Thea opened the book and flipped to the third page. There, in gothic text, I saw ‘Gespr?che mit Toten zu führen’. She turned it around and pushed the book towards him.
Hans read, face growing pale. ‘To converse with the dead? Thea . . .’ He looked up at her, then carefully closed the book and passed it back to her. ‘You told me you only used the seventh book. The herbal cures. This seems . . .’ He shook his head.
‘I know.’
‘You summoned her?’
Thea nodded. ‘Three nights ago. When you were sleeping. I thought it didn’t work. I was going to try again, last night, when she came.’ Her hands were shaking. ‘I saw her.’
Hans pushed the bread out of the way and leaned over the table, taking Thea’s hands in his. ‘I saw her too,’ he said, and then he laughed in a frightened way. ‘I felt her.’
Thea bent forwards and rested her forehead on their entwined hands. ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’
‘I don’t know how or why you did it, Thea, but’ – he hesitated – ‘there was no evil in it.’ He attempted a smile. ‘Not if it was Hanne.’
Thea lifted her head and looked up at him. ‘You truly do not know why I did it?’
Hans seemed to falter. ‘You miss her. You were friends.’
Thea sat up. Brought a hand against the back of her neck. ‘I loved her,’ she said eventually. Her voice was moss underfoot. Was a palm against a skin of water. I could not take my eyes off her.
Hans looked at her and said nothing.
‘I still love her.’ Thea’s eyes were intemperate blue. The heart of a candle flame. ‘Did you know such a thing was possible?’
Hans went very still. ‘Did I know that love was possible?’
Thea bit her lip and sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you,’ she said.
‘Thea . . .’ Hans suddenly reached for her again. ‘How can I make you happy?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what is real anymore. I feel . . .’ She took a shuddering breath. ‘I feel as though I am burning down all the time.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head. ‘Like I am being consumed by the depth of my feeling for her.’
‘I miss her too.’
Thea took a deep breath and glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Not like I do.’
Hans told her the story he remembered best about me then. Thea began to cry and laugh at the same time, nodding as Hans told her about the argument, me on my hands, searching for the source of the song I claimed to hear, the well all those years later.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, that was Hanne. She heard those songs. She sang them to me.’
Hans wiped the tears from Thea’s cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry she died.’
‘I’m sorry too.’ She kept crying. She could not stop.
‘I have something.’ Hans suddenly pushed back his chair and crossed the room. He pulled a small case out from under the bed in the corner, opened it, and took out a small cloth bag. ‘Here,’ he said, and placed it gently down on the table in front of Thea.
Thea opened the bag and looked inside. When she glanced back up at Hans, she looked like she might cry again. ‘Walnuts.’
‘Do you remember the tree in the Nussbaums’ orchard?’
Thea nodded, tears running down her cheeks. ‘You took them?’
‘For her.’ Hans rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Oh, this is a strange conversation to be having.’
Thea laughed, eyes wet. ‘We are strange people.’
Hans smiled. ‘I wanted to marry her.’ He gestured to the walnuts. ‘These were going to be a wedding present. So she could plant her daughters here.’
Thea stood up. ‘Let’s plant them now.’
‘Now?’
‘Let’s plant them for us. For Hanne.’
Thea and Hans planted the walnuts in their little orchard, creamy flowers already spasming on fruit trees. I climbed into the branches of a nearby stringybark, lay my cheek on its peeling surface and looked down on Thea and Hans, not knowing what to feel; feeling everything, Thea’s assertion that she loved me illuminating me like a flame within a glass.
Perhaps the mystery is deeper than I know, I thought. Perhaps, the mystery is not to be unravelled. A fathom not to be plumbed. Perhaps there is still grace for me, I wondered, and the thought was a raindrop on my forehead, a finger down my spine, snow on my tongue.
‘Hans?’ Thea’s voice called out below, concerned.
I looked down. Hans was still, leaning hard on his spade. He spat into the dirt.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ Hans said, straightening. But then he vomited, and I could see, as I slid down the tree and started towards them, that it was salt water. As Thea helped him back to the house, I could smell it. The ocean, brackish against the gathering wind, blowing over the crops, slate clouds scudding low.
Hans was bed-bound by evening, groaning from a great pressure in his head, unable to eat. He complained of loose bones, of sand under his tongue. As Thea flipped pages in the Book of Moses, I sat on the edge of the bed and urged Hans to recover. Thea placed a cold compress on his brow and he cried out that his skull was a chalice of sea water, that there was a darkness coming for him.
‘Time curves upon itself,’ he moaned. ‘The hole in the heart of God.’
‘Hans,’ Thea said, holding the compress in place with one hand and the book with the other. ‘Hans, lie still. Try to rest.’
He spluttered and sea water fell upon his chest. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he said. ‘I’m drowning.’
Oh God, I thought to myself. I did this. I have killed him.
Thea paused in her turning of pages and abruptly got up. I watched her as she found their Bible and tore a page from the endpapers, muttering, ‘Almighty Lord, forgive me,’ then proceeded to write something down. I got up and stood over her shoulder and read: ‘So says the Lord: I will look for what is lost again, bind what is wounded, replace what is weak for what is firm and strong. I shall protect thee.’
Thea smoked the paper before sunrise for seven mornings, and each dawn rose upon a grimmer picture than the last. The fever mounted until Hans could not speak at all, his nightclothes ringed with tide-ebbings of salt. Water ran from his ears. Thea tucked the paper under his clothes, upon his chest. It was damp from the ocean rising in him. Still, she persisted, and after the seventh day, she buried the smoked, stained paper a little distance from the planted walnuts.