Gerta

by Tučková, Kateřina

  XIV

  Compared to all the things that had gone on and were still going on around Gerta Schnirchová, this seemed a mere trifle. At least when it came to this, she wasn’t caught in it alone. They were all caught in it, every person she met in the small independent shops, the women forced to find jobs and who now sat beside her on the assembly line, feeding heads of screws into an enormous press—even their former caretaker from Sterngasse, whom she had recently encountered on the street, was caught in it too. And Karel had been caught in it as well, except his blind faith in the system had left him completely oblivious. And back then, all Gerta had been able to think about was the happiness that had unexpectedly come her way. It had dawned on her only later, when she could no longer find any potatoes to buy for Barbora and when, eight years after the war, milk or butter was available only by using food coupons, provided there was milk or butter. Thinking back to those days now—when lightbulbs in shop windows illuminated a display of smoked sausages or fruit that no one could buy because one needed coupons for everything, and by the end of the month everyone was out—the whole charade was laughable. Or when she thought back to the flurry of advertisements that always popped up in the papers just before Christmas: Have walnuts, will trade for lemons; will buy potatoes, or trade for onions and garlic; will buy sugar. Terrible. Back then, even Zipfelová had written her, asking could she come to Perná and bring her some sugar, because their coupons had been revoked, and there were no independent shops in the village. In exchange, she had offered potatoes—what else—so Gerta made the trip, although with only a modest stash, since sugar had all but disappeared even from the Brno shops.

  “If only they hadn’t deported Ignác Pfeifer—he kept bees—at least we’d have had honey. But no, everything either went under, or someone came around after the war and walked off with it,” Zipfelová had said back then, rubbing the paper packet of sugar between her fingers.

  There was absolutely nothing, no food and no clothing, and on one meager salary, from which the state deducted an additional 20 percent for some national reconstruction fund, Gerta and Barbora just barely scraped by. She practically burst into tears of laughter one evening as, gathered in the kitchen around the radio Karel had once acquired for her, they were listening to a report about what things would cost once the currency reforms went into effect. Mrs. Athanaia looked at her in alarm; by now she had learned some Czech and could understand quite well, and therefore couldn’t comprehend what about this catastrophic news was making Gerta laugh. Gerta couldn’t explain it either. Maybe she was laughing because the situation in which she found herself was so absurd. There was no butter to be rationed, no sugar, no vegetables, not even potatoes, and hardly anyone could afford meat. The milk supply had run out. This despite the fact that earlier that spring they had already confiscated food coupons from all the misers in the countryside, whose stinginess was being blamed for the urban shortages, and then went on to confiscate them from the last of the self-employed—people just trying to avoid work—and finally even from pensioners who had held senior official positions prior to 1945. And from their widows. Gerta was surprised they hadn’t confiscated them from citizens who had formerly been German nationals as well. They must have simply forgotten about them, or most likely it would come as part of the second wave, she thought to herself with bitter irony. And when, once a week, she permitted herself to buy a newspaper, what did she read? That all this was simply a side effect of a tremendous economic boom. That the standard of living was steadily improving, and people were happier. This was reported in all seriousness and made the front page under a banner headline. Meanwhile, in her neighborhood, they were no longer just turning off the electricity on Mondays, their main shut-off day, but also on Thursday afternoons, now designated as an additional irregular delivery day. This affected them all equally, regardless of whether it was her—that German bitch with the brat—or any of the Czechs around her. And if this latest stunt ended up wiping out the few Czech crowns she had managed to save, the hell with it. They had never amounted to much anyway, so doing without them wasn’t going to be a big adjustment. In fact, in her household, the repercussions probably wouldn’t have amounted to more than her outburst of bitter laughter by the radio receiver and Mrs. Athanaia’s lamentations—if Zipfelová hadn’t died.

  That time, they all went to Perná together: Johanna, Antonia, and the children, Anni, Rudi, Martin, Rosa, and Barbora. And they stood around the grave with Hermína, who had organized the funeral, and Mrs. Krumpschmiedová, whose daughter-in-law had brought her. There was no one else.

  “Before the war, the whole village would have been there. She would have had wreaths on her grave. From the Czechs and from the Germans. They would have carried her from the road all the way to the cemetery, taken her once around the field to let her have a last look at the Děvičky Castle ruins. There would have been a funeral procession, and there would have been music, even if she couldn’t afford it anymore. Just out of neighborly sympathy. Because everyone around here liked her, back then.”

  Mrs. Krumpschmiedová’s muffled German fell in shaky words that landed on top of the wooden table around which they once used to sit every day. Nothing inside Zipfelová’s cottage had changed, except for the room that Hermína had moved herself into. There was a time when five haggard women had taken turns sleeping in it. Gerta looked around the old kitchen and down at the table, on which a frugal funeral feast had been laid out. Chicory coffee, bread with sweet curd cheese, and strawberries. When had she and Barbora last eaten strawberries? Such a luxury for city folk. Not since the last year that they had still been living with Zipfelová, of that she was certain.

  “And the priest would have been there too. Our old priest, who left with all the villagers when they were exiled to Poysdorf, or wherever they ended up.”

  Mrs. Krumpschmiedová had her head bowed so low that it was almost touching the tabletop. At the back of her neck rose a hump that swayed in rhythm with the withered, hunched body that was continually shaking. She could barely make out any of the other women; their faces were above the horizon line beyond which her posture prevented her from seeing. From time to time, she would strain her eyes and try to raise her head to look at them, sitting around her stiff and upright, but then with a strained wheeze she would slump down again, letting her head sink back to her chest. She spoke only in German. After the war, she had never managed to learn Czech, not a single word. For Gerta, it was the first time that she had gone back to speaking in German for any sustained length of time. It felt strange. Unseemly. She had been the one to shoo the children out of the kitchen into the garden so that they wouldn’t overhear them talking, and she would have preferred to run out with them. Zipfelová’s old kitchen, suffused with memories and with the language that had been her undoing, felt so strange to her.

  “She so wanted to have music. She kept a list of songs that she wanted to have played. These last two years, she would bring it up often, asking me which ones I thought were better. She kept changing them around.”

  Hermína’s voice sounded choked up. How had their relationship changed over these past few years, since the two of them had begun living here together all by themselves? How attached had they grown to one another, once Zipfelová had lost all the children that she once took care of for her German girls, having already lost her own son and, in the end, even Ida?

  “I blame myself for not having visited her more often. And when I did come to see her, I didn’t even notice that she had death on her mind. She never said a word about funerals. She’d just talk about all the things that had been going on here over the past few years, you know? She seemed so spry, didn’t she, Hermína?” said Johanna.

  Hermína shrugged her shoulders.

  “It’s true. She was always keeping an eye on things, always interested in everything that was going on. When one of you visited, she’d tell you everything she knew. But then there were the nights when we sat here opposite one another, and the f
uture was simply a blank. She knew Helmut wasn’t coming back. After Ida ran away, something inside her broke, and she stopped waiting. Maybe she didn’t want Helmut to find that just his old mother was still waiting for him, but his wife was gone. So somehow, she just pushed aside all thoughts of his return, and then realized that without them, there was nothing left for her to look forward to. The future was completely empty, and the only thing she could see waiting there for her was death. That’s how she would talk about it.”

  Mrs. Krumpschmied’s daughter-in-law brought a cup of water up to the old lady’s lips and held it while she took a few sips. As she did, a dribble of water trickled down into the handkerchief held ready under her chin.

  “She had it all planned out, down to the last detail, and that’s also why this currency reform killed her. Whatever was left of her meager pension, she’d been putting it aside toward her funeral. And then overnight, she had nothing. Not even enough for a coffin, let alone for music or wreaths or the reception she so wanted to have at the parish house. Not enough for anything. Just barely enough for one of those paper bags left over from the war. She had the heart attack while she was looking at the newspaper, reading about the new prices.”

  Hermína paused.

  “Come to think of it, you could say she was lucky. After all, by then she’d already started to accumulate debts. She was reading a paper that was ten days old; that’s how long it took for it to get here. So the good Lord gave her a gift of an extra ten days. Ten beautiful, hot June days full of ripening strawberries and blooming lupines, which she’d always bring back in bunches from the fields. And beautiful early evenings sitting on the doorstep with the swallows and sparrows warbling and the smell of the garden.”

  They were silent. Mrs. Krumpschmiedová’s head kept on nodding as she went on involuntarily shaking, and it looked as if she were agreeing with everything. In resignation.

  “And the rabbits had babies. She still got to see the kits,” added Hermína.

  Johanna was dabbing the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief. Even Gerta felt teary.

  “And what about Ida, why didn’t she come?” asked Antonia.

  Mrs. Krumpschmiedová stiffened the narrow, bony shoulders that hunched over her sunken chest, and tried to lift her head to see who had asked this question. But then her head fell again as the younger women all looked on with compassion.

  “Hard to say. I wrote to her that same evening, the day I found Zipfelová. I had lit a candle for her. She was lying in the room next door. I had already gotten her ready.” Hermína’s voice cracked.

  Antonia, who was sitting closest to her, placed a hand on her shoulder. Hermína was squinting and rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingers so hard that it must have hurt.

  “Hermína,” Gerta said, but didn’t know what more to add.

  “So I wrote to her,” Hermína went on, “but who knows if those few days were enough for the postal service to deliver it to her in that backwater. I tried to call the post office, but it was no use. They don’t even have a post office there. The nearest one is in the next village where nobody had ever heard of her, small wonder. It’s possible she never even got it.”

  “Has she ever been in touch? How is she?” asked Johanna.

  Hermína nodded. “She wrote,” she said, “but it wasn’t good news. She can’t get over to see Hubert. It takes almost a whole day to travel there—she has to go halfway across the whole Republic—and the one time she went, and even brought the child along, they wouldn’t let her see him. She was only allowed to write him a letter, but up to the time she wrote us, she still hadn’t received a single line back from him. That one time she tried to visit him, she spent the whole night at the bus stop and barely made it back to work on time.”

  “She’s working on somebody else’s farm? Who’s taking care of the child?” asked Antonia.

  “She didn’t say. She probably brings it along—why, you yourselves know it’s not impossible.” Hermína shrugged her shoulders. “At least she’s working—the address is the state farm in Kostelec nad Orlicí. Supposedly she goes in as a day worker, but they won’t let her near the animals, because being a traitor who’s an enemy of socialism, she might try to poison them. They just let her help with the most menial chores, so you can imagine how much she’s getting paid for that. The only money she was allowed to take with her from here, she apparently spent on the trip to see Hubert. And it was a complete waste. At the beginning, since she wasn’t registered there, she wasn’t even getting any food coupons. And the people on the farm looked at her as if she were a criminal—never even offered her anything to eat. And right in the middle of it all, old Mrs. Šenková died. She’s buried there in some cemetery behind the farm without even her name on the headstone. They just put her in a grave and covered her up. They told Ida she should be glad not to have had to do it herself. Imagine.”

  “Beasts,” wheezed Mrs. Krumpschmiedová. “How are they any better than Hitler, hmm? They treat people exactly the same way. Worse, in fact! They liquidate and humiliate their fellow countrymen. Pigs.”

  The women looked over at the old German lady in surprise.

  “Come now, Mama,” exclaimed her dismayed daughter-in-law in Czech, having up until then remained silent. She obviously understood German very well.

  My, my, how the tables have turned, thought Gerta to herself. Not that she ever would have wished ill upon Ida. Never. She had even rejoiced with her when she finally had a husband and a child of her own, nor had she, unlike Zipfelová, ever suspected her of being conniving. Still, she couldn’t help but find something cynically amusing about this ironic twist of fate. Once, she and the women now seated around her had been the ones forced to work at tasks that they’d never done before, and Ida had been the one, at the beginning, to walk around with a stern expression, making sure they weren’t getting away with anything. And now suddenly, Gerta had a job in a factory; Johanna was working as a seamstress; Antonia was a saleswoman somewhere; Hermína worked on the JZD collective farm. And Ida? Ida was now paying her dues for no good reason, just as they, too, had once been forced to do. And not one of them had ever deserved it, nor did Ida.

  “Bunch of swine, the ones at the top,” Hermína spoke up. “But it’s always the simple folk who end up bearing the brunt of it. Same as always, same as under Hitler, same as under Stalin. Let’s not kid ourselves. Crooks will find their way to the trough wherever they are. One doesn’t have to look very far, right, Mrs. Krumpschmiedová? The Jechs had it out for you right after the war, and now they have it out for the Šenks. And it’s always about property. Whether German or Czech. And they always end up taking it away, just according to different rules. But at least these rules were adopted by the people, the ones who voted, anyway—isn’t that so?”

  Krumpshmiedová was listening to Hermína with her head bowed low as before. Only her shoulders with the hump in the middle shook harder. The sunken eyes in the midst of her wrinkled face reddened.

  “Who could have imagined such a thing before the war? Life here was so good. Everyone took care of themselves, but we were still a community. What’s happened to it all? Sometimes, when I get up in the morning, I still think it’s all just a bad dream that I simply can’t understand. They took everything from us, just because we were the wrong nationality, even though during the war we never harmed a soul. They barely let us stay in our own homes. And now all the money we saved up since the war—my son, my daughter-in-law, and I—it’s completely worthless. Our neighbors, longtime neighbors, who stayed here, are being sent off to camps—for not wanting to hand over their hard-earned harvest to SNB agents who show up at their door with some shady quota collector. I’m too old for this world. How often have I wished, as Zipfelová used to say, that the Lord would already come and take me. May he grant me a peaceful death, and then just let my son arrange for me to be buried next to old Krumpschmied. No need for any music—no point in theatrics for an old lady. Let it just come already.�
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  “Now, Mama,” the daughter-in-law spoke again in Czech, putting her arms around the old woman’s shoulders. “Richard and I keep telling you that everything’s going to be all right again.”

  Gerta looked over at Hermína. She was sipping the rest of her chicory coffee that by now had grown cold.

  “No, it won’t,” said Hermína, having set her cup down.

  Mrs. Krumpschmiedová’s daughter-in-law looked at her in alarm, and a shadow of displeasure flitted across her face.

  “You know it yourself. As long as Jech’s here—or as Zipfelová, poor soul, used to say, that whole Jech clan—things will never be all right. People who have no trouble taking down someone like Šenk can just as easily take down any one of us.”