Hill of Grace (6 page)

Before Bruno had a chance to reply, Joshua had William halfway up the hill, handing him his red, embroidered jacket and explaining how they'd been moved up on the programme. ‘The horse-shoeing's off.'

‘Why?'

‘Don't ask me. There's a hundred people from Adelaide, waiting around for something authentic.'

‘Joshua.'

‘Would you rather lederhosen?'

‘It's
our
Farm Day.'

‘Nonetheless.' And with that he had William in the front row, buttoning his jacket and clearing his throat.

‘All ready?' Ron Rohwer smiled, as Harry Rasch held his baton mid-air.

They sang for a full half hour, lusty at times, stretched beyond their range at others. As William looked at the crowd of mostly city suburbanites, he started to read their thoughts:
look at the
German people, children, how terribly quaint . . .
Caught up with this feeling his arms and legs froze, his neck muscles stiffened and his diaphragm weakened. But he kept singing – what, he couldn't say. His mouth moved and something came out, but he felt like a performing monkey inside a glass case, dancing on an electrified floor controlled by the deposited coins of these leering devils.

Their applause was a blur, a meaningless gesture. Their faces lit up as a lady from Swallow's Ice Cream, wearing nylon stockings and mauve lippy, led on a small choir of children with Mickey Mouse ears and coloured skivvies. The Liedertafel looked at each other but no one said anything. She explained how Swallow's were offering free iron-on transfers with every purchase, eventually turning to the choir and prompting them to start singing:
Who's
the leader of the club who's there for you and me – M.I.C.K.E.Y.
M.O.U.S.E. . . .

Before they could start the chorus, William stepped forward and attempted to pull the ears from a dozen or so heads. ‘This is
our
Farm Day!' he said.

The crowd fell silent, convinced, again, of the German habit of ruining everything. After all, a few perfectly nice kiddies, and how was it
their
Farm Day anyway, this was Australia, not Berlin with its Reichstag and underground bunkers.

William used his hands to help explain his argument. ‘This is a day we have to show off our agricultural produce, to each other.'

‘What about us?' a voice asked.

‘Of course, everyone is welcome . . . only . . . Mickey the Mouse?'

And with this he handed back the Mouseketeer ears, stopping short of apologising as the lady in nylon stockings ushered them off-stage, looking at William with a sideward stare.

Dill pickles and egg noodles, explained William, these were closer to his world. But at best, the crowd thought him pathetic, trapped in a past of wax cylinders instead of records, children instead of birth control. At worst they had their preconceptions confirmed. Driving home in cosy, American-inspired cars they took consolation in their Wynn's Estate at cellar door prices.

The afternoon continued in the same vein: feather-picking, sheath tossing and stooking, bienenstich, pickled cabbage and blutwurst. Sitting amongst his stock William took consolation in the honesty of his own display: real animals shitting real shit, making real noises, bringing pleasure to even the town kids. And as he sat he planned what he'd say to the organising committee: how all this ‘dressing' would ruin them, leaving them selling wurst from roadside stalls like so many reservation Indians.

After a lunch of burnt waffles and white pudding, William joined forces with Joshua to beat the bejeezers out of an old Austin Seven as the Langmeil church choir serenaded them with an out-of-season
Alle Jahre wieder
. As William was starting in on the bonnet the head came flying off of one of Julius Rechner's sledge-hammers, narrowly missing the euphonium player from the Lobethal Band, which went onto a faultless rendition of
Watch
on the Rhine
.

The Zilm Brothers, of anthropomorphic chair fame, variously doubled on button accordion, tin whistle, flute, cornet and saxophone to produce a version of
Now thank we all our God
which had even William up standing, applauding.

Tomato and garlic chutneys were tasted and preserves consumed on toasted bread. Bluma's quilting circle had their wares on display beside the harvest-festival wreaths she'd made from Arthur's flowers on long, cold nights as William sat reading and writing beside the family Bible. Nearly every family had provided a garland for the festival, competing with each other to see who could find the whitest freesias and bluest helichrysum. This year Mary Hicks had done her garland entirely out of laucodendrum, a marvel acknowledged by all.

A Prussian ferris-wheel and steam engines, the pancake tent and stein-holding contest made William wonder whether he hadn't been too hasty. At the end of the day the St John's kindergarten children put on a production in the beer tent in which a tubby ten-year-old played Bert Hinkler arriving in Australia from London in his miraculous Avron Avian. The children bowed down as his cardboard plane landed and Bert alighted. One of the girls, a stand-in Lady Mayoress, stepped forward with a wreath and said, ‘Bert Hinkler . . .'

And in this William heard the whisper of his own name at Gnadenberg. ‘William Miller . . .' And wondered whether God mightn't arrive, after all, in a Trojan horse in the form of a giant Austin Seven.

Chapter Four

William and Joshua, their children at school, their wives in search of the perfect egg noodle, settled around William's table with a small bowl of shiraz and merlot grapes. In turn each grape was squeezed, split and sucked dry. William dissolved the juice between his tongue and the roof of his mouth and smiled. ‘I think I'm ready,' he said.

Joshua had to agree. ‘You could check with Bruno's refractometer.' But to William that made as much sense as checking the air they breathed, the water they drank. ‘And what if it says I'm wrong?' he asked. ‘Ninety years we've made wine, without Bruno's tool.'

‘You could make better wine.'

And again he knew where Joshua was going: quality control and time and motion, chemists with bubbling beakers and temperature-controlled processing plants. ‘As I found out yesterday,' he offered, ‘maybe I'm a relic . . . still.'

Instead of getting straight to it, disinfecting crushers and fermenting barrels, repairing faulty bubblers and converting the house into a winery, he fetched a tawny port from their cold cellar (where soldiers had once searched for
Mein Kampf
) and joined Joshua around the fire of Bluma's kitchen, forever stoked, eternally warming the cottage.

After a while the talk turned to the past. William fetched his family photographs, tied up in a Blundstone boot box from his father's day. Sacred of the sacred was a photo showing his father, Robert, helping his grandfather, Anthelm, build the walls of the very cottage they were sitting in. ‘Before then it was a wattle and daub cottage with a thatched roof,' William said, going on to explain how, as a boy, Robert would sleep beside contented cattle under the single roof which formed their home. In the background the Muller vines were already flourishing and the half-finished spire of St John's, at Ebenezer, was pointing towards a sky of hot north easterlies and unpredictable dust storms.

Another photograph showed Robert and Brigid, his wife, sheltering from a rainstorm inside a hollowed-out gum tree a family named Herbig had lived in for years. The back read
Newly
joyned in God's eyes, 1898, Springton, B. Valley
.

William pulled out pictures of himself, excitedly explaining them to Joshua as he spilt his port and mopped it up with his sleeve, pouring himself another and topping up Joshua. Photos taken by cameras he wouldn't have in his own house: him as a part of the Lutheran Boy's Club, a group of serious kids in overalls restoring an early Thomas Carter stripper. Bluma and her sister working at Laucke's mill as girls, sewing up bags of flour. Nathan as a baby, being held by a nurse on the front steps of Scholz's Willow Hospital at Light Pass. A car wreck on God's Hill Road which had killed a young Latin teacher from town, six months out of college. Festival displays of wurst. Streetscapes. An old Turk who'd set up a trash and treasure outside the deserted Ampol on Murray Street. No one could remember anyone buying anything, until one day he was gone, taking his prayer mat and stubble with him. And finally, a serious portrait of Anthelm, clutching a Bible, now lost, in which Pastor Kavel, the valley's founding father, had supposedly written. Possibly explaining why he'd led his followers (Anthelm barely moving out of his shadow) from Silesia to England, across seas under hostile skies to Port Adelaide. There to settle amongst the gum trees and black fellas, experimenting with new forms of blutwurst beside the River Torrens.

And the only other shot of Anthelm, standing beside his wife Margaret on a block of virgin land they would tame and make productive. Sustaining generations until Christ returned to reward them for keeping the faith. Establishing a thousand-year dynasty in which everything would remain much the same, cucumbers grown, preserved and eaten within the boundaries of their new Eden.

‘Anthelm took me further away from the church, but closer to God,' William explained.

Because of Anthelm and Kavel, the Lutherans had been given the opportunity of bringing the
true
Christ to Australia. Spreading His word through Hermannsburg and Boundary Gate and a dozen other missions to black fellas, who, if the truth be known, were probably beyond salvation. But in the tradition of Luther and Kavel they had to try. When Christ returned he would ask them, ‘What did you do to save others?' And they would have to be ready with a reply.

The last photo was Elizabeth Street, Tanunda, 1936, a whole convoy of tractors driving towards Nuriootpa. Joshua smiled and looked at William. ‘You remember this?'

But William didn't reply, moving his glass into a puddle of spilt port and turning it by the stem. ‘God spoke to me,' he said.

Joshua looked up. ‘He speaks to all of us, William.'

‘No, not in that sense . . . real words. He whispered my name.'

‘When?'

‘Hill of Grace. I was picking for Henschke. I had my basket half full. I noticed a lily and bent down and then I heard . . .
William
.'

Joshua put his hands in his lap and shrugged, unsure of a reply.

‘Did he have a deep voice?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Was it everywhere, or just the . . . lily?'

‘The lily didn't talk.'

‘Did it say William, or Wilhelm?'

‘Joshua.'

William threw back the rest of his port. ‘I can't remember the words exactly, but I looked up . . .' He was looking for the words to explain but they were far beyond his grasp.

‘So, what did he say?' Joshua urged, sitting forward, unsure if he should grin, or hail William as some sort of prophet. Surely if God was going to pick a messenger . . . still, William was a reliable man, and messengers had to be reliable.

‘I can't remember,' William continued, ‘but it was something about spreading the message.'

‘The message?'

‘Christ's return.'

‘It was that clear?'

‘Yes.'

Joshua's eyes drifted off into the rafters. ‘Like Ussher?'

‘No, that was different. He was loopy.'

William was referring to the Calvinist Bishop who, Henry had explained to them one Sunday, had made a study of the Bible and come up with the very day and time God had created the earth: twelve o'clock, Sunday the twentieth of October, 4004 BC. His chronology had even extended to the day of Noah's flood, 1659 years later. This is what Lutheranism had saved them from, Henry explained. Dark Ages religion. The dates so misunderstood they'd even graced the margins of the King James' Bible. But what were dates, he'd concluded? Pure guesswork. This wasn't in the spirit of the Bible. The Bible was about two things: grace and love. And William was inclined to agree, referring to it at the following week's Bible study as Ussher's arrogance.

But this was a different thing altogether. He'd imagined Ussher, in his purple robes, sitting in his chambers dictating dates to feeble minded lackeys.
His
revelation was about the knowable, something written in every verse and rhyme of Revelations.

Joshua sat back in his chair and breathed deeply. ‘And that was all?'

William tapped his finger on the table. ‘He didn't give me instructions.'

‘But what did you make of it?'

‘That there's more I can do . . .'

Joshua shook his head. He still didn't know what to make of it. ‘Well . . . there'd be no point him coming to me.'

William shrugged. ‘So?'

‘Henry says he speaks to all of us. Maybe to you his words just . . . clarified.'

‘Maybe?'

‘I'm sure they did.'

‘I swear. These were real words, spoken by a real voice.' And with that he sat back and breathed deeply. ‘I swear.'

‘If that's what you tell me, William, I believe you. Maybe he wants everybody to have the opportunity – '

‘Exactly!'

But William was still only a little more convinced himself. Joshua had rationalised the news with a less than ecstatic response. If William was going to convince others he'd have to convince Joshua first.

Joshua's revelation was nowhere near as profound as William's or as poetic as John's. The voice of God didn't speak to him and, as with most people, there was nothing new about the thoughts which passed through his head: his magnolia in full flower, the lemon scent of Bon Ami washing powder, the whispers of his children tucked up in bed; the almost musical snoring of Catherine, his wife, reclining in a sofa beside him, and the sound of tobacco burning up in his pipe as he inhaled.

Joshua, alone in his living-room, was thinking of William, alone in his cottage, staring down at his linoless floor, arms on his knees, muttering something incomprehensible. The words transformed into those of Roy Rene, scratchy through a vintage bakelite radio playing softly on Joshua's mantlepiece.
She calls me dear, she must
be shook on me.
More lines, applause, play off, and the whole business of the apocalypse seeming so distant.