Devotion, page 12
Magdalena Radtke glanced at her, and then cast her worried gaze at my mother. ‘It looks like a coffin, Johanne.’
Mama raised her eyebrows. ‘As long as it floats.’
‘If God is not merciful to us, we shall be buried in the water.’
Eleonore Volkmann lifted a hand to her forehead and squinted against the light. ‘Look, they’re bringing more supplies out to it now. I wonder what’s in those barrels?’
Elize shrugged. ‘Pork. Flour. Water. Herrings, someone said.’
‘Herrings? I’ve never eaten a herring in my life,’ said Magdalena.
‘Ah well. We may eat stranger things yet.’ Eleonore sighed. ‘Best start with herrings.’
It seemed impossible that we might need so many hundreds of barrels, that such a great hulking ship would not sink under their weight.
‘What if we run out of things to eat before we get there?’ Rosina asked.
A familiar voice murmured into my ear, ‘We can cook the children.’
I turned and saw Hans standing next to me, brown eyes smiling.
‘Stop it, Hans,’ muttered Rosina.
‘Good,’ I whispered, turning back to the ship. ‘They can start with Hermine.’
‘I heard that,’ my mother said.
We were rowed out to the ship in handfuls, assisted onto the top deck by courteous sailors who shouldered our belongings with ease. A tall, clean-shaven man stood watching us as we boarded, hands folded behind his back.
‘That is the captain,’ whispered Matthias.
We stared at him, a little awed. This was the man who would take us over the great seas in nothing but a pile of timber. I wondered at how he knew to do such a thing. ‘He looks clever,’ I said. Matthias nodded. We bowed our heads as we passed him.
When all of us stood upon the deck, hushed and nervous at the height of the masts, the great symphony of ropes and rolled sail above us, the captain cleared his throat and opened his arms wide in greeting.
‘Welcome.’ His voice was a foghorn against the resonance of water and wood, the shouts of the sailors bringing further provisions on board. ‘I am Captain Olsen and it will be my pleasure to bring you to your new home in Adelaide.’
There was a sudden burst of clapping. The captain smiled, bowing his head. He told us a little of what we might expect from the crew, who numbered less than twenty, and then gestured to a man who stood behind him, deep-set eyes shadowed by thick eyebrows. He did not smile, but stepped forwards and looked down over us, Adam’s apple bobbing over his neckcloth.
‘This is Dr Meissner,’ the captain continued. ‘He has been appointed your medical officer and will accompany you on this voyage. As the doctor has been charged with your welfare, he will assign you into messes for meals and cleaning. Dr Meissner is also to be regarded as the authority in all things immediately relevant to your personal conduct, health and wellbeing, and will advise you on what you have been rationed, where you may sleep and all other daily administrations that will ensure an orderly and peaceable voyage. Unless anyone has any immediate concerns they wish to bring to my attention on behalf of the passengers, Dr Meissner will show you to your quarters below deck.’
At this, Christian Pasche raised his hand. ‘We thank you, Captain Olsen. This is a momentous day for us. We leave a place of oppression and tyranny for a land where we might freely worship and pay our debt of love to God by glorifying His name. Captain, would you do us the honour of leading us in the Lord’s Prayer?’
Captain Olsen bent his head and obliged. His voice was deep and pleasant, but it quickly grew faint as a brisk wind sprang up, sweeping his words from the deck and pulling them out along the river. The ropes creaked above us. I opened one eye and saw the sailors with heads bowed, lips murmuring. Ruffled skirts. Hair blown across foreheads.
The prayer blew out to the ocean ahead of us, blessing the air and waters we would travel through, light and tumbling. A bird to make sure of land.
a bolt of black cloth
Sometimes I wonder if I will hear it again, my voice as it was on that day we boarded the Kristi. Surely somewhere that prayer taken up by the wind is still blowing. Somewhere I am still praying. Maybe that is what I am listening for up here in the darkness of the bush: my own sweet voice rushing back at me, offering consolation. Conviction.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Below, in the valley, the lights are slowly pinching out. I imagine the women in the cottages laying down the clothes they are mending and finally going to bed, letting their fires go out in a way they never did back in the villages where they were born. The night is cool, but not cold. The wind is a bow scraping on the stars.
I will not sleep tonight. I was never someone who fell asleep easily, and now sleep seems gone from me in the same way as so much else. There was a time when wakefulness wound my thoughts into wire. But there is much to love about the night, if you know how to surrender to it.
It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom once I had stepped down the hatch to the tween deck. I was bumped by Amalie Schultze coming down behind me on the stair and so groped my way forwards, a hand on Matthias’s shoulder, until my eyes adapted to the low light and I saw the place we were to eat and sleep for the long months of our journey.
It was a long, narrow confinement, the upper beams only a short distance above the tallest of the company. A wooden trestle table extended throughout, benches nailed firmly to the boards beneath it, and on either side of the table, beyond walkways, were wooden berths, one row above another, abutting both sides of the ship. Small lights glowered in heavy, black lanterns.
It was close. The air was already warm and stale with bodies and breathing.
‘Goodness,’ Amalie murmured. ‘How will we all fit?’
I heard Hermine’s familiar wail rise up to my left, where Mama stood peering into a berth, prodding the bare mattress. People kept coming down the stairs and there was soon too little space to move freely. I felt a jab in my side as Hans tried to manoeuvre three large bags through the crowd. He shot me a look of apology as Rosina shouted instructions at him from behind.
‘Silence, please!’ Dr Meissner had his arms extended above his head.
There was a scuffle as Traugott Geschke slipped and fell down the hatch, knocking a young girl to the floor. She started crying, rubbing her head where she had hit it upon the corner of a berth, and several babies started up in sympathy. My heart was racing. There were too many of us, it was too crowded, and still people continued climbing down the hatchway, stumbling over one another, over luggage. There were exclamations of indignation, of disappointment. Arguments broke out.
‘Silence!’
I looked up. Samuel Radtke had climbed on top of the trestle table, head stooped under the low beam. An unlit lantern smacked him in the ear.
‘Brothers! Please, stop. Pay attention to the good doctor.’ He extended a hand to Meissner, offering to haul him onto the table. The doctor accepted reluctantly.
‘Listen!’ His voice was stern. ‘You heard the captain! As your doctor I have command over you for the duration of this journey. You are to conduct yourselves with propriety at all times. All of you are to keep your living quarters in good order, and if I ask you to complete additional cleaning or to stow your belongings in a particular way, you shall do so. You shall do so without question! You must obey my directions in all things, but particularly’ – a low murmuring had broken out and the doctor raised his voice in annoyance – ‘particularly in regards to rations, of which there are a finite supply!’ He waited for silence before continuing. ‘There are twenty-seven barrels apiece of pork and beef, and sixteen of herrings. Cooks shall be designated from amongst your messes, but no barrel nor hogshead shall be opened without my prior consent, and I shall issue instructions as to when these foodstuffs may be eaten with rice, peas or beans.’
The doctor went on, explaining the consequences for drunkenness, for unruliness, for untidiness, until I began to wonder if he did not hold some prejudice against us, or whether he had suffered through previous journeys with the worst of humankind. I could see the elders bristle as the list of offences continued.
When Meissner had finally run out of possible misdemeanours and their consequences, he pointed out the small kitchens, the barrels of drinking water, the water closet for the use of women and children in the main company and one for the single women in their own roped-off quarter. The small lamps, he instructed, were to be extinguished with utmost strictness at ten o’clock every night and during every instance of severe weather. Finally, sensing the growing irritation swelling from the crowd of passengers, he raised a rolled slip of paper and pointed it to the waiting bunks. ‘Berths have been assigned to each family.’
‘Finally,’ Matthias whispered. ‘I thought we’d reach the colony before he stopped.’
‘There shall be two persons to each bunk,’ continued the doctor. ‘If you have an infant –’
There was an outcry of disbelief. Surely it was a mistake. The bunks were narrow even for a single man.
‘Quiet!’ He stomped his foot upon the table. Everyone hushed, taken aback by the sudden display of temper. Meissner cleared his throat. ‘If you have an infant, a box will be provided for the end of the bunk. The carpenter will fix it in place.
‘All unaccompanied single men will be confined to the stern and single young women will be placed together in the bow with a chaperone.’ He pointed to the foremost area. ‘Families will be summoned by name and directed to their berths. Under no circumstances may you change berth without my prior permission. Once assigned, you may store belongings under the lower bunks. Hooks have been provided for those passengers with an upper berth.’
‘How will we fit all our things in that small space?’ shouted Gottfried Volkmann. He pointed to one of the berths. ‘How will I fit in such a small bed?’ He slapped his round stomach. ‘One big wave and my little wife will be squished. Yes, she will be a pancake.’ There was a burble of tense laughter. Eleonore Volkmann, taller than her husband, rolled her eyes.
‘You’d think they’d arrange the bunks fore to aft,’ whispered Matthias. ‘We shall all be rocked like babies in a cradle.’
‘I am not an unreasonable man,’ answered the doctor. ‘Some alterations may be required, as I have already stated. But let us stick to what has been arranged before we discern who is discontented.’
One by one he began to announce the names of all the families on board, allowing Samuel Radtke to direct them to the bunks. The bare sleeping quarters soon looked even more cramped and chaotic as women unpacked bedding, flapping sheets and hanging them between the berths in anxious attempts at privacy.
‘Eichenwald! Friedrich!’
My heart leaped at the name. I watched as Thea’s father raised his hand. The doctor didn’t look up from his documents but waved a hand in the air. ‘Friedrich and Anna Maria Eichenwald, lower berth fourteen. Your daughter . . .’ He glanced up, eyes catching sight of Thea. ‘Your daughter in the bow.’
I watched as Anna Maria frowned. The white of her headdress glowed in the gloom. ‘But she has her parents here,’ she said.
‘Excuse me, Herr –’
‘Dr Meissner.’
Friedrich cleared his throat. ‘Dr Meissner, we are here to accompany our daughter.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘You are an odd number. Husband and wife to berth fourteen. Dorothea Eichenwald to the bow.’ He glanced up at Thea then nodded towards the berths at the front of the ship, separated from the rest of the bunks by a curtain already half ripped off its cord.
Thea glanced at me before kissing her mother and picking her way through the crowd. I watched as she lifted the rope and moved along the empty berths, before sinking onto a lower bunk in the farthest corner. She shrugged at me. I returned her smile, but my heart was a fist.
The names were ceaseless. The air grew warmer. Word spread that there were nearly two hundred souls on board, but only eighty berths. We watched as they filled.
‘Nussbaum! Heinrich!’
My father stepped forwards, raising his hand.
The doctor gestured to his left. ‘Heinrich and Matthias Nussbaum, upper berth here. Wife, daughter and infant, lower berth. Pfeiffer, Daniel!’
Samuel Radtke indicated the two bunks allocated to my family. ‘Ask the carpenter to fit a box for Hermine,’ he said. He glanced at me and smiled apologetically. ‘Shame you are so tall, Hanne.’
‘Where is the carpenter?’ asked Mama.
‘On deck. Don’t worry, there are days yet before we set sail into rougher seas. There will be time.’
I waited until he had returned to the doctor’s side before turning to Mama. ‘How am I going to fit if Hermine’s cot will be fixed to our bunk? My ankles will be dangling over her head!’
‘You’ll have to put up with it, Hanne.’
‘Can’t she just sleep with us? Between us? Then I will have room to –’
‘No, Hanne. Hermine will need some protection. The boat will rock on the open sea.’
‘Perhaps I could join Thea. In the bow, I mean.’
My mother said nothing.
I sat down on the berth. The mattress was thin and I tried to imagine sleeping there for six months, legs tucked up around me. I heard the creaking of wood above my head as my father climbed onto the upper berth.
‘Johanne?’ he called out.
‘How is it?’ asked my mother.
‘They haven’t given us a lot of room.’
Matthias stepped up onto our bunk, gripping the struts like a ladder, to peer overhead. ‘You look like you’re in a coffin, Papa.’
Mama slapped at his shins. ‘Don’t talk like that. Here, come help. You can hang your father’s things on his hook.’ She placed Hermine on the mattress and began to pull out clothes.
I noticed that Reinhardt and Elize Geschke had been assigned the lower bunk next to me and my mother. Elize, breathing hard, gave me an apologetic look as she pinned a sheet into the wood to serve as a partition between us. ‘It’s the baby,’ she said. ‘She keeps me awake. You’ll be glad for this!’ The light from the open hatch cast her into silhouette against the cloth. I watched her shadow fuss at its corners.
‘How do you know it’s a girl?’ I asked.
‘Anna Maria,’ her voice whispered from behind the partition. There was a pause, and then the sheet was pulled to the side and Elize’s face appeared in the gap. ‘Don’t tell anyone I said so,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ I whispered. But Elize had disappeared, the sheet dropped between us.
With the cloth hoisted, I could no longer see Thea in the bow, although I heard the doctor assign Amalie and then Henriette to its quarters after Mutter Scheck was named as chaperone and agreed to serve as the girls’ guardian throughout the journey. Others, too, were sent to the bow – names I didn’t recognise. Women from Tschicherzig, I assumed.
The eight members of the Radtke family were assigned to four bunks on the other side of ours: Samuel and Magdalena on a lower berth immediately to my right, Samuel’s elderly parents on the lower berth next to theirs, with four children in the bunks above. I crawled out of the berth I was to share with Mama at the sound of Christiana quietly exclaiming.
She glanced down at me from her bed.
‘Who are you sharing with?’ I asked.
The round face of tiny Luise Radtke appeared over the edge, smiling. ‘Me.’
I smiled at Luise but felt a little spark of anger at the injustice of my having to share with Mama and Hermine, when Christiana only had the small body of her sister to put up with. Magdalena was making room for Elizabeth in the berth she would share with Samuel. Elizabeth was crying, skin pink and damp.
‘Don’t fall out and hurt yourself,’ I said to Christiana, my voice as flat as I dared.
She frowned.
‘Do you think we’ll be forced to stay here in our bunks most of the time?’ I glanced across to where Mutter Scheck was drawing the curtain across the bow.
Christiana sniffed. ‘Papa says that we will be permitted on deck when the weather is fine. But where else is there to go?’ She looked around the crowded quarters. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she added.
‘The air is very close down here,’ I said.
Christiana smoothed her hair back into her bonnet. ‘God only asks of us what we may bear.’
No sooner had each family been assigned a place to sleep and store belongings than the freighter came into the hatch and whistled loudly to attract everyone’s attention. In the brief halting of conversation, he explained that twenty-five chests of clothing would need to be returned and left behind.
There was an immediate clamour of protestation.
‘They will be sent after you!’ he cried. When no one paused to listen to him, he slammed his fist against the nearest bunk. ‘Stop! Listen! No one is stealing your things. There is simply not enough room and Captain Olsen has ordered that twenty-five chests be removed and sent after you in the next ship going to your destination.’
‘And how long will that be?’ cried Elder Radtke.
‘Captain’s orders!’ said the freighter. ‘Take it up with him.’ He started to climb back out on deck, then hesitated, wiping his brow with his sleeve. He gestured to the crowds of us standing in the thorough fares between berths and table, shoulder to shoulder, belongings still piled upon the long trestle meant for meals. ‘It is a long journey,’ he said kindly. ‘Do not make your passage more uncomfortable than it needs to be.’
Mama was rigid, her face pale. ‘But we have so little as it is.’
Papa bent low and whispered to her, ‘Johanne, we are not leaving the trunk here. Only delaying its passage.’ He looked up as Christian Pasche clasped him on the shoulder, face red.
‘Come with me to speak to the captain,’ he said. ‘We’ve a right to our belongings on arrival.’
Papa nodded. We watched them push through to the hatchway.
Mama closed her eyes for a long time. ‘They would make us leave even that.’ She pointed to the floor, to the trunks stowed in the hold under our feet.
Mama raised her eyebrows. ‘As long as it floats.’
‘If God is not merciful to us, we shall be buried in the water.’
Eleonore Volkmann lifted a hand to her forehead and squinted against the light. ‘Look, they’re bringing more supplies out to it now. I wonder what’s in those barrels?’
Elize shrugged. ‘Pork. Flour. Water. Herrings, someone said.’
‘Herrings? I’ve never eaten a herring in my life,’ said Magdalena.
‘Ah well. We may eat stranger things yet.’ Eleonore sighed. ‘Best start with herrings.’
It seemed impossible that we might need so many hundreds of barrels, that such a great hulking ship would not sink under their weight.
‘What if we run out of things to eat before we get there?’ Rosina asked.
A familiar voice murmured into my ear, ‘We can cook the children.’
I turned and saw Hans standing next to me, brown eyes smiling.
‘Stop it, Hans,’ muttered Rosina.
‘Good,’ I whispered, turning back to the ship. ‘They can start with Hermine.’
‘I heard that,’ my mother said.
We were rowed out to the ship in handfuls, assisted onto the top deck by courteous sailors who shouldered our belongings with ease. A tall, clean-shaven man stood watching us as we boarded, hands folded behind his back.
‘That is the captain,’ whispered Matthias.
We stared at him, a little awed. This was the man who would take us over the great seas in nothing but a pile of timber. I wondered at how he knew to do such a thing. ‘He looks clever,’ I said. Matthias nodded. We bowed our heads as we passed him.
When all of us stood upon the deck, hushed and nervous at the height of the masts, the great symphony of ropes and rolled sail above us, the captain cleared his throat and opened his arms wide in greeting.
‘Welcome.’ His voice was a foghorn against the resonance of water and wood, the shouts of the sailors bringing further provisions on board. ‘I am Captain Olsen and it will be my pleasure to bring you to your new home in Adelaide.’
There was a sudden burst of clapping. The captain smiled, bowing his head. He told us a little of what we might expect from the crew, who numbered less than twenty, and then gestured to a man who stood behind him, deep-set eyes shadowed by thick eyebrows. He did not smile, but stepped forwards and looked down over us, Adam’s apple bobbing over his neckcloth.
‘This is Dr Meissner,’ the captain continued. ‘He has been appointed your medical officer and will accompany you on this voyage. As the doctor has been charged with your welfare, he will assign you into messes for meals and cleaning. Dr Meissner is also to be regarded as the authority in all things immediately relevant to your personal conduct, health and wellbeing, and will advise you on what you have been rationed, where you may sleep and all other daily administrations that will ensure an orderly and peaceable voyage. Unless anyone has any immediate concerns they wish to bring to my attention on behalf of the passengers, Dr Meissner will show you to your quarters below deck.’
At this, Christian Pasche raised his hand. ‘We thank you, Captain Olsen. This is a momentous day for us. We leave a place of oppression and tyranny for a land where we might freely worship and pay our debt of love to God by glorifying His name. Captain, would you do us the honour of leading us in the Lord’s Prayer?’
Captain Olsen bent his head and obliged. His voice was deep and pleasant, but it quickly grew faint as a brisk wind sprang up, sweeping his words from the deck and pulling them out along the river. The ropes creaked above us. I opened one eye and saw the sailors with heads bowed, lips murmuring. Ruffled skirts. Hair blown across foreheads.
The prayer blew out to the ocean ahead of us, blessing the air and waters we would travel through, light and tumbling. A bird to make sure of land.
a bolt of black cloth
Sometimes I wonder if I will hear it again, my voice as it was on that day we boarded the Kristi. Surely somewhere that prayer taken up by the wind is still blowing. Somewhere I am still praying. Maybe that is what I am listening for up here in the darkness of the bush: my own sweet voice rushing back at me, offering consolation. Conviction.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Below, in the valley, the lights are slowly pinching out. I imagine the women in the cottages laying down the clothes they are mending and finally going to bed, letting their fires go out in a way they never did back in the villages where they were born. The night is cool, but not cold. The wind is a bow scraping on the stars.
I will not sleep tonight. I was never someone who fell asleep easily, and now sleep seems gone from me in the same way as so much else. There was a time when wakefulness wound my thoughts into wire. But there is much to love about the night, if you know how to surrender to it.
It took some time for my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom once I had stepped down the hatch to the tween deck. I was bumped by Amalie Schultze coming down behind me on the stair and so groped my way forwards, a hand on Matthias’s shoulder, until my eyes adapted to the low light and I saw the place we were to eat and sleep for the long months of our journey.
It was a long, narrow confinement, the upper beams only a short distance above the tallest of the company. A wooden trestle table extended throughout, benches nailed firmly to the boards beneath it, and on either side of the table, beyond walkways, were wooden berths, one row above another, abutting both sides of the ship. Small lights glowered in heavy, black lanterns.
It was close. The air was already warm and stale with bodies and breathing.
‘Goodness,’ Amalie murmured. ‘How will we all fit?’
I heard Hermine’s familiar wail rise up to my left, where Mama stood peering into a berth, prodding the bare mattress. People kept coming down the stairs and there was soon too little space to move freely. I felt a jab in my side as Hans tried to manoeuvre three large bags through the crowd. He shot me a look of apology as Rosina shouted instructions at him from behind.
‘Silence, please!’ Dr Meissner had his arms extended above his head.
There was a scuffle as Traugott Geschke slipped and fell down the hatch, knocking a young girl to the floor. She started crying, rubbing her head where she had hit it upon the corner of a berth, and several babies started up in sympathy. My heart was racing. There were too many of us, it was too crowded, and still people continued climbing down the hatchway, stumbling over one another, over luggage. There were exclamations of indignation, of disappointment. Arguments broke out.
‘Silence!’
I looked up. Samuel Radtke had climbed on top of the trestle table, head stooped under the low beam. An unlit lantern smacked him in the ear.
‘Brothers! Please, stop. Pay attention to the good doctor.’ He extended a hand to Meissner, offering to haul him onto the table. The doctor accepted reluctantly.
‘Listen!’ His voice was stern. ‘You heard the captain! As your doctor I have command over you for the duration of this journey. You are to conduct yourselves with propriety at all times. All of you are to keep your living quarters in good order, and if I ask you to complete additional cleaning or to stow your belongings in a particular way, you shall do so. You shall do so without question! You must obey my directions in all things, but particularly’ – a low murmuring had broken out and the doctor raised his voice in annoyance – ‘particularly in regards to rations, of which there are a finite supply!’ He waited for silence before continuing. ‘There are twenty-seven barrels apiece of pork and beef, and sixteen of herrings. Cooks shall be designated from amongst your messes, but no barrel nor hogshead shall be opened without my prior consent, and I shall issue instructions as to when these foodstuffs may be eaten with rice, peas or beans.’
The doctor went on, explaining the consequences for drunkenness, for unruliness, for untidiness, until I began to wonder if he did not hold some prejudice against us, or whether he had suffered through previous journeys with the worst of humankind. I could see the elders bristle as the list of offences continued.
When Meissner had finally run out of possible misdemeanours and their consequences, he pointed out the small kitchens, the barrels of drinking water, the water closet for the use of women and children in the main company and one for the single women in their own roped-off quarter. The small lamps, he instructed, were to be extinguished with utmost strictness at ten o’clock every night and during every instance of severe weather. Finally, sensing the growing irritation swelling from the crowd of passengers, he raised a rolled slip of paper and pointed it to the waiting bunks. ‘Berths have been assigned to each family.’
‘Finally,’ Matthias whispered. ‘I thought we’d reach the colony before he stopped.’
‘There shall be two persons to each bunk,’ continued the doctor. ‘If you have an infant –’
There was an outcry of disbelief. Surely it was a mistake. The bunks were narrow even for a single man.
‘Quiet!’ He stomped his foot upon the table. Everyone hushed, taken aback by the sudden display of temper. Meissner cleared his throat. ‘If you have an infant, a box will be provided for the end of the bunk. The carpenter will fix it in place.
‘All unaccompanied single men will be confined to the stern and single young women will be placed together in the bow with a chaperone.’ He pointed to the foremost area. ‘Families will be summoned by name and directed to their berths. Under no circumstances may you change berth without my prior permission. Once assigned, you may store belongings under the lower bunks. Hooks have been provided for those passengers with an upper berth.’
‘How will we fit all our things in that small space?’ shouted Gottfried Volkmann. He pointed to one of the berths. ‘How will I fit in such a small bed?’ He slapped his round stomach. ‘One big wave and my little wife will be squished. Yes, she will be a pancake.’ There was a burble of tense laughter. Eleonore Volkmann, taller than her husband, rolled her eyes.
‘You’d think they’d arrange the bunks fore to aft,’ whispered Matthias. ‘We shall all be rocked like babies in a cradle.’
‘I am not an unreasonable man,’ answered the doctor. ‘Some alterations may be required, as I have already stated. But let us stick to what has been arranged before we discern who is discontented.’
One by one he began to announce the names of all the families on board, allowing Samuel Radtke to direct them to the bunks. The bare sleeping quarters soon looked even more cramped and chaotic as women unpacked bedding, flapping sheets and hanging them between the berths in anxious attempts at privacy.
‘Eichenwald! Friedrich!’
My heart leaped at the name. I watched as Thea’s father raised his hand. The doctor didn’t look up from his documents but waved a hand in the air. ‘Friedrich and Anna Maria Eichenwald, lower berth fourteen. Your daughter . . .’ He glanced up, eyes catching sight of Thea. ‘Your daughter in the bow.’
I watched as Anna Maria frowned. The white of her headdress glowed in the gloom. ‘But she has her parents here,’ she said.
‘Excuse me, Herr –’
‘Dr Meissner.’
Friedrich cleared his throat. ‘Dr Meissner, we are here to accompany our daughter.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘You are an odd number. Husband and wife to berth fourteen. Dorothea Eichenwald to the bow.’ He glanced up at Thea then nodded towards the berths at the front of the ship, separated from the rest of the bunks by a curtain already half ripped off its cord.
Thea glanced at me before kissing her mother and picking her way through the crowd. I watched as she lifted the rope and moved along the empty berths, before sinking onto a lower bunk in the farthest corner. She shrugged at me. I returned her smile, but my heart was a fist.
The names were ceaseless. The air grew warmer. Word spread that there were nearly two hundred souls on board, but only eighty berths. We watched as they filled.
‘Nussbaum! Heinrich!’
My father stepped forwards, raising his hand.
The doctor gestured to his left. ‘Heinrich and Matthias Nussbaum, upper berth here. Wife, daughter and infant, lower berth. Pfeiffer, Daniel!’
Samuel Radtke indicated the two bunks allocated to my family. ‘Ask the carpenter to fit a box for Hermine,’ he said. He glanced at me and smiled apologetically. ‘Shame you are so tall, Hanne.’
‘Where is the carpenter?’ asked Mama.
‘On deck. Don’t worry, there are days yet before we set sail into rougher seas. There will be time.’
I waited until he had returned to the doctor’s side before turning to Mama. ‘How am I going to fit if Hermine’s cot will be fixed to our bunk? My ankles will be dangling over her head!’
‘You’ll have to put up with it, Hanne.’
‘Can’t she just sleep with us? Between us? Then I will have room to –’
‘No, Hanne. Hermine will need some protection. The boat will rock on the open sea.’
‘Perhaps I could join Thea. In the bow, I mean.’
My mother said nothing.
I sat down on the berth. The mattress was thin and I tried to imagine sleeping there for six months, legs tucked up around me. I heard the creaking of wood above my head as my father climbed onto the upper berth.
‘Johanne?’ he called out.
‘How is it?’ asked my mother.
‘They haven’t given us a lot of room.’
Matthias stepped up onto our bunk, gripping the struts like a ladder, to peer overhead. ‘You look like you’re in a coffin, Papa.’
Mama slapped at his shins. ‘Don’t talk like that. Here, come help. You can hang your father’s things on his hook.’ She placed Hermine on the mattress and began to pull out clothes.
I noticed that Reinhardt and Elize Geschke had been assigned the lower bunk next to me and my mother. Elize, breathing hard, gave me an apologetic look as she pinned a sheet into the wood to serve as a partition between us. ‘It’s the baby,’ she said. ‘She keeps me awake. You’ll be glad for this!’ The light from the open hatch cast her into silhouette against the cloth. I watched her shadow fuss at its corners.
‘How do you know it’s a girl?’ I asked.
‘Anna Maria,’ her voice whispered from behind the partition. There was a pause, and then the sheet was pulled to the side and Elize’s face appeared in the gap. ‘Don’t tell anyone I said so,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ I whispered. But Elize had disappeared, the sheet dropped between us.
With the cloth hoisted, I could no longer see Thea in the bow, although I heard the doctor assign Amalie and then Henriette to its quarters after Mutter Scheck was named as chaperone and agreed to serve as the girls’ guardian throughout the journey. Others, too, were sent to the bow – names I didn’t recognise. Women from Tschicherzig, I assumed.
The eight members of the Radtke family were assigned to four bunks on the other side of ours: Samuel and Magdalena on a lower berth immediately to my right, Samuel’s elderly parents on the lower berth next to theirs, with four children in the bunks above. I crawled out of the berth I was to share with Mama at the sound of Christiana quietly exclaiming.
She glanced down at me from her bed.
‘Who are you sharing with?’ I asked.
The round face of tiny Luise Radtke appeared over the edge, smiling. ‘Me.’
I smiled at Luise but felt a little spark of anger at the injustice of my having to share with Mama and Hermine, when Christiana only had the small body of her sister to put up with. Magdalena was making room for Elizabeth in the berth she would share with Samuel. Elizabeth was crying, skin pink and damp.
‘Don’t fall out and hurt yourself,’ I said to Christiana, my voice as flat as I dared.
She frowned.
‘Do you think we’ll be forced to stay here in our bunks most of the time?’ I glanced across to where Mutter Scheck was drawing the curtain across the bow.
Christiana sniffed. ‘Papa says that we will be permitted on deck when the weather is fine. But where else is there to go?’ She looked around the crowded quarters. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she added.
‘The air is very close down here,’ I said.
Christiana smoothed her hair back into her bonnet. ‘God only asks of us what we may bear.’
No sooner had each family been assigned a place to sleep and store belongings than the freighter came into the hatch and whistled loudly to attract everyone’s attention. In the brief halting of conversation, he explained that twenty-five chests of clothing would need to be returned and left behind.
There was an immediate clamour of protestation.
‘They will be sent after you!’ he cried. When no one paused to listen to him, he slammed his fist against the nearest bunk. ‘Stop! Listen! No one is stealing your things. There is simply not enough room and Captain Olsen has ordered that twenty-five chests be removed and sent after you in the next ship going to your destination.’
‘And how long will that be?’ cried Elder Radtke.
‘Captain’s orders!’ said the freighter. ‘Take it up with him.’ He started to climb back out on deck, then hesitated, wiping his brow with his sleeve. He gestured to the crowds of us standing in the thorough fares between berths and table, shoulder to shoulder, belongings still piled upon the long trestle meant for meals. ‘It is a long journey,’ he said kindly. ‘Do not make your passage more uncomfortable than it needs to be.’
Mama was rigid, her face pale. ‘But we have so little as it is.’
Papa bent low and whispered to her, ‘Johanne, we are not leaving the trunk here. Only delaying its passage.’ He looked up as Christian Pasche clasped him on the shoulder, face red.
‘Come with me to speak to the captain,’ he said. ‘We’ve a right to our belongings on arrival.’
Papa nodded. We watched them push through to the hatchway.
Mama closed her eyes for a long time. ‘They would make us leave even that.’ She pointed to the floor, to the trunks stowed in the hold under our feet.
