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?’