Читать книгу Czechmate - Michael Condé-Jahnel - Страница 10

I returned to Halifax after toying with the idea of traveling to Hamburg following the stay with Edi in Munich. Perhaps to visit the Ohlsdorf cemetery, one of the world’s largest, where my parents ashes were interred. I had not been there in quite some time and wondered, whether I could still locate their grave site. Although I had spent most of my youth in Hamburg from 1946 until 1959, in the end I rejected the idea as emotional overload. The trip to Reichenberg and the days in Munich had been more than enough stimulation.

My parents clearly had endured great hardship during their lives. All of these papers, the preservation of every important family document and my mother’s notes for her journal during the roughest days of their lives.

What did it all mean?

And then it struck me – it meant comfort and solace, it meant remaining connected to events of the day by committing them to paper while perhaps seeking refuge in the private confines of the personal papers. Trying to work through the aftermath of what they had been through, as evidenced by my father’s unfinished manuscript. It also spoke to me of a family bond so strong that none of the evil forces had been able to destroy it.

It was already unseasonably cold for early November. But the sun had broken through the grayish-white clouds, which hung low for most of the day. I pushed myself away from the desk, exited through the back door of the lobby and began walking purposely, yet without knowing exactly where my feet wanted to take me. Perhaps the German baker at the ‘Gingerbread House’ around the corner had some freshly baked apple crumble.