I imagine that young man: my dad, in blue-and-white-striped camp clothes lying in some hideous barrack-room, emaciated and hungry, waiting. He knows that the next moments will decide whether he'll live or die. Like a patient on an operating table. Before he falls asleep a patient has the hope that he has entrusted
himself to people who want to save him. Dad was lying on a plank bed and his only source of hope was the thud of shells that would scare me to death.
Then the Soviets arrived, the windscreens of their trucks bearing photographs of Stalin, the Great Leader, and hammers and sickles. They came to the rescue, gave bread, smoked fish, a soup called shchi and vodka. They brought salvation and a vision, and it was as if that determined how things were to be for years to come. For him, for me, for my country and for the whole world.
I informed Comrade P. that Use Koch, that SS monster, has died. The fiend of Buchenwald, who collected gloves and book covers made from the skin of our comrades who were tortured to death, and who even had lampshades made of it, had hanged herself with her bedclothes a few days ago in her prison cell. A small satisfaction, at least, for all those she tortured. You see, a moment ago I was doing men an injustice: women commit murder too.
I recall Dad telling me about that pervert. In his eyes she was an SS monster. But the monster was only able to behave the way she did because a monstrous system had divided people into humans and subhumans. Subhumans could be jailed, tortured and poisoned — without trial and without mercy. How many monsters did similar things here in later years with Dad's approval or at least his tacit consent. How many people were tortured to death? They didn't make lampshades out of human skin, but lampshades weren't the essential issue.
What went through Use's mind when she was making a noose out of her bedclothes? Had she understood something about herself or did she simply have a sense of emptiness and of the hopelessness of her fate?
We all have a sense of hopelessness from time to time but we are not strong-minded enough.
I get up and look in on Jana. She's asleep, of course. I return to my own bedroom and Dad's notebooks. It crosses my mind to see whether he noted how I had broken what he considered a
valuable vase. How old was I then? I wasn't going to school yet, so I could have been five, or at most six years old.
It was a big vase and I found it beautiful. It was indigo blue and there was the figure of a nymph etched into the side of it. I never saw a single flower in the vase. It stood on the dresser and the nymph smiled at me from above and lured me to her. I stood a chair up against the dresser and looked at the room through the glass of the vase and saw how it turned dark like the evening sky.
Once, when I was alone at home, I got the idea of putting some water in the vase and seeing whether the water would be blue too.
I took down that beautiful glass object and held it firmly in my arms, the way Mummy held me when I cried or when a strange dog pestered me in the street. It was odd how the glass didn't feel cold, but instead gave out a warmth — a blue warmth, most likely.
I reached the kitchen and turned on the hot tap. The vase
slowly filled and the water in it really was blue and gave off steam.
Then there was an odd sound that I'd never heard before: the
sound of glass cracking. The vase broke in two in my arms. I can
still recall the terror I felt as I tried — in vain, of course — to put the
vase back together again.
First Dad interrogated me. Why had I taken the vase down? What was I intending to do with it? Why had I put hot water in it? Was I aware of the damage I'd done?
Then he gave me a good hiding. I screamed and promised to buy him a new vase when I was big; I'd buy him two beautiful vases.
When I started to earn money of my own I actually did do the rounds of a few antique shops until I eventually found a vase of a similar colour, at least, to the one I'd broken long before. But it had the image of a flying bird etched into its side, instead of a nymph.
I gave Dad the vase as a Christmas present. I got a ticking off. 'You're crazy. What am I supposed to do with a vase? Have you ever seen me buying flowers?' He'd long ago forgotten about the
broken vase. It hadn't interested him and he hadn't regretted it; he had just thought it right to let me know what a dreadful thing I'd done.
I leaf through the notebooks from the end of the fifties and am unable to find any reference to the vase. Either there isn't one, or I missed it. On the other hand I notice that some female Comrade W crops up repeatedly in his notes. It's probably the same person who is later referred to as W. Saw V. Talked to V. about flowers for International Women's Day. . We went to see Ballad of a Soldier. W. cried. . Repaired W.'s sewing machine. No more details. He was careful. He was well aware that what he wrote down could be used against him. Even so, I feel as if I'm prying as I read it. I ought to put the notebooks back in the box. Dad's dead; why do I need to know about his secrets and his sins?
Eventually I drop off to sleep for a while.
3
Outside, it's a fine May morning; it looks as if everything has burst into bloom. I rejoice in the scents that waft into my room from the nearby gardens. But I expect hayfever sufferers are desperate; my daughter also was complaining of sore eyes when she woke up this morning.
She's back at school. She took a maths test and got an E again. I asked her if she realized she'd fail. She said she did.
She wouldn't be earning her living from maths!
I asked her to kindly tell me what she'd be earning her living from. She didn't think she'd be living off me for the rest of her life, did she?
I wasn't to worry, she'd get by somehow. And probably a lot better than I had!
She's insolent, but what can I say in reply, seeing how badly I've coped with my own life? I tried to explain to her that if she didn't
manage to pass her leaving exam, at least, the best she could hope from life was to be a shop assistant or a hairdresser.
She told me defiantly that she'd happily train to be a hairdresser. It was her life, and it wasn't for me to worry about.
When I was sitting in the metro, two girls of Jana's age were standing opposite me. They struck me as being clean inside and out: no war paint, no rings in their noses or even their ears. Why can't mine look like them?
I'm tired from lack of sleep. Luckily I've only a short surgery today and when it's fine, like today, people don't feel like going to the dentist and I can have a doze from time to time in the X-ray room.
I can't go home after work anyway; I have to go to the stonemason's to order an inscription for the gravestone and buy an urn for Dad's ashes. Then I have to arrange at the cemetery office for their interment. All the beneficiaries have been summoned to the notary public next week so that he can share among us what Dad left. It's a pointless operation as all that remained are a few old clothes — including his People's Militia uniform — a bed and a box of his writings. As well as a portrait of Lenin, the great leader of the proletariat. My sister has to attend at the notary's too. Even though she won't deal with anything else, she'll be there to see the urn buried, so long as I sort everything out first.