Deine Gerta
Brno, July 15, 1952
As she carefully licked the flap of the envelope and smoothed it with her thumb, pressing down firmly and securing the corners, little did she imagine the circumstances under which this letter, never delivered, would come back to her.
XI
The Deutsche Wanderbühne, Prague’s German traveling theater troupe, has arrived in Brno. Gerta couldn’t believe her eyes as she read the announcement in the Rudé Právo newspaper. Was it possible that some were still trying to keep the German language and culture alive? Were there still people left who believed in their worth?
Goose bumps ran up her arms. How long now had she been trying to pretend that anything German had nothing to do with her? Eight years? Gerta read it again: The Deutsche Wanderbühne, Prague’s German traveling theater troupe, has arrived in Brno. A theater company that performed in German. She hoped that Johanna wouldn’t ask her to go with her to see a German play, which would serve to remind her again of her own German blood. That despised part of herself.
Gerta folded the newspaper into quarters and tucked it into the trash—it slipped in alongside a few empty cups like it was nothing, didn’t even have to jostle for space. The German part of her no longer existed. Nor had it ever existed previously, in spite of her father’s efforts. She had already paid the price for the big D that had been stamped on her ration coupons. A price higher than some could endure, and these days she was grateful to finally be able to put the German part of her identity behind her, and occasionally even forget it existed at all. Even if others around her couldn’t. It was because of them that deductions were still being taken out of her paycheck and that the only work she could find was in a factory an hour away from her home. And then there was Barbora. Right from the start, it was obvious that the comrade teachers knew exactly whom they were dealing with. On the first day of elementary school, Barbora walked into the classroom with her big schoolbag across her whole back, glanced over her shoulder to give Gerta a big, trusting, partially toothless grin, and waved. But the enthusiasm didn’t last long, and soon she was coming home from school in tears, each time with a different story about what her classmates had done to her that day. Where was this coming from? It wasn’t until parents’ night that Gerta realized what was happening, after hearing for herself the disdain with which the comrade teacher was evaluating Barbora’s inability to distinguish similar-looking letters. This cow with her hair pulled back in a severe bun, standing on the teacher’s podium and repeatedly tapping the palm of her hand with a pointer, like a dictator wielding an instrument of authority, was tyrannizing her daughter in front of the entire class. At the end of the first year, she advised Gerta to have Barbora transferred to a special school—or else she would have to repeat the grade. And that was what happened. In spite of Karel’s efforts to intervene, the following year Barbora was stepping over the first-grade classroom threshold for a second time, and although Gerta suspected that her daughter hadn’t been born with the sharpest mind, she knew for certain that she had been born with the wrong last name. An injustice passed down from father to daughter, from mother to daughter. But why Barbora, who hadn’t even yet been born at that time? How long could human hatred persist? Gerta felt powerless. That she couldn’t protect herself was one thing, though somehow, hell knew how, she’d always managed to get by. But now, she couldn’t even protect Barbora, who looked up at her with her wide, uncomprehending, helpless child’s eyes. All Gerta could do was to smother everything German inside them. That was all she could do, for herself as much as for Barbora. Banish it. Not to pass on a single drop of tainted blood, so as not to infect the other part of her. Avoid using the language that had brought Gerta so much grief—better not even to acknowledge its existence, let alone attend a performance by some German theater troupe. As if it hadn’t occurred to the organizers that it was pointless, a useless battle that would only do harm to others, do harm to her, to Gerta. Best not to provoke anyone, to let things be, just as she and Antonia had done. Not congregate, not talk, not remember. For years now, Antonia had gone by the surname Ainingerová, as had Martin and Rosa. Only Johanna was foolish enough to believe that her husband was still out there somewhere, locked up, deported, and in her stubborn conviction had kept his name. Despite having seen what people were capable of doing. What they were capable of doing to her children. And now Gerta was aware of it, too, and so was Barbora. Even though Gerta had enrolled her in school as Schnirchová.
XII
The receiver in the Zábrdovice post office’s telephone booth burned her hand like red-hot metal. Gerta had been holding it for a long time, unable to bring herself to insert the tip of her finger into the hole on the finger-wheel and dial the number. She felt the crumpled piece of paper with the hastily scribbled numerals in her pocket.
“Five. Four. Six, two, three,” she dictated to herself aloud.
She dialed the last three numbers in rapid succession. Inside the receiver, she heard a clicking. Maybe the ringing on the other end would go on again to no avail, as it had that morning. Suddenly, on the other end of the line there was a clatter.
“Němcová,” answered a terse voice.
Gerta kept quiet.
“Němcová, who’s calling? Hello?”
“Hello, this is Gerta Schnirch,” Gerta practically whispered. She hadn’t expected such a harsh-sounding voice on the other end.
“Hello, what can I do for you?”
Gerta cleared her throat. “May I please speak with comrade Němec?”
On the other end of the telephone there was silence.
“What do you want from him?”
Gerta was prepared for this.
“I looked for him today at work, but unfortunately they told me they didn’t know where comrade Němec was. I have an urgent work-related message for him.”
The woman on the other end of the phone hissed, “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Then go back and ask them again. They of all people know exactly where he is.”
Gerta was silent.
“Or are you one of them?”
“Excuse me, one of whom?”
“Never mind. You wouldn’t tell me anyway. What do you want from him?”
Gerta again cleared her throat. “It’s confidential. It’s information from the Zbrojovka Arms Factory.”
“Zbrojovka, is it? In that case, trust me, Karel definitely won’t need that information anymore. That’s if he’ll ever need anything again.”
“What do you mean?” Gerta blurted out.
“Dear comrade, Karel isn’t here. And he won’t be . . .” The voice on the other end broke.
“Excuse me?”
From the other end came the sound of muffled sobs.
“Do you know when he’ll be back at work?” asked Gerta, but the only response was the sound of a dial tone. Gerta remained standing inside the telephone booth with the receiver in her hand. Someone knocked on the glass door. She hung up the receiver, picked up her shopping bag off the floor, and stepped out.
A man was standing impatiently in front of the booth. “Finally.”
Gerta turned her back on him.
How long had it been already? Fourteen days, three weeks? How long since she hadn’t received a message, since she hadn’t heard from him at all? Almost three weeks. This had never happened before. Never. He always came to see her with absolute regularity, two or three times a week; he would skip meetings and would come in the afternoons and stay overnight, always letting her know when she would see him next. Except now. And now it had been so long that she could no longer wait. So she made the call. It was the first time she had heard his wife’s voice. And heard her crying. She was overcome by a sense of dread. She remembered how nervous Karel had been of late. How he couldn’t concentrate on anything she said to him. He started showing up late and calling off their meetings. And in his sleep, he would cry out. And sob. It was the first time since the march to Pohořeli
ce that she’d heard a man cry, and it was her Karel, waking up sobbing from terrible nightmares—like a child. On such nights, she would wrap herself around him and try to calm him. And then one day he didn’t show up; he simply disappeared. Nobody knew where he was. Neither at work, nor at home. One day, she decided not to go to the factory, just so that she could sit on the square in front of the new state house and wait to see if Karel would appear, either going in or coming out. He didn’t. And then things began to happen that attested to his absence. To his definitive absence from her life.
Something catastrophic must have occurred for the authorities to move the married Greek couple into their apartment.
They had shown up one day with their suitcases, a police escort, and an official holding some documents in his hand, before she even returned from work. They were all standing in front of the door, waiting, the suitcases piled against the wall. By the time she and Barbora got home, hungry and exhausted, she didn’t have the energy to protest. They followed her into the apartment, removed their coats, and the official laid out the papers on the kitchen table.
“Mind you, now, comrade, no outbursts—three rooms for a single adult with one child, that’s an outright crime against our People’s Democracy. Do you have any idea how many disadvantaged people are out there without a roof over their head? We know all about the bourgeois lifestyle you were used to. Daddy was a loyal Henlein supporter, wasn’t he? So, comrade, you should be glad this Republic has granted you asylum at all, and that you’ve even been allowed to stay here. You need to reciprocate a little; it’s your civic duty. Besides, it’s not like you have a choice. Sign right here, and then fraternal greetings, comrade! Honor work!”
Gerta bent down over the papers as if in a trance. She picked up the fountain pen and signed Schnirch in dark blue ink on the line to which the official was pointing. With an ironic smirk, he gave the paper a shake. His comrade said something that she couldn’t understand to the couple; until now they had been standing by the kitchen door. They proceeded to enter the kitchen and set a pile of folded blankets down on the kitchen table in place of the papers. One of them was stamped Eigentum der Stadt Berlin. Property of the city of Berlin? This many years after the war? Gerta found herself wondering about it long after the front door of their apartment had closed behind the police officer and the official. In the kitchen, seated around the square table that Karel had once picked up somewhere, were now four people who were complete strangers to each other.
Gerta was exhausted.
So many changes in such a short amount of time, so very many. And Karel’s absence played a pivotal role in all of it. As if a central bolt had fallen out and the world had begun to spin out of control, with no coordination, madly reeling as though at any moment it would explode. And at the center of it all was Gerta, caught in the vortex of this raging whirlpool, everything she’d managed to collect over the past few years falling away. Karel and their new home. A space refurbished with great care as a refuge for herself, for Barbora, and for Karel. A space in which something extraordinary had come to pass, something she thought had been lost to her forever, a place of privacy, where everyone who entered unquestionably also belonged. And now it was all in shambles. Her life with Karel, as well as her home. Once again, there wasn’t room for her to breathe—for her to live her life. She fell into a state of apathy, unable to influence what was happening around her. She went on doing everything just as before. Each morning she dropped off Barbora at school, then took the train to work in Kuřim, left at the sound of the five o’clock whistle, and returned home with Barbora, always the last child to be picked up. In the meantime, the Agathonikiadis couple took over her bedroom, and the living room became Mr. Agathonikiadis’s around-the-clock recreation room. Gerta had literally been moved into Barbora’s room without even a chance to grab the mattress off her own bed. She was at the factory when the move took place. But she didn’t care. Without Karel, their home had lost all meaning for her anyway. The home they’d fixed up together with their own hands, during those evenings when Karel managed to slip away from his meetings. Karel, who seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth and no longer existed—not for her, and not even for his wife.
XIII
She had known it from the start. He couldn’t be with her, at least not in the way she would have wished. It was too late. She accepted it right from the beginning, as soon as she found out, and never attempted to change it. Not for almost three whole beautiful years. Neither had he, as if any additional attempt might derail this hard-won return, this fragile version of happiness they managed to keep locked away behind the doors of the apartment on Köffillergasse, now Stará Street, where he’d dropped her off one day back in 1950 with only a comforter and the few things from Zipfelová.
So often she had wanted to. So many nights awake in bed, huddled against his shoulder, her eyes staring into the darkness, so many times she had wanted to liberate herself of this burden. But he never asked her, and she didn’t have the nerve to bring it up. What if doing so undermined Barbora’s opportunity? Her opportunity to have a man in her life who over time might embrace her as a daughter, with unselfish, sincere affection. Even Gerta sometimes struggled. There was her all-encompassing love for Barbora, and there was the voice that would ambush her from within just when she least expected it. A ruthless, cruel voice that tied everything to do with her daughter back to her bloodline. Even her poor grades in school, even the fact that she still wasn’t reading or writing properly. Even that she looked like Gerta. And like Gerta’s mother and like her father. That voice forced her to admit to herself how much it repulsed her. The resemblance. The gestures that Barbora only could have picked up from watching her. Gerta grappled with that voice, and this was another reason she feared revealing the truth.
And so every day she remained guilty, once again guilty. Early on, she often caught Karel scrutinizing Barbora as she chewed on her breakfast roll, her eyes still sticky with sleep dust. Delving into her features, his gaze only discerned Gerta as he continued staring at her so intently that he would forget to sip his weak tea, brewed from a single teaspoon of leaves in a small teapot they all shared. She would see him racking his brain, trying to unlock her secret, unearth who had destroyed his future. He came up with nothing. Nor did he ask. He would finish sipping his cup of tea as Gerta took Barbora into the bathroom to wash her face with cold water. Afterward, the two of them would head out into the dark morning while he stayed behind, never knowing when they would next all share such a morning together.
Gerta had gone along with it. There was no way to pick up where they had left off in the days of their youth. Those days had brought them together, and that was enough. And to bridge the gap of those seven years and pretend nothing had happened was something she didn’t want to do. For Barbora’s sake, but perhaps for her own sake too. She sensed what a fine line there was between love and loathing. She sensed it the first time he had touched her again. That time she had tried, as best as she could, to hold herself together, but still she couldn’t relax. Like an ice floe that simply wouldn’t thaw, simply wouldn’t break down and dissolve into the ocean. That was how rigid, hard, and frozen she was. All she could do was close her eyes when he touched her, as, for that matter, she’d always done. There was no other way. Even though now it was no longer a necessity. For this reason, too, she wanted him to stay with his wife, this, and perhaps also because she was afraid of suddenly possessing too much happiness. Everything that she’d ever longed for. Gerta didn’t think she could bear it. For far too long she’d been living without a future, relying only on herself, her perspective that of a single day, which she would muster all her strength to face. She no longer knew any other way. All vitality and longing had drained out of her long ago. She was no longer capable of desiring anything. Of blooming like a tree in springtime. She didn’t want it. It scared her.
And besides, they never talked about it. Karel would show up and thaw out in their home like a snowflak
e on the lapel of a coat. The total opposite of the ice floe that Gerta carried within herself. He seemed happy and spent time with her often. There was no need for more. It had only been during these last few weeks that things changed. That he would leave in a hurry—if he showed up at all. Restless. Agitated. And scared.
“The revolution is devouring its own children,” he had often repeated of late.
What revolution? Gerta had asked herself, curious, but also with a slight foreboding. Never before had she known such tranquility as what they’d been enjoying during these past few years.
“Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be,” he had also said. Sadly, listlessly. Anxiously.
And then one day he didn’t come, although he had promised he would and had said that he would spend the night. Gerta stayed up late into the evening, waiting. In vain. The next day, she went to work and called. The day after that, she called again from work. The fourth day, she waited in front of his office building—all in vain. Karel had disappeared, as if the waters of the Brno reservoir had closed over him, just as they had over the stones that on a recent Sunday she and Barbora had been skipping. Nobody knew a thing. Gerta was desperate. So much so that she decided to transgress her self-imposed boundary, trespass into forbidden terrain, and make the call to Brigita Němcová. She imagined an older woman with a well-kept complexion and an impeccable manicure approaching the receiver, the cultured daughter of a friend with whom Karel had spent time in Hostýn during the war. A charming, elegant woman to whom Karel was joined by marriage and through a relationship that had shattered into a thousand fragments of minor misunderstandings. At least that was how he spoke of it, the one and only time he ever mentioned her. Would the woman on the other end of the receiver know who was calling? Or was she too busy with her own life to have noticed Karel’s nocturnal absences? Gerta didn’t know. Her hand trembled as she dialed the number. It was trembling with fear of the unknown territory that she was about to enter. A territory into which she had never wanted to set foot. One that even in her thoughts she had sought to avoid, just as Karel had, in their idyllic home in which the outside world didn’t exist. And then she had heard her—her voice and her sentences, which made it clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the voice on the other end belonged to that other one. And then her tears, which confirmed to Gerta the worst of her fears. The system had swallowed up Karel, just as it had swallowed up Otto Šling, Svitavský, and Kudílková-Blochová, with whom he used to work—just as it had swallowed up Hubert Šenk and Ida, and just as it had once swallowed up her, cowering behind a baby carriage on a farmstead outside of Pohořelice. And if not gone forevermore to his wife, then most likely gone forevermore to Gerta. Because what could Gerta possibly mean to him if at home he had a wife who was weeping for him?
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