The first return (summer 1945). An icy crust

After my return from that place I’m living like I’m under a thick layer of ice that all the others are skating on, their cheeks glowing with joy and enthusiasm. A long way under the ice. I’m invisible.

I go back home, in the mistaken belief that this is still the place where I belong. It’s boiling hot. And I steer clear of the dirt roads. The oh-so-hard-to-reason-with soil of self-preservation. Now I can go through the middle, stride along the hot, melting streets with the rest of them. Nothing for me to fear any longer. The war’s over.

But it’s for the best that I hold on to my fear.

I anticipate the pointing finger of the sexton, the reds of the crowded roofs, the oblong strip of our house and the buildings of our estate. I drag myself through ditches, sweep my legs through nettles – those little green saws. I saw the wood into logs so Mum can make the fire, that’s what we used to sing, our children’s arms interlaced with Mum’s slender wings. She wasn’t able to hide the veins which stood out on her wrists: no one had thought up a cosmetic to conceal the pulsing pipes of the body. In the evenings her hands would gleam with perfumed grease; they took their nightly rest after a thorough massage in this special cream.

Come to think of it, they would rest in the daytime, too.

My knees are shaking.

I fall into the ailing, shrivelling grass. The sun is high, and it has sought me out. Unerringly. It is sending down a shower of hot needles onto the bare white of my arms and legs. I’m an easy prey. We are all of us after our prey. And we’ll find it. There’s always someone a step lower on the ladder. Whose defences are weaker.

Who is more exposed.

I study the earth up close, watch it moving. From on high all is calm. Motionless. Under the magnifying glass all is panic. Insects. Ants. Ground beetles. A capricorn beetle. Crickets. Wood lice. A ladybird. A green grasshopper. And a stampede of spiders. While I’m melting in the sizzling heat from above, they struggle to avoid the cold, salt flow which I am powerless to stop. I’m killing creatures by this salt flood, drowning them in my scalding, helpless sorrow. Nothing can ever be as it was before. Never again will I touch their skin. The skin of protecting, living bodies. Never again will we be together. And even if we were … where could we lay aside the immediate past, how could we dig, bluff ourselves out of the pit? The pit the family has fallen into. My childhood. All that is stuck in there … all over, yes, it’s all over.

But our estate is still here. Its walls. I can hide behind them, summon up my strength. I can collapse behind them so that I might set myself back on my feet. Build myself up with happy memories. Walls I can hide behind, I can …

The ground is cracking. I rock my head back and forth; its heavy weight crushes the life out of a runaway ant. I roll out the ant’s remains with my forehead: a stick-on sign of death. My fingers catch hold of the grass, tear it out in clumps. Until the urge subsides to scream and yell and lacerate my forearms with my nails, dig my nails deep into the flesh and keep them there, spread out my arms and drive myself against a spike with all my strength, take hold of a glass and crush it to smithereens in my hand. I shred the innocent grass. Then the plantain, the white camomile, the dittany. I’ll do this until I tire, until I drop.

I am blinded by the sun’s lava. I’m lying on my left side, curled up. My knees are beneath my chin. I’m like a foetus in the mother’s womb. Maybe I dozed off for a few minutes. Maybe I just fainted. The sun is beating down on my right cheek, roasting it; the left is cold from the tear-soaked ground. I stand up. I’m dead tired. I straighten my blouse and skirt. Savagely I sweep the blades of grass off my clothing. I feel along the length of my skirt, insert my finger in the space under the hem where the stitches have come undone, as I would in a thimble. My mouth is watering. My throat is dry. With a nail wrapped in the moist fabric I scrape and scrub from my forehead the dried, reddish remains of the ant. My skirt twists and lifts right up, forming around me a kind of cone. I’m in a trench, from the waist up. My mouth’s watering again. I tip the cone back over. Then I squat to wipe the dust from my buckled shoes. Shoes put on me in Prague by a fear-stricken Aunt Ottla. She’d wanted to go with me; I’d wriggled out of her grasp, I’d been furious. I’m coming home alone. I’m an adult now, after all.

At the sight of the brilliant green grass of the ditch with its cherries red and rotting and infested with a swarm of wasps, I suppress the urge to vomit.

The village appears deserted. No one runs out of the little white houses, as I had dreamed they would. There’s no one there to welcome me, to embrace me, to commiserate with me. No one to force on me a plate of food. I’m fuddled with the fear that no one has survived …

Or perhaps no one is interested in this shaven-headed creature because it is not holding Daddy’s hand. Striding beside this girl there’s no well-respected but ungainly man in a hat. A man who caused a commotion whenever he rumbled through the village square on his long motorcycle. An original design by Čechie-Boehmerwald, he would explain keenly and proudly to any man who cast him a look of inquiry. He let them run their hands over the monster, would make an adjustment here and there before letting them ride around the grounds. One after another. Father caught the barber Klein unawares by giving him the tour in person; Klein was shaking all over, his razor still in his hand, frozen in an attitude of servile tribute. I was really scared of the roaring brute, a tourist model which could carry two passengers as well as the driver. The first time Mother climbed down after a ride, she stepped into Father’s palms so that she could keep her balance. She was feeling dizzy. She was horrified that the oil stains had got onto her made-to-measure, cream-coloured dress. I don’t want to end up like that Duncan woman, she whispered into Father’s ear, her irritation plain. Never again did she sit on the wonder contraption, much to Father’s displeasure. But I did. And how they ran out to watch; how low they bowed; how they waved! Smiled and waved. Or perhaps they just waved. That monster really put the wind up me, but how I wish I could hear today its thunderous roar from behind, could jump out of its way! How I long to see the oil stain on the cream dress!

Someone has pushed a photograph into my head and it’s got jammed in there. At its edges two adult figures are standing guard over the long motorcycle: Mother in her cream-coloured lace dress, holding a bonnet in her right hand, Father in his black suit, legs apart, one hand resting on the motorcycle, the other held foppishly at his side. On the long seat, as if in an auditorium, their legs crossed in white knee socks, are my brother and sister. Rozálie. Adolf. And I’m there in the middle, the poppers unfastened on the blue velvet dress I’d thrown on in haste before the photographing started. Adolf was pulling a face.
“Wie hatte sich die Schwester denn so schnell angezogen?”
And a great bow in my hair.
“A butterfly has landed in your hair,” said Mother as she worked on it. “We’ll just plump up his wings.”
I come to a halt in the apple orchard. In our apple orchard.

I am home.

My heart thumps in my chest; the heat is unbearable yet I’ve got the shakes of fever. I feel the touch of my loved ones on every square inch of this land. The touch of the life I once lived. Now life is something I watch. I’m finding a way to survive life.

I need to pull myself together, bring my swelling eyelids under control. I mustn’t collapse within sight of my goal as I did an hour ago, there on the radiant meadow near the ditch with those gnarled cherries. Everything’s going to be all right, I’m safe here, a creature retreating to its den. Fleetingly but tenderly I run my hands over the leaves, the branches of the apple trees, the fabric frame of the arbour; I cross the paved yard, vast and shining. I reach the door, forged by special smithery, ornamented with snakes intertwined to Mother’s design. Made with meticulous care by Ládínek Stolař, the smith’s young assistant.

My stiff fingers wrap themselves around the wavy line of the black metal handle, blocking the snake from view. I push with the whole weight of my body. The door is not locked.

I go in.

Hope strikes me savagely right between the eyes. On the high stand in the hall Father’s hat is hanging, still hanging; he hadn’t had time to put it on then, even though he would never leave home with his head bare. Never. He hadn’t had time to put it on then before the Gestapo took him away. We just looked on in confusion. Watched him crawl his way into the body of a small truck, where others were already sitting; they moved up to make room for him. It was also with confusion – bewilderment – that we watched Mother. She didn’t weep, didn’t rage, didn’t panic. I told him – the stubborn old thing – we’ll wait it out for a while at my folks’ in Prague, in the interior, and then we’ll see.

She really thought that Father would come back. That it was some kind of mistake. The worse thing for her was that they hadn’t put him in a passenger car, that he’d had to travel in a beaten-up truck with all the others. And that they’d ripped off the armband he’d pulled on in haste.

I never saw him again. Never.

Now I can stroke his hat.

 

Hot lentil soup

The door on the right leads to the dining room and kitchen. My body is tingling. Mother used to drum her gentle fingers on my back, the length of my spine, from top to bottom. From top to bottom.

“Sit up straight and don’t slouch. You’ll be as crooked as a corkscrew.”

My elder sister winked at me conspiratorially: Be patient, I went through it too. My brother sniggered, All that can help Mummy’s little darling is a proper thump in the back.

I clasp the second door handle.

I brace myself before I open the door.

In the last, unbearable hope that they’ll all be sitting around the table. Waiting for the latecomer. She who went away, fell into a dark pit and then clawed her way out of it. Now, her arms lacerated, she is returning to the world, a world which for a while was painted over by a twisted nightmare. I ease open the door. I’ll always sit up straight, straight as a rule, Mother, I promise, I promise, just so long as you’re here, I’ve changed, I’m almost grown-up, no, I am grown-up. The words of childhood scattered and lost, a skin gone wrinkly. Please, Lord, please, let them be there, let them be sitting there and smiling, laughing and showing off to one another, guffawing like madmen, rolling around on the floor and clutching their bellies in mirth. How you’ve made fun of me! That I’ve stood my ground in this cruellest of games. That we’re alive. Alive.

Before I clear the way so I can walk in, I count to seven. My lucky number.

There really is someone in the dining room.

I breathe out my relief; I want to break into a run, bury my head in a woman’s bosom. But my legs are paralysed. By caution. An instinct which has grown in me. I don’t smell the familiar smells.

There’s someone standing there. But it isn’t Mother. Or our cook. Nor is it my sister.

It is a strange Woman.

A young, startled Woman with a bulging belly. In an apron. She’s using our ladle to serve a seated man with hot lentil soup thickened with beans and peeled barley. The dish is one of those flower-shaped ones from our white dining service with the blue pattern. A pattern my Mother designed for the Vienna porcelain factory.

All three of us stiffen.

The man wipes his mouth nervously, with the back of his hand.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you know how to knock?”

“Knock? Why should I knock?”

Once again the tears spring, but I gulp them back as they scramble for the starting line, using my vocal chords to rein them in.

“I live here. I’m Gita, Gita Lauschmannová. My father bought the first motorcycle in the county. He used to sit in that leather armchair in the corner behind you.”

What is this drivel I’m blurting out? But it’s better to make speeches than allow the weeping through.

I cower into myself. There’s no delight, no smiling, no rejoicing. No invitation to the table, no dish filled for me and my rumbling stomach. Nothing.

I’m tired, I’m upset, and my nerves are fraught. I need to get this behind me. To lay myself down in my bed, dissolve into the sheets. I want to scream, yell out with my fingers outstretched: I’m Gita Lauschmannová! The daughter of a man who was scattered by the wind. They say that before he marched into the gas baths he raised an imaginary hat and let an older man enter before him. After you, sir. I’m Gita Lauschmannová! Daughter of an educated woman who was brought up in the big city, was redolent of the coffeehouses of Europe, a woman who struggled to adapt here. That’s why Father built her this oblong villa. In the village they referred to this splendid building with envy as the manor. I’m Gita Lauschmannová! Daughter of a tireless worker who employed and gave a livelihood to most of the grubby tramps in the area. So what are you domestics doing here, rolling your sweaty behinds on our chairs? Who gave you the right? I am Gita Lauschmannová. Pack up your goods and chattels and get out.

I say nothing. But inside I’m yelling. I’m returning from that place soaked in a shame which throws any claim I might make into doubt.

Even my claim on the air that I breathe.
“Well? So what?”

The man is the first to recover his composure.

“I … I’m Gita Lauschmannová. This is our house. I’ve come back.”

I’m going to have to run. I know this now, I’m well practised. I scent danger. It’s clear to me from the moment the man gets swiftly to his feet. So swiftly that the surface of his thick brown soup is disturbed and it spills onto our hand-embroidered, snow-white tablecloth. It’s clear to me from the moment the Woman turns pale and, as if in a trance, returns the ladle to the splendid-white soup tureen with its Art Nouveau relief and motif work, before shrieking, “No! Never!”

The man measures me with his gaze before speaking to the Woman.

“It’s unbelievable. D’you think these brats’ll ever leave us in peace?”

They must be confusing me with someone else. The mass of what is left of the soup is bobbing up and down, settling on the bottom of the dish, returning to its bed; steam rises from the plump tureen. The man’s hand is strong, covered with black hairs. He might gather all his strength and smack me in the middle of the forehead with his shiny spoon; he might grab hold of me as one would an adolescent, jerk me about, stick my head in a bath of hot mud. Or in the latrine. I dart away, past Father’s hat, out through the wooden door towards the outbuildings; my instincts seek out the safest hiding place and weigh up the odds. Self-preservation. Cultivated in that place.

I dive into an outhouse, crawl in among its brown stickiness and softened buttons. It’s the outhouse we used to play in as children, a dilapidated old place Father would grumble about and wanted to demolish. He planned to build a splendid museum in its place. I work myself into a squatting position. This hateful shaking. My head is spinning; I rest it on my knees. A hairy caterpillar concertinas across the hardpacked floor. It repeats the feat. Then it straightens again. For ever more.

What in God’s name is going on? Why am I hiding? Because the bread is now in the wrong hands? Might I have mistaken the village? I’ll stay here until I think of something. Until my head stops throbbing. My heart is reluctant to settle back into its accustomed rhythm; it wants to burst through, thump its way out of my chest.

 

Translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland