10

Bonny looks up to the sky as he waits beside Louis for the emperor to arrive. ‘Beeral, how can there be sun on such a day?’ Bonny whispers. ‘Mr Müller said the sickness Jurano has often kills. Can you see Jurano? Who is there for him?’

Louis bows as the emperor approaches, the ruler’s polished helmet gleaming in the sun. I hear the emperor speaking with the zoologische garten’s director about how well the zoo has recovered since the floods some years before.

When the emperor reaches Bonny, Bonny bows deeply as Louis has taught him, and the emperor regards him from the top of his head to his bare feet. Dorondera manages only a small curtsey. Hilda and Dorondera look along the path to where the crown prince and his English wife are coming slowly with two of their children, who are walking between them. The youngest child holds her father’s hand and stops, pulling him back. The crown prince lifts her into his arms, and she whispers something into his ear as she points, wide-eyed, at Bonny and Dorondera. The girl’s face disappears into her father’s thick beard, and Hilda turns away.

I know why Hilda does this. I have seen the change in the way she relates to her father, and he to her. I have read her journal, over her shoulder. I know she once loved Louis very much. I have witnessed the change in him, too. There are many things that have been difficult to watch since my death, these being amongst the hardest.

Crown Princess Victoria smiles as she reaches Bonny, and he begins his rehearsed German lines.

‘I am Bonangera. I come from K’gari, a land far away. Your mother –’

‘Yes. You come from Australia,’ she says in English. ‘My mother is your Queen.’

‘Yes.’ Bonny smiles and switches to English.

‘Please tell mother …’

The two girls at the woman’s side giggle, but their mother nods respectfully.

‘Many my people die.’ Bonny looks at his feet, coloured with German soil. He points directly at the princess. ‘You tell her.’

Louis glances apologetically at the royal couple, who appear surprised but accepting of Bonny’s readiness to speak his mind and his agility with languages. The crown princess’s attention, however, remains firmly on Bonny.

‘Yes, I will tell her. I am sorry to hear of this,’ she says.

‘We want stay on K’gari,’ Bonny continues. ‘We visit Queen soon and say this.’

The crown prince regards Bonny with curiosity. ‘You are not what we imagined,’ he says, also in English although with a thick German accent. ‘Not what the papers would lead us to believe. Tell me, are you well? Do you like our country?’ He points to the great gothic cathedral visible some two miles north along the Rhine.

‘I am well. Yes. But my friend is very sick. In Berlin.’

The emperor frowns, his great white sideburns and wide moustache obscuring much of his face. ‘I had not heard …’ He looks to Louis, who confirms the news with a solemn dip of his head.

‘Bonny, show how you throw the boomerang,’ Louis says, clapping his hands together.

‘The poor man is probably in no frame of mind,’ the emperor begins, but Bonny has already stepped out into the open. He flings the boomerang, the muscles of his chest and arms rippling with the effort. It soars over the elephant enclosures, dividing a flock of birds into panicked halves as if it were a bird of prey. The bar’gan spirals more than a dozen times before landing close to Bonny’s feet.

‘And, Dorondera, your dance,’ Louis instructs in Badtjala as soon as Bonny has returned with the boomerang, which he hands to the emperor to inspect. Again, Louis claps his hands twice, leaving no room for conversation. But Dorondera looks down at the dirt, her shoulders rounded forwards. She turns her back to her audience.

‘For your uncle,’ Bonny encourages his friend. ‘And for your cousins. These people know the Queen and will take a message to her.’

Finally, Dorondera faces the crowd and begins to dance, but her performance lacks vitality. Not even when Monsieur Perouse smiles at her from the side of the crowd does Dorondera’s performance regain anything of its former magic. Bonny begins to sing and, for a time, Dorondera tries to dance to the fast rythym of his words, but, without warning, she doubles over in a violent fit of coughing that leaves her breathless.

The emperor and his wife step quickly back and draw their young family away, the crowd parting to aid their escape.

‘I am sorry,’ Louis calls after the departing dignitaries.

Bonny shouts at Dorondera to stop coughing. He shouts at the sky: ‘What more do you want me to do?’ He turns to the nearest bird, which is looking at him from a fence post. ‘What message has Beeral got for me?’ He shouts for Can-o-bie to blow the contagion away, if that is what it is. He yells, too, at Louis for promising them so much when all he is doing is taking away. He goes to shout at Hilda but, seeing the shocked way she is regarding him, stops.

Monsieur Perouse drapes Dorondera’s new fur coat around her shoulders and walks her towards the carriage, which the driver is edging closer as the crowd disperses. Dorondera coughs into a white handkerchief that she keeps under the sleeve of her possum-skin dress, and the Frenchman pulls the handkerchief away to see its contents. He sighs, and I see on his face immense relief that there is no blood.