The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  She hoisted Finn into her lap and gave him a pretend shaking.

  A big question waited in the space between her and Josephina but the space filled up with small-talk because Greta couldn’t find a way to get started. The question had been there for weeks and Josephina sensed that Greta and Danne were discussing it when they spoke Danish and then stopped if she came into the room because now she could understand some of it. Perhaps they’d agreed that Greta would ask the question while Danne was away in Flensburg. That was why Greta got annoyed with her but then changed her mood to sweet and made some chamomile tea ‘because it will help Catha to sleep’. Maybe she would ask the question when Catha did go back to sleep and when Finn had his nap after lunch. But now Finn was jealous of Catharina and wanted Josephina to take him across the quay to look at the boats and leave Catharina behind. It was a little drama in which the question Greta couldn’t ask yet was being acted out. Greta gave Finn another playful shaking and looked at Josephina across his head while he writhed and pushed at her.

  Are you going to leave? Or it could be, When are you going to leave? – which was really, When are you going to leave Catharina here with us? Because that was the plan.

  ‘I’m not going to,’ Josephina said.

  ‘What, take Finn to look at the boats?’ Now Greta was furious again.

  ‘Leave without Catharina,’ said Josephina. ‘Come on, Finn, let’s go to see the baad, maybe there will be some fishes.’ Her sister’s mouth was wide open above the boy’s squirming. The question she hadn’t asked was trapped in there. Her expression made Josephina laugh – it reminded her of the first time she went to the Sønderborg market where the loud, busy woman at the vegetable stall asked her in Danish if she wanted anything else and she said yes, thinking the woman had asked if that was all.

  ‘So, what then?’ the woman shouted, staring at Josephina with her hands on her hips. ‘What more do you want?’ She was red in the face from her exertions, but she was only pretending to be fierce. When Josephina’s pregnancy became visible the woman would stuff one or two extra onions or the strippings of cabbage leaves into her bag.

  ‘Nothing more, thank you.’ That was what she’d learned to say to the market woman.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Greta.

  ‘What I said, nothing more.’ Finn was tugging at Josephina’s leg, so she took the baby from her breast and put her in Greta’s arms. ‘When I go, I’ll take her.’

  Then she and Finn were on the quay. The morning bustle was over, some of the fishermen were tidying their boats, and the sea glittered so much that Josephina and Finn had to squint their eyes. Squinting at each other made Finn laugh. He laughed with all his heart and soul, it came from the place of joy inside him, and then he got the hiccups, which made him laugh even more.

  No, little Finn-and-Catharina cousins, you probably won’t see each other again after Catharina and I go. The thought should have made Josephina terribly sad, but it didn’t. Danne was a kind man despite his noise, but really he was doing what Greta wanted him to agree with, which was keeping Catharina in Sønderborg after Josephina went home. Greta would surely love Catharina and make her happy, and no one could ever tell her what to do, but even so she was really doing what Mutti and Papa had asked her to, which was to send Josephina back without Catharina.

  What do you want? I want Catharina. Anything else? No, nothing. The thought was very clear and simple. So was the thought that she wouldn’t be going back to the place where the Strikkelise tunnel opened into her childhood, where the Oma resided in her mutti’s dark wooden chest, where old Gunnar knew the way back home from Tante Elizabeth’s house in Gaarden and could go there without being made to, and where Elke’s warm back would be breathing at the same speed as Josephina’s chest when they slept together near the owl that lived up under the roof. These were sad thoughts but they were now also completely clear in her mind. Not having them clearly there had been making her tired – not the baby, not the housework, not the difficulty of trying to speak Danish, not trying to sew enough things for Danne to sell in the Flensburg market, just not knowing certainly and simply what she wanted. But now she did.

  So they went along the quay little by little while Finn’s hiccups and choke-laughing died down. Josephina was singing to him in German, Backe backe Kuchen, Der Bäcker hat gerufen, it was a skipping rhythm, they skipped along holding hands. There were still a few big baskets of herring on the quay that the squawking seagulls were interested in, and Finn wanted to poke the fishes’ little shiny eyes but Josephina wouldn’t let him. Then, at the far end where the quay turned out into the breakwater, there was a gigantic halibut the length of a man that people were admiring – Why both eyes on one side, Finn wanted to know, why bumpy skin, did it eat children? No, Josephina told him while his hand tightened on hers and he pressed against her leg, it doesn’t eat children, it eats crabs, you can find them in its tummy. He put his free hand up to his face, he was checking where his own eyes were – it was the halibut’s eyes that terrified him, and its ugly skin and gaping mouth. Then Finn began to whimper, which made the proud fisherman laugh. He was standing very upright next to the huge creature and holding a gaff hook-upwards like a soldier; he used the gaff’s hook to prise open the halibut’s enormous mouth, which made Finn cling on to Josephina and cry, so they went quickly back along the quay.

  He cheered up when Josephina showed him the swallows flying in and out from their mud and straw nests under the eaves of the harbourside houses. They go away in the winter, she told him, they go to warm places where oranges grow. Their babies have to practise for a while but then they all go too; probably they have to learn to speak another language where the oranges are, but they all do it.

  ‘And then they all come back,’ Josephina said past the big swelling in her throat. ‘They come home again – look how happy they are, dancing together in the sky!’

  Finn flitted along the quay towards home with his arms outstretched. He’d forgotten all about the monster. Then his little legs got in a tangle and he fell over, so Josephina carried him the rest of the way piggyback.

  The lump in her throat was her mother – Josephina had to speak around Mutti when she saw Greta draping a muslin shawl over Catharina’s bassinet on the shady side of the yard.

  ‘We saw a big fish, didn’t we, Finn?’ She pulled her lower eyelids down with two fingers and gaped her mouth. But Finn was trying to take the muslin off the bassinet. Greta was pulling his hands away while looking at Josephina with an Are we going to talk? expression. Or perhaps it was What more do you want?

  I want the Oma. These thoughts were coming to her in an orderly way. The thought about the Oma came to her so simply while she and Finn were looking at the swallows because they reminded her of what Mutti had told her about the Rohrsänger. But the swallows were singing that she, Josephina, would not be coming home. She would have to find a way to say that. She and Greta had to find a way to ask their mother to give the Oma to her before she left Sønderborg – and that would mean she wasn’t coming home. They had to find a way to tell Mutti that Josephina was taking Catharina with her, she didn’t know where, and that she had to have the Oma. She had to have Catharina and the Oma, and that was that.

  Are we going to talk? What more do you want? Greta had one hand on her stomach and was holding on to the back of Finn’s shirt with the other; she had the kind of smile on her face that could mean she was amused or could be angry again any minute but she wasn’t going to be the first one to speak. She stuck her bottom lip out and puffed at the sweat on her top lip. Then she tipped her head on one side.

  ‘And I want the Oma,’ said Josephina. ‘We have to ask Mutti for the Oma.’

  ‘Monstrom,’ said Finn, goggling his eyes.

  Greta’s smile was back. It was almost angry but not quite. ‘No, Finn,’ she said while looking at Josephina, ‘your Oma isn’t a monster, what do you mean?’

  ‘He means the big fish we saw, don’t you, Finn?’ Josephina pulled
her eyelids down again and made a gaping halibut mouth. Then she pretended to chase him. ‘I’m going to gobble you up like a tasty crab!’

  Finn shrieked and hid his face in Greta’s apron. She was shaking her head at Josephina – the smile was a straight line. ‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘Clearly, the precious Oma. Well, we shall see, let’s wait and see, Josephina Hansen.’

  Josephina knew when Greta’s smile wasn’t one anymore because there were no wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She’d seen that not-smile many times; she used to call it ‘the look’. ‘The look’ frightened her when she was small, but now it didn’t. She lifted a corner of the muslin cover on Catharina’s bassinet; it was one of those she made for the market, with all-round blanket-stitch borders to hold the edges together – this one used the thick blue yarn that Danne had brought back for her from Flensburg, and she’d done different-length vertical stitches to make a pattern like writing. Catharina’s eyes were closed but just for a moment, when Josephina lifted the cover, it was as though the baby was lying there peacefully reading the patterned edging.

  Josephina knew the Oma’s stitch-writing better than the letters she and Elke had copied over and over in the smelly dusty schoolroom with Pastor Köhler and his wooden smacking spoon, and she knew the Oma’s stitch-stories and songs better than the ones in Sunday’s Psalter und Harfe – but then the Pastor’s lessons had come to an end when she was twelve and was given the Oma to work with and could still remember the songs and stories from when she was only old enough to make Strikkelise tubes out of the balls of coloured wool offcuts her grandmother gave her. Every stitch had a name and a story and a little picture of a flower or an animal or a red house with a window on either side of its green door and people in the windows; there was an owl of course, and yellow ducks on a blue lake, a snowy mountain with a little deer on top, and an alphabet in different colours around the border. The Oma was half the size of a bedspread and couldn’t ever be washed because the different threads and dyes would get mixed up, and it had a secret smell that it exhaled when it was unrolled. Her grandmother would close her eyes and breathe in deeply whenever she unrolled the sampler, and she would always tell the story or sing the song of the stitch she was using that day. And it wasn’t long before she gave Josephina a scrap of linen and Josephina embroidered a picture of Puck Puck the special chicken on it, and carried it around with her, and made up stories.

  But now she would have to make Finn his bowl of soup with bread and then she would have to sew until Catharina woke up. Today it was going to be cabbage and potato with a little cut-up sausage in it – Finn enjoyed ‘fishing’ for the round bits of sausage in his soup bowl while Josephina mopped the floor. There was a mangy cat that sometimes came over the wall into the yard, so Josephina kept a lookout for it in case it jumped up on the bassinet. Then she persuaded Finn to have a pee at the end of the yard where there were some weeds in a patch of dirt, which was his special place. He made his pee go as far over the weeds as possible. Then she took him up to have a sleep on Greta and Danne’s bed. The window was open and she could hear Greta talking in Danish to some women in the street below. Sometimes lately Greta had a nap at the same time as Finn but not today. Josephina hurried downstairs and out to the baby in the yard, but the mangy cat hadn’t come to visit. She lifted the muslin shawl to look at Catharina who was starting to wriggle before waking up. The blanket-stitched border with longer and shorter stitches was like writing but not quite. There was an old bible in the Bauernhaus above the Schwentine and, once she’d learned how to do it, Josephina had carefully written her name in it just below Greta’s and Elke’s. Josephina Christian Hansen. Like that. Mutti’s name wasn’t there because she’d never learned how to write it.

  There was still the yoghurt to drain into curds and hang up in a muslin bag, and her sewing, but before them the baby. She needed to chop some kindling now that Danne was away in Flensburg, and to bring the napkins in from the yard, especially as Greta had washed a lot of them that morning when Josephina should have. Then, when Catharina and Finn were asleep again, Greta would be waiting for her. And so, what more do you want now, little sister?

  Josephina had already answered the question to herself while she did her jobs, and Greta didn’t ask it when they had their supper. Danne had left some fresh soles before going off to Flensburg, and they ate them with pickles and bread. They were behaving as though everything was normal. They drank some verbena tea. Then Josephina sat upstairs by the window and sewed in the pale, clear late light, rocking Catharina’s crib with her foot. The baby was calm, twitching her arms around. The crib, which had been Finn’s and before long would have Greta’s new baby in it, had paintings on both sides, of ships at sea with smooth blue waves and white sails bulging with wind next to islands with green palm trees. Sometimes the paintings made her think of the young sailor by the harbour in Kiel with his wonderful great talking shell. She made the sewing and the rocking have the same rhythm because it was good for thinking.

  Finn was chattering away downstairs, then he and Greta went out to the quay so he could play with the neighbour’s children – they ran up and down squawking like seagulls. Then he had his drink of milk and complained for a while when Greta put him to bed. Then Greta was standing in the doorway of Josephina’s little room. Josephina was feeding Catharina again.

  ‘What, are you hiding?’ Greta said.

  No, not hiding, thinking. Then and then and then. Moving the big simple thoughts along a road over and over, from now until then, until she knew the way, until it was as if she’d already done the journey many times, like Gunnar returning from Tante Elizabeth’s to the Bauernhaus above the Schwentine, which he’d already done when Greta still lived there and even before that. So when she and Greta finally took chairs outside in the cool of the sea breeze where people were enjoying their last evening walk along the quay, she didn’t wait for her big sister to ask, she just said that yes she did want something else, she also wanted to get better at reading and writing because she’d need to be able to do that, wouldn’t she. She was holding Catharina on her lap so the baby could kick her legs and burp.

  ‘Able to do that after you leave, you mean,’ said Greta. ‘That’s what you mean. After you leave.’ The way she said leave was a little sarcastic. Then she leaned across and put her arm around Josephina and rested her head on her shoulder and kissed her on the neck. ‘Josie, Josie, sweet little Josie,’ she whispered, keeping her lips there so they tickled. ‘You always were that one.’ She picked up Josephina’s hand and put it on her almost-big stomach. ‘But you’ll have to wait just a little longer, won’t you, Schwesterchen? Just a little bit?’

  Josephina was looking down past Catharina’s wiggling feet – how long before those funny little feet would be tripping on the cobblestones? A year? It was impossible to imagine she and Catharina would still be here in another summer; her then-and-then-and-then thoughts had already gone away into the story she was telling herself and knew so well, like Gunnar’s nodding head and mane moving forward along a view between houses or trees that kept on narrowing until it opened . . . not to the Bauernhaus and Oma’s pear tree – but of course, of course.

  ‘Of course,’ Josephina said.

  ‘Of course.’ Greta’s hair smelled a little of cloves, her stomach was firm and warm where she was pressing Josephina’s hand against it, and then she gave a sudden start and sat up straight.

  Josephina recognised fru Jepsen who greeted them in Danish-sounding German. She had visited soon after Mutti left to go home that time, her husband was the pastor at Saincte Marie Church; its red brick tower with a big clock and a dark steeple stuck up above the houses at the end of the quay and reminded Josephina of the Nikolaikirche on the far side of Kieler Förde and how its steeple always seemed to be falling across the sky. Fru Jepsen was wearing a dark, high-necked dress with a white lace collar, and her grey hair was drawn back in a tight bun under a simple white cotton cap – Josephina at once felt disreputable and untidy.


  ‘So, your husband is away in Flensburg?’ The question must have been for Greta, surely, but fru Jepsen was looking at Josephina and the baby. ‘And how is the little one?’ She stood with her hands folded in front of her and her head on one side. She had a gentle, kindly way of talking, but Greta’s hand gripped Josephina’s where it rested on her stomach.

  ‘My sister’s husband was a soldier, fru Jepsen, did we not tell you?’ said Greta. She was still hugging Josephina and now she pulled her even closer. ‘But sadly he is no longer with us.’ She gave Josephina’s hand a squeeze and took her arm away from the hug and sat up rather straight. ‘But we are lucky, as you can see, fru Jepsen, we have this beautiful child.’ She put her hand on Catharina’s forehead. ‘A gift from God.’

  The pastor’s wife held Greta’s look for a while, shaking her head in sympathy. ‘I am so sorry to hear that,’ she said finally, extending her hand to Josephina. It was warm and dry and slightly rough, as if accustomed to doing at least some housework. Josephina allowed the woman to hold her hand for a while – it seemed she was expected to say something in response to fru Jepsen’s gentle clasp and her calm, direct gaze, but Josephina preferred to look her square in the eye as Oma used to instruct her when she was little and perhaps a bit nervous, direkt in die Augen schauen! Show that you are not afraid and also show respect.