The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  Verschone mich!

  Sometimes Papa Hein smelled a little of brandy when he came back from the harbour. Arfra momintif refleckshin. Then he would go to sleep in a chair. But then sometimes he would put Wolf to bed. He had a ‘nice singing voice’. He was allowed to sing to Wolf in German. ‘Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht, von Englein bewacht.’

  Sometimes he and Mutti sang together. Wie traulich war das Fleckchen, Wo meine Wiege ging.

  That was how they met, said Papa Hein. When he heard your mutti, sorry! – mother, your mother, singing. Like. An. Angel. At the Deutscher Verein. The. German. Asso-ciation!

  He didn’t really have to speak English to her so carefully. She already knew lots of words.

  She and Wolf were meant to say ‘Mum’ not ‘Mutti’ but she almost couldn’t because it sounded silly. Wolf sometimes said Mumti.

  Papa Hein said Feinsliebchen, Geliebte, also Gnädige Frau Wenczel.

  Sometimes he said Mumti.

  Come here Mumti my darling.

  Mumti Szelwen!

  Such memories were ‘cheap at the price’ she sometimes thought but without regret or bitterness, and partly because the English phrase now came naturally to her, the kind of naturalness she would sometimes still notice with a little surprise even after quite a few years ‘if the truth be told’.

  What she chiefly noticed somewhat wryly at this moment, however, was that she was choosing to mention Goethe’s Faust rather than the luridly illustrated Swiss Family Robinson that her stepfather had read to her in an effort to improve her English.

  ‘Sometimes when I was little he’d read Goethe’s Faust aloud at the top of his voice in bed, when he was perhaps inebriated.’

  Should she add ‘which was seldom’? But that wasn’t really true.

  Catharina wasn’t sure what Professor von Welden would make of this intimate family snippet about her childhood and her stepfather. She meant to convey that even a harbour pilot (she almost thought ‘pirate’) – but the ‘even’ in her thought irritated her, so she stopped the story at that point.

  She and Professor von Welden were walking in the Botanic Garden that he said reminded him of Austria, but she thought he was almost certainly being polite.

  Was he reminded because of the conifers?

  Indeed, the fresh smell of the air where there are pines and so forth. So refreshing and stimulating.

  But he’d ‘walked past’ her comment about Papa Hein. She sensed that he liked to stride – he was wearing ‘salt and pepper’ knickerbockers and had his Spazierstock with a steel tip. But now he was walking slowly, as if needing to pace his thoughts. And besides, it would be impolite for him to stride. He was certainly always polite. He’d invited her to discuss her studies ‘in the fresh air’.

  In der frischen Luft! (They were meant to be speaking English.)

  But his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

  But now they returned, but not to her studies.

  So, your father, Mister Wenczel. A well-read man?

  But of course he knew her name was Hansen. This was a familiar manoeuvre, she was used to it by now.

  Catharina stopped where there was a small decorative pond enclosed by a rustic wooden fence of crooked sticks. Yes, Professor Hugo von Welden was trying to walk around the side of her story about Papa Hein to see what was behind it.

  Her step-father was a sailor, she told him, breaking the word into distinct parts while looking at the exotic floating water lilies in the pond. Then he’d been a pilot on the harbour, he’d brought in the sailing ships, but after a time there were fewer of those. He’d been to many places in the world. The Orient, for example. He’d collected a number of exotic things. He spoke German of course but also quite good French and good English.

  Professor von Welden was mimicking with his slender, tanned hands the gentle floating movements of the lotus leaves.

  And her stepfather had also spoken Polish because that was where his origins were, over there in that much-dissected part of Europe. It was possible he’d had to make himself scarce at some stage, like so many who now find their homes here in New Zealand, wouldn’t you agree, Professor?

  The professor’s hands had ceased to be lotus leaves.

  And her stepfather had a damaged leg, Catharina informed the smiling professor, her tutor in Romance Languages and Literature. When she and her brother Wolf were little Papa Hein used to tell them he’d been bitten by a crocodile. The teeth marks, see? He’d obliged by pulling up his trouser leg. There were the blue indentations. But her mother told them it was because of a gunshot. She said Papa Hein blamed ‘the Austrians’. Neither Catharina nor Wolf had known what or who ‘the Austrians’ were. Were they pirates?

  But even now she, Catharina, wasn’t entirely familiar with that history, and after all here they were, Professor, on the other side of the world, where the old world animosities could be forgotten, wasn’t that so? Along with a great many outmoded social conventions, she suggested.

  Professor von Welden made a little bow and smiled.

  Catharina’s face was returning the professor’s smile, but her thoughts were lying in wait behind her own smile. No, she wouldn’t yet suggest that the smiling professor could by all means call her Catharina if he felt comfortable being on ‘first-name terms’ since they had much in common, for example being German, and could be friends as well as teacher and student. That would be quite proper, now, under the circumstances? And perhaps he would like to meet her mother, Mrs Josephina Wenczel, who had ‘encouraged’ her to attend university? If the professor were to meet her mother he’d understand what was meant by ‘encouraged’.

  But of course not if he felt uncomfortable with her suggestion.

  She didn’t wish to seem familiar.

  The professor appeared to be parsing her smiling silence. He was calm. People passed them, walking and talking. Some of them had dogs – one of them, a small bristling creature, took a ferocious interest in the ducks that were negotiating the lily pads.

  The professor shook his head disapprovingly but continued to smile at the surroundings, the young pines, the new borders of flowers and low shrubs. He wasn’t in a hurry.

  Not long ago, Mutti had told her the story of Papa Wolf asking if she, Josephina, would mind calling him ‘just Wolf’? That was when Mutti considered her old enough to know about ‘certain things’.

  And look what that led to, she’d said, laughing, and with tears that were both sad and happy.

  Which she’d quickly wiped away. Her dear little mutti who preferred not to dwell on the past, so she said with that piercing Mutti look.

  But even so, ‘He was a very special little man,’ she’d said. ‘Ein besonderes Männlein. And so funny! He believed in the future!’

  Mutti’s tone had been at once mocking and affectionate.

  But now Catharina could barely remember the ‘special little man’ except for an image of him in his sad baggy under-drawers on the deck of the ship, and having a bucket of seawater thrown over him. He was hairy all over, with a funny sticking-out chest. That, and his head tipped on one side as if his smile pulled it that way. And of course he was Wolf’s father, not hers. Even though Wolf had been given Papa Hein’s Wenczel name ‘for convenience’.

  For a time she’d struggled with the idea that being ‘on first-name terms’ could result in Wolf.

  He was a very kind, sweet man, was the most Mutti would say. And he believed there was a new world and that they were all going to it.

  But alas.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Professor von Welden, finally, with approving nods of his head. ‘Outmoded social conventions indeed, Catharina.’

  So, ‘Catharina’ now, not Miss Hansen.

  He had a pleasant smile and was very clean-shaven, even somewhat shiny – there were little humour-creases at the otherwise smooth corners of his mouth.

  ‘Please, Catharina, do call me Hugo if you like!’

  They’d agreed to speak English. His was somewhat fastidious.
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  He had rather pale blue eyes and kept them fixed on her in a manner that was either frank or a little too persistent.

  ‘But perhaps not in our classes.’

  No, perhaps not.

  ‘And your father, Catharina?’

  The annoying bristly dog was being dragged away by its collar. Its portly owner attempted to give it a kick but missed. It fled towards a rustic archway that a gang of young men were putting up – its owner walked belligerently towards their jeers.

  ‘He was a soldier,’ said Catharina. ‘He was killed.’

  There was yelling and derisive laughter down by the rustic archway.

  ‘Before I was born,’ Catharina added.

  It wasn’t clear whether the professor’s rueful expression was because of the soldier’s death or the confrontation along the path.

  At the university in Professor von Welden’s German literature seminar they were studying Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, which the professor considered was inadequately translated as ‘The sorrows of young Werther’ since he believed it missed the connotations of sickness and morbidity – ‘sorrows’, after all, were the effects of outside events, whereas the young Werther’s miserable condition was in large part the result of his own vulnerable and even sickly nature.

  Or so the professor had suggested, inviting his students to offer their opinions.

  Few had any.

  The young men cutting up manuka sticks for the rustic archway were too polite to pay obvious attention to her, but she sensed the professor’s firm posture was ‘en garde’.

  Catharina wasn’t ready for ‘Hugo’ just yet. Nor for ‘Catharina’.

  But what about the purported reason for their walk?

  With respect to the subject of the professor’s seminar, she wondered, wasn’t ‘suffering’ a better than plausible translation, given that tragic love could hurt even those who weren’t morbid by nature?

  She kept the thought such as my own mother to herself.

  The professor inclined his head as if to acknowledge her deflection of their intimate conversation up to that point.

  ‘That’s quite an interesting thought,’ he said, with a pause that he seemed hesitant to fill with either ‘Miss Hansen’ or ‘Catharina’. ‘And of course Goethe went on to substantially revise and republish the book, in a sense revising and republishing himself in the process.’

  Quite an interesting thought.

  Perhaps the professor’s tendency to drain the impetus from conversation was merely the consequence of his slightly pedantic English.

  Catharina’s mutti had had three children with three fathers. Two of the fathers she’d mourned (one in particular) and the other she’d said she no longer needed to hate. Her son Wolf (by the father ‘in particular’) had been apprenticed to a blacksmith, having left school as soon as he could, against his mother’s wishes. Now he was already a married man, and his wife was expecting their first child. The youngest, Freddy, the son of the kindly Polish deserter-sailor who’d drowned while drunk, had been bullied at school and had no memory of his father. Their mother had insisted they speak English at home whenever possible. She had worked to support them, with a little help from the widow’s fund at the Deutscher Verein. She’d been on the electoral roll for two years. She spoke frankly with her daughter about these things, though without dwelling on them.

  Their mother had needed to ‘revise herself’ frequently, if not exactly ‘republish’. She was now in her forties. One day it was possible she might meet the professor and then she’d be able to tell him about her ‘revisions’, if she chose to.

  Catharina and Professor von Welden walked back down the hill in silence, having made rather little progress with their discussion of her ‘studies’. Nonetheless, he suggested as they said goodbye, he looked forward to hearing more of ‘Catharina’s’ views on the works they were studying. She was clearly a perceptive reader and had ‘a mind of her own’.

  Yes, and her hands were ‘my own’ as well, thought Catharina, noticing that ‘Hugo’s’ was lean and warm as she shook it goodbye – she could feel the bones in his fingers, they were elegant without much fleshy padding, and the slightly prominent wristbone that emerged from his sleeve was covered in fine golden hair.

  At the moment his warm hand released hers after a perceptible pause, it was as though the past of her childhood with Mutti and the kindly pirate-sailor, and the future into which Professor Hugo von Welden seemed to be advancing, began to look sideways at each other, like individuals at a social gathering unsure of the appropriate protocols of engagement.

  Yes, well, we shall see, she thought as the professor strode firmly away.

  *

  ‘No more, Hein,’ said Mutti.

  Papa Hein was looking with his funny smile at her and the baby in the armchair. He’d knocked into the side of the kitchen door when he came in – that meant he’d been drinking brandy.

  ‘No more, Hein,’ Mutti said again. Her face was quite pale with red blotches. The women who had helped with the baby were cleaning the bedroom. The one called Arabella said something that made the other laugh, then Arabella went Shhh. Then they came out with the towels and sheets and went out the back. One of them said, ‘Congratulations Mister Wenczel’ with a tone.

  ‘No more.’ Papa Hein repeated what Mutti had said like an echo and as if there was something in his mouth. Then he pretended to tip a drink into his Papa Hein smile. ‘But a father is permitted to celebrate the birth of his first child, Mumti, surely?’ His eyes were wet and red.

  ‘No more babies,’ said Mutti as Papa Hein was leaning down to look at the baby. He was holding himself there with one hand on the arm of Mutti’s chair. It looked as though he was going to fall over on top of Mutti and the baby. ‘No more babies, Hein,’ Mutti said again, and put one hand against his chest, was it to stop Papa Hein from falling? ‘No more babies. Keine Babys mehr. Verstehst du?’

  Then the women came back with fresh things for the bed and beckoned at her almost impatiently, so she went to help them. The big one Mutti called Bella who knew a lot about having babies closed the bedroom door, but Catharina could still hear the sounds of Mutti’s and Papa Hein’s voices, they went on and on. Then she had to go over at once quickly right now to get Wolf from Miss Vicky’s house by the forge.

  Soon it would be dark but she stopped for a piece of Vicky’s apple cake, which was more like a batter with apples, she knew that already. The door to the back yard was open because it was so warm and the chickens were making a fuss, it was probably Vicky’s big blacksmith brother doing something, perhaps he was chopping one of their heads off. Sometimes she was allowed to give them the food scraps from the kitchen and some green weeds and they made a big fuss about it throwing the stalks in the air. Wolf was banging an old horseshoe against the kindling box in the kitchen, so she picked him up.

  It was a boy, she told Victoria, another one, he was quite small.

  Yes, Mutti was all right.

  She was very tired, Catharina thought.

  Yes, Mister Wenczel was there now.

  Then they were leaving.

  Yes, Wolf could bring the horseshoe but he’d have to carry it himself otherwise she’d throw it into the bushes where he’d never find it.

  On the way, Wolf carefully hid the horseshoe in the bushes. Oh yes, he was a clever one. Then he walked all the way home without holding her hand.

  At home Mutti was back in her fresh bed with the baby, and Papa Hein was asleep in the armchair with one boot off and one on. Mutti was asleep too and Catharina wouldn’t let Wolf wake her up. The baby was all rolled up, so they couldn’t see him. She got Wolf a piece of bread and dripping and a cup of milk. He was poking holes in the bread and poking his tongue through, but she didn’t care, it didn’t matter. Then she took him to have a pee outside. It was dark with only a little light from the kitchen door. No, the spiders in the coal bin were asleep, they wouldn’t jump out on to his little willy.

  Ins
ide, the armchair was empty but Papa Hein was on Wolf’s bed. He still had one boot on and he was snoring but not loudly, it just sounded like a draught rattling the blind. She let Wolf wet his fingers and pinch out the candle and pretend that he was hurt and then she and Wolf climbed into her bed and she told him the story that Papa Hein did sometimes, about the huge octopus that wrapped itself around the ship he was sailing on, and how he and the other sailors had to chop the octopus’s arms off and how after it had let the ship go they sliced one of the arms up and cooked it for their dinner.

  But what did it taste like, Wolf asked, but really he was already asleep and anyway he always asked that question. It tasted stupid what do you think she said to the back of his head even though Papa Hein always said it tasted delicious like chicken only better, one day he would bring some octopus arms home for their dinner. They had a roasted chicken at her sixth birthday, that was already two years ago, it was at the Verein, and that was where Mutti and Papa Hein met again and he gave her a fan for her birthday present, but now it was broken, Wolf did that. The next time they had chicken was when Mutti and Papa Hein got married, they sang Mutti’s favourite song ‘Wie traulich war das Fleckchen’ together at the Verein afterwards. Papa Hein had a nice voice for singing and everyone threw rice at them out in the street. The wedding chickens were from Vicky but now that Papa Hein was there they could buy chops twice a week and often rabbits to make into pies and sometimes there were special treats like sweet cable twist that Papa Hein hid in his pockets, and sometimes little oranges from a place called up the coast, they were what Mutti liked the most, especially while she was growing the new baby.

  Perhaps she could creep into the bed with Mutti and the baby later. Some angry men were shouting at the end of their street, they’d better not wake the baby up. Perhaps tomorrow she could stay home from school, but perhaps it would be better to go there, she could tell everyone about the new baby at her house.

  Ah yes, Hugo’s slender fingers had been so careful, and there her corset had lain where she had put it on the little chaise longue where his trousers were also. It was those empty objects comically together that had made her laugh at the same time as Hugo’s caressing fingers were finding out what was enjoyable, or mostly so.