The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  ‘So what is it, professor?’

  ‘It’s ghosty, is what it is.’ Beth pointed at the heading on the screen. ‘Just for the hell of it I looked up “Zum Gedächtnis WB” and got this. Remember it was on the headstone?’

  Of course he remembered, but once again he looked away from the moment – he even winced. But she would not get annoyed.

  ‘Turns out there was a poet called Wolf Bloch in Hamburg in the 1870s who wrote this long poem called “Zum Gedächtnis” in memory of the Paris Commune of 1871 – it’s about the final battle between the revolutionaries and the regular army in Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris on “Fiertletzter Tag im Monat Mai”, fourth to last day in the month of May. How about that?’

  ‘How about what?’

  ‘Zum Gedächtnis, WB, Wolf Bloch, Grandad Wolf Bloch Wenczel, Jesus Christ, Frank.’

  ‘Steady on, my dear Beth,’ said her cousin, slopping wine into his glass. ‘What are me and Jesus doing on that dance card together?’

  ‘You can put Friedrich Engels on there as well, if you like. According to Google, Wolf Bloch was corresponding with him. The guy was all over the place.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Beth. The conclusion I hear you racing hastily towards is that the guy was all over our ancestress Josephina Hansen as well. And let’s leave poor old Engels out of it for the time being, that’s getting way too racy.’

  ‘You want racy? Our respected ancestress arrived in Wellington with an infant son born en route who was christened Wenczel when she remarried here, and a daughter, your grandmother Catharina, whose maiden name, Hansen, was also her mother’s birth name – a little anomaly that no one at the reunion could quite get their heads around, though there was a fair bit of idle chatter.’

  But of course Frank knew all that.

  He was poking at one of the dips. ‘But really, it’s like this shit,’ he said, sucking the goo off his finger with a grimace. ‘Whizz a whole lot of stuff up together and hey presto! – it’s become a thing.’

  The waitress came out to collect Frank’s plate, but then hesitated.

  ‘Nothing wrong with the food,’ said Frank. ‘Excellent in fact, compliments to the chef and indeed to the lamb, just my appetite, I’m sure the dog will enjoy it, so long as it’s not a huntaway.’

  The waitress gave him a look – it was obvious from his tone that he knew the dog out the back by the accommodation units was a huntaway. Why couldn’t he resist doing that kind of thing?

  ‘That was a bit mean,’ said Beth. She leaned across Frank and brought up the photo of Wolf Bloch.

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘That was vintage Wolf-wisdom, passed down through the generations. Never feed your working dogs bits of the flock. It’s got a ring to it, that does, at the metaphorical level, you have to admit. Your mum used to quote him. Wolf-man.’ He took a swallow. ‘Am I getting shickered? I can’t tell anymore.’ He was peering at the image of Wolf Bloch. ‘Who’s this funny little chap?’

  The ‘funny little chap’ seemed to be peering back at them.

  Was now as good a time as any? ‘What’s up with you, Frank? Ever since we left the reunion on our little trip you’ve been going all moody.’ When she took his hand he didn’t remove it – in fact he put his other one on top of hers. He’d always had big paws; now they were a bit gnarly, with knobby knuckles, and liver spots on their backs. But his cheek-kiss was as gentle as ever.

  ‘Remember when we were down the valley earlier?’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘We were looking across the river at the hill your Grandad Wolf had cleared for pasture? You could see where he’d left the big stuff alone, in the gullies, and the odd patch here and there. Then there was this big triangular section of regrowth, almost the whole side of the hill, where he’d let the bush come back. It’s tall stuff now, but you can still see the difference from the original bush in the gullies. The big timber he felled turned into the houses and bridges and fence posts down there, the stockyards and what-have-you, and the rest got burned. Then the topsoil fell into the river and fucked it up.’ He removed his hand to pick up the wine glass and take a drink. ‘It’s all very well to go poking around to see which house or which bridge was once those trees, or digging up vintage photos for that matter, but they’re all fucking corpses as far as I’m concerned, and the part I like is where the bush has just come back and covered up the place where all that shit happened. I like to look at that new stuff. It’s doing the opposite of fucking everything else up. It gives me hope.’ He put his hand back on top of hers. ‘And Lizzie’s pregnant.’ Lizzie was his granddaughter. He was going to be a great-grandfather.

  A couple of cars tore past on the highway. ‘One-forty k at least,’ he said. ‘You’d think they wanted to kill themselves.’ His look, a bit glassy but steady. ‘And yes, I hope I can see you thinking, why indeed would anyone put a reference to the Paris Commune on a headstone in the Kaitīeke valley?’

  Josephina

  They were going up the stairs in Herr Andersen’s house, she and Catharina, they pretended to be climbing a big mountain like the snowy one with a little antlered deer and pointy pine trees on the Oma they often looked at in the evenings before Catharina went to sleep. The story Catharina liked was somewhat like the one her oma used to tell, but in Josephina’s version the little deer wasn’t lost and looking for its mother. Oma made it climb back down the side of the mountain on the two-step stitches and find its mother waiting at the bottom. In Josephina’s version of the story, the deer was looking around at the world from the top of the mountain to see where to go, and then it went back down the stepping-stitches one by one to what it had seen, a warm place where oranges grew.

  There was a fruit cart by the tram stop near the sewing room, and they would sometimes share an orange that Josephina bought from the impatient woman there, and peeled for them to eat before taking Catharina to the nursery. They would pretend to be little deer, making antlers with their fingers.

  Yes, they would go there, she said to Catharina, to where the oranges came from, but not today, and first we have to climb the mountain, up we go!

  Up they went. This was the first time they’d been past the floor above the Andersens’ kitchen, the one with the street door to the tram stop. She could have the place downstairs and food in the kitchen, she was not to talk familiarly to Frau Andersen if they met – Herr Andersen hoped this arrangement would help her ‘in her situation’. But now they were going up. Catharina was doing a two-step ascent of the stairs, pushing up with one foot and then following with the other to the same step, and then repeating, two-feet-by-two-feet-by-two, step-stitching.

  There was just a curtain that pulled across her and Catharina’s little space with its foldaway cot, and she’d heard the housekeeper and the cook, both of whom were called Frau Schmidt, talking about her and Catharina without even trying to whisper. In their opinion she was ‘trouble’. It seemed that was what they’d been told and they agreed that it must be so, because why else was a member of Herr Andersen’s family not allowed to go upstairs? – was it perhaps because of, you know, Frau Andersen? – but they were kind to Catharina and let her play with wooden spoons and a big bowl under the table. Josephina called them Schmidt One and Schmidt Two in her thoughts but Frau Schmidt when she spoke to either of them, which was seldom.

  Was she grateful to Danne’s uncle, Herr Aksel Andersen? There were other ways to ask the question. For example: What did she expect? How could she, now, tell Danne that it was quite difficult being in his uncle’s house? A better question was: How could she now move forward from her ‘situation’ in Herr Andersen’s house? That question made the issue of gratitude irrelevant. But she could never tell Danne or Greta that Herr Andersen had been merely convenient.

  And what was the meaning of, you know, Frau Andersen?

  And besides, how was she to move beyond the convenience of her ‘situation’? As yet, the answer to that question remained in the realm of the story she told Catharina at bedtime when she was a little
deer whose eyelids were fluttering on the edge of sleep.

  And in any case, she herself had organised her ‘situation’: she was in Hamburg, she was working in the sewing room, she was able to keep a little of her money, she understood the tram that took her and Catharina to and from work, Catharina was in the nursery where she had soup and a sleep at midday, on Sundays they could go for a walk over to the big bridge where there was a stall with jellied fruits, and sometimes the gypsies with the dancing monkey, and Catharina had learned quite a lot of new words, including some foreign ones from her playmate Alex at the nursery, including pane, which was Italian for bread.

  Schmidt Two came earliest in the morning and prepared the breakfast. She was a tall, fine-looking young woman with a dark complexion who kept her aprons very clean and crisp and wore her black hair gathered up under a floral embroidered cap. Josephina would have liked to know where the cap came from, but the young cook didn’t talk to Josephina, only to herself – ‘Now, now, now, where did I put that buttermilk? Where, where? Now, pancakes, pancakes!’ Josephina and Catharina took their hard-boiled eggs wrapped in pancakes out to the horse-tram before Herr Andersen came down. Catharina ate hers on the tram, or as much of it as she could manage, and Josephina kept hers and what was left of Catharina’s to eat later, when the women in the sewing room had lunch.

  Schmidt One was still there when they came back from the sewing room in the evening, and they all had supper together in the kitchen. She was an older woman who had been with the Andersens since they arrived in Hamburg and so, she told Josephina, she had better mind how she behaved. Schmidt One usually had a glass or two of wine with her supper. Then she would always go out to the privy on the landing above the river. Her expression was, ‘Time to feed the fish.’ When she came back, the two Frau Schmidts would wish ‘Sweet dreams’ to Catharina under the table, and tall, dark Schmidt Two would often give Catharina what she called a ‘Genuss’ made with honey syrup. They would say good night to Fräulein Hansen, Schmidt One would say remember not to disturb Herr and Frau Andersen, and then they’d go up one flight to the street door.

  There were no servants in the house at night – the household of Danne’s uncle Farbror Aksel was in reality a modest one, more so perhaps than Danne himself knew. Josephina would wash Catharina and herself with a basin of warm water on the kitchen floor, and she would wash their undergarments with the same piece of yellow soap that Schmidt One left out for them, and hang them by the stove. Sometimes she could hear other people talking upstairs, but the household was mostly very simple and frugal, and there were seldom visitors.

  The room where Herr and Frau Andersen and occasionally their visitors had their meals was off a narrow passage that led to the street door. The stairs to the upper rooms were also off the passage. Thus, there was a simple way up through the house to the very top, and opening along the way would be rooms with closed doors. The house was the shape of a secret or even forbidden narrative, with questions opening off it. There were three questions, and it wasn’t as though she asked them, it was more as if the questions asked her. Why had she put the nightgown on? Why had she taken the Hauptmann’s money? Why hadn’t she immediately told Tante Elizabeth what had happened in Faulstrasse? These were the questions that repeated themselves to her every day since arriving in Herr Andersen’s house with its closed rooms and ‘her situation’. Nor had she yet seen Frau Andersen, whom she was forbidden to address ‘familiarly’ if she did meet her. Schmidt One had suggested by the important expression on her face that Frau Andersen would be easily upset.

  But tonight, as recounted approvingly by the two Schmidts at supper, Herr and Frau Andersen had gone to the opera, they’d drunk some champagne and eaten some snacks with friends in the room upstairs and then gone off to the Stadt-Theater looking very fine, and ‘about time, too’. Frau Andersen had on her pale milk-coffee-coloured evening dress with pearls and silk flowers, and her husband his best tails and white waistcoat, it was too bad about his twitch, it always got worse in company. They were going to an opera by Wagner called Tristan und Isolde, and during their champagne and the Schnitzen that Schmidt One took up, they and their guests were discussing the scandal of a review of the opera by the radical editor called Wolf Bloch. He wrote in the Bürger Zeitung, and it was sensational, the guests all agreed, and of course they were clever people, Schmidt One was confident they knew what they were talking about, this Wolf Bloch had better mind himself, he’d end up in chains.

  ‘What did he write?’ asked Josephina, feeling a little shock like a pin-prick in her heart – she was reaching down to stop Catharina from bumping her head as she emerged from under the table where she’d been playing with her wooden spoons, all of which had names now, the names of children at the nursery, including Alex, and so Josephina was looking up at the Schmidts from under her eyebrows, awkwardly and perhaps somewhat disrespectfully, especially as she seldom spoke to them. Of course Wolf Bloch was the name of the strange little man in the sewing room, in the rather shabby clothes, with the pigeon chest and the somewhat insolent stare, when she’d almost made a fool of herself in front of the owner and Herr Andersen.

  ‘“The curse of nationalism”,’ quoted Schmidt One in a satirical tone for Josephina’s benefit, and, simultaneously, ‘What do you care?’ said Schmidt Two scornfully.

  ‘I saw him,’ said Josephina. ‘I saw Wolf Bloch.’ She clearly remembered the quizzical tilt of the man’s head, her sense that he was asking, why was she there? Catharina was climbing into her lap, so she stood up to stop her making a nuisance of herself at the table. ‘He was at the sewing room with his sister the day Herr Andersen took me there.’

  ‘He’s a Jew and an agitator,’ said Schmidt One, as if that explained something. Then she went out ‘to feed the fish’, and the two Schmidts left soon afterwards, leaving Josephina to clean up the kitchen. This she did very quickly, and next, without waiting to think about it, or about the excitement she felt all at once in what was usually the weary end of the day, she lit a candle and went to the stairs with Catharina and began to go up a two-stitch step at a time, towards the rooms she’d imagined with closed doors like unanswered questions.

  But the first three doors weren’t closed after all. The first was the room where the Andersens and their guests had been drinking their champagne, and there was still a single table lamp burning in one corner. In the gloom, the furnishings looked plain and comfortable and there were a few small pictures on the walls. Catharina wanted to go in, but Josephina wouldn’t let her. There was also a bathroom on this floor, but they went on up to the next room. This, too, had its door open and a single lamp in a yellow shade beside a large bed. It was very plain, without any pictures or ornaments; it smelled just a little of tobacco, and Josephina felt sure that Herr Andersen slept there – but perhaps not his wife? Then there was another bedroom on the next floor, with its door slightly ajar but no lit lamp inside. The room’s aroma by the open door was of gardenias and Josephina recognised the perfume because it was Tante Elizabeth’s favourite, especially in summer. They didn’t look into the dim room, but went on up to the last floor, slowly, because little-deer Catharina had to be coaxed up the mountain.

  The stairs were unlit up there, but enough light came from the landing below and from the candle for them to see a closed door. By now Catharina was very tired and was beginning to complain, so Josephina told her to sit on the top step while she tried the door handle. The door opened with a little creak and a musty smell came out. There was just enough light from the candle to see what was in the room, and Josephina knew at once what it was. It was a child’s room, but an unused one. She stepped across the threshold and crossed to a small bed with some dolls on it and, just visible in the candlelight, a string of paper cut-out animals suspended across the window, below which was a rocking horse with a large staring eye.

  She stood there for a while. There was a roaring sound in her ears.

  The room’s musty air filled her chest painfully. She
hurried back on to the landing and closed the door, because all at once she felt strange.

  But where was Catharina?

  A woman was standing four or five steps below the landing. She had on a pale evening dress, with silk flowers that Josephina could see parts of on either side of the child. The woman was holding Catharina against herself and looking up at Josephina over her head. Catharina’s arms were around the woman’s neck and her cheek rested on her shoulder – she looked quite peaceful and contented.

  ‘A beautiful child,’ said the woman. ‘Just sitting there.’

  Her name is Catharina Elke Lange Hansen. This was what Josephina then said to the woman, but it was only the thought of saying it, as Frau Andersen turned her back and walked carefully down the stairs, holding Catharina close. Catharina shifted her head on Frau Andersen’s shoulder and looked back up at Josephina, who began to follow her down with a cold, giddy sensation of stepping into a void that was silent because her anger and her fear were cancelling each other out and she couldn’t speak, she could only keep her eyes fixed on Catharina’s that were blinking slowly as the woman in the beautiful dress went carefully down the stairs, very carefully, because she was holding Catharina with both arms and couldn’t use one hand to steady herself on the bannister.

  It was hard to leave Catharina at the Kita nursery the first time because she shrieked loudly and held her arms up to be lifted and held tight. But it was not after all the only time she’d done that – she’d cried and cried when left with Elke for the first time while Josephina went to the market back in Sønderborg, but then she was just one year old and, besides, when Josephina got back, Catharina was no longer interested in her, it was Elke she loved best. So Josephina went quickly out of the nursery, leaving Catharina writhing and shrieking in the arms of a young woman about Josephina’s own age, and up the stairs to the sewing room.