Gerta

by Tučková, Kateřina

  Gerta suspected something. The past three nights, Ula and Teresa had been talking of nothing but Vienna. What was strange about it was that Ula had started to talk again. Teresa was always rambling on about either her back or about Vienna. But for the last several weeks, Ula had been silent, giving only curt answers, locked away inside her unhappiness. Dorla was the only person whom she would occasionally let in. Over the past few days, however, the words were gushing out of her like a waterfall. Words like we must, when, and in Vienna. Gerta anticipated something. And then one September night, she was awakened by a rustling. On the bed beside her sat Dorla, still half-asleep. Ula and Teresa were dressed, and each held a knotted bundle, presumably containing things that belonged to Zipfelová, because all three had arrived empty-handed. Ula was fumbling around beneath the straw mattress, and it was this movement that awakened Gerta. She sat up. Teresa quietly came over, sat down beside her, hugged her, and gave her a kiss.

  “You wouldn’t want to come with us to Vienna, would you?” she asked.

  Gerta shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears, and her throat got so tight that she could barely swallow.

  “The Russians are taking us in their truck today. By morning, we’ll be across the border.”

  Gerta nodded.

  “I’ll write to you as soon as I’m settled. Then you can come see me, anytime you want.”

  “Psst,” hissed Ula, letting the straw mattress drop and taking Dorla’s hand.

  “We have to go now,” she whispered, and came around the bed to Teresa and Gerta.

  “I’m going to miss you terribly,” whispered Gerta.

  “Me too,” said Teresa, her voice trembling as she hugged her tightly around her neck.

  Ula leaned down and kissed Gerta on her hair.

  “Farewell.”

  The sound of a dog’s howl rose over the sleeping village. Then came another, and then yet another, all along the path down which Ula, Teresa, and Dorla were hurrying toward the crossroads beyond the village. There, a truck with Russian soldiers and two other German women curled up in the back under a tarp was already waiting.

  XXIV

  The first Christmas came and went. All of the women who still remained gathered in the small garret chamber. Very softly, so that no one would hear them, Gerta, Johanna, Hermína, Marie, and Edeltraud sang “O Tannenbaum” and “Stille Nacht.” They held each other’s hands and placed dried fruits in each other’s mouths. They went around in a circle, each passing to the one on her right. On the windowsill stood a vase with a few branches of spruce, filling the room with their scent. They were all on the verge of tears. Not one of them had received word from loved ones; not one of them knew what the future would bring. That night, Johanna’s sobbing woke Gerta. Since the day Teresa and Ula had run away, the two of them had been sharing the garret room. Anni and Rudi slept under the bed, in the same place where Dorla used to sleep. Gerta took hold of her hand but said nothing. What could she say? She didn’t know what would come next.

  Behind the windowpanes, snowflakes fell through the darkness, enshrouding Perná in a blanket of white—that year the winter was harsh. Every day Gerta trod a path up the main street toward the church and the Rosenbaum homestead, which had now been converted from the administrative commission headquarters to the local National Committee. Every day, Hanák would be waiting for her in the kitchen, where she prepared his breakfast, and then together they went to his office, to work. Every day after the Angelus, she locked the front door and headed back to Zipfelová’s cottage to rejoin the other women. Since November, their number had been reduced by half; some had disappeared while others had been transferred to the brickyard in Ratíškovice, just as Ida had predicted. With the decline in work came a decline in what little respect the residents of Perná showed them. Now they were only in the way. This was why no one went looking for Ula, or for Teresa, or for the many others who, during the months of September and October, had disappeared overnight—no one knew to where, and no one even knew if they had survived. Gerta, using a straight-edged ruler, simply crossed out the names of these Germans on the lists that the farmers would bring in for her to copy. She crossed off people who had been registered as workers and who had fled; old-timers who had vanished into thin air overnight, as well as those who had left on the first transport; and she noted those whose names were unknown, who had come to Perná that summer with neither papers nor relatives and had died there.

  The parish office, which stood just three houses up from the Rosenbaum homestead, was where Gerta ended up spending many a winter afternoon. This was partly because of the district administrative commission index card catalog, which she was compiling using the parish book that Pastor Gmünd, an Austrian-born settler, gave her access to. But it was partly also because, since the death of Mrs. Führederová, the parish house duties had fallen to her. Finally, in November, this changed when Mrs. Hrazdírová, after losing her husband to old age, moved into the elder cottage on the Hrazdíra farm just steps away from the parish house. Her faith and zest for life still strong, she became the pastor’s housekeeper. Even so, from time to time, Gerta gave her a hand with the cleaning.

  How many dead had she and Gmünd counted by now? Nine women, who had arrived already sick with typhoid fever, and four children. They had picked up the infection in Pohořelice or maybe even in Ledce. Who could know what any of them had drunk along that miserable journey from Brno—they had already died back in June and July. She could no longer remember how many trips she and Schmidt made to that plundered pharmacy in Mikulov, or the military camp in Břeclav, before Dr. Karachielashvili finally succeeded in eradicating it. And then there were the dozen or so elderly people who had passed through Perná in early June on their way to Austria but didn’t have the strength to go any farther.

  A list of these unknowns, some of whom remained nameless because they didn’t have any papers with them, still hung in Gmünd’s kitchen, should anyone ever come to inquire. But who would come to inquire? Gerta privately wondered, thinking of all the solitary people marching in the column whose relatives had been irretrievably lost in the multitude of exiles. She recalled all the shouting and weeping at the crossroads beyond Mušov, where the mass of people, no longer supervised by Zbrojovka factory guards, flowed unchecked toward the Austrian border. Besides, how would it even be possible to find out the names of all those supine and suffering under the midday sun with no water, sick with dysentery or typhoid fever contracted in Pohořelice, dying like beasts? Nobody had helped them. On the outskirts of the villages she had occasionally seen a few soldiers or guards simply roll the dead bodies into the ditches along the roadsides and cover them with dirt in makeshift graves so shallow that dogs must have dug them back up in no time. Some of them, those who managed to drag themselves as far as Perná, had been lucky and now lay buried in paper bags along the cemetery wall. Some hadn’t been so lucky and now lay in front of the wall. In this, Pastor Gmünd hadn’t relented; those who had taken their own lives were to remain on the outside. And there had been more than a few of those, whose names had still needed to be crossed out during the summer. At the Krupas’, it had been two women and a married couple. Supposedly everyone at the Krupas’ knew what the latter two were planning; all they were missing was a rope. As soon as they got their hands on one, they hanged themselves, together, in Krupa’s hayloft. And later on, there were a few more women who could no longer bear the rough treatment at the hands of the farmers. Finally, Gmünd ended up having to go over and have a talk with them. From among his flock, he allowed only a few to be buried in their family plots inside the village cemetery: Járinka Führederová, who had also hanged herself, and the Egerts, who, rather than waiting to be deported, had in their despair taken rat poison in advance of their transport. But not even they had anyone to nail together a coffin for them. So in the end, they, too, were laid to rest in paper bags.

  Over the course of those months, Gerta witnessed very few happy endings. Josefína Reichert
ová was picked up by her sister and her brother-in-law. Antonia Ainingerová, along with her two children; Kristýna Kreuzová, who worked at the Krupas’; and Gabriela Etznerová, from the Lhotáks’ were all allowed to return to Brno on the grounds of mistaken displacement, an appeal on behalf of which Gerta and Hanák had repeatedly telegraphed the Brno office of the Provincial National Committee until it was granted. One month later, in November, a letter arrived from Antonia, informing them of the dismal conditions they found in Brno upon their return. It had required Hanák’s signature even though it had been addressed to Gerta, care of the district administrative commissioner’s office. He stood over her as she read it, in turn nodding in agreement or smiling in amusement. Afterward, in her mind, Gerta went over it line by line, taking time with each sentence, as Antonia tried to answer the questions they had all been asking themselves during these past several months of isolation.

  Dear Gerta, Johanna, Maria,

  and all my dear friends,

  I am writing to you in Czech, since my sister-in-law pointed out that letters in German, should they be intercepted, might not be delivered. For this reason, I’m relearning the language, which I haven’t used in years. It’s very hard and even harder for my children. But I’m sure you’ll understand me. I’m writing to cheer you up, even though, I won’t lie to you, things here are not the best. Brno is still very much in turmoil. New people are still arriving; they’re either returning from the war or from concentration camps (those I’d rather not even write about), looking for a place to put down their roots. Even our house belongs to somebody else now, and although my Czech citizenship was ratified, and my Czech nationality confirmed, my children and I aren’t going to get anything back, since, as you know, my husband was of German nationality, and as for the children, well, the German schools were closer. But I’m not about to complain, not while you, my dears, are still racking your brains over your own futures. This is also why I’m writing, so that you know what you’ll be coming back to, should you wish and find a way to return. Brno is badly damaged; many buildings are demolished; many apartments are destroyed; and there’s a shortage of space. And a shortage of work for those Germans who, for whatever reasons, remained in Brno. The only salaried jobs are for indispensable specialists. The rest of the German men work in labor camps, and if any of you have a loved one there, you should know that you have good cause to fear for them. I haven’t been there, but my brother, with whom the children and I are living now, says the conditions are brutal. But what’s encouraging is that it’s no longer a matter of life or death in those camps. At least, what they say is that once they’ve worked them as hard as they can, they send them away from Brno with the Red Cross. For now, all the Germans remaining here have to wear armbands, like the ones we got in Perná, and they’re not allowed to use the sidewalks or public transportation. More than once I’ve seen Germans being lynched, because the people of Brno still crave revenge. I’m living in Horní Heršpice now, Ober-Gerspitz, in case any of you want to come and find me once you get back. I’m helping my sister-in-law sew shirts and hope this way I can compensate them for the space my children and I are taking up. What will be next, I don’t know. For all of you, I wish you as peaceful a time in Perná as possible. Hopefully the work is easing up, or maybe by now some of you have already left to join relatives in Austria or elsewhere. I wish you and your children the best of luck in your lives.

  Antonia Ainingerová, Martin, and Rosa

  As she read the letter to Johanna, Johanna began to cry. She was the one who most longed to return to Brno and to her husband, from whom she had been separated at the end of May, when he’d been taken away to the labor camp in Maloměřice. And what about Gerta, what did she actually want? She wanted to go home. She wanted her apartment, with its kitchen, and her mother inside it—her own bedroom, and the flowers they used to grow in the hallway. She wanted to believe that Friedrich would come home and that she would be reunited with Janinka. And with Karel. But their apartment was no longer hers. She couldn’t go back to it. Nor could Friedrich, were he ever to return. Nor could her father, whom they would surely deport as soon as he had finished working off the mess he made in Brno. Gerta longed to go back to Brno where she felt at home, and she couldn’t imagine going to live in some unfamiliar city full of strangers. But where in Brno would she go? And furthermore, now there was Barbora. Whom could she turn to? By the time she was expelled, it had already been a long time since she’d had any news of Janinka, and Karel could be anywhere. Not that he would help her, regardless; he certainly wouldn’t have forgiven her yet. It was such a shame. They had grown so close, so incredibly and blissfully close. If only her father hadn’t given her this gift of all gifts. She would never forget the expression on Karel’s face when he realized why Gerta was growing fat.

  So then why this great yearning to go back to Brno, when she had no idea where or even to whom she would turn? Gerta’s eyes filled with tears. She looked down at herself, her hands with their withered skin, her skinny legs sticking out of the bulky shoes in which half a year ago she had arrived. Now she was nothing, just a body in the middle of an unfamiliar land. She was a nobody; she just worked here, as long as they allowed her to stay.

  And as Gerta bent down to look at Barbora in her deep, infant’s sleep, she realized that there was nothing she could do; there was no way she could fight back. She couldn’t see a future. All she could see were the walls of the room where she was now sitting on the edge of the bed, all her strength gone. She was a human wreck who was grateful for a kind word from those who now owned her. Her and Barbora. And the worst of it? She felt indebted. Because unfathomable as it was, she felt that at Zipfelová’s, nothing worse could ever happen to Barbora or to her. And if she could just let go of her expectations, reduce her needs to a bare minimum, stop concerning herself with how she had imagined her life would be, then perhaps she might even be happy here.

  XXV

  Toward dusk on Thursday, exactly three days after the New Year, Hubert Šenk stopped in to see Zipfelová. When he got to the cottage, he stomped the snow off his boots, brushed the snowflakes off his coat, then stepped inside, hung the coat up by the stove, and sank heavily down on the bench against the wall. He took off his hat and set it beside him.

  “I’ve brought the paper,” he said to old Zipfelová and to Ida, who welcomed him with a cup of chicory coffee in her hand.

  “What does it say?” asked Ida.

  “That the next transports are being delayed again. They don’t have room for them in Germany,” he said, motioning with his head toward the door behind which the German women had their room.

  “What else does it say? What’s going to happen now?” asked Ida.

  “Maybe in the end, they’re going to want them to stay right here?” Zipfelová narrowed her eyes pensively. “They must know that we don’t have enough people to do the work.”

  “It says here that we do:

  “In total, approximately eight hundred thousand Germans have already left Czechoslovakia, and another seven hundred fifty thousand are to be deported to the Soviet occupation zone. Deportation to the American occupation zone has not yet been effectuated—it will be initiated as soon as Czechoslovakia meets the technical terms required by the Americans, namely that every German must carry an identity card. According to the plan, one hundred seventy-five thousand Germans will then be deported into this zone. Some one point six million Czechs have already relocated from the heartland to the border regions. This large number of Czechs offers a guarantee that the economic life of the border regions would not suffer catastrophic shortages even if the Germans were to leave all at once. According to the plan, however, the expulsion of the Germans is expected to take until July, so during this period, it will be possible to secure adequate replacements even for any German specialists.

  “I’d love to know where they came up with that,” Šenk commented when he finished reading aloud from the paper. “Wouldn’t suffer catastrophi
c shortages? They should take a look at Führeder’s vineyard—specialists, they say,” he muttered. “Or they should take a look at the Heinz fields. They always yielded such a big crop, and this year, there was barely half, and they didn’t even manage to reap it in time. That’s what those hacks should be looking at.”

  “May I have a look?” Ida leaned over the paper. “There, you see, they write about it too.”

  “What now?” Zipfelová asked tersely.