11

Bonny and Dorondera were again accommodated in the now familiar porter’s flat beneath Castan’s Panoptikum. It had been a slow tour back to Berlin, performing in small restaurants and beer gardens along the way, their breath misting the air while they waited on the paved platforms of countless small towns for the next train that would carry them closer to Jurano. Louis had insisted there was no hurry, as Jurano was now doing well in hospital and Castan’s porter’s flat was not available until January. That had confused Hilda. Hadn’t her father said their funds were running low? Wasn’t that why he had been in a hurry to sign a contract with Monsieur St Hilaire in Paris? When she challenged her father on these things he told her to leave the business side of the touring to him. He held his hand up to her, as if there was no more to discuss. She looked at the uneven tip of his left index finger and remembered him cutting it on K’gari. Even she had been able to see he had been using the stone knife wrongly, but he had not listened then either.

Yesterday, when Hilda started to write ‘January’ above her diary entry and calculated that only eight months had passed since they had arrived in Europe, she could scarcely believe it. So much had happened, and yet so little of what Bonny and she had hoped for. She felt her mother’s presence daily, urging her to stay strong and not to forget the goal of making K’gari a reserve for the Badtjala. But with Jurano’s life still in peril, and Dorondera also having delivered a scare, such dreams seemed secondary. Hilda had not been able to write a word in her journal for months.

On arriving in Berlin, Hilda, her father, Bonny, Dorondera and Monsieur Perouse had gone immediately to the Charité, where Jurano indeed appeared to have made a slight recovery, although disease progression, Professor Virchow warned, was inevitable. Virchow listened to Dorondera’s chest as a precaution, confirming that whatever had caused her earlier cough was not tuberculosis.

‘I will perform with you tonight,’ Jurano told his niece from his hospital bed, uttering a weak version of his characteristic laugh.

The professor delivered his patient to the Panoptikum, commenting to Hilda’s father on the care Jurano had taken to comb his hair neatly for the occasion. Reassured by Virchow’s insistence that tuberculosis was unlikely to be transferred to healthy individuals who were well fed and provided for, Louis allowed Dorondera to embrace her uncle. The meal that followed in the porter’s flat was almost cheerful, the Badtjala group conversing amongst themselves as if Professor Virchow and Castan were not present. It was only when the door opened and none other than Carl Hagenbeck entered that Bonny, Dorondera and Jurano stopped talking. Even Hilda’s father seemed caught unaware.

‘Guten tag,’ Bonny said. He continued determinedly in German, ‘You have come a long way.’

Herr Hagenbeck lifted his eyebrows as if impressed by Bonny’s command of the language, if not his decision to use it in company, but his expression changed to alarm the moment he observed Jurano’s weakened state. When a journalist and his cameraman came knocking on the door, the Hamburg showman sent them away.

Jurano managed to strike two boomerangs together during the performance but offstage was overcome with another bout of violent coughing. This time there was copious blood and, despite his protestations, Jurano was returned at once to the Charité.

The next morning, Professor Virchow arrived early at the hotel with Dorondera and Bonny, who he had collected without explanation. Gravefaced, the professor shook his head, and Hilda clutched Dorondera as the strength went from her legs.

‘I was not there!’ Jurano’s niece cried. It was some time before she spoke again. ‘And I do not know the songs to bury him by.’ She openly wept, panic overtaking her normally serene face. She asked where Monsieur Perouse was and Hilda pointed to the closed door.

‘Do you know the songs, Bonny? The ceremonies?’ Hilda asked.

Bonny was looking out through a window where a fierce wind blew leaves and dust in thick clouds. A pigeon appeared to fly backwards and struck the window, leaving a smear. Bonny shook his head.

‘We will make sure Jurano is buried properly,’ Hilda said through tears. ‘Won’t we, Papa?’

Louis hesitated. ‘There will be certain procedures,’ he said, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘To confirm the cause of death. But afterwards, yes.’

Hilda thought of Jurano’s wife back on K’gari, looking out across the sea.

It rained for the burial, and Hilda believed it was Beeral crying. She closed her eyes as Jurano was lowered into the ground in the cold, wet cemetery in Berlin. On K’gari, Jurano would have been placed on a raised platform and covered with a section of bark. There would have been ceremonies that lasted for days, the women wailing around his head. His feet would have been pointing west, not north as was predetermined by the position of this plot.

Dorondera and Bonny sang for Jurano, and Hilda and Louis joined in as best they could, Monsieur Perouse a steadfast but mute presence beside Dorondera. That night, Beeral turned the evening sky blood red.

‘Now what will become of him?’ Bonny asked, rubbing at his throat. ‘On the third day, we are supposed to go to the site where Yindingie’s footprint is forever in the rock. We are supposed to do special ceremonies and watch his spirit leap off.’ There was a nervous, uneasy swirling in Hilda’s stomach as Bonny confided that he feared his friend’s spirit would not find its way.

In the days that followed, Hilda tried to make Bonny happy by bringing him fresh bread, cheese and sliced meats. She told him she would have liked to bring him fresh fruit, but it was the middle of winter and, here, that meant it was cold and dark.