In Search of Anna

by Valerie Volk

  ‘Carl’s sister has come to help him. The older girls, Elsa and Adelina, assist with work inside and outside when they are not at school. It is a household where everyone works hard.’

  ‘There are a number of children?’

  ‘Six, if you include the baby—little Fritz, they call him. Also girls come from nearby farms to work when they are needed. It is the way things are done here. And there are other workers, but no one who understands machinery. Carl is a progressive man who wants to use the new inventions on his land.’

  ‘I think I see why you would have found a place here. Always machinery. Any steam engines here?’

  I laughed but Kurt took the question seriously.

  ‘There are huge opportunities in this land for steam, Mutti. Landholdings are vast. One could develop all sorts of steam machines to help farmers.’

  ‘Land instead of sea?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps. It could be done.’

  ‘You would like to stay with him in this country? What about your homeland, and your work with ships?’

  He paused and reflected. ‘I think that last voyage on the Hohenzollern has cured me of a love of ships. I do not want to go to sea again. Can you understand?’

  I did understand. The experience had been a nightmare for him. I was beginning to realise that he now saw his future in this land, not at home with me. And still I had not told him anything of home, not even his father’s death, nothing of his sister. That was another life, one that he had put behind him. Or had the beating blotted out that life, I wondered.

  ‘Then, you wish to stay with Herr Bergmann?’

  ‘It’s interesting that you ask. In fact, I felt my work with him was done, and that he needed me no longer. So I had decided to move on.’

  ‘You haven’t changed. Always the wish to move on!’

  He shrugged. ‘I know. There is always the feeling that better prospects are elsewhere.’

  ‘It’s an American proverb, Kurt. The grass is greener over the next hill.’

  ‘Well, it’s how I feel. American?’

  ‘Yes, I recall the Countess telling me about it. She said it’s a much older idea, and comes from a Latin poet. Ovid, I think.’

  He ignored this diversion. ‘I’d always planned to move on. I was making for Queensland, where a shipboard friend told me there were German colonies and good prospects.’

  ‘I think you told me this plan.’

  ‘Actually, more than a plan. I’d said my farewells to Carl and had set off up the road with my swag.’

  ‘Swag?’

  It’s what they call it here. Your bedding and equipment. The men who wander around the countryside looking for work are called swagmen.’

  ‘And that’s what you were going to do?’

  ‘It’s how I got here. If you’re willing to work, there are always jobs available. Sometimes a day or two, sometimes longer. You get your keep and a little bit of pay if you’re lucky.’

  ‘You said you’d set off.’

  ‘I can hardly believe it. I know you’ll see it as God’s hand—’ my son smiled indulgently, ‘—and I almost agree. That day, just after I’d set out, Carl went to the post office where his copy of the paper, the Albury Banner, was waiting. He took it home to read with his morning coffee—and there saw your notice in Missing Friends, asking me to get in touch with you in Melbourne.’

  It seemed incredible. Such an unlikely chance. He went on.

  ‘Carl says he shouted out to his sister, “Magda, that’s the young chap who’s been working here. His mother’s in Melbourne, and she’s looking for him.” ’

  I was listening in disbelief.

  ‘So she said, “Go after him!” And he did. Got on his horse and chased me all the way to Walbundrie. Gave me a tongue lashing when he found me,’ he said. ‘Asked me what I thought I was doing, making you come hunting for me. Put me on his horse and brought me back. Sat me down and made me ride the four miles to the post office with the letter before sundown.’

  There was nothing I could say. It was a remarkable story. If it hadn’t been my son telling me I would not have believed it.

  ‘I owe him a huge debt. Without him …’ I could not finish.

  We travelled in silence.

  The countryside had changed. The horses were labouring now, up hills that were no longer pastureland, but uncleared bush country. This was the ‘bush’ that they had told me of in Melbourne, and more like the ranges I had seen there. The road was rough and rutted, and I could imagine that in winter it could become impassable. Tall gum trees lined the route, and filled the valleys and patterned the hills with their green and grey. So different from home, and yet strangely beautiful. I could imagine winter bringing a carpet of green under the trees but now, in summer’s heat, all was brown and yellow, with tall dead grasses drooping in the early evening warmth. Shadows were lengthening as sundown approached.

  It was December, surely a time of snow and chill. I had trouble adjusting my thinking in this world of reversals. Soon it would be Christmas. How could one have a Christmas without snow? I pondered where my Christmas would be. My search for Kurt was at an end, what would follow? Strange that I had never looked beyond finding my son, never contemplated if this was to be the end of searching. A wave of affection swept over me, and I touched his arm.

  ‘I am so happy to have found you,’ I began.

  He looked at me with the love I had come to depend on. ‘And I, too, believe me. We have a lot of talking to do. Not today. Let us just enjoy the fact that we are together again.’

  I nodded. Now we were through the hills. ‘Is it much further?’ I asked.

  ‘That road was Jindera Gap. A gap in the mountains enabling the road makers to construct a route. This is the way the settlers came, bringing their covered wagons from South Australia. Whole families of them, opening up this land and making small villages like those at home.’

  ‘Do the Bergmanns live in a village?’

  ‘No. First we go through Jindera—we are getting used to the new name. When early explorers came, it was called Dight’s Forest. Hamilton Hume named it after his friend John Dight, and for many years, even when our countrymen came, that was the name for the settlement. Then four years ago the name was changed to Jindera.’

  ‘Where did that name come from?’

  ‘No one is sure. Some say it was a native word from the tribes who lived here; others say it was just a made-up word. We don’t know.’

  ‘The Bergmanns have been here a long time?’

  ‘Yes, Carl’s father was one of the first, he tells me. For three years, groups of settlers came from South Australia. They had arrived in that colony hopefully, but the best land was settled, so they decided to try elsewhere.’

  ‘Surely a brave decision, with families to care for.’

  ‘His father brought them here in 1868—it’s odd to think that I was only a child of two back then.’

  For a moment I was back in Lewin with a little girl of four playing with her small brother, and Otto, young, strong and fit, coming home from Glatz at the end of a train-driving shift, to a wife who had never given him her heart. I would always blame myself for our lives together. I should not have married him. But if I had not, there would have been no Kurt beside me today, travelling through this southern land in the December sunshine. It was time to tell him.

  Kurt did not seem surprised to hear of Otto’s death.

  ‘It is sad to say. I cannot feel grief. And I somehow knew it. You would not be here if he were still alive. You would not have deserted him, no matter what he did.’

  It was true. None of it would wipe out the past, and we both knew it. Even my words about Otto’s dying message to Kurt could make little difference. At least he could hold that thought and perhaps one day forgive his father.

  ‘So is this Jindera?’

  I was surprised as we entered the village. I might almost have been at home. Elm trees, twenty years old and flourishing in this southern climate, li
ned the main street, set out as it would have been in my own land, with houses that might well have been in Schlesien. Small places, some with just wattle and daub walls, others whitewashed and more prosperous looking. A mixture, and thriving. At least four hotels, one of them a square rugged two-storey building that looked long established.

  Kurt’s eyes followed my gaze. ‘The Dight’s Forest Hotel.’ He commented, ‘That one is very popular.’

  I could see a substantial general store, with a familiar name over the verandah. Wagners. Also a butchery. Then a flour mill. A post office.

  Kurt indicated. ‘The Misses Spence. The postmistresses—and communications experts. They are the most efficient circulators of news in the village. They know everything that happens—and then so does everyone else.’

  We smiled at each other. ‘In a few years so much has been achieved.’

  There was little time to gaze around for shadows were now falling, and we had four miles to go. Kurt turned the horses to a side road and the track became still rougher.

  ‘There are a number of farms along the Four Mile Creek Road,’ he said.

  ‘Across the fields?’

  ‘Here they are called paddocks,’ he told me.

  ‘Paddocks.’ Another new word for me to try. ‘And those are farm houses?’

  ‘In this community we all know each other. And everyone knows everyone else’s business. By tonight the whole area will be aware that Bergmann’s man has a mother visiting from Germany. You will be famous.’

  ‘That I can do without,’ I said drily.

  ‘Ah, but wait until you go to church on Sunday …’

  I was surprised. ‘You go to church here?’

  ‘Everyone goes to church. These people came to the colonies for the sake of their religion. They are not likely to abandon it now.’

  ‘So they are Lutheran.’

  ‘Oh yes. Not just one sort of Lutheran. They might have escaped the state church the King wanted to enforce in Prussia, but that stubborn-mindedness has led to further divisions. They take dogma seriously.’

  I was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They fled Prussia for freedom of religion, but here they cannot agree on exactly what they believe. In this tiny place we have two Lutheran churches, from the two main synods established in South Australia.’

  ‘You are surely not serious. Two Lutheran churches in this Jindera.’

  ‘And in all the other settlements in the area. Oh yes. At least both groups send their children to the one school. That was the first thing they did in 1868. Only a log cabin, but they built a school.’

  ‘That has always been central in our faith. Church and school—they go together. Yet two churches! Such foolishness.’

  ‘I can explain all this later. We are at the Bergmanns.’

  By now the light had almost faded, but the animals knew where they were going, so we had not used the lanterns in the wagon. Ahead I could see the dim outlines of a house. No, of two houses. An older one, crouching white under massive overhanging trees. Then, beside it, separated by what looked like a garden, a newer house, a red brick square. From its windows, lamps cast a welcoming glow. As the wagon came to a stop, a door opened, and I saw a dark figure silhouetted against the rectangle of light, then come across the verandah toward us.

  ‘There is Carl,’ said Kurt unnecessarily. ‘We are home.’

  And, for an oddly comforting moment, I had a sense that he was right.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jindera, New South Wales, 1889

  How different my life has become, caught up these last weeks at Bergmann’s farm. Or, Lobethal, the valley of praise, as I am learning to call it. It was the word the old man, the Bergmann father, used when he brought his wagons and his family to this untouched country twenty years ago.

  They tell the story quite reverently, of how the man, strong and in his prime, gathered his children and his workmen and gave thanks to God for this land even before the wagons were unloaded and the first trees cut for the huts they would build. It will be, he told them, a place of praise to the good Lord who had brought them safely here.

  Yes, brought here safely perhaps. He did not foresee that a mere two years later he would be carried on his wagon to the new graveyard they had established near the first church, a church he had built with his countrymen in the Dight’s Forest settlement. Nor that his son Carl, still in his twenties, would inherit not just the land they were clearing and the house they were building, but also the mother he would now have to care for. The older sons were already gone, taking up land for themselves and the families they were creating, while Carl was left with his Valley of Praise to establish.

  ‘My father’s dream,’ he said to me one night as we sat after supper in the big kitchen of the New House. ‘I knew I had to make it what he had wanted.’

  ‘You were such a young man,’ I protested. ‘It was a lot to undertake.’

  ‘He died so young,’ he meditated. ‘There was so much he wanted to achieve here. Even when he lay dying under the tree that had felled him—’

  ‘So it was an accident that killed him?’

  ‘Ja, genau. Clearing the back paddocks. It’s strange that he could have let this happen. He was a good woodsman. But even the best can make mistakes.’

  We sat silent a moment, while he drew on his pipe.

  ‘I was with him as he died. It was his last wish, with the little breath he could draw. “Make it a true Lobethal, my son.” I have tried.’

  ‘And so you have done. What you have achieved here is … I do not know what word to use. Not just the Old House, now this new one too. And the land you have cleared and sown, the size of your flocks, all this. Did your brothers help?’

  ‘When they could. They too were making their homes and had their families to care for. I think they were happy to know our mother would stay here with me.’

  I must have looked my enquiry.

  ‘She was not an easy woman to live with,’ he admitted. ‘None of their wives would have taken her in. I had none, so was willing to accept her for what she did for me. Without her those early years would have been more difficult.’

  ‘And you? Then you married?’

  ‘Against her wishes. She said she would never share her household with another woman. Indeed it would have been a miserable existence, for Frieda also was a strong-willed woman. We built this new brick house to be our home.’

  ‘Forgive me. I had thought your wife’s name was Eda.’

  I spoke tentatively, lest talking of the wife who had died in the last year might be painful for him. It did not seem so.

  ‘No, Eda was my second wife. Frieda was the mother of my children—except of course for Friedemann, who came as Eda died. In childbirth. He was our first child.’

  As if in answer to the sound of his name, there came the sound of crying from the next room, and Carl went to check. He returned with the child in his arms, where he settled and looked sleepily around the kitchen.

  ‘It’s a strange thing,’ he sighed, bringing the infant to his chair in the firelight. ‘I married Eda, God forgive me, to have a mother for my children. Now I have one more child and again no wife. If it were not for Magda, I would have even more problems to deal with.’

  ‘You did not marry for love?’

  ‘Eda was little more than a child herself. Only twenty years of age. She had worked here for Frieda, and I knew she would be a good housekeeper. There were reasons to marry, and the children seemed to like her. It seemed a solution to the problems when Frieda died.’

  ‘Sometimes solutions do not work for the best,’ I said. The picture of my wedding day with Otto was clear in my mind, and the picture of my wedding night.

  Carl looked at me. ‘You speak feelingly.’

  ‘Some day I will tell you about myself. Not tonight. When you married Eda, you must have still been grieving, surely, for your first wife. It was so soon after her death, and I think that you had cared for her throughout her
long illness.’

  He shrugged. ‘True. I think I was exhausted. And so fearful for the children. I should not have made such a mistake again.’

  ‘A mistake?’

  He patted the child, sleeping once more, and ran a ruminative hand down the trim dark beard with its streaks of grey. ‘You said I was grieving. That is not so.’

  I stayed silent. Questioning seemed intrusive. If he wanted to speak on, he would.

  ‘I do not know why I am telling you this. I would like to be truthful. I was sad, yes. Frieda and I had been together for fourteen years. We had worked together. We had lived together. We had six living children, and the ones we had lost. She was a good woman, and I think she cared for me.’

  He paused, and remembered, for a time.

  ‘I should not have married her. It was her sister I loved. Her younger sister. It was Maria I loved, uselessly. Her heart was already taken. And Frieda and I were both getting older, and we wanted children. Perhaps she loved me. I know only that the affection I had for her was nothing like what I felt when I was with Maria. I should have listened to my heart. Instead, we married.’

  ‘How did your mother feel about it?’

  ‘She stayed in the old house, and would not move into this place with us. I think she knew she would be no match for Frieda. She died there. Perhaps it was her punishment for me.’

  ‘Your marriage?’ I asked tentatively. ‘You were happy in it?’

  ‘We were comfortable together, but she understood more than I realised. After she died I found that she had destroyed all pictures of Maria in the big Bible.’

  The child stirred, and Carl carried him carefully back to the cot in the next room before returning. ‘I should not have burdened you with all this. I do not usually talk about my life in this way.’

  ‘Sometimes it is good to talk. Now I must go to bed. The children wake early.’

  I took my candle and moved through the flickering shapes it cast on the hall walls until I reached the guestroom at the front of the house. The water in the blue-and-white-patterned jug at the washstand was still warm and I sent silent thanks to Elsa, whose nightly chore it was to take the water to the bedrooms. I paused as I washed my face, and ran a finger around the scalloped edge of the matching washbasin. How had I come to be having such a conversation with a man I had only known for three weeks?