The Reed Warbler Read online

  Yes, and he loved you, Josephina.

  Josephina closed her eyes and put her face in Catharina’s hair.

  She didn’t need Theodora to tell her that.

  The sound of the sea going away past the side of the ship.

  Theodora

  Thursday, 8 January, 1880, Equatorial zone

  It is now two weeks since my dear brother died from eating fresh food at Praia in the Cape Verde Islands. Fresh food! It took barely four days for this fresh food to empty his body of the stubborn forces that had animated it against all expectations for more than forty years. There was a shore party of boastful young single men freed from their quarters. They announced that they were hopeful of meeting the island’s young women. Two of them failed to return to the ship and Wolf made Josephina laugh with a scandalous scenario of their lives as castaways in which they were undressed by the island maidens and made to perform savage rituals undreamed of by the innocents of Swiss Family Robinson. They continued to laugh together for a long time as we watched the island slowly diminish behind us.

  It was clear that I should keep a certain distance from their intimacy. The distance wounded me almost as much as the reason for it made me happy on Wolf’s behalf. If it was jealousy I felt, then it was also a kind of perverse desire. I wanted to be the invisible breath they shared as they laughed into each other’s face. I wanted to be the breath that passed between those sweet lips into my brother’s mouth, and to be the breath that returned out of his careless smile to Josephina’s shining tongue. Now I should find the memory of that moment abhorrent, and yet it is the last one I have of my brother in which he remains fully alive in his defiant nature.

  This was the nature I had adored and battled with since he was the poor little thing whose life had often depended on the vigilance of his older sister. Then, as if an epoch had slid from time, that life depended on the young woman whose gaze had first opened my heart to the paradox of jealousy doubling as joy, and to the pain of redundancy. If this opening is a wound, then I must try to heal it and not allow it to infect the woman and child my brother loved, nor the child he will never see. I do not know how I can accomplish this healing, but the need to do so is where I must start.

  None of the young men who returned singing to the ship died from the fresh food they consumed on the island, though all were drunk. Whatever they drank seems to have enlivened them. Some of the first-class passengers, men and women and their children, were also permitted to go ashore, and returned in lighters laden with the fresh food that seems to have done none of them any harm, since they continued to enjoy it in the days that Wolf lay dying in the infirmary. Wolf had been permitted to go ashore past the scowls and mutters of the majority, since with his usual graces he had persuaded the captain that a ship’s newspaper would be an entertainment and distraction and would lighten the dissatisfied mood of the passengers, and he undertook to bring back what was required.

  Now that I can write again and can think clearly about what it is I am writing, I know there is no intelligent reason to believe Wolf was poisoned by any agency other than the fresh food and liquor he ate and drank apparently with such pleasure. However ‘fresh food’ is a term I can only write with a grimace of horror, knowing that some of it must have been a poison to Wolf, whether because it was not fresh or because it was something his body could not tolerate. And yet, of course, the fearful thought I have had to wait two weeks to set aside in a kind of mental quarantine remains with me, in my mind and in my dreams.

  That Wolf was poisoned by a human agent is improbable in our present circumstances, though he seldom hid the views that might have earned him enemies on the ship. It is the history of our lives together and in particular the stresses of the past months that have made me vulnerable to the suspicion that he was the victim of old venom rather than fresh food. This malign thought persists inside me next to the rational one I have managed to raise against it, and I fear it will never entirely leave me. I, too, have been poisoned first by jealousy and then by irrational suspicion and must now doubly beware of infecting those around me, especially the two whom Wolf loved utterly in his last months and who made him happier than I was ever able to. I must do this in spite of or against the contradictory force of my memory of Wolf and Josephina laughing in each other’s face as their erotic island slowly sank beneath the waves but rose over and over again in their expressions.

  After Wolf was sent to his final resting place Josephina was unable to look at the sea and would not leave our cabin except to relieve herself. She soon stopped weeping but seemed to retire within herself and to stop looking at the world, even at the narrow span of it that is our cabin. If she saw me there it was as though she did not perceive me with her senses and thoughts but merely with a dull, passive unrecognition. The bright, penetrating gaze that is the unmistakable signature of her nature had been shut down by her grief. The doctor visited her and prescribed brandy, which she quickly drank, but she seldom seemed to sleep. The matron brought her special broths and fresh goat’s milk and urged her to eat them for the unborn child’s sake, which she did as though through the agency of another Josephina hidden within the one I saw before me. I hoped that this hidden, determined Josephina would emerge soon and once again demonstrate that she was her own agent, but I was powerless to assist her to do so.

  Catharina seldom left her, and had stopped going to the school. Sometimes she went out for short times to play with her Danish friend. But mostly she and Josephina lay or sat together, sometimes Catharina sang to her, and the child persuaded her to do some of the sewing work they had begun some weeks earlier. But Josephina’s slender fingers, so quick and intelligent, simply stopped moving after a while, whereupon Catharina took the needle and thread from her and carefully folded the cloth away. How can a child so young know that it is she who must take care of this woman she can hardly recognise as her mother? After several days our Danish neighbour fru Frederiksen knocked fearfully at the cabin door and when I admitted her ignored me and asked Josephina in the patient tones of someone addressing an idiot if she would like her to read some comfort from the bible. Josephina’s silence might as well have been the screeches of a fork-tongued devil given the haste with which the poor woman then retreated.

  The weather has now become very hot and on some days there is scarcely any wind either to drive the ship towards the longed-for end of our journey or to cool the moods of those who swelter on deck. Below in our cabin and in the stateroom it is even warmer and so our neighbours are usually outside in the shade of awnings where space to rest is often contested. The small rations of water we are permitted also become objects of dispute.

  Today when Josephina finally came up from the cabin she was soon allowed space to sit in the shade, whether because she still carried the taint of infection or out of sympathy was not clear from the expressions of those who moved to make room for her and Catharina. But the sociable intentions of the man who approached her with a bottle of water were obvious, as was his courteous posture as he also held out to her some papers rolled up and tied with a piece of string. Josephina is now about seven months’ pregnant and moves very slowly and heavily, especially after the weeks she spent below barely moving. It was Catharina who stood and took the water and the rolled-up papers, whereupon the man made a little bow and shook her hand. He appeared to be giving a short formal speech and then stepped away respectfully. He saw me where I was sitting with my small class of listless children in shade below the afterdeck, and raised his hat, but then moved off.

  While my mutinous children droned ‘A B C the cat ran in the snow’ I watched Josephina unfurl the roll of paper, and saw from the expression on Catharina’s face as she looked in my direction that her mutti had not only emerged at last from the cabin but had also come back out from the self in which she had been confined for so long. Catharina’s face shone with delight but also with a kind of challenge. The direct gaze I knew so well was not an invitation to share her joy. Then she was in Josephina’s
arms. As I was asking my children if they knew why there was never ever any snow where the ship was now almost becalmed, though there was a cat on the ship whose job was to catch mice, I saw that Josephina was reading to Catharina what was on the paper that had been so ceremoniously delivered to her.

  There was no snow because we were in the equatorial zone and did anyone know what that was? There was one boy who thought it was the place where the earth was divided in two: white people lived on the top part and knew how to speak but on the bottom part the people were black from being burned in the sun and they didn’t know how to speak. And is the bottom part where we are going, I asked the boy. Josephina had stood up and on her face, as on Catharina’s, I saw that expression at once enlivened and obdurate. Yes, the boy told me, and his father was going to teach the burned people how to speak.

  There once again was that familiar, intractable laminate of effects as I transferred my attention from one situation to another. On the one hand I was offered a chance to educate this misinformed child, and on the other I saw the familiar tableau of Josephina and her daughter confronting me in unison with their unflinching interrogation. Then they walked across to the rail of the ship and inserted themselves among those looking at the placid sea.

  Later in the day when we had eaten our supper and were once again on deck, but all together this time, Josephina told me, with a careful smile, that the paper given her by Mister Oats the printer was two pages of what would have become their ship’s bulletin. He had printed one copy for her but did not expect there would be any more to come. He had liked Herr Bloch very much and had enjoyed his company, and was sad for her sake and the sake of her daughter that they would now be arriving in their new land without such a fine husband and father. His German was very strange, Josephina said, but he had prepared his address carefully and she could tell that he was a very sincere man. When I asked her what was printed on the sheets she told me that the first contained a list of entertainments planned for the remainder of the voyage, including a series of concerts by a trio of violinists from Vienna which she looked forward to. And then she paused before telling me that the second sheet had a poem by Wolf. She saw that I guessed from her hesitation that the poem was addressed to her, but she held my gaze and, whether out of sympathy or not, said only that I should see this fragment of what my brother had hoped to do with his newspaper, and that she would treasure it.

  I have written this without having read the fragment, and may never do so. I have had much of substance from my brother during the years of our work together, and these memories will not be ephemeral. Now Josephina and Catharina are asleep and soon I shall have to extinguish my lamp. It is good to be simply glad to see Josephina recovered and perhaps my dreams will now allow me to sleep peacefully again, though I doubt it.

  Wolf Bloch

  To my wife

  ‘Little Bird’

  Together with me on the Atlantic Ocean

  December 14, 1879

  ‘Water, water, every where’

  I searched for you along the wild paths of life, the one

  Who hand in hand with me would voyage bravely to our New Home.

  I had no wish to go to joyful festivals alone,

  To see at last our tired, poor, huddled masses welcome;

  And yet, my Little Seagull, look what you and I have done

  Because we always dreamed together of what we might become

  And know we can’t buy love for gold, no matter what they say,

  Nor futures, with the dragon-hoard of Reichskanzler Dismay.

  From calm blue Alster Lakes to seas of storm and stress;

  From summer’s trees reflected in the placid water’s sheen

  That gentle forest creatures ripple with their thirsty kiss

  To far horizons undisturbed by flags of forest green –

  Carried forward by your knowledge of suffering and distress

  And brave wish to leave behind whatever might have been,

  My captain Little Bird steers our ship towards the day

  The sun will rise beyond the gaze of Reichskanzler Dismay.

  Always your loving and admiring comrade

  Wolf Bloch

  Beth and Frank

  No, he hadn’t planned to stop over any longer. He had a crack-of-dawn Virgin Australia flight and a room at the Novotel. He could walk over to the terminal in the morning. Hadn’t he told her?

  He probably had.

  ‘It’s got a bar,’ he said. ‘With a living wall.’

  Beth found the ‘living wall’ sad, but didn’t say so. It was a blocky, two-storey thing with abundant assorted ferns and creepers. Lurking somewhere within the greenery was the native epiphytic orchid Winika cunninghamii, or so the informative text on the wine list said. ‘This indigenous orchid grows on native Podocarpus totara trees, one of which was used to make the hull of a sacred waka (great ocean-going canoe) belonging to Tainui people.’

  ‘Poor wee Winika,’ she said. They were ‘sharing’ a bottle of pretty good pinot noir which Frank would drink most of because she was driving home later. Then he’d have another, after she’d gone. Then he’d share a joke with Helen, alone in his room.

  ‘Who’s Winika?’

  Beth waved the informative wine list at the living wall. ‘It’s an orchid, in there somewhere. It grows on tōtara usually.’ She didn’t add, You should tell Helen.

  ‘I’ll tell Helen,’ he said, and raised his glass at the green wall.

  Beth could feel his imminent departure opening up the space between them. He was looking past her with an incurious expression at what she guessed was an Asian trade delegation or some such – she could hear them exclaiming enthusiastically about the wall as a woman explained in carefully enunciated English that it had won heaps and heaps of prizes.

  ‘Do you think they get “heaps”?’ Now he was looking to have some fun. His grin was an invitation to play. ‘Can visualise them, the heaps? The heaps and heaps of them?’ He was waiting for her. ‘When we first got to Oz I thought the other guys were talking about black people when they said wogs, then I found out it meant immigrants who hid gold chains in their chest hair.’ His expression said, Don’t want to play? ‘Wogs wore tracksuits, called trackies.’ He leaned towards her across the table. ‘They hung out with their cousins a lot.’

  They didn’t have much time left.

  Frank gave it one last try. ‘It was tough, being new to the place. For me and the wogs. Getting the hang of the lingo.’

  That was some kind of opening, at least. ‘Tell me about your grandmother.’

  Frank poured himself a glass and blew a sigh through pursed lips. ‘Not letting up, are you, Beth.’

  ‘And your mum. Tell me about Granny Cath and Auntie Greta.’

  ‘I already did.’

  ‘Not much. Not enough. Hardly anything, really.’ There’d been these lacunae or held breaths or incommunicative looks during chats and reminiscences back at the reunion. Frank could mostly be found enjoying the company of others disinclined to open what one keen family historian called ‘cans of worms’.

  ‘You remember Grandma Cath down at the river when we were kids, though.’

  ‘I was all of six or something the first time I saw her. Maybe I remember her singing. I remember her sitting in the river splashing herself. I think I was nervous of her, she had a way of looking at you. She was really old.’

  Their olives had come with a container of toothpicks. Frank began to make a shape with them.

  ‘Besides,’ said Beth, ‘after a while you can’t really tell what’s a memory and what’s been planted somehow. There were photos – my mum had some. Your grandma was pretty chic. Even her old-lady togs. But do I really remember them?’

  Frank had made a fat two-sided toothpick track with bars across it. It went across the table towards her. He put a black olive at the front. ‘Witchetty grub,’ he said. ‘I remember the first one I saw. But no, like you, not Grandma Cath’s togs.’ Then he swept the t
oothpicks up and returned them to their container. He put the olive in his mouth and chewed it slowly. ‘What I know and what I remember are vastly different,’ he said. Then he took the olive stone from his mouth and held it, looking at her. Then he put it carefully on the little snack tray. Either he was thinking slowly or he was stalling. ‘The trouble with what I know and what I remember being vastly different is that they don’t add up to a lot, even when I put them together into some kind of story. So you’ll have to cut me some slack here, cuzzie.’

  Down the other end of the bar the trade delegation or whatever it was had begun to shout about everything that had been cool. Frank was looking at them.

  ‘Imagine, for example,’ he said, ‘that one of those people down there went back after their visit to New Zealand and told everyone about the giant tooter tree they’d seen, and the wonderful exotic orchid called Winnie, and the great voyaging canoe called Awaken. Which in truth they only encountered at the living wall in the airport hotel, itself surrounded by many heaps of glittering prizes. And they saw them, too, the heaps and heaps of them. Know what I mean?’ He gave her a little slosh of wine. ‘So don’t expect me to do much better, okay?’ He waited again, for a moment. ‘So don’t try to untangle what you think I know from what you think I remember, including what I remember being told that someone or other knew or remembered, because you’ll go crazy.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Grandma Cath was really smart. She distinguished herself at school where she was dux and, after a spell teaching little kids, at university in Wellington. She graduated with honours, one of the first women to get a degree in New Zealand. It was her mother Josephina who encouraged her.’ Frank sipped his wine. ‘Feel like something to eat?’

  ‘Don’t stall, Frank.’

  ‘I’m not stalling, I’m starving. I’m going to order something.’

  ‘Go for it, but I’m okay, thanks.’

  Frank continued his account while scanning the bar menu. ‘Grandma Cath was also encouraged by a German professor whose name I’ve either never known or have forgotten – comes down to the same thing. I’m getting some crumbed calamari with aioli and a small bowl of tomatoes with torn basil. You’re welcome to help yourself.’