Gerta

by Tučková, Kateřina

  “We have to tell someone. Gerta left Šenk’s knapsack there.”

  “Jesus Christ, silly girl. Well, now there’s no point in trying to hide it.”

  Zipfelová paced around the kitchen, rapped her knuckles on the table, rapped them on the windowsill, then came back and rapped them on the table again.

  “How on earth could you have left it there?”

  “He reached for his weapon.”

  “Good God, an armed German lying in a field. We have to report this to Šenk and to the administrative commissioner—that would be Schmidt. He’s just been appointed in Břeclav,” said Zipfelová nervously.

  Gerta glanced tentatively over at Johanna. It wasn’t sounding good; that much she could sense. But at least Ida and Zipfelová could vouch for them that they hadn’t helped anyone. Now that she was cradling Barbora in her arms, she felt she would give anything in the world for the certainty of knowing that no one would ever harm the two of them again.

  “Would you come with me to find Šenk?” she whispered.

  “We’re going right now, before it’s too late. Ida, keep an eye on these children. I’m going with them to look for Šenk.”

  X

  A single shot was all it took. Gerta fell as if she had been cut down; her knees buckled. The sky closed in over her, the swallows disappeared into blackness and silence. Nothing. Then she heard Johanna screaming beside her. She was sobbing and shouting something into her ear, lying right next to her. Excruciating grief penetrated to the marrow of Gerta’s bones; it was tangible. It set the tips of her fingers tingling. She began to feel them again and started tapping them against the dusty earth beneath her, then swept her arms up and buried her head in them. She didn’t want to hear Johanna’s cries. The cries were too much on top of the burden of a guilty conscience, which would now weigh them both down for all eternity. Forevermore she would live with the knowledge that they were responsible for the death of a person who had asked them for help. Forevermore she would envision her hand with its extended finger pointing to the place in the grain field. The Russian soldiers picking their way carefully through the green waves of grain, closing in from two sides on the spot where he lay. Standing on the road, Commissioner Schmidt and Šenk, wearing his wide-brimmed country hat. The shot rang out before they even bothered to take a good look at him. And obviously he must have still been alive, or they wouldn’t have shot him. A heated discussion in rapid, convoluted Russian then followed.

  “Šenk, they want you to go have a look” was the first intelligible sentence Gerta made out.

  The sound of heavy boots on the hard, dusty road, the crunch of pebbles. The swish of shoes moving through the lush, green stalks of grain, waving left, waving right, parting and coming back together behind a person’s back, swaying in unison. Like sea waves, but with a different sound.

  Gerta still kept her eyes closed. Beside her, Johanna had calmed down a bit; by now she was only sobbing into Gerta’s already drenched sleeve. Meanwhile, from the field came the sound of Russian and Czech voices, a medley of shouting and arguing.

  “It’s definitely not one of the Knitzes; I knew them all. But it could be someone from Dunajovice, seeing as he was asking for Renner. If only those idiots hadn’t blasted his face off. How am I supposed to recognize him like this?”

  “Hubert, there was no time to aim; you saw for yourself.”

  “But this is a gruesome massacre. Who’s supposed to look at it?”

  “Listen up, pal. The gruesome massacre happened on the front lines. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Here you had a Werewolf lying in your field, and you’re complaining about the intervention. If you’ve got any sense at all, for God’s sake, shut up.”

  “Who’s going to clean this up? Just look at him.”

  “You got ten women off the transport, so don’t go grumbling that you’re shorthanded. Let the ones who found him deal with it.”

  “Yeah, right, those two,” said Šenk, and he must have turned to look their way because the wind carried his voice over more distinctly. “First, someone has to revive them. He does have to be removed, though, we can’t bury him here; we’ll be plowing soon.”

  “Jesus Christ, so take him to the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery in Perná? Are you crazy? The locals will have you lynched! You know it damn well yourself. And besides, you haven’t even identified who he is yet, so you’d better do that first, or have one of your commandos do it. He might just turn out to be someone from Dunajovice. He was after something around here. Maybe you’ll find the answer in his duffel.”

  “Open the bag!” Schmidt ordered the Russian soldiers.

  A moment of silence.

  “And throw that hat over his face. Jesus, who’s supposed to look at that?”

  “There’s an SA uniform in his duffel, Commissioner.”

  “There you go; he probably held up some poor devil and stole his civilian clothes. I bet nobody offered them to him for free. Wonder where he was headed, seeing as he felt the need to keep his uniform.”

  “Jesus, I bet he’s local anyway. Why else would he have been afraid of me?”

  “What do I know? Maybe the women didn’t understand him correctly. Let’s bring him in for an autopsy, or better yet, take him straight to Pohořelice. Have you heard what they’ve been digging up over there? Seems they were burying three hundred people a day. Dysentery and typhoid fever. And old age. People who didn’t survive the trek. We’ll just toss this one on the pile.”

  Hubert Šenk said nothing. Gerta hoped that at the very least he shook his head. Her own head wouldn’t stop spinning.

  XI

  One week later, Gerta was marched into the village pub that had been converted into the temporary local administrative headquarters and was presented to Commissioner Josef Schmidt. He had requisitioned her from working in the fields to working in the office as administrative support to help record and catalog confiscated properties seized by the National Land Trust. Šenk remembered from that very first day that she had gone to a commercial academy and that her Czech was as good as her German. He couldn’t refuse Schmidt’s request, especially after Schmidt had assigned two night watchmen to his fields, realizing they had become a border-crossing corridor for men sneaking back to see their families—Nazi Werewolves, and who knew what other devils. They hadn’t been able to identify that shot German, so there was no way of knowing what had brought him to these parts. In any case, it was better to stay on Josef Schmidt’s good side; that much Šenk knew from his boyhood days, when they used to tussle behind the schoolhouse. So he sent him the Schnirch girl, who seemed reliable and above all smart. Hopefully someone like her wouldn’t annoy Schmidt and wouldn’t end up being blown to bits by his Russian goons.

  Gerta waited outside the door until two men, who up to then had been inside talking to Schmidt in loud voices, came out. They walked right past her, having shut the door behind them, and a few moments later she knocked and went inside. In the former main dining room of the Perná pub, there were four wooden tables pushed together with the commissioner’s paperwork spread out across them. On the tables behind him were reams of documents, boxes of papers, and office supplies. There was also a firearm.

  “I’m assuming there’s no need for me to explain in what state of affairs things were left here by the former German mayor, am I right? His office was the little house that burned down just off the square. I’m starting from scratch.”

  Gerta glanced up at the high ceiling of the pub, decorated with a border of wine-themed motifs typical of the region.

  “Hell knows how long I’ll be here or who’ll come after me, but it makes no difference. We have to start somewhere and end up with some kind of a list. And we’ve got to start right away. We’re already behind. By now we’ll have a hell of a time figuring out who took off with what. Here, come sit in this chair.”

  Gerta approached the table and sat down opposite Commissioner Schmidt.

  “Can you u
nderstand everything I’m saying? They told me you speak Czech.”

  “I speak Czech and German. My mother was Czech; my father was a Brno German. I went to Czech elementary school and German secondary school.”

  “What a shitty case. One hell of a way to be born. The worst part about it is that it wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the times we’re living in. Excuse my language. It’s just that I feel for your situation. You’re still young. Bet there aren’t that many skeletons in your closet yet, right?”

  Gerta shrugged. It would depend on how one viewed her involvement in the Winterhilfswerk. And being young meant nothing. She knew girls her own age who deserved to find themselves in her current situation, if only for the zeal with which they had cheered on the Wehrmacht officers during the military exhibition parades. She thought of the exquisite Anne-Marie, waving from her car, seated between her father and the fair-haired SS captain, in a motorcade of gleaming black automobiles with swastikas on their sides, driving through Adolf-Hitler-Platz.

  “I’m German, too, but my family has lived in Perná for generations, and no one around here would dare to challenge me.”

  Gerta looked him over. Had he been in the war? Had he already returned? If he had been conscripted, how come he was already home? Questions raced through Gerta’s mind. What could there be in his past, when here he was at thirty-five, sitting behind a desk, tall, mustached, looking a little like the German actor Willy Birgel, a ladies’ man.

  “Well, the main thing is you know how to type, and you’re good at shorthand and all this administrative stuff. Have a look at these papers. Some I found around town; the rest I got from the parish office. See if you can figure out a way to put them in some kind of order. Then you can show me what you’ve done. What you need to concentrate on first are the Perná resident records, understand? Especially the Germans who are still here and any new arrivals. And put aside any papers that don’t state a date of death, which you should be able to find in the parish documents. Everyone here is baptized. Where there’s no date of death, those papers need to be put into some kind of pile. Those are the people most likely to be missing. And you might as well start a box for the claimants. From what I hear, the first ones have already shown up and are waiting by the church. I’m going to go over there now. Get to work, and I’ll see about finding us a different space. Supposedly, the landlord telegraphed his wife from Prague to say he’s back from forced labor in Germany and in good shape, and expects to show up here in a few days.”

  Gerta nodded and surveyed the stacks of papers on the tables.

  Meanwhile, the commissioner placed a Russian military cap on his head and with long strides in his gleaming boots, made for the door. At that moment, Gerta could have sworn they were her father’s legs, marching around the Rathausplatz in his shiny black boots.

  The record keeping was an arduous task. Over the next several days, Gerta made the rounds of the village, counting houses and the number of occupants living inside each one. She wasn’t surprised to find that half of them didn’t want to let her in. Some Czechs didn’t want to let her in because she was a German pig; others, who were Germans, because they had something to hide. Schmidt was annoyed. At first, he thought he would go around with her from door to door, but then he came up with a better solution. He got her a search warrant, assigned her one of the Russian soldiers, and thus by order of the Russian military command in Břeclav, she was authorized to enter every household in Perná. Gerta preferred to avoid doing so; she was afraid she might see something that she would rather not see at all. Instead, on the threshold of every house, she would ask for a head count of how many family members were currently living there, how many had died during the war, and how many had not yet returned. And she would ask for a rough estimate of their property. Commissioner Schmidt was satisfied.

  One week later, he moved them into a house formerly occupied by the village trustee Müller and his family, who had arrived in Perná at the outset of the war and had moved into the impounded Rosenbaum property, loudly proclaiming, “Blood and Soil.” They had thought of themselves as local lords, living in the largest house on the square, right next to the church, and then in early April they vanished, leaving not even a colander behind. It was an attractive building and would make for a pleasant workspace, provided none of the Rosenbaums returned. Schmidt assigned Gerta a small room accessible directly from the entryway behind the front door, and took the room on the opposite right-hand side to use as his office. The sheds in the courtyard and the remaining rooms then provided ample space for the storage of confiscated property. Schmidt brought in wagonloads daily, assisted by several Russian soldiers who had been allocated to him from Břeclav.

  First to be cleaned out was the Heinz household, where no amount of knocking had gotten Gerta inside, as the family had long since fled. Next came whatever the Pfeifers had left behind. For them, Zipfelová didn’t have a single nice word. In the rooms of the Rosenbaum manor house, armoires, bedsteads, and dressers began to pile up. The Heinzes had left behind elegant china and dozens of books, a sheepskin rug, and even a mink coat, which Gerta had never seen before. In the barn, sacks of grain, potatoes, and walnuts were piled one on top of another, and the Rosenbaum wine cellar, just outside the village, was lined with casks of wine that had been boarded up so well that not even the Russian soldiers had managed to break into them. The chickens, ducks, and geese kept by the Heinzes, as well as the rabbits that the Pfeifers hadn’t taken along, were set loose in a penned-off section of the courtyard. Two of the Heinzes’ dogs were tearing around the village. Schmidt had Gerta write it all up and create a file for each family, itemizing everything.

  Josef Schmidt was in demand around the clock. Gerta came in shortly after six in the morning, when all of Perná was just beginning to stir, and he was already waiting for her. When she left to the sound of the bells of the Angelus to go home, he would still be at his desk. Every day, homeowners and farmers like Hamza or Charoust went to see him with specific requests. Gerta had to document which objects Schmidt transferred over from the National Trust and to whom. It was hard to say based on what or whose authority.

  Hubert Šenk was given an additional large tract of land that ran alongside the one he already owned going toward Bavory. This was because turning it over to him to cultivate made the most sense. The Charousts were given a field going toward Dunajovice that had been part of the Heinz property, and Schmidt’s Czech brother-in-law got the rest. Gerta would never have discovered this if it hadn’t been for a sloppily inserted piece of paper that she noticed in a folder intended for the Land Registry office in Břeclav.

  And then there were the newcomers. Where they came from was anybody’s guess. Toward the end of June, two packed-up families with their eiderdowns tossed over a hay wagon pulled up in front of the Rosenbaum manor, currently the local administrative headquarters. Not even Schmidt knew a thing about them. They were asking about vacant houses. Schmidt, looking flustered, walked off, made a phone call, returned, walked off again. Following him went the hay wagon, women in kerchiefs, men in rubber boots and jackets. When he got back late that afternoon, just before the Angelus, he told Gerta to start a new file and log the transfer of the Pfeifer house, including the field, to the Jech family from Hrozenkov. By the end of that week, Gerta had filled out five more such new files.

  XII

  From the beginning of July, she no longer needed to bring Barbora with her to the administrative headquarters. She was able to leave her at home with Zipfelová and the other children, as did all the women who worked in the fields. Old Zipfelová kept an eye on them as they played, either outside in the garden or inside the house; she fed Barbora gruel and even seemed to enjoy doing so. Helmut and Ida hadn’t managed to give her grandchildren, so these children would have to suffice.

  Schmidt, as soon as Gerta was no longer tied down to Barbora and the office, wanted her to accompany him everywhere. She went with him to inspect properties and catalog e
verything right inside the homes, since he had discovered that objects were pilfered by the time the Russian soldiers managed to get around to moving them to the Rosenbaum manor. She accompanied him out to the fields to make sure the newcomers were working the correct tracts of land, waving as she went by Johanna and Ula, hard at work on Šenk’s land, feeling at the same time awkward about being better off than they were. She went around keeping notes, fetching items from the office, making phone calls, coming back with news. And suddenly she was amazed to realize that she started to feel like a person again. A person who was needed and whose work was appreciated. Schmidt appreciated her. It didn’t take long before she noticed that he sought out her presence even when it wasn’t needed.

  Toward the end of July, when it was time to start harvesting, it was necessary to make a trip to Mikulov for equipment. In the prewar years, as far back as Zipfelka could remember, the small farmers of Perná would do the cutting and harvesting themselves, hiring some of the villagers to help. Even Zipfelka and Ida would lend a hand each year. Only the families with large farms like the Šenks, the Pfeifers, the Heinzes, the Krumpschmieds, and once in a while the Hrazdíras, would borrow farming equipment from Věstonice after the harvesting there was done. This year, Josef Schmidt decided to borrow harvesting machines from the district administrative commission in Mikulov, where they’d taken most of the confiscated farming equipment that had belonged to various Germans from the surrounding villages. All of Perná would bring in the harvest together. This was because so many families had disappeared that it would have been hard for the villagers and the German women from the Pohořelice camp to harvest all of the formerly German fields on their own.