In Search of Anna

by Valerie Volk

  There they were. Hanna, stouter than when I last saw her, and standing behind her a Franz who seemed older and more fragile than when last I saw him. Hanna, at thirty, was still Otto’s daughter, with her heavy-set features and curly dark hair. On her knee she held the little one, Fredericka, no longer a baby but a sturdy three-year-old, while beside her stood Theo and Liesel. I studied their faces earnestly. No matter how closely I scrutinised them, I could see little trace of myself. Were these indeed my grandchildren? Where was my sense of grandmotherly devotion? They were strangers.

  ‘Ah!’ I could imagine Hanna’s reproaches, the ones I had heard so many times. ‘If they were Kurt’s children …’

  I had to accept the truth. Kurt’s children delighted me, and they were always welcome at Lobethal. For Dieter and Rolf it was a pleasure to come to Papa Carl, as they called him, and with infinite patience he whittled toys for them, and took them on rabbiting hunts and fishing in the dam. Or rode them on his knees, as they bounced up and down to the old familiar German rhymes.

  ‘Hoppe!’ they would beg on arrival, running to him. And ‘Kuchen, bitte, Oma’ to me. Carl would patiently listen to the squeals of excitement as they rode up and down on his leg joining in the familiar words—Hoppe, hoppe, Reiter, Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er—and waiting, in half-fearful excitement for the downward plunge when he reached the last line: Macht der Reiter plumps! He would then open his knees to let them swoop gently to the floor. Over and over, until an exhausted Carl shook his head and said firmly that the horse was tired and the ride was over.

  ‘Off to Oma, boys!’ and they would come to raid the cake and biscuit tins I kept filled for them.

  With me it was drawing and writing at the big kitchen table, where I took delight in three-year-old Dieter’s first attempts to write letters of the alphabet and his little brother’s colourful scribbles. Somewhere, buried deep inside me, were the memories of Froebel and the kindergarten movement that had so fascinated me when Hanna and Kurt were young. I shook my head, amused, recalling that I had once thought I might even have liked to become a teacher in one of his ‘children’s gardens’—how long ago and how foolish such dreams now seemed. Now I found myself trying to put in practice some of his ideas.

  I knew that when they got home Emma would shake her head and say to Kurt, ‘Your mother spoils those boys!’ I told myself that there was little spoiling in their home and it made coming to us a nice change for them.

  Soon there would be a third baby in the family and they would need the new house they were building near the blacksmith’s shop. It was fortunate that Kurt’s work was prospering. Working with Emma’s father had taught him many new skills, but his basic love was still the possibilities of steam, and I had seen his wife’s tight-lipped face at the hours he spent reading in the small office at the side of his works. Understandably, it lightened when his new inventions, like the stripping machine for harvesting he had made for Carl, became well known, and orders flooded in from neighbours.

  He was becoming known for his work with steam engines in a small way, and even the wealthiest landowners in the area called on his expertise. That too satisfied his wife, and made her involvement in the works more acceptable than the hours she saw him spending on other inventions.

  ‘Do you think they are happy?’ I raised the question yet again with Carl as we sat reading together. He sighed. It was a familiar discussion, and he marked his place before putting down Jane Eyre. He was reading the classic literature that I so loved, and we spent many hours debating the questions these books raised.

  ‘In their own way, yes. She will never feel for him what she once felt for her first love, yet she is a good wife and mother. And Kurt has what he wanted, the woman he adored.’

  ‘They say in every marriage there is one who loves, and one who is loved.’

  ‘Do they indeed, beloved? And what do you say? Is it so with us?’

  I smiled fondly at this man, so utterly dear to me. ‘Whoever said that did not have what we have. I think—I believe—that we would be hard-pressed to say who loves more. We seem to be equal, balanced in our feelings.’

  ‘Then let us just be thankful for that, and hope that Kurt and Emma may have even a measure of our happiness.’

  It perturbed me, and I felt uneasy when I caught sight of my son watching his wife with an almost baffled yearning on his face.

  There was no one I could talk to about it and, at times, I missed Lydia. To have a friend from childhood, a person to share memories with … such a treasure. While I now had new friends in the village, for I had joined the ladies of the church, it was not the same as a friend who had known me all my life.

  These women had thawed gradually, as they had come to realise that my way of life, as Carl’s wife, was the same as theirs. Carl too had joined the Progress Association, and had returned to music with the village band. When the Albury Banner reported on life in local communities, his name would frequently be found in accounts of meetings, or plans for the new Institute. Kurt’s name was there too, for he had realised that being part of the community was important.

  ‘Important to Emma,’ he remarked, when I commented on his new civic presence.

  ‘Do not interfere!’ Carl warned me. ‘It is their life, and you cannot change it.’

  I knew he was right; I should not meddle. This is not interfering, I convinced myself. Yet, when I took flowers to the cemetery for the grave of one of the women who had been quick to welcome me, I chose a time with care. A time when I thought I might well meet with my daughter-in-law on her regular pilgrimage. A time when I thought there might be a chance to talk to her alone, without children, husbands, friends around—and not easy to find.

  ‘Mother Anna,’ she said, with surprise.

  ‘I’ve brought some flowers for Gerda Klinge’s grave,’ I said quickly. ‘She was good to me when I first came. Many others saw me as an intruder in those days.’

  ‘Now you are so much part of the community.’

  ‘I feel very much at home. As does Kurt. Mainly because he is married to you.’

  There was silence. A silence that became more pointed as I watched her continue her task, emptying the dead flowers from the urn on the Count’s grave, and changing the stale water for fresh from the tank stand.

  ‘You do this every week?’ I asked.

  ‘Always.’ The air between us was heavy with unspoken thoughts. Finally she asked: ‘Do you disapprove?’

  ‘No, my dear. I can understand. How does Kurt feel about it?’

  ‘He says that it does not concern him. That it is simply honouring the past and what we have now is the present.’

  ‘But is it?’

  I knew the question was intrusive, and I wonder now that I had the courage—no, the audacity—to ask it. I knew what Carl would have said.

  The young woman eyed me steadily for a moment. She did not appear to resent the question, but to be considering her response.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you are a very honest person. And an honourable one. I believe you would not have married Kurt if you had not thought you could be a good wife to him. And you are.’

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘I too have lost someone dear to me, and clung to that memory for many years, so I can understand why you come here each week.’

  Emma looked at me in some surprise. ‘Forgive me, Mother Anna. I had understood from Kurt that your marriage was often difficult—unhappy, even. I am sorry if this is wrong, or if I am offending you.’

  ‘No, child. You are right, and Kurt has told you the truth. In fact, he probably doesn’t know how bad it was. I was not speaking of my husband.’

  She looked up from her flower arrangement in surprise.

  ‘I am not going to tell you a lot about my earlier life—that’s no longer important. Before I was married, when I was very young, younger than you were, I was deeply in love with someone who loved me. Like you and Kurt zu Stolberg.’
r />   For a moment she looked up in rejection of the idea that anyone’s love could have been like hers. She said nothing.

  ‘He left me. No, he did not die. In some ways it is worse to be abandoned, I think. I’d loved him so much. He became the focus of my emotions. I couldn’t forget what I’d had. Maybe I made it bigger than it actually was, I don’t know. I didn’t want to forget; to let it go.’

  Emma nodded thoughtfully. ‘It seems like a betrayal.’

  ‘Not really. I let it mar my whole marriage because I could not forget him. And probably because I married the wrong man. I couldn’t love my husband.’

  ‘I do love your son, Mother Anna. Yet I feel I can’t abandon what I had before. That it would be wrong.’

  ‘You don’t have to abandon it. That’s what I’ve discovered. Finally, only here, with Carl. I know I can keep the place I had for my long-lost love, but still move on and love just as deeply, just as intensely, another man. And it doesn’t seem wrong.’

  ‘Do you really believe that? That you can love again, just as much as before?’

  ‘What I’ve learned is that you don’t measure love by quantity. As if it’s—this much for you, and this much for you, and—oh dear—I think we’ve run out!

  The younger woman laughed. ‘I think I see what you mean.’

  ‘You must have loved him very much.’

  The girl’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I did. I still do. It was so romantic—we met in Albury, and we both knew, at once, how we felt. You have heard that he followed me here to be close to me?’

  ‘Yes. I can understand what it must have been like.’

  ‘He was so charming, so civilised. He knew the whole of Europe, and yet he wanted me.’

  It was so reminiscent of my own experience that it was almost painful. ‘He loved you enough to want to marry you.’

  ‘And then I think he would have taken me away from all this.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted?’

  ‘Yes. No. Oh, I just don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if that was what I loved. That he was so different from everyone here. He knew a bigger world, and I could have been part of it. It was more than that, though. I did love him too—I really did.’

  ‘You can still love and honour your Count. But there’s nothing wrong with also loving Kurt. It’s not a betrayal. Just a recognition that love is an expanding emotion. There’s more to go around than you’ve realised. He needs to feel this too.’

  She had finished with the flowers. ‘Do you think I should stop doing this?’

  ‘No, not at all. Then you would feel you’d abandoned someone important to you. Just make sure that Kurt knows how much you love him too.’

  She got to her feet. ‘I think you are a wise woman. I’m glad you came here today. You have given me much to think about.’

  When I confessed to Carl what I had done, he shook his head. ‘You’re a risk-taker, Anna. I love you for it. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be here now.’

  There were more risks to take in the coming year. For when the new Anna was born, and my little namesake was put in my arms, I dared to ask my son about his marriage.

  ‘She’s a fine woman,’ he said. ‘A great manager, and an excellent mother. And look at all the good she does in the village. If there’s anything to be organised, who do they ask to do it? Emma Werner! She’s always the first one asked.’

  He was rattling on, but not telling me what I wanted to know.

  ‘Are you happy, Kurt?’

  ‘What is “happy”? I have my children—look at this little one, our own little Anna—and I have my work. And I am married to a good woman who cares for me. Why would I not be happy?’

  ‘Is this what most marriages are?’ I asked Carl that night, as we lay entwined in the big bed. ‘Is that what happens to most couples—why would I not be happy?’

  He drew me closer. ‘What we have is something special. How long is it now since you came into my life? Just five years, and I look back on all the time before as a desert.’

  I nestled closer to him. ‘Tell me more. I love it when you tell me.’

  ‘Greedy! Well, if I lived in a desert, you, my dearest, have brought the water. And now I’m flourishing.’

  So too was Lobethal. After the hard time of the early nineties, conditions were improving again, and Carl’s face was serene as he went through his account books. Our lives moved to the rhythm of the seasons, and I looked with pride on the rows of jars in the cavernous cellar under the house. Rows of golden peaches and orange apricots, the deep red of cherries, and the big barrels of salted beans and cucumbers put away for the winter months.

  In the Old House kitchen we sliced the sausages that came out of the smoke house, the reward for the labours of pig killing.

  ‘Must do it before the warm weather sets in,’ Carl would remind us as winter turned to spring and the orchard was a wonderland of blossom. ‘I’ll set a date with Magda and Lars.’

  Pig killing was a family affair, just as, at home, it had brought together neighbours and friends. Here, as there, all had their appointed roles. Like the younger children I preferred to keep away until the animal was slaughtered. Once it had been tethered, stunned, and its throat cut, we could wait until the draining blood had been caught. Then all had their appointed tasks as the boiling water from the coppers was poured over the animal and the painstaking job of shaving the carcass began.

  ‘Check the water,’ Lars insisted. He was the acknowledged expert in the pig killing; it was usually his knife that dispatched the stunned beast. Now he tested the water, making sure it was not too hot. ‘Add a dipper of cold,’ he insisted. ‘Otherwise it’s going to lose its skin.’

  With the butchering, it became Carl’s empire, as the carcass was divided and the head removed. They cut along the backbone and began the dividing into hams and bacons, ready for smoking.

  ‘Elsa, Adelina,’ called their father. ‘Time to come. Your jobs are waiting!’

  Next the intestines were removed and turned inside out, before the scrupulous washing and soaking in salt water. Men butchered; women made sausages, carefully dividing the innards for the white puddings and the black puddings that would hang in the smokehouse, where the children’s job was to get the fire going with damp sawdust and almond shells. As the long sausages were filled, the intestine skins were neatly tied at the ends, then handed to Lena for delivery to Willi in the smokehouse.

  ‘Lena! Where is that girl?’ rang out at intervals. Each year I cautioned her about her habit of finding a quiet corner for a quick read in slack moments. Each year she would look plaintively up at me with her big blue eyes.

  ‘But Mama Anna, you understand. You love to read. You know what it’s like when you are in the middle of a book.’

  The trouble was that I did understand. ‘Lena, there’s a time for reading. And pig-killing day is not it! Off you go. And leave the book with me.’

  ‘She will go far, Carl,’ I said to my husband that night, as we lay exhausted after the work of the day.

  ‘Too true,’ he laughed. ‘The little miss is getting plenty of practice. She is never where she’s meant to be when you need her.’

  ‘No. I am serious. We need to think about an education for her. More than she will get here.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘The Klein boy is going away to school. He wants to become a pastor, and the training for the church is in Adelaide. There are boarding schools there run by the church.’

  ‘He is a boy.’

  ‘Yes, but I have talked to Helga Klein about it, and she says the school accepts girls. We could ask Lena if she would like this. She would make a fine teacher.’

  ‘Let her go all that distance from us? Anna, I am not sure that would be wise.’

  I let the matter rest, knowing an idea had been planted. The next week I saw him in discussion with Joseph Klein, and smiled to myself. That evening, he called Lena to him.

  Later, she came to me. ‘Vati has said I mi
ght be able to go away to school.’

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘I don’t know. It sounds exciting, but I would be so far away. How I would miss you all.’

  ‘There are holidays to come home. Would you like to go away to study?’

  There was no need for her to answer the question. Her face told it all.

  ‘Vati says there are two Lutheran schools in Adelaide. Immanuel, and the other is Con … Con—something.’

  ‘Concordia?’

  ‘That’s it. Each of our churches has its own school there.’

  Typical, I thought. Such a little church, here in the colonies; still they divide and have their own schools.

  ‘Well, we’ll see what happens. It would be another year before you go. Meanwhile, work very hard at school so that you can be prepared. It will be a different world there.

  It was to be a different world here by the time she left for school. We did not know that yet.

  CHAPTER 28

  Jindera, New South Wales, 1897

  Who was to blame? In my rage, in the anguish of my grief, I needed someone to blame. Someone to be responsible. Someone I could rail at and accuse.

  I think now, when I look back on that day, that I must have been mad. Surely it was enough to have driven any woman mad, and when I relive it the same blind inchoate fury swamps even grief.

  Kurt had come with his children as so often before to stay with us for the slow hot Sunday afternoon.

  ‘Not Emma,’ he had explained cheerfully. ‘This new baby is making her sick, and she is fearful of losing it. Like the last one.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘Since Dieter and Rolf she has had trouble.’

  ‘That’s not uncommon. As women get older it becomes harder to bear a child. With Anna things went well, and there’s no reason that this one should not be fine. After all, Emma is now four months on, I think. It should be safe.’

  ‘Anyway, I have left her home to rest in peace with little Anna, just brought these little imps.’