Hill of Grace (4 page)

The service continued via yawns and wandering thoughts, lofty messages sent and received in mixed and muddled ways. The Confession of Sins and the Introit, the Kyrie and the Gloria, mostly stolen and re-packaged from the Catholic church.

‘“Glory to God in the highest,”' Henry sang, modulating through a variety of keys.

‘“And on earth peace,”' the congregation replied, ‘“among men with whom He is pleased.”'

The Salutation and the Collect, standing up and sitting down, fathers cuing sons and mothers cuing daughters, altar boys tempted by coin, the faithful careful to show they were adding pounds not pence and passing it on with a rattle and the knowledge that God had seen anyway.

After the business was complete, Henry climbed his pulpit and looked out across a nearly full church. His fingers ran across the smooth varnish covering some of Arthur Blessitt's best chisel work. The repairs dated back to when Arthur had been an apprentice to one of Ewald Graetz's sons. Although Henry could've chosen one of the Graetzes themselves, one night he found himself traipsing through Arthur's early experiments in floriculture, arriving at his door and knocking and saying, ‘I have some work for you, Arthur.' Seeing as the Graetzes had plenty of work anyway, and Arthur was just starting off. Henry knew it was best to spread the work around, that was the Lutheran way, and strangely enough, the Australian way.

Henry smiled a smile which seemed to reach everyone. ‘The Old Testament lesson is written in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, beginning at the first verse.' And with that he was off, explaining how the Bible, and God himself, had given men licence to live, increase in number and occupy promised land. Such as the Barossa, with its metaphor of vines as people made real, pruned by Jesus and harvested by God, the sinners thrown into the winepress to make cheap, undrinkable claret.

Meanwhile, in the vestry, Herb Medlin had his charges lined up, dressed like so many wise men in search of a star, swathed in flannelette sheets and Onkaparinga rugs gone seedy. The youngest Heinz had borrowed his father's pipe to try and look even wiser but Herb grabbed it from his mouth and said, ‘You're in search of Jesus, not a pair of comfy slippers.'

Back in the church, Henry passed from the Epistle to the Hallelujah and eventually to the hymn of the day,
Ein Feste Burg
.

William wasn't inspired with Henry's choice of material, dwelling in the church militant when he should've been more celebrational.

A mighty fortress is our God,

A trusty shield and weapon . . .

As Edna's organ drowned out Mrs Fox's piano in the vestry, the children walked in in a circle, holding up their hands in choreographed ecstasy. Herb ground his teeth but couldn't take it. He closed the piano lid without so much as warning Mrs Fox and said, ‘Sit down children,' joining them with his hands in his lap, determined to wait out another three verses of Luther before he continued.

As they stood for the Gospel reading, Nathan's eyes moved from the peeling alabaster Christ-on-his-cross behind Henry to the rows of girls with their mothers and nannas: little girls in lace-up frocks and older ones picking chips from between their teeth, gathering dust like so many Russian dolls on a dresser. Bonnets, Bibles and Lilli's hands, describing the explosion of an A-bomb, mimicking William's obsession with the Apocalypse. Nathan looked at Lilli and her lips silently described the explosion. He smiled and looked back at his father but William's eyes were closed, his mind busy analysing Henry's words: ‘“And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoices more of
that
sheep than of the ninety-nine which went not astray.”'

Lilli's expression turned sheepish, silently baaing, moving onto the lifted eyebrows and pouted lips of a dimly remembered Lollobrigida. She looked at the alabaster Christ on the wall and wondered if he'd ever been young, waking up beside the Dead Sea after a night of binge drinking. Looking into his face she couldn't imagine it. No trace of a man who could keep down three dozen oysters, turning water into wine as a party trick. Turning and looking at her family and friends she could recognise some of their own alabaster qualities. People whose lives were as solid and unchangeable as the Kaiserstuhl.

Nathan turned back to her but could see that her thoughts were elsewhere, her eyes caught up with the pattern of light as it passed through coloured windows. Her dress, worn loose, revealed nothing about her body but he was busy with her face in his hands anyway, kissing it all over, plunging his tongue into her mouth.

Seymour Hicks watched Nathan's head come around and saw that Lilli had finished. Deciding to tell William after, he looked over at his son-in-law and back at Henry, who was saying, ‘“Here ends the Gospel,”' smiling as the congregation muttered, ‘“Praise be to Thee, O Christ.”'

And to thee
, Joseph Tabrar thought, staring at his father-in-law with contempt. He'd seen Lilli too, but had smiled, understanding Nathan's connection to her, more convinced every day that he had to move his family on soon.

After the service, as families re-grouped and gathered outside for morning tea, Harry Rasch distributed rehearsal notices for Liedertafel. William felt Seymour Hicks take him by the arm and listened as Seymour whispered in his ear. William found Nathan cutting honey cake and decided to have it out then and there.

Bluma, busy with Edna and the coffees, watched as Nathan put down his knife and walked off down the avenue of pines which had become an avenue of shame. William returned to Seymour and Joshua Heinz and the smile returned to his face.

Watching, Bluma felt repulsed by her husband's grinning and laughing and arm slapping. Unable to explain this feeling she reconciled herself with the fact that her husband was a fair and balanced man.

Joseph Tabrar watched as Lilli slipped out through the graveyard, out and down the hill towards a nearly deserted Tanunda. He fancied he could hear her calling after Nathan in the distance but the spell was broken by the ringing of Bruno's bells.

After the women had gone some of the men gathered in the vestry to convene a committee: Farm Day 1951, prudently planned, costed and set out on paper, responsibilities shared out and new attractions considered. The Cambrai Leinerts had put forward a proposition for a light steam competition (the winner being the first to pump out a thirty-gallon tank) and one of Bluma's distant cousins had suggested a pet judging event.

‘Too much competition,' Ian Doms observed, but William was bound to defend the idea on behalf of Bluma. As a string of disjointed conversations overtook the planning circle, William overheard Joshua Heinz saying to Pastor Hoffmann, ‘And you believe this?'

‘Of course not,' the pastor replied.

‘Believe what?' William asked, and saw Joshua smile as he realised the whole group was listening now.

‘Old Mother Falland,' Joshua said, and William joined the rest as they variously smiled, laughed or nodded their heads.

‘Fritzsche's wife is beside herself,' Joshua continued, going on to explain how the Fritzsche woman was convinced the old witch Falland had laid hexes on her. Starting off with the fact that the wheel had fallen off her buggy last Wednesday as she drove past Falland's house, through to her cow's milk dropping off the very next day.

‘Why would Mother Falland put a spell on Mrs Fritzsche?' asked Ian.

‘She couldn't say,' replied Joshua. ‘Maybe something about a land dispute between her father and Falland's.'

A local had suggested she slaughter a calf and hang its liver over her fireplace, but this had done no good. In desperation she'd summoned Pastor Hoffmann. ‘Wear a red ribbon around your neck,' she'd warned him before his visit.

‘My grandfather knew the Fallands,' Seymour Hicks interrupted, describing a falling-out and their own dry uddered cows. ‘He put a little milk into the stump of a tree and everything was fine.'

William shook his head. ‘Seymour . . .'

‘Just stories, William.'

‘Ma Falland is not in bed with the Devil,' Henry said categorically, tapping his finger on the list of Farm Day jobs. Unwilling to mention the fact that he
had
carried a red ribbon in his pocket when he visited the Fritzsches – how he'd prayed with her over a white bonnet she claimed had flown across her kitchen, how he'd explained the large shadows of birds over her house and the branches of gum trees which reached down to smack her over the back of the head.

Before they left, William checked the numbers for Bible study at his house the following night and Pastor Hoffmann confirmed who was down to do what for Farm Day. William and Bluma were to oversee the making of garlands for the Harvest Festival, with Bruno and Ian in charge of a charity car smash, a new event Joshua had suggested, having seen it done by the Methos at some other fete. Julius Rechner, asleep at the back, woke in time to promise a couple of sledge-hammers he'd seen in the school's grounds shed.

Lilli and Nathan walked the back way to Seppeltsfield, Lilli dissecting Gary Cooper's performance in
Distant Drums
. A bit of a belly behind the pistol belt, she explained, wobbly forts and quarter-caste Seminole Indians, but if that's what you like. Nathan explained how he didn't even like Gary Cooper, but how his father had an old clipping of John Wayne in
Dark Command
in his scrap-book of clues. They laughed about William and Nathan explained how, in a sense, he was the jazz trumpeter to his father's dreary hymns. ‘We share a name and a roof,' he said, going to extremes to distance himself from William.

‘Proud to call myself an atheist,' Lilli bragged, smiling, tempting Nathan to better her. ‘There's gotta be a God,' he replied. ‘But he doesn't eat honey cakes.'

‘Weak.'

‘Something's better than nothing.'

‘Not if it's a fairytale.'

Nathan was stumped. He smiled. ‘You're a disgrace to the Fechners.'

‘Fuck the Fechners.'

The clouds parted and sun opened out across the floor of the valley. At length she said, ‘It's all a crutch for the feeble,' kicking a bunch of dandelions, whose seeds floated into a whirlwind of warm, must-flavoured air. ‘Oh look,' she laughed. ‘Angels! Hosanna! Hosanna! Save me! Miller the rampant masturbator!' She looked him squarely in the eyes. ‘Feeble.' And ran off towards the Seppelt mausoleum.

He ran after her, nearly but never quite catching up. ‘So what if you're wrong?' he asked, but she just sped off ahead, calling at the top of her voice, ‘Feeble,' racing up the steps towards the mausoleum at the top of the hill and tripping over. Nathan ran past her, up, opening his arms out towards the finishing line and screaming, ‘Feeble!'

But then stopped, turning around and going back to her. Holding her ankle she moaned then looked him in the eyes, whispering, ‘Feeble,' before sprinting up the remaining steps and hammering her hands on the giant wooden doors.

As they sat at the top she took off his shoes and socks and gave him the consolation prize of a foot rub, saying, ‘God can't help you win, and he can't help you be happy.'

Nathan refused to answer, feeling she was both right and wrong. He could hear William ranting, explaining how man wasn't put on earth to be happy, just to prepare for Christ. As he looked over the valley, his eyes following the roads lined with date palms, he felt entirely content in the presence of both Lilli and his other God. And as though in recognition of this a breeze blew up, filling his nostrils with the smell of pot cake and his ears with the sounds of rustling sugar gums.

A bus pulled up at the bottom of the hill and a dozen tourists got out. Nathan stood to gather his shoes and socks, and they headed off.

When he got home that night, William sent him to his loft with a pen and paper and the Bible. Nathan copied and re-copied the usual, Hebrews chapter thirteen, until William told him he could put out his light and go to sleep. To contemplate the disrespect he'd brought to the Miller name. To clear away thoughts of the Fechner tomboy, with her predilection for everything brash, steamy and celluloid.

‘She wants me to see a film with her,' he'd pleaded, but William knew what sort of film.

After William had gone out to his vines to check his Baume, Bluma smuggled Nathan a plate of sauerkraut and sausages. When William returned he smelt the sausages and saw the empty plate and thought, He is a merciful God, reminding us in sin we're not beyond redemption.

Nathan's thoughts were torn between two Gods: one which made him feeble, and one which made him strong.

Chapter Three

Nathan's turn first. Sitting in a large copper tub Bluma would later use to wash their clothes in, he watched as the skin on each of his ten toes wrinkled and turned pale. ‘Don't drown in there,' his mother screamed. ‘Some of us have work to do.'

It was a busy time for William too. He'd decided to follow up some early rain by seeding two of his three stock paddocks. As he harnessed an old mare he'd kept from the knackery, he saw his son run half-naked from the wash-house, Bluma flicking him with a tea-towel and laughing. Sighing, William backed up the mare to Bruno's seeder, its seed bin nearly rusted through, and filled the American contraption with a mix of Machete wheat and vetch in a ratio Riedel the seed merchant had suggested. He'd been doing it this way for years, with mixed success. Robert had been the first Muller to go mechanical, giving up on Anthelm's method of hand-sowing improved pasture, hand reaping and stooking and stacking bales under a leaky green tarp.

One year, as William was stirring a mix of peas and barley in the seeder, he looked up to see a group of soldiers with rifles running towards him. Unsure what to do, he took flight, jumping the dry-stone wall to Arthur's place, only to find Arthur himself busy with a dozen or so soldiers.

Eventually the strangers introduced themselves. Nothing to fear if you've been a good Fritz, let's return to your house and see what's in the cellar. The military intelligence officers spent the afternoon looking at William's photos, considering his scrapbook and searching his house: the roof cavity, cellar and loft, right through the smoke-house and wash-house.