The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  Did Catha remember the time they went to the Bauernhaus above the Schwentine when her Tante Elke was to be married to that handsome Franzose? Did she remember going with her cousin Mathilde to take the Franzose his supper and a bottle of beer where he was being kept apart in one of the animal stalls inside? While the rest of them sat outside under the tree with the lamp hung up in it, and sang? While waiting for Tante Greta and the others to come up Kieler Förde in Danne’s boat?

  Oh yes, almost – or not really? – perhaps she remembered something to do with a chicken. And her opa’s bony shoulders when he carried her on them. And there were lots of flowers, and bees.

  But really, did she remember? Or was it the memory of being told about it? What she was seeing was that her mutti did remember, she remembered all of it and more after having tidied it away for many years; and seeing also that Mutti’s memory seemed now to have reached out ahead into the summer when she would catch the train to the place called Raurimu and go down into the valley where Wolf had prepared for a return rather than an arrival.

  ‘A chicken?’ exclaimed Greta in excitement.

  ‘Yes,’ said her grandma who was going to the magic valley. ‘It was like that one I told you about called Puck Puck. Perhaps there will be a Puck Puck at Uncle Wolf’s place? Then you can hold it the way you did with Emma.’

  Then, without noticing the moment she had decided to do so, but with a strange sensation of having shifted this person called Catharina out of the time and place of the birthday party, she was standing by herself in the last of the pale sunshine at the window end of the room and watching the vivacious woman who was now as much her friend as her mutti – Mutti who had not been vivacious and happy in this way for a long time, but who it seemed now had been re-animated by the potent apple or the nail with Vulcan’s warming powers or the sweetness of the gifted honey.

  More and more over the years this woman had withdrawn herself into her own tidiness, as though she needed to reduce the amount and complication of what was in her life and perhaps also in her memory. This friend-Mutti had been her closest companion for fifteen years or so, even after Hugo, but she had long ago stopped referring to her life back in ‘the old country’ or telling stories about it, except when there was important news, such as her sister Elke’s babies; but after a while she seldom any longer spoke of even that kind of news. And certainly she had long ago stopped describing what her life had been like as a child and a young woman, with the animals and so forth, though she had done so when Catharina was young.

  So why now, feeling even a little faint, and watching her mutti lean in close to the aura of wonder with which her granddaughter had surrounded herself, did she all at once have in her mind Mutti’s description from long ago of the animals in the Bauernhaus, and her own memory, if indeed it was her own and not the one Mutti had given her, of her opa’s bony shoulders, and the flowers, and the bees?

  It was almost as though the special package from Wolf and the magic objects in it had unlocked Mutti’s tidied-away memories, and they had found their way into her, Catha’s, mind, not because she was a child like Greta with her shining eyes, but because she was her mother’s closest friend and she would need to be the one who understood what was happening to her.

  Then she was sitting down in the hard armchair with the whorled mahogany arms pressing up against her, and Hugo was offering her a cup of tea with lemon – it had some of the special honey in it, and was she feeling all right? She had gone very quiet and looked rather pale.

  Oh he could be so kind, her dear Hugo, but how could she possibly explain to him what had happened just now when she had barely begun to understand it herself?

  Do you remember the time we went to the Bauernhaus above the Schwentine when your Tante Elke was to be married to that handsome Franzose? Do you remember going with your cousin Mathilde to take the Franzose his supper and a bottle of beer where he was being kept apart in one of the animal stalls inside? While the rest of us sat outside under the tree with the lamp hung up in it, and sang? While waiting for Tante Greta and the others to come up Kieler Förde in Danne’s boat?

  Did she? It was impossible to know, but now the story was back in her mind where perhaps it had been once before when she was a child, and before that perhaps the memory itself had been there for a little while.

  But why had Mutti asked the question? After all these years? Surely it was because Wolf’s magic had unlocked it and she was really asking herself, not Catha?

  And then, after some tea, Mutti was preparing to leave. She and Catha and Greta would not go for a walk in the Botanic Garden today because Catha looked tired, perhaps from her work at the High School?

  Mutti had her little smile suggesting that by ‘work’ she might mean engaging with ‘her own mind’ as well as those of her pupils.

  She had a box with some of the leftover sandwiches kindly wrapped in greaseproof paper by Mrs Tilley the housekeeper – they would keep her going for days! – and would Greta like to keep one of the special things from her uncle and auntie’s place? Because her grandmother would like to keep some herself, to remind her of what was going to happen in the summer!

  Then Greta was looking at the apple, wool, honey and nail on their piece of pale canvas. Her eyes filled with tears that then poured down past her mouth that had begun to tremble, because how could she decide which of the magic objects she would like the most?

  ‘Choose the honey, my darling,’ advised her grandma, ‘because that is the most special. And you can have a little every morning with your breakfast. It will remind you that one day you will visit me at uncle and auntie’s place.’

  And then she was quickly wrapping up the other things and tying the parcel’s string with a deft knot. Hugo had himself hurried down to the end of the street to re-call the trap – she offered her cheek for his gallant kiss before stepping up into it. The cool afternoon sunshine was casting the intermittent shadows of houses across the road, and Mutti flickered away through them and round the corner.

  Agatha

  Dear cusin greta I miss you very much. Granny josie says you will come to see us plese come soon now its summer again we can swim in the river. Granny has been here for a whole year since last summer I think you must miss her she helps with a lot of things mostly henry and she is helping me to write this letta. She ses I must tell you the news mummy will have another baby soon. Now I am almost nine adam is five and henry is two so granny says there will soon be four little wolfs. I hope the new one will be a girl because Henry is a bad wolf who treys to bite me but granny says he is just treying his teeth. Our dog curly dide we are all very sad. Daddy says he will get a new one but it wont be as good as curly. Curly is buried near the gooseberies we made a cross with a sheep bone in it one of the sheep fell in the river and some eels ate it. Now we have one cow two horses some chickens also some sheep they live on the other side of the river unles they fall in that is a joke. Also now we have bees and daddy and mister badem are bilding a honey house near the river how would you like to live in a honey house I would. In the morning I go to school with daddy on the horse its name is blackie of course you will love it. Our teacher is missis fletcher she mostly likes singing. Now we know how to sing a lot of songs my favorite is the fields of athenry, low lie the fields of athenry where once we watched the small free birds fly our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing its so lonely round the fields of athenry. Now granny is teaching me a song in german here are some of the words she helped with, vie traulich var das flekchen vo mine viga ging. When I know all the words I can sing it for missis fletcher at school. Asian badem is at the school he sang a song in turk his name asian means lion so now there is a wolf and a lion in the school is what daddy says. There are sixteen children at the school some of the big ones help missis fletcher how is your school in wellington? Soon this letta will go to wellington on the trane and then you can send one back so we can have your news or better still send your self. The address is Wenczel kait
ieke which means eat a bird called tieke. There are a lot of birds here besides our chickens they live in the forest no not the chickens that is another joke. Soon mister badem will come to have a cup of tea he and granny josie like to talk so I have to finish my letter. Granny josie sends you love and kisses and here are mine xx.

  Greta

  Dear Cousin Aggie

  Thank you for the letter it was very nice to get it and read about your news and animals. Mama was very happy to hear about the new Baby that you will have in the Valley soon, the news made her cry with joy. She says thankyou for the Gooseberries and the eggs that came on the train with your letter. Mrs Tilley made a Gooseberry Tart and we enjoyed it very much with Cream.

  Mama and Papa say I can go on the train to visit you in the Valley in the Summer Holidays after Christmas. Mama says she will come on the train to get me at the end of the Holiday and then she will see for herself what the Valley is like. I know it will be magic with all the Birds and the Honey Bees.

  Are there Eels in the river where we will swim? I have been learning to swim at the Te Aro Baths. I go there once a week with the girls from my School. Also I go on the Ferry with Papa to Days Bay where there is icecream at the Pavilion.

  At School we are learning Reading, Writing and Arithmetic as well as Physical Education, we do that outside with Stretches and Skipping ropes. We also have Cooking and Sewing and Papa is teaching me German in the evening, he knows that song you are learning, he says it is Wie traulich war das Fleckchen wo meine Wiege ging and the song’s title is Heimweh by Johannes Brahms. Also we are starting to do some French. Comment allez vous is how you say How Are You in French.

  Grandma Josephina told me she had a special Chicken called Puck Puck when she was little. Do you have a special Chicken in the Valley that you are allowed to carry around? I hope so because then I can have a turn when I come to visit. I was allowed to hold the chicken called Emma at Grandma’s house before she went to stay with you in the Valley.

  Now I will close this Letter and get it ready to send to you on the Train at Wenczel Kaitieke, but next time I hope I will send myself.

  With love from your faraway Cousin

  Greta

  Beth and Frank

  It was unnaturally quiet in the garden with Joe’s mob gone, normal nice quiet but minus an extra amount of quietness with their happy racket subtracted from the norm. Both her head and the garden itself seemed muffled, as if their spaces were conjoined and invaded by a dull vacuum that was really the absence of Joe’s lanky Frankie and his boisterous boys. Her visiting blackbird came and went without a sound, not even the deft flit of its wings as it departed.

  She refilled her glass with the uninteresting pinot gris snatched off a shelf at New World after the galah-head Frank email and the phone call to Joe. At the supermarket it had been the noisy opposite of too-quiet deafness that had made her hasty with the wine and lazy with her selection of fruits and cheese for the lunch with Joe’s mob the next day, and at the self-checkout she’d cancelled her transaction and begun to take her basket back to the shelves to start again but had then said ‘Fuck it’ out loud and returned to the checkout queue where the assistant gave her a fishy look and who could blame her. The place was filled with a tinny racket of bad music tracks on the shop sound-system and in front of her a man talking too loudly into a cellphone mike dangling under his chin – he kept shouting ‘No I don’t get it, I do not get it, Francis!’ while gesticulating with his full basket of stuff. She’d almost pushed him towards the next vacated checkout station, where he continued to expostulate while doing his efficiently angry transaction. On the way home in the car she’d first of all turned the radio on to banish the ‘I do not get it, Francis!’ from her head, but had then turned it off and opened all the windows to let the muggy air blow Francis away.

  Bit of a Noel moment back there. Some way along in his fading he couldn’t handle supermarkets, it was the profusion of choices and his inability to know how to make any that led to tragi-comic events, not least the time he set about rearranging the canned tuna shelves. That time he was escorted from the premises by a big Samoan security guard who recommended a nice walk along the row of plane trees over the road in Victoria Park – ‘Nice and quiet over there, sir, lovely trees,’ was what Noel reported the man had said when she caught up with him after the security guy told her he’d directed the elderly man in khaki dockers and a Panama hat to the park. The organising principle of the tuna display had been ‘anomalous’, but the plane trees were just right!

  Of course it hadn’t just been the effect of the emailed image of Frank with the photoshopped galah head that had rattled her and summoned the memory of Noel waving his Panama in gracious sweeps to demonstrate the symmetrical enfilade of the plane trees, but also the sturdy brown cardboard box about fifty-something centimetres square and thirty-something deep plastered on the front with Aussie bird stamps à la Frank and with a crudely drawn Edvard Munch The Scream on the back. Now at last she set her glass of wine to one side and ripped the masking tape from the box seals.

  The stuff inside was neatly and tightly packed within fresh new white foolscap archive file-boxes surrounded by supporting bubblewrap and with a scattering of what she took to be anti-bug capsules – someone’s careful loving handiwork, not Frank’s and certainly not anyone historical. There were three archive boxes, each one with a neat handwritten entry on its lid. One entry read ‘SDP + KUNZE’, another had ‘CATHARINA/GRETA?’, and the third one the name ‘FREDERICK’ with a quickly sketched smiley-face emoji. Though the saggy-face Munch-scream sketch on the back of the box could plausibly have been Frank’s before the ‘can’t work my claws’ moment, the archive box labels were not – they were done in careful but decisive capital letters, using a skinny-tip black magic marker. Probably granddaughter Lizzie while holding Frank Junior at bay with her free hand. Was she the one with anti-bug knowledge, and where did she get it?

  And now poor old Noel again pleading to be noticed and included, his scrupulously organised Brumberger cases of 35mm colour slides, his too-neat handwritten labels. All carted off now, to the Auckland Museum.

  A sip of the wine, the second glass better than the first.

  There was also a postcard in the box, as was only to be expected, this time of a winking emu, one eye shut next to its crazed amber counterpart, its dishevelled head feathers in a punkish mohawk crest, a straw clenched in its derisive, grinning beak. It was stuck to the Frederick package by a little piece of clear tape. No written message.

  Yes of course she should be thrilled to be encountering another batch of the Catharina/Greta/Ruth things, and she was even a bit trembly as she opened the CATHARINA/GRETA? box, but also apprehensive because of what Joe had meant a bit earlier with his finger screwing into his temple.

  But okay, why not go all the way and invite Noel to the party?

  She found the vinyl Jan Tomasow with Solisti di Zagreb Four Seasons, Noel’s favourite, and put it on the turntable that had been one of the last devices he could manage.

  ‘Give us a hand, Noel dear, please.’

  Giunt’ è la Primavera e festosetti, he said into the place where the garden and her brain overlapped, and the foggy confused space filled up with the happy, purposeful cheer of the Allegro. While it played briskly he would often have been poring very, very slowly over the details of the slide on his light table, his magnifying eyepiece creeping about with minute care within the headlong movement of the music.

  In the fresh new CATHARINA/GRETA? box were a number of much older envelopes. The first of them was A4, brown and not very full to the touch, with a faded mauve handwritten note on the top – ink mauve from age? – the small, cursive letters elegant and precise and somehow old-fashioned. Too old to be Frank’s twin Ruth, killed at twenty-three in 1970? Could be her and Frank’s mother Greta? On their road trip, somewhere around the stinky stretch of highway near the Kinleith paper mill, Frank had said Greta took the Granny Cath stuff to Queensland with them
for her ‘fresh start’ when she herself was in her fifties – so early sixties? Still didn’t feel right, the mauveness, the old-fashionedness, the precise elegance.

  For dear particular Noel, the examination of detail had never been slapdash or boring. He called it ‘forensic looking’ and advocated stubbornly for ‘the truth of the detail’ when his picture editors argued for ‘story’ and ‘big picture’. He almost always lost the arguments, but never changed his mind.

  Forensic looking.

  So that left Greta’s mother Catharina as the likely author of the faded mauve handwritten note, Catharina the daughter of Josephina Wenczel, the latter now at rest beneath the sheepy hillside of the Raurimu cemetery – the Catharina who, according to the reunion’s querulous tree, had taken back her maiden name Hansen when her husband and Greta’s father, one Hugo von Welden, was incarcerated on Somes Island at the outbreak of war in 1914. The daughter Greta who, when she married the Oliver Hardy impersonator Albert Parks, awarded herself the hyphen in Hansen-Parks, most likely because her mother Catharina had also prudently stripped her daughter of the von Welden moniker at the same time as she rebranded herself as non-alien.

  Beth raised her glass in a salute to Great-aunt Catharina Hansen, because of course it had to be she who wrote the words ‘Film Reviews, Evening Post, October 1920’ on the outside of the brown envelope. The wine was warm from late sunshine on the deck, so she took it to the kitchen and tipped it down the sink. A fresh, crisp, cool glass seemed no more than Catharina Hansen’s crisp, just-so handwriting deserved.