Down in the valley the bell is tolling, and not for the hour.
The bell only rings at this time for the dead. It rings in the day’s labour and it knells its close. It summons the faithful and disperses them. Warns of bushfire, flood. And when someone dies, it announces each year of life blessed to them, tolls in steady, slow rhythm until the age of death is reached.
Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
Each strike of the bell is a year of seasons, sorrow and joy. Of meals eaten and prayers offered. Leaf burst and flourish and fall and rot.
Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.
There. It has stopped. The deep echo floods the valley floor for a moment before fading. There, the span of a life wrung out in sound.
They will bury Thea now.
I will go and I will see her lowered into this earth, and then I will know she is gone. There will be no reason to stay and I will wait for timelessness to come for me. I imagine it already lapping at each hour.
Down and down and down into the valley. There is the scar line of fence posts, emptied now of her stones, her promises of together, and as I follow them to the house I see the mourners in black gathering outside in the yard.
Hans is one of six bearers holding the coffin on the funeral bier, Matthias behind him, an arm on the shoulder of his friend. Augusta and Matthias’s eldest boy leads the procession to the graveside, carrying his black wooden cross with such solemnity that I would smile if it were not Thea dead, Thea in the coffin, Thea no longer here, gone where everyone else has gone.
Sweet, absorbing darkness.
I want to wear black too. I want to take a moonless night and make a shroud of it, I want to wrap it about my head and cry into that night of no moon. I will take the black of a well and dress myself in its dark, hidden water until it fills my mouth and drowns me, and I may be where she is.
The cemetery is still a corner of gentle soil. I am glad that Thea has a hand of good earth to hold her bones. The grave has been dug east to west, and as the coffin is lowered into it, the pastor talks of trumpets sounding on Judgement Day. As he speaks, I imagine Thea lifting out of soil to a rising sun. Never not miraculous, a seed in the earth.
‘Dorothea passes from our community of believers into the company of those who need faith no longer, but see God face to face,’ says the pastor, and he nods at Hans, who takes a handful of dirt and casts it onto the coffin.
Thea’s body is committed to the earth.
Johann sleeps in my brother’s arms. I watch Matthias kiss his pale head.
I stand alone as ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind mit dem Tod umfangen’ is sung by the mourners. All the voices rise in natural, long-familiar harmonies, and I tremble at the melding of deep and high. In my mind I see Thea at her first service in the pine forest, nudged by her mother and turning to me. Thea, looking back, eyes meeting my own.
I sing, then. For the first time since the ship, I sing a hymn. It swells inside me like a wave and I hear my own voice like a bell, holding the last note for a moment longer, unwilling to let it end.
The endless song, I think, as the mourners turn from the grave and walk away. I want to sing the endless song.
And then I am alone. Devoted still.
‘Your voice is a gift.’
I turn. I am turning, I am the world in orbit turning heartsore to the sun, and she is there, she is shining, she is golden. Thea, my love, my whole heart-shimmer, heart-shiver. Curtain torn. Seed splitting. Light pouring through an open window and blazing holy upon me.
‘Hanne,’ she cries, and her hands are on my cheeks, fingertips on my mouth, palms holding my crying face, holding me up in light, in love.
I fall to my knees and she kneels with me. Thea, Thea in front of me, both of us kneeling under a cathedral of sky.
Love runs through her like a seam of gold. It runs through me, too, and we are illuminated.
the song is endless
We are golden here. The light makes us so.
If the grapes are sweet, it is because we sleep under the gnarled hands that offer them. If the water tastes of salt, it is because the rain makes its way through our hair, it is because we let it pour over our skin and so bless it.
If you kindle a fire, we will warm ourselves by it. We will warm ourselves at every fire you light. Pour your wine and let us drink and hold communion with the world that made it. That made us, and you. Small miracles of life.
If you ever feel pain that comes from a deep knowing that it will not last, that it cannot last, it will pass, it is passing, know that some things remain.
The song is endless.
We will wait for you, and then we will go together.
author’s note
Hanne, like all other characters in this novel, is fictional, but those familiar with South Australian colonial history may recognise real-life parallels between her community and others. In writing this book I have leaned hard on the 1838 voyage of the Zebra from Altona to Adelaide, as well as the experiences of the Old Lutherans who, after arriving in South Australia, formed the town of Hahndorf (Bukartilla) on Peramangk land.
In writing this book I do not seek to glorify, simplify or sentimentalise the colonisation of Australia. The land ‘settled’ by the Old Lutherans who established Hahndorf and other villages in the Adelaide Hills had been inhabited for millennia by the original custodians of the land, the Peramangk people. Few violent encounters were recorded as occurring between the Old Lutherans and the Peramangk at Hahndorf – the latter almost certainly saved the former from starvation by teaching them how to source food in the months after their arrival – but the ongoing effects of colonialisation continue to this day, and no treaty has been made with any Aboriginal peoples.
I urge those who wish to offer support to look up the following: ANTaR – antar.org.au
Healing Foundation – healingfoundation.org.au
Indigenous Literacy Foundation – indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au
acknowledgements
I am so grateful to those who have cheered on the writing of this book over the past five years. There is no way Devotion would have been written without your encouragement.