Devotion(47)
Someone was always sick.
The women in the bow who remained confined to their beds were largely from Tschicherzig, and although Thea and I caught glimpses of these strangers gripping buckets and heard them groaning in the night, we knew them only from what Mutter Scheck intimated to us. Ottilie, who seemed to bring up every meal she attempted, was already widowed at twenty. Another two Johannes, a dressmaker and her cousin, were travelling together. Maria, a girl our age who was close to Ottilie, was orphaned. Christiana, Henriette, Amalie and Elsa we knew.
On fine days Mutter insisted that every able woman drag her mattress and blankets up onto the deck to air them out, allowing us to return them below only after she had brought her nose to the canvas and sniffed, a practice which mortified us, as did her enthusiastic applications of vinegar if the smell was found to be too unpleasant. We were to wash our faces and hands morning and night, and while she did not lean forwards and smell us, she was not above folding down our ears to ensure that we had cleaned thoroughly. We washed in sea water, which left my skin feeling tight and dry. Sometimes, in the light, I could see tidelines of salt ebbed upon Thea’s neck and forehead, and knew I had them too.
‘Mermaid,’ I whispered to her, the first time I saw them on her skin.
‘More like salted herring,’ she replied.
Mutter Scheck’s appraisal and insistence on cleanliness was not limited to our beds and bodies. Our moral scrupulousness was also closely watched. All single women were forbidden from breaching the confines of the bow at night and Mutter Scheck discouraged us from even lurching to the water closet set aside for our use. Instead she issued us with tin chamber-pots that slid under our bunks, and sometimes had to be fetched from the far wall by wriggling under the lower berths on our stomachs. The Guzunder, when finally found and filled, was to be emptied into the slop pails secured to the side of the berth by a hook, and all was to be voided and rinsed daily, weather permitting. Any woman who did not securely replace the lid to the slop found herself saddled with the responsibility of emptying it for a week or more, an unenviable task when the ship was rolling. Mutter Scheck inspected our cutlery and plates after washing and made us keep our dishes against the side of the berths. When Henriette complained about their constant rattling, Mutter produced some string to hold them fast, and my father inserted small hooks into the wood from which we might hang our cups, for ease of drying and reaching. Often times, at night, I would watch my and Thea’s mugs sway above my head, until sleep finally arrived, and occasionally, during swell, I would be woken by a plummeting handle smacking into the bridge of my nose.
Everything was supervised, rationed, managed. But, as the weeks passed, I saw that Mutter Scheck, while unyielding and particular, was genuinely concerned for our health, even if that concern manifested in a public urging to take aperient pills and eat a little less salt pork and a little more oatmeal. She was affectionate towards us in her own way. Occasionally there were packets left on berths: washing soda for the girl who did not have a spare flannel; a bottle of castor oil for one who did not attend her pail as often as Mutter Scheck believed appropriate. And once, late at night, I saw her lift Ottilie onto her lap, holding her like a baby, so that Maria could swiftly exchange the damp and soiled mattress for an aired one without exposing the sick woman to the indignity of daylight.
Every Sunday Thea and I were visited by our mothers. Mama gave me Hermine in the afternoon so that she might have some respite, and after briefly telling me that everyone was managing as well as they might, she would return to her own berth. Anna Maria, however, liked to sit with Thea and me at the table or on our berth and tell us exactly what had happened since her last visit: the argument Elder Pasche had started with a sailor who spoke directly to Rosina; the rumour that a couple from Klemzig were not actually married; the dolphins she had seen swimming upside down alongside the ship; the great escape of the captain’s pig from its crate upon deck and the unease she felt watching Dr Meissner treat those who remained unwell.
‘I believe he considers the work beneath him,’ she admitted to us one afternoon, absently letting Hermine chew her finger. ‘Do you know the man Helbig, from Züllichau?’
Thea and I shook our heads.
‘Well, he is very sick. This morning, after an awful night – we could all hear him moaning – the doctor was fetched. He was conferring with the man’s wife, and an argument broke out between them. Frau Helbig was very distressed, shouting at the doctor and asking him how her husband was supposed to get better without any medicine. Everyone went quiet at that. Then we all heard Dr Meissner lose his temper and scream at this woman – this poor woman, afraid for her husband’s life.’
‘What did he say?’ Thea asked.
‘I shouldn’t repeat it.’ Anna Maria dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘He said, “Do not tell me how to do my work, bloody peasant!” And then, when he realised we had all heard him, he spat on the floor and told us we were all “a pack of dogs”.’
‘Does he not have any medicine?’ The thought that the man entrusted with our wellbeing held us in contempt made me feel deeply uneasy.
‘He does. I have seen his chest.’ She shook her head. ‘I think the truth is that he is a drunkard and that he had forgotten to give Herr Helbig treatment. The door to his cabin was ajar yesterday. I saw him asleep in there, snoring as loud as you like, no matter that it was the afternoon and children sicking up their water below decks.’