Gerta

by Tučková, Kateřina

  Zipfelová began to weep. There had been times when she had wanted Ida out of her sight. It had taken years for her to accept that Šenk and Ida had decided to stop honoring her son’s memory and had begun seeing each other even before Helmut had been officially declared dead. From what Gerta remembered, Ida had moved in with Šenk, bringing along just a few bags of clothing, a radiant smile, and rosy cheeks, her growing belly barely noticeable under her many-layered skirts. Zipfelová hadn’t even come out to say goodbye. The following Sunday, they proclaimed their banns.

  “Everything around here went downhill pretty quick after Jech became chairman of the cooperative. He was one of the first to turn his farm over to the JZD—you remember, the one he had no idea how to take care of, that had belonged to Führeder. Even the vineyards. Opportunist.”

  “Of course I remember. Hermína and I ended up taking care of his cows. The Führeders’ niece, the one who married into the Kovář family, came over to show us how to milk them. I’ll never forget the way she rubbed them between the ears and called them by their names and greeted them for Járinka Führederová. The cows would turn around to look at her, as if they understood. And then when Jech came in, they always got so nervous! He’d come marching through the barn, and the cows and us, we’d all start shaking.”

  “Even the animals were scared of him! Let alone the people!” Zipfelová exclaimed, raising her hand clutching a large handkerchief menacingly over the table.

  “I was afraid of him. After all, he did try to shoot me. And then he ended up being the one who had me transferred over from the National Committee to the cows, remember?”

  Zipfelová let her hand, now clenched into a fist, drop back to the table and resignedly nodded her head.

  “He’s got nothing on me; I’m just an old woman, but I’m afraid of him just the same. What a pig, showing up from God knows where. Dragging all his relatives with him. Why, half of Perná belongs to the Jechs now. And they all willingly joined the JZD, which makes sense. It was an easy way to unload everything they’d robbed and plundered for themselves over these past few years. If only you’d been here to see it! How many times did we—the Krupas, old Krumpschmied, and in the end even Šenk—shake our heads over what we saw them doing to the trellises? They had no idea how to take care of the vines, no clue about husbandry—it didn’t matter if they were working a field or a farm. I get upset just thinking about it. And then, to top it off, that business with Šenk and Ida.”

  Zipfelová stood up and walked over to the window.

  “At the beginning of the year, Jech started to make noise around the pub, blaming everything on the folks who didn’t want to join the JZD. The shortage of meat, the shortage of fodder, the failure to meet quotas. They kept on having meetings at the pub, but by then it was mainly to bad-mouth Šenk, as well as the Krupas and the Lhotáks, the last of the private farmers. And then, did you hear about that tragedy in Babice, where three local party officials were shot dead? That was something. Jech wasted no time going around and blabbing about it. You could cut the air here with a knife. But Šenk still wouldn’t budge. He even kept up with the delivery quotas. I don’t know how they did it. I went over myself to help them a few times, not that I really felt like it. But Ida kept on asking me, and then finally she even begged me, because she was afraid they wouldn’t make the delivery. So in the end, I went over two or three times to give them a hand. They worked nonstop, in the fields, in the vineyards, around the animals. I felt sorry for them.”

  “But at least they still had their own place, and that had to be worth something, right?” said Gerta.

  “Well, yes, but just for a few months. Then their cow barn caught fire, and word around the village was that Jech was behind it. It was awful. The cows were running frantically through the streets right up until the morning—the firemen showed up from Dunajovice, where they’ve got that volunteer fire brigade. But do you think anyone from Perná lifted a finger to help them? Not a soul. The pastor. He made the call to Dunajovice, to the firehouse. Everyone else was too scared.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “And then there were the quotas. More and more things started to go missing. It began with a few milk cans. Next it was chickens. Then the fire in the cow barn. Šenk called on the SNB to come and investigate why suddenly so many things were happening to them, all at once. And what do you think happened?”

  Gerta shook her head.

  “It started with them showing up in front of the chairman—in front of Jech—and it stopped right there. In the end, they put Šenk on probation, for slander and noncompliance with production quotas. He was lucky they didn’t charge him with causing the accidents himself, as a way to get out of making the contributions.”

  “Poor Šenk. I can’t even imagine him in that kind of a situation. Such a decent man. How did he take it? And Ida?”

  “My dear girl, it was very hard on him, and it didn’t go on for very long, you know. Then they took him away, and after that, well, I’ve only heard from Ida once. She wrote from that place, Kostelec, asking us to send her a few things, if they hadn’t already been confiscated. And by then, of course, everything was already gone. And you know what else she wrote? That he got sixteen years. In Jáchymov, for high treason, for being the rich man of the village who had held up cooperative farming efforts. They lost everything. That’s what finally put old Šenková in her grave, you can bet your life on it. She’d buried that drunk of a husband, lost a son in the war, and was herself a cripple. But it took this to kill her, sure as my name’s Zipfelová—it took getting kicked out with nothing but a quilt on her back, like the lowliest servant. Off her own property, a good chunk of which had been her dowry, and off their own land, which her husband’s father had worked, and his father, and his grandfather before him. For generations. Now tell me, what kind of justice is that?”

  Zipfelová was dabbing her eyes with the large cotton handkerchief as she continued to stare out the window.

  So that’s how things had turned out for Ida. Beautiful, lovesick Ida, who, bitter at not having children of her own, had so often lashed out at theirs. Ida, who used to blush at the mere mention of Šenk’s name. How long had her happiness lasted? One year? Two? How long before she once again lost a husband and, at the same time, her home?

  “Ida used to like to think what a fine lady of the manor she’d make. Marrying into the grange. Remember the hurry she was in? I resented her for it back then, and I still do. Thinking what a fine missus she’d make. The wife of the farmer with the biggest farm in the whole village. And vineyards stretching all the way to Pavlov. She certainly got that one wrong, didn’t she?”

  Zipfelová turned away from the window and shuffled slowly back to the table, sinking down heavily on the chair.

  “But this, I never would have wished it on her. If you’d only seen her when they were taking her away. With that child and crippled old Šenková. It would’ve brought tears to your eyes.”

  A heavy silence fell over the kitchen. Zipfelová looked from the table out into the garden. And then abruptly she said, “They drove out the Šenks and so many other neighbors. And see how it is now? Before the war, we all lived together here in harmony—every harvest festival, every wine festival, every Christmas, Sundays at church—we celebrated everything together. It didn’t matter if you were Czech or Austrian or German. How many families like the Heinzes and the Führeders did we have around here? Maybe twenty? So now we’ve got twenty families who wandered in from God knows where, for whom our traditions are totally foreign, who have no relationship to this beautiful land, to this soil—you should walk around and have a look, see what they’ve done to Perná. Nothing matters to them. They stay holed up in their houses, the fellows in the pub, and out on the street nobody even says hello anymore.”

  Gerta put her hand over Zipfelová’s.

  “At least they can’t do anything to me. I’ve got nothing left for them to take.”

  “Things will get bett
er again, Mrs. Zipfelová, you’ll see,” said Gerta uneasily, trying to console her.

  Zipfelová turned toward Gerta but seemed to look right through her.

  “You remember the time they got into that fight, after Führeder got shot? How Jech beat up Šenk in the pub? Well, Šenk wouldn’t leave it alone; he took it further. He took it to Mikulov, and maybe even all the way to Brno. It made no difference. Once the president announced amnesty for anyone who had assaulted a German or German property, either during the war or at any time up to the end of 1945, he had nothing more left on Jech. Remember how cocky Jech got? Because even though he’d committed murder, no one could touch him. That’s where it started. And now this is where it’s ended. Jech won. Šenk’s in the mines; Ida and her child are all alone in some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere, like two lost waifs; and old Šenková is dead from grief. The grange belongs to the JZD, and Jech’s the chairman of both the agricultural cooperative and the local chapter of the National Committee. And he’s setting his sights even higher, dear girl. He’s already a member of the Regional Committee. Miserable bastard.”

  For a while they were silent.

  “Forgive me, Gerta,” Zipfelová said suddenly.

  Gerta looked at her in surprise.

  “Here I am going on about Šenk this and Jech that, and meanwhile your life must’ve changed something tremendous, am I right?”

  Gerta awkwardly shrugged her shoulders. She took Zipfelová by the arm, and they went out into the garden to find Barbora, who was chasing the dog around the bushes.

  “Oh, and before I forget,” said Zipfelová as they were saying their goodbyes in the late afternoon. “You got a letter—here.” She slipped a white envelope into Gerta’s hand.

  The edges of the asphalt road leading back to the bus stop were overgrown with grass, clusters of Carthusian pinks, and yellow shrubby cinquefoils; the early-evening air smelled of the neighboring fields and vineyards. The sun was setting behind Děvičky Castle, and the silhouette of the ruins offered an enchanting panorama. Gazing up at the patchy clouds in the sky and with Barbora dozing in her arms, she skirted the village and only out of the corner of her eye caught the twitch of curtains behind the window of one of the Jech houses.

  X

  Meine liebe Gerta, Johanna, Hermína,

  all my dear friends, dear Frau Zipfel and Ida,

  I greet you in a way that only my being here makes possible.

  I’m writing to you, even though I’m not sure if all in Bergen is still as it was. Maybe some of you are already far away; maybe you’re in Brünn; or maybe you’re somewhere close by, here in Austria, trying to make a life for yourselves, as I am. Maybe in the end, everything turned out differently and this letter will never find you. In that case, I hope it will at least find you, Frau Zipfel, in the same cottage with the lovely garden from which I once fled without saying goodbye. I was never properly able to thank you for taking me in and for caring for me as you did, you and Ida. Please don’t think I don’t realize how lucky I was to have been placed with you and Hubert Šenk. I do realize it, and I thank you for everything. And I’m grateful to you even though I ran away, but that’s another chapter, and I’m sure you understand that I simply had to do it, and the sooner the better. And today I have no regrets; on the contrary, I’m glad that I took my fate into my own hands, even though at the beginning it wasn’t easy; that much I can tell you. I can also tell you that I’m still a stranger here, yes, even in this country where we all speak the same language and where so many of us came, filled with the hope of starting a new life. But even here it’s “us” and “them,” and we, the newcomers, will never be on equal footing with them. This curse has followed me from Brünn, and I’ll never be free of it—perhaps it’s my fate. But God didn’t abandon me, and, thanks to that, in the end, I found Traude Fröhlich, of the Fröhlichs who used to live in Bergen, behind the church, and who takes this opportunity, joined by her whole family, to send you, dear Frau Zipfel, her warmest regards. Just so you know, there’s a place on a hill here above Poysdorf from where you can see all the way to the Pálava Hills, and on a clear day, you can even make out Rassenstein castle. So many people show up every Sunday, week after week, to gaze toward those rows of vineyards in which I used to break my back bending over—you’d be surprised how hard it is to forget. The Fröhlichs, the Wlassaks, the Bergers, Frau Bürgermeister and her daughters, and others from Dunajovice, Věstonice, and one family from Pavlov, they all settled around here, within sight of their vineyards. They flattened out this hilltop and cleared a little area where they put a bench and planted a grapevine that climbs up behind it. And it’s from here that I’m writing to you all, you whom I’d so love to see again sometime.

  With sincere regards and thoughts of you,

  Teresa Bayer

  Renngasse 33-A, 1010 Wien

  P.S. Dear Gerta, may I ask you a favor? Do you remember that fence in Pohořelice? Would you go and hang a little wreath there for me, in memory of my mother? Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and the final hours of her life. I hope someday I’ll be able to repay you. Thank you. Teresa.

  Poysdorf, September 27, 1951

  My dearest, liebste Teresa,

  Du kannst Dir nicht vorstellen—you can’t imagine how happy I was to get your letter! And how close it came to never reaching me at all, so close. It took me a year and a half before I found the nerve to come back to a place that I’d left so full of fear, maybe even more fear than you had, back when you and Ula fled from here. Can you imagine, my dear Teresa, the dangers we faced in those years right after the war? Do you remember those days in the Pohořelice camp? I’m sure you do. It’s impossible to forget, just like the nights that preceded them. But what then went on afterward, after you were already gone, was a slow death, a long-drawn-out process of dying, and it almost did me in. Be grateful that you ran away, my dear Teresa—even though so far you haven’t found your happiness, at least you still have a chance. Whereas we here don’t. We here are condemned to rot, to be blamed forevermore for all the problems in this Republic. And, Teresa, not just us, not just all the Germans who stayed, not just me, a Czech with the wrong nationality, but even Barbora, Anni, and Rudi. Do you remember them? Barbora bundled up in burlap and Anni and Rudi, with their puppy eyes? That’s what you used to say about them, remember? Teresa, they’re all considered to be guilty too. It’s a dead end from which there’s no escape. And it’s only thanks to Karel that I was able to take off old Zipfelová’s filthy boots and get away from that cow barn, and that today I have a roof of my own over my head and a job, where they rob me of my wages. I would never have managed it on my own, by then I was already so dead inside. But that’s a long story, Teresa, and mine isn’t going to be any better or worse than yours. Are you still standing on that hilltop above Poysdorf? Are you still sitting on that bench and looking toward Perná? Don’t do it, Teresa; don’t mourn for something that stopped existing long ago. Hubert Šenk was sentenced to forced labor in the mines for not wanting to hand over his farm. Ida is living alone with their child someplace in the middle of nowhere, and in Perná there’s practically no one left from the old days. And the same goes for Brno, just in case you’ve been missing those streets too. Don’t be homesick. You wouldn’t want to have stayed, believe me; everything has changed, and you’d be as unwelcome here as we are. Instead of sitting on a bench overlooking Poysdorf, you’d be spending Sundays sitting with me and Johanna in Lužánky Park, watching our children chase each other around the grass, and that would be all you could do. Isolated, forever branded an enemy of the state. Classified as socially unreliable, just like Johanna and me, and just like someday our children will be. I know what it’s like to long for home, Teresa, believe me. I, too, rejoiced when I thought I’d found it again. But all for nothing, Teresa, and it made my disappointment that much worse. Home isn’t where one grows up; don’t make the mistake of thinking that. Home is where they welcome you when you walk in the doo
r. And that’s something none of us here in Brno have experienced. It’s downright outrageous, how differently it all turned out. There’s another family now living in the apartment where I grew up. On the doorbell nameplate it says “Urban.” They’re occupying the room that was mine and Friedrich’s. They’re sleeping in our parents’ bedroom, and if what people say is true, then they’re eating off our porcelain plates, sitting at our table, and walking on our carpet. Teresa, we lost our home here the day they drove us out of the city, over the course of that night—remember the Feast of Corpus Christi? That’s how it is. Be done with the past, and don’t torture yourself with useless nostalgia. What you’re suffering over is no longer here. Not even your mother has a grave here anymore; all around Pohořelice, far and wide, there’s nothing. Not a single headstone, no memorial for all the people who died there during those days. I placed a small wreath as you asked by the fence where you last saw your mother. The building in which we spent the night is still standing; they haven’t torn it down. It’s still surrounded by the same rusted fence against which they stacked the bodies. I put the wreath there and, for the second time in my life, barely made it out of that place alive. The locals still carry the war in their hearts, and there’s so much hatred, you can’t even imagine. They called the SNB on me—apparently honoring the memory of a dead German is the same as declaring oneself a die-hard fascist. Teresa, the people here have gone mad. Stay where you are, in the free country of your dreams, and seek a new home. I think that even if the locals are unfriendly, you’ll have better luck finding it there than if you were here. Even though there you’re treading on their soil, at least you’re treading on it as a human being. Not as a criminal or a “Deutschak,” as they’ve taken to calling us now, with blood on your hands. Teresa, how much I’d love to see you again someday. I really hope we have that chance. I send you kisses and regards, also from Johanna, Anni, Rudi, and Barbora.