by Tara Haigh
‘What does that mean, Father?’
Desperate now, he tried to speak, but the sounds that came out were scarcely audible.
What did his brother Karl have to do with his desire for forgiveness or the orphanage? Was he trying to tell her that Karl was her father? She needed certainty.
‘Uncle Karl? Is he my father?’ asked Ella.
It looked as though Father was trying to move his head, but he could neither nod nor answer in the negative. Instead, he kept writing.
ALWAYSLOVEDYOU
Why was he evading her question, even in his death throes?
‘Is Karl my father?’ demanded Ella with mounting desperation. His chest was rising and falling at ever shorter intervals and she sensed that he was drawing his final breaths. Her eyes filled with tears.
Her mother, who had been standing frozen by the door all this time, now came up to them and sat down on the other side of the bed.
‘Heiner . . . It’s all right,’ she whispered to him. She ran her hand gently over his brow, but the gesture failed to calm him.
‘Please tell me,’ Ella implored.
Her father’s hand gripped the pencil so tightly that Ella thought he would snap it in half. Sweat glistened on his forehead; his eyes flew wide open. He seemed to be struggling to reach a decision. Then he lowered the pencil once more and scrawled further letters on the page.
RICHARD
He was pressing down so hard now that the tip of the pencil broke off, but not before he had managed to write an F. He tried desperately to speak the person’s name, but he couldn’t. Instead, he produced a noise that sounded like the howl of a wounded animal. His body reared up violently, then went limp as he exhaled his final breath and the pencil rolled out of his hand onto the notepad.
Mother burst into tears and threw herself desperately over her husband’s lifeless body.
Ella gazed into his eyes, trying to fathom why he had asked her to forgive him. They were fixed blankly on the ceiling and there was nothing she could do but close them. She hoped he would find peace, whatever the reason he felt he needed forgiveness.
Hours later, Ella still couldn’t believe that her father was dead. She was so used to seeing him lying on his back like that whenever he took a nap, that to her he just looked like he was sleeping peacefully.
Mother had been inconsolable. Ella had feared that she would suffer a nervous collapse over his deathbed. Why did he have to leave them both so prematurely? Her mother had seen it coming, believing that any seaman who was confined to dry land would inevitably expire before long. Ever since he’d suffered his first heart attack at sea, he had only been able to work in the harbour office. That probably felt like imprisonment to a sailor. Ella could vividly remember their countless strolls along the waterfront, where he would look longingly at the departing sailboats and steamers. His fund of tales about his many voyages and adventures in foreign lands had been inexhaustible. Only one story – perhaps the most important one, since it concerned his daughter – had been left untold. And now it was too late.
It was not until they had called the family doctor – who assured them that her father would be taken to the morgue early the following morning – that his passing began to feel more real.
Mother was now sitting at the kitchen table like a statue, staring silently at a cup of hot milk that she had made herself in the hope of catching a few hours’ sleep on the living room sofa.
Ella was in no mood for silence. She had always been aware that her parents had adopted her, so her mother must know about the background to that. Who, if not she, could explain what her father had been trying to say? There was no need for Ella to ask out loud. All she needed to do was to sit beside her mother and place the scribbled pages from Father’s notepad in front of her on the table.
‘We didn’t find you in the orphanage, as we always told you,’ she began in a broken voice.
Nothing made sense to Ella any more. Why in God’s name had her parents lied to her like this?
‘So where do I come from?’ asked Ella, once she had composed herself somewhat.
Mother still lacked the courage to look her directly in the eye. ‘He brought you back from one of his voyages to the South Pacific.’
‘The South Pacific? Mother, what are you talking about?’
‘Strictly speaking, you must have been born in Singapore,’ continued Mother. She now sought to meet Ella’s gaze, at least.
Ella feverishly wondered how a seaman could bring a child home with him. A child wasn’t a souvenir!
‘Do I come from the orphanage there?’ she asked.
‘No . . . You know the stories one hears about sailors. One of the mates had a dalliance with a woman in Singapore. She must have been a Dutchwoman or an Englishwoman, as otherwise your skin would be a different colour. She urged him to shoulder his responsibilities, and he did. But he wanted his child to grow up at home, and under better circumstances. The mother must have agreed, since your father’s friend brought the child on board. The captain had no objections . . . But the mate – I think his name was Johansson – he came down with malaria and died at sea. Somebody had to look after the child.’
‘And Father . . . ?’ Ella could hardly believe what her mother had just told her.
‘You know I can’t have any children of my own.’
‘How old was I then?’ asked Ella.
‘No more than a few days. You were a baby.’
‘A newborn baby aboard a ship?’ The story grew stranger by the minute.
‘They brought goats on board to provide you with fresh milk. Your father told me you were everybody’s darling. The star of the ship. Back in Europe they found nursemaids for you whenever they stopped in a port.’ A smile passed over Mother’s face. Her father must have told this story particularly vividly.
Yet Ella was not in a cheerful mood. ‘But what kind of a woman gives away her own child?’
Her mother shrugged.
‘And how were you able to adopt me in the first place?’
‘You know that your father was friends with Rudolf’s uncle. Well, the two of them came up with a story together. Heiner told everyone that he was your natural father – that you were the child of a Dutchwoman of ill repute who had died of yellow fever. Von Stetten’s word and influence were enough to get hold of the necessary papers.’
‘And why did you come up with the story about the orphanage?’ asked Ella.
‘People talk. We could hardly shout it from the rooftops that your father had been unfaithful to me with a whore, and that you were the result of that connection.’ That at least seemed plausible to Ella. Nonetheless, she had the feeling that her life had vanished overnight – that she had become a stranger to herself. And there were still so many unanswered questions.
‘Why did Father mention Uncle Karl?’
Mother was at a loss.
‘I can’t make sense of that myself either,’ she admitted.
‘Mother, what does it all mean? Uncle Karl, something about lies, and when I asked him if Karl was my father, he wrote down Richard. None of it fits the story he told you. Was this Richard he mentioned at the end my real father?’ Ella found it hard to believe that her mother hadn’t given this any thought. She was presumably so shaken by Father’s death that she had overlooked this significant detail. Now, she reached for the paper and stared at it with a mounting sense of unease.
‘It looks as though he didn’t tell me the whole truth.’ Mother was obviously racking her brains. ‘The mate’s name was Johansson. Nobody ever mentioned a Richard. If this Richard was your real father, Heiner surely wouldn’t have told me that you were Johansson’s daughter,’ she added.
That made sense to Ella. Her father would have had no reason to pretend that she wasn’t this Richard’s daughter, since it made no difference whether her real father was a Richard or a Johansson. But this realisation didn’t get her any further.
‘And what does all this have to do with Uncle Karl?’
asked Ella.
‘He’s been dead for over twenty years. He must have died shortly after you were born. At any rate, we started receiving the lifetime annuity after his death,’ pondered Mother out loud.
‘Are you sure those two things happened at the same time?’
Her mother seemed to disappear into her thoughts. She furrowed her brow and played with her teacup.
‘We didn’t hear from Karl for many years, but your father visited him twice. They wrote letters to each other, but . . . the last letters we received came two or three years before he died,’ Mother recollected.
‘They must have been very close, though,’ speculated Ella.
‘It seems odd to me too, now that I think about it . . . All these years and I never gave it a thought,’ began Mother.
‘What do you mean?’ Ella probed.
‘Heiner never showed me the documents. But the annuity was definitely paid, as we would never have been able to afford this apartment otherwise.’
‘Do you know where Father keeps all his important paperwork?’
‘Yes, in his desk and in the living room cabinet,’ she answered.
‘We should look for it,’ Ella remarked. One thing was clear: there was something about her father’s story that didn’t make sense.
Ella couldn’t bring herself to watch while her father was wrapped in a linen sack and taken away at an ungodly hour of the morning. Shortly before the arrival of Fischer, the family doctor, she had planted a farewell kiss on his forehead and told him that she would forgive him, no matter what truths eventually came to light.
For her part, Mother accompanied Doctor Fischer out of the apartment, along with the two men from the morgue. Where she found the strength was a mystery to Ella. They were both exhausted, having spent half the night engaged in wild speculation until Mother had finally nodded off. They had resolved to immediately start searching through Father’s papers for documents relating to the now mysterious lifetime annuity; yet it felt disrespectful to do so in his presence, even though he was nothing more than a lifeless shell.
Unlike her mother, Ella hadn’t managed to sleep at all, and had called the hospital first thing to take the day off. Work was out of the question today. Coping with her father’s death would be difficult enough as it was. And then there were all the unanswered questions. Despite her lack of sleep, they kept Ella awake even now, and simultaneously prevented her from giving in to the tears that constantly welled up in her eyes.
Her mother seemed to feel much the same, although she looked considerably more composed than she had just a few hours ago. Ella had thought she would go back to bed, but she did just the opposite.
‘Let’s start looking for his bank documents now,’ she said resolutely.
While Ella was plagued by questions about her identity, her mother was presumably consumed by the thought that her husband had pulled the wool over her eyes. If Ella had been in her mother’s position, she too would probably have accepted Father’s explanations without delving any deeper. A woman who couldn’t bear children naturally wouldn’t ask questions when she was suddenly presented with a child to raise as her own. Besides, Mother had always trusted Father’s word.
Her father’s filing system left nothing to be desired. All the paperwork relating to their home and finances and all their banking affairs was stored in his desk, as expected. The only useful items were statements from the Reichsbank showing the monthly payments. Yet the amounts listed were in pounds sterling, which brought in around a thousand marks per month, depending on the exchange rate. A small fortune.
‘Why British pounds?’ her mother wondered.
‘Have you never seen these statements before?’ Ella asked.
‘No. Why would I? Your father always took care of the finances.’ Ella could see that she regretted that now.
Ella had expected the annuity to be paid in dollars. But there was a further detail that left them both even more baffled. The handwritten statements gave no clue to the name of the person making the transfers – they listed only a number and the name of a bank. The money came from the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. One thing was clear though: the monthly payments certainly didn’t come from Uncle Karl.
In the end, there was only one way to get an answer.
‘I expect the bank will be able to provide me with details.’ Her mother must have read Ella’s mind.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Ella, who was now burning to know who was transferring these enormous sums every month.
‘No . . . You should rest, Ella, or look for his diaries. He always kept a diary at sea. They must be in the cabinet.’ There was no end to the revelations about her father. Until this day, Ella had had no idea that he kept a diary. Her desire to accompany her mother to the bank vanished, along with her sense of leaden fatigue. Perhaps the diaries would hold information about what happened back then. In any case, they offered the perfect opportunity to become reacquainted with her father.
CHAPTER 3
Ella was surprised that it had never occurred to her before to venture a peek inside her father’s cabinet. A sense of basic respect had always prevented her from sniffing around in other people’s private possessions, so doing so now left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, even though her father was dead. Yet her burning curiosity overcame her good upbringing and even the pain caused by the loss of her father, which had been submerged under so many questions . . . Now, as she searched for answers by reading through his account of his life, it felt as though he were still alive. As she leafed through the pages of a diary she had selected at random from the box in front of the sofa, Ella could almost hear his voice – as if he were sitting opposite her and telling her a story about the boundless freedom of the high seas. The powerful illusion didn’t last long, however, as just a few sentences from his diary were all it took to bring the sense of loss flooding painfully back and her eyes filled with tears. Reading his words called up so many memories of him; of the incidents he would tell them about after every voyage and the souvenirs he brought back from all over the world – perhaps a hand-carved elephant from Morocco, or a bottle of fragrant oil purchased during a stop on the Suez Canal.
Ella wiped away her tears. The paralysing melancholy that had fallen over her gave way to curiosity once more.
She looked at the box of diaries and pulled out the next one, hoping that he had arranged them in chronological order. He must have begun writing down his experiences as a young man, for the first entry dated back to 1868. He would have been twenty-six years old back then. Mother had told her that he had joined the crew of a sailboat for the first time aged just eighteen. Hadn’t they met each other the year before he started to keep his diary? Ella read the opening lines and, as expected, they mentioned her mother. He could see a glittering future ahead of him, and had decided to capture the wonderful moments he spent with her in writing so he could relive them over the long weeks he would spend at sea. Did her mother know about this? Ella decided she would show her these passages.
The next four books could safely be skipped, as on flicking through the first diary Ella could see that it covered a period of three years. It looked like he hadn’t recorded every single day, but only the events that had struck him as significant. She reflected that she would probably have done the same. As a seaman, he more than likely wouldn’t have had time to write every day. Anyway, the year 1877 was what she was looking for: the year of her birth. It seemed she hadn’t reached far enough along the box, since the book that lay open in her hands dated only from 1875. Perhaps it would also include the following years, like the other diaries? But to her disappointment, she saw that it ended in October 1876. The final entry discussed a long voyage to the South Pacific. Ella scanned through the text. The plan was for the ship to bring rubber back to Germany, as well as a cargo of tin and spices that would be loaded up during a stop in India. Right now, however, she was far more interested in what happened in 1877 in Singapore. Surely the next diary w
ould tell her – and yet the narrative resumed in May 1878. The intervening period must have taken up an entire diary on its own. Had Father filed it out of sequence?
Ella’s hopes soon evaporated, as the remaining diaries were all arranged in the box in chronological order. There could be no doubt that this particular diary was missing. Perhaps the sensitivity of its contents had led him to store it elsewhere? Ella stood up and peered into the cabinet, but it was otherwise empty. She and her mother had already gone through every drawer in her father’s desk, and there wasn’t a diary to be found. He must have had a good reason for keeping the entries from the year of her birth secret. Ella rummaged through the box again, thinking that it might have fallen underneath the others by accident. A vain hope. What on earth had he had to hide? After all, adopting the child of a deceased seaman was nothing to be ashamed of. Or perhaps it was the circumstances that he had wanted to conceal. Perhaps she really was his daughter, and the story about the mate was as untrue as the official version. Perhaps he had wanted to spare Mother the distress of knowing that Ella really was the child of one of his lovers. In other words, perhaps the story that he had supposedly invented was really the truth. But Ella had no time to pursue these thoughts. Just then, the lock on the front door flew open. Mother must be back from the bank.
She entered the room with slumped shoulders. Ella didn’t even have to ask what had happened.
‘They can’t give me any information because they don’t know anything themselves,’ she declared.
‘But these are exceptional circumstances. Couldn’t the bank make any inquiries?’ wondered Ella out loud.
‘That’s exactly what I said to the staff there, but it seems the whole purpose of a numbered account is that the owner should remain anonymous,’ her mother explained.
Ella felt the last spark of energy drain from her body.
Yet her mother looked less defeated than might be expected.
‘I’ve known Clausen for many years now. He made an exception for me,’ she hinted.