‘Hanne.’
Her voice again. A sudden riptide of need dragged through me. Somewhere in this valley of rough gables and neat gardens was Thea. I said her name out loud and it was a prayer filling my body, already moving me closer to her.
The Pasches’ farm teemed with activity. I could see Hermann and Georg in the yard with Christian, the brothers now older than Hans had been at his wedding. They were strong, upright men, and I noticed Georg pause to speak to a woman I did not recognise but who seemed to be his wife. I watched her raise a hand as he left, then duck her head under the door to a lean-to.
I hesitated then. I had envisioned walking to that lean-to and find ing Thea there, stepping out of its shadow into the sunlight, but as I waited, only Georg’s wife emerged, a wailing newborn over her shoulder.
I approached the homestead. The lean-to was empty. Inside the house, Rosina was cooking, a girl of five or six waiting next to her.
‘Bertha, go and see what Frieda is doing,’ she said, sweeping peelings from the table into a bucket.
‘The baby woke. I heard him crying,’ Bertha replied.
‘Give all this to the pigs then.’
I passed Rosina and stepped into the room coming off the kitchen. It was a bedroom, a wooden cross above the narrow bed. Empty. Through that room lay another, with two more beds pushed together. Thea was nowhere to be seen.
I returned to the kitchen, unsure of what to do. Rosina was pouring water into a pot on the fire.
‘Mama, they’re back!’ From the back door came the clatter of a bucket being dropped on the ground.
‘Where, Bertha?’
‘In the potatoes.’
Rosina wiped her hands on her apron, then ran out the back door. I followed her, somehow thinking the child had meant Thea and Hans, already picturing the two of them walking through the potato ground. But outside I saw, instead, several Peramangk men and women on their knees, digging up the new potatoes and dropping them into net bags.
‘Get on with you,’ Rosina shouted, running towards them, flapping her hands. ‘Thieves!’
The women looked up but did not stop. Rosina motioned to Bertha, who was staring open-mouthed from the doorway. ‘Go and get your father.’
Before she could do so, however, Georg’s wife came running over with a stockwhip. She was red-faced, furious. I watched, horrified, as she ran at the women, cracking the whip and catching one of the older women on the face. The woman screamed, dropping the potatoes and bringing her hands to her eyes, as the others rose to their feet and, pulling her along with them, ran, woven bags held tightly in their fists, soles of their feet flashing. The men followed, shouting angrily at Georg’s wife over their shoulders.
Rosina watched them leave, hands on her hips, breathing heavily. ‘Thank you, Frieda.’
Frieda tossed the whip on the ground and sat down beside it, wiping the sweat from her face and neck. ‘That is how my father did it in Neu Klemzig,’ she said.
‘In broad daylight, too.’
Bertha’s voice came from the house behind them, full of warning. ‘Mama . . .’
I looked up as Rosina did, saw a man stepping back through the potato field, spear in hand. He lifted his free palm and I saw that it was covered in blood.
‘Frieda . . .’ Rosina pulled the younger woman to her feet. Frieda paused, bending for the stockwhip, then thought better of it and ran with Rosina to the house, slamming the door shut after her.
I watched the spear pierce the air. The throw was so liquid, so sure, it seemed the spear was not only an extension of the man’s arm, but a pure, darting exhalation of his anger and contempt. It was a ribboning of power and frustration. An act of assertion. The wood licked knife-hot through the air, splitting the afternoon light.
The spear hit the centre of the door with a small wooden thud. It quivered against its buried point, shaking still, it seemed, with the man’s disgust.
I turned to see his reaction, but he had already turned away and was walking back to his family on the periphery of the village, all of them silent except for the wailing of the woman whom Frieda had blinded with her whip.
Thea is not here, I thought to myself. And then I turned and saw Anna Maria beyond the farm border, one hand on her hip, the other held over her mouth.
‘Hanne.’
Thea’s voice came to me again, filled with distance and yet, so close, so urgent, my knees went weak with anticipation.
I stumbled towards the Eichenwalds’ cottage, body-soft with hope.
Anna Maria was alone, setting out earthenware jars on her wooden table. The air smelled of dried herbs and liniments. I took in the empty house, then watched her work, strong hands wrapping beeswax in a cloth. She raised a mallet to break it into pieces, but something stopped her. She stood there for a moment, hammer raised, eyes lifting slowly from her work of salves.
‘It’s only me,’ I told her. ‘Hanne. I’ve come back.’
I felt her hesitate, felt the air prickle with the intensity of her listening.
‘I’ve come for Thea,’ I said. I touched her hand. Her bare forearms rose in gooseflesh.
Anna Maria put the mallet down on the table. Her voice, when she spoke, was a whisper. ‘What do you want?’
‘Thea,’ I said. ‘She’s calling for me.’ I reached out to touch her again but the Wend drew back and looked around the room. I brought my mouth to her ear. ‘Where is Thea?’
Hair rose on the back of Anna Maria’s neck. She breathed in sharply and, placing a hand over her heart, closed her eyes.
I paused, then asked the question again.
The Wend brought the tips of her fingers to her lips. ‘She’s not here,’ she murmured, and in that instant I heard the strange words again.
‘Ersurgant mortui, et ad me veniunt.’
A summoning from outside the cottage, from somewhere in the grey-green throat of bush beyond the village.
Anna Maria opened her eyes as I left the room. Before I stepped out the door, I saw her pick up her mallet and hold it to her chest, a shadow of a smile on her lips.
I could smell new-baked bread and frying bacon on the afternoon air, and as I hurried back onto the lane I saw it was coming from Gottfried Volkmann’s place. Gottfried himself was outside, standing next to a sign written in English, The German Arms, talking with a fellow with his back to me. I could see several men inside through the open window, smiling at a woman offering a coffee pot.
The door opened and Elizabeth Volkmann stuck her head out, waiting for a lull in the conversation to summon her father inside.