‘With the sixth book.’
‘And she came?’
‘Yes. Hans saw her too. She was with us.’
Anna Maria picked up Thea’s folded hands. ‘Thea, was this a dream? Did she come to you in a dream?’
‘Not in a dream. I was awake,’ Thea whispered. ‘She looked older. My age. She was standing just there. And then I couldn’t see her anymore, but I could feel her.’
‘I wondered . . .’
‘What?’
‘I felt a presence one night. A searching. A searching for you.’ Anna Maria placed her hand over Thea’s stomach. ‘You felt her here?’
Thea shook her head. ‘I felt her everywhere.’ She began to laugh, fingers over her mouth. ‘The next day I thought I had gone mad. I had been so lonely, I wondered if I had dreamed her.’
‘Does it matter if you did?’
‘Yes! Yes, I need to know it happened. I need to know that she’s with me. Like you once said she might be.’
‘What does it matter to your life, Thea?’ asked Anna Maria gently. She gestured to Thea’s stomach. ‘What would it change?’
Thea placed a hand over her heart. ‘Everything.’
Thea went into labour three nights later, just as a storm arrived with torrential rain that sank the yard into mud and a wind that threatened to lift the thatch. By the time she was leaning over the bed, eyes scrunched tight each time the pain moved through her, thunder was booming so loudly I felt it in my lungs.
Anna Maria was laughing to herself. ‘What a night this child has picked.’
Hans nailed cloth over the little window to keep out most of the wet, and then sat in front of the fire, pale and anxious, piling log after log onto the flames.
‘Hans, this isn’t a fever,’ said Anna Maria. ‘You can’t sweat a baby out.’
‘I’ll go,’ he said, standing up. ‘Check on the animals.’
There was a flicker of lightning outside. A flash under the door.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Thea gasped. ‘You’ll drown in this.’ Another contraction seized her and she groaned and pushed her face into the mattress.
Anna Maria rubbed Thea’s back. ‘Let him go make himself busy. You’ll be a little while yet.’
Thea turned around, wide-eyed. ‘Is something wrong?’
Her mother smiled. ‘Not at all, my daughter.’
The night passed in an endless outpouring of sound. Hans returned, drenched through, and reluctantly fell asleep by the fire after Anna Maria assured him all was as it should be. I marvelled that the relentless drumming of rain did not wake him. At some point in the near-dawn, as Thea was telling her mother she could not do this, that she would not, I went outside, and it seemed to me that the sky was the sea, that the world had swung upside down and the oceans, now above us in smoky, steeled darkness, were falling upon the earth in revelations of water.
I tilted my face to the sky and opened my mouth, and the sea was upon my tongue.
He was perfect. I watched from the doorway as the baby, his voice all tender vibration of need, was lifted onto Thea’s chest. As she nursed him, Hans and Anna Maria sat on the bed beside her and offered up gratitude to God, each word holding their relief and joy.
‘Johann,’ Thea said, as they lifted their heads from prayer. ‘His name is Johann.’
The rain stopped as he was born, as though it had served only to herald his coming.
I waited until they were all asleep before I stepped to the little wooden bassinet beside the bed.
I was in awe of him. So soon come from the place of creation, he seemed to shiver with the mystery of life. I brought my face to his, heard the strange noises he made, his small, light, rapid breathing.
I placed my palm on his chest, noticed the eyelashes not yet unfurled.
In his sleep the child mouthed at his blanket and, finding no sustenance there, crumpled into a kittenish cry. I stood and saw that Thea was already pulling herself out of bed, hands already reaching for his body. She pulled at her nightgown and brought him to her breast, arms crossed beneath him, eyes half closed, as he set to nursing with little grunts.
I marvelled at him and, in that moment, knew him as my own.
ordinary divinity
The winter passed in milk and love, wet cloths strung before the fire, sleep broken-backed. News travelled to Heiligendorf, and the women of the congregation walked to the cottage with food and gifts and clothing. Anna Maria visited as often she was able, knocking on the door and sweeping in with salves and food and offers to hold the baby so that Thea might sleep. Mother and daughter spent nights going through the Seventh Book of Moses, Anna Maria telling Thea which cures she had found best when Thea was a child. ‘You should plant an oak tree,’ she told Thea. ‘A young oak will be good for broken bones.’