Devotion(42)

broken beds


Deep night now. The witching hours. The lonely hours.

There is an art to wakefulness at this time, when those around you sleep. All that is diminished with daylight – regret, sorrow and fear – can press on your chest until it is impossible to breathe. Uneasy thoughts can pin you to your bed if you are not careful. The weight of them can sink you into the soil until you feel that you are being buried alive.

When I feel the earth give way around my body under the weight of a troubled mind, I let go. I surrender. I think of all the bones charged to the earth’s tender care, and I imagine my own held in her gentle hands. I imagine the peace of that, of being claimed by such beauty and benevolence, and I let the wind take all my sorrow. I give my fear to the ground, I give my regret to the water.

Disintegration as reunion. Ashes to ashes.

The moon rose before I was there to see it. The moon will rise when I am gone again. I yield to that.



A few days later a steamer towed the Kristi from the city, and the ship made quick work of the Elbe, hampered only by the ill health of Elizabeth Radtke. All of us soon learned that the little girl was suffering from fever – I was woken by her cries at night, as well as Magdalena’s brittle requests for drinking water from the barrel by the long table. One night I woke to a flurry of raised voices and, listening, recognised Anna Maria’s. There was a brief silence and then I heard the Wend exhale sharply out of her nose. ‘You know where I am if you change your mind,’ she whispered.

Magdalena Radtke’s voice was a lash in the dark. ‘I will do no such thing.’

I waited, ears pricked for more, but heard only the sound of footsteps walking away and, in the quiet that followed, a sudden, stifled sob.

A few hours later I woke again and heard Christiana, Franz and Luise praying in whispers, then the swift, booted steps of Samuel Radtke coming down from the cabin with Dr Meissner. There was a soft conference of voices and I heard the sound of a spoon scraping against glass. The doctor left shortly afterwards.

‘Mama,’ I whispered.

‘Mmm?’

‘Mama, what is wrong with Elizabeth?’

My mother did not open her eyes but reached out a hand and touched my shoulder. ‘She has a temperature. The journey here has tried her. Go to sleep. She will be better now that the doctor has been.’

But the following morning I woke to the sound of Christiana crying and the captain below decks, speaking with Samuel and Magdalena. They told us the news, ashen-faced. Later that day Elizabeth’s body was rowed out and buried on the shore of a place called Juelssand.

The next day another two-year-old died, and as the family waited for the captain to negotiate a place of burial at a town along the river, the mother took a knife and cut off the child’s curls. Many of us had just sat down to eat at the long table, and beyond the muted prayers of thanks, we could hear the husband admonish her. The mother seemed indifferent to his hissed reprimands. I looked up over my plate to see her climbing out of a berth, hiding her face in hands filled with the hair of her child.

The deaths of the two children had a sobering effect on the passengers. Captain Olsen, while sympathetic to the grief of the families, did not seem surprised at the early tragedies.

‘In the confines of a ship, illness and disease can spread quickly,’ he said to us after our usual morning prayers upon the deck. ‘I expect us to reach open sea today and it is my fervent wish that no more of you succumb to ill health. We are just over two hundred souls on board and I will do everything within my power to ensure that we remain so for the duration of our passage. But please, you must listen to Dr Meissner and do as he instructs. He will advise you on the best ways to keep your quarters clean and sickness at bay.’

The doctor himself had little to say. When Mama, anxious at our berth’s proximity to the Radtkes, asked him what she might do to inure Hermine against the sickness that had taken Elizabeth, she received a brusque response.

‘A doctor may not be able to prevent illness, although he may treat it,’ Meissner replied, glancing at the Radtkes’ bunks. ‘If you are anxious, pray. I am afraid that I cannot heal those who are not yet sick.’

Mama said nothing, but after the doctor had left, and when she thought no one was looking, I saw her press her nose to the soft tenderness behind my sister’s earlobe and, eyes shut, fiercely breathe her in.


A few hours after the captain’s warning, the Kristi sailed out of the Elbe and into open waters. We felt the shift in the tween decks. A steady tugging rose to lift and fall, and those who had not secured their belongings saw them roll under berths. There were uncertain smiles as neighbours returned a runaway cup, a wooden clog, a shaving bowl.

Weeks had passed since we had left Kay, and it seemed impossible that, after so many rivers, after such waiting, we were away. The freedom that had been spoken of for so many years seemed, finally, to be within reach. It had shape. People crowded the hatchway, eager to be on deck to witness the shoreline slip away. Matthias and I joined the throng, laughing as the ship moved beneath us.

‘The ocean,’ Matthias said. His eyes were sparkling.

‘The ocean,’ I replied. We gripped the steps and clambered out into the wind-slap and exclamations of our fellow passengers.

The deck was crowded; I saw the sea in the air first. The sky was hazy with ocean-breath that kissed my lips, and when I licked them I tasted salt. I squeezed past the people gathered, forcing my way to port side, where my view was clear.