The Reed Warbler Read online

  And how was Catharina, he wanted to know. Was she enjoying her days in the nursery? Did she have some little friends? Catharina was drinking her milk and she looked with wide eyes over the cup’s rim at Herr Andersen, whose head gave a twitch and whose hand that had reached out to touch her curls returned quickly to his coat pocket.

  ‘Alex,’ said Catharina. She had a milk-moustache and that was what seemed to make Herr Andersen smile, since he made a playful show of licking his own moustache.

  ‘That’s her friend’s name,’ said Josephina, ‘it’s Alexandra,’ and then stopped before saying that sometimes the friend was called Alessa, because she couldn’t organise what words were best to push through the confusion that Herr Andersen’s appearance in the kitchen had suddenly caused. She had an armful of dry clothes from the rack by the stove – was she supposed, now, to hurry? And Catharina’s hair still had to be plaited, she had to have her hands and face washed, and be encouraged to go unwillingly to the privy on the landing, a small drama every morning – was Herr Andersen to witness that? And Josephina herself, how could she, now, move so quickly from her memory of what had happened the night before, and the image still in her mind of Frau Andersen’s face unlit from within by emotion but her white hands knotting themselves together in her lap? And as well as that image of Frau Andersen, the thought that she, Josephina, had lain awake with for a long time next to the breathing and dream-whimpers of her own daughter, listening to the slapping sound of water on the landing’s piles and the shrill cries of the birds that flew about over the river at night – the thought that she could no longer stay in Danne’s Farbror Aksel Andersen’s house, and in addition, over and over in her thoughts that were more like counting and recounting a list of things she’d forgotten to do, her realisation while listening to Frau Andersen’s cold, unlit voice that she’d misunderstood Herr Andersen’s odd behaviour on the day she and Catharina had arrived in Hamburg, and the knowledge that she had put herself at the centre of her ‘situation’ as the one who was continually wronged, when it was in fact likely that Herr Andersen had done his Christian best to help her as requested by the nephew he thought of as his son, while also making an arrangement that would protect his wife who was clearly, ten years after the death of her daughter from the cholera, still mad with grief.

  Over and over again, the thoughts and the image of Frau Andersen’s unhappy hands.

  And then the sound of early traffic on the river woke her, the clattering of oars and the shouting – she and Catharina had slept later than usual and Schmidt Two was shaking their curtain and insisting that soon some kitchen supplies would be arriving at the landing, would they please for the love of God get up? Would they please, at once? What was the matter with them?

  Of course she knew what Herr Andersen would want to ‘have a chat’ about. He would want to know why she and Catharina had gone up to the closed child’s room at the top of the house, why had she taken advantage of the house being empty? Was it any of her business what happened upstairs in the house that was her only refuge under the circumstances?

  ‘But please, Josephina, do not hurry,’ was what he said before leaving the kitchen, noting before he did so that Frau Schmidt’s coffee smelled especially good this morning, and he hoped that Josephina would enjoy hers, and her breakfast, and Catharina also, did she like pancakes? – and he would let them know when he was ready for the cab.

  Josephina?

  She stood there holding the warm, wrinkly dry washing against her chest which had begun to pant a little with the shock of hearing Herr Andersen call her ‘Josephina’ and not ‘Fräulein Hansen’. Schmidt Two was also surprised and stood with her mouth open like the bowl with pancake mix in it. It was as though the meaning of who and what she was had suddenly been shifted from the story of her ‘situation’, the story in which she and Catharina were characters who kept being concealed from themselves in their ‘situation’, like the brightly coloured farm-girl dolls at the nursery – as if they had now emerged as themselves.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Schmidt Two with a bewildered smile, ‘so now it’s Josephina, what next?’ And she began vigorously to mix the pancake batter, as if she needed, now, to show Josephina, a member of the household family after all, who was about to ride with Herr Andersen in his cab, that she could apply herself to her tasks.

  But, after all, Herr Andersen had hoped that Josephina would enjoy her breakfast in the kitchen – and he would let her know when it was time to join him in the cab, once he had finished his own breakfast, upstairs with his wife, no doubt.

  But still, there was a kind of lightness or breath-held sensation in her chest – it was happiness, perhaps it was hope?

  So then they ate their pancakes and eggs at the kitchen table while Schmidt Two went upstairs with the breakfast and coffee on a tray but only one cup and only one plate.

  What was the name of the man in the dark coat and boots who was there in the sewing room the first time she came to see the place with her sponsor Herr Andersen? She’d found out the name of the strange little man who was also there with his sister, it was Wolf Bloch, an unusual name that you wouldn’t forget – but who was the other man, the owner of the sewing room, what was his name?

  The woman working next to Josephina was called Wilhelmina, but she said to call her Willa. It was Willa who’d given Catharina a little wave when they came to see the sewing room the first time. Now, as they did most days, they were talking to each other in the low, murmuring voices the women used while keeping their attention on the stitches in front of them, under the gaze of the supervisor on his platform. Willa was also doing buttonholes on the four-button twill jackets; she was a very quick sewer, and also spoke quickly, as if what she was doing made her speech keep pace. She also spoke in the rhythms of the stitch, with a little tug at the ends of certain words and phrases.

  ‘The man’s name is Herr Johannes Paul sometimes you’ll see his business partner who’s called Steinberg they’re cotton merchants but some people say that he and Steinberg’ – Willa spoke in a whisper – ‘are socialists but best not talk about that because they’re banned.’

  ‘Banned by whom, why?’ Josephina whispered, but Willa’s face had coloured up and she was shaking her head, so after that they murmured about other things, such as how Catharina was liking the nursery and what it had been like living in a Bauernhaus up north with animals and so forth, and why did she have to leave and did Josephina have to do maid’s work at the house where she lived, but why not? – and where Willa was living now in a shared room with five other women, two were sisters from Russia who worked in a glove factory and stole offcuts of kid leather to sell in the street, there was an Italian chambermaid whose husband was in prison in Bolzano for counterfeiting and she’d had to cross the border at night and leave their child behind with her aunt, and there was an older widow who worked in a Jewish bakery and brought them onion rolls that wouldn’t keep until the next day, they all had to share a privy with six other rooms on their floor in that building, Josephina was quite lucky by the sound of it – but she also made a point of telling Josephina that she was lucky to be working in this sewing room with its Kita for the children, because of the owners.

  But then she stopped again and just repeated that they were lucky, both of them were, but you had to keep working hard, you had to finish your quota every day, you couldn’t stop for long to eat or drink or go to the privy because a lot of other women would rather be working here than in most of the other places, she’d been in a couple of them herself, they were dirty, with rats and vermin, and often with men who bothered you.

  Some of the pieces of her and Catharina’s story were beginning to make a pattern, like a quilt, and Josephina was moving them around and rearranging them a little every day. She saw clearly the pieces of Herr Andersen agreeing to help her because of Danne but not wanting Fräulein Hansen upstairs. She saw that the two Schmidts understood this and that it gave them a licence to treat her as ‘trouble’. It was
because those pieces fitted together that she and Catharina had to sleep behind the curtain by the cool back wall beyond the kitchen. And now, after talking to Willa, she saw that Danne’s uncle had done the best he could to find a place for her to work that was better than most of the others, which fitted in next to the piece about his duty to Danne, of course.

  And in addition, also from Willa, but mysteriously, as if it were a dangerous secret, she had another piece to fit in next to those ones, which had to do with the word socialists, because that’s what Willa said the owners of the good sewing room were. But what did that mean? Was it a guild, like the cabinetmaker one Papa belonged to? Were they charitable religious men? And why was it banned, if it was to do with making garments or being a cotton merchant? What was wrong with that? Papa’s guild was why he was so proud to be a Meister and have an apprentice and sometimes a journeyman at his command, and why he and Mutti wanted to be ‘upstairs’ and not in a Bauernhaus with the animals.

  But she didn’t want to ask Willa about it, because it made her nervous. At supper a few days later, she carefully and politely pushed the annoying word across the table towards Schmidt One’s munching cheeks and her ears that also munched away below her cap. But the cheeks and ears just stopped munching briefly while the housekeeper gave her a hard look and tut-tutted. So it was no use asking the Schmidts, since they already considered her ‘trouble’.

  So, very casually, as she and Catharina and the young woman Maria whose sister worked in the sewing room were leaving the Kita on a chilly, rainy day, she asked her if Herr Johannes Paul was a ‘socialist’, and what did that mean? They were waiting for a moment on the threshold of the building before jumping over a big dirty puddle below the step while each holding one of Catharina’s hands, but Maria let go of the hand and jumped by herself. Then the supervisor from upstairs pushed past with a testy ‘If you please!’ – and as he hurried away along the street Maria jumped back to help with Catharina and muttered, very fast, ‘He’s a stool pigeon, a stool pigeon, for goodness sake, don’t you know that?’ But she never explained what a stool pigeon was or why that frightened her – after all the man with herring and pickles on his breath did just sit on a stool and peck away at his notebook – and Josephina didn’t want to ask again what it meant if you said the owner of the sewing room was a ‘socialist’, because Maria began to pretend she hadn’t noticed her when she came in with Catharina in the mornings.

  So that piece of the story patchwork continued to be missing, and in the end what did it matter? What mattered was that Herr Andersen had bothered to find a good place for her to work in even though she was ‘trouble’. And what also mattered was that the sewing room had a Kita attached, where Catharina had soup and a nap, and where she also had a new friend called Alex, from whom she was learning some Italian words. The newest word was arancia, which meant orange – she was sharing her arancia with Alex, Catharina told Schmidt One, who permitted Josephina a brief little smile, despite tut-tutting at her the week before.

  Perhaps Catharina would like to ride up top with the driver, suggested Herr Andersen. Since it was nice and sunny, even though quite cool? Would she like his scarf? Up she went with a squeal, and then Herr Andersen was holding the cab door open for Josephina. Schmidt One was approaching along the street, usually they’d be gone before she arrived at the house, and Josephina saw her look of shock as they clip-clopped past with Catharina perched up top. The cab smelled of stale tobacco which made Josephina wrinkle her nose. Herr Andersen noticed and pulled the window down. The air was chilly, with a coal-smoky tang because it was autumn, and the sunlight was misty and yellow.

  Then he was looking at her very directly. ‘Do you like the autumn?’ he asked.

  Of course, now she and Catharina had been at Herr Andersen’s house since late spring, was this his meaning? ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I like the autumn very much, the colour of the trees, and thank you for your kindness, Herr Andersen, but perhaps now is the time for us to leave before it gets cold?’

  Because the memory of last autumn was suddenly vivid in her mind but also because she couldn’t think what else to say about leaving, she told Herr Andersen that last autumn she’d washed salt off the windows of the house at Sønderborg, how pleasant that had been, with the children playing and getting wet, and baby Otto in sunshine on the front step of the house.

  Then, startling her so that she gave a jump on the seat, he leaned forward and took both her hands and held them between his. He was wearing grey kid gloves, they were old and soft and, because she was surprised and looking down at their hands, she noticed a little tear between the thumb and forefinger of his left-hand glove.

  ‘Let me tell you what I know, Josephina,’ he said.

  Was he going to talk about what happened last night, about Frau Andersen, about their daughter who died of the cholera? Was he going to reprimand her?

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘I meant no harm.’

  ‘Please, look at me, Josephina,’ he said. ‘I have seen that you can do that, you have a clear mind, you see clearly.’

  His neck and shoulder were making small jerks, and these travelled down into his hands – and his eyes, when she looked at them, were blinking rather quickly, which was unexpected, as she remembered both his way of talking to her through Catharina but then his direct gaze.

  ‘In one house I read about there was a basement room with a family of twelve people living in it, they slept in their work clothes on bags of wood shavings, they had torn up one of the floorboards to make a privy. There are lodging houses with five or six beds in a room and each bed will have four or five people in it. Such places are full of vermin. Of course, you will have seen people living where they can hide by the streets. In England there are those who call this social murder, and here there are some who would agree.’

  Outside, on the driver’s seat, Catharina was shouting, ‘Giddy up!’

  She’d learned that at the Kita.

  The cobbles were getting bumpier on the rough streets away from Deichstrasse.

  ‘We need to take care of Catharina,’ said Herr Andersen. He gave her hands a gentle squeeze and then folded his own in his lap. ‘I shall talk to Herr Paul, whom you met, the owner of the sewing room.’

  Then he was looking out the cab’s open window – but at what, exactly, through his blinking?

  He hadn’t disagreed with Josephina that ‘now is the time for us to leave before it gets cold.’

  Dear Danne, and of course my darling sister Greta and my little nephews Finn and Otto

  I miss you all very much, Catharina and I kiss you all many times, I know that writing this letter will make me cry.

  Danne I hope you are not annoyed that I call you by your familiar name, it is strange for me to have been living for some months in the house of someone with the same name as you, of course I mean your kind uncle Herr Andersen. The truth is that I have seen very little of Herr Andersen and his wife only once, this has been different from the way we lived together in Sønderborg as a family thanks to your kindness, and so I think of you as my sister’s dear man Danne, I hope you don’t mind.

  And so Danne I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart and from the bottom of Catharina’s heart also, you should see her now, she knows so many words including Italian ones and has nice little friends at the Kita. The work in the sewing room has been fine, I had no difficulty with it, they say that it is a better room to work in than some others, it was your uncle Herr Andersen who arranged that, perhaps he has told you already. It has not been hard going to and from the sewing room, perhaps a little at first but we got used to it, Catharina likes the horsies at the tram and she usually has a nap so she isn’t tired at the end of the day.

  But now I have to tell you that Catharina and I have left Herr Andersen’s house. This is not because we have been treated badly, of course I will always be grateful for Herr Andersen’s help. It is because of something I didn’t know when we came here and that you and Greta didn’
t tell me about, I think you had a good reason for respecting Herr Andersen’s wishes. But now I know that Herr and Frau Andersen’s daughter called Isolde died of the cholera ten years ago, she was seven years old so now she would be only a little younger than me. Frau Andersen told me this, it was the only time I saw her and the only time she spoke to me, we met by accident upstairs in the house where Catharina and I were not allowed to go, it was my fault. At first I didn’t understand why we had to stay below by the kitchen, I thought it was because Herr Andersen knew what had happened with the Hauptmann and so once again what happened to me had spoiled what could happen next. But now I think Herr Andersen knew Frau Andersen could not live with a girl nearly the same age as her lost daughter, nor with a girl child as sweet as Catharina, because her grief has never healed, I saw that very clearly and will never forget how that poor mother looked at Catharina.

  Herr Andersen did not tell us to go but he agreed once again to help when I said we would, that it was time. This was because I could no longer keep Catharina in that house where a mother was still grieving so much after ten years that after she saw my beautiful daughter and your niece she could not leave her room for many days and may not have left it yet even though we have been away from that house for some weeks now. Greta you know what it means to lose a child, and Mutti also of course, but I could not have imagined such terrible grief as Frau Andersen’s. Danne, your good uncle loves you like a son, he gladly did what you asked for on my behalf, but now the situation at his house is too hard for him to continue with your request.

  This is a very long letter with not much happy interest in it, I will write another one soon and tell you more about our life here in Hamburg. But for now I will tell you that I have moved on by my own wish, it is my own future that I want. I am now living with Catharina as the maid in a house known to the owner of the sewing room, Herr Johannes Paul. Herr Paul is well known in Hamburg as a businessman who believes in treating his workers well. Herr Andersen knows him and what he does and once again he spoke to Herr Paul for me. The house where we are now living and where I am working is called the Bloch House and is quite well known so it would seem, it is the house of Herr Wolf Bloch and his sister Fräulein Theodora Bloch, it is very different from Herr Andersen’s house because a lot of people come here all the time for talking and dinner, and sometimes for early breakfast as well. They call me Josephina, and Fräulein Bloch asked me to call her Theodora, which I am getting used to, but for now I will write Fräulein Bloch.