by Valerie Volk
I smiled when I read that. He missed no chance to praise the new way of life that steam had brought. It reminded me of Otto, and his passion for the coming of the railways. Yes, he was Otto’s son too. I read on:
‘It is a scene of such turmoil and activity. Ships’ agents race from group to group, organising their departures, and checking that they have their visas, for they cannot depart without this clearance if they wish to emigrate. I am fortunate, because as a sailor I am cleared to depart. I am not an emigrant, but a worker. But my heart is troubled for these people. Already the mothers look exhausted, and they little realise how long and hard the voyage will be. They have great courage.’
I shook my head. Or great desperation, I thought. Years of bad harvests, the memory of the potato famine, the ever-present threat of military service (how I rejoiced that Kurt had missed this!) and now another time of economic hardship—it was not surprising that so many felt their only hope lay in a new land.
‘There are still some,’ his letter continued,
who say they seek greater religious freedom. These are the Old Lutherans, the ones who held out against the coming of the State Church. Even though the time of persecution is over, they still wish to find a land where they do not feel under threat that one day they may be forced to give up their traditions and join the Emperor’s church.
I nodded when I read this. Even here in Lewin there had been bitter debates in the church, and many had left rather than compromise their ways. It had seemed of little importance to me. Surely it was not a matter of great concern. These issues of doctrine were matters for theologians, and our young pastor was happy to be part of the State Church. God, he said, is interested only in what is in our hearts. That is what counts. But doctrines had divided our people, and many left to worship according to the old ways. For Otto it had been unimportant. He did not often set foot in the church for Sunday worship, and Kurt and Hanna and I had walked unaccompanied to the town.
Kurt’s letter remained folded in my apron pocket for many weeks. He had found it possible to send mail from Antwerp, where the Hohenzollern stopped briefly to take on more cargo. I knew I would not hear again for many weeks.
A letter from Aden, where the time dragged as they crawled through the new waterway of the Suez Canal. His letters were short, and I worried. He was not happy, that was clear, and relations on the ship were strained. ‘Much depends on the captain’, he wrote,
and we are not fortunate in ours. There is unrest among the passengers, and there has been illness. We have had four burials at sea, and these are sombre affairs. Two have been children, and to see the parents’ grief is awful. It reminds me of the importance of family, and how much I miss you, dear Mutti. It reminds me also of my own childhood, and how much I wish it had been different. Perhaps one day I may be able to forgive my father, but the memories are still too raw. I wonder if he will ever change.
Oh Kurt, I thought, if you could see the broken old man he became, and how he suffered, you may well feel differently. But there is no way to tell you of it.
The next letter he posted was even more desperate. It came from Colombo, where they had stopped to take on coal, but the men were not permitted to go ashore. He wrote of passenger anger and dissension, and a captain who was drinking heavily and concerned only with delays that ship repairs had created.
He is worried about the owners, I fear, for his payment depends on meeting the conditions of the contract. Already we are behind time, and he tries to push the boat beyond what it can do. We have tried to talk to him, to explain that there must be limits on what we demand of the engines, but he refuses to listen. He is a violent and intemperate man—he reminds me much of my father—and yesterday he struck our first officer. I fear what may happen. Among our crew there are some hotheads who speak of mutiny, but this is something not to be considered, surely.
It would be an act of great foolishness, for our ship carries not only passengers and cargo, but also a great troop of naval personnel. I think I have not mentioned before that we are transporting almost 300 men, both officers and ratings, who are on their way to Sydney to relieve the men on the three German ships stationed in that harbour. I am sure that the marines on the Olga, the Bismarck and the Sophie are waiting their arrival with great anticipation, for our ship will then take them back to Hamburg. I had not known that we had such a squadron on the other side of the world, but with these disciplined troops on board any act of rebellion would be madness.
For a long time, no word. And I had no way of telling him of the gravity of his father’s condition. Then finally, another letter. My heart sank as I read.
Dear Mother, I will post this letter to you from Australia, that vast southern land we have known only through stories in the books we shared. I remember well all that we have shared, and I look back so fondly on our time together.
What I must tell you will be of concern and regret to you, I know, so I hesitate to say it. I have left the Hohenzollern. Not happily, and not with a peaceful dismissal. I have told you of the captain, and the problems, which became worse as we came closer to land. He is a drunken fool. The ship is overloaded and his demands on it were excessive and dangerous. I could no longer accept his orders. We had reached Adelaide, in an area they call South Australia, on the southern coast of this huge continent, where we needed to stay for repairs. But he forced us to push on against all advice, to make haste for our next stop, to the east, a city called Melbourne, before the destination of Sydney. The naval officers are impatient and press him to meet deadlines. His orders defied all reason; he wanted the steam dampers closed and the ship pushed beyond its limits. If we had screwed down the safety valves as he wanted the boiler would have been increasingly unsafe. But I had no choice. To disobey would be, he told me, mutiny and I would be imprisoned on board and charged on return to our country.
The man is mad, I truly believe, and I cannot believe that this ship will ever see northern waters again. I do not want to die at sea! A number of our passengers left the ship in Adelaide, and over a hundred more disembarked in Melbourne. A great number of the naval seamen were given a few hours shore leave—and were even told they could travel free on public transport if they were in uniform, a concession they much appreciated. So I have managed to depart among them, even though I did not have shore leave.
In Melbourne, I made the decision not to return. Do not worry about me. It is easy to disappear in this city and not be found. Many have told me of the opportunities in this country for a young fit man, and also of the German communities spread throughout the land. In the north, in Queensland, one of my fellows has friends in a township where he is sure we would find work. He himself left the boat, ‘jumped ship’ they say, in Adelaide to walk north to find this place. Would I had gone with him. It will be a long journey from Melbourne, but I am about to undertake it. I believe I can find work along the way and when I reach there I will write and tell you where I am.
I could scarcely read the rest of his letter. All very well to tell me his only regret was the concern I would feel, that he would depend on my prayers, that he loved me—oh yes, all this. But all I could think was that my son was now wandering in a wilderness on the other side of the world, and I had no idea where or how he might be. And I had no way of telling him of his father’s death.
CHAPTER 11
Lewin, Silesia, 1889
Two years.
They tell us, wise men and scholars, that time is relative. They lie. Time is a slow dragging of one day after the next while one’s life is whittled away, like the wood my father and brothers used as they carved spoons in my childhood home.
With Otto’s death, at times I saw my family again. I have wondered over the years why we have not been closer. Otto had no wish for close family living. His childhood home had been unhappy, and his main wish was to break away from all that reminded him of Rauschwitz and our early days.
I had always felt separate from my family. My years at the Chateau had set me a
part, and after my early marriage we had little contact with my brothers and sister, for Gertrud had never been to me what Lydia was. My father’s death had brought my mother closer, and the naming of my daughter for her had been a sort of bond. But she did not like Otto, and he barely tolerated her presence.
I would have been shamed if she had known just how bad my marriage was, and in some ways her death came as a relief. I no longer had to pretend. But now, with Otto’s death, we gathered at Christmas for a family meal. Not comfortably. I was still seen as the Chateau ‘lady’. I would never lose that image. I was more at home with Lydia than my own flesh and blood. She was my only confidante. I could never open my heart and share my desperate unhappiness with Berthe Muller.
And I heard nothing of my boy. He was not cruel. Young and sometimes thoughtless, but I could not believe the cruelty of this long silence. Was he alive? That was my agonising concern. If he had died, if he had been hurt, would anyone know to contact me?
I woke each day, sick at heart. Each night I went to my solitary bed in frantic prayer. Prayers that became less and less trusting as first the weeks, then the months went by. There are no words to describe the desolation of that time.
‘You should not worry,’ said Hanna, when I tried to talk to her. ‘Kurt will be fine. He is young; he is adventurous. He is enjoying his freedom.’
I looked sharply at her, reading the hidden message. ‘You think I tied him too closely?’
She was cautious in her words. ‘Sometimes I think he loved you very much and knew how you depended on him. You were perhaps too close.’
‘You had your father. You were always his daughter.’
‘Perhaps. When I was small. Not in later years,’ she added bitterly. ‘All I wanted was to get away.’
‘Kurt too?’
‘Yes, but he had to look after you. He needed to break free from that too.’
‘But not like this. How can I rest not knowing where he is?’
‘Well, you can scarcely go after him!’
Words spoken in jest, but they began to fester in my mind. Go after him. It was a preposterous thought. Impossible. At my age. At forty-five I was old, a grandmother. I had never been further than Breslau, never even to Berlin. The very notion was ridiculous.
Yet there it was. My son, whom I loved so dearly. So long without word. How else would I learn what had happened to him?
‘But Lydia,’ I said, when I told her of this wild notion, ‘where would I start? It would be impossible.’
‘Difficult,’ she agreed. ‘But not impossible. Where was he last known?’
‘The letter from Melbourne,’ I told her. ‘But he said he was about to head northward. To somewhere called Queensland where people had told him of a settlement by our countrymen, people from Silesia.’
‘‘So you have a starting point. And you have one other great asset.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All those years my mother made us learn both English and French—you would have enough of the language to communicate.’
‘True,’ I admitted. ‘And Kurt too. I had tried to pass the language on to him.’
‘Well, perhaps not quite impossible?’
‘But I could not afford such a venture. The money that you pay me—yes, I am sure it is through you, not your husband or your father that this continues—’
Lydia shook her head but did not deny my words.
‘This payment to care for wellbeing at the Chateau, it’s been so important to me. You know where Otto spent all my other earnings, so there’s been no chance to save from it. It has spared us total poverty, and I have been thankful for it.’
‘Then let me do this one further thing. Kurt is my godson, let me send you to look for him.’
‘Such a fool’s errand. I could not let you do it.’
‘Even for the sake of our old friendship? Even for the memory of my mother, whom we both loved?’
I wavered but shook my head. ‘I cannot do that. But I am so grateful to you—you and the Chateau and your mother. You and my memories of the past are all that I have to keep me going in this world. And my daughter, of course.’
I did not tell Hanna of the conversation. I could imagine her reaction.
It seemed an act of the God I still believed in, an answer to my prayers, when the letter came. It was crumpled, and the envelope was blurred and smudged and dirty, but my heart leapt as I saw the writing.
I write to reassure you, dear Mutti, that all is well with me. I think you will have been concerned for my wellbeing, and it grieves me that you will have been so distressed. Indeed for a time I too ill to send mail. A beating in the streets left me almost for dead—I am sure a punishment for deserting the ship. He could not afford for me to get away without some outcome. But do not worry. There is a strong German society in Melbourne, and when they found me I was cared for and am now fully recovered, except for greater deafness in my right ear. A small price to pay for freedom.
I am now travelling northward again, working on farms as I go. I stay for a time and expect soon to be in the border area between this state, Victoria, and the next, New South Wales. I have heard of many German settlements in this area, so it may be possible to find work for a time. It will be a long, slow journey. It is hard for you in our homeland to envisage just how enormous this land is. Do not be concerned for me. When I reach a destination in Queensland, I will write to you of my whereabouts.
I breathed deeply and thankfully. He was alive. His letter concluded with loving messages to me, and to Hanna and Franz and their children—and a greeting to his father. The father no longer alive. I knew it was an omen. I should go. But where?
When I told Lydia of the letter, she was wholehearted in her support.
‘Indeed, you must. You will need a ship to take you to Melbourne—your starting point. I will see shipping agents in Hamburg and find a passage for you as soon as possible.’
‘Lydia, how can I let you do this for me? How will I ever repay you?’
‘Anna, dear Anna. We have been like sisters. I am simply doing what I know my mother would have wanted. And I will give you her big travel chest for your clothes. She would have wanted you to have it for such a journey.’
‘One day …’ I said firmly. ‘One day I will return what you are giving me.’
‘One day …’ she agreed lightly. ‘But now you must organise a passport for your departure. I am sure that Hanna’s husband can do that for you.’
My daughter was aghast.
‘You must not do this, Mutti!’ It was a measure of her feeling that she had slipped back into the childish name. ‘You are an old woman, and you have never travelled further than Breslau. This plan is insane. I cannot believe that anyone of sense would countenance it.’
‘Lydia is in favour—and will provide me with the money for it.’
‘What of us? I need you here. I had not thought to tell you yet, but I have a third child coming, and I need you to help me with the household during the months before the birth, and with the other children afterward.’
It interested me that for the first time she had found it desirable to have me with them. A new development indeed.
‘If Kurt has been ill, and is in a strange land, he needs me too.’
Hanna set her lips. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, her voice bitter, ‘if Kurt needs you, no one else will count. Not even your daughter, facing her third childbirth.’
The sad part is that she was right. It was true.
I lived those last months before departure in mingled terror and anticipation. How could I, from this little town in Silesia, travel alone to the other side of the world? An act of madness, it was agreed. Neighbours and church people were free with their advice and warnings; few supported me.
When the wooden travel chest was packed, Frau Schmidt’s husband came with his wagon to take me to the railway station at Glatz. I said farewell to friends and neighbours, among head-shaking from all those around me.
; Hanna did not come to say goodbye.
Part Two
CHAPTER 12
Departure from Silesia, 1889
They are right. This venture is madness. For all that I sat in the church and prayed, harder than I have ever prayed before, for guidance on what I should do. I still did not know.
A lie, anyway. My strongest prayers, my most desperate ones, were not for guidance but for my boy. All that time with no news. The waking every morning sick at heart. The uneasy sleep filled with nightmares. The days when I could push thoughts of my son out of my mind as I busied myself with the animals, with the small crops kind neighbours helped me to harvest and thresh, with my work at the Chateau, my weaving in the Lewin hall … yes, then I could forget for a time. But as soon as my hands were free my mind would leap to Kurt, and the blanket of fear would settle again.
These had been my most fervent prayers and, see, they had been answered. He was alive. But now. Was I right to take on this journey? A woman of my class, my age, to travel alone across the world. Such terrible doubts.
‘A prey to saucy doubts and fears …’ I could hear the Countess reading those lines as we sat in the library, the volume of Shakespeare’s plays between us. It comforted me to think of her. She had confidence in me. What would she have done?
How could I tell? But there were signs, and I depended on these. From Mittelwalde, Franz told me, emigrants were about to leave for America. I would join them for the first part of the trip and be less alone. They too would go to Hamburg for their ship. That gave me comfort.