He was sitting on a bench at a
bus stop. I hesitated for a second or two before I hit the
brakes and reversed my Peugeot.
The
guy looked old and and lonely, but there was something resilient and
even optimistic about him. 'He might talk', I thought.
I
needed something to make up for the lost conversation which I thought I had
booked for that afternoon. It turned out though that the would-be speaker couldn't face the history he'd witnessed or
simply wasn't sure any more if he was on top of his memories (the excuse
relayed by his daughter wasn't too clear).
I got off the bike, introduced myself and told
him what I was after. ”Go ahead”, he said in a realaxed voice,
which made me even more hopeful, ''What would you like to know?”. I told him that basically everything, but helped him focus: ”When
did you first come here?”
His answer made me forget all
the stories that I could have lost in the village next door*, not
that they were less interesting, usually quite the contrary, but because they
we much easier to come by in these parts. His was endemic, and because of Wstern
Imperialism, Hindenburg, Ypres, Haig, Clemenceau, Hitler,
Chamberlain, Potsdam - in short: because the collapse of Western Civilisation - people who could tell stories like his were extremely hard to come by in these parts.
”In
1939”, was his reply. My heart skipped a beat. "My grandparents came to Dresden and brought me
with them over here". I couldn't believe my luck.
Germans are few and far between hereabouts after the last emotional send-offs in the early
1950s and information-wise each was worth their weight in gold.
We
talked on and during the conversation I had a feeling that something
important was happening. I was getting more than just the facts
concerning one German boy's life, but I couldn't quite say what.
It
was getting late. ”What's your name?”, I asked when I shook his
hand. ”Jürgen"*, he replied.
”One day I'll be back”, I assured him before I left.
When
I was cycling south-west, with die Riesengebierge looming on the horizon I thought thrilled: the first was that woman from S. who fell in love
with a Polish guy after the war and decided to stay behind while all her family went to live across the new border, in the DDR; the second is Fraulein Pietsch who
used to live in my teenage-years room (before me); and he is the third one. I know
personally three local Germans now, and three meant a lot. One was just a toehold, two were a foothold and three –
three are a solid basis on which I can build in my head a vibrant
community; why, three is a whole society!
"Toll!", I declared to the discreet silhouette of the Schneekoppe. "Contact
has been established."
*except the one I did hear, and quite by chance, about a Ukrainian man with a Polish wife who was
told to kill her and their children when a bunch of Ukrainian Insurgent Army guerillas raided his village one
day in 1944.
**I
changed the name slightly, but the real one was as German as German names get, too.
