The Journey: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller)

by Annelie Wendeberg

  ‘I noticed you disposed of the physician.’ He helped me back to the bed, where I kneeled down and laid my head on the mattress, grunting. ‘Do you want me to call for a midwife, or a more experienced doctor?’

  I nodded. I had never attended a birth from this angle. He rang the bell and I was astounded at my own ignorance. How could I have forgotten about the maids providing almost anything one asks for? For once in my life, I lived in isolation where consciousness had energy only for contraction and no-contraction, of inching a small human out of my body.

  ‘I cannot even dress the child,’ I cried, once I had some air to spend on speaking. ‘What a chaotic and naive person I am! I didn't purchase one thing in preparation for this.’

  A kiss on my forehead softened the worries. ‘I’ll ask the maids to get whatever you need.’

  His fingers combed through my hair and I felt myself relax. Then the next contraction hit. After it had passed, I said, ‘I’ll need plenty of towels. Ask Dr Lehmann for a pair of sharp scissors should the other doctor arrive too late, and… and iodine. Tea. I’m very thirsty. Clothes for the child. Blankets…’

  Again, a long time seemed to have passed before the maid arrived, left, and finally returned with the requested items.

  Sherlock placed the stack of towels on the bed, tapped a reminding finger on Lehmann’s scissors on the nightstand, and handed me a cup of tea while I resumed my pacing. By now, I was as slow as a snail.

  He peeked through a gap in the curtains. ‘A midwife and a physician will arrive shortly.’

  I couldn’t answer immediately. My back hurt so badly. My tailbone was about to pop out, or so it felt. This contraction took too long.

  ‘Good,’ I grunted. ‘Leave now.’

  ‘I’ll be right outside your room.’ He patted the revolver in his pocket. ‘Moran will not set foot in here. The police are guarding the hotel.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘M’lady,’ he said with a bow and exited.

  I laughed at his attempt to cheer me up until I felt something soft and pliable descend halfway through my vagina. An inaudible but tangible pop and the water bag broke, gushing its contents over my legs. An overwhelming contraction followed and a burning that shocked my core. My body was being split like an overripe melon. I bit into the headrest of the chair I held on to, muffling my scream, pressing and pushing because the urge to do so was uncontrollable.

  So quick! I reined in my panic, urged myself to remain calm, to breathe, to relax my clenched limbs.

  The next contraction came and I greeted it with a low and powerful growl. Wave after wave followed, tossing me about like a nutshell on an angry ocean. I let myself be carried away, pushing when my body commanded me to, resting when it allowed me to.

  The child’s descent was exhilarating. I put my hand between my legs and felt a smooth wet patch. I laughed again, bringing on another wave, pushing the child down farther.

  The head squeezed itself through that too-small opening of mine, setting my lower body on fire. Maddening elation came crushing down once the head was born. I sobbed when I heard a small noise like a kitten meowing. My fingers slid over its nose and chin, felt for the umbilical cord, and found it wound around its neck. I gingerly pulled the loop over the head, probed again, but the next contraction demanded my full attention.

  I noticed the presence of strangers in my room. With my hand on the gun, I turned my head. A man and a woman, their eyes taking in the room. They moved towards me. Sherlock waved from afar, then closed the door. Everything felt oddly dream-like.

  I grunted and pushed once more, caught the child, and placed it on the towel between my knees. I was trembling hard. My body was about to buckle. I gazed down at the small and wrinkled child, who now twitched a little. The thought of a naked bird that had just fallen out of its egg touched my mind.

  ‘A girl,’ I sobbed. ‘I don’t even have a name for her.’

  ‘Now, now.’ A woman’s soft voice.

  When I picked up my daughter, she began to squirm. ‘Help me up, please.’

  Two sets of hands supported me and the newborn in my arms, then laid us down on the bed. The midwife pushed a towel between my legs and one under my buttocks, and the doctor covered the two of us with a blanket.

  The clinking of medical utensils startled my daughter. She crinkled her nose. The midwife drew the heavy curtains aside while the doctor approached with a small tray, scissors, thread, and iodine.

  ‘Wait with the cord-cutting,’ I said. I had noticed that newborns recovered quicker when the umbilical cord was cut after it had stopped pulsating.

  I lifted her onto my stomach to keep her warm. ‘She’s so small.’ I was concerned she would become ill because I hadn’t carried her to term.

  Eyes squeezed shut and mouth searching, the tiny girl moved her head a little. Gently, I pushed her up farther until she found the offered nipple and closed her lips around it. I gasped at the force. She pulled in a mouthful of breast and sucked with such strength as though she had practiced for months.

  And I was shocked at her appearance, so unlike her father. Her hair was swirls of black, stuck to her head by mucous, water, and vernix caseosa — the protective layer of white fat.

  How curious! Although I had held many newborns in the past years, I feared to break her. With soft touches, I massaged her ashen skin until it turned a healthy pink. She smelled so sweet.

  My uterus contracted again. I inched my hand between my legs and carefully tugged at the cord. The placenta had detached and slipped out onto the towel without effort.

  The physician rubbed disinfectant on his hands and wrists, then cut the cord and tied the end a few inches from the girl’s navel.

  The midwife handed me a cup of tea, helped me take a sip, then collected the placenta and bloody towels. What a mess I had made.

  The sweet warmth of my daughter pressed to my side demanded my attention. With her attached to my right breast, I reached out to Sherlock’s glass of brandy, dipped my fingers in, distributed the alcohol on my hand, and let it dry. Then I probed for tears on my vulva. I couldn’t find any.

  I pressed a fresh towel between my legs and pushed down on my uterus. Warm liquid seeped into the cotton. I waited a minute, then examined the towel. The bleeding appeared normal.

  The physician watched me from the corner of his eye. ‘The young man outside your room believes you are mad,’ he said with a smile. ‘He has a lot to learn.’

  Exhausted, I leaned back and watched the girl. She had fallen asleep. Both her hands were curled — one lying on my breast, the other on the mattress. Her fingernails were bluish and a bit flaky at the tip. Gently, I stuck my finger in her tiny fist and was amazed that a hand so small could exert such a grip.

  What an adventure this must have been for her. I ran my thumb over the pressure marks on her forehead. The base of her nose was a little swollen. She must have collided with my tailbone on her way out. I remembered feeling as though the tailbone was about to be dislocated. I touched her fragile face, wondering how much it must have hurt her to be squeezed through so constricted a space.

  I let the doctor examine me and the girl; then he bade his farewell with a satisfied nod. I forgot to ask his name.

  The door closed with a shy squeal and someone else approached.

  Sherlock came to a sudden halt in the centre of the room. ‘The curtains!’ he cried, dashed to the window closest to him and farthest from me. He yanked at the velvet. At that same moment, I heard a clink and a soft plop.

  Time froze.

  — twenty-seven —

  I curled around my child. A useless reflex. My body had no armour.

  Sherlock’s face turned towards me. His eyes were wide in terror, his face drained of all colour, his hand still clutching the curtain. Everything was so quiet, it hurt my ears.

  He crossed the room. I saw him placing his feet on the carpet, saw the fabric of his trousers and shirt move, but I couldn’t hear any of it. No footfalls, n
o rustling.

  Then, all of a sudden, the world tore wide open.

  Another clink, followed by a plop. And yet another. Shards hit the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. The wind combed through empty sash bars. Curtains billowed.

  Where did all the blood come from? My fingers flew over my daughter’s face, neck, and torso. She protested with a cry, but she was unharmed. Red blossomed on my nightgown, spreading quickly.

  I sensed Sherlock’s shock, heard his frantic heartbeat, his blood being propelled through arteries and sucked back through his veins. The shout he tried to hold in. I heard my own blood leaking from my chest, the whispers of thick liquid crawling over skin, the crackling of moisture soaking through cotton. I heard the soft breathing of my daughter, restful and unknowing.

  I sensed Moran’s eye through the finder of his silent air rifle, sensed his sharp mind, prepared to disassemble the weapon in a flash and pack it in a bag, prepared to let a satisfied smile crack open his face. His brow was sweaty. His legs a little twitchy, eager to run down the flights of stairs to leave the anonymity of one of the many apartments in one of the many buildings across the street, to pick through the countless courtyards and narrow alleys Berlin had to offer.

  I watched Sherlock hurl himself towards me, grab the heavy bed frame, and pull us out of the line of fire, closer to the now-darkened window. A furious growl rolled up his throat. His jaw muscles were bulging, the blood vessels on his temples stood out.

  ‘So this is what he wanted. How disappointing,’ I whispered. ‘Dispatch a wire to the Watsons. But… later.’ My eyes begged him to not leave me now.

  A sharp nod. Then he bent over me, pulled at the strings of my nightgown, and pushed the fabric over my shoulder. ‘A clean shot.’

  That was probably the only good thing left to be said. The left half of my ribcage was numb.

  He pressed a towel onto each side of my chest to staunch the flow.

  My mind had already catalogued which blood vessels had most likely been ruptured, which organs irreparably damaged. If the subclavian vein had been hit, and it looked very much like it, I had less than twenty minutes left.

  He pressed me on my back, took my right hand and held it to the towel. ‘Hold this for a moment,’ he urged, then made for the door.

  ‘Help!’ he bellowed. ‘We need a surgeon! Make haste!’

  Running feet on floorboards, then a maid’s voice. He barked an order at her to find the doctor who had just left and to call for the best surgeon, no matter the costs.

  ‘I can hear you,’ I whispered once he was back at my side. ‘I hear your heartbeat, your breath cooling the perspiration on your upper lip, the blinking away of moisture in your eyes. I hear your pain and your worries, how your focus shifts between your fear of my death, your feeling of insufficiency, your rage about Moran, your helplessness that you cannot accept. I hear it all. Your…’ A violent shiver ran through my body. ‘Your complexity is beautiful. But it hurts me to see you so sad.’

  ‘She looks like you,’ he said, nodding towards my daughter.

  ‘I know. How odd; I cannot recall why I feared her so.’

  The world began to close around me. Lights blinked on my retina, blood loss screeched in my ears. ‘I name her Klara Emilia. Promise me to keep her safe.’

  The mere thought of my daughter and me being separated raised a flood of emotions I hadn’t known existed in my silly heart. Why had no one ever talked about this? Why did all women talk about pain during childbirth when the pain from imagining the child being hurt, taken away, or having to grow up without a mother was unbearable?

  ‘I’ll keep you both safe.’ A decisive growl that allowed no objection.

  I felt his lips on my hair and wished I could turn my head to meet him. Warm breath caressed my cheek when he said that all will be well, that once I had recovered, he would take me and my daughter far away.

  I listened to his soft voice and felt as though I had finally arrived home, but I wasn’t certain whether it was only one of the illusions that helped everyone meet death without fear.

  ‘Anna, stay awake!’

  Had I been sleeping?

  My gaze found my daughter. Her mouth was loosely attached to my breast, her tongue curled around my nipple. Careful not to wake her, I wiped my blood off her face, arms, and hands. My fingers trembled.

  The pain began to spread, to vibrate and tear at each bone and each muscle. My heart was aching with loss, with opportunities not taken, with lives not shared. What would become of her? What would become of him?

  My mind drifted in and out of consciousness. ‘Is it night already?’ I asked, to demand an explanation for the sudden darkness.

  ‘Not quite.’ I heard him whisper. His voice didn’t sound like his own. His hand warmed my cheek and supported my head, lifting my mouth softly to his.

  He brushed a strand of hair from my face, then spoke about traveling across Europe to gain distance from Moran for a year or two. We would let Moran believe he were safe, let him think we had given up.

  The low hum of his voice sent goosebumps across my skin. Weren’t we like two weights on a scale? I was so full with need; so heavy with it that I could make him slide towards me, make him collide with me if only I made myself a bit heavier yet.

  A fleeting glimpse of a future that could have been scampered past my vision. I saw his older self, smiling at his adopted family. Behind his eyes shone the restlessness of a caged animal, the urge to solve a riddle, to arrest a criminal, and leave domestic life to stop insanity from tugging at his underused mind. What a weight of possibilities and impossibilities.

  My legs began to twitch. My field of vision was reduced to a pinprick, and in its centre — shockingly far away and too small — lay my child. I hadn’t even seen her eyes yet. Not knowing how her eyes looked — how her soul looked — disturbed me. I began to panic. My chest contracted uncontrollably.

  Arms wrapped around me. A slender hand rested on my daughter’s head. She began to stir and her eyelids fluttered, revealing the darkest blue — smooth and deep and calm like the Pacific Ocean on a mild summer day.

  I smiled at her. My soul rose. And finally, I soared.

  — twenty-eight —

  Klara was wrapped in a thick wool blanket and safely tucked under my fur coat. My constantly hungry daughter had now almost reached the size of any other well-fed two-month-old girl.

  Her head rested against my scar, radiating heat through the layers of cloth and into the hardened tissue, softening the pain within. Once we were farther out on the water, and clouds and fog concealed the November sun, I could expect the throbbing in my wound to reach the quality of a knife being stuck into it.

  The distance to the harbour grew. I could barely see the boats bobbing up and down, the warehouses shrouded in smoke, and the people lining the docks. Sherlock wasn’t among them. We had agreed that a farewell could be said anywhere. Even in a doorway. I had stepped into the hansom without turning around. My few belongings, a stash of money, and a bag containing all the clothes my daughter would need in the next two or three weeks had been picked up and delivered to the ship just an hour before our departure.

  The gale hit my face; some of the cold must have blown down my collar and into my coat, for Klara began to cry, her nose searching for a warmer spot. Gently, I rocked her back to sleep. My sweet daughter. She would know nothing of her third big adventure. With her unusual birth and her mother nearly shot to death, the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in winter must seem like a small achievement.

  I didn’t know what precisely I would find on the other end of our journey. But it had become clear that staying with Sherlock wasn’t good for either of us. He had loaded so much responsibility upon his shoulders; I had the impression he wouldn’t be able to stand upright as long as I remained at his side. So I decided to remove a large part of that weight and announced my plans to leave for America.

  I hoped to find a medical school that would take me as a scientist or
a lecturer. America was known to be progressive, and the newspaper clipping that told of Koch’s former student who had disguised herself as a man should be proof enough that I had indeed obtained all my medical and bacteriological credentials. Even if the name Anton Kronberg was written on the top of every single one of them. If that wasn’t sufficient, I’d have to kindly ask Koch for a supporting letter. The whole operation bore a risk. After all, I had graduated by pretending to be a man — a far from legal undertaking — but staying in Europe would threaten my daughter’s life and mine.

  America was, I hoped, far enough from Moran and Parker. Sherlock would arrest them soon enough, and he would certainly enjoy the chase. I could forget warfare, biological weapons, and espionage for a while and focus on life and on raising my daughter.

  During my recovery, I had learned what happened while I was in labour. Moran and Parker had exchanged their hats, coats, and trousers. While Moran sat on a roof, hiding behind a chimney and awaiting his chance for a clean shot, Parker led the police on a wild goose chase across Berlin, occasionally showing himself from afar. This would never have fooled Sherlock, but he had not dared to leave me alone and unprotected. He hadn’t witnessed the charade.

  He had given orders to the police on how to search the buildings on the other side of the street, how to search the hotel. He instructed the hotel manager and staff where to keep watch and how to report effectively. He placed maids, servants, and policemen like chess pieces on a board.

  Only the midwife — thinking of the birth she had to attend to, and of the doctor needing more light to examine the patients — foiled Sherlock’s well-laid plans. She had ignored his warnings, for she believed we had all lost our bearings. I wondered how often it was ignorance that ended lives prematurely.

  Sherlock must have guessed my plans to leave long before I told him. When I lay in bed, healing, and nursing my child — and with that making all doctors and nurses believe I was indeed mad, for who wouldn’t take a wet nurse under these circumstances? — he tried to convince me to come with him. Once I almost said yes, when he spoke about the South of France, where the warm winters would lower the risk for my daughter to fall ill. He knew of a laboratory in Montpellier where he wished to experiment with novel coal tar derivatives — aniline dyes, which are used to stain cells. He planned to adapt them for a diagnostic test to identify various forms of post-mortem tissue damage, and he believed I could modify them to stain bacteria.