The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  Yes, he understood why it might have been necessary, he told her.

  Then he put Catharina down again. He was nodding at Josephina in a way that said clearly he knew about the situation at the Andersen house. Until then they had never spoken about it.

  Catharina was tugging on Josephina’s skirt again because Mutti and Herr Bloch were talking to each other with their faces quite close together, but the gypsies and the fuzzy monkey weren’t at the bridge so Herr Bloch got a cab with a nice black horse and she was allowed to ride up top with the driver.

  Giddy up! she shouted as they clopped away – while inside the cab Josephina leaned towards Wolf and thanked him and then picked up his hand and held it between both of hers for a moment, with a little squeeze. Then she sat back. He was kind and he listened to her, she thanked him for that and for his affectionate way with Catharina. He was looking at her with an absurd expression on his face – it was a mixture of surprise and gratitude, his mouth was open but no words came out, and Wolf was certainly never at a loss for words.

  But it wasn’t his loss of words, it was his gratitude that touched her the most there in the cab with its rather stale smell of tobacco. He noticed her wrinkling her nose and trying to pull down the window-glass, and so reached across her to help. Excuse me, Josephina? Unlike the cab, Wolf had quite a nice smell – he kept a little bottle of syrup of violets and almond oil by his bed, for his cough; Josephina had taken out the cork and sniffed it when tidying his room, the smell was in his bed as well, and it seemed he dabbed some on his chest before going out – though there was also of course the aroma of himself, and his warmth.

  Over by the rail of the ship the group had dispersed and Wolf was leaning back and looking towards her with his head on one side, that was his way. He gave a little ‘Come over here’ wave.

  Of course she knew why she’d picked up his hand in the cab. It wasn’t just a thoughtless impulse.

  What silly nonsense was he telling those people?

  She took his arm.

  He was telling them about the only time he’d ever tried to swim. He’d believed all you had to do was dive into the water and make yourself the shape of a fish, he’d almost drowned. That was in Uelzen, in the river Gerdau, which was pure and ran between lovely grasslands and forests, made even purer and lovelier you might think by his young schoolmates who swam in it and had urged him to jump in. He still remembered the ghastly sensation of sinking! But Josephina, she was a Siren now, so Theodora had told him, she’d have to let him ride on her tail and they’d be saved! They could swim together to an island like her favourite one in The Swiss Family Robinson, though please without the self-satisfied Schweizer! Who were even worse than the Frederiksens! Or those Bavarians!

  But she hoped he hadn’t told those people about her being a Siren? And her tail?

  ‘What, the Frederiksens?’

  ‘The people you were telling the fishy story to, silly man. But also the Frederiksens!’

  Her tail was their secret, he reassured her – theirs and Theodora’s, he added, as his sister came towards them with Catharina.

  ‘This is the Atlantic Ocean,’ Catharina told them proudly, extending her arms. ‘All of it!’

  ‘Oceans,’ explained Theodora, who looked tired. ‘We’ve been learning oceans. Some of us, at least.’

  The three Frederiksen children went past in a little herd managed by fru Frederiksen, and the girl called Gudrun poked her tongue out at Catharina. Fru Frederiksen preferred to instruct her children in the Bible away from the common schoolroom. She had a way of parting the crowd on the deck as they hurried towards the stateroom. Could she go with them, Catharina begged with a sweet expression for her mutti. She liked the stories such as the one about the time Jesus made one fish and one loaf of bread increase until it satisfied ‘a multitude’.

  Theodora said something inaudible.

  Yes, of course she could, said Josephina – did she want Mutti to come with her? As far as their cabin?

  There was a band with a violin and a flageolet, and some people had begun to dance. Dancing was encouraged as a way of exercising on board the ship, so they were all told. But it was the nice weather and the sunshine that had lifted the mood of the passengers, as it had Josephina’s, so she thought it was quite simple, surely? Unless Catharina would prefer to stay and listen to the music? She could have a little dance with her mutti? But not too fast?

  But no, Catharina wanted to go to be with her friend Gudrun, she liked her, they had a secret language.

  Wolf allowed his hand to press Josephina’s stomach as he took his arm from her waist.

  There was that expression on Theodora’s face again – was it more sad than annoyed or more annoyed than sad? But what did it mean to think of it as an expression, an out-looking, since what Theodora’s face was doing was mostly concealing what she thought or felt? Or in-looking, looking in at what she was thinking, looking at herself? And in any case, Catharina was her daughter, not Theodora’s, she had raised her to be a friendly child and to be curious about things like reading, which she was learning to do with The Swiss Family Robinson, and about oceans, for example – what right did Theodora have to those expressions that were not quite truthful?

  Then Catharina was pulling her away towards the Frederiksens. Probably now Wolf and his sister would have their discussion about the Danes, it was usually the same one, with Theodora being annoyed and Wolf being amused, which annoyed her even more, which amused him even more, and so on. She’d leave them to find a way of changing how they discussed the Danes, or going back to the beginning again, or coming to an agreement! – while she went with Catharina to be with her friend Gudrun and the stories from the Bible that she herself remembered well from the days at Pastor Köhler’s hot musty schoolroom so long ago now it seemed, when in summer the big dung flies would come droning in from the cow meadow. Boring boring boring Elke would mumble under her breath, imitating them and Pastor Köhler, and thwack would go the wooden spoon on her back!

  And then she continued rather tired through to her own space in the cabin where she’d begun to put nice blue chain-stitch borders on the little garments she was making, starting with a muslin night-shift long enough to cover the baby’s feet. She was also going to do a little antlered deer on the front, with its mountain peak and a pine tree, more interesting than an owl, though she didn’t have much thread and had begun to unpick some of the embroidery work on her own things to get enough different colours.

  The sound of the sea – of the Atlantic Ocean! – never went away from the sides of the ship, nor did the sounds of the ship itself, its creaking and snapping and moaning so terrible at first and the sounds of wind and sails, and especially when their hatch was open the hubbub of people on the deck when they were allowed to be out there, and now the sound of fru Frederiksen next door in the stateroom reading from the Bible in the Danish that Catharina said she understood, she understood perfectly! – though of course she hardly did, since she was only just talking when they left Sønderborg, her funny mixture of Danish and German with Finn’s made-up words as well. The sounds were soothing and the sewing was intimate, the way it repeated was both dreamy and careful, and there was just enough wave-flicker light from the porthole window if she sat below it on the bunk bed she sometimes shared with Catharina but not Wolf these days.

  Ah, it was so nice to be alone but also nice to feel her body occupied a little by desire – it was the pleasing atmosphere of the cabin that did that but also Wolf’s absence, the thought of him saying ‘little bird wings, how lovely’ in his room with its dim lamp, his hesitant fingers on her shoulder blades, his uncertainty – and as earlier in the cab with the black horse and Catharina shouting with excitement up there with the driver who was also by then shouting giddy up! – that look of astonishment and gratitude when she took his hand, but later in his dim room his fuzzy chest rising and falling with his difficult breaths. The funny, fuzzy chest he’d been too shy for her to uncover, at first.r />
  ‘You’re a fuzzy monkey! So now I know!’

  ‘And you’re a little bird.’ He could only just manage to say it once.

  ‘A Rohrsänger.’

  Gasping, ‘A what?’

  No, she wouldn’t do the little deer on its mountain with the pine tree, or the owl with its solemn round face turned out to stare straight ahead – no, it would be the Rohrsänger on the delicate pale muslin, a pair of them, they would have tiny blushes of redness and dark streaks along their wings and pale breasts of bare muslin, they would have small bright black eyes – where could she get some black beads, perhaps she could dye some grains with Wolf’s ink, but how could she attach them? – and they could rest there on the thin muslin, the little Rohrsänger, and sway a little in the breeze that was the baby breathing, and then one day they would arrive at last after their long journey at the place that oranges came from. And that was the story she would tell her baby, not the story of the little deer that would only ever stay behind, and not the story of the owl that could only ever make its first evening hoot from the edge of the woods over beyond the Bauernhaus – there always had to be a first one as the daylight faded, and it would always be where Elke was.

  Now she was crying and had to put the muslin aside, which was when Wolf and Theodora came in. Theodora turned at once and went out again into the stateroom, closing the door on Catharina’s worried face looking towards her. It had begun to rain outside, it was a ‘squall’ Wolf told her, and indeed the ship had leaned over – but then he sat down beside her on the bed and carefully put his hand on her back, the bones he liked.

  ‘What’s the matter, little bird?’

  What was the matter? What was the matter? Nothing was the matter, she couldn’t really explain it, she was feeling so happy and even would he believe a little amorous, yes, just a little, it was so nice, she was liking the peace of their cabin and the sewing, she even liked remembering her sister Elke, nothing was the matter, really nothing.

  Now she just had to unpick some things because she didn’t have enough thread. She’d been remembering.

  Remembering what, he wanted to know.

  ‘That first time we . . .’

  His pleased ah-hum, the prickle of his whiskers on her jaw.

  But no, that wasn’t it.

  She gently pushed him away.

  ‘I don’t understand what the world means. I don’t understand where it is.’

  His face and whole body were silent.

  ‘Sometimes it overcomes me.’

  Catharina’s querulous voice on the other side of the door.

  ‘Just give me a little kiss, please, Wolf, and then tell the others they can come in if they want to.’

  The very sweet tender little kiss. His hand on the side of her neck.

  ‘Thank you, Monkey.’

  Catharina came in first. She knew Mutti’s crying from the redness of the eyes.

  Would she like to help her mutti with some unpicking, so they could have some more thread for the baby’s nightdress?

  Then they sat down together to do the work.

  Tuesday, the 25th of November, The Atlantic Ocean

  My dear sisters Elke and Greta I kiss you both many many times.

  Yes of course I’ve cried sometimes thinking of you! And also thinking about Papa, and of course Finn and Otto who will both be big boys now especially that naughty Finn! And perhaps Elke will have something special to write me about when she has time away from her handsome Franzose!

  I promised to write a letter about my life in Hamburg but it has been very different and busy and in any case we all saw each other at Elke’s wedding and so you know that I was living with Catharina at the Bloch House of Herr Wolf Bloch and Fräulein Theodora Bloch and liking it, it was a nice house by the lake, and very hospitable.

  Since the wedding and the happy memories I have of those days much has happened and some of that is why I haven’t written you the letter I promised, it was because I was unsure how to tell you about the things that have happened in my life which is also Catharina’s life, I was afraid you would judge me or be angry with me. But I was wrong and foolish to be afraid because I know you love me. No matter how wide the distance is between us we are always close in the world and will be for ever.

  Elke you will read this first and so will Papa and perhaps Tante Elizabeth, but please send it to Greta as soon as you can because you all need to know that Wolf and Theodora Bloch and Catharina and I have left Hamburg because of laws against the Socialists, it had become dangerous. We are now all on a ship going to New Zealand many weeks journey away but it will be a safe place where we can have a new life.

  You will want to know why I am going to this distant place with strangers since the laws are attacking them but not your little sister or Catharina. The reason is that Wolf Bloch and your little sister are now in a marriage and I am going to have this man’s child. Yes Elke I know you will at this moment be screaming what a fool your sister must be and have I allowed myself to be taken advantage of again but I can tell you and you must believe me nothing could be more different. Firstly because I did not allow myself to be taken advantage of in that house on Faulstrasse and of course you know why that was so, but secondly because I am married to Wolf and bearing his child because I chose to and you know I can choose my path, you have seen me do it before. He is a very gentle man and also funny but not strong in his body, it is the strength of his nature that I love and his kindness to me and also to Catharina who calls him Papa Wolf. Yes it is true that we are not married in the usual way with a pastor like you Greta to your Danish man who carried you far away across the Alsund to Sønderborg where your uncles were killed by the Danes, in case you forgot! And you Elke to a penniless Franzose who says things in his beard about the revolutions of forty-eight and so is surely seditious! But we are all married in the way that matters which is about love, and so Elke and Greta you have to be happy for me and for Catharina and for the sister or brother that she will have in our new life.

  And now at last I will tell you something about what has been happening and what it is like to be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in this ship with hundreds of others also hoping for a new life. We had to run from Hamburg in a hurry because the Chancellor’s men closed Wolf’s Bürger Zeitung newspaper down and took his property and would have sent him to prison if we hadn’t gone to Bremen. He wanted to go to America where some of his comrades were already living but there was no time. The friends of the Bürger Zeitung collected enough money for an intermediate class voyage and so we are travelling in better conditions than most of the passengers. There are four intermediate class cabins on the ship, two on each side of it, and each one has two sleeping compartments with four beds in each, the beds are stacked two high so it is very close. There are about thirty of us altogether in these cabins and a lesser number in the most expensive first class ones, they keep to themselves and stay on the upper deck at the back of the ship, sometimes people on the lower deck gather to look at them and discuss their clothes!

  In our class there is a small shared room for each pair of cabins where we can eat our meals and shelter during the day. We are sharing ours with a Danish family with three children whose sleeping space is the closest to us, of course they speak mostly Danish and are Lutherans like Pastor Jepsen who christened Catharina in Sønderborg, you will remember him Elke, you said he was buttoned-up. The others on our side of the ship who also share this stateroom are two families from a place called Starnberg in the south, they are related to each other and all look the same, they speak a funny kind of German and are Catholics and are travelling to be with even more of their family in New Zealand, perhaps one day you will think of doing this! And then there is our family which the others think is Jewish even though Wolf and Theodora are Socialists and don’t believe in religion and Catharina and I are not. Wolf tries to have conversations with these different believers but Theodora keeps to herself. We have all been thrown together by circumstances a
nd will have to remain friendly for many weeks but I think this will not be easy. There is a shared washroom with a privy that spills over when the sea is stormy but no bath, some of the men go on deck and have seawater thrown over them in the morning.

  There was a big storm soon after we left Bremerhaven, both Theodora and I were very sick but Catharina was not bad and Wolf looked after us all as much as possible dear man. There were animal pens on the deck and most of them were swept away into the waves that came over the ship and also came in to our cabins and flooded them. We had to go in to the Island of Madeira to get supplies since many of those were spoiled or lost in the storm, but there was a dispute about these provisions at the port and so now the ship’s captain has told us we are going to the Canary Islands. All that came on board at Madeira was some wine and fresh fruit for the rich passengers, which made the others angry and no wonder!

  So now some people are angry about the supplies and the delays in our voyage and the captain and his officers are walking about with weapons. But today was mostly sunny and warm and people were dancing up on the deck where we are allowed to go for certain times every day if the weather is good. When the weather is bad we have to stay shut up with all the doors and windows closed, which is bad for us but much worse for the people in the mass accommodations who have to live crowded together in a single space, and so we are lucky. There is a school for the children that Catharina goes to, and I still have the Swiss Family Robinson that you hid in my bag Greta on that day Catharina and I left you that I will never forget.

  But now we all have to put our lights out, the ship has many orders like this, and so I will stop here and promise to write again. This letter will have to go ashore in the Canary Islands where we hope to be before too long so that another ship can carry it back the way we have come, to my dear sisters in those places I will always remember because of you.

  Your sister and daughter Josephina

  and your niece and granddaughter Catharina who can now write her own name here.