“Christian,” I say half to myself, because I cannot help it though I have not meant to ask her about Christian, because Aunt Aggie perhaps knew all about him, but Mamalie might come back and remember that I am Hilda and that I am not Agnes. But I did not say “Christian” very loud, perhaps she did not hear me.
Mamalie came back, she looked round the room, she said, “What was I saying, Hilda?”
I said, “I was thinking of asking you about this scrap, it’s black with pink rosebuds; Aunt Aggie said is was a silver-grey dress that she had for Philadelphia when she married Uncle Will.”
Mamalie said, “You said something, or somebody said something, who said something?”
I said, “It’s you and me, Mamalie, I was asking about Aunt Aggie, I was thinking about — about — church — I mean, I was thinking about something…” Mamalie puts her hand up to her hair, she presses her hands against the sides of her face as if to hide the two long braids that have white threads in them but look darker when they are down than when they are looped up either side of her face, under her lace cap.
‘‘What were you talking about before I went to sleep?” said Mamalie. I do not tell her that she has not been asleep.
“We were talking — because I heard them talking — I was cold.” What will I say now? “It’s too dark to read to me, Mamalie,” I say, “but I was thinking I’d ask you to read. I was thinking, I’d get my new fairy tales. I don’t know, I may have said out aloud — you know how it is—‘I’ll get my new fairy tales, I’ll get Hans Christian Andersen.’”
I said again, “I’ll get Hans Christian Andersen.”
“They were talking outside the window,” I said, “I was listening to them and they said “ah.” They were saying “ah” because it was a shooting star. Aunt Jennie says you can have a wish on your first summer shooting star. I did not think of any wish, anyhow I did not see it, I only heard them talking. I wished, if I wished anything, that I would not think it might fall on the house. I knew it could not, because of gravity or something like that, that keeps the stars from falling on us and keeps the world going round. Gravity keeps the earth on its track, and Mr. Evans explained about Papa in the transit house. Eric is in the observatory, looking at his double stars.”
“Double stars,” said Mamalie.
“I heard you coming up the stairs, and I said, could I get your knitting and you said no, I think, or maybe you didn’t answer at all, and then we lit the candle.”
“Yes,” said Mamalie, “we lit the candle.”
“Then you took off your cap.” She puts up her hand, she is feeling for her cap. I wonder why she thinks she must always wear a lace cap?
“I wanted one of the little tight caps,” she said, “like the early Sisters wore, and I wanted to be one of the single Sisters but Christian said it was best not, because already the German reformed people were accusing us of popish practices.”
I said, “What are popish practices, Mamalie, and who is Christian?”
She said, “I thought you knew, Agnes, that I called your father Christian.”
She said Gnadenhuetten, and it does not matter what it is or where it is or what it means or anything about it. It is the same when Papa calls me Töcterlein, it simply makes everything quite different, so that sometimes I am sure that I am really in the woods, like when Mama plays Träumerei which isn’t very good music, she says, but I ask her to play it because it’s called Träumerei.
It would be no good my trying to learn German because, when I look at one of the German grammar books in the bookshelves, it stops working. A row of words called der-die-das doesn’t belong to it. I would rather talk German, real German, than anything. I do not want to learn German, I do not even want them to know how much I feel when they say Gnadenhuetten like that. I am in the word, I am Gnadenhuetten the way Mamalie says it, though I do not know what it means.
“And Wunden Eiland,” she says.
It seems as if something had come over me like the branches of a tree or the folds of a tent when she says Wunden Eiland. She says Eiland which must be an island, and the Wunden, I suppose, is wonder or wonderful. I do not even want her to tell me, but I want her to go on talking because if she stops, the word will stop. The word is like a beehive, but there are no bees in it now. I am the last bee in the beehive, this is the game I play. The other bees have gone, that is why it is so quiet. Can one bee keep a beehive alive; I mean, can one person who knows that Wunden Eiland is a beehive, keep Wunden Eiland for the other bees when they come back?
But it won’t be any use just thinking like this, because if I don’t say something, she might really go to sleep, or she will talk the whole thing out in German and I don’t want to listen to her talking nothing but German, because then I start to think about it, and if I start to think about it, it gets der-die-das-ish and I am angry that I cannot understand or that I cannot learn it quickly. But Wunden Eiland is not a thing you learn, it’s not a thing that anyone can teach you, it just happens.
“Tell me more about the island,” I say, though maybe Eiland isn’t an island, though I think it must be.
“It was washed away,” said Mamalie.
Mamalie is talking like something in a book and I do not very much understand what she is saying. I have heard of Count Zinzendorf, of course, who founded the Unitas Fratrum, the United Brethren which is our Church or which was our Church before we moved from Bethlehem.
Unitas Fratrum is united brethren, like United States is united states, and they have a sign which is a lamb, like the United States has an eagle, and they have a flag with a cross. Mamalie says it is a flag the crusaders used or a banner, but that was long ago, only it is all long ago.
I think four hundred years back; it is because we all had a holiday when it was 1892, which was four hundred years since Columbus discovered America. But the Unitas Fratrum seemed to have discovered something which was very important, that was in Europe. They came to America to bring the secret from Europe or to keep the secret to themselves. But something happened like it always does, it seems, so that the United Brethren weren’t really united.
Mamalie said, “My Christian explained the secret to me; it seemed very simple to me. It was simply belief in what was said—and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. You see, those words were taken literally.”
There were all these questions in a row, each with its particular question mark. I did not think them out nor see them in writing, but some of them were:
Did you play the spinet, Mamalie? Did you play Four Marys?
Who were the four Marys, and why were there four?
Who has our Grimm, and did they lose the picture of the Princess and the Frog, that was loose and partly torn across?
Why are they all called Christian or does it just mean that they are Christian?