Gerta

by Tučková, Kateřina

  They walked side by side, Gerta looking down at the late-afternoon February shadows that spilled out of dark corners and crept across the streets, when suddenly the sky seemed to grow so dark that, with her eyes still fixed on the shoelaces of her winter boots, she stopped short. She looked up only as Ulrika shrieked, grabbed her sleeve, and yanked her sharply off the edge of the curb. A hand slipped off her shoulder. The cuff adorned with a decorative button came off, the shiny button clinking against the sanded sidewalk tiles, but by then Ulrika was already dragging her away, running as fast as she could in the direction of the Reduta Theater and toward the busier Cejl Street. The stiff soles of her boots clattered and creaked as they skidded in the splattering slush. Ulrika, one hand holding on to Gerta, the other clutching her rattling money box, kept on running, farther and farther, until Gerta had to stop her, saying she couldn’t go on.

  “That had to be a Jew . . . for sure . . . Mutti told me . . . be careful . . . They could be anywhere, like stray dogs. For a crust of bread, they’re even ready to go after a girl. Are you all right?” Ulrika uttered between gasps.

  “I’m fine.”

  Ulrika glanced down at the money box hanging around Gerta’s neck. “How could you have been so oblivious? What were you looking at?”

  “When?”

  “Just now, by that passageway.”

  “I don’t know. I was probably just thinking. I didn’t notice.”

  “And I’d just been thinking that somebody could be lurking in there . . . I just had a feeling. At least I’ve got it, you know, a sixth sense. Just as we were nearing that gate, I was thinking to myself, That’s the courtyard with the scrap heap. Someone could easily be hiding in there. And you see, there was. We’ve got to report it right away. There’s sure to be a patrol on Cejl Street, come on.”

  Gerta reluctantly moved forward. Her heart was still pounding, and she had barely caught her breath. Step by step, she followed Ulrika, her eyes cast down again, watching her shoes moving side by side. From the beginning, she had thought it was a stupid idea to head out into those narrow alleyways, where people didn’t even open their doors, let alone hand out money. They had been ringing doorbells all afternoon, knocking, trying to get into people’s homes. And they could consider themselves lucky if even a caretaker opened up. How much could they have collected? Seven marks? Eight?

  That would certainly land Ulrika in trouble when she got home. Or, God forbid, she’d decide not to call it a day and would resolve to try to bring the amount up to what she’d collected on the previous days. Gerta’s fingers and toes were frozen, and she felt as if her knees, in spite of being wrapped in thick stockings, were creaking with the cold. She would have liked to go back to the German House, turn in what they had collected, and go home. Since that morning, the only thing she had really wanted was to go back home. But what could she do? Her father, along with the others, was waiting back at the German House, ready to start tallying and noting down the names of who had contributed and who had been surly, and where the latter people lived. Gerta would keep quiet, but Ulrika, her cheeks reddened either by the frost or by the attention of the change collectors, would blush and carry on, ready to embellish her story with exaggerated details. Today Gerta would certainly end up having to hear her describe the vicious attack and their hairbreadth escape. Gerta would have preferred to give Ulrika a kick. With her heavy boot with its stiff sole and crude shoelaces that could withstand a thing or two. Her mother bought her those shoes, saying that whatever happened, she wanted them to last Gerta through the end of the war.

  But Gerta was far too tired to give anyone a kick. She was sleepy, and felt numb and empty. Like a sheep, she went along with everything, did what she was told, and wanted in exchange only to be left alone. Which was why it hadn’t taken her father much of an effort to make her join the Winterhilfswerk, but God, how ashamed she was of the begging! Still, her father’s cursing made her go, and at times even his tears, on those evenings when he’d been hitting the bottle too hard. He would then pursue her from room to room, one minute full of humility and remorse, prostrate before her, making her feel almost sorry for him, and the next, exploding in uncontrollable rage to the point where she feared he might hurt her.

  “Come on, Gerta, there’s a guard!”

  No doubt her father would approve of Ulrika. Ulrika, who never talked about how, no sooner had the war started than her family had moved into the Černá Pole villa that had been confiscated from Mr. Rosenkraus, as Gerta found out from Karel. With her shameless smile, she had no qualms about blocking someone’s way and didn’t think twice about threatening, “You’d better make a donation, or my father . . .” Or, “Make a donation, why surely you must want victory for our soldiers! You mean you don’t? And your name is?”

  Gerta would just stand there, staring down at the tips of her shoes. She was afraid of meeting someone’s gaze and worried that, even without looking up, she might recognize a familiar voice somewhere up over her bangs asking in Czech, Gerta dear, and how are you doing? Aren’t you cold? Or, Gerta dear, how is it that even you are willing to gouge us this way?

  Gerta didn’t know what she would do were she to run into Mr. Kmenta, for example. Or Janinka’s mother. Ulrika would certainly march right up to them with her money box held out, and if they didn’t make a donation, she would pull out her little notebook and jot down either their car or bicycle license number, or maybe a physical description that wouldn’t necessarily help to identify them, but just might. Wasn’t Gerta being an accomplice? She was. She was collecting winter relief for German soldiers to help Germany win the war, when in fact she really didn’t care one way or the other. All she wanted was for the war to be over. She wished no ill to Friedrich, but at the same time wanted everyone like him and like her father to be silenced. Then she could go back to taking Mr. Kmenta’s art class with Janinka, continue seeing Karel, and begin her studies at the university, whether in Czech or in German; to her it didn’t matter. She wanted peace, for herself and for everyone else, but especially for Janinka, who was no longer allowed to have anything to do with Gerta, the daughter of Germans like those in the Reich who had imprisoned and then murdered her uncle from Frývaldov, and for whom Janinka’s aunt then had to pay off debts. The debt for detention was one and a half marks per day, twenty marks for court expenses, three hundred marks for execution by decapitation, five marks for cleaning the blood off the blade, one hundred marks for funeral and cremation; supposedly, it was all itemized on the receipt and broken down on the payment schedule they drew up for Auntie, whose weekly pay was seven marks, which on the black market wasn’t enough to buy her even a cup of lard. When Janinka told Gerta this, she was sobbing, for her uncle, whom she said they had killed just because he was a Communist, for her exhausted parents, and for herself, worn out after long days of menial work at the insurance company. Gerta hugged her and wished for it all to be over, and for the Germans, who had been the cause of so much misery, to lose, and to lose as quickly as possible.

  X

  That morning, Gerta was catching up on the sleep she’d missed out on during the night when her father had been drunkenly raging again. The apartment was steeped in darkness; not even a glimmer of light came through the blacked-out windows. She was awakened by a dull, drawn-out sound. She opened her eyes wide and listened closely to the unfamiliar noise. It didn’t subside. It sounded like the rumbling of thunder before a storm but was coming at regular intervals. Ominous and booming and growing louder. This was then interrupted by another sound, which flared and faded in a single flash, during which it swelled and subsided in intensity, and then came again. It was booming outside the windows, and everything had to be very close. Gerta flew out of bed, reached toward her bedside table, and knocked the flashlight she kept there to the floor. She dropped on all fours and fumbled around the cold floor under the bed until she finally felt the flashlight. She aimed it straight ahead of her and in its cone of light made out the handle on the door to the
kitchen. She ran toward it, threw it open, and shone the light inside. The kitchen materialized out of the darkness, but the noise of planes flying overhead didn’t stop; it continued and was growing louder. The door to her father’s bedroom was closed. He may as well die in there, she thought, and instead of going over to see if he was even inside, she spun around and raced through the vestibule and out the main door into the hallway. Wearing only her nightgown and with bare feet, she made for the cold, damp stairwell and was swept up in the chaos of terrified people who were rushing down from the upper floors. Some clutched objects in their hands, others bags they had prepared, and the sound of screaming and children’s crying reverberated through the building. From up above, she recognized the frantic whimpering of Granny Novotná. She had to drag herself along as she couldn’t stand on her feet and had long ago stopped leaving her apartment. Gerta hoped someone would help her. She herself simply had to get downstairs, away from here, at any cost.

  “Schnell, schnell, air raids,” someone from down below shouted; perhaps it was the caretaker.

  Terrified, she inched forward toward the stairs, the stone floor cold against the soles of her feet. Suddenly, a surge of booming sound engulfed her, and the wall against which she was leaning with her palm shuddered beneath her fingers. Gerta pressed herself back hard against it and felt the vibrations, along with the unceasing roar of aircraft engines, go through her entire body. There was a loud explosion. Her foot slipped as she raced down the stairs. She tripped and remained lying on the ground, her mouth and eyes full of plaster that had rained down on her. Before she had a chance to stand up, the entire building shuddered again; this time it had to be somewhere extremely close by. Gerta got up, shielding her stomach with her hand, and made her way down the stairwell filled with dust, bits of bricks, and fallen chunks of stucco, ready to run for the front door. She wanted to dash outside, but her foot caught on a body huddling by the bottom step, just ahead of the bend in the staircase that led into the basement. Someone grabbed her foot, and she cried out, kicking in all directions as the next blast hit. She cowered against the male figure and buried her face into his warm woolen sweater. The roar lasted interminable seconds during which someone was shouting at her, the voice coming from the chest against which she was leaning, but she didn’t understand a word; she couldn’t because she had covered her ears with her hands, but even if she hadn’t, the noise of the airplanes, explosions, shattering glass, and falling bricks was so deafening, she couldn’t have understood a word anyway.

  The caretaker grabbed her and pulled her up to her feet before she had a chance to move a finger. He put his arm around her waist and, panting, started to drag her down to the basement. Gerta kicked at him; after all, she was trying to get outside, away from this building, which at any moment was going to bury her alive, was going to come crashing down around her, couldn’t possibly hold out.

  “Into the shelter,” she heard right by her ear.

  She stopped struggling. As he opened the door, the next roar was already approaching. She felt a chill against her feet, her loins, and even her stomach, her nightgown having ridden up under her armpits as she had tried to squirm out of the caretaker’s hold. The intensity of the roar was increasing, growing louder, coming closer, and Gerta knew that she wouldn’t be able to fend it off. The roar would come, and her heart would again stop; every hair on her body would stand on end, and she would feel sick, because this had to be the sound of death. She wrenched herself free of the woolen grasp. Her nightgown fell back down along her sides, and she raced down the few-remaining steps and into the shelter, where people were huddled together on wooden benches along the concrete walls in the flickering light of a pale lightbulb, which, seconds later, went out for good.

  No one kept track of how much time elapsed. Leaning against the feet of the residents who had still found room to sit on the benches, Gerta sat on the floor, her head tucked between her thighs. It was possible that a long period of silence had passed. No one dared to say a word; not even the children made a peep. A stifling, oppressive stillness prevailed, and then, in a single, abrupt instant, she became aware of being able to hear the silence. It was as if she had woken up, as if with the wave of a magic wand, like the one her mother used to tell her about in fairy tales, she had been brought back to life. One wave, and you would get everything you wished for. Gerta’s wish would have always been to have an infinite number of additional wishes, and she was proud to have come up with a way to outwit the magic wand. Now, someone had waved such a wand, and Gerta’s senses had returned. Silence. Darkness.

  With her face still pressed to her knees, she could smell her own urine, which had trickled down her inner thighs and had by now grown chilled. She inhaled that pungent smell and the odor of her bare sex, and in that blend of primal scents, she also breathed in the knowledge that she was alive. She inhaled over and over and with exhilaration, and then finally dared to lift her head and look around. She saw nothing. She was surrounded by darkness, but no longer that sepulchral, terrible one. This was a darkness in which one could discern, like luminous splashes of color, the shuffle of feet, the sniffling of noses, shallow breathing, and even an occasional sigh. Finally, a child began to cry, its inconsolable, shrill wail filling the cramped space of the stone chamber. Gerta wasn’t a whole body; she was just a torso, a heavy, leaden rib cage from which arose, ever so slowly, a first sob that almost ripped her throat apart as it forced its way past her shriveled tonsils, her slackened tongue, and her clenched teeth. It forced its way out through the dark cave of her mouth like the head of a serpent, followed by a long, thick, round body that then slid out easily, and suddenly her sobs were flowing freely in a steady rhythm between tears and fitful gasps for breath. The entire basement was astir with sounds of relief, first words, exclamations, embraces, and then some more hissing—hush, hush, what if it’s not over yet!

  Gerta had a feeling that it was over. If it wasn’t, she would lose her mind on the spot. It had to be over!

  Someone tripped over her; then another person did. People were getting up and stepping on her. Bracing her hands against the knees of a woman beside her who by now was also stirring, she prepared to straighten up, tried to stand. Her knees had stiffened from being in that cramped position for so long that she was like a mummy; her joints and muscles wouldn’t move. Someone grabbed her by the armpits and helped pull her up. And then somebody opened the door.

  A faint gleam of light filtered into the basement. Not even the corridor into which the door was opening had much light. Suspended in the air were smoke and dust motes from the masonry that had come crashing down in the stairwell. The door was wedged against the rubble and wouldn’t open farther. Through the demolished front door, at which those below gazed up as if beholding a miracle, the August afternoon light came pouring in.

  XI

  Slowly they ascended the steps behind the caretaker, who went ahead as far as the front door to have a look in the street. He quickly turned back and motioned impatiently with his hand for everyone to keep coming.

  “All right, folks, come on, schnell, it’s all over,” he said, and then he ran out into the street where a few disoriented, disheveled people were aimlessly wandering about. He stopped after a few steps, spun around, and ran back inside the building, as if he had dashed out only to make sure the air outside was also possible to breathe.

  “It’s over,” Gerta heard from all sides, in Czech and in German, as she made her way up the basement steps in the cluster of people.

  “It’s over; we survived.”

  “We’re alive, thank God.”

  Even Gerta was grateful. She cautiously stepped out in front of the building where almost everyone had come to a standstill. They were all paralyzed by the overwhelming emotion of what they had just lived through. Then behind them, from inside the building, they heard a scream. No one had helped Granny Novotná down into the shelter. Gerta didn’t turn around and didn’t run inside to look as did some of the othe
r women. She didn’t even go upstairs to see if there was a hole in the wall of their apartment or if any of their furniture was left. Something else had crossed her mind: Janinka.

  She quickly set out walking along the row of buildings, the sidewalk littered with fallen plaster and shattered glass, until she came across someone who hadn’t managed to get inside fast enough, had been struck by the falling bricks, and now lay on the ground, a pool of blood spreading out under his head. She stared at the scene, transfixed, unable to turn her eyes away. Then a man carrying a shovel bumped into her, hurrying in the opposite direction, toward the head of the square. She turned to look after him. The building in which Anička Horáková lived and where Gerta’s mother had regularly brought her food-ration coupons, stamped with the large D for Deutsch, was no longer standing. The collapsed upper stories, of which only some jagged walls jutting aimlessly up at the sky remained, were now nothing but a mountain of rubble, bricks, and sections of staircases, which had completely inundated Pressburger Straße. The prolapsed bowels of the apartment building spilled out onto the asphalt of the street and trailed off in long veinlike lines as far as the plane trees in the middle of the square. Everyone standing there beheld the unfamiliar panorama of the rooftops of the buildings of the parallel-running Cejl Street before them. Gerta couldn’t stop staring at the new look of this familiar place. She peered through the haze of dust rising over the ruins and tried to imagine their original height. There was suddenly much more light. More space. The square seemed to have appropriated the new space, as had the plane trees, whose crowns, as Gerta saw when she looked up, were now spread out against a clear blue sky.