by Valerie Volk
‘And that’s you. You can’t deny it. We’ve seen it, remember?’
It was strange to find Hanna my champion. All these years I had seen her as Otto’s daughter. Now it seemed there were still bonds that tied us. It was almost disconcerting; I had become so accustomed to an old familiar alienation from my daughter.
‘Let’s talk of happier things. There is a new letter from Kurt.’
I pulled it from the pocket of my apron and laid it on the table before turning to take the bread from the oven. They were loaves of the dark rye bread that Hanna and Kurt had always loved, and I planned to give her a loaf to take home to Mittelwalde. I knew that her Liesel and Hans looked for ‘Oma’s bread’ that I would send them. These little ones I saw only rarely, for Hanna came dutifully every four weeks, but always alone.
She had made no move to pick up the letter, so I unfolded it to read to her.
‘He has found work in a huge shipyard, he says. It’s called Norddeutscher Lloyd. He writes that it’s one of the biggest companies in Bremen. It’s well established, too—Kurt is very proud of this new work. He gives a lot of detail about the firm.’
I persevered, in spite of Hanna’s lack of interest.
‘Actually, he says it was started back in 1857, but in these thirty years it has grown to be the largest in all the German Reich. Think of it, Hanna. How well Kurt has done, to join such a company.’
The girl yawned. ‘Oh, Kurt will always do well,’ she commented, with a touch of bitterness. ‘He has charm.’
I looked at her in surprise. ‘But he has not had it easy, Hanna. Life here was not happy for him.’
‘No, not with Vati, true. But you more than made up for it.’
‘Someone had to,’ I retorted, perhaps a bit more harshly than I had intended. ‘After all, you got away from it.’
Her face took on that mulish look that so reminded me of her father. ‘Yes, well, there was little for me here.’
I chose to ignore the comment. ‘Let me tell you a little more of what he says.’
‘If you wish …’ her tone was indifferent.
‘He seems impressed by the company and what it does. Already in the first ten years it had fourteen steamers, eight on the voyage to America and six to England. And it gained the mail-carrying rights—that was a big achievement. He says that in spite of a few problems in the years when we were at war with France—they actually blockaded our German ports for a few months—the company has gone from strength to strength.’
‘But what does he actually do, Mama?’
I frowned. ‘He doesn’t clearly say. The letter is all about the company. He is full of praise for its reputation for safety and reliability, but now they are making speed of travel their priority. In the last seven years they have been constructing fast steamers—he talks about a future with twin-screw steamers …’
‘Do you know what he is talking about?’
‘No, it means nothing to me. But he seems impressed by the foresight of the founder of the company, a Herr Meier. I think your brother is working with the steam engines, which is what he wanted. He says it is in Bremerhaven—that’s where the shipyards are.’
‘So Kurt is not actually in Bremen itself?’
‘No, it seems to be about forty miles and on the waterfront.’
‘That would be logical, wouldn’t it!’
In spite of her sarcasm, I continued. ‘He says seven years ago the first fast steamer was launched—probably because Englishmen had built one three years earlier—and since then in Bremen they have added more. It seems like a competition. Kurt is going to post us a photograph of the Kaiser-Wilhelm II, a new ship they are building as we speak.’
‘The next thing, Mama, will be that he wants to sail on one.’
‘Ach, lieber Gott, I hope not. These ships are now going, he says, not only to New York but also to South America, and to countries far away across the Pacific, even to Australia!’
At last Hanna looked impressed.
‘They are really crossing the world. I can see why he would be excited to be part of this.’
She sat down again at the table and took another piece of cake.
‘But does he tell you anything about himself? What does he do in his leisure time? Even our hard-working Kurt must have some free time!’
‘No …’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘He writes mainly about his work and how excited he is about it.’
Hanna shrugged. ‘That’s our Kurt.’
I went on. ‘He’s proud of the company. The Imperial Post that they carry has been important. They say these new ships have increased exports to all these countries, because their cargo space is so much greater.’
‘That would be profitable,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘It must be. They are now building more cargo steamers. And they’re planning to deepen the Weser River, so that the new ships can carry their cargo as far as Bremen itself, rather than having to unload at Bremerhaven and transport goods there.’
‘I would think the new ships might be for people-carrying also. Franz tells me there are many men in Mittelwalde who are packing up their households and families and emigrating. Mainly to America, but some are also going to Australia.’
I was not surprised by her words. ‘It’s so hard to make a living from the land, and those who go to the cities say that conditions are hideous. Not enough work, nowhere to live, and they cannot get used to the cramped dirty city life.’
‘Franz says that as Bürgermeister he has had to complete many documents for the emigrants. Some just close their cottages, even farms that have been in their families for generations, and walk away. There is no one to buy them.’
‘But to leave your home and your neighbours—that is an act of great courage.’
‘It is indeed a long way to go. They say it takes many months.’
‘And such a dangerous journey. What makes them think they will be any better off in a new land?’
Hannah shrugged her shoulders. ‘Who knows? Someone goes, and then sends letters back, saying there are great opportunities. Hans Dichtermeyer went, and now six other families are planning to follow him to Australia because his letters have made it seem so attractive.’
‘Such courage. Or is it stupidity?’
‘They sell everything they can to raise money for the passage, then set off for Bremen or Hamburg in the hope of a ship to take them. But to what?’
Kurt’s letter had been forgotten as we talked. I scanned it again quickly.
‘There is little mention of the work he does, but he tells us about the lodging house he has found; it’s one where many emigrants stay while they are waiting for a ship. He seems happy there, and that is the main thing.’
‘Will you go there too, like your Breslau adventure last year?’
I laughed. ‘Oh, my child, too far, too difficult. Where would I get the money for another such trip?’ I hesitated. ‘Also, I am concerned for your father.’
She looked up curiously. ‘What do you mean? Concerned?’
‘More than usual, I mean. I look at him, and I fear sometimes. No, not of his blows—’ I forestalled her response ‘—but for him. I think there is something wrong.’
‘There would be no surprise in that, the way he drinks.’
I folded the letter and put it away, then packed the bread, some eggs from my fowls, and biscuits I had baked for the children before waving her farewell from the front doorstep. She walked to the pony trap that Franz had brought back, his business in Lewin completed, and they drove away.
I was always regretful when her rare visits were over, regretful that I was not sorrier to see her go. Regretful that so much of our time had been spent with me talking of Kurt. Sad that our time together was stilted and awkward, and our conversations formal and constrained. Had it been Kurt, how different the hour would have been.
But that was a thought to dismiss. My son was in Bremerhaven, and I was in Lewin. Time to think more about Otto, and what was happen
ing there. Perhaps, I mused, I should have been more honest with Hanna, and let her see the level of my concern.
It was hard to look at him; even harder to remember what he had been. I had given up all efforts to stop his drinking; years of failure had left me exhausted and defeated. What more could I have done?
If my days were dreary and joyless, at least they were not filled with the nightmares that seemed to accompany him. He seemed shrunken, and the yellowing of his face alarmed me. Even the violence in him had waned, and that, such irony, alarmed me even more.
‘There are doctors in Glatz,’ I urged, after I had seen the blood spots on his clothing. ‘You are not well, Otto. You need to see someone who can help.’
‘God damn it, wife. What do you care?’ His voice faded into confused muttering as he lurched toward the bed.
Yet, I did still care. For all the years of wretchedness, we shared a past. Days in the little village school, before I had gone to the Chateau and separated myself from him. The two children he had given me, his tenderness with Hanna when she was a little girl—I wondered if she could recall those days.
I had kept a cold home for him, and I could not be surprised that he had turned to other satisfactions. It had not been a good bargain that he had made in agreeing to marry me, and we both knew it. Did he sometimes feel that the empty flapping sleeve was a punishment on him? Or was our marriage even more the punishment … for us both?
Now I looked at his face where he lay, yellowed and sunken, and the great mass of his swollen belly. Frau Schmidt’s words came back to me, for our neighbour had been brutally honest with me that day.
‘Anna,’ she said, for her age and our closeness had given her the right to call me by my name, ‘your man is doomed, I fear. I have seen it before. It is the drinker’s fate, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy.’
‘I have begged him to go to a physician in Glatz, but he will not listen.’
‘It would be pointless. When it reaches this stage, there is nothing that can be done. His innards are rotted.’
Frau Schmidt looked at me with pity. ‘I know about this disease. I have seen it before, and the symptoms are the same. Have you not noticed the bruises and the dark marks on his face, or the yellow of his skin and his eyes?’
I could only nod.
‘It is in his gut, his liver,’ she shook her head, and then did something strange, uncharacteristic. She laid her hand on my arm and, with the other hand, made the sign of the cross upon my forehead.
‘You will need to be brave before the end, my child.’
I wondered, should I have told Hanna of this conversation? Should I write Kurt to come home? Home to the house he had said he would never set foot in again, to see the father he so hated? Perhaps a chance to make some peace between them?
But before I could do that, Kurt’s letter came, and I knew it was too late.
Hanna had known her brother all too well, and I berated myself for not listening to her. He will want to sail, she had foreseen, but I had refused to believe her. How right she had been.
‘It is a rare opportunity,’ he had written to me. I think I knew, even before I opened the envelope, with its Imperial Reich stamp. Up to now, I had blessed our new postal service, and the fact that I could at least hear from my son each week. He had been so good about writing regularly to me. I think he sensed how I lived for those letters.
But not this one. It was like the doomsday bell, which still rang out over the township for each funeral.
He would take this rare opportunity, a chance to sail on one of his beloved steamships. They would give him the opportunity to experience firsthand just how this ship performed. It was, he explained, the Hohenzollern, a ship built in England fourteen years earlier. Now, after further work and many voyages, they had decided to ready it for the new run to the Far East and Australia.
My heart sank. Not even the more regular crossing to America, but this time a much less predictable voyage. Australia. What did I know of it? Nothing. A strange southern continent. My reading had not prepared me, and I was heartsick at the thought.
He would go as a seaman, a sailor.
‘They classify us as “firemen”,’ his careful handwriting explained.
It will be my chance to see a steamship in operation, under all sorts of conditions on such a long journey. I am so fortunate that I get this opportunity, so early in my time here.
They must, I thought cynically, be anxious to take on extra crew, if they will take such an inexperienced lad. But then, he has studied in this field for many years.
I read on.
I will have no chance to see you before we depart, as the ship sails in February, and there will be little time to prepare. But I promise you, dear Mutti, that I will be sure to come straight to you on return. Then I can tell you all that happens.
It seemed that I would have to hold close to myself the happy times at the Christmas Market in Breslau; they already seemed so far back. I would not see my son again for many, many months.
CHAPTER 10
Lewin, Silesia, 1888
I have wondered so often if it is a good or a bad thing that we cannot see our futures: a blessing, or a curse?
The year that has gone is one that I would not wish to bestow on an enemy, no matter how I hated him. Losses, only losses.
For scarcely had February come and gone, the knowledge that Kurt’s ship had sailed lying like a heavy weight in my heart, than I knew that Frau Schmidt had been right. I would soon lose Otto.
Almost Hanna too. She was filled with fury when she discovered her father’s condition and, as always, unleashed it on me. Her father’s daughter, yes.
‘You should have told me how bad he was. You had no right to keep it to yourself.’
This was the week before he died, when I sent messages to her to come. I could have pointed out that if she had not deliberately avoided seeing him these last years she would have known. That it was a situation of her own making.
I swear I did not say it like that, but she recognised the message, and it made her even angrier. We could find no comfort in each other’s presence, even at Otto’s deathbed.
It was not an easy death, and I was glad to have had Frau Schmidt’s warning. Death is never pretty, and I have seen enough of it, both man and beast, to have been prepared. But it is harder when the body that is writhing and disintegrating is one that you have joined with, whose seed has been planted in you, whose children you have borne.
There were times that he was conscious, and toward the end the pain abated a little and his mind was clear. There were no deathbed reconciliations, and who would believe in those anyway? But he seemed to soften towards Hanna, more like the father she had known as a small child, so at least her memories of him will be more tender than otherwise.
We talked, in his moments of consciousness, about Kurt, and I told him of his son’s love of steam, and his voyage to Australia. For a moment a spasm of regret crossed his face. But still he blamed me.
‘You made … milksop of boy.’ His speech was thickened, slurred, but the meaning was clear. ‘Wish,’ he tried to moisten his lips, and I reached for the wet cloth to put on his mouth. He could no longer drink, only take some moisture squeezed out for him. ‘Wish … different. Tell … him.’
The words came slowly, haltingly, but I understood. ‘You want me to tell him you are sorry?’
They were the last words he spoke, and with a final gagging croak he was still. Frau Schmidt closed the one eye that was open, that still stared blindly up at us. Only Hanna sobbed.
After we had buried him, I found I was very tired. Days went by when I did little but sleep. There would be few changes in my life, that I knew, save that the small money I made from my linen weaving—pitifully small now that machines and factories turned out goods more swiftly and cheaply—or from selling at the weekly markets the vegetables I still grew, would now be at my disposal, and no longer funding the taverns in Lewin.
‘Yo
u could come to us in Mittelwalde,’ said Franz. But there was little enthusiasm in his voice, nor in Hanna’s half-hearted seconding. I swear they looked relieved when I said I would stay in the house that had always been my home.
I went only rarely to the Chateau during these weeks, though the payment from the Graf still continued, as it had all these years. I doubt he knew of it. I was sure that it came from Lydia, who, for all her frivolity and love of pleasure, had her mother’s warm and generous heart. They still kept the Chateau for the hunting that he had always enjoyed, and at times Lydia joined him. When she did, there was always time for me in her life. I valued those brief times with her.
She had written to me on her distinctive personal paper with its flowers and crest when news was sent her of Otto’s death. She did not come to the burial.
‘I do not like funerals, so I will not be there. But you are in my thoughts, and in a few weeks, when you have had time to adjust, I will come to you. Is there any news of Kurt?’
Although we did not keep in close contact, we did communicate more often than I would have anticipated after her marriage. I knew that she was glad there were no children in her home, but it pleased her to take some interest in mine. I had not forgotten her kindness over Hanna’s marriage, and her gift of the wedding gown.
But her question about Kurt opened the worry that filled my heart no matter how I tried to keep it at bay.
There had been the promised letters. Not many, it is true. But how could there be, I told myself firmly, when his ship was on the long sea run. I had taken books from the Chateau library and followed his course closely. It made me feel closer to him to know a little of the places where he would be.
When the first letter came, it was brief. Just to tell me the ship had departed, as planned, on the thirteenth day of February, and that he was settling into his crew’s quarters with a group of others, most of them from different parts of our land.
‘But only a few foreigners’, he wrote.
You would be interested in the scenes here, dear mother. The crowds of emigrants arrive, some of them from far away. Already they are weary, for they have many children and chests of household goods brought by barge or on the trains that bring them to Bremen. Then often they must wait here while the ships load, and sometimes also for good weather conditions. Though it is not like the old days of sail, when the clipper ships depended on favourable winds for departure. This is another of the benefits of steam power …
