I know what it means now.
Thea was as a chink of light in a curtain. When I put my eye to her, the world beyond blazed.
When I finally fell into sleep that night, I dreamed of clothing. Christening gowns and embroidered collars and blouses. Sunday shirts and stockings and aprons, all strewn over our orchard, across the shingles, in the lane. I dreamed I wandered the empty village, wondering at it all. There was no one left, everyone had gone. They had gone to seek new freedoms, and these clothes belonged to them. It was a graveyard of garments. I made my way to the sty across from my bedroom and saw, with a sinking heart, a great pile heaped across its gate. I pulled the clothing off, at first gently, one piece at a time, and then in a great hurry until, finally, under them all, I found Thea’s headscarf knotted neatly around the top rail. As I untied it, a lock of pale hair fell into my palm and, just as quickly, was swept away by the wind.
I woke suddenly, my throat tight, chaff and husks from the torn mattress sticking to my hands. My bedsheets were tangled about me. It was morning; the light was grey and thin. I got out of bed and looked out the window.
There, perfectly balanced upon the gate post to the sty, was Thea’s river stone.
the kiss
Summer was truly upon us, each day longer than the last. All living things wrung the worth from every hour of daylight: trees twitched with leaf, wildflowers wrestled heads clear of uncut grass. No one bothered to cut down the dandelions and sow thistles that grew tall against fences. There was an understanding amongst the departing families that arrangements must be made as soon as possible so that we could leave before the ground shifted once more. The very real possibility that the passports would be revoked, permission rescinded on a whim, licked the days with urgency. Thea and I saw each other only at worship in the forest. It felt like coming up for breath after a week of drowning in chores.
Papa gave notice and a new family was found to take over our lease. I walked in the orchard and when I saw the growing fruit, I thought to myself, I will not be here when these pears bend the branches. The rye and ripe fruit and oats will all be cut and threshed and plucked by different hands, different families. We will be gone. We will be on the sea when the stalks fatten with grain.
Lists began to circulate amongst our congregation. Market days were flooded with families selling their laying hens and furniture. Mama and I began to make the trip weekly, selling what we could and returning with seeds, leather for boots and other necessities such as needles and sewing cotton. Christian Pasche had received further correspondence from Pastor Flügel, as well as letters from the agent of the Englishman financing the journey, and took it upon himself to remind all families of what must be procured and packed, and the woe awaiting those who did not bring sufficient belladonna, bed linen, adze heads and knife blades. Cloth and dry biscuits, bitters and brandy, scythes and saw teeth. It was not uncommon for us to step out in the morning and find him talking to Papa over the fence, loudly reciting all the items the pastor had recommended. Matthias and I took to imitating him under our breath.
‘And gold teeth and thimbles and nail scissors.’
‘Ja, do not be forgetting the nail scissors.’
‘And toothpicks. And match heads.’
‘And pickled pork and India ink.’
‘Or was that pickled ink and India pork?’
‘Bring both, just to be safe either way.’
When Thea’s father was tasked with building many of the necessary shipping chests, I volunteered to make the journey back and forth to the forester’s cottage with payment and instructions on behalf of our neighbours. Mama rolled her eyes when I told her, but nonetheless allowed me to help Thea deliver the heavy trunks to the homes in the village. We hauled them between us on their rope handles and talked breathlessly of preparations for the journey and the life that awaited us beyond. We were excited and unsettled: it was the first time in our lives that our days were not guided by seasons. Winter occupations, such as the unpicking and mending of clothes, were done in sunny doorways. Pigs that ought, by right, to have lived until autumn were snuffed in the fragrant dusk so that families might add to their ship supplies of cured foodstuffs and soap.
My own father made a summons for a Schweineschlachten soon after his announcement that we would leave. I was no stranger to pig slaughter, but I loved sweet-natured Hulda, who had given us several litters of piglets, and I did not want to be a part of her death.
‘Say it is your time,’ Thea urged me. We were lugging a chest down the slope to the village, the smell of fresh-planed wood lifting between us.