Above Us Only Sky

by Michele Young-Stone

  When he woke in a sweat, he went to the kitchen for a glass of water and steadied himself against the counter.

  His sisters had been real in the dream, and just like in real life, he hadn’t managed to save them.

  In Bay Ridge, the Old Man finished his water and went upstairs to his wife. She looked like a girl when she slept. Her brow was unwrinkled and her mouth was pleasant, not turned down, like when he saw her at breakfast or at lunch or at dinner. Like when he saw her tidying, walking to and fro, through rooms where he wanted to sit in peace and listen to his music. Since he’d retired, she drove him crazy, talking on the phone and watching the blasted television. “Turn it down,” he complained.

  “But I can’t hear it then.”

  “Because you’re deaf. See a doctor.”

  But tonight, the clock radio showing two a.m., the Old Man felt more like Frederick than an old man. He took two Benadryl to help him sleep without dreaming, and feeling scared for the first time in many years—the past too close, his sisters too close—he climbed into bed, nuzzling Ingeburg. His chest against her back. When she startled awake, asking, “Is everything all right?” he said, “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

  He would never tell her that he was scared. It was enough that she was there looking like her young self. Why can’t my sisters hear me? It’s my dream. Then he closed his eyes and fell dreamlessly to sleep. You’d think that in forty-eight years, a man would stop grieving his family, but life doesn’t work that way. Life speeds by until forty-eight years seems like one bar in one song, like one scene in one act in one opera. Like one stroke of paint on the Mona Lisa.

  The next morning, the Old Man was nearly himself again. He shoveled eggs and fried potatoes into his mouth, sopping his plate with day-old bread, but after swallowing, he brightened and raised a finger. Ingeburg knew him well enough to know that he was going to make some point, and however trivial it might seem to her, she should feign interest, for the Old Man’s benefit.

  “Yes, Frederick?” she said, taking a seat at the table. Was this going to be some recounting of a story she’d already read in the newspaper? Was he going to critique The Harvard Dictionary of Music, as he’d done last night at dinner? Ingeburg smiled and waited.

  “We have a granddaughter.”

  “Yes, we do.” This was no great revelation.

  “We should meet her.” His pointer finger was yellowed from cigar smoke.

  Inge said, “What? We do not know her, and she is nearly grown. I wanted to go and meet her when she was born. She is not a baby, Old Man.”

  “We should know her.”

  “I don’t even know how old she is.” Inge rose and untied her apron. “You’re crazy.”

  “She is the same age my sister Daina was the last time I see her. I think she has a birthday on March twenty-ninth. She is sixteen.”

  Ingeburg sighed. “Freddie’s daughter is not your sister.”

  “She’s my granddaughter.”

  “She’s our granddaughter.”

  “I am dreaming,” he said. “Last night.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “What do you think, Inge?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of my sisters.”

  She pointed her spatula at him. “How am I supposed to know what goes on in that head of yours?”

  The Old Man said, “I want to meet the girl. I wonder if she looks like my mother or my sisters.”

  Inge said, “The girl’s name is Prudence. We have pictures from Freddie.”

  “Does she look like Daina?”

  “How do I know what Daina looks like? You have one old photograph. I can’t tell who’s who in that picture.”

  “What kind of name is Prudence?”

  “From the Latin, I guess. ‘Cautious.’ American now.”

  “Nothing is American but the Indians, and they are dead. You’d think our son would care about his heritage, but he doesn’t care. No one cares anymore.”

  Ingeburg rolled her eyes. “That’s not true.”

  “We will meet the girl,” he said. “Before I die, I want to meet her.”

  “Are you dying soon?”

  “Sit down now, Inge, and let me talk at you. And you try to listen for once.”

  Ingeburg rolled her eyes and, sitting down, folded her hands on her lap.

  “Family is important,” the Old Man began. “Most important. After family, land is most important. In 1918, with Lithuanian independence, we had our land back. Father was so happy to have his grandfather’s land back for the Vilkas family, but father’s brother, Joseph, cared more for money than for land or family. You know this.”

  “I know this story,” Inge said.

  “Listen, woman. You don’t know everything how you always think you do.”

  Inge rolled her eyes.

  “And don’t go to sleep on me.”

  “I better make a strong pot of coffee.”

  “You’re a funny woman, Ingeburg.” The Old Man cleared his throat while Inge put water on to boil. “So my uncle Joseph sold his half of the estate to not one but four separate families.” At this, the Old Man held up four fingers. “They were Lithuanian families, but like us, exiled from the country since the great uprising. They were good people. They later became our friends, but Father never forgave his brother for dividing the land into parcels. Father’s brother, useless Joseph,” at this the Old Man made the sign of the cross, “and his wife, Lina, take a boat to America, where Joseph is going to sell men’s clothes and work as a tailor. I remember Father spitting on the dirt and saying, ‘Juozas is dead to me,’ and so Uncle Joseph was dead to all of us, and then came 1940 when the Red Army is occupying Lithuania, and then came 1941, when we are all doomed to die, and don’t think we didn’t have suspicion all the time that the Red Army was going to do something evil. What is wrong with people? In 1918, Lithuania was independent. But when the Red Army marched into our country, no one did anything. Not even us because the lying Soviets said that we wanted them there to protect us from Hitler. No one, except for maybe some Jews, wanted the Russians there. My neighbors, the ones who saved me, were Jewish. Did I tell you that?”

  “You told me,” Inge said. A million times!

  “The Soviets told lie after lie—that we need them to protect us from Hitler, that there will be another war, and they will keep us safe. They said that we voted and decided to become part of the Soviet Union. They were liars. All the while, they’d signed a secret pact with Germany, saying that Stalin could have Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and half of Poland. In exchange, the Soviets would leave Germany alone, stay out of Hitler’s business, and let him have the rest of the world. When liars make contracts, no one is to be trusted. Everywhere, we see the tanks and the red stars. Everywhere, they wave their flags and banners. Everywhere, is the face of Joseph Stalin. There were two sides: evil and more evil. Even as a young boy, I remember hearing mother cry about Holodomor in Ukraine. I was eleven or twelve and Mother was telling Father that the Soviets are shooting children in wheat fields. We were never not afraid of Russians. She had read about it in the newspaper. A whole nation starving to death. Father is saying, ‘Don’t worry, Aleksandra. We are not in Ukraine.’

  “But then the Soviets are in Lithuania, and there was plenty of time for Father to telegraph or telephone Joseph in America and ask for his help. There were planes flying overhead and tanks rolling through town, and we hear about the nationalizing of the stores. We hear about the men and women disappearing in the night. We see the men in black coats. Mother said to Father, ‘We can visit Joseph and Lina in America. We should go.’ Father put his hands over his ears and shook his head at Mother like she was too loony for her own good. ‘This is our home,’ he told her. ‘This is our soil.’ He kneeled down and ran his fingers along the dirt. ‘We don’t run, Aleksandra.’
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  “‘But the girls,’ Mother said. ‘And Frederick. I am sick with worry.’ Mother was always worried about us. She wanted to protect us no matter what. She didn’t even want us to know that war was coming, but we knew. You couldn’t help but know.

  “Father said, ‘Frederick and the girls will be fine. You worry too much.’

  “I listened to everything they said. I don’t think Father was stupid, just too optimistic. I don’t know.

  “Three months later in June, 1941, everyone was gone. Our house is filled with the men in black coats. The front doors are ajar. The furniture stands on the front lawn with no one sitting or playing piano. There were trucks and wagons. Our house is nationalized and then the land will be collectivized and the family is no more.

  “My neighbors are alive. They are one of the families that had returned to Lithuania twenty years earlier and the men in the black coats didn’t bother them like they did us. They did not own enough. Or maybe their house was not big enough. Or their land wasn’t rich. Or their chickens didn’t lay golden eggs. Or maybe they keep to themselves. Stalin killed randomly. They might’ve had a magic beanstalk. You see, Inge, it was always with no reason. You know that.”

  “I know,” Inge said. “You say this every day, Old Man. As if I don’t know from Stalin.”

  “Mother’s name was Aleksandra.”

  “I know, Old Man.”

  “We never say it. We always say Mother.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Me, Father, and my sisters. She was Mother, but she had a name.”

  “Of course she had a name.” Inge yawned and filled two cups with black coffee.

  “I hid in the darkness, eating the neighbor’s leftovers. They were Jewish. Did I tell you that?”

  Inge pulled a skein of yarn from her basket. She had to keep her hands busy even while her mind was idle.

  “All the while, I was hearing the Red Army fire guns in the air. I got on my knees and prayed for my dead. Father, I knew for certain because I’d seen him die, but Nelly, my neighbor, said that my sisters’ bodies were carried from the house. I asked her, ‘All three?’ and she said, ‘Do you think they would spare one?’

  “‘And Mother?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure about Mother?’

  “Nelly said, ‘They took her right after your father. I saw your sister Daina. She was crying, coming back from the train station. They forced your mother onto a cattle car bound for Siberia. Your sisters were going inside to pack.’

  “‘Did you see them?’ I asked Nelly. ‘Did you see my sisters?’

  “‘After they brought out Audra, I couldn’t look,’ she told me.”

  The Old Man covered his eyes. “For a while, Inge, I really had some hope. I told you.”

  “You have told me,” Ingeburg said. “You’ve been telling me since 1942.”

  “Just listen, woman!” The Old Man banged his fist on the table. “I thought that maybe Daina and Danut˙e had survived, but as the days passed and there was no sign, no word, I knew that I was being naïve. I prayed and even as I prayed, I doubted God.”

  “Stop, now, Frederick,” Inge said. “This is ancient history. All of it. No more talk and no more dreams.”

  “It doesn’t seem so ancient, Inge.”

  “Just stop it, Old Man! Our son is right about one thing: you live in the past.”

  “But I have a point.”

  “Then get to it! Will you?”

  “Our granddaughter. She is not in the past. We are going to witness her.”

  “But how? What if she doesn’t want to see us?”

  “We will fly to where she lives. I will call Freddie and find out where.”

  “I’m not getting on an airplane.”

  “It’s too far a walk for you, Ingeburg. You’re old.”

  “Very funny. Don’t call me old.” Inge sipped her coffee. “Why now, Frederick?”

  “Why any time, Inge?” He puffed on his cigar. “We don’t know. Only God knows.”

  The Old Man wasn’t feeling so old, not since his dream. The past had caught up and kicked him in the rear. He was hopeful. What if his granddaughter resembled his mother or one of his sisters? He was hell-bent on knowing her. He stifled a smile and folded his hands in his lap. He loved his Ingeburg, but sometimes she did not understand the world as good as he did.

  6

  Ingeburg Rosemarie Kischel

  While the Old Man is always talking about his Lithuania, I keep quiet. But I have a history. I am a person, a girl, a daughter, a woman, a wife, a mother, and now a grandmother. I am no less important, nor is my history.

  My mother was named Emilie Vogel and my father was called Alfons Kischel. I was born in a hospital bed, my mother unconscious, a nurse pressing down on her stomach and a physician between her legs, his forceps gripping my jaw. The year was 1925.

  Like my parents, I was intelligent, but I didn’t care about studies. I was more concerned with making everyone laugh. I had a happy, well-to-do childhood with my older brother, Francis, two years my senior, but like anyone growing up in a country bent on war, we felt our happiness unraveling. As early as 1936, when I was eleven, we knew that things were not good. We were not blind, but everyone wanted to feign ignorance and believe in the nation. We were safe. No one was hungry. Father had friends, veterans of the First World War, who’d lost their citizenship because they were Jewish, but no one wanted to acknowledge what was really happening. Some of my mother’s friends earned medals for having more than four children. We would laugh about it, how they deserved those medals because their children were rotten.

  For forty years, I have listened to the Old Man’s family history, hearing over and over about his shame at having to petition his uncle Joseph in New York for sponsorship to the United States. “Inge,” he said, “I did it for you. We had to get out of there.” But it was never for me. It was for us. Putting the weight on me lessened his shame.

  There is no such thing as ancient history. I know it, but I try not to dwell on what I cannot change.

  I met Frederick early during the war. Inside, he might’ve already become the Old Man, but on the outside, he was Frederick, handsome and fit. He was a sort of postal carrier, carrying documents, correspondence, and packages back and forth to Berlin. I was a nursing student, a practical joker. Tall, with dark hair and good teeth, my friends teased that I’d make a better actress than nurse. “Ingeburg is so dramatic,” they said. “She’ll be the next great film star. Her smile is over the top.”

  I met Frederick in a beer garden in the summer of 1942. He was there delivering a package to an albino wearing a brown leather eye patch. Immediately, I was intrigued. As I said, he was handsome, with sweeping dark-brown hair and blue eyes. I watched him. After he handed a paper to the albino, the man slipped it inside his jacket and remained at the bar.

  “Stare much?” my friends asked.

  “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

  “Which one?”

  “Stop it,” I said. I was proud of my smile, and I didn’t shy away from showing it off.

  The albino man left through a flowering archway that led out to the street, where there was a parade in progress. The sun was bright. Women and children, dressed in traditional lederhosen, tossed flowers at the marching soldiers. There was music, laughter, and cheering.

  In the beer garden, I rested my chin in my hands and stared at Frederick. Because of the festival, our nursing instructor had dismissed class early. There were five of us out enjoying the weather in our blue starched uniforms.

  Frederick turned around and saw me watching him. After finishing his pint and ordering another, he approached our table. It’s funny to me now, how he was so young and full of potential. His black cap was under his arm. His cheeks were rosy. We had yet to share our war stories.

  I was laughing. “He’s coming over here!”

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bsp; “That’s what you get!”

  He was foreign, but his German was good. “May I sit down?” he asked.

  Despite his bright complexion, right away I detected his sadness and was drawn to it. Sadness was something I understood. I think it was why I was always trying to make everyone laugh. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I said, “Where are you from?”

  He’d come to Germany after the army had “liberated” (according to the Germans) Lithuania, and he knew how to behave. Like the rest of us, he knew to say “Heil Hitler.”

  When I asked about his family, he told me, “They’re not around.” My brother and father weren’t around either, so I thought that I understood. They were both fighting in the war.

  I was flustered, but I wrote my address on a corner of my class notes and tore the paper. Frederick pressed it to his lips. In Berlin in 1942, apart from Hitler’s speeches, it was hard to detect that there was a war going on. There were parties and parades. Everyone swelled with pride. There was nothing the Germans couldn’t do. As a nation and as a people, we were truly better than the rest of the world. It was tangible.

  In the garden, Frederick kissed my hand. I smiled for him. My friends exploded in laughter. After he’d gone, they teased, “You only like that boy because he’s sullen. You like the quiet ones.”

  I rolled my eyes, but it was true. On that first sunny day, I had this sense that he understood the war how I did. Like maybe we could confide in one another. We were pawns, victims of circumstance, pretending we weren’t caught in someone else’s chess match. Pretending that the butchers weren’t sharpening their knives.

  A few months later, Frederick told me about his family, how he’d marched across Poland and been assigned a bicycle. He’d taken an oath and sworn allegiance to Hitler and Germany. They gave him a black cap and an armband. He slept in the homes of strangers, traveling back and forth to Berlin, delivering papers and packages to men and women he didn’t know, fearing for his life.