Gerta

by Tučková, Kateřina

  Gerta’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Someone’s living in our apartment? What about our things?”

  “No clue. They’re probably still there, unless they were given away. I really don’t know. But there’s a family living in your place, supposedly some disabled war veteran or something. I’m not sure.”

  “And what about Friedrich? Did Friedrich come home?”

  “Gerta, I have no idea. Right now, there’s so much going on. I haven’t seen Friedrich, but my mom said that she heard from someone that your dad stayed in Brno. Supposedly he’s in Kounic College. Do you know what’s there?”

  Gerta was momentarily taken aback, but then nodded.

  “Schnirchová!” echoed just then down the street from the direction in which Zipfelová’s group of women had gone. “Schnirchová, hurry up!”

  Jana may still have been awkwardly mumbling something else, but Gerta didn’t wait to hear. Placing her hand over Barbora’s little head, she set off running after the group of women, trying at the same time to stifle the tears that were stinging her eyes, and to force down the sob that was choking her throat. And then Barbora began to cry.

  XXII

  “Bastards, crooks, that’s what they are. They harm decent people, just for the fun of it. Bandits, my God, who would have expected this? From our saviors? They’re murderers, not saviors,” fumed Zipfelová, taking chunks of meat from the hands of the Dunajovice butcher who was out in the front yard with her.

  In the kitchen, Gerta and Ula were also portioning out parts of the shot pig, cutting away tendons and separating the fat from the skin, straightening out the intestines the way the butcher had shown them earlier, simmering them to make tripe sausage and blood sausage. On the wide griddle sat pots of bubbling hot water in which knuckles were being boiled, and at a table behind them stood Ida, preparing the meat mixture for the headcheese.

  “Russian sons of bitches, let them be gone already,” she muttered, seething with hatred as she worked the meat mixture with her bare hand, her arm elbow deep in the metal bucket. “All they do is slack off and drink. Let them go where they’re needed, or let them go home, not stay here abusing other people’s women. Let them go home.”

  “Mama, look, Jan made me all dirty!” Dorla called out in German, bursting into the kitchen.

  “Get out! Raus!” Ida shouted at once from behind the table. “Into the garden, you hear me? And speak Czech!”

  Ula wiped off her soiled hand and pointed Dorla, who didn’t understand Czech, back in the direction of the door, giving her a look that left no room for any objections. The girl backed out and quietly shut the door behind her.

  “When are we finally going to have some peace around here again, for God’s sake? Who’s supposed to live in a house like this?” hissed Ida, her unmistakable tone of reproach clearly directed toward Gerta and Ula.

  They kept their heads down and didn’t react, just doggedly went on trimming one piece of meat after another.

  “Ida, quick, the basin for the innards!” Zipfelová called from the courtyard, startling all three of them.

  Ida grudgingly grabbed the metal basin and hurried out to where Zipfelová and the butcher were waiting. Gerta and Ula looked at each other wearily. Exhausted after a sleepless night, they’d been on their feet since daybreak, running around the shot pig. This was the first chance they’d had to take a break. Gerta leaned back against the tiled stove and slipped her palms beneath her sore lower back.

  “Can you imagine what would have happened if they’d come inside the house?” she remarked.

  Ula just shook her head and dropped her eyes back to the pail. She had barely spoken all morning and kept turning her face away, as if she didn’t want to see any of what was happening around her.

  “I’d be curious to know where Dr. Karachielashvili was last night, to have let them go on a rampage like this,” continued Gerta quietly. “Where Hanák was is obvious—he was under the table before we even got up to leave. But what about the guards? They’re always strutting around with those red sashes, scaring everyone, but yesterday there were none to be seen anywhere. Drunks, all of them.”

  Ula remained silent. She went on listlessly trimming the meat, tossing the cleaned pieces into a large stoneware pot at her feet.

  Gerta thought for a moment about how she might draw Ula out of her morose thoughts, where, since the middle of August, she seemed to be spending more and more time, but nothing came to her. Who knew what this nighttime scene with the drunken Russians might have evoked for her, and what Gerta might trigger by reminding her of it. She decided instead to stop talking. She was afraid of unlocking Ula’s dark and secret place.

  “Schnirchová, Jesus Christ, what are you standing around like that for? Come out and help us carry,” Ida, mightily annoyed, shouted through the door, upon which Ula and Gerta quickly ran outside. On top of the board on which the butcher from Dunajovice had dismembered the pig, all that was left now were a few heaps of meat and bones. Strewn underneath the board were scraps that the dog had caught wind of, while the innards had been piled into a large pot and several cast-iron buckets.

  “Such a shame,” lamented Zipfelka.

  “Bring that inside,” Ida directed as she herself bent down to pick up the pot.

  “Look out, young lady; don’t strain yourself, now,” said the butcher, grinning at Ida as he packed his knives, hooks, and dainty saws into a canvas case.

  When Gerta and Ula bent down to reach for the buckets, he said nothing. Zipfelová followed them inside, bringing up the rear.

  “Such a shame,” she repeated morosely as she counted the dishes lined up in the kitchen, and before she went out again, she turned back to them with more orders: “Ida, put together a care package for the butcher. You two, don’t just stand there. Start carving up the meat, let’s go, so that we’re done cutting it up by nightfall!”

  Gerta and Ula obediently reached for their knives, while Ida reluctantly spread a linen dishcloth out on the table and wrapped a few chunks of meat up in it.

  “That should do him, don’t you think?” she asked without looking up, and went on to prepare a second portion of lean meat. She then slipped the second package discreetly into the pocket of her soiled apron and hurried out into the yard.

  When Zipfelová came back to the kitchen a little bit later, she went right over to the table and started straightening out the casings and stuffing the blood sausage.

  “Don’t worry, girls. You’ll get some, too, and so will your little ones. We’ll eat it all, and whatever we can’t eat, we’ll give away. What else are we going to do with it? Unless that black-market woman comes by, then we could barter in exchange for shoe vouchers or some fabric. But who knows when she’ll come around again. She’s been gone for half the summer.”

  Gerta and Ula were silent, each bending over her work.

  “Unless I try to sell some of it to that little shop those new folks from Wallachia opened up. But who’s going to go buy it, when everyone here has enough of their own, for heaven’s sake. Except for maybe that Hanák. Or those damn Russians, the devil take them!”

  It was only then that she paused and looked around. “What’s happened to Ida?”

  Gerta and Ula uneasily glanced up from their pots.

  “Where’s she gotten herself tied up now? Ida!” Zipfelka called out with a sense of foreboding toward the door, but there was no answer. One look through the window and they could all see that the yard was empty and the gate to the road ajar. Coming on top of the shot pig, Ida’s disappearance that day was the last straw for old Zipfelová. Devastated, she sank down on a chair.

  “I bet she’s gone to see that Šenk, hasn’t she?” She sighed. “Silly goose, running over there in broad daylight. What are the neighbors going to think? He was asking for a beating, Mr. Hero. Yes, it’s a shame about Führeder. Nobody’s happy about what happened. Why, old Führederová and I were classmates, back in the days of the kaiser. We went to elementary sch
ool in Dunajovice together. I feel bad about it, too, but what can you do? After all, old Führeder had no business destroying his best vineyard like that. He must’ve known he’d never get away with it—after all, he’s been a German citizen his whole life! Then he goes and commits an act of sabotage like that. It’s madness. And at this time! If he’d been even a little bit responsible, he never would’ve done it to Járinka. Poor woman, it’s on him that she hanged herself, not on Jech. And how could Šenk have been stupid enough to go provoking him like that? And they were both drunk, the pigs. He deserved that beating, it’s not as if he didn’t, and because of our Ida, too, that young ninny. He’s always turning on the charm with her, silly goose. I’m sure she went to look after him!”

  At those last words, Zipfelová hid her wrinkled face in her hands and began to sob, until her whole scarf-covered head was shaking, and neither Gerta nor Ula knew what to do for her.

  XXIII

  Pride. Over the past several months, it was what the others had buried. Crawling around in the fields, toiling away at whatever they were told to do, grateful for a crust of bread—talking in the evenings only about the next day’s work. They had gone mad. Their lives had gone missing. Their personal interests, desires, aspirations, the things that brought them happiness, were all gone. All that was left now were hollow husks that only thought about the work and what was to eat. For how much longer? How many more times would that question be asked? And the future, that was something no one ever talked about anymore. At the beginning, she would still hear “When I get back to Brno,” or “After I leave,” or “When all this is over.” What did she hear now? Talk about harvesting potatoes and rapeseed; that it was better to kneel on a piece of sackcloth than to bend over, which made the back pain worse; or how many rows so-and-so had done today; and how lucky they were to be working for Šenk and not for Krupa, where you got slapped if you didn’t bring in enough. Or she simply wasn’t hearing anything, because the conversation was in Czech, which neither she nor Dorla understood.

  Ula couldn’t take any more. Every day felt like an iron ball and chain shackled to her feet, her wrists, her neck—by now she was dragging around dozens of them, one for each day. The weight forced her to buckle lower to the ground, fasten her gaze on the coarse brown earth. How many times had she already said to herself that it would be better to be lying beneath it, free of her suffering, her anxiety for the future, her fears over Adolf and Adi? The other day in the kitchen with Gerta, carving up the meat, the urge to turn the knife on herself must have come over her more than a hundred times. She couldn’t take her eyes off it, mesmerized by the sharp point and the razorlike blade that would effortlessly glide through her stomach. And rid her of those thoughts, sever her from that foul-smelling, filthy body that had penetrated her in the field behind Perná, practically ripping her arms out of their sockets, so roughly had it pinned her down. And the kicks, those were the worst. The long, sharp blade would at once put an end to her sleepless nights, the stifled rage over the humiliation, and the maelstrom in her mind that she couldn’t stop that kept her tossing back and forth between longing to forget and longing for revenge. And it would put an end to the loathing of her body, which would cease to exist. But there would still be Dorla. Dorla abandoned and alone among strangers in a country where she no longer belonged. She would stay behind, not quite eleven years old, and could end up just like her mother, Ula—after all, during those nights between Brno and Perná, she had seen plenty of such cases. And Adolf and Adi would also stay behind, somewhere in Brno, where right now they were laboring, but one day they would be released and would come looking for them—either here or across the border. What would her Adolf say if he were to find out that she had given up and left Dorla alone in the world? He would curse her. He would never understand.

  Adolf, her strong, resolute Adolf, who always knew what to do. She could always lean on him. He made her feel secure—at his side she could safely close her eyes and let life blithely run its course. Because Adolf knew how to guide her through everything, first her alone, and later her and their children—in a state of prosperity and well-being, toward happiness. The years spent beside him had been pure and perfect joy. To tend to him, accompany him every day to his law office; to make a home for him; to give him Adi, at whose birth she saw him moved to tears for the first time; to give him Dorla, with whom he fell in love at first sight; to go on excursions together in their new car; to attend balls and socialize with the notables of Brno; to wear new dresses and jewelry and sparkle on his arm, beautiful and beloved. Sheer happiness. How proud she had been alongside him, proud of him, whose counsel was sought out even by Judex and Schwabe—how many Sunday afternoons had they spent on the terrace of Judex’s villa near the botanical garden—and proud of herself for having borne him two beautiful children, so perfectly pure, that even the mothers of their Aryan playmates were envious. Proud of their lavish apartment and of the invitations they received. They went to the opera every time von Neurath was in Brno and always received an exclusive invitation to join the Judexes in their private salon. That had been happiness.

  How was it possible that it all slipped away so easily? Merely a few months of convincing themselves and reassuring each other among friends that everything would be all right, that it was all just a tactic—the Führer’s tactic—and that all would be well again. How could they have been so shortsighted? If only they had left in time, if they had packed up their things and been gone already by February, or by March, like the Freilichs, the Riedls, the Schrimmpels, and so many others—then she wouldn’t be here today, with neither her Adolf nor her Adi, about whom she hadn’t heard any news for five months now. If only Adolf hadn’t been so stubborn back then and had been willing to give up his practice; after all, he easily could have reopened it somewhere else, perhaps in Regensburg, where they had relatives. How could he have even imagined that, under the circumstances, he could have kept on practicing? But no, he had believed, he had gone on believing—blindly believing—and Ula in turn had believed him. It never would have occurred to her that her Adolf, prudent and self-confident as he was, to whom the most sensitive cases were entrusted—over which he then often pored late into the night, sitting in their salon, smoking and explaining to her every possible angle—might have been wrong. Her very own Adolf. And yet he had been wrong, and she had been forced to humiliate herself, naturally to no avail, not only for his sake, but also for her Adi, her not-quite-sixteen-year-old son—her boy whose future had been so bright. A part of her died when she saw them line him up and march him away from the assembly place in a double line, striking him in the back with a weapon to shove him forward when he turned to wave at her one last time. It didn’t help that she kneeled, begged, wept, offered jewelry that she had hidden—they tore it out of her hands and pushed her roughly to the ground, saying that she had stolen it from the Jews anyway. That was when she had gotten her first kick, which for a long time she couldn’t let go. But by now, she had lost count of them. The same went for the punches, the slaps, the yanked hair, everything but the rapes. Those she still counted. Yet what was all that compared to the hunger and the deadly thirst, when between Rajhrad and Pohořelice she and Dorla drank nothing for almost two whole days? What was it compared to the fatigue and depletion that laid them low in the barns near Pohořelice? Compared to watching children die, and old women, who could no longer move? Disgusting. How could her Adolf have allowed her and Dorla to go through such hell? And how was it actually going to end? During those early days in May, she would still bring both of them, Adi and Adolf, at least the little bit that she managed to scrape together by working and begging. During those three visits, she could only glimpse both of them through a gap in a concrete wall topped with barbed wire, which the guards allowed them to approach in order to accept a few slices of bread. To see how Adolf looked back then had shaken her. Gaunt, haggard, with large circles under his eyes, his hands raw, and wearing clothes that once upon a time she wouldn’t h
ave allowed a maid to use even for rags. But it served him right, as he alone was responsible for himself and for the decision he made when he insisted they stay. But what about her Adi, why him? The moment she saw him with a swollen, bloody contusion over his eye and welts and bruises all over his body, over which he wasn’t even wearing a shirt, she thought the feeling of helplessness would drive her insane. She was a disappointment to herself, both as a mother and as a wife, who hadn’t sensed that Adolf was making the wrong decision. And now she was paying the price and, once again, just waiting to see what would come next.

  But all this came to an end that moment in the kitchen, when, as she was carving up the pig, she decided not to turn the knife on herself. At that moment, her time of bondage ended, that period of waiting and feeling grateful just to be alive. At that moment, she made a decision, and did so with a conviction that she hadn’t felt in years. She decided that she and Dorla would leave, as soon as possible. Leave this country where they no longer had a future, regardless of what Adolf might think. This country in which they had no rights, no property, and whose language they didn’t speak. If they ended up having anything left here at all, Adolf could sue to recover the damages later; he was a capable lawyer. But given the memories she now associated with this country, Ula no longer wished to live here. This country, which for years they had helped to make flourish, had taken everything from her and had almost driven her to the point of turning a knife against her own body. She had to get away, across the border, either to Austria or to Regensburg, where she would wait for Adi and Adolf. Because here, in this country where they were driving her away with a whip, it was no longer possible for her to stay.

  She confided in Teresa one evening at dusk as they were rounding up the poultry in the farmyard. Teresa stopped short, taken aback. Now? As soon as possible. Two women from Krupa’s, and the two of them with Dorla. The hardest work was behind them. The potato and rapeseed harvests were almost done. Ida had already snappishly remarked several times that soon they’d have to go work in the brickyard as there would be no more work left to do in the fields. And now that they were no longer needed, people were becoming more hostile. Extra mouths to feed. “Away, away,” hissed Ula as Teresa’s face turned ashen. They were all scared, even the two women from Krupa’s, who had sent word through the grapevine to the German women at Šenk’s. One of them used to let that old Russian, who was here with Karachielashvili, come see her—in a few days he’d be heading to Mikulov for good. He was willing to hide them under a tarp in the back of the truck and take them across the border, one piece of jewelry per person, or a bit of what he was getting from that woman at Krupa’s. There was no other way to escape now; it was only possible with the help of a Czech or a Russian. Apparently, now the borders were closed and strictly guarded; one could only get into Austria illegally because the country couldn’t take in any more refugees. That was what the Russian had said. But Ula, Dorla, and those two women from Krupa’s needed to get away from here at all costs. Ula still had a few rings knotted in a handkerchief under the straw mattress—if Teresa wanted, she’d give her one, and then in Vienna, when times got better, she could pay her back.