Near the railroad station Anna has found a flower shop, and is emerging now with a mini rose bush.
Warner and Lydia, on their way to an Italian vacation, have driven a 150km detour to see Anna and take her to the cemetery. Arriving early, they even stopped by and found the section where the grave will be located, before meeting her train.
They drive in silence. Park. It is a large family plot, the old, weathered headstone featuring an anchor, the sisters advised, and it faces out toward the Maschsee. A beautiful cemetery, they walk among ancient rows of graves, a hint of fall in the air. Warner has walked ahead, and he is the one who spots it. Opa passed away in 1938, and Grandmama had then insisted they find a family plot facing this body of water. (Everyone had remarked later how fortunate it had been that Opa didn’t have to live through another world war.)
Warner has brought the collapsible emergency spade from the trunk, and a bottle of water. Anna plants the wee bush among the shiny dark leaves of the ground cover, in a spot that will afford it sunlight for part of the day. Then they empty the bottle around the soft soil. Warner takes a photograph of the grave, and another with Anna in front, holding the empty bottle. Lydia keeps her arm around her, and then Warner and Lydia leave Anna alone for a few minutes, before all return to the parking lot.
Lydia and Warner now sit with Anna in the lovely Café where they have taken her for afternoon coffee and cake. And Lydia says nothing, just listens to Anna talking and talking, and Warner across from them, spaniel-like folds on his brow and melancholy eyes letting her have this hour, attempting to describe, do justice to, a huge life.
Had Anna been out of her mind, convinced she could do this alone? Warner and Lydia had suggested no such thing, just insisted they wanted to see her, and this would be the obvious choice to meet.
Anna stops babbling.
“Will you be visiting Florence?” she asks. “Do you know where you will be staying? Do you want to try a place That’s a treasure all by itself? Look for the Albergo Monna Lisa. It’s in a very inelegant narrow cobblestoned street. If you ask for directions, everyone will know.”
Warner writes it down.
“Our second trip to Italy,” he says, “we saved Florence for this time, didn’t want to just breeze through. We’ve been to Rome, of course. It was fabulous.”
“History — it’s talking to you at every corner,” says Lydia in halting German. “It’s exactly like all the photographs, only bigger.” She laughs.
“I had seven hours in Rome once, glorious, but I’ve never been to Venice,” says Anna. “I envy you. One day I hope to go.”
Later they take her suitcase up to the platform, and wave until the train pulls out. Anna never expected to form such close new friendships late in life, but she has, and some of these have included their children and hers.
Frank, Helga and Anna walk along the village streets. People have farmed here for hundreds of years. The land belonged to the principality of the von Donnersmarcks long before WWI. Vast forests were part of their holdings, the last Kaiser’s occasional hunting grounds, courtesy of the Duke. But around 1910 the trees were pushed back by the ever expanding capital city.
Another cemetery, in Hennigsdorf, near Stolpe, the second resting place in two days. A long row of simple wood crosses, a few bearing name and rank of the fallen German war dead, in a flat green lawn. They all died in “April 1945.” No, it has not been plowed under for convenience, to make room for more recent deceased.
Friedhelm Dahme, 7.12.1928, Gerhard Dietmar, Joseph Dziubang, Felix Horst, Peter Kirchhoff, 11.2.28, Siegfried Kunzmann, 26.3.1927, Erich Lonitz, Karl-Heinz Mueller, 13.8.1926, Sigrid Neubauer, 7.10.1931, Hans-Georg Neubert, 14.9.1935, Van Horn, Mathe, 5.7.1924, Jacob Wagner, Karl Wenzel, 23.10.1929, Ottomar Zimmermann, 5.4.1930, Klaus Neubert, 14.9.1939, Horst Alfred Noleppa, 18.4.1930, Erhard Papst, William Reinhardt, Franz Josef Riether, 1.11.1927, Hans Rost, Franz Schmiedl, 14.11.1927, Joseph Schmitt, Horst Schumann, Ludwig Strasser, Strobel Gottfried Tuss.
No, our boys were not likely to be among these. Only two of the graves were identified as “Volkssturm”, and all of the fallen under twenty years of age.
And finally they stand in front of the Russian War Memorial garden in Hennigsdorf. The massive collective headstone in the centre features a long list of names of common soldiers and officers alike, resting in enemy soil.
Tschebotar, Iwanow, Klitschew, Karplenko, Ergatow, Sidjakow, Omarow, Koslow, Murasch, Amfredow, Rutwerg, Malkow, Abdulajew. The list is long, printed in Latin letters not Cyrillic, and that is as it should be.
Anna reads them out loud. Frank and Helga know the proper pronunciation.
Are their families aware of these graves? One mother is said to have traveled here after “the collapse of the Soviet Union”, driven by her need to see her son’s grave, overcome with grief still. The warmth and sympathy of the local population enabled her to survive this harrowing journey, she reportedly said.
Now Anna and the Hornungs have returned to their home, are having coffee. Whenever they have been together their talk has been centred on things very difficult. Sadness had been close to the surface at all times.
She paused.
“You want to hear what Canadians are like. Canadians are always wondering about that themselves. In the forty-five years I have lived there they haven’t figured it out, it seems, except for the Francophones. They know exactly who they are. A very popular author, Pierre Berton, said once that a Canadian is someone who can make love without flooding the canoe.
“It’s a very good analysis, I think.”
Frank and Helga are laughing.
“That doesn’t quite cover it, of course. Canadians are often thought to be overly sober types. Not true, but before they let loose with something uproarious, they anxiously look around to make sure they won’t offend anybody.
“It’s hard to avoid because Canadian cities, like Toronto or Montreal, are the most ethnically, culturally rich places in the world with a lot of diverse belief systems all around you.”
“Really big cities in Germany are becoming like that too, aren’t they?” says Helga. Frank nods.
“It’s a good thing, a very positive thing for the future.”
She can’t sleep. A storm has blown up, the shadows dancing on the wall, images of trees Maja’s father planted some eighty years ago. The chickadee’s nest Maja pointed out way up in the blue spruce, re-assembled each season, will be swaying comfortably with the winds. The fall crop of baby birds have flown off now, in early October. Begum barks in the kennel, rare for her.
Where are they, the boys? Rainer had led the way, struggling with all his gear, but bicycling off a few meters ahead of the next, Toni, was it Toni? They planned to drop the bikes a safe distance from the trenches and approach on foot, teamed up in fours. Was there a chance perhaps, that all that machine gun barrage Anna and Lilly had heard missed the first group? Might they have been able to scramble on, straight on through the familiar territory in a westerly direction, getting away eventually? Moving out before the gross of the Russian 2nd Guard tank army swung around and down towards Berlin? Gus and Axel brought up the rear, before Eddie, Ulli and Motz caught up, having been delayed. How many tanks did they really encounter in the woods? Motz, Gus and Ulli heard heavy explosions, saw fire, smelled smoke, in addition to seeing those few that came their way. And there had been all that automatic fire, were those machine guns mounted on the tanks? It sounded like the woods had been lousy with infantry. Had some of the boys simply been taken prisoner? Will she never know? Probably not.
Anna has dropped in to say goodbye to Eva who has just published a significant book about the Prussian monarchy, after months and months of research in national archives and castles. Fluent in French, she has deciphered hundreds of hand-written letters and missives, flushed with the joy of discovery. This the Internet can’t supply. Not yet.
They had been talking about their Dads. Eva’s too old to be called up into the regular armed forces in WWII, he had simply refused to show up when the call to arms arrived from the Home Guards in late April, 1945. If anyone came around to check up on him, he would point to his thick reading glasses, and that was that. No one had bothered, to everyone’s relief.
Anna’s father lost his own personal war during the first few days of the Polish campaign, she believes. An incident on the third day or so led him to discover that the enemy was not necessarily to be found in those towns and villages beyond the Polish/Russian border, but right there, in his own cavalry regiment. He couldn’t talk about this for about twenty-five years, finally shared it with his new wife, and she eventually with his children.
“Anna,” says Eva, “do you realize, do you ever think about this — that if there had been another world war with a similar set-up, your son and mine might have been fighting against each other?”
“Yes, occasionally I do think about that. Hilde’s son too, with whom he played in the sandbox on his first visit. But it didn’t happen. And it won’t. The world has come a long way, though not nearly far enough, we are living in the middle of a work in progress.”
“Progress, it is,” says Eva. “Let’s be honest.”
Maja’s reddish-grey hair is twirling around her ears. The wind has blown a rakish curl into her forehead. For a split second she looks like the eighteen year old Maja, with her whole brave life in front of her. She is driving too fast again, the take-charge, though retired, doctor today.
“Well, you know, Anna,” she says, vehemently stopping at a yellow light, “we must face some disappointments sometime in life. My guess is that they won’t be found, wherever they may be. Your boys. I’ll have to let you out at the curb, at your gate. Can’t park anywhere at Tegel. Do you mind? Can you manage? I’m sorry.”
“Maja, I’m so grateful. Thank you for everything. I’ll call you from Frankfurt in a day or two. Must pop into that book fair.”
And she grabs her suitcase, pushes through the doors and lines up at the Lufthansa desk.