7

21 September 1882

Four days ago I travelled to Leipzig, where my cousin Clara was to give a piano recital to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of the new Peterskirche. Papa asked me to go, as we had not found time yet to travel to Bremen to see Clara and her parents. I wonder, sometimes, if Papa is avoiding our home city because the memories of his time there with Mama are too strong.

I was met at the train station by Clara’s governess, who escorted me via carriage to the recital venue, not far from one of the gates to the city and close to where the new church was being built. A large crowd was entering the grand building, and I took my seat with the governess, some distance from where I could see my aunt and uncle. The governess pointed out Clara to me. My cousin, her blonde hair in a long tight braid, was sitting very straight and looked nervous as she waited to be called to the stage. When my aunt saw me for the first time in six years, she dipped her head in recognition, but I was shocked to feel little warmth in her gaze.

‘Am I late?’ I asked the governess, who shook her head.

‘No, not at all. But if I can warn you, Fräulein, I think the family have their misgivings about your father’s ventures …’

Those words, as unexpected as they were, explained much about my extended family’s lack of contact. Only one letter from them reached us in Queensland, and that arrived after Mama died. At the end of the recital, the governess asked me to come with her to the carriage.

‘The family will meet us back at the hotel,’ she said.

I had intended to wait for Clara and asked if they were embarrassed by me. Perhaps my loose hair …

The governess spoke behind her hand. ‘I am sure they have no reason to be,’ she said. ‘You appear perfectly civilised to me, but they are very particular about whom Clara associates with. Very particular. I am the family’s third governess.’

I was given a small room at the back of the hotel where the family were staying. Clara and her parents were civil over the evening meal in the hotel restaurant, but there were no questions of my time in Australia, only discussions that compared Clara’s fine Bach performance to that of the two other young performers. When I caught my cousin’s eye, I sensed a desire to talk, but after the meal my aunt asked Clara to retire to her own room to rest, for there were to be more performances tomorrow. It continued this way until my departure.

It is as if my aunt and uncle fear I have become savage in my ways, too, and might taint their talented daughter by association. It is funny really, their fear. I want to put my mouth to their ears and tell them to wake up and live. I want to blow hard like Can-o-bie on a bad day and try to increase the space in their heads. I want to shake them and ruffle their hair and splash seawater on their small, false smiles so that they might taste salt and be shocked out of their serious and sullen states.

I left this morning, deciding it would not trouble me at all if I never saw my aunt and uncle or even Clara again. On the way home, I looked at the sky from the train window and was startled to again see a large comet, this one brighter than the previous two I had seen and with the appearance of a bird with wings spread. I watched it for some time and when I arrived back here in Dresden I hugged Papa tightly and we studied it together. I asked him why there had been three comets in the space of two years, and he said that sometimes it is like that, ‘Sometimes they are part of the same original comet, like parents and children who do not like to be apart for long.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘How wonderful it will be when K’gari becomes a reserve bearing your mother’s name. Our funds are starting to build, Hilda, so we will soon be able to travel to England. But you must be patient a little longer.’

It is still quite warm in Dresden, although I can feel the seasons changing. Our hotel overlooks the zoo and the Groβer Garten beyond and is close enough to smell the waft of the carnivores’ manure. The nocturnal clamour of caged animals keeps me awake at night, but I have decided I like such sounds.

Dorondera is very quiet today and Jurano seems angrier than usual. Not even Bonny is talking to Papa, who says it is because our friends are growing greedy and want more money than he can afford to pay them. I suspect something else happened in my absence, but no one is speaking of it, and I will not press them. I feel lighter after returning here, away from Clara’s family, and I wish to remain feeling happy for a time.

Papa says we must visit Berlin again in the new year, for there is to be a south-seas exhibition at Castan’s Panopticum with the collections of Otto Finsch on display, and Herr Castan would like the Queensland group to perform in the months leading up to it. But first, Papa told me with a wide smile, we are to travel to Cologne. He said the emperor is visiting in November and we are to have an audience with him. It is not the English Queen, but Papa says it will be to our advantage to go as there are, of course, connections to the English monarchy.

Audience numbers have started to decline here at the zoological garden, and the director has said we need to leave within a fortnight to make room for new shows. People are soon to arrive from Africa with many animals.

25 September 1882

Monsieur Perouse has arrived with news that he would be happy to accompany us to Paris where Herr Hagenbeck has arranged for us to also travel. Herr Hagenbeck sent a message to Papa that Bonny, Jurano and Dorondera will receive larger audiences in Paris than they are receiving here in Germany. ‘Larger audiences mean better pay,’ Papa says. ‘And more money means we can take a ship to England sooner.’ I said to Papa that I thought our finances were healthy, and that was when he confided that he had received the account for the hotel here in Dresden. ‘I had not expected it to cost so much,’ he told me. ‘It has set us back.’ Then he added, as if I had forgotten, ‘And we were always planning to go to France, Hilda. Nothing has changed.’

So, it seems we have the next months planned out: Cologne, then Berlin (because Papa promised the clown Castan another visit) in the new year, then France. After that, finally, England, which I know cannot come soon enough for Bonny. Mama was seldom outwardly angry, and I must do my best to suppress my frustration at the delays, for not everyone is displeased with our circumstances.

It transpires that Monsieur Perouse has family in the fur trade, and that is how he came to purchase the fur coat that he brought this evening for Dorondera. Jealousy, as I have written before, belongs to that category of emotion Mama described as ugly, so I forced myself to smile. ‘It is beautiful,’ I told her as I watched Papa search his pocket for sufficient funds. But Monsieur Perouse said there was no need for payment, and that it gave him great pleasure to give the fur to Dorondera and to join us on our travels.

Dorondera, I am pleased to say, looked happy again for the first time since my return from Leipzig. But her joy was short-lived, for Jurano’s cough grew very bad indeed this evening. He had been carving a toy boomerang and the air around him was dusty.

Papa said we should move him into the fresh air, which we did, but even on the hotel balcony the fit continued. Jurano buckled over, and when he sat up, there was a line of blood on his chin and down his shirt. Specks of blood also dotted the pale wood of the boomerang he was clutching. It was ghastly and frightening to see.

Papa brought his hands together and leaned his face against the steeple they made. Tuberculosis, I know, is his worst fear. He asked Jurano if he had ever before coughed up blood, and Jurano shook his head.

Bonny, who had been practising his German writing at the hotel table, stood.

‘If it has not happened before, perhaps it is just a mild illness,’ Papa said. ‘Brought on by the change of seasons.’

‘Let us hope,’ Monsieur Perouse said, studying Dorondera with what seemed to me to be loving concern.

Dorondera, I remembered, had developed a cough this very morning. I looked through the hotel window at the comet, still there in the sky, day and night, brighter even than Jupiter. Papa said it was the brightest comet in a thousand years, and that if we had still been in Australia he may have been the first to record it.