‘Johanne?’
‘Mm?’
‘She is dwelling now in that place where there is no more pain or sorrow, and she shall be the Lord’s handmaiden and under His protection.’
‘Tell me that is true, Heinrich.’
‘It is true.’
‘Tell me she is with God.’
‘She dwells in glory. She is at rest.’
My mother murmured assent.
The knowledge that my father spoke a lie and was so believing of his own falsehood tore at something deep within my heart. I was not with God. I was with them. Part of me hoped that Papa’s canted eye would light upon me and see my form as a contour in the air. A shifting of space. I followed him as he hauled nightsoil to the upper deck, and when he stood at the ship’s rail, empty bucket at his feet, looking up at the churning masses of clouds, I threw my arms around his middle. He gave no sign he sensed me there.
‘Papa?’
I reached up to angle his eye to my face. I could feel his beard under my palms, could feel his jaw working. There was his blind eye, the glisten between eyelid and lash. Part of me wondered if I might see my own image reflected in this pupil, angel-blessed, seer of Heaven and all unearthly things.
‘Look at me. Notice me.’ I waited for recognition, and when none came I wondered if his ruined eye truly did see Heaven, and what he had thought when I failed to appear in that holy orchard after my death. Had he lied to my mother about my inhabiting it? Or had he always lied to me?
His holy eye is simply afflicted, I realised, as he stepped through me and moved off towards the hatchway with the empty bucket. He sees nothing but the desires of his own mind.
I never saw Mama cry for me. She had not cried over Gottlob either, and I had thought then that her lack of tears spoke to a ruthless stoicism. I had resented that strength and thought her heart hard. But as I watched her quietly drag herself through the hours, I saw that my mother was possessed by loss. Her blood wailed with it. Her milk dried up and the young, red-cheeked woman from Klemzig became Hermine’s wet nurse.
Mama understood me to be gone from her and, in her suffering, I saw evidence of such love. I was awed by its enormity. She had loved me my whole life and she loved me still, but she had no place to put that love and she suffered under its weight.
If only I had known this in my living years.
such a thing happened
The storm shifted something within me. It was an untethering. If my first christening had, with still and sanctified water, welcomed me into the light of the Lord, the ocean that night admitted me into His shadow. I was the baptised dead. If my brief and wondrous life was gone from me, and if all I had now was the freedom to go where I pleased, to watch whom I wanted, then I would do so.
Days passed and I grew wilder with each one. Unbound from the religion of my father, I lived by my own nature. I explored the ship as I would never have been able to in life. I watched Christian and Rosina complain in whispers and remove food from each other’s teeth. I noticed Emile Pfeiffer give her daughter the better bread and Beate Fr?hlich weep in private at the lice. I examined the long, white sideburns of Samuel Radtke’s father, placed my fingertip inside one of Eleonore Volkmann’s mammoth nostrils and overheard sailors’ vulgarities, which I repeated to myself in delight. Most days I climbed the rigging. Wind in my hair, I gave names to the water. I introduced myself to the sky.
I watched the other women slowly, kindly, distract Mama with requests and chores, pulling her upright with appeals for an extra pair of hands to brush the mould off the biscuits, to advise on the best way to cool a child’s heat rash, to suggest an appropriate blessing for commemorative embroidery. ‘Best to brush downwind. Don’t scratch at it – a damp cloth will soothe. “God’s Grace to your green wedding; Go joyfully towards the silver one!”’ She ate more. She snickered at Eleonore Volkmann’s wry observation that the doctor was playing ‘die beleidigte Leberwurst’ – ‘the insulted sausage’ – and she struck up a curious friendship with the young woman who now nursed Hermine. Her name was Augusta and she had been born in Klemzig only a few years before I came into the world. Her husband, a man called Karl, ten years older, had suffered rather badly throughout the journey from scurvy and had lost a lot of weight, and, to Magdalena’s disapproval, I saw Mama bring Anna Maria to his berth to treat his bleeding gums. Hermine found a playmate in their chubby son, Wilhelm, both babies sitting on the floor mouthing things they found discarded under the bunks.
Papa approved of Mama’s new friendship. I guessed that he felt relieved his wife had resumed something of her old self. He was now free to resume his duties as elder and representative. I watched a keener edge of religious fervour emerge in my father as he took his place as leader of the people. He gave himself further to God and summoned Him into every decision, from how best to divide bacon to whether to complain to the captain about the water barrels, which were now only good for tea and coffee. It was difficult for people to argue with him when every choice was staked to gospel, and so passengers complied and the small fires of argument between decks were largely extinguished. It helped that Papa put himself last in many ways; he did not eat the bigger portion, and he offered his hands to the dirtiest work. If he had held the esteem of his countrymen in Kay, on the ship my father was respected to the point of veneration. He reminded everyone that the journey would end in such freedom and prosperity as they have never known before, and I sensed a growing excitement spread throughout the congregation with each new day.