The Reed Warbler

by Ian Wedde

  Adam was trying to climb up on her cot and get her bottle of cordial but Agatha was standing by the door flap and holding her nose. There was a streak of sunlight from the open flap, it extended across the hard dirt and at its limit wavered on the edge of Ettie’s sheet. She dipped her hand in it and moved her fingers as if dabbling in the bright creek where he’d been with the children not long before. It was as though that feeble dabble was all she had the strength for. How could he now put her on the pack-horse with their kit like a roll of camp canvas or a sack of flour? She could not be expected to walk from Raurimu the long day or more it would take to get to their block – he had done it himself to see the place and to measure what they would need at first, and got back two nights later bone weary as he would not have been even after a day working with Yorky’s gang in the railway cuttings or at the smithy forging the tie bolts and plates for sleepers.

  Ettie’s wedding ring glinting in the streak of sunlight on her sheet was a generous gift from her uncle, and also his signal by day and night and for as long as it had taken to raise two kiddies and improve the soundness and value of the house that was never theirs on the bare slope of Mount Cook above the town, that they but especially Wolf and his family were beholden to Councillor Hastings, the man people called ‘Hasty’ behind his back and for good reason. It had always until now been a reminder of that generosity and what it entailed. But now it glinted in the watery sunlight as if the weak stirring of Ettie’s hand was signalling to him, but also to her angered uncle back in Wellington, that the ring no longer guaranteed their debt.

  ‘Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Baghdad after the race of caliphs is extinct,’ said Ettie in her special pretend-solemn voice and with that wicked little smile, weak and trembling now but still Ettie’s, the smile that had some time ago unlocked her secret nature to him and for him to share, and so he joined in the rest, making his voice solemn as he imagined Thoreau’s might have been, ‘if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.’

  It was memorised out of her favourite book that she had got from her father who had dreamed of a better life where there was land and fresh water aplenty but had not found it.

  How much did they still need for a second pack-horse? Because he couldn’t leave her while he went over with a load.

  Ten shillings a day at the smithy, and seven for bushwhacking and roading and other jobbing. He was owed a week from before Ettie got sick and three part-days at seven shillings less time lost, doing what he could manage with the kiddies. That was three pounds near enough, he calculated, after his share of the bread and tea was taken off. He owed seven shillings at the shop. That was two pound thirteen near enough to add to the kitty.

  Off they went again with Curly trailing along. Adam could just walk but was not very steady on his feet that kept tripping in the hard ruts. Agatha was being a big girl and trying to hold his hand but he shook it off. Soon enough he had to be carried again.

  Yorky was at the depot where the Italian and the boy with the skitters were unloading. He could have been doing that too and earning while keeping an eye on the kiddies.

  Yes he’d be taking his smithy kit, the whole lot, he’d be needing it down the valley. He didn’t say too bad Yorky hadn’t thought of that. He was a head above the Yorkshireman but was still holding Adam. He could see the fresh sweat break out across Yorky’s forehead, so he stood still and waited until the man stepped away. He would come back to the smithy for his kit later, it had better still all be there.

  Well then he could get his wages later too, and had better or what? said Yorky, turning back to the job of unloading.

  Adam began to wail when he was handed to the Italian but stopped when he got the man’s floppy hat to play with. Agatha stood with her doll in her mouth. A hot gust of breeze made little dust devils in the road and blew her hair across her eyes but she just stood there and let it. The Italian was showing his teeth in a smile that left his moustache where it was. The Yorkshireman’s muscles were thin and hard like tool handles where he gripped the man’s arm and steered him to the depot doorway.

  Just what was in the ledger as owing, not a penny more or less, that was all he was asking. Then he’d be gone for good. And good luck to you with finding another smith within the day.

  Then they were heading back to Ettie. Even though Adam was staggering slow and tumbled over several times into the dust, the present was moving quickly towards what Wolf could already see, which was the scrubby place on the bank above the river down there where the flood gravels stopped below a good dry flat easily cleared for a tent. It was light sandy soil that would drain. They could get there downhill across the slope through big trees from where the pack-horse track ended at the Kaitieke Block settlement. There was a creek in a gully they’d have to cross on foot while he led the horse. He would have to take the horse with Ettie and the kiddies on it down first and go back for the other one once they were down there by the river. They would be where it was shallow near where the bend joined another arm and ran on past some of the other ballots. No doubt they would be meeting those other ones before very long. They were already burning off. He could see it all clearly, and Ettie holding on tight as he led the uncertain horse slowly down the slope. Perhaps Aggie could walk the last bit. That would be one of his first jobs, to cut a good track down there and bridge the creek. And then she could sit there in the quiet with the kiddies while he went back for the other horse and brought it down. They would be hearing the birds, unless the kiddies made a racket and frightened them. He would get them all a drink of water, it was very clear and cool over there in the valley. He had tried it when he went on his recce and the taste stayed with you – it was the taste of stones and leaves. Here in the camp it got filthy.

  There was enough in the kitty now to pay the store off and for provisions to get them started. He could lease another horse with the ring as collateral and the anvil from his kit thrown in as well because it would be too heavy to take over there at first.

  But Ettie had already slid the ring halfway off her finger before he had finished. Her face was very warm to his touch but she had that smile. So he took the tired children to the cookhouse and when they had finished Agatha proudly carried the billy of soup back for Ma. Some of the navvy ragamuffins were running up and down kicking a ball in their bare feet. The ruts in the road were baked hard and she had to be careful not to trip and spill the soup. The ruts were like the gullies they would be crossing in a day or two, he told her, only now they could pretend they were giants, walking across the rough steep land and the mountains and tall thick trees to their home.

  Then he left them to play peacefully outside the tent where Ma could see or hear them and not disturb her for just as long as it took to go with the barrow to the smithy and get his kit, not long, because time seemed to be striding quickly away like a giant towards their green cool place by the river. In the morning he would arrange the second horse. The other one was already theirs. He had lifted Agatha up to meet its gaze and the horse had snuffed at her dress and blown a big hrruff breath out into it.

  Always the sound of birds had woken him back at the railhead camp at the edge of the tall bush in the dim light just before dawn. The first few calls in darkness soon multiplied until the air was full of them, calls and songs of many kinds, a joyous sound and dense as though the songs had substance in the air. You could not even talk over that sound. He expected that when he stepped out through the tent’s flap he would feel the bird songs brushing his face and arms. Sometimes the birds came close to touching him, especially the cheeky little ones with flirting tails that came to greet him at the edge of the bush. Their call was a wittering, clever and alert. But they didn’t follow him back from the creek once he’d left the bush with his bucket of water, and as the camp’s noise increased and the morning brightened the birds were quieter. T
he bush was their home and its border was the mess of branches and stumps that marked the camp’s extent and the hard labour of the men who lived in it.

  And now it was his and Ettie’s labour alone that had begun to clear a space in the forest where he and Ettie and the children could live on the dry above the river. Their needs would clear the bush border back as far as was required for their hill pasture and the flat ground where they could have gardens and crops. But he would leave the steep gullies because they were difficult to fell and the birds could have their homes there. There was good rimu timber and more than enough of it on the ridges and broader slopes. There was a place nearby called Pukerimu, it meant rimu hill. Back in town Councillor Hastings was throwing up his mansions built out of it on the Karori hills. But in the valley the smoke of burn-offs from neighbouring ballots was already filling the air the birds had owned with their songs and their flitting so quick and sure. In time the smoke would clear, and there they would be in their own mansions, and he and Ettie and the children in their one.

  He lugged Freddy’s theodolite and tripod along the riverbank where he had cleared a path through the scrub. The western limit of his ballot was close to where the two streams met, so his map said. A shallow just upstream of the junction allowed him to cross if it had not rained. There were no clear sightlines from the ridge where the tall timber was, so he would have to measure his land from the valley bottom up towards the top. Now he would see if he could remember what Freddy had taught him. He had the big weighty compass as well, a thing he found beautiful, as was the theodolite, and he had the map of ballots with theirs on it, and his axe. Once he had found the right place by the river and with Freddy’s theodolite the right angle of sightline up to the ridge, well then he could get his compass bearing right and begin to blaze a track up the slope from the river where the two arms joined up just by the shallow. That would be his west border and he would cut timber along it and mill the best of it that could be brought down in sections. The ridge was his northern border as near enough as mattered for now. What lay beyond he could get to later. The eastern one would run down to the river a couple of miles upstream of the junction. For now he would deal with what he could see and with what he could imagine.

  He could bridge the river and run rails across it to get timber to the flat where it could be milled. He would have to get some train wheels for the sledge and borrow a team of horses. He began to make a plan that was also already vivid, with him sitting astride a log on the sledge while the bridge creaked under its weight. Ettie was leaving in the light one-horse buggy with the kiddies but they reined in to watch the log being towed across the bridge towards them. The team of five horses harnessed in line were snorting hard with the weight of the timber and the kiddies were shouting Giddy up! at them from over the other side. Then Ettie and the kiddies would go on up the road he had cut across the hillside to the settlement. The road was well formed with gravel from the river-junction shallows.

  But of course that was a while away! Meanwhile he had to sight up the hill and establish his border. The theodolite found the ridgeline across the river and up the hill and the line along which he would climb with his axe to mark his border, just as Freddy had showed him it could. Then he could write the distance and the bearing on the ballot map and go from there with the compass.

  But the clever instrument’s eye could not measure the distance to Freddy or what direction he was in. And in what quarter of the world would Freddy’s fine compass find its true owner?

  He sat for a while on the riverbank next to a little creek choked with watercress to let the grief and dismay settle back down in his chest. He was even quite used to it. The birds started up again while he was still, but quietened when he jumped down to the shingle with the loudest shout he could summon and sank his face in the river’s cool running water and then climbed back up and put his wet dripping face to the instrument. It was good to imagine Freddy here helping with the work and scoffing with that laugh of his at his big brother’s mad ideas, but the pity of Freddy’s disgrace would not go away and neither the cool river water nor working to the point of falling down flat to sleep at night could take it away.

  His brother was a filthy little bugger and his sister a whore and his mother gave herself airs because she could sing songs in German though she lived in the same slum as always and who was his sister’s father anyway, was what the councillor shouted in his face with froth at the corners of his mouth, but they had got the result of their ballot which was what he had come to tell the councillor about and had done so and so they were leaving anyway. So he left the councillor’s office for the last time without another word because why waste them, and they packed up their cosy Mount Cook house and were gone. And so now she would only have their chickens for company was Ma’s joke, but she could come up to the valley soon enough when all was ready for her.

  There was a tall rimu that viewed from below stood a hand’s width above the rest on the top of the ridge near enough to the point Freddy’s theodolite had found for him up there. He might leave that one – that one could be Freddy’s tree. The clouds moved on along the ridge but he could still find the tree – it had a couple of long outstretched branches near its crown, he could line it up by sight as well as with Freddy’s compass, and that tree with its arms would be his end marker as he crossed the river at the shallows in fast water up to his knees and began to cut blazes every twenty yards or so on the way up. At each fresh cut of his axe he shouted his brother’s name aloud and felt the name thump in his chest as the thick chip flew to the ground. This was where he would be, this was his mark. Fred-dy, Fred-dy, Fred-dy – it already felt better to have Freddy ghosting there along the trees with perhaps his laughter, and perhaps one day he would see the place and his tree. But of course he would not.

  He had marked out the western line, he told Ettie when he got back wet and dog tired as darkness fell. He hung his pants to dry by the fire and sat bare-legged to eat his supper. His legs were like tree trunks, said Ettie with a mock grimace, weren’t there already enough here? There was bread with some watercress and the last of the cold mutton from Dick. His chewing jaws were tired as if from the cold water of the river even though it was warm in the hut. He was talking around his mouthful of supper because he could feel his thoughts tiring. Soon they would have enough timber to wall the hut properly and tin for the roof. He would get some lads from the settlement where the mill was, and Dick would come over from his place downstream to help with felling the trees along the line. They knew how to drive down a whole lot of trees at one go. They could have a share of the timber, not that there was any lack of the stuff. He could hardly get his mouth around the word timber and when warm Adam climbed on to his lap he took him to the bed and fell asleep with him lying across his chest. He woke when the birds started up. Ettie and Aggie were in the bed too and he had not even noticed.

  That ground mist was there when he went out to piss, and of course the birds. He went barefoot to the river and stripped off to wash. The light was just coming up over the treeline to the east. Oh lord yes, one of these days very soon he would have to go out that way again and get Ettie’s ring back and not before time. The pale-gold light along the ridge reminded him of that.

  Catharina

  Yes my dear Hugo, Mutti was still insisting she preferred to be by herself in the ‘miserable’ Bute Street house, aside that is from Wolf’s ‘dirty’ chickens in the little yard at the back. She did not find her house ‘miserable’ and she was fond of the ‘dirty’ chickens. It might reassure him to know that she had named some of the chickens after characters in the books she claimed she had time to read ‘at last’. There was an Emma, Bovary of course, and also of course the Charlotte who bewitched poor unfortunate Werther – it was her copy of the book that Mutti had now, very well thumbed and with her daughter’s student scribbles in the margins throughout. And others, even a chicken Isolde! – a dirty Isolde! There was a Mutti story associated with the Isolde chicken, one
day she would tell Hugo about it because she herself was in the story. But alas no filthy old Chanticleer. He had met the ruthless edge of Mutti’s kindling axe because his enthusiasm was unbearable in the early morning when, these days, she had the chance to lie in bed for a while longer ‘at last’.

  Hugo was looking at her with an affronted expression, but then, thankfully, laughed, a little too heartily perhaps – Ha! A dirty Emma Bovary! And a filthy old Chanticleer! Bravo!

  Mutti’s tone as she told her daughter about these celebrated chickens had been between sarcastic and affectionate, as it was when she wondered aloud whether the chickens missed her bravely pioneering son Wolf.

  The other one, Freddy, she had banished from their conversation less by decree than by her own silence. It was a silence that occupied her face as much as her speech. No, she would not speak about him nor about the reasons for her silence. And what could she, Catharina, say to this silence – that it was not fair for Mutti to embrace her daughter’s no doubt scandalous marriage while cursing Freddy with her renunciation; that the renunciation was unreasonable for a woman who had lived beyond the rape that had made her, Catharina; that the renunciation of Freddy and the obdurate silence that conveyed it were unjust when read in the story that also contained Mutti’s marriage-of-some-kind to the poet Wolf Bloch and marriage-of-convenience to the absconded sailor with a murky past, the kindly father of the silenced Freddy! – but no, she could not even begin to compose a way to say these thoughts in her mutti’s presence, and in any case could not help but keep flickeringly alight the little thought that her mutti’s silence was her way of protecting if not Freddy in person then her own implacable embodiment of him. Those Kornblume eyes and the glint, now, of the spectacles she wore to read and sew, and the line of her mouth that would not smile again until Freddy’s presence had been fumigated by her unsmiling mouth and her glint, and by her refusal to admit him to the present she now occupied with discussion about other things, for example her granddaughter Greta’s uncertain health which, at age two, was still a worry to her – could those unblinking eyes, and the glint, and the implacable set of her lips, and her deflection of conversation into mundanity, not also be her way of protecting Freddy?