The Reed Warbler Read online

  So there was this special thing that she called the Oma, after her grandmother, she’d told the silent guests at the table, it was a sampler of all the stitches, it had come from her grandmother’s mother and perhaps even from her mother before that, it was like a book of all the stitches that she could know.

  ‘An encyclopedia!’ exclaimed Herr Bloch, who was even quite excited.

  Should she go and look after the children now, she asked – but not what is an encyclopedia?

  Oh no, no! they had protested. Surely her story had only begun – how old was she now, at this time in her story, so interesting, working with her mother and father?

  She was then about seventeen years old, Josephina told them, seeing as well as hearing their silence in which a question was waiting for her.

  But now her papa wasn’t looking at her as he would once have looked at a young daughter of seventeen who had never been further away than the town of Kiel, and who, only a little time ago, would walk around outside holding her Puck Puck the chicken that seemed to be asleep, talking to it. Now he was looking at her as the mother of the child who’d just run sturdily down towards the meadow where the cows and the chickweed were – his head was tilted slightly forward, not held stiffly upright to show his authority, and he was asking about the city of Hamburg where she now lived, he had been there himself once or twice when he was a young man, it was a noisy and confused place, surely, not easy for – his head dipped forward a little more – a young mother and her child?

  Yes, she was then only just seventeen, she told them, she’d been working with her mutti and papa for four or five years, they were proud of her work, there were important people in the town who would be interested in it, they believed.

  What kind of important people, Josephina, Theodora wanted to know.

  She liked the taste of Signor Martignetti’s wine – she took a sip after eating a morsel of the Sauerbraten, which was rather too rich for her. She wanted to tell the lunch guests that one of the most interesting and beautiful things she saw while living at the Bauernhaus was the wings of wild bees that she picked off the bodies of those that fell down below the hive in the old elm when the weather got colder – most of them stayed inside the tree, just like her family did in the Bauernhaus, to keep warm. When she held the little wings up to the light she could see that they had tiny bones in them – their delicacy made her throat feel funny. But she didn’t tell the lunch guests about the bees, although she’d thought about the tiny bones in their wings the first time she saw Catharina after she was born, in Greta and Danne’s big bed in Sønderborg. She was healthy but not a big girl, quite fine in her bones, just like you, little sister, Greta told her, and the baby didn’t complain when Josephina unwrapped her to look at her ribs and fingers. Josephina was very tired and soon went to sleep, but when she woke up again she had another look at the baby’s little bones and at her fingernails and toenails, and her silly ears that were a bit squashed.

  What kind of important people? They were people like Catharina’s father.

  The guests were waiting for her to answer the question none of them had really asked, not even Theodora, who’d barely kept the question hidden in her What kind of important people?

  ‘They were people like Catharina’s father,’ said Josephina, not expecting that she would. ‘He was a Junker, Hauptmann von Zarovich. He was killed when his horse fell on him.’ She took another nice swallow of the wine. Clearly, in the silence, the guests were now anticipating her answer to the very last piece of the question they hadn’t asked. She looked at each of them in turn. ‘And so, here we are, Catharina and me,’ she said, and saw Herr Bloch’s eyes crinkle at the corners, as if he enjoyed the way she had and had not told her story. But his sister’s eyes hadn’t crinkled at the corners as if Josephina had amused her – instead, her mouth was a little open as if she wanted to say something, but couldn’t, and her eyes were blinking as if she couldn’t cry but wanted to.

  ‘And that is how I have become what I am,’ she said, copying the way the others had finished their stories about how they had become ‘socialists’. ‘That is my story.’

  There were lots of yellow and purple spring crocuses and blue grape hyacinths along the side of the path by the trees on the way to the graveyard, and Josephina, Catharina, Mathilde and Elke picked posies of them for Mutti’s grave. Johannes Franzose was back at the Bauernhaus – they could still just hear him splitting firewood with regular, well-spaced cracks of his axe. He was ‘Franzose’ because he’d been told his father was a Frenchman, Elke explained with her face in a bunch of the spring flowers – her eyes were looking at Josephina over the flowers so that they, too, were like flowers, and she’d tucked a yellow crocus into her hair so that it peeped out crookedly from under her blue cap – but some of the people in the neighbourhood thought he must be a deserter from the war with Napoleon, which was stupid because he spoke good German and why would he call himself ‘Franzose’ if he was a deserter who was hiding up in the north? But that’s how people are around here, Elke explained, as though her little sister was, now, a stranger from somewhere else. That fat old witch Frau Tiesel had been the worst of them at first, because she thought Papa had stolen Johannes away from the mill, but now Frau and Herr Tiesel were Papa’s best friends because he allowed Johannes to do jobs at the mill and didn’t ask for money. They were going to come to the wedding – they’d have to bring Frau Tiesel over in a cart! – and so was Herr Mayer, in fact he was going to ride over from Gaarden this evening to make sure the arrangements were in order, you know how he is. And the Webers from Wellingdorf, did Josie remember, with the bull, how they would walk it over with some flowers between its horns? They were coming, but without the bull of course, there would be no need for that! And there would be some others, but not too many, the new pastor and his wife of course, did Josie remember them? And a couple of their old friends from Pastor Köhler’s, one of them was Anna, she’d married that crazy boy Eric from the mill, the one they watched jump from the top of the millwheel that time, with no clothes on, now they had a couple of kids?

  It was as if she, Josephina, had left a very long time ago, and not just four and a bit years, but then the years didn’t count the time, something else did, something like the measure of what she knew and how she knew it – but here was Papa opening the gate to the graveyard and making her and Catharina and Elke and Tante Elizabeth and Mathilde stop for a moment in a jostle while he made a short speech. This was where his dear wife and the mother of Josephina and Elke and Greta was now, he told them – their mutti and Catharina’s oma, he said to Josephina and Catharina, did Catharina understand that? – while Elke and Tante Elizabeth and Mathilde stood waiting with lowered eyes. Well, she’d had a hard life at the end but now she was at peace, the things that had troubled her no longer mattered. Then he seemed to lose the thread of what he was planning to say, and just waved his arm towards Mutti’s grave.

  Well no, of course Catharina didn’t ‘understand that’, she’d never met her oma, but Josephina didn’t say this. The wild grasses and weeds had begun to grow up eagerly in the graveyard, cow parsleys and daisies and cornflowers, and there were lots of bees busy among them, there was a humming sound all around, and the bees kept flying at the crocuses and especially the blue hyacinths they’d picked on the way over, so they quickly put the posies by Mutti’s grave near the verbena bush Elke had planted that was struggling to establish itself. The grave was quite simple, and the grasses had already grown up around the base of the headstone, which was a nice plain one with an arch shape on the top. Papa’s friend the one-eyed stonemason Herr Fischer had made it and cut the inscription – did Josie remember him, Elke wanted to know. The man who’d lost his left eye when a chip of stone flew into it? Who used to frighten them with the stitch marks where his eye was closed, and the sharp chip that he kept in a special pouch? And he pretended that the stain on the chip was blood? But perhaps it was?

  Elke was babbling, but then she sto
pped as Josephina knelt down in the weeds to look at the inscription – she had to push some stalks away to see the last line. Yes, there was Mutti’s name, she was Agatha Hansen, she was the beloved wife of Adam Hansen – the two A letters were cut with nice identical flourishes on their right feet – and she was the mother of Greta, Elke and Josephina and the grandmother of Finn, Otto and Catharina.

  Yes, there she was, there was Catharina, her name peeping out among the stalks, but Elke hadn’t put that in the letter Greta had sent on from Sønderborg. So it was meant as a surprise? And there was Elke kneeling on the other side of the grave, she was nodding and smiling that big Elke smile, the yellow crocus had slipped down from her cap across her forehead – Yes! she was mouthing, yes! but then pointing with her eyes towards Papa who was standing just to one side of her.

  ‘Thank you, Papa,’ said Josephina, ‘and Catharina says thank you as well. One day she’ll understand this.’

  But that was all she was going to say to Papa, because she’d stopped grieving for Mutti somewhere in the time that months and years didn’t measure – yes, she was glad that Catharina’s name was there together with her cousins’, she was glad that Papa had changed enough to allow that to happen, or that Elke had made him do it, or that Elke had changed him by her example, by taking the Oma and coming to Sønderborg, by bravely going to the house on Faulstrasse – or even that she, Josephina, had changed him by showing him that she was continuing to move her future forward towards where she was going, and that he could not change her course. He was now looking at her as if he expected her to say something more, or that she might give him a daughterly kiss – he was waving the bees away from his face, and seemed to be waiting – but then he turned and began to walk back towards the graveyard gate. Tante Elizabeth followed her brother with Mathilde holding her hand, and after a while Elke gave a little shrug and followed them. She’d taken the yellow flower from under her cap and she dropped it on Mutti’s grave as she went.

  Now Catharina was tugging at her hand – ‘Come on, Mutti, they’re going!’ – and so she got up and gave the headstone a rub across its curved top, and ran her fingers over the names below, and pulled some leaves from the verbena shrub to get its smell on her fingers, and followed after Catharina who was running to catch up with the others. But no, she didn’t have to forgive her father for being hard-hearted in the past, or thank him for now opening his heart again to her and to Catharina, because it no longer mattered. Now it was better to say little about the past, including those portions of the past that had crept back into this present that was filled with Elke’s happiness. And she didn’t have to thank him for allowing her to come back, to come ‘home’, to this place that she knew well, including the flowers between the bull’s horns and the jokes about Frau Tiesel in a cart and all the rest of it, but now knew more as if ‘home’ was a memory that she recognised, so that her feelings were not as strong perhaps as Elke and Papa thought they should be.

  But that was just how it was, and she couldn’t do anything about it. And also, it was as though ever since she’d told the lunch guests at Herr and Theodora Bloch’s house, where there were often lunches and dinners, and meetings with coffee in the mornings – ever since she’d told the Blochs, and Signora and Signor Martignetti, who were the mother and father of Catharina’s best friend Alex, the story of where she came from and how she had become who she was – ever since she’d finished that story, it was as though it left her, and the place the story came from left her, so that now, having come back to that place, she couldn’t really be there anymore.

  Catharina had run after the others, and her opa had swung her up to sit on his shoulders with her legs hanging down in front. She was holding on to his ears and shouting Giddy up! And yes, Josephina remembered that as well, her Papa’s rather bony shoulders, as she walked along behind them in the empty space they left for her.

  Herr Mayer was there punctually as he’d promised he would be, in time for an early supper outside under the pear tree where they’d leave the table for the wedding lunch tomorrow, yes?, and to have a last discussion about the arrangements. His man and their cook would come out in the morning with plenty of beer and wine and the wedding food. But for supper they were just having some over-winter kale from the Bauernhaus garden, with white sauce, and smoked ham with bread? Herr Mayer thanked Elke for organising this. Tante Elizabeth had brought some beer and schnapps in the buggy that morning, squashed in together with Mathilde, Josephina and Catharina – Herr Mayer thanked his wife for seeing to this too, and greeted Josephina and Catharina quite formally, saying it was nice to see them again. She saw that the words Fräulein Hansen almost came out instead of Josephina, but then he busied himself with the thick bottles of beer – their tops opened with a bang that made Catharina hold her hands against her ears – and the thin one of schnapps. Elke had brought out the mugs and glasses, and Josephina and Tante Elizabeth filled them, the tall mugs with the beer and the little glasses with Herr Mayer’s favourite Köm, ‘the best in Holstein’! The two little girls had mugs of apple syrup with water. Then they all stood under the pear tree and drank a toast to Elke and Johannes, first a small swallow of Köm followed by a good swallow of the cool beer, and then, all together, a shout, good luck and happiness!

  It was too bad Greta and Danne and the children hadn’t got in to Kielerhafen yet, said Herr Mayer – he’d heard that the packet would be coming in at night on the tide, not too late. So they drank another toast to the eldest sister and ‘the lucky Dane’. Then they all sat down to have some supper. Johannes had been banished to his stall inside the Bauernhaus after the first toast, because it was bad luck for him to be at the table on the eve of his wedding, but Elke gave the two little girls a bottle of beer and a plate of food to take in to him, and said they were allowed one kiss each, on his cheek.

  Almost everything was familiar to Josephina, because she’d been to other weddings, including Greta’s not long after she began to work with Mutti on the linens, and also to her friend Anna’s – they’d shared a desk at Pastor Köhler’s but Anna was the naughty one who knew well the end of the wooden spoon; she told Josephina that she and crazy Eric from the mill had already ‘done it’ before they got married. Of course everyone having supper under the pear tree had been to other weddings, even Mathilde, probably, who’d just returned giggling with Catharina from taking Johannes his supper – he’d pushed open the stopper on the beer and drunk most of it in one go, and did a big burp! – and was Mutti going to get married too, Catharina wanted to know, tomorrow, because she liked Franzose, as he said to call him. No, my darling, Elke told her, my little sister can’t marry Franzose because he’s mine! – but of course they can be good friends.

  And then, perhaps because there was a silence, the tip of Papa’s tongue carefully prised his lips open in a smile. Now that Josephina was no longer living in Hamburg at the house of Danne’s uncle, Herr Aksel Andersen, would she like to tell them about her new circumstances?

  She was now living at the house of Herr Wolf Bloch and his sister Fräulein Theodora Bloch, it was a nice house near the lake in the middle of the city, it had a small garden that Catharina and her friend Alex could play in. It was a very busy house because Herr Bloch and his sister entertained many people, there were often dinners and lunches, and also meetings with coffee in the mornings.

  And what does this Herr Wolf Bloch do, Herr Mayer wanted to know. Since he seems to have a busy social life? Herr Mayer’s mouth had opened and shut when Papa mentioned the house of Herr Aksel Andersen, but now he was looking at Josephina with a rather determined expression, as though he expected her to do some explaining. And is this Bloch married, he wanted to know.

  The pleasure Josephina felt in meeting Herr Mayer’s firm gaze was unexpected, because it emerged with such an enjoyable rush from her feeling of sadness about the familiar joy of weddings. No, she told everyone at the table, but especially Herr Mayer, though it should have been her papa because he’d begun the qu
estions about her ‘circumstances’ – no, Herr Bloch wasn’t married, and the many people who came to the house mostly came because of business.

  ‘Ah!’ said Papa and Herr Mayer in unison.

  ‘Yes,’ said Josephina, and moistened what she was saying with the last of the Köm in her glass. ‘Yes, it’s a place of discussions and talking, because Herr Bloch is the editor of a newspaper, the Bürger Zeitung. He also writes for it often, and so does Theodora, that’s what she prefers to be called. In addition, Herr Bloch writes reviews of theatre and music, they are quite famous, and he is a poet. He and his sister often work together. They go together to look at the conditions and organisations of places of work, and they report on them.’

  ‘And that is their business?’ This time Herr Mayer spoke alone.

  ‘Yes,’ said Josephina. ‘They are socialists.’

  Her papa had no expression on his face, as if he hadn’t heard her answering his question about her ‘circumstances’, Tante Elizabeth had a little smile in one corner of her mouth, Herr Mayer was putting his fork full of smoked ham down very carefully, and Elke was frowning severely as if her wedding supper had begun to be spoiled, as perhaps it had.

  ‘They are very good people,’ said Josephina. ‘They are kind to me and to Catharina. They care about the circumstances of people working in places like the sewing room where I was, the one belonging to Herr Paul, who is Herr Aksel Andersen’s friend. Herr Paul is also a socialist, his sewing room is well organised, and it has a Kita. That is their purpose, they call themselves social democrats, their purpose is to improve circumstances.’ Josephina enjoyed saying circumstances with special emphasis. ‘But this is Elke’s party,’ she said. ‘This is my dear sister’s wedding supper, here we are, so let’s not talk about what I might be doing in Hamburg, because it’s not important, it’s not as important as Elke.’