by Sarah Lark
Only Karl remained an outsider, and it took him an entire week after their arrival in Bahia to get a chance to speak to Ida alone. The women fetched drinking water from a stream that flowed through the forest above the beach, and one afternoon, no one accompanied Ida when she decided to fill up the containers. Karl met her at the stream and took a bucket from her.
“Good afternoon, Ida!” he said in English. “Can I help you?”
They both grinned as she answered correctly with “thank you.”
“Oh, Karl, I never thought it would be so beautiful!” Ida burst out.
So far, he had met no one who was as excited about Bahia as she was. The other settlers cursed about the sand that was constantly being carried into the huts, the sweat-inducing heat, and the “lazy natives” who stopped everything they were doing at midday and withdrew to the shade to relax. This delayed the resupply and maintenance work on the Sankt Pauli. Before their journey continued, the captain was having the ship overhauled and cleaned.
“Will it be like this in New Zealand?”
Karl shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said regretfully. “But I doubt it. Going by what Beit told your father, it’s more like Mecklenburg. The sailors say it’s like England. It will rain a lot. Do you like it here?”
Ida nodded enthusiastically. “Like it?” she asked with a happy smile. “That’s an understatement. It’s wonderful here, like paradise! I wish I could stay!”
Karl put the bucket down. He didn’t know if what he was about to do was smart, but it was a chance . . .
“Then let’s!” he said determinedly. “Let’s just run away. I can find work here, for example, in the harbor. In Hamburg I unloaded ships, and that was very well paid. It doesn’t matter if we learn English or Portuguese. I can already say something, Ida: Você é linda. That means ‘you’re pretty.’” He grinned at her. Ida stared back at him in confusion, but Karl didn’t let that dishearten him.
“There’s even a German embassy here, Ida!” he continued. “We could speak to them; perhaps they would help us.” He held out his hands to her. “Will you stay here with me, Ida Lange? Will you marry me?”
Ida looked frightened, and then she laughed nervously. “You—you’re jesting, right? We can’t just run away, we—”
“Who’s going to stop us?” Karl asked and reached for her hands determinedly. His courage was bolstered when she didn’t immediately pull away. “Your father? Beit? If we slip away in the night before all the others get back on board, they won’t search for us very long. One or two days, maybe. The captain won’t tolerate a longer delay. We can hide until then in the forest, or I could rent a room at the harbor.” He thought of the friendly owner of the cookshop.
Ida shook her head. “But I can’t marry you,” she told him. “I have to marry Ottfried, you know that. It’s already been decided. And my family—I have to go to New Zealand!” She gently pulled her hands out of his.
“Who said so?” Karl replied dismissively. “God? I haven’t heard a heavenly voice proclaiming to the world that Ida Lange can only marry Ottfried Brandmann and no one else.”
Ida crossed herself. “That’s blasphemy, Karl!” she said accusingly, and there was fear in her eyes now. “I’m engaged to Ottfried. It was announced to the council.”
“To the council in Mecklenburg, five thousand miles away from here!” Karl cried. “You’re not bound by that, Ida. This is another country, another part of the world. We’re free!”
Ida shook her head. “You can’t run away from destiny, Karl,” she said earnestly. “Yes, I know you’re trying to, and that’s fine. I even believe that God planned it that way for you. But not for me. The scriptures say we must honor our parents. What would the villagers think if I just went away with you, without us being wed in the eyes of God and the people? That’s a sin, Karl.”
Karl knew that he should give up now. He wouldn’t be able to change her mind, at least not yet. Perhaps it was too soon for his proposal—but he had no choice. He desperately grasped Ida by her upper arms and forced her to look at him.
“But I love you, Ida! Doesn’t that count?”
“No,” she said softly, and looked him in the eye. “It doesn’t count. I mean—it’s wonderful that you love me. Jesus Christ said we should all love each other. Just not like—like man and wife. I’m only allowed to love Ottfried that way.”
Karl swung between the desire to shake Ida and the desire to take her in his arms. How could she be so stubborn? She must feel it too; he could see it in her eyes. In a desperate impulse, he decided for the embrace. Before she knew what was happening, he pulled her close and kissed her. Ida twisted in his grasp, wanting to tear herself away, but then she gave in. Her lips opened, and for one heartbeat it seemed as though she would respond to his kiss. But she didn’t. She didn’t run away either when he let her go. She gazed at him in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” Karl whispered. “But never say again that it doesn’t count!”
With those words he turned and left. Maybe he’d just destroyed everything, but at least he’d gotten to kiss her once.
Ida remained standing there as though frozen. For a moment she closed her eyes and allowed herself to savor the kiss. She should be ashamed and angry; she should feel dirty and perhaps even run to tell her father—but she felt happy. And that was worse than anything else. She must never let Karl get so close to her again, and it would be better to stop having secrets with him. Her father was right, she didn’t need to learn English. After all, the emigrants didn’t understand the language of the Brazilians either, and they were still managing to get by.
Ida opened her eyes again. She decided to avoid Karl in the future, and not think about the three words she’d just heard in Portuguese. Você é linda. You’re pretty. Words to dream about. But she wasn’t allowed to dream! Perhaps that was one of the dangers of learning foreign languages, she mused. There were far too many words to dream about.
Ida tried not to think about Karl anymore. Maybe she should marry Ottfried on the ship after all. Then she could prove to Karl, and God, that she was obedient, upright. But she already knew that she couldn’t make herself do it. Ida Lange would accept her destiny with humility, but she wouldn’t run toward it.
The emigrants from Raben Steinfeld were all present and accounted for when the Sankt Pauli started on the second leg of her voyage after a twenty-four-day stopover in Bahia. However, two other passengers had decided to stay in Bahia. Hannes and Jost, the sailors who had been recruited in Hamburg, had disappeared.
“Ungrateful bastards!” Beit thundered.
But of course it was unthinkable to go searching for the men and force them to get back on board. They had probably signed on to another ship to try their luck again with less Christian seafaring. Karl wasn’t surprised. The supposed devoutness of the two awkward youths had seemed increasingly suspect to him. They probably had only accepted passage on the Sankt Pauli in order to spend a few months being idle with full board and lodging. In any case, he had never seen them lift a finger on board the ship. And now colorful, loud Brazil must have seemed more attractive to them than a pious country at the other end of the world. Karl couldn’t blame the two young men, but he wasn’t remotely tempted to join them. After all, that would mean running away from his destiny, he thought with a bitter smile. And there was one thing he was sure of: his destiny was bound to Ida’s.
Chapter 12
The voyage to New Zealand took another two and a half months. It was June when land was finally sighted again. But the journey was uneventful in spite of the changing weather. After being almost unbearably hot for a time and then becalmed for several days, it finally got cooler again.
“It’s winter in Australia and New Zealand,” Hein explained to Karl, who was shivering in the wind on deck. He handed him a woolen pullover. “We’ll be there in a blink. We’ll see Van Diemen’s Land in two or three days.”
“Isn’t that the prison island?” Karl asked, remembering the boo
ks about New Zealand and Australia.
He still had the book that Ida’s father had bought, and Ida had Karl’s from Hamburg. He only hoped that Jakob Lange didn’t find out about it one day. But trading back wasn’t possible. Since their stopover in Bahia, Ida hadn’t been to their hiding place in the lifeboat. She didn’t come to collect any new English words, and she had stopped looking for Karl during her hour on deck. Karl could have slapped himself for his transgression in Bahia. On board the ship, their relationship had developed so nicely, but with his premature proposal and kiss, he had destroyed everything.
“Aye, that’s the prison island, but don’t fret, we’re nay stopping there. We’re sailing between Van Diemen’s Land and Australia,” Hein said casually. “Then it’s well-nigh a thousand miles, and we’ve made it to Nelson. Yeh’ve made yerself right useful here on the ship. I bet the captain’d be glad to hire yeh on, if yeh want a job!”
Karl laughed. The praise made him happy, but of course he wouldn’t pursue the opportunity. He couldn’t imagine spending his life on a ship. He was looking forward to working the land again, even if it wouldn’t be his own.
The emigrants had all been fervently anticipating their first sight of their new home, but when the Sankt Pauli approached Nelson, it was by the darkness of night. Most of the settlers slept through the arrival and then, early the next morning, stared in surprise at the simple wooden houses surrounding the harbor. There was no playful architecture like there had been in Bahia, but instead practical, pretty gabled houses, mostly with two stories. On the ground floor, they had porches built onto the front of them or sometimes a storefront. They looked quite new and were painted in a cheerful mix of pastel colors, predominantly blues and yellows. The harbor was ringed by docks, and narrow, tidy streets led away. The townspeople were just starting their day, and the sight of them comforted even Frau Brandmann, who had been fretting about encounters with “savages” since Bahia. The citizens of Nelson looked European and were dressed much like the emigrants. The men wore suits or canvas work clothes, and the women wore dresses, aprons, and bonnets. They were wrapped up in shawls against the winter chill, but the garments weren’t nearly as heavy as the ones in Mecklenburg; they didn’t need to be. The only snow to be seen was on the mountain peaks in the distance.
“When can we disembark?” Lange asked impatiently when Captain Schacht was speaking to the harbormaster on deck. “We want to see our land as soon as possible, we want—”
The captain dismissed his inquiry with a wave of his hand and a smile. “All in due course, Mr. Lange! Mr. Beit left at the crack of dawn to find Arthur Wakefield. He’s the founder of Nelson, and a representative of the New Zealand Company. He will assign parcels of land to you within the next few days. Until then, accommodations in Nelson have been prepared for you. But I don’t know any of the details myself. Just be patient and thank God for the calm and fortunate voyage.”
During the six-month voyage, only six children had died. It was a tragic but relatively low death toll. On similar journeys, many more lives had been lost.
Since the missionaries had already left the ship with Beit, Lange and Brandmann gathered the settlers for an improvised church service, but they found it difficult to concentrate on what they were doing. The men were anxiously awaiting Beit’s return, and were extremely disquieted when they could already see from a distance that he was seething with anger.
“What about our land?” Lange demanded as soon as he’d set foot on the gangway. “Can we—”
Beit shook his head. “There is no land!” he said through clenched teeth. A vein on his forehead was pulsing. “I’m sorry, I’m just as disappointed and angry as you are. But new settlers from England beat us here, and Wakefield gave them the land that was reserved for you. Now we have to—”
His words were drowned out by the settlers’ cries.
“No land?”
“We’ve been swindled!”
“What about our money?”
Some of the women and children broke into tears. Beit raised his hand to quiet them.
“Silence!” he roared. “How can I explain to you what happens next if you won’t let me speak? You haven’t been swindled in the way you think. Look around, there are acres and acres of land here, and we will find something for you! Just not so quickly. Unless, of course, you decide to accept the leftovers. Wakefield didn’t give away everything. However, the parcels aren’t all together, and you would have English neighbors.”
“We were promised that we could found our own village!” Lange insisted. “Only under those conditions did we—”
Beit stopped him again. “I know that. And if you are adamant, it is possible. New land will soon be available. It’s in the Wairau Valley, on a river, about thirty miles east of here. Fine, fertile land. It just needs to be surveyed.”
“Needs to be surveyed?” Brandmann echoed. “So is it going to be surveyed or not?”
“There seem to be, um, a few discrepancies. Misunderstandings with the Maori,” Beit admitted.
“With the savages? What business do they have there?” Lange asked with a snort.
“Well, in some ways they think of the land as their own.”
Chaos broke out again. Some of the settlers were outraged at the impertinence of the “savages,” and others about John Nicholas Beit and Arthur Wakefield, who’d stolen what was rightfully theirs. This time it was Peter Brandmann who silenced the settlers. He confronted the agent threateningly.
“What can we expect, Beit? Indian attacks? Wasn’t the land ownership sorted out before you went to find settlers for it?”
Beit smoothed his beard. “Yes, it was. Captain Wakefield bought the land from the Maori. All this land here in Nelson, and the farmland in the Wairau Valley. But the chieftain of the tribe won’t honor the transaction anymore. That is to say, he wants more money. Now he’s trying to get his way with a revolt. He burned down the surveyors’ huts and drove them away. That just happened, and Captain Wakefield hasn’t had time to react. But it’s only a question of a few days. Augustus Thompson, the police magistrate, is preparing an expedition. He’s gathered a group of men to go to the Maori camp and arrest the rabble-rouser. He will then be tried in Nelson as an arsonist. That ought to scare the rest of them. Apparently, it’s mostly the chieftain, Te Rauparaha, who’s stirring up trouble. Generally, the savages here are quite easy to live with. So, you see, everything will be fine. Just not immediately, as sorry as I am.”
Beit truly seemed to be somewhat embarrassed. That placated the settlers. They had never seen the agent penitent.
“What happens until then?” Brandmann’s voice rang with provocation. “Are we expected to camp on the beach again?”
Beit shook his head. “Of course not. Your livelihood is assured for the next three months. The esteemed citizens of Nelson have declared themselves ready to take you into their homes, and the company will cover the costs. This is all genuinely distressing for me, and Captain Wakefield says to tell you the same. He didn’t know when to expect you because the voyage took so much longer than usual, and then there was the delay in Wairau. However, he’s asked me to welcome you cordially to your new home in spite of all disappointment and adversity. Your new passports are already being prepared, and you are being granted British citizenship. Please collect your documents tomorrow at the magistrate. And now, prepare yourselves to disembark. My daughter is making a list of the households you will be assigned to. Of course families will be kept together, so don’t worry about that. Perhaps you could even see the delay as an opportunity. In this way, you will have a chance to get to know some of your new countrymen and look around Nelson. So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to New Zealand!”
Ida had packed her family’s belongings in no time at all, and the Langes were soon standing on the windy pier. The young woman was reminded of their departure for Hamburg, when it had also been winter. Beit had explained to them that their trunks were being put into storage. It was pointless to kee
p them at the homes of their hosts, where they would only take up space. The settlers would have to stay in tight quarters again.
Ida sighed when she realized that she would probably have to live with her family in one room for several more months. She would have to continue to wear the clothes she’d worn day in and day out on the Sankt Pauli. In the ship’s tiny quarters, she’d even had to give up her intention of changing into a nightgown. And now they had to be dependent on strangers! The only good thing about it was that her wedding was being put off again. Ida berated herself for the thought. Why couldn’t she just be happy to finally be allowed to start her own household?
She despondently followed her father, who had wordlessly accepted a piece of paper from Jane Beit. Mortimer Partridge, 8 Trafalgar Street, it said. Lange attempted to ask for directions, but of course he didn’t know how to pronounce the words. But still, people were friendly and made an effort to help the foreigner. One man finally reached for the piece of paper to see the address for himself and then tried to explain to Lange at length, gesturing with his hands. Eventually, he gave up and drew a map on the dirt road instead.
“Thank you,” Ida said shyly in English as the man took his leave.
Jakob Lange gave her an indignant glance.
“Meinen herzlichsten Dank für Ihre Mühe, mein Herr!” he said loudly, as though he had a deaf man in front of him instead of an Englishman.
The man smiled at Ida kindly. “You’re welcome. Have a nice day!”
Ida’s heart beat wildly with happiness, because she understood.
The day, which had begun so disappointingly for the Langes, changed for the better. The Partridges were a short, active man with red hair and a plump, motherly woman. They immediately introduced themselves informally as Mort and Alice. They owned a house on a bustling street near the center of town and had only one child, a boy of Franz’s age. When they had built their house, they had obviously been intending to have more children, because there were two empty, spacious bedrooms. Mrs. Partridge offered one to Jakob and Anton, and the other to Ida to share with her younger siblings. There were only two beds in it, but Mrs. Partridge told Ida it would be easy for her to add a third. As it turned out, the Partridges ran a general store that also sold mattresses, bedsheets, and blankets.
