FIVE
The
Great Republic
left New Orleans at exactly five o’clock, as advertised, and began its journey up the Mississippi. Black smoke billowed out of the ship’s chimneys as it edged past velvet swamps and headed for the famous waterway that would take them north. Downriver from the flood that had cut off the railroads, the Mississippi was a seething, roiling mass of fury. Dark water roared past the ship. The river is so vast that it follows no set course, especially in times of flood. There is no single current or velocity. Its waters move in layers and whorls, unpredictable in the chaotic rush to the sea. As the
Great Republic
crawled against the current, it stayed close to the western bank of the river, protected by the Louisiana shoreline.
Compared to the grim austerity of the
Copernicus
, the new ship was a swoon of luxury. The upper level was dominated by a long saloon that ran almost the length of the vessel, flanked on each side by a series of staterooms. The ceiling was as high as a church’s and decorated with a lattice of elegantly carved mahogany. At one end of the saloon, the Ladies’ Cabin was a women-only domain where passengers read, performed needlework, or engaged in uplifting Christian song. Iced tea was served all day. The sun flooded through the large windows, warming the polished pine. Separated from the women by a sea of dining tables, and usually half-hidden behind a wall of cigar smoke, there was a well-stocked bar. Behind a counter of burnished oak stood a glittering wall of inverted bottles, a rainbow of liquor. Here the male passengers chased away the tedium of the journey with drink. It would take five days to reach St. Louis.
At dinner that evening, Jette was unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls. All day she had felt a constant pain in her abdomen. Now as she sat miserably fingering her knife and fork, she began to feel the hot creep of fever. They returned to their cabin and she gratefully climbed into the lower of the two bunk beds. Frederick kissed her head and held her hand until she fell asleep. He did not want to disturb her rest. He thought about the saloon upstairs and felt a glow of conviviality and warmth toward his fellow passengers. He stood up and quietly closed the door behind him.
Several hours later, Frederick stumbled back to the cabin. All of his attempts to strike up a conversation in German or French had been rejected, usually with a look of suspicion or distaste, sometimes with a salvo of angry words that he could not understand. The flamboyantly mustachioed bartender was faultlessly polite, but not even he was prepared to converse with him. Frederick watched as other men came into the bar and easily began to talk with their fellow travelers. As the evening wore on, he descended into a pit of morose introspection. Embarrassment was not an emotion that Frederick Meisenheimer was well acquainted with, and his instinct was to flee from it, right to the bottom of the nearest bottle. He pushed his glass toward the taciturn bartender, and the bartender filled it up.
The next day, neither Frederick nor Jette felt well enough to face breakfast. Jette’s face was chalk-white beneath the blankets that she had heaped upon herself. She lay on her bunk, shivering in the grip of fever. Frederick, meanwhile, was suffering from a monstrous hangover. He thought blackly about the previous evening. This was a new form of torture for him, to be surrounded by men he couldn’t talk to. As his head throbbed in reproach, he resolved to learn English at once.
Later that morning, he staggered to his feet and went out onto the deck for some fresh air. The ship passed a procession of soupy bayous, lazy crucibles of iridescent green, fringed by small forests of cypress and hanging moss. Across the vast expanse of water, Frederick could just make out tiny trees on the far shore. The Mississippi was still running high. Water rippled and broke into silver flashes as the
Great Republic
plowed its way upriver.
Frederick considered his position. He had to find someone to teach him English, but it seemed unlikely that any of the ship’s passengers would be willing to help. Then, through the fog of his hangover, he had an idea. He walked toward the saloon. Inside, waiters were beginning to lay tables for lunch. At the far end of the room, the bartender was at his post, holding a glass up to the light. He watched Frederick approach with an inscrutable look in his eye.
It took several minutes for Frederick to establish, by means of zesty pantomime, that he wanted language lessons, not a drink. Finally, the bartender understood. He said that his name was Thomas. It was agreed that, for the duration of the journey, Thomas would provide such instruction in English as was possible, subject to his professional obligations. There followed a brief negotiation as to fees. At its conclusion, Frederick marveled at exactly how much
could
be communicated simply by gesticulation and facial expression. Even before the first lesson had begun, the two men understood each other perfectly.
Jette was too ill to leave the cabin. The ship’s doctor examined her and prescribed bed rest and plenty of liquids. While she did as instructed, Frederick roamed the ship, watching the country unfurl before him. The
Great Republic
made several stops on its journey north, tying up alongside crowded levees to off-load cargo and passengers. Frederick watched, hungry for clues about his new country. He stared at the dark-skinned roustabouts as they skipped along the narrow gangplanks that perched precariously between the ship’s hold and the shore, backs bent double beneath their loads. They worked quickly, stacking up cargo on the quay under the watchful eye of the ship’s clerk, a short, corpulent man in a bowler hat. A small fortification of merchandise would soon appear on the side of the wharf: sacks of cottonseed meal and rice, barrels of oil, sugar, and molasses. The clerk strutted between the waiting merchants, completing paperwork, while the workers regained their breath in the ship’s cool shade. Then the process was reversed, with new crates and sacks and barrels carried back onto the ship for delivery to destinations farther upriver.
Frederick also had his lessons with the barman to occupy him. For an hour in the middle of the morning and for longer in the afternoons, he perched on a tall stool in front of the bar and began to learn English. Given that teacher and pupil did not share one word of common language, the process was necessarily a slow one. Every day Frederick arrived with a list of new words he wanted to learn, and the first hour or so was spent establishing the correct translation for each one. Without access to a dictionary, Frederick had to identify the words in other ways. Objects were easy enough—a rudimentary drawing would usually do. Abstract concepts such as love, or hope, or lies, were more difficult. Adverbs and adjectives were murder. They must have presented a peculiar spectacle, Frederick gravely performing his charades to his unblinking audience of one. The final part of each lesson was spent on establishing a basic idiomatic repertoire. Since he was the only one with a grasp of the local vernacular, Thomas was responsible for deciding exactly which phrases would be most useful. It is possible that the bartender was not entirely honest in communicating with his pupil the exact substance of what it was he was being taught. Soon Frederick’s lexicon of expressions included:
Let me give you a large tip.
I like big mustaches.
My wife is a witch, you know.
I am a German idiot.
God bless the United States of America!
F
rederick was an eager student. At Thomas’s insistence, he spent his evenings in the cabin, going over that day’s work rather than practicing on the other passengers. The strange words felt heavy on his tongue, as new and different as the spicy food of their first night in New Orleans. He hardly recognized his voice as the alien sounds emerged cautiously from his mouth. His head was filled with foreign words and syntax, a bewildering storm of meaning. Still, Thomas would applaud every morning as Frederick showed him what he had learned.
The ship continued its steady progress north. Jette finally emerged from the cabin at Cape Girardeau. She watched the off-loading of cargo and passengers in silence, her eyes dull in the bright afternoon sun. The worst of her fever had passed, but she had barely eaten anything in days.
When they docked at St. Louis the following afternoon, Jette wept, unwilling to quit the cocoon of their cabin. Frederick waited patiently for Jette’s tears to stop, and then they walked down the gangplank and stood on Missouri soil for the first time.
Frederick had planned to travel the last leg of their journey, from St. Louis to Rocheport, by carriage. He had explained all this to Thomas by way of tortuous mime, and so was equipped with the necessary phrase, which he repeated and repeated in his head:
I need to hire a carriage for a long journey
.
As they walked away from the crowded dockside, there were signs to a hundred different destinations. Frederick understood none of them. Crowds streamed past them. This constant velocity! Did nobody in America remain still? Clouds were massing overhead, dark with the threat of rain. Next to him, Jette shivered.
They made their way onto the street that ran alongside the wharf. Gas lamps cast pale yellow light onto the cobbles. A policeman was standing on the other side of the street.
“I’ll ask this man,” Frederick said to Jette. “He’ll help.”
The policeman watched him approach without expression. Frederick took off his hat. “I need to hire a carriage
for a long journey,” he said.
The policeman ignored him.
Frederick tried again. “Please. I need to hire a carriage.”
This time the policeman responded, his tone sharp. Frederick did not understand a word. “I need to hire a carriage for a long journey,” he said again. He turned and pointed to Jette. “My wife is a witch, you know.”
The policeman unleashed another torrent of words, his fingers tightening around the long, black nightstick that hung from his belt. Frederick smiled politely and retreated back to where Jette was watching.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” admitted Frederick. All his hard work with Thomas had been of no use at all. For the next hour he approached a succession of people, bowing politely before carefully announcing,
I need to hire a carriage for a long journey
. He was shouted at and ignored in equal measures. Jette was looking paler by the minute, and when an elderly couple shook their heads in a display of harmonious distaste, Frederick lost his patience. He stood in the middle of the sidewalk and raised his hands above his head.
“I need to hire a carriage for a long journey!” he shouted. His words rose into the air, unheeded. The only discernible effect of the outburst was to create an island in the ebb and flow of traffic as people shifted direction to avoid him. Frederick clenched his fists into fat knots of distress and shook them at the sky.
“Excuse me.” A man in an immaculate three-piece suit was standing in front of him. He looked about sixty years old. He had spoken in perfect German.
Frederick dropped his arms to his sides in surprise. “Yes?”
“Can I help you?”
Frederick took a deep breath. “I need to hire a carriage for a long journey,” he said in English.
“A carriage, yes, I see,” replied the man, again in German.
Frederick gave up. “
Meine Frau ist ziemlich krank
.” My wife is ill. The familiar sound of the words made him want to weep.
“Ill?” said the man.
“She is expecting a baby. She has a fever.”
The man took off his glasses. “I am a doctor. May I see her?”
“Of course. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all.” He put out his hand toward Frederick. “My name is Joseph Wall.”
Frederick shook his hand. “How could you tell I was German?”
“I studied there for a while. In Königsberg. I recognized your accent.”
“I’ve only just begun to learn your language,” Frederick said. “It’s difficult.”
Joseph Wall nodded. “It certainly is.”
“You’re the first person who has offered to help,” said Frederick, unable to hide his bitterness.
“Well, what do you expect?”
Frederick frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You do know where you are, I presume?”
“Of course. This is St. Louis, Missouri. The United States of America.”
“That’s right. So why were you standing in the middle of the street shouting in Polish?”
S
oon the extent of the bartender’s cruel hoax became clear. Frederick had wanted to return to the ship and confront him, but Joseph Wall gently persuaded him that Jette’s health was a more pressing concern.
The doctor’s offices were nearby. There, inspection and diagnosis were swiftly conducted. The baby was nearly engaged, he reported. The safest course of action was complete rest until the birth.
Frederick explained that it was impossible for them to remain in St. Louis. Joseph Wall listened without comment as Frederick told him of their plans to reach Rocheport as soon as possible. When he had finished, the doctor said, “You understand that undertaking such a journey at this juncture would not be without risk?”
“Of course.”
“If I arrange for a carriage for you, will you at least promise me one thing?”
“Certainly.”
“You need a proper night’s rest before you begin your journey. Much better to start in the morning.”
“Very well,” said Frederick. “Can you recommend a cheap hotel?”
Joseph Wall smiled. “I believe I can do better than that,” he said.
T
hat evening Frederick and Jette sat down and ate supper with Joseph Wall and his wife. Reina Wall was a short, neat woman, a contained bustle of domestic efficiency. Her brown hair was twisted into a bun on the back of her head. She and her husband spoke softly to each other in a cocktail of English, Polish, and Yiddish, before Joseph would turn to their guests and address them in perfect German while Reina sat next to him and smiled.
The food was simple, wholesome, and good. Thick white soup, coils of pink sausage, slabs of heavy black bread. For the first time in days, Jette ate.