‘Don’t forget me,’ I said. I was breaking apart. ‘Thea, do not cast me out of your heart. Listen, listen, I know the word of God. “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is as strong as death.”’ I drew myself closer to her, I brought my voice to her ear. ‘“Jealousy is as cruel as the grave.”’
‘And so, as we celebrate these two young –’
‘“The coals thereof are coals of fire.”’ I buried my face in her neck, cried into the cloth that had been meant for my own wedding. ‘Thea, listen to me. Please hear me. “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it . . .”’ I brought my mouth close to hers. ‘“Thy love is better than wine. Honey and milk are under thy tongue.”’
‘Dorothea Anna Eichenwald . . .’
‘“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, upon thine arm.”’
‘Hans Reinhardt Pasche . . .’
‘“Love is as strong as death.”’ I kissed the shell between her fingers as she rose and tucked it into her palm. ‘“Love is as strong as death.”’ Heard the ocean issue from it as she was married. Eternal. Ancient.
‘“Love is as strong as death.” Remember, Thea. Remember me.’
She was ever my song of songs.
As Thea and Hans returned down the aisle, I was bled dry of all feeling. My vision swam. Some part of me was aware of the congregation leaning over each other to congratulate Hans, jubilant, laughing and shaking his hand. Thea smiled as the women bent towards her. The sound of voices lifting and falling washed over me in a discordant cadence and I closed my eyes to try to centre myself, to summon one single clear thought.
Let her go.
I could not move. I sank back on my heels, aware of Flügel shepherding everyone out into the soft morning light. His robes brushed past me. I closed my eyes and waited until silence descended and the church was finally empty. Then I laid down in the aisle.
‘Dear Lord, into your hands I commit my soul.’
No summons upon my spirit.
I looked up at the celestial body painted on the strung bedsheet above me.
No heavenly host. Only a long-limbed spider scurrying along, worrying the stretch of stars with frantic silhouette.
I left.
I did not keep the same direction. The sun was at once above me, now dawning to my right, now setting in the same place. Days and nights passed and though I kept moving – compulsively, urged on by some sense that I must place as much distance as possible between myself and Thea – I dwelled almost wholly within myself. I woke some nights and saw that the moon had changed and realised that it had waxed bold since its husking light the previous evening, and then I understood that I had forgotten the rhythm of days and they had bled by unnoticed. There was no handbell rung by Elder Pasche or Pastor Flügel to mark the time of day. No devotional services to begin the week. I felt neither chill nor sun, hunger nor thirst. My mind ran to a different measure; it forgot the steady turning of the earth.
I saw things. I saw the two Tiersmen kissing in their cabin. The cave of ochre and the shore that took the Ramindjeri woman home. I saw things that sickened me and aged me and made me weary of ongoing, but I continued. I didn’t know what else to do.
I thought of Thea and bled into trees. I did not care if they fell. I became birds so that I might explode with song and fill hollow bones with longing, and woke in sunshine, their feather-light bodies in my fingers. I crawled into a dingo for the satisfaction of blood on my tongue, when blood was all there was to meet my grief: holy beat of marsupial heart crunching into silence beneath my teeth. I blacked out in iron-rich ecstasies of woe and hunger, woke back into this world with blood on my chin and ears furred. I stroked them at night till they faded and I became once again myself, unbeating heart, unbreathing lungs. Just shadow quickening with love and memory of pale head bending to me, lips pressing her seal in the molten wax of my being.
Distance and time affected nothing upon my heart.
Years passed. I believed I had seen her for the last time. I thought our story was done.
And then. And then.
THE
THIRD
DAY
THEN
incarnations
Thea, in all incarnations, wherever my soul has resided, I have loved you, am loving you, will love you. If the earth one day burns out its charge, you will find me in the ash. If the sea dries, find me in its sand. Fingers forever writing your name in ash, in sand, over and over in a love-patterned wasteland.
tributary
It is nearly dawn now. The hour of the first birds and their summoning of light and warmth. I feel the night leaving over the edge of the world, like a tablecloth slipping to the ground.