Schmidt dictated to Gerta requests for tractors, combines, plowshares, and trailers, but the half-written request for additional German workers he had her discard. Instead, he dictated a new one in which he simply requested a harvest brigade, and a second one, in which he invited Czech citizens to come and take over the formerly German Perná farmsteads.
As he dictated, Gerta looked up at him in surprise.
“There’s no way to stop it,” he said. “Just last week there were six. And last night, more relatives of the Jechs showed up. You’ll start a new file for them today and transfer the lower Gottfried house over to them. From now on, this is how it’s going to be, and it’s only right. New Czechs will replace the old Germans. Guilty or not.”
Gerta shook her head and said, “New Czechs, possibly even guilty, will replace the old Germans, possibly not even guilty? And it’s only right? And you’re not afraid?”
Now it was Schmidt’s turn to look up from his papers in surprise and narrow his eyes suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“You’re also German.”
Schmidt looked puzzled.
“No one here would dare come after me. We’ve been landowners for generations, and everyone knows that’s all we’ve ever cared about. I’m the first Schmidt to have gotten mixed up with politics. And it’s only because I’m trying to bring some order back to this village.”
“I heard the Krumpschmieds were also on the Czech side.”
“Bullshit. In that case their three sons wouldn’t have enlisted. And all three of them did enlist; not a single one joined the resistance. It all adds up to the same thing, to protest but then quietly go along or doggedly pursue a career. You know shit about how things work in these parts, so stop speculating and do what I tell you. And keep in mind that I was in the resistance.”
Gerta dropped her gaze back to the papers she was holding. She should steer clear of such conversations. After all, she was still just a German, whom nobody would miss if she were suddenly to disappear across the border with a transport. In spite of this, she quietly said, “And will that matter to the ones who’ll be showing up here, wanting German homesteads?”
Schmidt fell silent. The vein at his temple bulged, and the fine tips of his mustache quivered.
“Don’t you ever say such things again! I’ve got as many Czechs as I have Germans in my family, understand? And we’ve worked the land here for over a hundred years. Just go to the cemetery and have a look at the Schmidt gravestones! You can see how far back the dates go.”
His voice was cold, and Gerta bent even lower over the typewriter. She fixed her eyes on the slightly protruding g and h keys, her gaze darting between them. For some time now, she had sensed that Schmidt was holding on to his position only with the help of the Russian soldiers who fell directly under his command. Even so, the old-timers as well as the newcomers were treating him with less and less respect.
The Hrazdíras had plowed right over the dividing line between their fields and the Heinz fields without his permission. The Krupas had taken over a neighboring vineyard and informed him only when he came around to check on things at the onset of the harvest. Hubert Šenk had witnessed this and didn’t say a word, and Gerta noticed that even he was beginning to look down on Schmidt. The newly arrived Jechs, still that very first week, had moved out of the modest Pfeifer house and commandeered two houses behind the church, one with its German occupants, the Hammer family, whom they relegated to a single room, still in residence. They kept the Pfeifer croplands, however, as well as the contents of the abandoned homestead and considered it all to be their own. When Herr Hammer, the German master of the house, appeared at the administrative headquarters to file a complaint, Jech came barging into the office and beat him up right in front of Schmidt’s desk, kicking him even after he was down on the floor. Observing from the doorway, Gerta watched Schmidt trying to restrain Jech up until the moment that Jech turned on him and shouted, “Aren’t you German too?” Schmidt froze, leaving Hammer to lie on the floor and Jech to carry on about being entitled to property that had belonged to some mangy Germans, and that he intended to fix it up. When Jech left, Schmidt walked out of the office as well, so as not to have to look his neighbor in the eye. It was Gerta who helped Hammer back to his feet and wiped the blood from his broken nose.
“What a shitty time,” Hammer said, but then took no further action and just waited, with all seven members of his family, his young children included, to see if they would be reassigned to a smaller house or put on the next transport across the border.
Gerta observed Schmidt as he delivered his reports to the district administrative commission. She didn’t understand Russian but saw how, after these phone calls, more and more often, Schmidt’s features would harden. Then he would step out into the courtyard and have a cigarette, summoning Gerta only afterward to do some more work. She sensed his fear, that he was struggling, but that somewhere deep inside, he knew it was useless. More and more people were making him feel it, both those to whom he was assigning new property and, even more so, those to whom he wasn’t assigning new property.
On the threshold to the administrative headquarters they heard the stomping of feet, then someone stepping inside and pounding on the open door, calling out Schmidt’s name.
“What is it?” answered Schmidt from Gerta’s office.
Hubert Šenk strode into the room and said, “They want to take away my German women.”
“What do you mean?” asked Schmidt in surprise.
“That Georgian doctor, who’s here with the soldiers, he stopped in at Zipfelová’s and told her that all of the German workers and German residents would be put on a transport. He said he heard it from Mikulov. They’re going to take them to Drasenhofen.”
“Are you kidding? Who’s going to do the harvesting?”
“Nobody told you anything?”
“No order came down. So far, there’s only been talk about armbands and about patrols to keep all Germans under watch. And about property. Nothing about transports.”
“As I said, that Georgian doctor just gave Zipfelka the news. He’s going around with the ordinance to all the villagers who are housing workers.”
Josef Schmidt looked over at Gerta and then back at Šenk.
“Well, that’s simply not acceptable. There’d be no one left to do the harvesting. You can’t rely on the newcomers; they don’t know shit about what to do. And only about one-third of the old-timers are left, so they can’t go off with a transport; there wouldn’t be anyone left to do the work.”
“Exactly.”
Schmidt, who had been holding a sheaf of papers, set them down on the table in front of Gerta and motioned for Šenk to follow him into his office. They left the door ajar.
“We’ve just written up a request for a harvest brigade. One from Brno has already arrived in Dunajovice. Schnirchová will send it now and will follow up by telephone. In a week’s time, you can count on having about twenty people. At least, that’s what they said in Dunajovice.”
“All right, but who knows what we’re going to get. Most likely they’ll be Czechs with no incentive to work hard.” Šenk shook his head.
“Hmm. That’s true.”
“And what about in Pohořelice, is there anyone left?”
“Just the ones in the ground. They buried half of them and shipped the other half across the border. They say a couple hundred sick ones are still lying around in the field near Drasenhofen. The only other Germans left around here are the villagers and small farmers, but we already know what we can expect from them; sooner or later they’re going to disappear. The harvest brigade is still the best option.”
“So what are you saying? Fine, let them go ahead and send us whoever they want. I’ll train them, though I won’t expect them to do good work. But as far as my German women go, the ones who are here now, they’re not going on any transport. On that I insist. They don’t cause any trouble; they have kids, so they don’t dare, and they’r
e happy to get a bit of food. I need them,” Šenk added softly.
Schmidt stood up from his desk and walked over to the shelf where he kept written appeals from the district administrative commission. He thumbed through them, then went over to the telephone and dialed a number. He waited a long time for a connection.
He made the call with his back toward Šenk and Gerta, who was straining to hear from her office across the hallway. She did not want to leave Perná. They hadn’t deported her across the border a month ago, and wild horses couldn’t drag her across now, nor in the future. She would not let herself be expelled from here. She would return to Brno and claim the apartment in which she had grown up and which had belonged to her family. She might find her father or Friedrich. She might even find Janinka, and once all this was over, she might even look for Karel. She was not about to leave. This was her home, hers and Barbora’s. Who knew what would be waiting in Austria or Germany, and where was she even supposed to go? Should she plant herself on some street in Poysdorf or in front of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna? Absurd. They would let her stay in Perná as long as she was useful, and that she was useful and worth keeping, by now, they surely already knew. And eventually she would go back home.
“We’ll issue them papers saying they’re indispensable. For now, they’ll stay put, and after the harvest and the vintage, we’ll see,” she overheard Schmidt saying in the next room.
“You have such papers?”
“We just need to write down their names and their former places of residence, keep one copy here, and send the original to the district office, and they’ll stay here, watched over by the farmers to whom they’ll be assigned for work, and under the supervision of the local administrative headquarters. When they come in from the fields tonight, bring them right to me.”
“Mine are all the women from Zipfelka’s. But I’m sure Hrazdíra is going to want to keep his as well; he has about ten. Same goes for Krupa and Hanák. The rest I don’t know.”
“Gerta will notify them all. No need to worry about that. Bring all your women here this evening, and we’ll write it up.”
Šenk put on the wide-brimmed hat that up to that moment he’d been holding in his hand. He tipped it and said, “Well then, until tonight.”
On his way out, he stopped in the doorway to Gerta’s office.
“We’ll say you’re indispensable as well, what do you think?”
Gerta gratefully nodded her head.
“Thought so,” Šenk said before walking out the door.
XIII
When Teresa, wearing only her nightgown tied across her narrow shoulders with a piece of twine, stretched out comfortably across the whole bed, it looked as though there couldn’t possibly be any room left for Gerta or Ula, who night after night slept sandwiched on either side of her. Teresa would go through the same ritual every night as Gerta put Barbora to sleep and Ula her Dorla, who at the age of ten had no interest in sleeping, and instead would lie awake straining her ears, trying to catch snippets of the adult conversation. In the meantime, Teresa on the mattress would spread out her arms and legs as far as her nightgown allowed, then abruptly sit up and reach forward, grabbing the tips of her toes. They would hear the loud cracking of vertebrae run up her spine, as if someone were snapping dry twigs. In the small room, the three adults in the shared bed, with one child on the floor and the other in the baby carriage by the window, had become a tight-knit family.
“Don’t you want to think it over some more?”
“Not even maybe.”
“You’re crazy, girl. What are you thinking?” Ula shook her head. “As if you haven’t already jumped through enough hoops in your life, silly goose.”
“This will be the last one, and it’ll be the one that saves me, silly goose.”
Gerta and Ula looked at one another. They had no faith in Teresa’s notions, but then again, they didn’t have much faith in their own either. Heads or tails, who could know how it would all turn out?
“I’m young, I’m pretty, and when I’m rich again, I’ll get a new tooth. And rich I will be. In Vienna, where everyone has egg on their face, I won’t stand out as that German bitch, whom anyone can use to lean their bicycle on or outright screw. There, I’ll be one of thousands who may not have a place to lay their head, but whose past is nobody’s business. A new beginning waits for me there, don’t you get it? And if not in Vienna, then maybe in America.”
“You’re courageous, foolish one, but you might end up on the street, where nobody’s going to pick you up because, like you said, you’ll be one of thousands. Has that ever occurred to you?”
“I’m not afraid to work. And now that the war is over, there’s plenty of work to be done. Why wouldn’t someone hire me? Over there, no one’s going to care whether I’m this or that kind of German, or if I’m an Austrian country girl. And the tooth makes it clear that I’ve suffered, so why should anyone start poking around, trying to find out if my father was or wasn’t a Nazi? I’ll become invisible. I’ll vanish in the crowd of other Germans. I won’t stick out like a black sheep. And I’ll start over. I’m all alone anyway, so why stay here, to slave away just for a bit of food, when our future here is as uncertain as it will be over there?”
“Because if you take a look around, although we’re slaving away just for a bit of food, it means we’re needed here, which means nothing’s going to happen to us. And we have everything. Food, a roof over our heads, and people who treat us pretty decently.”
“Fine, but for how much longer? Until you’re done harvesting. And what’s going to happen in the fall, when you’ll just be extra mouths to feed because there’ll be no more work for you?”
Ula shook her head. “You’re really silly. There’s always going to be work to do around here. You can see for yourself how many empty houses there are, and fields with no one to work them.”
Gerta looked up from Barbora, who was happily gurgling at her breast. “Well, not exactly. People are coming over from Hrozenkov. Supposedly they’ve been told that they’ll be given German properties in exchange for their work on behalf of the Czech state. Today, Schmidt had me send a letter over to the district office offering up German homesteads. He says someone has to take care of them, and it looks like it’s going to be people from Hrozenkov or families from around here. But we’re still going to be needed; Šenk was clear about that even tonight. He said the newcomers won’t know a thing about farming.”
“We’re always going to be needed. Look at us; we’re like workhorses—we work ourselves to the bone just to get some food, and we’re grateful to be given a place to sleep, us and our kids. We don’t complain. They know exactly what they’ve got going here. Why would they want to get rid of us?” added Ula.
“Because there might come a time when even the Czechs will want a racially pure nation. Just for revenge,” Teresa ventured wryly.
“I don’t believe that. The Americans and Russians would never allow it, right?” Ula turned to Gerta, who just shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t know, but then again, those soldiers might not be here forever either. For now, they’re keeping an eye on things, but once the Czechs are back on their feet, what’s left for them to do here? They’ll probably go home, right?”
“Right, and the next thing will be pogroms against any Germans who are left, you’ll see,” Teresa declared with conviction. “And then it will look like it did this morning, when we were on our way to the fields and they caught that Hammer fellow, who had tried to take his family across the border in the night. By morning, those new Jech folks were still chasing him around the village, and when he ran past us, his eye was dangling down his cheek. I almost puked.”
“That was disgusting. Mercifully, the children didn’t see it,” said Ula.
“I saw it, Mommy,” piped up Dorla from the nest of linens and burlap bags under the bed.
“You should be asleep, Dorla, not listening,” Ula said anxiously toward the floor.
&n
bsp; Dorla mumbled something and turned over.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t just let them go. They wanted to put them on the next transport anyway, so why couldn’t they just let them cross the border in the middle of the night? Those Russians and those Jechs are out for blood; it has nothing to do with the law.”
“It has to do with property. They can’t let them leave in the middle of the night with valuables. They want them skinned to the bone and put bare-assed on the transport, with only the clothes on their backs. Same as with us a month ago. And then they’ll divvy up what’s left among themselves.”
“They’d just as soon kill all of them for their money.”
“And that’s exactly why I don’t want to stay here anymore. You see for yourselves. And there’s no guarantee that it’s going to change.”
Teresa was determined to leave with the earliest transport that Šenk would allow her to join. On the day when they’d all been at the administrative headquarters, he had asked each of them if they wanted to stay in Czechoslovakia or if they preferred to leave. At first, the women all looked at each other in a quandary, nervous at being given a choice. Then the first to respond were the women who still had family somewhere in the country or a husband in one of the Brno labor camps. Next to speak up were the women with children, who for the time being felt safe in Perná. Only Teresa and one other girl mustered the courage to ask to be deported.
Šenk shrugged his shoulders and said that in that case, only after the harvest, meaning after the grape harvest, which meant at the earliest in the fall. Staring down at the tips of their shoes, they simply nodded and were then the last to dictate the personal information that Šenk asked of them and that Gerta typed up on two sheets of stationery with a piece of carbon paper inserted between them.
“Maria Schrammek aus Brünn, Wiener Straße achtundsiebzig,” said Maria, to whom Šenk had pointed first among those who wanted to stay.
Before Gerta even had a chance to touch the keys of the typewriter, Šenk asked, “Can you speak Czech?”
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