The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  There was just too much of both kinds of stuff, what was behind her barricade and what was behind Noel’s one. Maybe the national museum would like to have what was behind Noel’s. She’d have to give Joe a ring and see if he could help with the slides; he could bring the kids round and they could also take the Cherub mast away and turn it into a flagpole over at their place out at Laingholm. Where to put the stuff that was behind her barricade was another matter.

  ‘So how was the ride back with crazy old Frank?’ Joe wanted to know. Somewhere in the background one of the boys was trying to get an E5 power chord. ‘Straighten your bloody finger!’ Joe shouted, adding, ‘Not you, Ma!’

  ‘We should pile everybody in cars and go down the valley one summer.’ There was a silence, except for the E5 with a straight finger, a couple of times. ‘It was okay. He’s a cranky old bugger but we had a great road trip. Went to have a look at Pouakani, remember him?’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Frank or Pouakani?’

  ‘Both.’

  She needed to cut to the chase.

  ‘Listen, Joe, I need to get Dad’s slides out of the way.’ There was another silence and then a door slammed and the E5 attempts with straight finger faded to the background.

  ‘Why do you need to do that?’

  ‘It’s been going on six years, Joe, I need to start clearing stuff out.’

  ‘You can’t just chuck them away. A life’s work.’

  ‘Come off it. You know I wouldn’t chuck that stuff.’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Life’s work of warm, glowing, softly textured Kodachrome colour slides.’

  Finally, his lovely cackling laugh.

  ‘We could give them to a museum. Maybe Te Papa would want them.’

  ‘Would they pay?’

  ‘They might, I don’t care. Could you take it on for me, Joe? I’ll chuck in the old Cherub mast for free. You and the boys can make a flagpole.’

  ‘You all right, Ma?’

  ‘Come over at the weekend, have a glass of wine, bring the boys.’

  She expected Joe to understand that she needed a clear space to go forward into. It had to be a space that hadn’t been gatecrashed by the past. He’d had to do that himself, took his time over it but got there in the end.

  ‘I’ll smoke you a fish.’ He made a kissing sound close to his phone.

  Then she went back downstairs into the drive-in and looked at the unlit space where the Brumberger cases were. There was just a dark mass. Hidden in it were six thousand little windows to the past.

  Josephina and Catharina

  Now it made her laugh out loud to imagine that the wooden birthing chair with the hard shiny arms was the hull of her heaving ship and she was its full-to-bursting body – the woman who sat behind her in the hull and gripped her tight below her breasts was the helmsman whispering hoarsely that she had to keep steady, the midwife who knelt between her knees was saying that she was nearly there, now she was nearly there at last, and now all at once she was! There was a wide blue-green expanse of ruffled water with sunshine glinting across it, and the purple shadows of slowly passing clouds. The gulls were making a squawky fuss around the ship, and Wolf was making his own squawks until she turned him around in the wrap of the Danish shawl and showed him the sunshine on the water. She even felt an ache low in her belly as if it too was remembering – it was the sunshine and the purple cloud shadows that made her ache there, and as well as that the horizon was gone, there was a proper border to the place they were in, it couldn’t keep on unravelling away anymore, her thoughts had a simple space to be in.

  Theodora came up from their cabin wearing her plain straw bonnet with the red ribbon around it. Though Josephina had seen the old bonnet many times she got a little shock of surprise – they kept startling her, the things that were familiar. Theodora held out her arms for Wolf and asked what did he think? Did he like the look of this place? Wolf was saying loudly that he didn’t like it very much at all and so Theodora took him away for a walk around the deck through the noisy crowd of people.

  It had taken so long and so much pain for him to be born that when he arrived at last there was hardly anything else there – the polished wooden arms of the chair weren’t there, the woman’s hoarse voice in her ear wasn’t there anymore, the other woman wasn’t kneeling in front of her saying nearly there, the pain wasn’t there, her own voice crying out wasn’t there, she was in an almost empty place with just the baby in it, and he didn’t know where or who he was or where he’d come from, and now there was the almost empty expanse of water with hills all around and a range of blue-grey mountains in the distance. The sunshine was nice. There were wispy plumes of smoke blowing away from some buildings.

  That’s where they were going now, she and Wolf and Theodora, and nobody there knew who they were or where they’d come from. Nobody there had ever known Wolf Bloch the poet or Hauptmann von Zarovich the shithead. Perhaps no one there knew the words or the melody of ‘Wie traulich war das Fleckchen’ and they’d certainly never heard of Puck Puck – that could hardly be expected! They didn’t know who Greta Andersen and Elke Franzose were and they’d never heard of Meister Hansen or poor thin coughing Agatha Hansen. They’d never heard of Alex who was really called Alessandra who lived on the other side of the world in a big city like Hamburg, not like this little place, even though New York had New in its name as well. Perhaps they’d never heard of Kielerhafen or Sønderborg.

  Then Catharina was tugging at the sleeve of her dress and telling her that Gudrun’s big brother Bendt had told her that this wasn’t Wellington after all and that they’d been kidnapped and taken to a secret place to be slaves in the mines, was that true, Mutti? There were gold mines in the mountains over there and children had to pull little wagons deep into the earth, there were Kobold goblins down there, but here they were called Maries, they were black.

  Bendt didn’t know what he was talking about, Josephina told Catharina’s anxious face and widened eyes, and she ran back across to where the children were to tell Bendt.

  But perhaps it was true, said Theodora, laughing somewhat sarcastically when she came back with Wolf who had quietened down. It was as likely as anything else, after all. Who could tell what they would discover when they were finally allowed to set foot on that land? Something like a small fishing town with low buildings had been established on some patches of ground scraped bare; there was a rudimentary port with three or four wharves, there was a single unimpressive church spire – had her dear brother envisaged anything like this? She was even enjoying the joke, if it was a joke, and seemed not at all sad. And after all, said Theodora, whose face was speckled with the sunshine coming through her straw bonnet, Wolf would hardly have been surprised to hear that there were gold-mine goblins exploiting children, they were usually to be found everywhere, though of course being Wolf he’d hoped things might be different in the New Land of his hopes and dreams.

  Theodora said ‘New Land’ in English with a familiar twist of her lips. ‘And now, see, look, here they are coming,’ she added, also in English. And indeed, a boat had rowed out from the shore and come alongside. Half a dozen men climbed on board and went with the captain to his cabin. ‘The Kobold have arrived!’ said Theodora with a bark. ‘Quickly, we had better hide Wolf!’

  But then after an hour the six men came back out from the captain’s cabin and climbed back down into their longboat and were rowed away. And then it was time for lunch. It was the same barley soup with the carrots from Sydney, but two of the Sydney sheep had also been butchered that morning and so almost everyone on board the ship could perhaps find a small piece of the meat in their soup, although the best parts had gone to the captain’s cabin and first-class passengers at the back of the ship.

  ‘A taste of things to come I hope!’ exclaimed fru Frederiksen, who was stirring their big soup pot beside Josephina in the kitchen, because as she often reminded her fellow passengers her two eldest sons were farming sheep somew
here inland, it was very successful, and that was where they were going.

  But where were Josephina and the baby going, she wondered, without mentioning Theodora.

  They were going wherever their own talents might take them, said Josephina, giving her a direct look that made her blink quickly several times.

  Why of course, that went without saying, agreed fru Frederiksen, who had perhaps noticed that Josephina had returned to her theme of ‘what choice did she have?’ but by turning the theme upside down. Now it was that the choices they had were their own to make to the best of their abilities – she and Theodora had decided together that here they were in this new place where no one knew them or expected anything of them, and was that not after all an opportunity and even like giving birth to new hope?

  But she didn’t say any of this to fru Frederiksen – to Ada – who was now a little flustered by Josephina’s direct look, which was hardly fair, because it was true, she had been a good, kind friend. And so Josephina gave her a gentle kiss on her cheek and said that she hoped Ada’s grown sons weren’t too far away because it would be a pity to lose touch with her and with her family, after all they had endured a long voyage together, not to mention a great deal of soup with no meat in it only beans.

  Now Mutti was smiling sometimes and making the shapes of words with her lips but not saying them. She was walking around all the time with Baby Wolf. Perhaps she was singing? Sometimes she was moving her head as if she was singing but without making any sound. Gudrun and Bendt and the other stupid brother called Harald had fresh clothes on and their papa had cut the boys’ hair with a pale bare stripe around the side. They had been saving the clothes for when they arrived, Gudrun told her, was Catharina going to do the same? Did she have some? Look, she even had some special shiny shoes, but they were a bit too tight. And she had a special handkerchief from Haderslev, it wasn’t their home anymore, but it had a special picture sewn on it, there was a shield with some water and a bridge, but she didn’t know if she could remember the bridge. Would Catharina like to come down to the cabin and get some fresh clothes on, asked Tante, with that Tante look, when Catharina told her about Gudrun. That was a good idea, because soon they would be going ashore. Ashore was an English word. But could she have a special handkerchief with a picture, like Gudrun’s? No, said Tante, she didn’t have a special handkerchief, but Catharina could have the red ribbon from her straw hat – if they made a plait with her hair she could wear the ribbon around it, would she like that? It would make going ashore special? And also it would be a good idea for Catharina to clean her teeth, she could do it with the washcloth around her finger, with some salt on it, they could get some salt from the kitchen, because the men who had come back on board would want to look into her mouth and at her tongue. So then she took her clothes off in the cabin and Tante wiped her all over with the washcloth dipped in a basin of water and with some of the lavender soap, there was just a narrow slice. Then she put on some clean clothes, and Tante did the same. And then she brushed both their hair – Tante piled hers up but did a plait for Catharina and tied the red ribbon around it. Yes, it felt special. But where was Mutti, was she going to change her clothes as well? And Baby Wolf’s, because his would certainly be stinky? Tante thought Catharina’s mutti might be too happy walking around up on the deck, perhaps she couldn’t be bothered. Or perhaps it was because she was very unquiet, Tante thought, perhaps Catharina had noticed how she was walking about in that unquiet way? But what did unquiet mean? Tante thought it might mean that Catharina’s mutti was thinking about everything that had happened, about her Papa Wolf getting sick and dying and about Baby Wolf getting born, and about what they were going to do when they went ashore. She used the English word ashore again. But what was ashore? But then they had to wait in a line with Mutti and Baby Wolf because the men had come back in the long rowboat and they wanted to look in everybody’s mouth just as Tante had said they would, and so Tante didn’t tell her what English ashore meant, and one of the men listened to her chest with a thing like a trumpet that he put in his ear. Tante showed them some papers and spoke to them in English and then they went to wait with some others in a crowd. Mister Oats was there as well, he told them that soon the ship would be towed to the wharf and they would be able to get off. He also told her very slowly that he hoped to see her again, and her mother and aunt, once they had got ashore. But what did ashore mean? Everybody was saying it. Ashore was where flowers and trees grew, said Mister Oats, it was where grass grew for horses and cows to eat, it was where birds could make nests in the trees and where people could make their homes. And was Mister Oats going to make an ashore home as well? Perhaps he would, Mister Oats told her, but first he had to find his brother who had got lost a long time ago. Perhaps once he’d found his brother he could come and see Catharina’s ashore home? And visit her mutti and tante? But now Mutti was walking around and around again and laughing, and then suddenly using her special Papa Wolf Poem voice she said, ‘The sun will rise beyond the gaze of Reichskanzler Dismay!’ – and then Catharina joined in, she was happy to be saying the Poem again, they hadn’t done that for a long time, and they said it together in their special Papa Wolf Poem voices while looking at each other’s lips. Tante was watching them with a funny expression and Mister Oats walked away!

  The rear balcony of the hotel was above the landing steps and faced across the harbour. Often noisy boatmen would come to the hotel that way, and Josephina began to understand more of what they were saying to each other. How many afternoons had she spent sitting on that balcony in the late sunshine listening to the men boasting about the fish they’d caught – they often caught fish by the landing because the hotel’s kitchen scraps were thrown into the harbour there – but now it was time for a damn good glass of beer? Or perhaps a couple? The words for glass and beer were the same in German and English, but couple was not. A couple could also be two people who were married. What would Wolf have thought of this place? The evenings were often a melancholy time; it was when the light began to fade. Sometimes she’d sit out there with Baby Wolf on her lap, if he was peaceful. He was getting stronger and more contented and her milk was better and her breasts not sore. Herring was a German word but the boastful watermen also said snapper and gurnard, those were the names of fish. They quite often had snapper or gurnard for their supper, the fish were very plentiful in the harbour. The word fish was the same in German. Very plentiful fish – Catharina made the shapes of the English words very carefully with her mouth, which was full of the very plentiful fish and the boiled potatoes with white sauce. Please don’t talk with your mouth full, said Theodora – and especially not English, she added, with a little bark laugh.

  There were warm baths on the first floor of the hotel, and Doctor Lichtscheindl said it would be beneficial for her to take one every evening. Beneficial. There were beneficial mineral salts to put in the water, she should dry herself with a very rough towel, she should also drink the beneficial tonic made with cardamom seeds and spirits, and she should add some drops of it to the fresh milk that came to the hotel every day in a cart. She should drink plenty of fresh milk because like her the dear little baby had also been affected by the long sea voyage and the bad diet, he was too thin. Doctor Lichtscheindl believed in watercress, beetroot, onions, apples, and plenty of fresh fish. There was plenty of watercress in the fresh streams around the town. He said they should stay at the hotel until Josephina was completely better, he was only too glad to be in a position to help some fellow Germans in their time of need, and Theodora said the hotel charges were reasonable. There was still some money from the subscription, and a bank draft had arrived at the Deutscher Verein – Herr Andersen had arranged it from Hamburg. Then they would move to a rented house. These could be found through the Deutscher Verein, Theodora had investigated how it was done. Then they would see what to do next, such as a school for Catharina.

  Josephina heard what Doctor Lichtscheindl was telling her while Theodora listened, and wha
t Theodora was patiently saying to her, but what she mostly noticed was the way the weather wove itself across the surface of the harbour, and the way the mountains in the distance changed their complexions from grey to purple to a dull blue-green.

  Had Josephina understood what Theodora had just said to her about getting a house and the school for Catharina?

  Yes, she had, thank you. Had Theodora noticed how the harbour changed its surface from one moment to the next?

  Yes, Josephina, she had.

  The harbour was called Nicholson but neither Theodora nor Doctor Lichtscheindl could explain why. The doctor’s first name was Josef – after a few weeks she heard Theodora calling him by that name. The hotel was called Empire, and the reason for that was obvious, Theodora thought, since the English had planted their flag in the soil of New Zealand. Perhaps the name Nicholson was obvious for similar reasons, it was an English name after all, but no one seemed to know, not even Josef – he was very well informed in general, was Doctor Josef Lichtscheindl, said Theodora with a droll intonation, but especially about the beneficial properties of watercress.

  Now they had a little baby carriage and she could take Wolf for walks along the street where the hotel was, with Catharina helping by holding on to the handle of the carriage. The street was rough with cart tracks in it, but there was a sealed footpath beside it and they could walk the length of it to where the buildings stopped. Work was being done on the harbour at the end of the street, so they would turn around from the noise there and push Wolf ‘back home’ to the hotel. The word home was quite like the German one, but because it was a little different it didn’t really mean home. Sometimes they would go back and forth several times, and then when she was tired she could lie down in their room ‘at home’ while Theodora took care of Catharina and Wolf. Theodora was helping Catharina to learn English words and then Catharina was helping her mutti.