The Wild Girl (9 page)

The church bells rang out, filling the night air with music. Out into the cold the family hurried, snow feathering their faces. They joined the procession of families making their way to the church, each with a lantern swinging brightly in the darkness.

Dortchen matched her steps to its rhythm, feeling her soul expand inside her body till it was pressing against the bones of her chest.
It’s Christmas Eve
, she thought.
At midnight tonight, all the animals of the world will speak with human tongues. I wonder what they’ll say
…

Old Marie knew an old tale about a man who crept out to eavesdrop on the animals in his barn. He heard one horse say to another, ‘It’ll not be long before we will drive our master to his grave.’ Frightened, the man had turned to flee; he slipped on the ice and broke his leg, and had to lie all night in the barnyard. He caught pneumonia and died the next day. With black plumes on their heads, the horses had taken his corpse to the graveyard, just as they had prophesied.

I’ll not try to listen tonight
, Dortchen decided.
I’m afraid to hear what the beasts will say
.

THE BLUE FLOWER

May 1806

On her thirteenth birthday, Dortchen was released from the duty of the weekly wash and allowed to spend the day in the market garden. This made her happy, and she swung her basket and hummed under her breath as she went down the alleyway.

Overhead, the family’s eiderdowns were hung on the washing line to catch the early-morning sun. It was a beautiful spring morning and Dortchen felt sorry for her sisters, who had to spend the day struggling with boilers and wringers and mangles, helping their mother and Old Marie with the week’s wash. Already the scullery was full of steam, and Lisette and Hanne’s faces and hands were the colour of boiled lobsters.

As Dortchen passed by the house where the Grimms had their apartment, she heard a low whistle and looked up. Wilhelm was standing at a window, smiling down at her. Heat rushed up her face. She had not seen Wilhelm in months – he had been at the university in Marburg, studying for his final exams. He was more handsome than ever, his dark curls hanging over his brow, his shirt unbuttoned to show his throat.

‘Dortchen,’ he called, ‘you’re the very vision of springtime. How are you?’

‘I’m well, thank you. And you?’

‘Glad to be home. I’ve passed all my exams, you’ll be glad to know, and am now a fully accredited lawyer. Isn’t it awful?’

‘Are you home to stay?’ she asked.

‘For now. I must get a job. I’m hoping to find one here in Cassel.’

‘That’s good,’ she answered, then bit her lip, thinking she sounded like a fool. She dipped her head and gave a small wave of her hand, knowing she should not be seen talking in the street to a young man who was still in his shirtsleeves.

‘Wait,’ he called. ‘I have something for you.’ He disappeared from the window. Dortchen waited, casting a quick look at her father’s shop. No one seemed to be watching her. She took a few steps back into the shadow of the alley.

Wilhelm reappeared at the window. ‘Look, I found it for you in Marburg.’ He lifted up a small doll, dressed all in white frills, and showed it to her. ‘Is it not your birthday today?’

Dortchen flushed pink.
He remembered my birthday,
she thought. ‘Thank you,’ she managed to say. ‘She’s beautiful.’

‘I’ll lower her down to you,’ Wilhelm said, and disappeared again. In a moment he was back; he opened the casement wider and lowered the doll down to Dortchen on a string. Dortchen received her into her arms as tenderly as if it were a real baby. ‘I’ll call her Wilhelmine, after you and the Kurfürstin,’ she said.

‘I remember you hoped for a doll for Christmas,’ Wilhelm said. ‘I gave one to Lotte for her birthday too. You’ll be able to play together.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again, and looked down at the doll in her arms. She had never seen such a lifelike doll. Its face was white and smooth, and skilfully moulded to look just like a baby’s face, while its blue eyes and black curls had been artistically painted. Its body was soft and well-stuffed, much nicer than the stiff bodies of the old wooden dolls.

‘It’s made from papier-mâché,’ Wilhelm said.

She nodded, although she did not understand what he meant, and turned to go back inside and put the doll safely away.

‘Happy birthday,’ Wilhelm called after her.

Spring turned into summer, and Dortchen was kept so busy in the garden and the stillroom that she scarcely had time to play with her new doll, or to go wandering in the woods with Lotte.

She only saw Wilhelm at a distance, usually at church on Sunday, or when the reading circle met at the Wild house. The circle had widened to include a few other friends, including Johann von Dalwigk, the son of a local baron, and Karoline and Gotthelf Engelhard, the daughter and son of the Grimm family’s landlord.

Wilhelm always had a smile and a kind word for Dortchen, but this only made her heart ache more. She longed to be near him, but his presence made her hot-cheeked and tongue-tied, so that she felt she was always making a fool of herself. Her greatest fear was that someone would realise how she felt, and would mock her or tell Wilhelm. Yet she longed for him to realise, and to return her feelings.

One Friday afternoon, on the first day of August, Dortchen went to the big garden outside the town walls to cut cornflowers for her father. Their colour was as bright as the hot blue sky overhead. Her father would boil the blossoms to make eyewash. It seemed a shame, Dortchen thought. She would have liked to fill a vase with them and have them by her bed, to bring a little of the meadow into the house. Her father would think it a waste of good eyewash material, however.

She heard the garden gate open and turned. Wilhelm came towards her, a sombre figure in his black suit. Dortchen rose to her feet, very aware of her muddy apron and dirt-streaked face. She hoped he would think the red in her cheeks was from the sun.

‘Good morning, Dortchen,’ he said, taking off his tall hat. ‘Have you seen Lotte?’

She shook her head. ‘Not today.’

‘Mother needs her help but she’s run off again.’

Dortchen made a face. ‘I don’t blame her. It’s such a beautiful day, it’s a shame to be indoors.’

‘She’s not a little girl any more – she has to realise that. Mother cannot manage it all on her own. I wish Lotte was good and quiet like you.’

Dortchen was surprised. She wasn’t used to being called good and quiet. ‘No, you don’t. Lottechen wouldn’t be Lottechen if she was good and quiet.’

‘True,’ Wilhelm admitted. He looked at the basket of flowers, then picked one up. ‘Such a lovely colour. Almost as blue as your eyes.’ Dortchen blushed. Wilhelm slipped the flower into his buttonhole.

‘You know they’re called bachelor’s buttons?’ she asked. ‘If you go home wearing one, people will think you’re courting.’

‘Oh, no, I can’t have that.’ Wilhelm took the flower out of his buttonhole at once. ‘I can’t afford to go courting. We can scarcely afford to feed ourselves as it is, without adding another mouth to the family.’

‘Times are hard,’ Dortchen said, wishing she had better comfort to offer.

At least there had been peace of a kind. After the Austrians had signed the peace treaty with France, Napoléon had been kept busy making his brothers kings of Holland and Italy, and marrying off his stepdaughter. Everyone hoped he would be happy with what he had won, and would not turn his rapacious gaze on the rest of Europe.

‘I was about to make some tea,’ Dortchen said, seeing Wilhelm move to put his hat on. ‘Would you like to join me?’ He hesitated, and she went on: ‘You study too hard – some fresh air and sunshine would do you good. And I could make us a nice, fresh salad. I keep oil and vinegar in the summer house. And I have bread and cheese and sour pickles.’

‘I am rather hungry,’ he said, still hesitating.

‘The bread and cheese is very good,’ she tempted.

He smiled at her. ‘It does sound lovely,’ he replied, taking his hat off again. ‘Though I don’t want to eat all your food.’

‘I have plenty,’ she said, throwing her hands wide.

Wilhelm smiled. ‘You are lucky to have such a big garden.’

‘Father doesn’t like to spend money on food when we can grow our own. And we need the land for medicinal herbs as well, of course. I wish this garden was closer. It’s my job to look after it, most of the time, but it can be wearisome having to walk all this way.’ As she spoke, Dortchen gathered salad leaves.

When her basket was full, she led the way to the summer house. This was a small wooden building, rather dilapidated, with a stove in one corner, and a cupboard in which Dortchen kept a few chipped cups and plates. Wilhelm sat down, toying with the blue flower he still carried.

Within a few minutes, Dortchen had a kettle singing on the stove, and bread and cheese and salad laid out on the rickety old table.

‘You’re very deft,’ Wilhelm said admiringly. ‘I do wish you’d teach Lotte. She shows no liking for domestic tasks at all.’

‘You think any of us do?’ Dortchen replied. ‘The floors don’t scrub themselves, though.’

‘I guess not,’ Wilhelm responded, smiling.

When he smiled, his eyes crinkled in a most attractive way. It made Dortchen want to make him smile again, but she could think of nothing witty or amusing to say. A silence fell. She made the tea, putting extra milk and sugar in it – she knew sugar was a luxury the Grimms could not afford. Wilhelm drank it thirstily, then fell upon the food.

Dortchen sipped at her own tea, then said, rather shyly, ‘What work would you like to do, if you could do anything at all?’

Wilhelm shrugged one thin shoulder. ‘I’d like to be able to study old poems and stories, and maybe write some of my own. I’ve been reading the work of Novalis. He’s a poet, you know, a most tragic figure. He died when he was only twenty-eight. He said this thing about language and words … I find it very beautiful.’

‘What did he say?’ Dortchen asked.

‘He said that words have a remarkable power. The word “God” is only three letters – yet how much meaning is in those three letters? It’s vast, unimaginable. Think of the word “liberty”. Only seven letters, yet it changed a whole country and looks like it might change the world.’

‘That’s true,’ Dortchen replied.

‘He said, too, that poetry heals the wounds of reason. I often think of that. Does reason wound us?’

‘Sometimes,’ Dortchen answered, thinking of her father.

Wilhelm looked at her with interest. She looked away, not wanting him to read her face. No one had ever spoken to her like this, as if she were an adult with a mind and a will of her own. ‘If poetry is medicine for the world, then it would be rather a fine thing to write it, don’t you think? You’d be like a doctor of the soul,’ she said.

‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘I’d rather be able to write than practise law. Not that that seems likely, anyway. It’s three months since I completed my last exam, and still no job. I don’t know what I’m meant to do.’

‘You should write something,’ she suggested.

Wilhelm shredded the bread between his long, thin fingers. ‘I don’t know … I doubt I’ve the talent for it.’

‘You’ll never know unless you try,’ she answered.

He smiled. ‘True. You’re wise beyond your years, Dortchen.’

‘What else did this poet say? What was his name again?’

‘Novalis. It’s not his true name – that was Georg von Hardenberg. I don’t know where he got the name Novalis from, but you must admit it sounds much more poetic. He was one of the Romantics, you know. He said, “To romanticise the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”’

‘That’s beautiful,’ Dortchen said.

‘He was a great writer,’ Wilhelm said. ‘It’s so sad he died so young – just think of what he might have achieved, had he lived longer. He wrote a book about a young man who dreams about a blue flower. It was your bachelor’s button that made me think of him.’ He gestured towards the cornflower lying on the table next to his plate. ‘No one knows what the blue flower means. Death. Love. Beauty. Perhaps the yearning to express the inexpressible. The mystery of the blue flower is its power.’

Silence fell between them. Dortchen was entranced by all he had told her. She hugged her knees, thinking over his words.
To see the ordinary as extraordinary
.

Wilhelm put down his cup. ‘But I’m keeping you from your work. I should go.’

‘Oh, please don’t,’ she blurted, then added in a rush, ‘I want to hear more. I’d much rather talk about poetry than weed the garden beds.’

‘You’re as bad as Lotte,’ he teased. ‘All right. What more do you want to know?’

‘What did he die from?’

‘Tuberculosis,’ Wilhelm replied. ‘It was very sad. He fell in love at first sight with a young girl called Sophie. They were engaged when she was only thirteen.’

‘That’s how old I am.’

‘Yes, I know, and Lottechen too. Much too young to be married. They were told they had to wait until she was older, but she got sick with tuberculosis and died when she was only fifteen. He caught it from her, and four years later he was dead too.’