Paris Savages

An extraordinary occurrence took place today as we crossed the north Atlantic, less than a week away from reaching Hamburg. A full solar eclipse, the likes of which Papa said he had never seen. But that was not the end of it. As the moon cloaked the sun and an eerie dusk fell, we saw another comet, its tail a streak in the black like a mullet at night. All of us fell silent and I can only imagine what was in the heads of my friends. What sort of omen was this?

Stripped of most of her sail, the Wilhelm slid across the North Sea towards the lightship, a three-masted schooner at anchor several miles from the mouth of the river Elbe. Germany, Hilda thought. It did not feel like home. She drew the high collar of her jacket around her chin and stared into the welcome glow, as unlikely as a comet after a quarter of a year at sea.

‘Slowly,’ called the lightship pilot, his voice hoarse in the way her father’s was when he was tired. ‘Approach very slowly. We don’t want a collision.’ Hilda supposed he had made this command countless times at all hours of the day and night. The pilot climbed down a series of steel rungs from the lightship into a cutter and rowed across, boarding the Wilhelm by way of its rope ladder.

Hilda stared at the man as he boarded, taking in his long black jacket with gold buttons, black trousers and naval-style cap, which he dipped to them. His formality struck her as amusing and detracted from the man’s pleasing face. Hilda noticed her father straightening his own jacket as he spoke with the pilot. Men are like male dingoes competing with one another, she thought.

Hilda heard the hatch open and turned to see Dorondera arrive on deck in the white dress Louis had packed, which now fitted her. The lightship pilot paid Dorondera less attention than Hilda imagined he might, but then he had probably seen more unusual comings and goings than most. Trade ships from all corners of the globe, people from distant colonies, even the creatures of Hagenbeck’s ‘zoo’ would have passed along this river, their ears pricked to the new sounds and their noses raised to the unfamiliar scents on the wind.

‘He is handsome,’ Dorondera whispered in Badtjala, referring to the pilot who was giving instructions to the first mate at the helm. She ran her hands over her shoulders and down her chest to signify the man’s clothes.

They looked towards the mouth of the Elbe and, beyond it, the distant glow of Hamburg.

‘There is still a way to go. Papa says it will take all day and tonight. We stop there first.’ Hilda pointed to a place in the distance, a wooden beacon as tall as a satinay that marked the entrance to the river and the town of Cuxhaven. ‘He wants to send a message to the man who is expecting us. Herr Hagenbeck.’

Dorondera set her gaze on the sun rising over the land and smiled as the pilot approached them. He pointed at the distant wooden structure.

‘That beacon has been welcoming Germans home for more than two centuries,’ the pilot told Hilda, the skin folding into tiny birds’ feet at the corners of his eyes. Bonny’s eyes creased in the same way when he smiled. A sliver of sunlight broke through the clouds and Hilda wondered if it was lighting up the colour in her hair. The ship’s pilot was the sort of man she knew her father would approve of her marrying. Capable. Articulate. German. They neared a stone house on a large allotment and, for a moment, Hilda pictured living there with the young pilot. A small herd of cows nudged the grass, and a rooster crowed.

Dorondera cleared her throat. ‘You are already forgetting me,’ she said in Badtjala.

‘No,’ Hilda said, although for that moment it had been true. She had entirely forgotten why they were here.

They passed countless fields flushed with spring growth, and Hilda marvelled at the richness of the land of her birth.

Louis knocked on the wall outside Hilda’s cabin. ‘We’re approaching the port,’ he said. ‘I thought you would want some time to get dressed. The blue dress perhaps, or the green with the flowers. Gloves, of course.’ The sounds of Hamburg’s port were audible through the ship’s hull.

In the dawn light coming through the porthole, Hilda looked at her mother’s pendant watch. The slow, hundred-mile journey along the Elbe had felt as if it would never end.

‘Hilda?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

She heard his footsteps retreat.

‘Time to wake up,’ she said to Dorondera in German, climbing down from her bunk and stroking her friend’s arm. Dorondera opened her eyes. ‘We are here,’ Hilda said. ‘Are you very excited? It will be so wonderful.’

Hilda washed her face at the basin and brushed her hair, noticing the flayed ends in need of a trim. She took from her suitcase the olive-green dress with the embroidered red eucalypt flowers and the silk bag containing her mother’s jewellery. Carefully she removed a thin gold chain and cradled the necklace in her hand. She fingered the solitary pearl pendant.

‘I found some shells like that,’ Dorondera said drowsily in Badtjala, pointing to the pendant. She lifted her mattress and extracted a knotted handkerchief that Hilda thought she’d lost. Dorondera handed over the bundle, which Hilda untied. Inside were some two dozen pearls.

‘The captain had a large bag of them in there,’ Dorondera continued in her own language, indicating to the captain’s washroom.

‘You should not have taken them,’ Hilda said, also in Badtjala now.

‘They are shells … He does not own them.’

Hilda resecured the handkerchief and hid it in the corner of her suitcase. ‘Don’t tell anyone we have them. Not even Papa.’ She rubbed her forehead and hauled the red dress that was once her mother’s from the suitcase she now shared with Dorondera.

‘You can wear this one,’ Hilda said, switching to German. ‘You look so pretty in it. And sit up. I’ll braid your hair. It’s a special day.’ She tried not to think of the pearls and what might happen if the captain realised his loss, but she was not inclined to return them.

Dorondera pushed herself up to sitting, and Hilda applied the brush, then plaited Dorondera’s hair in an intricate arrangement that ran down the side of her head and was neatly fastened at the back with a red ribbon. The other ribbon Hilda owned was white. She looked forward to purchasing more.

‘Now, let me do yours,’ Dorondera said, and Hilda sat for her. Dorondera’s fingers worked quickly and efficiently, and when she was done, they pressed their heads together to look in the cabin mirror and admire their handiwork.

Hilda and Dorondera arrived on deck as the sun rose over the port through a forest of masts. Hamburg’s expansive waters were already a bustle of jostling skiffs ferrying New World goods to shore. The small boats skimmed the water reminding Hilda of water-skating insects on K’gari’s lakes. Many of the labourers working the boats were dark-skinned, Hilda observed. Some appeared Indian, others African. A jumble of languages reached the Wilhelm.

Hilda’s father was clasping the ship’s rails near the helm, his body tilted forwards. He turned to her and extended his arm, his nostrils flaring with emotion. Hilda went to him and took his hand, holding out her other hand to Dorondera. Louis was wearing several rings, not just the one bearing the family crest.

‘Finally, Hilda,’ he said as they glided towards the docks. He looked along the ship to where the crew were lined up by the rails near the deckhouse, Bonny, Jurano and Hans amongst them. They were joking and Jurano’s high-pitched laughter rang out like a bird’s cry.

Louis pointed out a steam cargo ship that bore the name Woermann, a German firm he said had growing interests in Africa. In exchange for gin, schnapps and guns, it would likely import palm oil, sugar, gold and ivory, he said. A passenger ship blew vast clouds of white smoke into the orange sky and blasted its horn sending vibrations through Hilda’s chest. Dorondera blocked her ears. There was a large crowd on the floating pier, waving up to hundreds of people on the passenger ship, many of whom were waving back and blowing kisses.

‘They’re leaving for America,’ the ship’s pilot said. ‘Soon there will be no one left.’

It didn’t appear that way to Hilda. She had forgotten what it was like to be amongst such a mass of people and, as exciting as it all appeared, the thought of disembarking unnerved her. She feared it would be overwhelming, too, for Dorondera, Bonny and Jurano. Hamburg, it was clear, was experiencing breathtaking growth. Chimneys spewed, and she heard the whistle of a goods train. Further south, houses were being demolished to make way for what her father said was the new ‘free port’. Hilda watched a third steamship, one loaded with coal, head north, back along the Elbe in the direction of the North Sea. Black dust fogged the sky behind it.

‘Why America?’ she asked.

‘Better wages,’ the pilot answered. ‘Bismarck is trying to keep workers here with promises of pensions and health insurance schemes, but …’

Her father had only ever spoken of the riches of Europe, and Hilda wondered if it was not all as rosy as he had made out. She blocked her ears as the passenger ship sounded its horn again. When her family left Germany six years ago, Hilda had held her mother’s hand tightly and been met with a reassuring smile. ‘What an adventure we will have,’ her mother had said.

Dorondera had said very little since coming on deck, although several of the crew had smiled at her in the red dress, her hair so neatly braided. Hilda squeezed her friend’s hand, realising Christel had hidden her fears well.

To the left, a clock tower read six o’clock. Further up the hill were hotels her father said were for wealthy merchants, and, alongside them, humble dwellings, the seamen’s quarters. There was a park with large trees, heavy with leaves and flowers, and a winding path where a cart sank into the road edges under its load of baleen. Hilda pondered whether the Wilhelm had passed any of the whales from which the baleen had been taken. She had heard the ocean giants at night, calling to one another.

The ship’s pilot pointed, indicating to the first mate where they would berth, and Hilda’s heart rate sped again. She focused on the copper dome of St Michaelis church, green in the morning sun, and drew Dorondera’s attention to the cathedral. Hilda remembered her mother holding her hand and singing in St Michaelis before they departed, the sound of her voice a soothing vibration that, if Hilda pressed herself close enough, ran through her body, too. Christel had proudly told Dorondera of such beautiful and sacred places, and Dorondera, to this day, held a deep fascination for the miracles she had heard went on inside them. Dorondera knew many hymns by heart and quietly hummed one now. Hilda caught her father smiling.

The ship berthed and there was a flurry of ropes and men. Beyond the crush of the schooners, the original port buildings, five and six storeys high, crammed the shoreline, their open windows staring as if in disbelief at the riches arriving from the colonies and beyond. Narrow lanes and canals carved between the buildings, and Hilda caught glimpses of a street market beyond.

‘Fresh fruit soon,’ Hilda promised Dorondera in German, bumping her playfully with her hip. ‘We will have such a wonderful time.’ But Dorondera was frowning and running her hands over her skirts at the back. The fashions of the women looking on from the shore were different from the clothes Hilda and she were wearing. ‘But we will need some new dresses.’ Hilda winked.

‘With those big behinds?’ Dorondera asked in a mix of German and Badtjala, pointing to her buttocks and indicating a bustle. Hilda had taught Dorondera more German on the voyage, figuring it would be helpful once they arrived.

Hilda shook her head and laughed at what did seem a ridiculous fashion. Dorondera touched her hair self-consciously and commented that the women on shore were mostly all wearing hats.

‘I have bonnets, gifts from Mr Sheridan, in our suitcase,’ Hilda said. ‘I’ll give one to you before we leave the ship.’

Bonny looked up at a small section of flapping sail that was cracking loudly in the wind. He climbed the mast to secure it and, from his higher vantage point, surveyed the city. Hans asked the captain’s permission, then joined Bonny aloft and pointed out various landmarks. Hilda tried to picture the view. A lake. Yes. She remembered there was a large lake in Hamburg. And gardens. Could Bonny also see the two-acre enclosure that her father had said was behind Hagenbeck’s house – the thierpark that would become their home for a time?

After several minutes, Bonny and Hans descended the mast as another boat, piled high with reeking guano, docked astern of them. In the water beside the dock, Hilda saw the remains of a pig carcass. She turned away and pointed in the opposite direction at a sailing boat.

‘Wilkommen,’ Louis said, patting Bonny on the back. Bonny smiled despite the choking air.

‘Danke.’ The cool wind gusted and Bonny shivered, tightening his coat around himself. ‘But it is cold,’ he said, again in German.

Hans reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a woollen beret. ‘I bought it in Paris,’ Hans said, also in German. While he had learned some Badtjala, he had not bothered to teach Bonny Dutch, which he said would be quite useless to him here. ‘But I think your need is greater than mine. Spring can be cold in Germany. Please take it in gratitude for the language lessons.’

Bonny took the beret and fitted it to his head, while Hans removed the notebook from his other pocket and flicked through the pages of Badtjala words and their translations. In several places, Bonny had drawn explanatory illustrations. Hans tore out one of the few remaining blank sheets and wrote on it.

‘My address,’ he said, giving the page to Bonny and pointing westward. ‘You are most welcome to visit me. Yes?’ He thought for a moment and then continued in Badtjala. ‘I am your friend. I help you if you … want.’

Bonny smiled and nodded his approval. He looked in the direction the Dutchman had pointed. ‘Is it far?’

‘Yes.’ The Dutchman laughed. ‘Far.’ He paused as if trying to formulate his next sentence in Badtjala, but shook his head, resorting again to German. ‘But not as far as you have come already.’

Bonny rearranged the beret.

‘You look very handsome in it,’ Hilda said, also in the Aboriginal language.

‘Ha!’ Herr Ullrich reeled, approaching. ‘The Paris Savage. He’ll blend in well.’

‘Merely a hat to keep the man’s head warm,’ Hans responded without looking at the botanist. ‘And you, Fräulein. I wish you all the best. You would also be most welcome in Holland. You all would be.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Louis said. ‘We may indeed see you there. You mentioned that your country is hosting a colonial exhibition soon.’

The Dutchman regarded Louis directly. ‘I meant a social visit. You would be most welcome to visit me for that.’