The Reed Warbler Read online

  Steuerer was a new strange word that Frau Lande had to say twice before Elke felt confident enough to say it herself, it meant the man who looked after all Herr Mayer’s cargoes coming into or going out of Flensburg, and there were a great many of them said Frau Lande who clearly thought her husband was an important man and perhaps he was, ‘a great many cargoes’ mostly cloth and fine craftsmanship – questions such as why don’t we see your papa Meister Hansen’s fine work coming here anymore, the coffins for example and the fine cloth-work? – which was really a missing-cobble question and so Elke walked around it carefully and didn’t trip up and now here she was approaching ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ and it was as though the twists and turns and missing-cobble-traps of her voyage home from Sønderborg were about to come to an end because here was her destination, this was where she was always certainly going from the moment she and Josie and Greta and the children looked down from the rise at Dybbøl above Alsund and Sønderborg and the boats going south down the Bugt towards ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ as she imagined they all were with their sails set firmly in that direction on that happy sad day of the picnic at Dybbøl when she knew she might not see Josie again or Catharina who had her little mama’s blue Kornblume eyes.

  When will I see you again she said to Josie back on the hill at Dybbøl, I don’t know said Josie. I don’t know maybe never. Because I have to keep going, I can’t stay at Greta’s place much longer and I won’t take Catharina ‘back there’. The word ‘because’ and the word ‘and’ were so clear and sure in what Josie said, like the determined straight line of her mouth, different from what Elke was used to which was Josie making those pictures with words that mixed up how things looked and how they smelled or tasted or moved like the bees in their summer flights back and forth from their hive in the old hollow elm on the hill down to the meadow flowers and wild grasses, flights that Josie said were streaky mare’s-tail clouds of honey in the sky that you could taste if you closed your eyes and listened to the flavour of the bee-sound – yes she was almost crazy sometimes that was what Mutti and Papa thought but they were also proud of their ‘special one’ at first, until she learned with having Catharina how to make ‘because’ mark the exact path of her thought while ‘and’ marked the place where her thought changed the way everything had always been, as if one day the bees decided no we can’t go back to the elm anymore and so all disappeared into the woods.

  But what would be their ‘because’, because why? – or because what? – the bees? But Josephina had a ‘because’, the ‘because’ was ‘the house on Faulstrasse’, the front door was painted shiny green with some chips around the hinges and a heavy polished brass doorknocker, it was up six steps from the street and you could see that the steps had been washed that morning and the bucket of water thrown across the cobbles – should she go up the six steps and knock at the green door with the heavy brass knocker that was a lion’s head showing its teeth, no perhaps it would be wrong to trample the mud and horseshit from the street across those six freshly washed steps, no of course that is what she should do, go in the door Josie said she was sent out of, but would she meet shithead Hauptmann von Zarovich or his ‘Junkfrau’ wife that way? – no they wouldn’t open the door, the maid would, so perhaps she should go through the alley and around the back where the kitchen door would be or the door where things got taken into the house, the firewood and the things a house like that needed, what would they be? – the things that Mutti wanted, no not the milk, they had that so long as Elke was there and not the firewood so long as Papa’s stupid boy was there, they had plenty of vegetables and fruit so long as she was there screeched poor Mutti, so long as she Mutti was there to do all the garden work, not even the flour and meat, they already had those things even if not enough of them anymore.

  What Mutti wanted was in her eyes that were red from coughing and anger, she wanted to live somewhere like ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ the one where Junkfrau von Zarovich liked very much the work she brought to show her, Mutti couldn’t say Josephina’s name, it was as though Josie was no longer there and had never done the work when they went to ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ – Mutti wanted not to live in the Bauernhaus with animal piss running down the slope-floor in winter she shouted at Elke, her eyes all red and the screeching cough like a rooster, she didn’t want to be bleaching the linens anymore, how could Elke run away like that didn’t she know that her mother was not well and strong anymore she couldn’t work anymore, ‘I can’t, Elke!’ – it was Josephina’s fault, she didn’t say it but her eyes did and her crow-cough and the way she talked about ‘the house on Faulstrasse’, the door they were meant to go through to the life she deserved and that her husband, Elke’s papa, Meister Hansen, deserved, but now her other daughter Elke was a thief how could she? – how could she take the Oma sampler to the – but not saying that her youngest daughter was what, a whore? That Josephina her youngest daughter was a whore?

  The girl who opened the door at the back was staring at Elke with a fierce ‘what do you want?’ expression from her heavy eyebrows pushed together in a frown and her hand on the doorframe as if Elke would try to push past into a kitchen with a big table and a big black stove in three parts – What did she want? Who are you, the frowning girl was saying, what do you want? What did she want, why was she there, what was she going to do – she didn’t know, all she’d thought about all the way to ‘the house on Faulstrasse’ was Mutti’s red eyes and crow-cough and Josie’s mouth in a straight because and line – What was she going to do when she got to ‘the house on Faulstrasse’? What are we going to do? Mutti wanted to know, how can we go on, I can’t anymore, I can’t Elke, I can’t.

  She was Josephina Hansen’s sister, Elke told the fiercely frowning girl who’d been sieving flour, it was on her hands and apron and there was some on her cheek as well, do you remember her, she brought the special lie-in nightgown for Junkfrau von Zarovich, my sister made it, it was a while ago, nearly two years, two autumns, do you remember her, my sister Josephina, quite small and fair, a pretty one, you’ll remember her I think, she came in the autumn and she was by herself, Elke was telling the floury girl – is Hauptmann von Zarovich at home she asked the girl who then quickly shut the door to the kitchen and jumped with a thump down to the step Elke was standing on and pulled her strongly by the arm around into the alleyway at the side of the house.

  Yes I remember your little sister said the big girl with thick eyebrows only she wasn’t frowning now, she was still holding Elke’s arm with her strong hand, I remember her, she went up to show Herr Hauptmann the thing she’d made for Junkfrau, we didn’t see her again, how is she? Oh yes Josephina was fine, Elke told the girl, she had a baby, a beautiful little girl, her name is Catharina Elke Lange Hansen, that’s my name, Elke, Catharina has it too now, I’m her aunt. I’m her aunt, I’m Catharina’s aunt and I want to talk to Hauptmann von Zarovich – the floury girl with thick eyebrows let go of Elke’s arm – I want to talk to Hauptmann von Zarovich, Elke told the girl, because he is Catharina’s father the fucking shithead and I have to tell him.

  Dearest little sister Josie and my darling Catharina

  I hope you are well I think of you all the time and also of Greta and the children, kiss them for me. Well it is nearly winter so you will not be travelling yet thank god. Tante Elizabeth is helping me to write this letter but this is my writing not too bad I hope you agree. First of all I have to tell you some important news about von Zarovich. I know you said you did not care anymore but I think you need to know what has happened so forgive me Josie. I went to that house on Faulstrasse because I wanted to tell the Hauptmann what he had done. Tante Elizabeth thinks that was stupid and she is right but I had to Josie. I met the maid who works there her name is Clara she remembered you. She told me that the Hauptmann is dead, his horse fell on him during exercises at Schlossgarten. They brought him back to the house that you remember I am sure but he died after a few days. You also need to know that his wife had a baby,
Clara told me it was a boy, but they are gone now, her family is in Vienna. The house is a garrison one and now there is another Prussian army family living there, Clara does not like them. Josie I also have to tell you that Clara found the nightgown you made for the Zarovich wife, she said it was spoiled so she burned it. Tante Elizabeth thinks that closes a door and perhaps you will think so too. Of course life goes on here and thank god at the moment Herr Mayer has sent one of his men to help Papa’s boy with the firewood for winter. Papa is quite well but his business is not so good anymore, he only does repairs or makes plain things and not much money. Mutti is not strong and so I worry about the winter. I have to ask you Josie, and Tante Elizabeth is asking too, will you please change your mind and come back here? You could do it before the snow and ice. Then Mutti and Papa could see Catharina and they would love her I am sure and so would Tante Elizabeth and of course Mathilde who says you are her favourite and that she loves you more than stars but also loves Puck Puck. These are their kisses on the end of this paper and this one X is mine, your sister Elke.

  Beth and Frank

  What was it about those old things like the Danish shawl she’d got from her mother Elke who’d got it from her grandmother Ettie who’d got it from her mother-in-law Josephina? And that sewing-sampler thingie that was at the reunion, that had been Great-great-grandmother Josephina’s and someone else’s before her – her own grandmother’s perhaps? Nobody really knew about these things, and they could mostly only go ooh-ahh because they were so old, imagine that, what was life like back then? They were ghosts but material ones – they had substance and texture, they smelled of what they were; the shawl could still keep you cosy and the sampler could still show you how to make stitches. They still had agency, they were still what they could do, right now, in the present – many, many people had died while the sampler and the shawl just went on being what they did in the here and now, including amaze us with their ability to make nonsense of time, and one day someone would just chuck them away and that would be that.

  Over by the hotel proper the dog was making awful anxious sounds that were a cross between a half-hearted bark, a whine and a growl. It was rattling its chain, and she wished someone would give the poor bloody thing a bone or something. So Frank would probably be having his dinner by now, and probably getting stuck into a bottle of wine – she’d better get over there. He was so moody, something was bothering him, but first.

  First she had to have a quick go at checking out Zum Gedächtnis WB.

  But first the hotel’s Wi-Fi. The slip of paper in the folder with the attractions of the ‘Central Plateau Land of Legends’ had the password ‘100pcp’.

  Zum Gedächtnis WB drew a blank, but then Frank’s hunch, Wolf Bloch.

  And there he was.

  Wolf Bloch!

  Born 15 Januar 1843 in Brno, Hauptstadt von Moravia, nachdem der Vater seine Firma nicht halten konnte, siedelte die Familie nach Hannover und 1851 nach Hamburg über, father’s firm went bust & moved to Hannover and then to Hamburg. Ab 1872 war Bloch Mitglied der Sozialistischen deutschen Arbeiterpartei, den sog. Eisenachern, after 1872 got involved with the German socialist workers’ party, die Hamburger Bürgerzeitung zu gründen und als Redakteur zu leiten, he founded the Hamburger Bürgerzeitung and was its editor. Blah blah blah, not our man, no way, whoa!

  Zum Gedächtnis!

  In dem Gedicht Zum Gedächtnis (1875) würdigte er die Pariser Kommune von 1871, in the poem Zum Gedächtnis he celebrated the Paris Commune of 1871.

  She looked away from the screen for a moment and closed her eyes while she attended to the constriction in her chest and the sensation that it had filled suddenly with something, time perhaps, that pressed on her heart and made it thump. When that stopped she looked back at the screen.

  There was a photo of this Wolf Bloch from 1878, little chap with an asthmatic’s hunched shoulders, a pair of rimless glasses, a bit scruffy in a dandyish sort of way, with a rather wicked look about him and an eccentric boutonnière of what was probably wild tree blossom.

  Her great-great-grandfather?

  There was plenty more – there were references in Das Elektronische Arkiv to correspondence with Friedrich Engels in England – but that would do, that would do for now, in the here and now!

  As she rushed out with her iPad, the old shawl got caught in the door of her unit and she only just resisted the urge to give it a yank. She went back in and carefully folded the shawl on the bed with its manky candlewick bedspread. There was something appropriate about the arrangement, the worn old and the faded new folded together, but that was a bit precious.

  And besides, there was a ridiculous full moon in absolutely clear sky above the hotel. It made her heart thump again – that moon and her ridiculous WB risen brightly into view.

  Greta

  Well, yes of course Josephina should. But of course she would not.

  These were Greta’s views on the matter.

  Then Danne’s beard was against her ear and his voice was rumbling into it.

  Her family needs her more than we do. We can get a maid. We had one before. Or don’t you remember? And she didn’t have a child to look after.

  This was what Danne thought.

  But Finn and Catharina are playmates, was Greta’s argument.

  So are we, was the beard’s. Saying, Feinsliebchen, in best German, into her ear.

  What difference does that make, Greta wanted to know. And please stop doing that, because we have to talk about this.

  She required.

  To no avail.

  And anyway, Greta resumed after a satisfactory while, not only did her sister, who had become stubborn, not wish to go back to the farm, she also did not wish to stay there in Sønderborg.

  Because she’s a crazy little bitch and you have to talk to her, was the opinion Danne offered the wall beside their bed, but gently, without anger. Then he began to snore.

  But she had. Over and over, many times. Josie, think about it. What will you do? What will Catharina do? How will you live? Where will you live?

  It was impossible.

  So then the ‘crazy little bitch’ held up the blue-owl border on the nice grey blanket that was around Otto, who was blowing milky bubbles on Greta’s lap.

  She would sew. Now that she had ‘the Oma’, for God’s sake. As if that old offcut of shroud-linen with its little pictures of yellow ducks on a blue lake, a red house with a window on either side of its green door and grey wool smoke coming from its chimney, the mountain with its little deer, and the owls, of course the favourite blue owls, and the rest of it, including the crooked alphabet in many colours – see, she knew it too? But what was the use of arguing? Josie would take the little pictures and the soiled old linen to a bigger town, and she would earn her living.

  A very young woman with a child and no man.

  Have you learned nothing, Josie?

  So then that new direct look.

  Yes. She had. She had learned much. She didn’t need to say so.

  So, Danne, what about your uncle in Hamburg, Greta wanted to know, having lost the first part of the argument with her husband. The part that suggested Josephina could stay because Finn and Catharina were playmates. And cousins.

  She and Danne were walking along to the Slot on a day when he wasn’t away or working, while Josephina minded the children and washed salt off the window-glass. Of course they’d all get wet, that was how she did it.

  The part of the argument Greta hadn’t lost was that ‘the crazy little bitch’ wouldn’t go home to her family on the ‘family farm’ by the Schwentine at Kiel.

  Because she wouldn’t. That was that. She would not.

  My uncle? Danne stopped and repeated the question – his uncle? He was using his whiskers to comic effect, to exaggerate his expression of disbelief and scorn.

  Do you know what that’s called, he wanted to know.

  Ah, ‘selling the debt’. Of course, Greta had heard that expression already, on several
occasions lately, usually to do with the Bückling yard.

  But was her sister a bad debt, she wanted to know.

  Like the . . . ?

  Like the Bückling smoking-yard, Danne suggested.

  They were having a nice walk, it was sunny, they could have a drink and a bite over by the Slot, talk to some friends, how often did they have the chance? But no, of course he wasn’t suggesting Josephina was a ‘bad debt’. Just a crazy little bitch. Why would he wish a crazy little bitch on his uncle in Hamburg?

  Because she’s a clever crazy little bitch, suggested his wife. And she’s my sister. And your sister-in-law. And she got fucked by a Prussian.

  So then they were walking back, too quickly. Danne was a man who got angry with good reason.

  What was the good reason? This time?

  The last time was when her other sister stole that stupid sewing-thing and tricked his business partner’s shipmaster into bringing her to their house. For a couple of months, remember? Another clever one.

  Best not be saying anything more about my sisters in that tone, was what Greta was composing in a sentence that would stop short of ‘making the beard catch fire’, because what would be the use of that?

  This time, there was the little clever one, with a mop and a bucket, washing spray-salt off the glass. It was something people along the quay did before winter. Finn and Catharina were getting wet in the puddles, as expected. Really, that was more important than washing the windows, even though the days were now chilly. Otto was on the owl blanket in a patch of sunshine on the stoop.

  Everyone was astonished, of course.

  Why were they back? Why were Greta and Danne back, wondered Josephina. Mor and far, back, asked Finn.