the basket, please.” She would normally ask me about work and then say, Go rest, lie down for a while, or she would make me some tea. Her brusque behavior today was making me uncomfortable.
I carried the basket into the kitchen and put it on the table.
“Come on,” Herta said, “hurry up.”
I pulled on the end of a sheet and tried to untangle it from the others without overturning the basket. Her rushing me made my movements clumsy. When I gave it one last tug to free it completely, a white rectangle fluttered into the air. It looked like a handkerchief. It was going to fall on the floor and my mother-in-law would be displeased. Only when it hit the floor did I realize it wasn’t a handkerchief but a sealed envelope. I looked at Herta.
“Finally!” she said, laughing. “I thought you’d never find it!”
I laughed too, with amazement, with gratitude.
“Well? Aren’t you going to pick it up?”
As I leaned down she whispered: “Go read it in the other room, if you like. But then come right back here and tell me how my son is.”
My dearest Rosa,
At last I can reply to you. We’ve been traveling a lot, sleeping in the trucks. We haven’t even changed our uniforms for a week. The more I travel through the streets and villages of this country, the more I discover there’s only poverty here. Its people have withered, the homes are hovels—far from a Bolshevik paradise, the workers’ paradise … We’ve stopped for the time being. Below, you’ll find the new address where you can send me letters. Thank you for writing so often, and forgive me if I write less frequently than you, but at the end of the day I’m exhausted. Yesterday I spent all morning shoveling snow out of a trench and then last night I stood guard for four hours (wearing two sweaters under my uniform) while the trench filled up with snow again.
Afterwards, when I collapsed onto my straw mattress, I dreamed of you. You were sleeping in our old apartment in Altemesseweg. That is, I knew it was our apartment though the room was somewhat different. The strange thing was that lying on the rug was a dog, like a sheepdog. It too was asleep. I didn’t even wonder what a dog was doing in our home, whether it was yours. All I knew was that I had to be careful not to wake it because it was dangerous. I wanted to lay down beside you, so I tiptoed over to avoid disturbing the dog, but it awoke and began to growl. You didn’t hear a thing, you kept on sleeping, and I called out to you, afraid the dog would bite you. Suddenly it barked fiercely and lunged—and just then I woke up. It left me in a foul mood for a long time. Maybe I was only worried about your journey. Now that you’re in Gross-Partsch I’m calmer. My parents will take care of you.
After everything you had been through, the thought of you all alone in Berlin was a torment to me. I recalled when we argued three years ago, when I decided to enlist. I told you we mustn’t be selfish or cowardly, that defending ourselves was a matter of life and death. I remember the period after the Great War—you don’t, you were too young, but I remember it well. Such misery. Our people were foolish, they let themselves be humiliated. The time had come to strengthen our resolve. I had to do my part, even though that meant leaving you. And yet today I no longer know what to think.
The following paragraphs were crossed out. The lines covering the sentences to render them illegible disturbed me. I tried to decipher the words, but to no avail. And yet today I no longer know what to think, Gregor had written. He usually avoided writing compromising things, fearing the mail was opened and censored. His letters were brief—so brief that at times they seemed cold. The dream he’d had must have made him lose control, later forcing him to cross it out, and violently so; in some places the lines had torn through the page.
Gregor never dreamed, or so he claimed, and he used to tease me because of the importance I attributed to my dreams, almost as though they had revelatory power. He was worried about me, that was why he had written such a melancholy letter. For a moment I imagined the front would send me back a different man and I wondered if I would be able to bear it. I was shut up in the very room where he had dreamed as a little boy but I didn’t know his childhood dreams, and being surrounded by what had once belonged to him wasn’t enough to make him feel close. It wasn’t like when we used to share a bed in our rented apartment and he would fall asleep on his side, arm outstretched to clasp my wrist. Reading in bed, as always, I would turn the pages of my book with only one hand so as not to detach myself from his grasp. At times he flinched in his sleep, his fingers tightening around my wrist as though some spring mechanism had been triggered, and then relaxing again. Who could he cling to now?
One night my arm grew stiff and I wanted to change positions. Gently, trying not to wake him, I pulled my hand free. His fingers curled up around nothing, grasped empty space. At the sight of it, all the love I felt for him had risen to my throat.
It’s strange to know you’re at my parents’ house without me there as well. I’m not one to get emotional, yet recently it’s happened to me when I imagine you wandering the rooms, touching the old furniture I grew up with, making jam with my mother. (Thank you for sending me some. Give a kiss to her for me, and tell my father I say hello.)
I need to sign off now. Tomorrow morning I wake at five. The Katyusha organ plays around the clock, but we’ve grown used to it. Survival, Rosa, is all a matter of chance. Don’t worry, though—by now I can tell from the whistle of the bullets whether they’ll fall close by or far away. Besides, there’s a superstition that I’ve learned in Russia: it says that as long as your woman is faithful, soldier, you’ll never be killed. So I suppose I have no choice but to count on you!
To make up for my prolonged silence I’ve written quite a bit, so I hope you find no reason for complaint. Tell me about your days. I simply can’t imagine a woman like you living in the countryside! You’ll get used to it soon enough. You’ll like it, you’ll see. Tell me about this job of yours, too. You said you would describe it to me in person, that it was better not to do so by letter. Have I reason to be concerned?
I’ve saved the best for last, a surprise: I’ll be coming home on leave for Christmas and staying for ten days. We’ll celebrate together, for the first time, in the place where I grew up, and I can’t wait to kiss you.
The letter in my hands, I rose from the bed and reread it. I wasn’t mistaken, he really had written it. Gregor was coming to Gross-Partsch!
I look at your photograph every day. Since I always keep it in my pocket, it’s getting awfully worn. It now has a crease that crosses your cheek like a wrinkle. When I return you’ll have to give me another one, because in this one you look older. You know what I say, though? You’re even beautiful old.
Gregor
“Herta!” I rushed out of the room, waving the letter in the air. “Read this part here!” I pointed to the lines where Gregor mentioned his leave—only those, as the rest were between me and my husband.
“He’ll be here for Christmas …,” she said, almost in disbelief. She was eager for Joseph to come home so she could give him the good news.
The uneasiness I had felt just minutes earlier was gone; happiness had drowned out every other possible emotion. I would take care of him. We would share a bed again, and I would hold him so close that he would no longer be afraid of anything.
Sitting around the hearth, we daydreamed about Gregor’s return. Joseph planned to kill a rooster for our Christmas dinner and I wondered whether I would have to eat at the lunchroom that day. What would Gregor do while I was at the barracks? I was jealous of the time Herta and Joseph would spend with him while I was gone.
“Maybe he could come to Krausendorf. After all, he’s a soldier in the Wehrmacht.”
“No,” Joseph told me, “the SS wouldn’t