Paris Savages

An hour out of the city, a narrow bridge crossed a fast-flowing stream, a tributary of the Elbe.

Hilda gave her a gentle, teasing push. ‘That water would kill you. It’s far too cold.’

Hilda sighed, shaking her head. She could see that nothing she might say would change her friend’s mind, and she could hardly blame her. While she and her father had access to the Hagenbeck family’s newly installed Bade-Apparate, an invention that piped warm water overhead and showered it over a person’s body, Bonny, Jurano and Dorondera had only a cold-water trough. Hilda tapped on the roof of the coach, and the coachman called to the horses. The carriage pulled to a jerking stop.

Dorondera climbed out swiftly and, lifting her dress above her knees, ran towards the stream, disturbing a cloud of butterflies, which rose from the long grass and trailed her to the water’s edge. Hilda followed, walking quickly, then running, too, aware that her father was watching. She began to giggle, thinking of his comment the night before when she had played chasing games with the Ceylonese children and hitched her dress to ride Sayed’s elephant in the thierpark after hours. In Germany, young women are expected to act with decorum and restraint. They don’t show their legs and they walk slowly. They don’t run.

Hilda ran on, her laughter gathering force until she couldn’t stop it. ‘She wants a bath!’

‘No, Dorondera!’ Louis shouted, standing in the box seat, hands on his hips like a proprietorial statue in a town square. Dorondera unlaced her boots.

‘They’re good swimmers?’ Herr Hagenbeck called. He was stroking the pelt of his hat furiously.

‘The best,’ Hilda answered from the river edge. She noticed the coach driver staring as Dorondera waded into the water, her dress about her thighs, revealing her knee-length woollen drawers and slender calves. Dorondera was scanning the banks, lifting branches and looking underneath them, plunging her hand into the river mud and feeling about. She tossed a river mussel onto the soft, grassy bank.

‘Tell her not to go out too deep,’ Louis called again. ‘It’s not like the lakes on K’gari. And she shouldn’t get her dress wet. She will catch cold.’

Hilda wondered if her father had already forgotten the perils of K’gari’s surf. Dorondera left the water and stood behind a tree, which was ripe with bud. She began to undress, quickly irritated by the difficult task of removing the corset.

‘Here,’ Hilda said, going to her. ‘Let me help.’ She undid the back fastenings, and Dorondera used her growing fingernails to scratch her body through the camisole in the places where the corset had pressed into her skin. Dorondera stepped out of the dress and carefully laid it across a limb of the tree. Sheltered from the men’s gaze, she removed her woollen combinations and made for the stream.

Bonny, also out of the carriage now, was heading upstream, surveying the shallows as if looking for fish.

‘Be careful,’ Hilda called to Dorondera, who was swimming into deeper water.

In answer, Dorondera grinned and dived. In the place she had been, a log spun in an eddy and hurtled away on the current. Hilda waited for her friend to surface, but she did not.

Dorondera appeared in shallower water some thirty feet from where she had dived under. Jurano laughed and clapped his hands. His niece was clutching a handful of mussels, smiling in a way Hilda had not seen for months. Not even in St Michaelis church had she seemed so joyous.

‘Come, Dorondera,’ he said in Badtjala, his voice artificially steady. ‘No safe, this river. Too fast. Too much wood.’ He held out his hand to say, No more.

‘Let her be happy,’ Hilda said. She addressed Jurano. ‘Does she have your permission?’

Jurano nodded and, after giving a rattly cough, added, ‘She is a good swimmer, and she finds real food. Babaram!’

‘Bonny …’ Louis began, but Bonny was already stripped down to woollen undertrousers, handsome and muscular. He collected his spear. Hilda looked away when her father caught her staring.

Dorondera whooped and dived again, surfacing with more mussels, which she gently threw, water trailing in delicate arcs, onto the grassy bank. The shell mounds grew quickly.

From the river edge, Bonny cast his weapon upstream and laughed as the current returned it to him. He held the spear high in the air, displaying a convulsing fish. Victorious, Bonny yelled for Jurano to join him and Jurano, not to be outdone, clutched his own spear, laughed his high-pitched laugh, and ran, still in his long trousers, to the stream.

Hilda’s friends spoke so quickly amongst themselves as they fished that she struggled to understand. Again an outsider, as she had been in the early days on K’gari, she longed to join them. Ignoring more glances from her father, she removed her boots and felt the sensuousness of the damp grass underfoot.

Bonny flung a fifth fish high on the bank, where it flapped and spun on the grass, flattening the new growth. Dorondera, Hilda noticed, was leaving the water through a patch of long rushes and heading for the privacy of the tree.

‘Do you need my help dressing?’ Hilda called in German, although she did not wish to leave the sunshine.

Bonny and Jurano set about gathering dry grass and twigs to build a fire, and Louis looked at his fob watch, then at Herr Hagenbeck.

‘Well, we can hardly take the fish in the carriage,’ the showman said. His long fingers circled his stomach.

Bonny placed a piece of thick bark across a flat rock, overlaid it with dry grass and drilled a stick over the top, rotating it expertly between his hands. He blew on the small stack and, within minutes, a glowing spark ignited the grass. Herr Hagenbeck applauded.

Dorondera emerged having quickly dressed and went to gather up the mussels in her skirts. The corset, Hilda saw, was still draped over the tree branch. She would have to remember to collect it.

‘Here, use my shawl,’ Hilda said, holding it out to her and helping to carry the shellfish to the fire.

Behind them, one of the two horses whinnied, and Hilda turned to see the carriage driver walking back towards them along the road. Had he been watching Dorondera dress? The thought of it made Hilda’s skin crawl. Herr Hagenbeck approached the fire and lowered himself to sit, but Bonny looked up questioningly.

‘You must ask permission to sit at another man’s fire,’ Bonny said in reasonable German.

When the fish was cooked, Bonny laid it on a section of bark and peeled back the skin, exposing the steaming flesh. He took a small piece in his fingers and tested it, smiling broadly, then handed the rest to Hilda, nodding for her to try.

‘Gut,’ he said. He offered fish to Hilda’s father and the showman, but still he was looking at Hilda. His bare foot briefly brushed hers and she wondered if the touch had been intentional. Bonny offered fish to the carriage driver.

‘I don’t eat with them,’ the carriage driver informed Herr Hagenbeck, pointing unnecessarily at Bonny, Jurano and Dorondera.

Hagenbeck laughed. ‘As you wish. There will be more for us.’

Hilda slid a morsel into her mouth, pressing the silky flesh with her tongue until it melted away, sweet and smoky. A line of hot juice spilled onto her chin and ran down her neck. It seeped into the bodice of her dress. She wished she could remove the corset as Dorondera had done. Hilda turned away to wipe the slippery trail and, with her handkerchief, she mopped at the bodice’s smocking, thinking of the raised, secret lines on her breasts underneath.