When I think of the journey from Prague to Ravensbrück, it’s hard for me to accept that, after surviving a six-day voyage without water or food in a cattle car, in almost complete darkness, without enough space to sit and with dead bodies piled up in one corner, Alma ended up dying among the scrap iron of a wrecked train because of a drunk switchman. I suppose that, as difficult as it is for me to get my brain around, it’s just one more of fate’s unfathomable paradoxes.
My worst train trip was the one that took me from the rearguard to the military hospital in Gera. I couldn’t say how long it was, because I had a nasty fever. Which may be why I remember — with the vividness of a dream — the pain in my shoulder, the moaning of my bunkmates, the deafening drone of the wheels, the nurses’ words, intended to be comforting but incapable of mitigating a pang that had too much history behind it, of long months in the trench, plagued by lice and rain, plagued by the stench of the cadavers and the living who had no change of clothes, plagued by fear and the annihilating emptiness brought on by the lack of expectations.
They wounded me during a night patrol. Lead by a lieutenant, we entered no-man’s-land at midnight and crawled to the English trench to spy on the movements of their troops. Every once in a while, flares lit up the sky and bursts of machine gun fire were heard. Shortly before their line, we ran into a detachment of soldiers who were repairing the barbed wire. When they saw us, they retreated to their position and, not long after we started running back to our trench, a star shell turned the night into day and the shots began. A second later, although it could have been many hours, because each step seemed like an eternity, I felt something hit my shoulder. I fell, but somehow — probably compelled by a visceral fear of transforming into another of the rotting corpses that surrounded me — I managed to get up and make my way, pushing and rolling, to our trench.
I woke up in the campaign hospital. The bullet had entered at the height of my scapula and come out the front. I was almost always half drowsing those days before leaving for Gera, but I vaguely remember the smell of the room, a mix of phenol, pus, and sweat, and the shrieks from the guy to my right. A grenade had exploded his belly and there was nothing they could do for him. Just wait for him to surrender. Every once in a while, someone would shout at him to quiet down. And for a while he did, but then he would resume his litany. He lasted for three days. Then one morning, a soldier with both legs amputated was lying in his bed.
After a month in the hospital at Gera, my father came to pick me up and take me home. I was only there for fourteen days, but I savored every moment as if I had been given a second chance at life. I remember that when someone was surprised at my enthusiasm over every little thing, like sleeping in a bed or a warm meal, I could have easily started in on a long list of grievances about conditions on the front, but I didn’t want to talk about it — the idea that I would have to go back was weighing heavily on me— and I wasn’t interested in anyone’s compassion. The best part was seeing Lisa, one of my first models, again. We only spent one night together, after really tying one on, but when I evoke the sensation I felt caressing her body that I’d painted so many times, I can’t forgive myself for falling asleep so fast.
I saw Lisa again on Hofer’s list and, when I repainted Nude On A Persian Rug, I felt the same emotion I had at seeing her for the first time, because she was the model who forced me to forget all the portrait theories I’d been force-fed at the Academy. Lisa was different. She gave off an energy that compelled me to abandon mere likeness in order to transmit the mood she triggered.“But that’s not me,” she told me the first time she saw one of the portraits I’d made of her.“Maybe not, but that’s what I feel when I look at you,” I replied. I don’t know if she ever understood my long-winded spiel about the difficulties of finding a model who stimulated my imagination, but she didn’t seem too interested either.
Where must she be now? Maybe she was able to save up enough money to leave Dresden and live far away from her family, the way she’d wanted. Or maybe she didn’t and ended up dying in the 1945 bombings. It’s a shame that so many people have come in and out of my life and left only a scattered trail of memories. Just the way I must have done in their lives, I guess. If Lisa is still alive, what place do I hold in her memory? I often wonder what must have happened to some person or another. Perhaps it’s just a last flicker of nostalgic curiosity before disappearing. . Obviously I’ll have to settle for the little I know. The rest, it’s as if it never existed.
Returning to the trench after being at my father’s house on leave was much harder than I had imagined it would be. Naively, I had believed that, knowing what to expect, I would have an easier time getting used to it again. But actually the opposite was true. After recovering, for a few days, the life I never should have abandoned, adapting to the void again made me terribly anxious for the first few weeks. And since one of the ideas that most tormented me was that I might not have another opportunity to return home, I was constantly scolding myself for everything I hadn’t done.
I only took part in two attacks before falling apart. The first was a fairly straightforward skirmish to regain control of an elevation that we’d lost the evening before. But the second was a bloodbath. Our company got trapped in the crossfire at the Vaux forest. We held up for three days, during which the hopeless regularity of the enemy artillery fire was driving us so crazy that, despite the angst it provoked in me, I was happy when a cloud of gas forced us to run off as fast as we could. But as we retreated to our positions like rabbits, dodging the pit craters and the uprooted tree trunks, the machine guns did the rest.
A week later, when I received the order to leave the trench to begin a new offense, I burst into tears like a baby. They told me that later, because I don’t remember it. And they also told me that I was shaking like a leaf from head to toe, and raving. And that I shat myself. What a spectacle. Luckily Sergeant Forkel was no longer there, because if he had been, I probably wouldn’t be here now.
Like my return to the trenches after my shoulder wound, knowing what to expect should simplify things but it doesn't. Ever since they told me that this will all be over soon, I’ve been tormented by the things I won’t ever get to do again. That didn’t happen to me before. Maybe when you can’t see the end, it’s easier to trust in time’s benevolence.“There are more days than sausages,” people say. No, there aren’t more days than sausages. Not even close. Time flies by carelessly and leaves us adrift. Weaker and more alone. And it’s difficult to resign yourself. Maybe if I only had to worry about dying it would be simpler, but having to cope with my body’s progressive surrender is exhausting. Battling with half a bowl of soup, washing up every time I shit my pants, dressing myself with nowhere to go. . As the days slip by, I find it harder to maintain the serenity I need to keep myself from just giving up. I know that Alma wouldn’t allow it, but she’s not here. And there’s no one else left who’s convincing enough that I would pay them any mind.