Читать книгу Czechmate - Michael Condé-Jahnel - Страница 11

I rushed from the bathroom to pick up the receiver on the fourth ring, wrapping the towel tighter around my waist.

“Hello”, which sounded more like “piss off!”.

The caller seemed unperturbed.

“Hallo, hier ist Muenchen!”.

I checked the wristwatch I had deposited near the phone. It showed 8:05 p.m. German long distance rates dropped to next to nothing after midnight. It was Edi’s favorite time to call.

My voice had lost all of its earlier irritation.

“Und hello, hier ist Halifax - Guten Abend, Edi!”

I grabbed another towel and continued drying my hair while reaching for clothes and slippers.

“So, it’s my favorite cousin,” I added.

It had only been several months that we had seen each other, but I was glad to hear from him.

Thoughts strayed back to my last visit with Edi in Munich.

I missed our rambling walks along the Isar River. None of these ever had a clear destination, but we would talk from the moment we left Edi’s house until our return. We would make sweeping loops through the narrow suburban side streets, where much of Munich’s professional elite was residing now, cocooned away in large free-standing villas with ornamental fences and manicured grounds. Not like Edi’s tiny row house on the bustling thoroughfare to the ski resorts further South. At some point, a road would disgorge us onto a narrow footpath, moving through a few acres of meadows and thin stands of leafy trees not yet sacrificed on the altar of suburban development.

Turning just a few hundred feet before the railroad tracks, we would double-back on the wide path through the ‘Hoellenkriegel’ forest, where cyclists were navigating skillfully around all manner of pedestrians - singles, couples, joggers, people with pets and without, some dragging along toddlers.

I had been amazed at the sight. This country, which had invented official ordinance with near obsession for exact rule and order, had failed miserably to keep chihuahuas from being crunched under mountain bike tires and toddlers being scared silly at the sight of muscular German shepherds. Edi had been amused - wandering about freely anywhere and anytime was still a teutonic right of passage - he explained. Some of these walks has lasted well over two hours – at least until our last encounter, when Edi was no longer up to it.

Good God - it won’t be that much longer before I get there myself. The years had seemed to get markedly shorter. I wasn’t sure, when I started feeling that way – probably around sixty-five.

Edi would turn eighty later this year, I not much short of seventy.

I had finished toweling and was still looking around for items of clothes dispersed in various places.

“Mine as well,” I heard Edi respond.

“What?”

“Favorite cousin, didn’t you say that?”

“Oh, yes, of course, thank you. If it’s you, it must be just after midnight,” I joked.

‘Ja, ja - das ist korrekt,” Edi responded seriously, as if he had just been reprimanded for blasphemy in religion class.

“Just joking - I am always happy to hear from you,” I added quickly. “Let me put you on the speaker phone for a couple of minutes, until I get my clothes back on. I just came out of the shower.

“Speaker..... what phone? I can call again a little later perhaps, yes?”

“No, no, absolutely not, it’s fine - it’s late enough for you”.

“Everything o.k. in Canada?” Edi inquired.

He was too much the old school gentleman to come right out and ask about how things were between Rachel and myself. Or, heaven forbid, ask whether she was still around in my life.

“You mean politically, economically, environmentally, health-wise, Rachel and me or just how are you?”

“Forget the ‘allys’ - I’m not interested in weather reports.”

“More or less o.k. then, thank you. Actually, it’s less. Rachel and I have separated.”

I had thrown out the last sentence like an exclamation mark. It hung there for several seconds.

“Yes, Rachel told me.”

“She did?”

“How do you think I was able to get your number?”

“And yes, I am saddened but not surprised. How do you feel about it?” Edi wanted to know.

“What?”

“Having left Rachel, of course.”

“Mixed. Sort of relieved, but not sure what to expect.”

“Makes sense.”

“What does?”

“What you just said. How you feel.”

“Oh that, yes - I guess so.”

“Where are you living?”

“A small apartment. Just for now. It’s in the same neighborhood. There is still the Montreal condo. I go there periodically.”

“Any new friends?”

“Well, the guys I play golf and tennis with. Some poker buddies. A circle of acquaintances here. My old friends in Montreal.”

“Michael! This is Edi you’re talking to. A lady friend, of course, is what I meant.

“Too soon to tell.”

Edi groaned.

“Anything else I should know and you wouldn’t tell me?”

“No, not really. Just plain getting older - waking up with aches and pains, you know.”

“Wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. I mean the aches and pains.”

“Really?”– my voice betrayed disbelief.

“Well, what do you think? It’s the miracle of waking up again that let’s you forget about the aches and pains.”

“I can hardly wait to get there.”

Our conversation had hit stride again. Two cousins connected by deep friendship. Every few months, Edi or I would call each other. But the topic of our conversations rarely migrated back more than half a century.

“Do you remember talking to me about my father’s manuscript at your house some years back?”

Although I had tried to pose the question in a casual manner, Edi appeared to sense that it was anything but.

“Of course. Are you giving that subject some further thought?”

“More than that. I have decided to write about our family history and events of the time. I want to complete what he had been unable to finish; also with the help of my mother’s journal, the other documents - and expand beyond perhaps.”

“Fantastisch”. Edi sounded genuinely excited.

“It’s a big project,” I cautioned.

“Well yes, but perhaps this is a good time for it. It may add some focus to your life right now. Have you started?”

“Not exactly. There is so much I don’t know. A great deal more research needs to be done before going any further. I know our truth was better than..............”

Fiction, I thought, but didn’t say it. I stopped myself in mid-sentence. What was I saying? Certainly not better - the sick, the hungry, the shelter-less, the displaced - perhaps more poignant than fiction, but hardly better.

“I’m sorry - I really didn’t mean that. Nothing was better - everything was shit,” I added lamely.

“You’re correct. The truth was ugly during our early years. In fact, it was beyond ugly.” Edi responded after a moment.

“You should know better than anyone.”

There was another pause. Edi had been part of the Hitler Youth, drafted at sixteen in late 1942 and sent to Stalingrad just months before the mass surrender by the German Sixth Army. Several hundred thousand Russian and German soldiers perished in battle or during the mid-winter retreat by the remnants of German forces. He had somehow made it back across the Polish border, but then along with nearly a thousand others, spent some of the best years of his youth in a Russian POW camp before being transported to Sachsenhausen, one of several former Nazi concentration camps the Russians had ‘liberated’ in the summer of 1945. An experience he never spoke of, but which had nearly cost him his life. I knew from having seen a diary entry along with other papers we inspected during my last visit. I could still feel the chill reading it.

“You know,” Edi said into the vacuum of my straying thoughts, “my basement was filled with all kinds of stuff - archives of reports, letters, newspaper clippings, eyewitness accounts and editorials of those years; more importantly, the personal stories of those who had been a part of the war years and our eventual expulsion. I had contact with many of them over the years.”

Edi was in his element, off and running.

“Unfortunately, I shipped most of it to our association in Augsburg last year,” he added.

“You will probably find a lot of material there that’s relevant to what you plan to work on. I also still have many files and papers relating to our family with me in the house in Salzburg.”

“It would be good,” I said, my mind now focused back on our conversation, “if we could just spend time together again over a few days. I mean, just to talk about what you remember.”

I knew that I had blocked out the worst and remembered the best – unlike Edi, I had been sheltered and protected by my parents.

“You’re always welcome to come and stay for as long as you wish. And remember the 18^th of December “, Edi added. He would be eighty then. Germans were big on birthdays with round numbers measured by decades and quarter-centuries. Only the minutest of planning, hand-graved invitations and culinary feasts would do.

“I’m working on some projects that might take me over again soon.”

The moment it slipped out, I regretted it. There was nothing concrete on the horizon. Was it to show that I’m not yet been confined to chronicling the past like Edi? Except for some lapses in earlier years, I had managed to keep my word and show up in Munich every few years -sometimes unannounced - working on something or other while in Germany.

“So, good - we’ll leave it for tonight that you will come again soon.”

Edi didn’t add that time was not exactly on our side at this stage in our lives. He didn’t have to.

Hanging up the phone, I remembered conversations with other family members and my own observations of Edi’s increasing fragility. His decline seemed directly proportionate to his increased obsession with all things past to the exclusion of most things present. Nobody knew for sure and he wasn’t saying. Yet within weeks of shipping off much of fiften retirement years of his life in numerous cardboard boxes to Augsburg, some of his mental agility had magically returned. I had little desire to follow a similar path.

We would walk again together. Perhaps a dozen blocks around their neighborhood was all Edi could handle now and I would keep measured pace. At least we wouldn’t need to traverse the long ‘bridge of sighs’ spanning the deep canyon with the Isar river rushing by a hundred feet below. The outside of the solid metal railing, already reaching up more than seven feet was now clad with a fine mesh fence stretching across the girders overhead and down the railing on the other side of the bridge. Those still suffering the dark pain and ache of years long past or the grief of events too recent to comprehend, would have to look elsewhere.

And so our conversation had ended and my attention turned back to the manuscript.

We had marked our seventh wedding anniversary a few weeks before the events that would permanently change our lives. It was a small gathering, mostly family, as several of our long-time friends, particularly those from Hedi’s side of the family, were no longer part of the festivities. Goldberg and Friedman had left the Order and taken their families to Britain. Benjamin, Hedi’s grandfather had been too weak to accompany them and passed away mercifully before the worst was to unfold. Hedi’s parents, Emil and Elizabeth, had been loath to leave behind their textile factories, brickyards and slate quarries employing thousands - at least just yet.

I had confided my concerns about my father to Hedi that morning.

“I hope and pray that Hugo doesn’t spoil our day by intoning some grandiose words about German glory.”

Hedi had met my worried expression, held my eyes firmly in her quiet response, even found the courage for a little mischievous smile.

“And I am hoping that some time next spring he is going to be totally pre-occupied with making faces at his grandchild”.

It had taken me a few seconds to retrieve my tongue, which had become temporarily attached to the roof of my mouth.

“You, we - what a wonderful bit of news,” had finally trickled out of my mouth, as I drew her close and kissed her softly.

We agreed not to share our news with the small crowd gathered that evening. Not just yet - the joys of life had become more elusive of late and this needed to be savored between us a little while longer.