“No, thanks. It’s just a short distance.”
“Fine then, I’ll ask Liesl to put on the coffee for us.”
They had lived in the same house on Wolfratshausener Strasse for over fifty years now.
As I neared the small blue sign with white lettering proclaiming 175b, I noticed that little had changed. The tall hedge was still grown over, partially hiding the latch on the gate, the tiny front yard displaying wisps of grass, some dandelions and other untamed weeds.
“Just push in the gate – it’s open.”
Edi was standing in the door frame, looking comfortably disheveled in baggy corduroys, rumpled shirt, a few strands of white hair hanging in half-circles from the sides of his head.
“Do you want to take your luggage up, refresh yourself a little first?” Liesl inquired.
“Same room?”
“Please, you know. On the top.”
One piece of luggage at a time was all I could handle up the spiral staircase to the second floor. The aroma of freshly ground coffee was wafting up the stairs and I heard clanging noises from the kitchen. I returned minutes later, my comfort clothes only slightly more elegant than Edi’s attire. I was about to enter the living room, when Liesl materialized, carefully balancing a tray with a white porcelain coffee pot and several cups. Edi was shuffling close behind, holding a tray with baked apple crumble, which looked fresh out of the oven. I opened the door to the adjoining dining room. The square table in the L-corner of the living room, surrounded in a half rectangle by a fixed bench with Tyrolean style carvings, was clad with white/blue checkered tablecloth.
Bavarian colours, how appropriate.
I began placing servings and cutlery, when Liesl waved me off.
“Nein – hands off Michael, you must be tired from your journey; you’re not to lift a finger while you’re here.”
I reluctantly followed her instruction and moved my body along the bench. I had sat here during my first visit nearly fifty years earlier. She filled the cups for everyone and motioned toward the sugar bowl and cream server.
“Help yourself, the apple crumble is still hot.”
The advance of time had not diminished her skills in the kitchen.
“Excellent – just the way I remember it,” I nodded appreciatively in her direction.
Edi had barely swallowed the first spoonful when he looked at me across the table.
“I really want to hear about your impressions being back in Reichenberg. It’s the second time you’ve been back?” he added, before I could answer.
“Yes. Remember, the first time when you were along as well.”
“Yes, of course – we both went with Simon in………” Edi hesitated, not sure of the timing of their trip together.
“In 1998 – now more than another eight years back,” I finished the sentence for him.
“That’s it – thank you. So tell me about this trip – what did you think?” Edi asked again.
“I think it was a sort of closure for me almost,” I said quietly, leaning my back against the bench seat. Edi looked at me curiously.
“It’s hard to put into words – I’ll try,” I added.
I paused for a moment before continuing.
“To begin with, it was an ambivalent feeling. It’s not easy to be back in a place we were driven out of. Although we were spared the worst, all our families lost friends during that time and our parents certainly left behind everything they had strived to build.”
I paused again, stroking the handle of my coffee cup. Edi nodded quietly without interrupting.
“I would walk through the streets looking at signs in a foreign language. I am among people speaking with a harsh Slavic accent, hurriedly passing by buildings and landmarks. Some filled with snatches of my personal memory, flashes of recognition from photo albums and family history. It’s as if there is a constant disconnect between what I see around me and how I would wish to remember it.”
Edi spoke into the long but not uncomfortable silence between us.
“That’s my recollection as well. I mean how I felt when I first went back.”
“Except you did so much earlier, right?”
“Absolutely. My first trip back was in early 1968. I had business in Prague and decided to stay for an extra week. Spent time in Reichenberg and the surrounding area. It was a strange feeling.”
“It must have been fascinating, especially with you being fluent in Czech and able to get the pulse of what was going on at the time,” I interjected.
“Precisely. Remember it was the ‘Prague Spring’, Alexander Dubcek, the emergence of a spirit freed from the doctrines of communism.”
“ Until the Russian tanks moved in later that year,” I added dryly.
“You remember that?” Edi seemed surprised.
“Of course. I was visiting your sister in Bayreuth. August of 1968.”
“You were close to the scene. Just a few kilometers from the Czech border.”
“I remember walking near the old Wagner house. The news must have come on just then. Cars, taxis, even the street car stopped as if frozen to the ground. Car and transistor radios were blaring forth the Russian movements.”
“What went through your mind?” Edi asked.
“The same as what was probably on everyone’s mind. Are they going stop at the German border? Of course, they would. No point risking NATO retaliation. But events of a little more than twenty years earlier were clearly still on many people’s minds. Some, sitting in their cars that day in Bayreuth, had seen those tanks before, just like you and I.”
Edi’s expression had turned blank. He looked as if trying to forget, not to remember.
Another short silence between us followed. Edi was first to speak again – a different, less painful recollection of the subject.
“It was on my initial trip in ‘68 that I first connected with Veronika Juçek at the town library. Remember her?”
“Of course. We met her on our trip with Simon, the last time we were there together. I remember Simon being so impressed with the fact that the old library was in the building his great-grandfather had owned until the end of the war.”
“That’s right – that was special,” Edi remarked.
“The preservation of that library with the thousands of German volumes inside was remarkable. I suspect it’s what led the German government to generously contribute to the new library.”
Edi nodded.
“Exactly. It has become the symbol of reconciling Slavs, Germans and Jews,” he added.
“What motivated you to spend many years following your retirement researching the fate of displaced families, writing articles, collecing every scrap of paper to do with our past in Reichenberg?”, I finally had the courage to ask.
Edi looked at me. There was faint amusement around the corner of his eyes.
“Perhaps nothing very different from why you went back again this time. It was not a master plan I had envisaged. Certainly not. But Bavaria, and Munich in particular, is the high fortress of post-war Sudeten-Germans. Most of us wound up here after the war.”
I waited patiently. That could hardly be the whole story.
“And, yes, there was obviously something