They survive great floods.
They birth fifteen children.
They are barren.
They steal a neighbor’s husband.
They help neighbors who are poor.
They are impatient with those who believe they can ward off Hochwasser with gifts: paintings of powerful waves with tiger claws; porcelain bowls decorated with roses floating on a glass sea; carvings of shipwrecks on the backs of whales. Kitsch. When there is so much you can do instead: dry out the Neuland; separate it from the sea with dikes that you stabilize by planting grass; herd your sheep to graze and fertilize the earth; dig long ditches into land that lies below sea level and must be protected; build windmills to pump seawater from those ditches.
* * *
The Old Women know how to relieve a hacking cough and reduce the swelling in your ankles and cure that dryness deep inside your down-there. They find out from Frau Bauer who cures her dryness when she asks the nurse, Sister Konstanze, for advice.
In the infirmary, Sister shows her how to release her own wetness. “You rub this little pearl-sized bump.” She guides Frau Bauer’s hand. “Right here.”
Joy like a hiccup, then. And Frau Bauer blushes high-red.
“For medicinal reasons only,” warns Sister Konstanze.
“But then Sister winked at me,” Frau Bauer reports to the Old Women, “and said I must be vigilant … not take too much pleasure.”
“At what moment will this rubbing turn into sin?”
“I trust Sister.”
“Oh, I’m not surprised.”
“She knows about women.”
“She knows about medicinal issues.”
“And she has practically given us permission to attend to our health.”
“Oh, you!”
“Our own health … take it in hand.” Maria laughs and covers her jaw.
But not enough to hide the new bruise. Custom is: You avert your eyes. Pretend not to see. Avoid questions when someone is injured or distressed. Prop up dignity with your silence. But as you get older, you’re no longer afraid to ask.
“What happened to you, Maria?”
“You know you can come to my house—”
“—any time of night or day.”
Two Old Women stroke her hands, whisper to her.
“He is a good Doktor,” Maria says.
The Old Women nod. “True.”
“He respects his patients.”
“But he harms you.”
Silence, then, until Maria laughs. “What did I do all those years without Sister Konstanze’s permission?”
The others are quick to fill in. Normality.
“I thought I invented that little pearl when I was a girl.”
“You did.”
“We all did.”
“I didn’t.”
“Stop it, or I’m going to wet myself.”
Laughing hard. Teasing.
“Who gets to say what’s too much pleasure?”
“Sister did not say that we must not take pleasure.”
“Like absolution … only in advance.”
“You all knew about the little bump?”
“I didn’t,” says Frau Lindmann.
“Ha!”
“Really now?”
No one believes Frau Lindmann anymore. She’s been lying about her age, adding years—five or seven—so she’ll earn the honor of becoming The Oldest Person of Nordstrand. Whenever the Old Women press to see her birth certificate, Frau Lindmann claims she lost it when she immigrated as a child from Jutland with her parents and grandparents.
“People from Jutland are rugged.”
“It’s the cold that hardens their bones.”
“People from Jutland should not be counted.”
By then Frau Lindmann is shunned even more than as a child when she immigrated in dirty embroidered boots.
* * *
Every summer solstice, Nordstrand honors its Oldest Person with a Fackelparade—parade of lanterns. Church bells echo in recognition of the one who has succeeded in living the longest. First communion children braid a crown from Kornblümchen und Klee—cornflowers and clover, fasten it to the hair of the Oldest Person or, if no hair is left, to the top of the head with a chin strap. Only four men have earned this honor during the past century. There almost was a fifth, but when he went out in his fishing boat and was lost in 1876 the day before the Fackelparade, the next Oldest Person stepped forward in an embroidered silk dress no one had seen on her before. A dress like that would take weeks to sew and embroider.
How convenient, people gossiped.
How convenient that her rival vanished in the Nordsee.
To offset their unease, people joked, speculated.
“Did he bend over too far to haul in his catch?”
“Was she in the boat with him?”
“Was he helped to a stumble?”
Dangerous, they agreed, to be a very old man on Nordstrand.
Tradition has it that the Oldest Person teaches a class in Heimatkunde—local history, of value to the children, but also to the old because it keeps them alert and spry to consider their favorite topic and assemble details. Generations have learned from Oldest Persons about history and nature and events of Nordstrand. Some lessons teeter between fabrications and facts, more enchanting than what teachers are allowed to teach.
Oh, to be crowned, to be celebrated—a recognition that validates your life, your endurance—
PART TWO
1842–1845
8
Sisters and Girls Thrive in the Salt-Drenched Air
Sisters and Girls thrive in the salt-drenched air. At dawn they waken to the screams of peafowl scratching in the yard; and they convene in the chapel. A few Sisters become more devout and crave the structure of religion to validate that they haven’t taken a wrong turn. In the chapel one Sister will lead, recite a prayer, while the voices of the others collect in the responsorial and offer intercessions for the Girls, especially those who dive from their beds frog-style and land on their bellies to shake out the baby.
“We understand your wish to be free of all this again,” they tell the Girls.
“We can also understand God’s wish for your child to come into the world.”
“They don’t act like real nuns,” the Girls whisper to each other.
“They don’t even punish us.”
“Maybe they’re not real nuns.”
* * *
The Sisters educate all Girls, not only those younger than fourteen and still of school age. Each Sister teaches the art form she’s passionate about, plus one scholarly subject: Sister Konstanze tapestry and biology; Sister Hildegunde painting and mathematics; Sister Ida theater and physics; Sister Elinor music and history; Sister Franziska poetry and health.
Of course, there is prayer, too. Along with poetry. And weaving. And ballet taught by Sister Elinor. So what if the Pregnant Girls look clumsy while dancing? Their laughter, even if it comes from embarrassment, sets something free in them—humming and light—that distracts them from their dread of childbirth. In their hometowns, many graves have headstones with the names of dead mothers and their dead babies, and the Girls know death may chase them to the St. Margaret Home. Even if they cannot imagine the dying. Even if some are confused about how babies get inside you and how they will get out. But they’ve been to funerals of Girls who split open when their babies got out of them.