Thea sighed. ‘Hanne?’
I’ll name my daughter for you.
I closed my eyes, heartsore.
‘Everything feels so wrong.’
‘A pig knows you have betrayed it,’ I murmured.
Her voice was a hot whisper in the dark. ‘It’s as though I don’t know who I am. There is no one here to remind me who I am.’
‘I love you, Thea,’ I whispered. ‘I know who you are.’
The next day, Elder Pasche greeted the Eichenwalds as they entered the yard, turning from where he was sharpening his knife. ‘That’s the one,’ he said, pointing the blade to a long-bristled fattening pig separated from its fellows. ‘Hans!’
Hans emerged from the house followed by Rosina. ‘Well then, are we ready?’ she asked.
Christian tested the blade on the hairs of his arm. ‘Ready,’ he muttered.
Rosina passed Anna Maria a whisk and motioned for Thea to come and take the pail by her feet.
Thea did not move. She had drawn away from the sty and looked waxen with dread.
‘Thea,’ Anna Maria said patiently.
‘I feel a little . . .’ Thea shook her head at her mother.
‘Pick it up,’ Anna Maria said.
Thea did so, all the while staring at the pig. A memory of her on the Kristi came back to me.
Hanne, talk to me. Sing to me. Tell me something.
I began to hum, then. I let my voice join the song coming to me from the ground – that old, chordal note of earth – and turned from Thea to the creature, whose own piggish sound was lifting off its back like steam. A body hymn to the warmth of hot-bellied brothers, earflap snuffle of mother nipple against wet snout. I hummed it all, and as I did, I felt a scattering. I felt a fluttering within myself. Everything around me blurred except the pig, which was now before me in exceptional clarity. I could see each bristle as it caught the sun, see the tiny pupils widen. The gleam on the snout. It was before me, iridescent, this pig now running, now fleeing. And as I felt myself fade into the air, the pig grew spectacular. I not only saw it, I heard it in a way I had never heard a pig. The hammer-heart of it, yes, but the blood-rushing too, and the gurgle of the empty stomach. I could hear the knocking of gristle and the clap of mud between toes and the air-suck of lungs taking breath. Frightened breaths. For I felt it then, the fear coursing through the pig. It was my own fear, too. It was ours. And suddenly, those small pupils were my own, too, and we saw mud and reaching hands, and felt our heat pushing out against the chill of autumn air.
I was the pig.
We were the pig.
We stopped running. We were a marvel.
We were weight and it was good. The slick of mud upon our stomach was a cool lick of blessedness. We wanted more. We wanted to loll in it, feel the wet bliss of earth against us. But the smells! We could smell it all. It was humus, fungi in dark places. It was eucalyptus burning spicy under cauldrons of puffing grain. The sun smelled like grass, smelled like living things. Skin and curdled milk – good things! Pap of soured vegetables, human breath, and castings from the worms below us. Smoke. Split rock and clay.
There was laughter and exclamation. Then hands grabbed us and elation rushed me. Hands, human hands! To be touched. It had been so long. And then, tears. Real tears, at the feel of muscled arms around us. I remembered what it was for skin to be addressed with skin, remembered the smallness of my hand in the sturdiness of my papa’s, Matthias’s shoulder against mine in the wagon. I was so happy to feel the life of another, pressing against our pig self, and I realised I had hungered for this, in death: to feel and be felt. How glorious, the press of flesh.
We looked into the faces of the people about us. They were all so beautiful. Foreheads shining in the soft afternoon light, chests heaving. Hands stroked our side, and pleasure was everywhere. There was Hans. He looked at Thea, smiled and shrugged. We had no reason to run from the touching. We wanted the moment to last forever. I had forgotten how wide men’s hands are, the strength in their hard palms. But they were gentle with us. They were glad to catch their breath. Hans took a rope and we felt him knot it about our leg and secure us to the fence. In that moment we believed he did not desire to hurt us.
‘Good pig.’
We felt his voice reverberating in his hands. He rubbed our ears and we leaned into him, felt his feet stumble under the surprise of our heft. There was laughter.
‘You have the knack, Hans.’ Friedrich’s voice. ‘He’s taken a liking to you.’
We were petted, stroked. Quick-bit nails scratched our glorious body. We closed our eyes. This was rapture. To be touched with love and our snout filled with all the livingness of earth. We felt a sudden yearning for milk.