The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  Greta was there in the doorway, holding baby Otto. Her mouth had opened to ask what was all the noise about, but then she saw Elke with Josephina and Danne’s man with the barrow and no words came out. Oh God, there they were, the two of them, die Bande, the gang, the little one whose smile opens doors and the big one who then goes through them, the special one and Papa’s helper, God in heaven, here they were, here we are.

  ‘Well, here I am, so it would seem,’ said Elke. ‘And here we all are. Amazing, isn’t it?’

  Danne’s man wanted to know if he should bring the things in. Yes, yes, said Greta, as if she was waking up. So he lifted Finn out of the barrow and then handed Catharina to Josephina as if she was a dangerous parcel. Elke took the rolled-up Oma, and Danne’s man the old Reisetasche and some other bundles, and then they all followed Greta inside, first Finn proudly leading the way and then Josephina with Catharina triumphantly on her hip, then Elke with the Oma under her arm, and last Danne’s man with the bag and other things. He was leaving as fast as he could when Danne pushed past him into the room.

  ‘A minute,’ he said, looking hard at Greta, and they went out into the yard.

  Elke had that expression that Josephina knew well, it was both guilty and smug, the one that used to make Pastor Köhler reach for his wooden spoon all those years ago. ‘Well, while we’re waiting,’ said Elke, ‘you should know a few things.’ She still had the rolled-up Oma under her arm. Then, pretending she’d only just thought of it, she held the object out to Josephina in a mock-ceremonial way, across both hands, and bowed.

  ‘What things?’ Josephina was holding the familiar weight of the Oma against herself in a space that wasn’t the ground-floor room in Greta’s house – the conversation with Elke was happening in that room but at the same time as Josephina was somewhere else.

  ‘You’re being crazy,’ said Elke. ‘Why don’t you put that thing down?’ She was looking around. ‘It’s a nice house,’ she said. ‘Must have been pretty nice staying here?’

  ‘Greta and Danne have been kind to me,’ said Josephina, but she didn’t put the Oma down.

  ‘Greta needs to know this too, but all right, why wait?’ Elke was looking at the door to the yard. ‘You need to know that Mutti is sick, it’s the cough, that’s why I can’t stay very long. And old Gunnar died.’

  His jaunty mane, the wildflowers Josephina would tuck under his horse-collar that was shiny inside with his smell. This had happened somewhere else in another time, but now it was here and she was back in the room with the sound of the quay just outside and her sister Elke looking at her with a sorrowful expression. She put the rolled-up Oma on the table and sat down.

  Elke sat down too. Yes, well, it was true, from the time Gunnar first arrived they would find Josephina standing on an upturned wooden chaff bucket to reach the horse’s nose, and he would let her – he didn’t shake his head and knock her over, that funny little thing. ‘He just stopped on the road back from Gaarden. Papa took some milk to Tante Elizabeth but she refused it, they were always arguing, so he was bringing it home again, and he said Gunnar just stopped and then sank down, the milk tipped out of the cart, it was his heart, it burst. Papa sent him to the knackers for some money but it wasn’t enough for a good one – it’s only got one eye so it can’t go straight, it’s a lot of trouble.’

  Well, no more sobbing – across the table her little sister, Gunnar’s favourite (he would snort love-breaths at her), sat calmly with the fingers of one hand lightly stroking her precious Oma-thing and her pale eyes looking steadily into the present moment.

  When Josephina and the children were first out on the quay that afternoon, big black spring clouds were boiling over in the sky and people were saying there was going to be a storm. Now, gusty rattles of rain struck the windows and Greta and Danne hurried inside with the baby, followed by a draught of cold air.

  ‘So, Elke,’ said Greta, ‘do you have something to tell us?’

  ‘I just told Josie,’ said Elke. ‘Old Gunnar died.’

  Danne was going out in his greatcoat – he said something angry in Danish and slammed the front door. Finn had helped Catharina to climb up on the window seat and they were pretending to lick rain off the panes, which would usually have annoyed Greta but she ignored them. She gave baby Otto to Josephina and sat down opposite Elke. Die Bande, so help me.

  ‘And Mutti has the cough.’

  ‘Don’t make me angry,’ said Greta. ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘And Papa sold one of the cows. And all the new poplar planks. And he doesn’t have a journeyman anymore, just a stupid boy who keeps hurting himself with a saw or a hammer or something and he cries at night in the stall.’ Elke reached for Greta’s hand across the table. ‘And I didn’t tell them I was coming here.’

  ‘And?’ said Greta, letting Elke hold her hand.

  ‘And I took the special sewing thing, Oma’s sampler, it’s Josephina’s, they were wrong to keep it from her.’ She was holding Greta’s hand in both of hers and beating it gently on the table. ‘They are old. They don’t know what anger is for.’ Then she said it again. ‘They are old. They don’t know what anger is for,’ and Greta repeated it with her, so that it was hard to tell whether Elke was saying it again or whether she was echoing Greta.

  Josephina was listening to them talk about her and about anger as if she wasn’t completely there, and at the same time she was watching the children licking pretend rain off the windowpane. The rain wasn’t there, but also it was, and the anger?

  ‘So, what does that mean, They don’t know what anger is for?’ Greta allowed her sister to keep beating her hand on the table while Elke didn’t answer, but then she withdrew it quite gently and went to make tea. When she turned around from the stove with the teapot, Elke and Josephina were both looking at her – neither had spoken. The two children were still pretending to lick rain off the windowpane and Catharina was laughing loudly, a hearty laugh like her aunt Elke’s. Josephina was holding Otto over her shoulder and patting his back.

  Greta put the teapot and three mugs on the table and it was as though what was happening in the room was now arranged in an orderly way around the tea – her sisters, the children, even the troublesome bundle on the table that Josephina was looking at while patting the baby’s back. The one thing that didn’t find its place was the word anger. Where did it belong? Danne was angry because Elke had tricked him and because now, God damn it, he had all three sisters under his roof. Greta was angry because Elke had made Danne angry. Elke was angry because she thought Mutti and Papa were wrong to be angry with Josephina and not let her have Oma’s old sampler, who could argue with that. And Josephina? Josephina was looking at her across the Oma on the table in that steady way, hardly blinking, direkt in die Augen schauen – well, of course, everyone knew now why Josephina was angry. Tante Elizabeth back in Gaarden knew, Mutti and Papa knew, but where did their anger fit? No one except Josephina could make it fit properly anywhere. But everyone was angry with her as well, in one way or another, for one reason or another. Except maybe Elke, because here she was. But even so.

  The tea was verbena, Greta told them, looking back at Josephina’s stare (Where do you keep your anger now?), same as the one Mutti always likes at home, from that bush at the back. Near the juniper. The old one. She should drink it for the cough, it’s good, you should tell her. And nettles.

  Josephina was now holding the baby on her lap and stroking the Oma bundle, and at any moment she expected the bundle to begin to squirm a little, while Greta’s voice went on about the tea. But then Elke butted in because of course she knew better, after all she’d just come from that old Bauernhaus above the Schwentine with the strange new one-eyed horse in poor Gunnar’s stall. It probably wore Gunnar’s collar now, but who collected the flowers for the horse’s bouquet, the one that would dry and fall out on to the road? No one, probably.

  Papa gets Mutti laudanum from the apothecary over by Ellerbek, Elke was telling them while looking har
d at Greta over her cup of verbena tea – the fat, boring Apothek with bad breath who talks too much. It’s good, makes her sleepy though.

  So what does that mean? Greta wanted to know. So Mutti can’t work? Much? Is that what you’re saying?

  Elke paused and blew on her cup of tea. Her hand was trembling, she wasn’t going to risk a sip, not yet. ‘She stopped. She doesn’t.’ So, now, the weak flavour of the sip. And I know where this is going, big sister, so all right: ‘She can’t.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘She says she’s too angry. But you know she just can’t. Anymore.’ And now Greta will surely say: ‘What are you doing here then? If Mutti can’t?’

  Well, anyway, baby Otto was now asleep, he’d fallen asleep while those two went on at each other, so Josephina took him upstairs and put a blanket over him on Greta and Danne’s bed, a nice grey woollen one she’d edged with a border of round-eyed blue owls. Rainy squalls were beating on the bedroom window and for a while she watched the agitated masts along the quay tossing about in the dim light.

  Then she went down again. Her sisters were sitting closer together and holding hands, only now Elke wasn’t beating Greta’s on the table. The two children were playing with Finn’s duck on the floor, Finn was making it quack its way around Catharina while she snatched at it and laughed. It was clear that soon Finn’s teasing would frustrate her and she would cry – so, as usual, there wasn’t long to say what had to be said.

  Josephina stood behind her sisters and put a hand on each of their necks. They looked around at her with happy expressions on their faces, Elke’s that broad smile with her brow furrowed up towards her hair, Greta’s her sweet sickle-shaped one with the dimples in her cheeks. She was looking so fine, Elke told her, being a mother suited her, who could have imagined it? Yes, who, agreed Greta, our little Josie? And she’s been such a help. Then Josephina quite gently pushed their faces down towards the table and held them there with her hands as far around their necks as they would go.

  ‘He pushed my face down into the back of a sofa and squeezed my neck with one hand so I could hardly breathe, then he pulled my clothes out of the way with his other hand and stuck his cock between my legs right up there and pushed it to and fro, then after a while he pushed it all the way in and squeezed my neck so hard I couldn’t breathe at all, it really hurt, then he called me a whore and told me to never come back.’ She let the sisters go then, and stepped back against the big cupboard so the plates and mugs rattled inside. ‘I know what anger is for. It means someone should have cut the shithead’s throat.’ Josephina wiped with her sleeve at the heat in her face; a trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades. The children had noticed something was happening, and they were both staring as Elke and Greta stood up and went to Josephina and put their arms around her, which is when Danne banged in out of the storm and saw the three sisters standing in a close huddle while the children gaped up at them from the floor.

  Elke

  It was sunny in Faulstrasse and everywhere the autumn sunshine came down through the trees making nice shadow patterns on the cobblestones and the dry brown leaves, the kind of thing that Josie would have noticed and exclaimed happily about making pictures with her hands, and that Elke was noticing because of Josie restless in her thoughts that were like a small black growling cloud that hovered above her head, it was moving with Elke towards ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ and there it was, the house, the windows upstairs were flashing with sunlight and the place looked cosy and fine, not too grand, the kind of place Mutti and Papa dreamed of living in with a housekeeper and a maid perhaps to empty the chamber pots, imagine that, even a cook and a place at the back for the workshop and for horses and for Papa’s journeyman and a stable boy.

  Her ‘empty, lifeless heart’ was how Josie had described what she felt like, not so much after ‘what happened in Faulstrasse’ as she called what the ‘shithead’ officer had done to her at that address but after everyone got angry, and what was at the bottom of that? – for Mutti and Papa it was not being able to live now and perhaps never in something like ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ or over in Gaarden perhaps where Tante Elizabeth and the ‘very successful’ Herr Mayer had already been for some years and who Papa said now thought themselves too fine for milk from ‘the family farm’, but of course that wasn’t what the feud was about, it was because Mutti and Papa blamed Josie and Tante Elizabeth blamed them and Herr Mayer blamed his wife for making a fuss that everyone was talking about now, and where was the family’s reputation going to end up? – on the dungheap out at ‘the family farm’ said Herr Mayer according to Tante Elizabeth who was also angry about the bad feeling between herself and her husband now, or even in ‘the paupers’ graveyard’ as Mutti feared, making herself sick with the worry of it – but where was Josie, where was she in this swarm of flies buzzing over a single turd, the turd was Hauptmann von Zarovich but no one could see it, could see him, the great shithead turd anymore, they couldn’t see past the ends of their noses and they certainly couldn’t see little Josie, growled the angry black thought-cloud above Elke’s head.

  She had stopped across the road from ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ and was looking at its cheerful windows – Josie’s ‘empty, lifeless heart’ had filled up again and come to life when Catharina was born she said, she no longer cared what happened to Hauptmann von Zarovich, there was a time when something should have happened to him but who could have spoken on her behalf, she’d put on the nightgown meant for Junkfrau von Zarovich and she’d taken the Hauptmann’s money so what did she expect? – well, she expected nothing anymore she said in that new calm voice she had since getting Catharina, and that clear firm look in her Kornblume eyes blue like the flowers she used to tie together and tuck under old Gunnar’s collar, her heart was full again, she had a path ahead said that little Josie and who knew where it might lead finally? – not back to the reedy marsh by the Schwentine where the little Rohrsänger practised flying away to a nice warm place she said where oranges came from, and one day they did it, off they went, and she had done it and now she had to keep going, and she would said grown-up Josephina that time back in Sønderborg at Greta’s place the day she and Josie and Greta went on an outing with the two older children on the little ferry across Alsund to Dybbøl and walked up to the rebuilt mill destroyed in the battle where Opa and his two sons ‘the fools’ were killed fighting for the Prussians, well they didn’t get far said Josie but not laughing – it was a good long walk and they took turns piggybacking Catharina, and Greta was fretting because she’d left baby Otto with the neighbour, they had a drink of water and ate some bread and apples on the higher ground by the patched-up ruin looking back at Sønderborg across the water.

  Elke was leaving the next day to go back, die Suppe auslöffeln she laughed, to spoon up the soup she’d cooked for herself and take care of Mutti. When will I see you again she said to Josie, not laughing anymore, I don’t know said Josie. I don’t know maybe never. Because I have to keep going I can’t stay at Greta’s place much longer and I won’t take Catharina ‘back there’ – it was the word ‘home’ that sank out of sight under ‘back there’ as if into the choppy blue-white Alsund sea or into one of the boggy collapsed trenches below the hill they’d just walked up where Opa and the uncles were, since they didn’t go ‘back there’ either, they were here somewhere under the wet turf.

  It was easier walking back down the slope, and then before she knew it after one last night hardly sleeping not wanting to sleep and waste any of her last time squashed together with her little Josie lightly breathing through her Josie nose with small murmurs like always in their life before ‘the house on Faulstrasse’, there she was by herself again with the old Reisetasche on the boat to Flensburg waving to Josie and Greta and the children and her heart didn’t break or become ‘empty and lifeless’ like Josie’s had before Catharina because now here she was crossing the road to ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ and her heart, Elke’s very own heart, was beating
like a drum.

  She cried a lot on the way to Flensburg and was a bit sick too, the passage into the harbour was long and twisty with wind-shifts so the boat swayed this way and that, she wasn’t the only one being sick over the rail but it was as much about her heart as her stomach, her heart was sick but not broken or ‘empty and lifeless’, and it was better up there in the wind with the rude sailor who wanted her out of the way than down in the sick-smelly cabin.

  Then Danne’s man who was impatient and rude helped her to find Herr Mayer’s man who was also impatient but looked at the letter from Danne and so knew she’d been visiting her sisters in Sønderborg at Herr Andersen’s house and needed to get a boat the rest of the way to Kielerhafen. Both Tante Elizabeth’s husband Herr Mayer and Herr Andersen Greta’s husband were important and successful unlike Papa and so she stayed for two nights in the house of Herr Mayer’s man in Flensburg until there was a boat going the rest of the way to Kielerhafen – she could tell that Frau Lande the wife of Herr Mayer’s man Herr Lande wanted to ask her questions about her sisters in Sønderborg but she didn’t ask them she just left gaps in her conversation that were like missing cobblestones in the street that you might trip up in—yes the journey was difficult, more difficult than the one going up to Sønderborg to see Josie and Greta and the children because she had to stop on the way back at Flensburg this time but also because as well as the twists and turns of the boat coming into Flensburg and the complication of stopping on the way home to Kielerhafen she had to find her way past the unasked questions and also past the questions that were asked by Frau Lande the wife of Herr Mayer’s man Herr Steuerer Lande.