Devotion, page 16
The few times I had spoken to Mama about the contradictions and impulses of my heart, my uncertainties, she had responded with directives on how I might abolish them. But Thea never drifted away from my conversation, her mind already formulating a remedy. She just listened. And so, on the ship, I told her everything. How I was afraid my mother did not love me as well as she might. That there was something wrong with me for not crying at Gottlob’s funeral. That I had a canker in my heart.
Thea’s response to this last secret was something that, even now, even as I lie here with the stars burning holes in the night, warms me. It was a moment of grace that I have held on to in everything that has followed. Even now, even after the great cataclysm, it sustains me.
‘Owe no one anything, only love one another: for she who loveth hath fulfilled the covenant.’
Never was scripture so beautifully rendered to my heart.
One night Thea and I were woken by a sudden thump from the foot of our berth. We had been sleeping in each other’s arms. We jumped apart.
A voice emerged from the dark. Hoarse. Afraid.
‘It’s burning.’
Someone was kneeling on the floor, leaning against our bunk.
‘Ottilie?’ Thea’s voice was husked.
In the ghost-light I saw she was right. It was Ottilie, her arms folded tight against her abdomen. Her nose was bleeding. ‘Fire, everywhere,’ she muttered. ‘It’s all burning down.’
‘What?’
‘Burning down,’ Ottilie muttered. She seemed not to be aware of her nose; I could hear the patter of blood on our mattress.
‘Wake Mutter Scheck,’ Thea said, crawling out of the bed. I did as she said and together we all managed to lift Ottilie back to her berth.
‘Tip your head back,’ Thea said, placing a cloth to Ottilie’s face. She looked up at Mutter. ‘I don’t think she knows where she is.’
‘Tell Johann,’ Ottilie was saying. Her eyes were closed. ‘Please tell him. He must not breathe the smoke.’
‘Who’s Johann?’ I whispered.
Mutter Scheck was grim. ‘Her dead husband.’ She returned to her berth and began to dress. ‘I shall wake the doctor,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave the bow. See if you can get her to drink some water.’
Thea grabbed at Mutter Scheck’s wrist. ‘Not the doctor. Fetch my mother.’
Mutter Scheck hesitated, looking at Thea with apology. ‘I’ll fetch the doctor first,’ she said gently. ‘Then we shall see.’
Dr Meissner bore the rumpled, wide-eyed look of a man trying to rouse himself from inebriation. ‘A blood nose, you say?’ He kneeled at Ottilie’s bedside and Thea and I exchanged a look. He smelled strongly of brandy.
‘And a terrible fever,’ Mutter Scheck added. She regarded the doctor with consternation. ‘She has had a malaise for over two weeks now, Doctor. She has hardly risen from bed.’
‘And now this delirium.’
Ottilie began to cry.
‘Girls, best you go back to bed now.’ Mutter Scheck took the bloodied cloth from Thea’s hand and gently flapped her away. ‘Dr Meissner and I can manage here.’
We watched the doctor place his ear to Ottilie’s chest. The ship suddenly rolled, and he fell sideways. There was the sound of glass breaking.
‘Damn it,’ he muttered, trying to rise.
Thea bent and picked up a small vial. The top had shattered, spilling white powder. She handed it to Dr Meissner and watched him clumsily pick out shards of glass from the bottle.
‘Thank you, Thea,’ Mutter Scheck said. She extended a hand to the doctor as he stumbled against the tipping of the swell. ‘Go on back to bed.’
The next morning, I woke to the sound of Thea scrubbing the foot of our mattress.
‘I can’t get it out,’ she said, looking up. She was crying.
‘What? What is it?’
‘The blood.’
I looked down at the stained pattern at the foot of our bed. Ottilie’s bunk was empty.
‘Did your mother come?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t see her.’
Thea shook her head and took something out of her pocket. It was a folded piece of paper. She gave it to me. ‘Open it.’
I did so and saw the words Thea had uttered to me weeks earlier, written in Anna Maria’s neat print: the invocation of Adonay.
‘Magdalena and Rosina found this when they moved Helbig’s body,’ she said. ‘They will tell the pastor when we arrive in the colony.’ I glanced across the bow to where Christiana was braiding her hair, determinedly facing away from us.
‘He will understand,’ I said, kneeling next to Thea. ‘He will know Adonay is another name for God.’
Thea flung the wet rag into the bucket. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I hope so.’
The funerals for Ottilie and the man Helbig were held jointly that morning upon deck. The weather remained sultry, the air thick and hot. I noticed that the passengers stood in two groups, Anna Maria in the centre of one, Magdalena in the other.
The deaths of two adults had proven what many had already suspected: there was disease on the ship. The six elders roused the doctor from his cabin and escorted him down to steerage, where they demanded he diagnose the other passengers. At first Dr Meissner refused to confirm that the sickness was anything more than scurvy. But they pressed him, listing the symptoms they found common amongst the ill. Fevers. Delirium. Headaches and malaise. The children itched. The doctor examined each of the sick passengers as the elders looked on, and by evening prayers, everyone on board knew that it was as Anna Maria had warned: there was typhus on the Kristi.
whale
Life on the ship took on a strange intensity. With the bunks already so crowded there was not sufficient space to create a ship’s hospital. The sick remained where they were and those who could bear it joined the passengers already sleeping above deck to give more room and air to those below. More would have gone, but the sea had grown rough again, and waves sometimes broke against the boat, sending foam and spray across bedding and blankets. On occasions of very heavy weather, sea water spilling across the deck would reach us in steerage, where it swilled anything loose upon the floor into corners. The humidity remained stifling. Gottfried Volkmann recounted his experiences of typhus in the wars against the French and was shouted down. No one wanted to hear about the smell of the bodies he had seen. Traugott Geschke and Samuel Radtke came to blows as a long-running feud over a bull was reignited, and Papa was forced to come between them and mediate. The doctor, people noticed, was nearly always drunk. He confused passengers, forgot their names. Amalie Schultze nearly took medicine she did not need because he believed her to be a different woman.
Mama had not spent much time with me in the bow, except to hand over or collect Hermine, but after Ottilie and Helbig died, she started taking me aside after prayers on deck, asking how I was, how the other women in the bow were feeling. One afternoon, having spent the whole day in bed, I looked up and saw her standing at the bottom of my berth.
‘Anna Maria told me you did not eat breakfast,’ she said, gripping the empty upper bunk to steady herself.
I had not realised the Wend had been keeping my mother apprised of my wellbeing, and I wondered whether my mother shared Magdalena’s opinions or whether Hermine’s birth had convinced her of Anna Maria’s skill.
‘I’m just resting,’ I told her. ‘My ankle hurts.’ The sea had grown thuggish since midnight and by morning the ship had been pitching with new violence. I had fallen against the side of the trestle when the ship plunged, spraining my ankle and slamming my shins so hard against the bench that I was convinced I had broken bone. The skin had already darkened to a mottled plum.
Mama leaned towards me and placed a hand on my forehead. I noticed her eyes flick to the unwell in their bunks.
‘Truly, I am fine. It is just my ankle. I tripped, earlier.’
‘No headaches? No pains in your stomach? You feel warm. Where is Thea?’
I shook my head. ‘With her mother in the kitchen galley. How is Papa?’
My mother sat down on the berth and smoothed the blankets. ‘Your father is stalwart.’
‘And Matthias?’
‘I have heard he is having a wonderful time being drenched upon deck. He has turned quite wild with the adventure.’
I smiled, but I could see that Mama was worried. She looked back at the hatchway, visible at the side of the half-opened curtain. Sea water was washing down the stairs.
‘He will come down if it gets worse than this?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘People are talking of lashing themselves to their bunks.’
As if in response to this, the ship lurched and we grabbed each other.
‘God in Heaven.’
Mama glanced back at the hatch. ‘We shall be swimming soon. All this water.’
‘Mama, you’re hurting me.’
‘What?’
‘My arms.’
‘Oh.’ Mama let go, then lay down beside me. The ship plummeted and she closed her eyes. It was dark below decks, on account of the bad weather, but I could still see that the journey had thinned her face. It made her beauty a little harder, a little more jarring. I let my eyes fill with her, my mother, dark gem.
‘You are happy here with the other girls?’ She spoke without opening her eyes.
‘I am teaching Thea whitework. On calmer days, when we can hold a needle without the threat of taking out our eyes.’
‘Mutter Scheck takes good care of you?’
‘Yes.’
Mama opened her eyes and, taking my chin in her fingers, turned my face to hers.
‘What is it?’ I braced myself for warning. For criticism.
Her eyes looked black in the low light. Her gaze unnerved me.
‘What?’
‘I thank God for you,’ she said softly, more to herself than to me.
At that moment there was a cry from the hatchway. Both of us lifted our heads and saw that two people lay on the floor, water washing around them.
Mama sat up. ‘Oh no, it’s Elize,’ she said, and before I could respond she pulled herself out of the berth and rushed towards the main quarters, even as the ship tipped and sent her stumbling sideways through the curtain. She was gone.
Thea came into the bow after the lamps had been extinguished. I heard her stagger along the berths then crawl onto our mattress. I lifted the blanket and she lay down next to me.
‘Your feet are wet,’ I whispered.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Here.’ I moved closer and placed my own feet over hers to warm them. ‘Better?’
‘Mm.’
‘What hour is it?’
‘Midnight.’
‘Where have you been? I thought you were in the kitchens.’
‘I was. Mama needed someone to try to keep the fire going in all this swell,’ Thea said. ‘But then Elize fell.’
‘I know. How is she?’
‘Georg Pasche fell down the hatch ladder and landed on her as she was walking to the water closet. Georg is fine, but Elize went into labour.’
‘She’s not at term.’
‘Five months.’ I felt Thea’s fingers move absently over the inside of my arm. ‘Reinhardt came and found Mama in the kitchens and I went with her to help. That’s why I was gone for so long. I helped her deliver the baby.’
‘Oh. Thea . . .’
Thea’s voice was small in the darkness. ‘Elize can hold her in one hand. I’ve never seen . . .’
‘She’s alive? She had a girl?’
Thea nodded. ‘But she’s so small, Hanne,’ she whispered. ‘I left. Mama and I left, so Elize and Reinhardt . . .’ She could not finish the sentence. I wrapped my arm about her and she cried into my shoulder.
Reinhardt and Elize named their daughter Esther, for Elize’s mother. We learned the next morning that Traugott had christened her minutes before she died. She had lived a full half-hour. The brick they used to weight the shroud was larger than her body.
The elders approached the captain after services, hoping to convince him to heed Dr Meissner’s rumoured petition and put in to the next port. We all stood in silence as they spoke to him, watching Olsen listen and nod. He seemed sympathetic. The morning sky was dark grey, the sea capped white by a blustery wind. I felt nervous, as though something was going to happen that I had little power to stop. A freak wave. Mutiny. The ocean was everywhere, restless, unquiet, sounding like a woman in anger.
‘What is he saying?’ Thea asked me, voice low.
‘I can’t hear,’ I replied. ‘It’s too windy.’
Mutter Scheck shushed us.
A few minutes later the captain broke away from the elders and addressed us as a group. ‘I understand that many of you desire to call at Port de Praia so that the ship might be cleaned of disease and the ill allowed to recover away from its regrettable discomforts.’
There was a general murmuring of agreement.
Olsen assumed a look of deep regret. ‘Unfortunately, I cannot assent to lie at anchor for as long as it will take the sick amongst you to recover. The delay would prove expensive. We do not have enough foreign currency on board to pay for the cleaning of the ship.’ He said something else, but the wind snatched the words from his mouth.
‘What?’ Daniel Pfeiffer cried. ‘Say again!’
The captain renewed his efforts. ‘We have no source of credit on the Cape Verde islands!’
People muttered in dismay. I had not thought of this either.
‘I understand that you are disappointed.’ Captain Olsen extended his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘I understand that many of you are afraid. And so, I would like to console you with the prospect of Brazil. Should the need become greater than it is now, or should my crew become unwell, I will consider Bahia.
‘You have my great sympathy,’ he continued. ‘And I would like to make a gift . . .’ Again, his voice was drowned out by the wind, a snapping sail. ‘I hope it might lift your spirits.’
‘What did he say?’ Mutter turned to me, frowning.
‘What is lifting our spirits?’ called Christian Pasche.
‘Louder, please, Captain!’
Captain Olsen gripped the balustrade and roared. ‘A pig! I’m giving you the pig!’
None of us had any livestock on the boat, although there were some chickens to provide eggs and fresh meat for the captain, as well as the pig, which we’d been told Olsen kept as a sort of pet, and a goat that bleated piteously every time waves emptied over the deck. Two days later, as soon as the weather had calmed and the pig had been fasted, Mutter Scheck insisted the girls in her charge come up on deck to take part in the occasion of its slaughter.
‘A nice pig,’ she said to herself as she climbed the hatchway. ‘We won’t know ourselves.’
The day was hot, with little wind, and in the rare stillness the sounds of people laughing and making as much of the event as possible were earnest and abrasive. Amalie, Christiana, Thea and I stood with three other women on deck, looking on as the young men squabbled in a good-natured way about who ought to be butcher, their fathers and the sailors goading them on.
Papa placed a rope around the pig’s neck, holding it still as Hans and Matthias wrenched the nails from its crate and brought one side free.
‘He’s very strong, isn’t he?’ Christiana murmured to no one in particular.
‘The pig?’ I asked.
‘I meant Hans,’ Christiana answered, rolling her eyes.
Mutter Scheck twitched in disapproval. ‘Halt’s Maul, so fliegt dir keine Mücke hinein. Close your mouth, so no mosquitoes will fly in, Christiana.’
The pig was led out of the crate. Everyone cheered and the animal, startled by the sudden noise, immediately lurched starboard, taking Papa by surprise so that he stumbled and was dragged on his knees. People laughed. Papa joined in, letting out a roar as he got back on his feet. He gave the animal a few slaps on its rear. It squealed and the passengers laughed again.
‘I feel sick.’
Thea had been very quiet all morning. I saw that she had turned away from the deck and was looking out to sea.
‘Really?’
‘I want to go below.’
‘Thea, Daniel Pfeiffer will do it. They’re not going to let the boys fumble it.’
‘Please, Hanne.’
I noticed that she was trembling.
‘I can’t watch.’
Mutter Scheck was enjoying the mirth. I waited until she had stopped guffawing and tapped her on the shoulder.
‘What is it, Hanne?’ she asked, still smiling.
‘Thea is not well.’
Mutter’s smile vanished, eyes flitting to Thea, who waited for me, pale-faced, at the hatch entrance. ‘Fever?’
‘Just a little tired, I think.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure that’s it. I am too. We’ve slept so little these past days.’
‘Go on, then,’ she said, her attention already turning back to the pig and its capture. ‘Don’t leave the bow.’
The pig’s frantic squealing quietened as we returned below deck, but Thea was almost crying by the time we crawled back into bed. She clamped her hands over her ears. ‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘I hate it. I can’t understand why everyone wants to watch such a thing. Hanne, talk to me. Sing to me. Tell me something.’
‘All right.’ I took her hand. It was hot and damp. ‘Think of the lives we have ahead of us. Imagine what they will be like. We will have to learn English, you know.’
There was a loud rumble of laughter from above, a shrill screeching from the pig.
