PO: 9:00–16:30
ÚT–ČT: 9:00–15:00
PÁ: 9:00–14:30
POLEDNI PŘESTÁVKA OD: 12:00–12:30
If “Po” meant “Monday,” then this office was open, since it was a little after one o’clock on a Monday afternoon. I didn’t feel like going in just yet, so I kept walking toward the hedges and the gate at the end of the office wing, where I came upon the cemetery. Thick grass, sprinkled with daisies, carpeted most of the space between the graves. Only the main paths were covered with gravel. Evergreen thuja hedges corralled the graves into rows and semicircles. They were the same kind of hedges I knew from the big cemetery in Wiesbaden where I used to visit my grandfather’s grave with Oma. I remembered Oma telling me that these hedges were called Lebensbaum (tree of life)—an oddly fitting choice for a cemetery, especially here, where they grew wildly. Their emerald humpbacks created a bumpy maze meandering through the cemetery, their spidery foliage leaning over and sometimes embracing a gravestone. All that green was dotted with the fiery orange of marigolds—apparently the caretaker’s standard planting for this summer.
I walked past the graves and scanned the headstones. There were Czech names and German names, recent dates and long-ago dates. Here and there I came upon someone tending a grave, and I would nod at the person, smiling, trying to look like I knew where I was going. The cemetery was bigger than I had expected. It swung around the back of the crematorium and ended in a row of tall maples. I walked up to them and saw that beyond them the hill dropped into what was now another construction site but mainly a huge pit of sandy earth. From here I had a good view over the rooftops and spires of the city. Now and then, through the wind, I could hear the honking of a horn or the ding of a streetcar. I contemplated the trees for a while, looking up into their branches rustling in the breeze. Given their height, they could have been old enough to have been here when my grandparents buried Guido, and later their little son Klaus. And they might have witnessed my great-grandfather shooting himself, if this was the right cemetery.
I turned around and walked back toward the crematorium. I would have to ask to find the family grave, if indeed it was here. I entered through one of the glass doors that seemed to lead to an office. It was quiet inside. The lights were off, but I was clearly inside an administrative building. Someone emerged from a door, and it seemed to me that the sign on the door said something about hours from nine to four thirty, so I knocked. When I received no response, I tried the handle and found myself looking in on two women working behind computer screens at two desks arranged in an L. Someone was sitting in the guest chair in front of them. One of the women motioned me out of the room, so I retreated, mumbling an apology. There was a bench outside the office, and I sat down. For a moment I felt like giving up, but then I thought, No, I should at least ask, as long as I’m here and the office is open.
I took a sip of water from the bottle I carried in my backpack. Eventually the door opened again and it was my turn. One of the women looked at me expectantly while the other hacked away at her keyboard.
“Dobrý den,” I said. “Good day” was the only thing I could say in Czech, and so I continued in German, “I’m sorry, but do you speak any German?”
She made a gesture with her hand to indicate a small space between her thumb and index finger.
“English?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m looking for the grave of Knina,” I continued in German.
She nodded, then said, “When die?”
When had Ludwig died? I didn’t recall, exactly.
“Nineteen ninety-three? Ninety-four?”
She nodded more vehemently, sat down by the computer, and typed something. Before long, she jumped up. “Come!”
She motioned for me to follow her. We left the office, walked along the crematorium’s wings, and turned into the cemetery. I had to hurry to keep up with her. She was a small woman in black corduroy pants and a black top. Once in a while, she waved in a “follow me” gesture, and we made our way to the section behind the crematorium. There she slowed down and started scanning the graves. At the end of a row she would swerve, shake her head, and start reviewing the opposite side. Then she would sprint off again and start on another row. After a while she shook her head and pointed at herself, then toward the office.
“Wait!” She motioned toward the ground and then rushed off.
I waited. The sun had now rounded the tower of the crematorium. I remained where she had told me to and enjoyed the sun warming my face and the wind tousling my hair.
It took a few minutes until she returned. This time she held a piece of paper in her hand, and when she showed it to me, I saw it was a letter addressed to Herta, all in Czech, of course. The only thing I could make out was a date in the first paragraph, written in bold letters: dnem . . . 1.3.2009.
And then, a little farther down, a figure in bold letters: 3865—Kč.
This must be correspondence about the lease for the grave.
“Family?” she asked, pointing at Herta’s name.
“Yes,” I said. “Aunt. My aunt. But she died.”
“Oh, good, you give her?”
“Yes, yes, I give,” I said. With the little language we shared, it was going to be impossible to make her understand that Herta had died two years ago.
“Because,” she said, “no answer.” Well, yes, of course there was no answer.
“And,” she added, poking at the number written in Czech koruny.
“Yes, yes, I take care,” I said, nodding and pointing at myself.
“You?” she asked again, and I bowed my head, put my right hand on my chest, and reached for the letter. She gave it to me.
“Okay, I show you!” She waved again for me to follow her and hurried toward a row of graves at the opposite corner of the crematorium. I waited, holding the letter, while she filed by the gravestones, stooping sometimes to read the engraving. At the far end, where the row curved to join another, she crouched down, and then, squatting, she motioned for me to join her.
“Here!” She was pointing at a small grave that was only a gray stone block topped by a gray stone urn.
I could not see a name engraved anywhere. How did she know this was it?
“This!” she repeated.
All right, I figured, I must take her word for it. We both stood up, and she looked at me, nodding toward the letter.
“Yes, I take care of this,” I said. “Thank you very much for finding the grave for me.”
She smiled and left. I bent down again to consider this grave where my father’s brother Klaus was buried, and where Guido had been buried, and then much later his son Ludwig, who was the only one I had known. And then, as I studied the crumbly stone base, I made out the faint engraving, its relief almost flattened by all the years: RODINA KNINOVA. Since I had seen “Rodina” on other gravestones, I assumed this meant “family.” “Kninova” would be “Knina,” adjusted grammatically to mean “Family Knina.”
Family grave in Liberec (Reichenberg), 2009
I had found it! I pushed aside a fern leaf to caress the engraving. At least this grave was not overgrown like some of the others. The contract had run out only three months earlier, so the tree of life behind it had not had time to engulf it yet. And I had paperwork to possibly take care of it. Untended graves get repropriated; I knew that from the cemeteries in Germany.
Graves always make me want to leave a sign of life, a sign that somebody cares. I brushed some needles off the urn and looked over to the maples that swayed in the wind at the edge of the cemetery. Here’s what I would do: I would give the letter to my sister when I returned to Germany, so she could take care of the payment and paperwork, but I would buy some flowers and come back the next day to put them on the grave. It didn’t even occur to me simply to put a pebble by the stone urn, as you would on a Jewish grave.
I stood by the grave a little longer, contemplating its smallness. Then I walked o
ver the grass carpets to the edge of the cemetery, where the hill fell to the city. I looked up into the treetops waving their arms above me. Were you the same trees that were here in 1938 when Oma’s father shot himself? And when Guido was buried? And later my little uncle?
I had a good chunk of the afternoon left, so I walked to Talsperre Lake, where my grandparents used to promenade. The clouds had cleared, and ducks were bouncing on the water, its rippled surface glittering in the sun. I walked on, passing by the mansion where the Nazi Reichskommissariat had been, and down the hill toward the old museum, which still stands with its thick turrets and portly gate, and on up Grillparzer Straße, now called Dvořákova. I was halfway nervous that my grandparents’ house might not be there anymore. But it was, steadfast as ever. Red geraniums bloomed in the pot atop the archway by the fence, and pink geraniums hung in planters off the sun porch. All was silent; the owners were probably away at work, as they would have been on a Monday afternoon.
My grandparents' house on Grillparzer Straße in Liberec (Reichenberg), 2009
I walked up and down the sidewalk, as I had on earlier visits, and snapped pictures of the house, just as I had of the apartment on Tuchplatz. The rhododendron bush by the kitchen garden was still there, the tiles around it overgrown by grass. After I took my obligatory pictures, there was nothing more for me to do. I took my leave. How do you say farewell to a house? As I walked down the hill of the former Grillparzer Straße, that sense of abandoning that always grabs me when I “visit” this house overcame me. I turned to look back several times, as if I were saying good-bye to an old friend.
On my way back to the hotel, I passed by my grandfather’s old school and, through the closed glass doors, took pictures of the staircase where he used to slip love notes into Oma’s hand. I walked on, back toward the center of the city. I was looking forward to coffee and cake at the Café Post, where on previous visits I had sat with my brother and then with Harry and the children among the very same gilded columns among which my grandfather and Guido had smoked their endless cigarettes and talked politics.
When I got there, however, the café was gone. Its shell was still there. The wide windows were there, and as I peered through their dusty panes I could see the gilded columns and the stucco walls. But it was empty. My heart sank. I wanted to pound against those grimy windows. How could it not be alive anymore? It was supposed to be here, always, waiting for my return, ready to serve up another dose of Old Austria. I walked over to the door, on which hung a notice that I couldn’t decipher. It looked like the closure had been recent. Maybe, just maybe, they were renovating it? I asked the receptionist at the hotel. She confirmed it had closed recently, but she didn’t understand my question about whether it was going to open again. I had to make do with coffee and cake in the less-baroque hotel café.
When I phoned Harry that night, he said, “Why don’t you find out what the letter from the crematorium says? It will be harder to find someone who can translate it when you’re back in Germany.”
True. The next morning, I asked the hotel receptionist to translate the letter for me, and she told me that it asked for the equivalent of $150, which had to be paid in cash at the crematorium office, to pay for the grave for another ten years.
That decided it. This was, as the Jewish saying goes, hashgachah pratis, divine providence: one of the reasons I was back in Reichenberg, unbeknownst to me until then, was to take care of this grave.
I figured I would buy a plant that would last awhile. It would be better to plant it in the soil, so no one would be tempted to carry it off. But how would I plant it without a shovel? I searched the drawers in my hotel room and found a corkscrew. That would do. I could dig a hole with this. I stuck it in my pocket.
I had spotted a florist’s shop on the way from my grandparents’ house, so I went there first and bought a heather with tiny lavender buds. Heathers are hardy. If need be, it could withstand a hot summer with only occasional watering by the cemetery gardener.
I withdrew the required koruny from a cash machine, made my way back up the U Krematoria, and marched into the crematorium office with greater confidence than I had had the day before. Rather than merely snooping about, I now was somebody about to accomplish something. The same woman who had helped me the day before was there. I smiled at her and said, “I come back; I pay today,” and handed her the letter and the money.
“You pay?”
“Yes. Another ten years, yes?” I said, holding up all ten fingers.
She nodded, motioned me to take a seat, and began to fill out papers. She showed me the registration page that listed the names of the people whose ashes were buried in the grave I was paying for:
Emil Berndt
Marie Berndt
Guido Knina
Klaus Berndt
Teresa Kninova
Ludwig Knina
I did a double take at “Teresa Kninova”—yes, of course, that was Resi’s official name in Czech. They were buried here together, she and Guido.
I managed to have the woman change the registration address to my sister’s, and she gave me a copy of our exchange. Since it was all in Czech, I could not verify what it said, but at least I had paperwork.
Then, riding my wave of taking care of things, I decided I would ask all I could possibly ask.
“Could you look up another grave for me? My great-grandfather,” I said. She nodded.
“Josef Rößler,” I said.
She pushed over a notepad, on which I wrote his name and November 1938.
She frowned when she saw the date, waved her hand in an iffy motion, and tapped into her computer. She leaned back, biting her lip, thinking. Then she rummaged in her desk drawer, pulled out a key, got up, and gestured for me to wait.
She disappeared into an adjoining room. I was alone; her office companion from the day before wasn’t there. A clock on the wall ticked, its big hand moving from one minute to the next with a soft but steady zonk. The little heather plant sat by my feet in its thin white plastic bag.
When the woman returned, she was carrying a big leather-bound book.
“Maybe, maybe,” she said. She cracked it open on her desk and carefully turned the pages, which were stiff to her touch. Finally, she ran her index finger down a page, stopped, and rotated the ledger toward me.
There, in fading blue ink, was written, Josef Rößler 3.11.1938.
I blinked as I felt tears welling up.
“Grave?” I asked, peeling my eyes off the page.
She shook her head slowly and shrugged her shoulders.
“No. Don’t know.”
Death notice for Josef Rößler in the then Nazi-run Reichenberger newspaper Die Zeit, November 7, 1938
I glanced one more time at the notation, took a deep breath, thanked her, gathered up my papers and my plant, and wandered out into the cemetery, where again the wind was blowing.
I squatted by the grave for a long time. I dug a hole in front of the gravestone, between two scraggly marigolds, stabbing my corkscrew into the moist black soil until it was loose enough for me to scoop out with my fingers. I dumped the heather out of its plastic pot and pushed its root ball into the dirt, sweeping the dug-out earth onto it and patting it all down so the plant would be firmly set.
Then I dusted off the urn with my dirty hands and plucked some unruly branches off the fern growing out from underneath the hedge behind it. I straightened up and wiped my hands on my jeans.
After all that was done and there was nothing else to do, I stood by the grave again. One should say a prayer at moments like this. I did not know the Kaddish and so, staring out over the hedge behind the little grave, I said out loud into the wind, “Sh’ma, Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.” Hear, Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.
Harry and I these days, Ireland, July 2016
EPILOGUE
Tel Aviv, July 8, 2014
Air-raid sirens wail at 7:19 p.m. I grab my keys and phone and text Harry in Chicago
: Sirens over Tel Aviv. My eighteen-year-old daughter yanks the stubborn apartment door and urges, “Come on, Mom!”
Just yesterday, I reassured a friend in Germany that in Tel Aviv we weren’t feeling the violence she was seeing on TV.
We are in Tel Aviv because my daughter, freshly graduated from a Jewish high school, is doing the paperwork to volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces. Like most of her classmates, she is spending a gap year in Israel before going to college; unlike them, however, she has decided she isn’t going to a religious seminary or taking classes at Hebrew University. She wants to do something “real” and “consequential.” Harry and I support her decision, but we have not urged her on. Joining the IDF is too grave a proposition for that.
As the sirens howl, we clamber down the stairs to the second-floor landing of the building where we are renting a vacation apartment. A Bauhaus building from the 1930s, it has no bomb shelter. According to the “conventional threat prevention” our landlord emailed us the day before, we have ninety seconds to get to a secure spot, like this landing. That’s how long it takes a missile fired from Gaza to reach the Tel Aviv metro area.
Neighbors are gathering on the landing. Some speak English, and we chat. Everybody is tapping a cell phone. Boom! We all look up. Does this mean the Iron Dome intercepted the rocket? Eventually, people disperse. As we climb back upstairs, my daughter says, “Well, at least we met the neighbors.”
Over dinner, we marvel that this is actually happening. I post on Facebook, and concern from Jewish and non-Jewish friends around the world pours in: “Be safe!”
Jumping Over Shadows Page 18