‘She said I’d meet my ghost.’ Thea did not look at me. Her skin glowed in the firelight. ‘She says understanding comes to her in riddles, like that. Like poetry.’
‘Like when I hear the trees speak.’
‘It must be the way of mysteries.’
We fell into silence. Thea shuffled close to me and I felt her like a fire, warmer than anything flickering in the hearth. The groaning intensified, there was a low and guttural cry, then, seconds later, the wail of a newborn child. Thea looked at me, a smile spreading on her face, as footsteps sounded down the corridor and Anna Maria entered the room with the baby in her arms.
‘Hanne, hold your sister.’ Without waiting for my reply she gently placed the baby, crumpled and waxen and crying, in my arms and then, glancing at Thea with tight lips, returned to the bedroom.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked Thea. ‘Is it Mama?’
‘I’m sure she will be well,’ Thea said. ‘Try not to worry. No, don’t get up. My mother has been doing this since she was my age. Here,’ she said softly. ‘Give her your little finger to suck on.’
I did as she suggested, and Thea smiled at my astonishment. ‘She’s so strong,’ I said, gazing down at the tiny, working mouth. In the quiet I heard Anna Maria’s voice sound from the room, low and rhythmic and loud.
‘Ich ging über eine Brücke, Worunter drei Str?me liefen.’
‘What is she doing?’ I whispered. ‘Why is she talking about a bridge?’
Thea said nothing, only stroked the damp wisp of hair on the baby’s head.
‘Der erste hies Gut, Der zweite hies Blut, Der dritte hies Eipipperjahn, Blut du sollst stille Stahl. In Namen Gottes, Javeh.’
‘“Blood you shall be silent”？’ I asked, panic striking through me. ‘Is Mama bleeding? Thea, what is Anna Maria saying?’
Thea opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She gave me a heavy look. ‘My mother, she . . .’
The baby broke away from my finger and, mouth wide, chin shaking, began to cry again.
‘What is she saying, Thea?’ I was on the cusp of tears myself.
‘It’s like a prayer,’ Thea said. She reached for my sister and placed her own finger in the baby’s mouth. ‘It’s like a prayer,’ she said again. ‘It is a prayer. A prayer of healing. In the name of God.’
At that moment Papa and Matthias returned indoors and, seeing Thea holding the child, approached us wide-eyed. Thea offered the baby up to Papa and, as he held her in his arms, I saw that his good eye was filled with tears. He cupped her tiny skull in his hands and looked at me.
‘How is Mutter?’
There was the sound of a door opening and a moment later Anna Maria entered the room, wiping blood from her forearms with a balled-up apron that seemed just as red. As my stomach dropped, Anna Maria offered a wide smile, teeth shining in the low light. ‘All is well.’
‘Johanne?’ My father’s voice was oddly thin, as though it might snap in half.
Anna Maria nodded. ‘She lost some blood, but’ – she glanced at Thea – ‘I was able to stop it. With the help of the Lord.’
‘Praise His name,’ said my father, and tears slipped from his cheeks to the crying baby in his arms. ‘Praise His name.’
stones into water
I have been thinking about the dead up here. Already the light is growing rich and the sun is sinking below the horizon. Already a day is nearly gone. I think about all the bodies buried with the heads facing east, the better to greet Christ. All the sunsets they are missing.
In the congregation it was customary to give the dead an opportunity for resurrection. Three days for the body to rise, as Jesus’s did, and then, when it did not, they made space in the earth and laid the unrisen to rest until the time trumpets sound and all four corners of the world are shaken like a sheet to upend the buried, so that their sins might be tallied and the chosen called home. Home to silver orchards. Holy honey and magdalen milk.
The three days lent a sort of cruelty to Gottlob’s passing. Seven weeks of dying in bed and even then he had to wait to be buried. I hardly remember those three days, only that the flowers placed in his coffin by visitors wilted within the hour.
I do remember the seven weeks.
Gottlob never opened his eyes again after he fell. He was insensible to the world. Still, it took him some time to die. Hans took Otto to his new farm in Skampe and my father was released from prison at Züllichau in time for harvest. Without a horse and without Gottlob, harvesting took twice as long, and so Mama and Matthias joined Papa to bring in the crop. I was suddenly responsible for cooking my family’s meals, for washing their clothes and keeping house. When I was not doing these things, Mama made me sit sentry over my elder brother’s body.