The summer continued despite my constant, aching grief. While I cried for my own broken heart, the congregation of Heiligendorf filled every damned hour with work. While I spent days singing myself into the scaly leaves of she-oaks for the consolation of keening with the wind, knowing I was harming them but, in my misery, caring not, the mood amongst the congregation lifted.
The cows were giving good quantities of milk and the fields of wheat turned from green to gold. Labour outside the settlement – shearing, laundering, fencing – quietly addressed the collective debt, and soon Fachwerk frames of red gum walled with pug replaced the little shelters of saplings. Adzed slabs were turned into tables and chairs, animal pens improved with sod. Matthias began building a home from the wood of the fallen sister gum for himself and Augusta. Wells were dug under the watchful eye of Mutter Scheck, and Samuel Radtke constructed a wagon in the image of the one he had regretfully left behind.
I watched it all, ever in orbit around the one I loved.
Believing a Schwarzekuchen a stupid idea in a land so hot, Anna Maria enlisted Thea’s help in making an oven and smokehouse outside her back door, cutting curved branches then applying stones and a thick mud plaster before firing it into hardened clay.
‘I need to show you these things now,’ Anna Maria said to her, scraping out the ash from the burned wood. ‘You’ll have a home of your own before long. When will Pastor Flügel return?’
‘This Friday,’ Thea replied, picking fragments of dried mud from her wrists. ‘Hans will speak with him then.’
‘How are you feeling?’
Thea shrugged.
‘You don’t talk with me like you used to.’
Thea came up behind her mother and, wrapping her arms around her, laid her head on Anna Maria’s back. ‘There’s nothing to say,’ she murmured.
That Friday evening Thea and Hans walked to the church. They lingered by the doorway until Flügel appeared and shook Hans’s hand.
‘Come in,’ he said, turning back inside and seating himself on a chair between the pews. I sat next to Thea, sick to my stomach. She was anxious – I could see it in her jaw, in the way she pressed her feet into the floor – but I still did not know if her nerves spoke to fear or excitement.
The pastor leaned forwards, gaze moving from Hans to Thea. ‘You wanted to speak with me?’
Hans cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, Pastor. We would like to be married. In the autumn,’ he added. ‘After harvest.’
Flügel smiled at him. ‘You would like to be married. Let us do this with the necessary formalities.’ He rose from his chair and took out a sheet of paper, a pen and ink from an inkstand at the side of the room. ‘Your full Christian names?’
Hans glanced happily at Thea. ‘Hans Reinhardt Pasche.’
‘And the bride to be?’
‘She is Dorothea Anna Eichenwald.’
I lifted my legs up onto the pew beside Thea.
‘The names of your fathers?’
‘Her father is Friedrich Eichenwald, and mine is Elder Christian Gottfried Pasche.’
The pastor looked up from his paper. ‘Do you both actively, willingly consent to this union?’
‘We do,’ said Hans.
‘Dorothea?’
‘I consent.’
‘And have you remained chaste?’ he asked.
Colour crept up Thea’s throat into her cheeks and she stared down at her folded hands. Hans, too, seemed uncomfortable.
I thought of her kissing me in the forest. I thought of the Kristi, Thea’s tongue tasting the salt of my skin.
Thea gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘And you, son?’
‘Yes.’
Flügel hesitated then, giving Thea a careful look. ‘If none should object to the banns and you are wed, you must both understand that you will be expected to do as the Church asks of you, to uphold the faith of the congregation.’
‘Yes, Pastor,’ Hans replied.
‘Well, I give you my blessing, and it would be my honour to wed you both.’ He sat back in his chair and regarded Thea again. ‘My dear, remember: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”’
‘Thank you, Pastor Flügel.’
‘May the Lord bless you both.’
That Sunday, I lay on the ground outside the church, staring at the clouds streaking the summer sky, listening to the service. When the congregation sat to sing their hymns, I closed my eyes and imagined new words against the harmonies and as I hummed I felt the earth vibrate and my own being shudder with the sound. It was like being pulled apart by time. I was a sheet of paper tearing; I was softening, deliciously, into ash. But the singing ended and I heard the pastor close with prayer. A little delirious, I walked towards the door of the church, left open due to the heat.
Such rows of hatted, bonneted heads. Orderly rows of sunburned necks. All of them looking to Pastor Flügel, rolling his shoulders under his black robes. I could see the skin of his throat pressing hard against his starched white B?ffchen.
‘A few public announcements,’ he said, voice projecting to the back rows. ‘There are some whose repayment of the passage money is tardy. These defaulters are to make payment as soon as possible, or make public apology: Herr Pfeiffer and Herr Kirschke.’
I noticed Emile Pfeiffer sink lower in her pew.
‘I also announce the banns of marriage between Hans Reinhardt Pasche and Dorothea Anna Eichenwald of Heiligendorf.’
There was a low stirring. I saw Christiana glance at Hans. She looked as though she’d been slapped.
‘If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, you are to declare it. This is the first time of asking.’
I stepped into the church and its hush. I was shaking. My bones half-hinged to ligament.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I declare that I have cause.’
I walked down the aisle and stood beside Thea. I faced the pastor.
‘They cannot be married because we two –’
Flügel smiled. ‘Well, then.’
‘– we are for each other.’ I reached for Thea, and as I did, I heard the sound of the ocean, at first faint, but quickly amplifying to a roar. The light drifting into the church went dark, and I turned just in time to see a wave of water filling the doorway and upending the congregation, knocking the pews forwards in one heaving mass of ocean before it hit me like a wall and I surrendered to its drowning.
I woke by my mother’s side, drenched and shivering, seaweed tangled around my legs. I was in my parents’ house and Mama was on the floor beside me, kneeling before the opened shipping chest from the Kristi. I unwound the seaweed from my feet and pulled myself up on their bed as Mama leaned into the chest and took out the bolt of black material she had intended for my wedding dress. She held it across her lap, her mouth suddenly warped in sorrow. Even in her solitude she could not permit herself the sound of her own tears.
Then, quite abruptly, Mama pushed herself back to her feet, smoothed her hair with her free hand, then stepped out of the house.
My father was seated by the campfire, the sky cherry-red behind him. He was eating from a bowl balanced on one knee, Hermine seated on the other.
‘What do you think, Heinrich?’