The Fire Blossom

by Lark, Sarah

  “But this is the best place to live,” Elsbeth gushed. “Mrs. Partridge has so much to do with Amanda and Paul, so she needs me. Stina Krause isn’t working here anymore because she had a second baby, and her husband is earning enough money.”

  The Krauses had integrated into Nelson well and were content. They had returned when Frederick Tuckett was still in town, and the surveyor, who knew their story, had supported them generously and had given them a piece of land and a house at the edge of town.

  “In any case, the Partridges need me in the shop now,” Elsbeth said happily. “They’re even paying me a small salary! But I’m not telling Father that. Otherwise, I’d have to give it to him. But I’m not going to do it, Cat. I’m going to spend it on myself. Just watch me!”

  Cat dutifully admired the pretty new barrette that Elsbeth had bought with part of her first pay. And Cat, too, could make her purchases with her own money. A few days after her arrival, Paddy had taken her aside and asked her if she really spoke the Maori language and understood their customs. As it turned out, he had been assigned a piece of land upon his arrival, and William Spain had told him its ownership was questionable. So far he hadn’t planned to build a homestead there because he was earning enough money with his pub. But he wanted to come to an amicable agreement with the Ngati Toa.

  Cat refused his request for interpreting, unwilling to face the tribe that had banished her. But she did advise Paddy expertly about how to resolve the conflict. The pub owner was a bit nervous, but finally he set out with a well-laden wagon. Cat had also taught him a few words and how to greet the tribe politely. The next day he returned full of enthusiasm. The gifts had been accepted with pleasure, and all the misunderstandings had been put aside. To Paddy’s relief, the tribe hadn’t served him human flesh, as Lucie had predicted, but instead had treated him to fish and sweet potatoes while they passed around the bottles of whiskey that he had brought for them.

  “They’re very decent people,” he reported with surprise.

  After that, Paddy didn’t spread any more stories about Cat and her life with the tribe. What was more, he paid her for her guidance. She was finally able to buy a few blankets, some clothing, and the most important household items for Ida and herself.

  And then there was a surprising opportunity for Ida to contribute to the household income. Of course there was no kitchen in Paddy’s shed, so Ida cooked over an open fire in the yard. Ottfried had no problem accepting meals in his wife’s lodgings and then silently disappearing for work or to spend evenings in the pub. Paddy, however, was amazed when he smelled the aromatic steam coming from Ida’s pots and pans. The young woman cooked German stews, and also prepared fish and sweet potatoes according to Cat’s Maori recipes.

  “I’ll be jiggered, Mrs. Brandmann!” the pub owner said as the women hospitably filled a plate for him. “This is ten times better than anything my cook makes.” Paddy’s Hideaway offered simple evening meals to the unmarried dockworkers and street builders. “And that’s aside from the fact that he only turns up when he happens to be sober. Would you like to work for me as a cook? Under honorable conditions, Mrs. Brandmann, I promise. You wouldn’t have to mix with the guests; you know where the kitchen is.”

  The kitchen had a door that led to the yard. Ida would be able to go in and out without entering the barroom.

  “Of course you can do that!” Cat said. “And you aren’t going to ask Ottfried first. He doesn’t ask you before he takes a job.”

  “That’s not the same thing,” Ida said nervously.

  As it turned out, Ottfried had nothing against it. He was constantly short on money and complained every time Ida asked for help buying supplies. Cat assumed that his bed with Lucie didn’t cost him any less than a proper apartment for himself and his wife would, but she didn’t bring it up. She liked the current arrangement, which kept him from getting too close to either one of “his women.” As far as Cat was concerned, it could stay that way until summer, when the weather was more reliable. Then she would leave Ida and start on the long journey to Canterbury, where she hoped to find friendly Maori tribes. If Ida worked until then and had saved some of her own money, even better. But Cat still had a bad feeling about leaving her friend alone with Ottfried.

  First, Ida spent two exhausting days cleaning the kitchen and the stove. Paddy’s former “cook” had obviously never cleaned, just assuming that the film of fat and filth on everything was unavoidable. And he’d never once changed the fat he used to fry the fish and chips. Regretfully, Ida was forced to throw away not just the oil but also the whole disgusting pot. After all the work of preparing the kitchen was finished, she had stews simmering on the stove, and roasted fish on the fire in the yard that would become the specialty of the house. Paddy’s guests were thrilled, and Ida was soon pleased by her new job.

  “You could make a proper guesthouse out of this pub,” she told Cat after the first week. “An honorable one that families would visit. New settlers, for example, who are traveling through Nelson. With lunch specials for dockworkers. Simple, cheap food. The people would come every day.”

  “Then Paddy would have to throw Lucie out,” Cat said. “And maybe put a few cloths on the tables, and air out the place occasionally. But you’re right, a lot would be possible here. Also a little lodging house, a simple one, maybe just for men. The street builders and dockworkers sleep in the most awful places. They often used to come to Beit when they arrived in town and ask him if he knew places for them to stay. Mrs. Robins’s guesthouse is much too expensive for them. But Lucie’s room could be shared by three or four laborers.”

  Ida smiled. “But then we’d have to put up with Ottfried again,” she reminded her friend.

  Cat bit her lip. “Ida, in the long run, you’re going to have to live with him again,” she said earnestly. “We’re in our third month now, and I have to leave before it’s too obvious. Then Ottfried will move in here or finally get you a house. After all, you can’t raise a child in this shed. Ottfried and the others will give up their dream of a new Sankt Pauli Village sooner or later. You can work here in the kitchen, and he could easily set himself up to work as a carpenter. People will be building here for years!”

  Ida didn’t answer. She knew that Cat’s departure was inevitable. She just didn’t want to think about it.

  But then everything changed again. It began with Elsbeth arriving early one evening as Cat was starting the fire and Ida was about to chop vegetables and meat for a stew. The girl rushed into the yard, completely beside herself. She had never been to the pub before, but she must have asked around town until she found it. She could barely hold back her tears.

  “We have to leave again! Father and the Brandmanns and a few others want to try all over again with a new village.”

  Ida groaned. “Oh no! The magistrate told them point-blank that they wouldn’t give them new land. Where are they going to go? To Wairau, after all?”

  Elsbeth shook her head. “It’s worse, Ida! Much worse. Father wants to go to Australia. He wrote to Beit, and he wrote back that he couldn’t offer anything here in New Zealand. But he said there is endless land available in Australia that he could very easily have assigned to us. He could organize the voyage too. It’s easy now that we’re all British citizens, and ships go every week. It’s ‘only’ two thousand miles to the city he wants to go to, or maybe even more. I don’t want to go there, Ida! Who knows what’s waiting for us? In Schacht Valley it was just the river, but in Australia . . . Is it true that there are poisonous snakes there? And spiders? And dangerous natives?”

  “Everything is poisonous in Australia,” Paddy remarked. He had just come into the kitchen with a tray of glasses. “Could you please wash these, Miss Cat?”

  Cat and Elsbeth reached automatically for brushes and towels while Paddy continued.

  “Honestly, girls, there’s a reason they used it as a place to send prisoners. Normal settlers ran away screaming when they saw the creatures that live there.” />
  “I thought there were kangaroos,” Ida said curiously, remembering the little book about New Zealand and Australia that Karl had given her aboard the ship. “They looked so cute. Do they bite?”

  Paddy laughed. “No, not them. They’ll just eat the hair off your head, or better said, all the grain from your field. But the snakes, spiders, jellyfish, fish, mosquitoes, crocodiles—”

  “Crocodiles!” Elsbeth repeated indignantly. “Oh Lord, Ida, I don’t want to go there. We have to talk them out of it. Has Ottfried said anything yet?”

  “No,” Ida said. “Does Frau Brandmann want to go? She’s always so scared of everything.”

  Elsbeth sighed. “She’s more afraid of her English neighbors. She isn’t doing very well with the new host family either. That’s what Eric told me.”

  “Who told you?” Ida inquired.

  “Eric.” Elsbeth smiled for the first time since she’d arrived. “Erich Brandmann. But that sounds too German, so he’s just calling himself Eric now. It’s much nicer, isn’t it?”

  Ida’s brow creased. Peter Brandmann wouldn’t like that.

  “Is the whole community going with them again?” Cat asked. “I had the impression the group was dispersing.”

  It was true. In recent weeks, many of the former Sankt Pauli settlers had left Nelson. Some of them were trying their luck on the North Island, others in the Canterbury Plains, and still others had moved to Otago, where a new town was being built under Frederick Tuckett’s supervision. Dunedin, it was called. It would mostly be populated by highly devout Scottish settlers, with whom the Lutherans felt a kinship. A few of the young people, like the Krauses, had decided to stay in Nelson, in town. Ida wondered if the elders would find enough people to start a new Raben Steinfeld in Australia.

  “Father’s talking to all of them,” Elsbeth said. “And of course Herr Brandmann and Farmer Friesmann want to go. They’ll surely talk to Ottfried soon. Talk him out of it, Ida! Whatever you do, talk him out of it.”

  Chapter 39

  Ida didn’t have great hopes of being able to talk Ottfried out of anything he’d set his mind on. But as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. Ottfried Brandmann didn’t want to go to Australia. However, he wasn’t thinking about staying in Nelson either. He’d heard about another opportunity and hoped to make his fortune. The day after Elsbeth’s visit, he waited for Cat to go to the market, then told Ida his plans.

  “Land sales, Ida! Land sales and development, for settlers. Nothing can go wrong, and we’ll always be able to earn money that way. Look at the Beits and the Wakefields.”

  “Beit ran away to Australia, and Wakefield is dead,” Ida said pointedly.

  “One of the Wakefields is dead. As for the other, I have no idea where he is, but he’s surely rich. Beit too. Whether he’s here or in Australia, he surely won’t be working in fields. And whatever he can do, we can do too.”

  Ida raised her eyebrows. Beit was a swindler, but he was also an educated man who spoke several languages and was good with words. Ottfried had barely managed to finish his education at the village school.

  “Where do you plan to get the land to sell to the settlers?” she asked.

  Ottfried grinned proudly. “I have my contacts, Ida. I already told you that. Yesterday I talked to a friend, a good old friend . . .”

  Ida considered the fact that he’d called Paddy his friend too. And honestly, Ottfried’s English might be enough for a quick conversation, but it was hardly good enough to base friendships on.

  “Joe Gibson is his name,” Ottfried said. “He was a surveyor with Tuckett, but then he left. He said Tuckett’s impossible to work with because he’s a nitpicker. And a Quaker. They’re difficult people to deal with.”

  Ida frowned. “I’ve heard that they are very religious people, much like us. And—”

  She stopped before she could say what she was thinking. Karl had gotten along with Tuckett splendidly.

  “Gibson said he’s a bastard,” Ottfried said, then lowered his eyes when Ida gave him a reproachful look. A Brandmann never would have spoken such a profane word before. “In any case, he knows what he’s talking about. Gibson, I mean. He says out in the plains there’s land—more land than anyone can imagine. And there are very few Maori there. They don’t use all the land at all, because they’re too dumb and lazy to plant anything, Gibson says. In any case, they’re selling. For a song. A few blankets and pots and a bottle of whiskey, and you have a farm! The next settler will pay two hundred pounds for it. Now, that’s what I call business!”

  Ida thought it sounded more like fraud, but she didn’t want to provoke Ottfried.

  “But where are you going to get the money for the blankets and pots and whiskey?” she asked. “We don’t have a penny to spare, Ottfried. You know that.”

  Ottfried grinned, his face flush with enthusiasm. “Yes, but we have something different. This is a kind of deal, you know, and I have to think like a businessman. Joe Gibson has some money. We’ll be able to buy a couple of wagons full of supplies with it. And I, I have Cat.”

  “We’d all move to Purau, out near the Canterbury Plains. There’s a whaling station there. There are a couple of farms and a house for us; Joe Gibson used to live there. Ottfried and his friend want to start from there to make deals with the Maori. And you’re supposed to translate.”

  Ida’s tone swung between skepticism and hope as she told Cat about Ottfried’s plans. She didn’t even wait until her friend had unpacked her shopping, which was a large array of fresh vegetables. Summer had finally come.

  Cat raised her eyebrows. “What does he mean by ‘make deals’? Trading a few blankets for a lot of land?”

  Ida blushed with shame. “I don’t like it either. But Cat, it’s a chance! I won’t have to go to Australia with my father, and you could stay with us!”

  Cat shook her head. “Ida, I can’t stay with you. Still, I’d be happy to travel with you if you really want. Almost all the tribes in Purau belong to the Ngai Tahu, and I might be able to find a home with one of them. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to live anywhere nearby. You’ve forgotten about the baby, Ida. Or do you want to tell Ottfried about it now?”

  Ida bit her lip. “You could say it’s someone else’s,” she murmured.

  Cat glared at her. “And whose whore should I have been?” she asked angrily.

  Ida lowered her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It would have been so nice. And it’s far away from the community. No one will know us there. No one will talk about us.”

  “That will change fast, when Ottfried arrives with two women!” Cat said with a snort.

  “But what if you’re working for us, as a maid . . . ?”

  “Come on!” Cat said, her voice hard. “You don’t even have your own house, let alone a farm, and you’re supposed to have hired a maid already? No one will believe that. And Mrs. Beit was always threatening to fire me and Mary if we got pregnant. She said it’s what all good Christian families do.”

  “We could say you’re my sister,” Ida said, considering.

  Cat slapped her forehead. “We don’t look alike,” she retorted, “though the children will. Give it up. I can’t stay with you, at least not without Ottfried finding out about the pregnancy.”

  “But if you go live with the Maori and he comes with Gibson, he’ll see the child at some point, anyway,” Ida added.

  “So I’ll find a tribe far away,” Cat said determinedly. “And I don’t have to let him see the child if he shows up either. Honestly, it’s not very likely that he would. Wake up, Ida! Gibson doesn’t want Ottfried, he wants me! That is, he wants someone who will help him swindle the Maori in their own language. When I’m gone, Ottfried won’t be of any interest to him.”

  Ida looked down. “Then he won’t have a job anymore, and I’ll be stuck with him in Purau,” she whispered.

  Cat rubbed her brow. “You’re right about that,” she admitted reluctantly. “So I’ll have to leave right away. Hopefully Ot
tfried will be smart enough to stay in Nelson, then. But I don’t really believe he’ll drag you with him to Australia. He’s done with the community, all that righteousness. Ottfried is just looking for any opportunity to make money without working.”

  Ottfried Brandmann was convinced that he had found the key to prosperity, and bragged about it that evening in the pub. The group consisted largely of neighbors from Raben Steinfeld and Sankt Pauli Village. Manfred Schieb, Robert Busche, and others worriedly discussed whether they should follow Lange and Brandmann to Adelaide, Australia. Ottfried tried to impress them with his ambitious plans. His penetrating voice reached Ida in the kitchen. Cat wasn’t with her that evening. She hadn’t felt well and was lying down in the shed.

  “What you’re missing, boys, is adventurousness!” Ottfried announced, slurring slightly. “You only think about your land and your community. But that won’t get you anywhere. This is a new country, friends! You can make your own luck here. You just have to grab it with both hands—”

  Robert Busche laughed. “Do you grab the little cat on the breasts or on the hips for that?” he asked. “You have your women under control, I’ll give you that. It’s a wonder that Ida is so calm about it. Elfriede would give me a piece of her mind.”

  Ottfried puffed out his chest. “Ha! And you call yourself a man. I bet she’ll give you hell if you don’t want to start another Raben Steinfeld too. But my Ida knows it won’t work. She’s a good wife; I just have to fuck Karl Jensch out of her head.”

  Ida blushed deeply. From her spot in the kitchen, she could see Paddy grimace behind the counter. She hadn’t known that the pub owner understood so much German.

  Ottfried continued to rant. “Of course, the little cat is a wild one. She was hard to tame—”

  “You can shut up now, Ottie!”

  The pub owner commanded the men’s attention by slapping a half-full whiskey bottle onto the bar.