Finding Lumka

I'm thinking about contemporary Lumka today. Who is she, how does she behave, how does she think? What does she do? I made her the owner of a vintage shop on Ravnsborggade in Copenhagen, perhaps because that's what I would love to do. It also gives a means for how she finds Captain von Dijk's journal that he kept at sea. The journal is filled with facts and thoughts and small sketches and careful measurements and observations. He has a budding scientist in his belly and he is affected by those scientist/observers of his generation to carefully observe and record - nature, the sea, but as a Captain, he is also a born storyteller, honing his craft over many voyages and he notes down many stories of life at sea. Lumka is fascinated by this and knows instinctively that the journal is a treasure. Tucked into the back of it is a letter. A letter from Lumka to Abraham after she is sent back to Europe. But, does she really go back to Europe?

Why do they both disappear from the record? Did they leave together? Where is the record of Abraham's death? Of his will? Did they flee to the Eastern Cape? Or the Western? Did they remain together and raise their daughter? How much longer would Abraham have lived? He was already very old when he married Lumke and positively ancient for those days - how much longer could he have lasted? Is the Jan Theuniz that Judith found in Stellebosch Lumke again, making her life as a man to keep her and her daughter safe? Was the society too small a place for that to have been possible? Would she be recognized?

But back to contemporary Lumka. When I tried previously to do character bible answers for her, I felt she went in a direction I didn't like and of which I didn't really have control. How to make her a character worthy of revisiting, in case this becomes a series of novels. We need her to be as lovable and brave and gutsy and unexpected as Mrs. Pollifax. How to infuse her with the qualities that make Mrs. Pollifax all those things.

I see her as pretty, mid 30s, unattached, very focused on her shop. She has to be trained somehow as a conservator perhaps? Though that makes her a little too People of Book, perhaps. It's hard to keep all influences out. And having her find the Captain's journal lends it a bit of a Dan Brown quality with the DaVinci Code. I think she's a different sort of historical detective and maybe there's no bad guys chasing her, but she's more of an uncoverer of lost stories. Now, that feels like it's getting somewhere.

Where does Lumka find the Captain's journal? On a weekend trip to Amsterdam? In a dusty antique shop there - of the kind like that amazing store front I used to drive past in Christianshavn - long forgotten and left behind, possibly ignored by heirs who never cleared it out, but finally are compelled to do so. It's inside of a metal box, like the one Lynne sent a photo of. It once had the name of the ship painted on it and it's partially visible, but very faded. No one had opened it in years and thus the journal remained safe inside. Lumka buys it, loving the weathered look of the old metal box, not even realizing the treasure it contains until she gets it back to her shop in Copenhagen.

I have to find the threads of this story and weave them together as my own...all those impressions I've gathered over a lifetime, of places that struck my fancy - like the storefront in Christianshavn, Ravnsborggade, journals and sketches seen in museums. I feel so stuck in autobiography, perhaps Lumka is a version of me and who I was in Macedonia back in the late 90s. Maybe that's how I find my way to her, to make her concrete and living, rather than just seen in glimpses at a distance in my mind. The only way she's going to come out and be who she needs to be is if I sit down and write her down every day. She will remain elusive until I commit to that. I think the time to commit is now.