister and bathe her, soothe her and hold her, as well as complete my usual chores, and I grew to deeply resent Hermine’s presence, the cloths streaked with mustard shit, the spumy trails of sick down my back. It was no longer easy to visit Thea on my day of rest. When I told Mama that caring for Hermine seemed as much work as any other chore forbidden on a Sunday, she paused, swept Hermine out of my arms and placed her in her little cradle.
‘Let us leave her until Monday, then,’ she said.
I do not know how she bore the screaming that followed, but she did not touch Hermine. I waited for as long as possible, dark and angry and exhausted, and considered setting out for the forester’s cottage, but I did not dare test Mama’s stubborn streak and nor could I bear the grating cries of my sister. I picked her up and she rewarded me with a sudden eruption of curdled milk.
Deprived of our pastor, it was up to my father to baptise my baby sister. Samuel Radtke had baptised his youngest child, Elizabeth, but word had reached the local authorities and he had been imprisoned for insubordination. We could not afford for Papa to be jailed again, but my father pointed out that the price of delaying Hermine’s baptism was a far greater one to pay, and so one warm night my bawling little sister was ceremoniously sprinkled with well water at our kitchen table.
One week later the elders gathered at our house to discuss the matter of Christian and Rosina’s wedding, and it was agreed that, out of duty and necessity, my father, again, must perform it in Flügel’s absence.
‘It matters not that we have no church,’ I overheard Christian say. I was in the kitchen, frying bacon for their supper. ‘“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” My marriage shall be recognised by the Lord, if not the King.’
There was a murmur of agreement from the table.
‘Will we have it in your home?’ Samuel Radtke asked him.
‘I think so. In the morning. Will you ask your wives to prepare a wedding breakfast?’
The morning of the wedding I arrived with my parents at the Pasches’ early, buttoned and bonneted, my feet blistering in a pair of Elder Fr?hlich’s leather shoes intended originally for my mother. As my father sat with Elder Pasche and discussed whether they ought to risk singing hymns, Mama ushered me through to the barn which, scraped of manure, was to accommodate both the service and wedding breakfast. Magdalena Radtke and Beate Fr?hlich were already there, decorating the place with garlands of early wildflowers and branches of spruce.
‘Hello, Johanne.’ Magdalena nodded to Mama, her hands full of corn poppies. ‘We could use your help.’
Mama passed Hermine to me. ‘Take her outside will you, Hanne?’
I did as I was told, bouncing my sister against my shoulder, pacing up and down the Pasches’ orchard, which was filled with new, green leaves whispering amongst themselves. Underneath the soft sound of the trees, I could hear Christian Pasche’s raised voice travel from the cottage’s open back door and, a few moments later, saw Hans march out, cheeks red, new-cut hair still damp. He looked as though he were about to hit someone and, not wanting him to see me, I tried to hide behind a peach tree. In my haste, however, I jostled Hermine’s head against a twig and she began to cry.
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.’