The road. The road of my childhood is a cobblestone street with a soft shoulder.  Where the shoulder ends, the fields begin.  Where the fields end, there is a sign. The sign reads: Reichenbach Vogtland.

From this sign, it is approximately one hundred meters to a development, which is named the star development and looms bright on the horizons of my childhood.

There are three streets in it; however, they are not called milky ways, as one might perhaps imagine, but Rim Road, Middle Road, and Erich-Mühsam-Street; connected to the last one is a grouping of houses, which the grown-ups of my childhood called "the SA-development," a name, which I assumed, must have had to do with their childhood.

But I lived in the star development.  Middle Road, divided into two parts, ran, as its name suggests, right through it. Yards on both sides, lawns, green in the shade of large apple and pear trees, colorful fences, thick red or black currant and gooseberry bushes, beckoning one to reach over the low fences.  Flowerbeds, asters, tulips, snapdragons, and, sporadically, on the lawns, crocuses and snowdrops were a part of the view throughout the short season of my childhood.

And there was a large variety of little dogs: fox terriers, poodles, and long-haired dachshunds, who ran along the inside of the colorful fences barking loudly, only to end up, at the end of the yards, where the fence turned the corner, howling longingly after passersby, wagging their tails, as if to say they were sorry for the wild barking, or to make clear that it was only meant as a friendly gesture in an idyllic place.

Two meters to the right of Middle Road, the third yard, the one with the yellow gorse bush and the plum tree at the corner, belonged to my grandmother. A red gate made of metal pipes welded together, which led into it, made a sound when I slammed it shut that I still remember precisely. 

The walk made of two rows of stone slabs, then, to the right, flower beds, a lilac tree, two  peonies, behind them, a wooden shed stained dark brown, an attached chicken coop, a cherry tree,  lawn, apple tree, asters, tulips, snapdragons, maybe a white crocus in March; someone climbing over the fence going out of the yard would end up on Middle Road and would have walked in a circle.

So, through the red gate again; the metal clang of a childhood, closed.

The path made of stone slabs, the wooden shed, the lilac tree; but now turn left, one and a half meters, three steps.  The door to my grandmother’s house was never locked; one could enter without being noticed.

Two doors in the entrance hall, one to the left, and one to the right, straight ahead, the steep wooden staircase to the second floor, from there through a bedroom, further, to the attic.

But the right door opens into the kitchen. Whoever opens it can see my grandmother standing at the kitchen table, a coal stove on the right whose iron lids glow in the winter so that you have to be careful.  But, let's assume instead that it is summer, the light is somewhat dim because the brown wooden shed in the courtyard obscures the view out of the window.

I am sitting under the windowsill on a corner bench; next to it, the sewing machine with its dangerous flywheel that invites a hand to grab it; now, however, it is standing still. I am sitting on the bench. My grandmother is standing at the table. I am packing my book bag for the next day. Grandmother is mixing cake batter or the dough for poppy seed rolls. We had poppy seed rolls in December, for New Years Eve.   In the summer, Kirschschale.

Sometimes, when I got home from school and sat quickly at the table after I had thrown my book bag under the corner bench, my grandmother served me one of her specialties.   Kirschschale, for instance: mashed cherries, milk, and red sugar.  Or poppy seed rolls, the secret recipe:  water and poppy seeds in a ceramic pot. Mix energetically and for a long time with a wooden spoon until a milky layer forms on the surface. Then my grandmother put some pieces of white bread into the pot and placed it on the staircase to the cellar; there it still had to sit for a day.

I am sitting on the bench at the window. When I look out of the window, I can see a corner of the front yard, the lilac tree, the two peonies which blossom in late May. Behind them, the red and black currant bushes, tulips, asters, snapdragons, I don't see, but I can see part of the fence, Middle Road behind it, where, maybe, Mr. Schimmack is out for a walk.  Schimmack with short, gray hair and glasses, the shirt, unbuttoned at the top, knee-length, green leather pants, knickerbockers, and long, large patterned red and black stockings in sandals that are green as well. This on a public street.

I am not allowed to shout at Schimmack on a public street: "Even if the fart is wet, none goes through his breeches yet." The tailor, my grandmother says.  And I know that once Schimmack made pants for my grandfather, a grandfather I never called Opa who is dead, died after surgery from a blood clot, as my grandmother says. I don't have any memory of him; however, I still keep a hand-sized piece of grayish green chalk at the bottom of my book bag, chalk with which tailor Schimmack used to take grandfather's measurements.  And actually, I don't know whom I have to thank for this silent memento. Should I attribute it to the tailor Schimmack or rather to my grandfather. Those two with their dubious stories.  Blood clot. And as to Schimmack, something about an ax with which he supposedly attacked the police, and, following that, jail.  As I said, dubious stories. But Schimmack, whom my grandmother calls the "tailor," is walking now along Middle Road behind the currant bushes. I don't know why.  Maybe to be a tailor.

Grandmother with her stories. More clear cut is the one about my great grandfather, who a long time ago (my mother and my father were still sour cream in a grocery store window, as my grandmother says), in a country that is now called Poland, climbed up a giant smoke stack one night to raise a red flag.  All by himself.  And descending, he covered the steps of the iron ladder with soft soap to prevent the police from ripping the flag down again. Such stories my grandmother tells and makes her Kirschschale or the poppy seed dough. The red flag earned my great grandfather a five-year residence in a very different country called Siberia.  However, having gotten to this point, my grandmother always falls totally silent and says something like "you won't understand this anyway." And at first I thought that this had to do with the totally different country, but once, I overheard a conversation between my father and my grandmother from which I gathered that my great grandfather at the time of the great Russian Revolution in February 1917 -- not to be confused with the October coup -- had been seen by acquaintances in St. Petersburg. Therefore, he must have been released from that country, Siberia, early. But he did not return home. The acquaintances reported that he strolled through St. Petersburg in broad daylight, whistling loudly, they said, and in addition, with a lady on each arm. Sluts, my grandmother says. Whether he stayed in St. Petersburg because of them or because of the revolution there, she did not say. This doesn't seem quite clear to my grandmother either.  No matter how long I listened, the conversation about my great grandfather ended with this question every time.  What remains certain is that he never came home, even though I found out that "home" was Poland at that time.

Another story? The one about my mother's father, my other grandfather? Whom I have never seen, but who must have been a fun-loving person. As a fun-loving person, he was a member of a "Stammtisch,” a regulars' table, in a pub on his street. Every night, he hit it up a bit. Every night, the regulars' table let one of its party die to have an excuse for drinking extensively to his death. And every time, my grandfather would come home late at night, crying and reporting the great tragedy: The death of a close friend.

My mother would have felt deep sadness, too if, the next morning, she had not run into the friend who had been declared dead with a slight hangover.

Also, the story of the death of this grandfather has been better passed on than that of my great grandfather.  One day, he bought a brand-new motorcycle with a side wagon, rode it in a drunken stupor without thinking onto Hitler's newly built highway and flipped over.  Understandably, the regulars' table scheduled a long meeting.

At least these are better stories than stories about walking down Middle Road at noon with green sandals and knickerbockers and being called Schimmack. But perhaps not better than mixing poppy seed rolls and being able to tell stories like my grandmother while I look out at the street and see two old women from the house across the street, the "re-settlers," walking along.  By the way, "re-settlers" is another one of grandmother’s words which I don't know the meaning of.

The smaller woman, who has a hunchback and walks bent over, works at a cemetery that is located at the farthest end of „Edge Way," at the border between the star development and the fields. She washes corpses there, my grandmother says, and every time the hunchbacked woman walks along Middle Road, I run into the house or hide behind the dark brown wooden shed or, if I have just climbed the lilac tree, sit very still.

The other woman outside on Middle Road is walking upright, seems stronger than the hunchbacked one and is a cook in a factory canteen.  I gladly take in every word she says to me as well as the accompanying sweets, chocolates and pudding, which she brings along from her canteen.

And one day, when a thunderstorm developed and my grandmother took the wash from the clothes line in the backyard, this old woman came into the room, up to the bed where I lay covering up my eyes, sat down, and gave me a large plate of jello.

The first lightning bolts, the drumming of the raindrops on the metal sill of the open window, the shimmering green jello, brought by the re-settler who lived with a woman who washed corpses, this taste would forever remain on my tongue.

But now, it is a bright summer day; the two women are walking along Middle Road and arrive at a bigger cobblestone street with a soft shoulder after passing three gardens, fences, lawns and dogs.  There, after another hundred meters, the sign: Reichenbach Vogtland.

The road. The road of my childhood runs from Zwickau to Plauen. And it is a Vogtland road.

The Vogtland. The Vogtland is a small strip of land in the South of Germany's East.  The part of Germany which is situated on the right of the map and whose geographic physiognomy may remind an observer who likes to kid around of a dried-up dwarf not prone to kidding around.  The Vogtland in the south borders on Saxony in the north. However, it is not part of Saxony, something that can be gathered from the irritated gestures of its inhabitants, when they are told that they are Saxons.  Vogtland is Vogtland, please!

It is surrounded by Thuringia in the west, the Erz Mountains in the east, and Bavaria and Bohemia in the south.  The Vogtland is my homeland, which means nothing except that forests, rivers, brooks, lakes, villages, and sun-flooded market places are clear images changing places in my memory.

And paths run through all of the memories; on the paths I.  With the parents and alone. Alone and with the brother. With the bicycle, then with the colored, cardboard cone filled with sweets on my first day of school. And later, with the blank faces of peers and classmates, who ask inane questions: Why did Walther von der Vogelweide get involved with the Pope?  Questions and faces that I answered with silence early on and knew the answer.  Was alone.  At the market places and school desks.  Went into the woods and knew the paths.

Because next to the highway already mentioned, the highway that doomed my mother's father or that saved him, maybe, from a miserable, white death near Petersburg and Stalingrad or from a very different death in Siberia, there, next to this highway, which, so I heard, was built by Hitler alone, there is only one north-south route left. This is the one, the only one, the road of my childhood.  The road.

Between Reichenbach and Zwickau it is called Zwickauer Straße; after Reichenbach in the direction of Plauen, it is called Plauensche Straße, and right before Plauen, it is called Reichenbacher Straße. From there it leads to Bad Brambach. Then Bohemia begins.

The road. But at that time, I was only a young girl. My grandmother says and stirs poppy seed buns.  Every morning, the cavalry rode out.  An endless line of wagons and men on horseback who went to war.  I was a young girl then. My grandmother is telling a story. I am sitting at the table looking into the backyard. The brown shed that blocks the view. But I see the peonies. I see a girl. Past the lilac tree. Through the red gate. The metallic sound. A few meters. A different fence.  A different garden.  Different bushes. Again a lilac tree.

Martina's grandfather lives here. Who raises fish and spends his nights with them. Martina visits in the summer. When the summer is yellow, Martina's hair is blond. Then we go swimming. Through the fields at the edge of the development called the star development.  Then the canola stands high.  Then Martina has a black swimming suit. Then the canola blossoms yellow.  When the summer is blond, our hearts are pounding and the breasts of the first girl are blossoming red and white. I was thirteen.  I don't want to be a teenager-in-love again. I don't want to sing. Not about that. 

Then Martina put her dress on. Farewell. We went back to the development called the star development. The lilacs were blooming on both trees. Farewell. Then I said to her in front of the red garden gate: See you soon.  Then the lilacs blossomed wildly.  Farewell. Then Martina moved to a different city.

The next summer, preceded by an endless fall, with a girl from my class named Karin who was blond and wore a black swimming suit, I tried to relive a little bit of what had moved away with Martina.  But I did not find it anymore.  And later, the girls were called Ulrike, Beate, and Karin again.  Their hair was brown, blond, or red.  By that time, ten years had passed.  And then the girl was called Maria. But she had black hair.  On happy days, braids.

This is of no interest to you, my grandmother says and pours water into the ceramic pot.  Please, continue, I say and keep looking at the street.  Every morning, and her words seem to determine the rhythm with which her arms grate the poppy seed buns, every morning they rode out.  But I was still a young girl then. Cavalry.  The soldiers rode horses at that time, you have to understand, because there were hardly any cars or tanks. Even canons were drawn by horses.  Every morning past our house. Wait, she says, I have to go to the basement to get some poppy seed. I am sitting in the kitchen looking at the back yard. Martina.  That's why every evening I climbed up the wooden staircase to the attic and gazed at the stars with binoculars.  Thus my irrepressible interest in astronomy. That did not find fulfillment, because later, after the eighth grade, I transferred to gymnasium and therefore, missed tenth grade astronomy at my old school and I could not take it in twelfth grade because I was thrown out of the gymnasium for generally contrary behavior.  Defamation of army officers. Because I did not want to sign up to become an army officer.  Disruption of the student collective. With topics not suited for education. The stories of my grandmother and those I experienced myself. About the cavalry and drunken drivers of motorcycles. About red flags and sluts in Petersburg. About two lilac trees.  My unscientific star gazing. In a development called the star development because its houses were built in groups of three connected to one another in the form of a star.  The black swimming suits.  My brother, the university student with stories about rebelling students. The black currant schnaps, home-made, which we secretly drank in the basement. The re-settlers. The lightning bolts. Jello.  The devil. Rudi Dutschke. Schimmack. The new-year's rockets in the snow. My brother who fired them and laughed.

What happened every morning? I am asking my grandmother who has returned from the basement.  After the sun rose, she says, they moved out, out onto the fields, where the war was. Our house stood right at the street, and I could see everything.  But at that time, I only was a young girl.

She is not saying Leokadya Amalia. Those are my first names, the country was called Poland, this was a Polish street, and the town with this house on the street was called Sduńska Wola located 200 kilometers from Warsaw.  That is where your father was born. She is not saying that.  She is only saying: I was a young girl then.

The officers in their shiny uniforms, every one of them on a white horse. Then the drum major. Who swung his baton and dictated the rhythm for the following rows of riders. The Music. The soldiers. With sabers which swung with the gait of their proud horses.  At the back, horse-drawn wagons. Carts with provisions, canons, field kitchens. Past our house. Every morning.

And then, in the evening, and the evenings were always warm there during the summer, you have to understand, and we girls stood barefoot in front of the houses at the wayside, we were waiting for the soldiers. And one day in the morning, I still remember very clearly, a tall blond lieutenant on a beautiful white horse had ridden ahead of everybody.  In the evening I was at the street before any other girl.

Then the soldiers came. I saw the lieutenant. He lay sideways over the saddle of his proud horse and was dead.  The uniform soiled with dirt and blood.  I could not recognize his face anymore. They had split his skull.  In the morning he rode ahead of everybody. He was courageous; but this was senseless, because there was a war.

Then other wagons pulled by horses came with dead riders. They lay in piles on top of each other. My mother ran out of the house and pulled me away. This is the war, she said.  And since that evening, I have never gone to that street. But then, I was only a young girl. My grandmother says. And stirs the poppy seed buns.

She is breathing heavily now, stops for a moment and pours some more water into the ceramic pot.

I am looking out of the window again, see the wooden shed, the lilac tree, the currant bushes, the flowers in front of the fence. Evening has come.  The crimson peony blossoms have closed. A bright star is shining over the house of the re-settlers.

Grandmother puts the ceramic bowl with the poppy seed mixture on the staircase to the cellar.  The path which takes one past three idyllic gardens, which leads to the large cobblestone street, at this point called Zwickauer Straße, which I mentioned: my childhood, is empty now.

And later, I don't know how many days or years have gone by, because childhood is a time without an internal gauge, I heard a noise in the morning that had already begun at night and did not seem to want to stop anymore.

I found by brother's bed empty. And when I checked, the wooden shed where his motorcycle normally stood was empty too.  I got dressed and ran into the street; my grandmother had sent me to the bakery to buy breakfast rolls. And I was happy because I was on school vacation, and the rising sun promised a hot day.

I ran alongside Middle Road; one of the dogs from the three front yards performed his normal ritual and remained howling behind the fence.  I arrived at the street of my childhood, the cobblestone street with the soft shoulder and stopped.  Because everything had stopped.  Schimmack stood there. The re-settlers had stopped.  The canola stood yellow but somewhere else. The summer was not blond anymore. The black swimming suits remained imprinted in my memory. And something else stopped, was frozen, there on the road, on this day, something that from now on would be called childhood and would be left behind.   

Because they alone moved. On my road. Kept on rolling.  Drove away: tanks with machine guns on their turrets, trucks and canons, armored personnel carriers, and field kitchens.  An endless stream that moved forward slowly under a yellow cloud of dust

I stood still for a while, and then kept going slowly, past houses, along this road. 

Two girls form my class, Sonja and Ruth, saw me and ran toward me.  What is going on, they shouted. Is this the reason why we were not allowed to hunt for mushrooms in the forest although we are on school vacation?

No, today, these soldiers were not friendly and did not want to exchange addresses; very different from those whose unit our school had adopted and who came to our school on Wednesdays when we had our young pioneer meetings where they sang Russian songs.

I laughed and kept on going because something had stopped a few moments ago, and I turned around and knew its name from then on.

I kept on going past the house where the principal of our school lived; I saw him standing at the wide open window on the first floor of the house, in each of his hands a red paper flag that he waved wildly. Out of his mouth must have come shouts of elation which, however, were swallowed up by the metallic clanking of the tank tracks.

I walked close to the front of the house so that the principal could not see me, and when I looked up, I only saw his arms and hands with the red flags and how they pointed to the stream of vehicles under the cloud of yellow dust.

It must have been other hands, I thought and a different flag which my great grandfather once fastened in dizzying heights. Not these school chalk fingers, not this grading red.

Not that, this much I knew after I had turned around and seen what my childhood had been.

But I kept on going, went past two more houses and opened the door to the bakery. Except for the saleswoman and me, nobody else was in the store because everybody had stopped.

I bought five breakfast rolls, three pieces of poppy seed cake for my grandmother, my brother, and me, paid, and left the store.

On the steps of the bakery, I got under the cloud of yellow dust again, smelled the black, burned diesel fuel, looked over to the vehicles and -- I almost fell. I saw him! He sat on his black motorcycle among the endless tank tracks, in the middle of the road. I saw the face of my brother, saw the black hair, the beard and the eyes that conveyed an expression of horror and joy; his red shirt with the rolled up sleeves, as if a hard job had to be done.

Was this the flag?  Was this the reason my brother was riding there, or did he only want to have fun? Under which flag did the tanks move? Did he dress in his red shirt because of that; did he want to make fun of them or stop their advance, which was the equivalent of war?                                                                                                                                                                 

And I saw that there was some distance now between my brother and the tank that banged the cobblestones. The following tank had remained about fifty meters behind now. I saw how my brother straightened his upper body and turned around to the tank whose commander shouted in an incomprehensible language. I saw how the commander pulled his pistol out of his belt and gave an order. How the tank accelerated suddenly and jumped toward my brother. How my brother sped up and came to a full stop after five meters. How sand flew into the air and the tank tracks screeched on the cobblestones. How the tank shot forward into emptiness and how my brother laughed. How commands were executed by invisible drivers. How a visible flag fought against a gray snake of metal moving forward under a flag that remained invisible. How my brother disappeared under the cloud of dust. How the gray snake rolled on. How the flag was hunted by it and could not be seen anymore. How it seemed defeated. How the tanks came to a stop again and how the motors idled as if somebody had poured sand into them.

I held my shopping net with the breakfast buns more tightly and ran as fast as I could, down the road to the star development, to Middle Road, to my grandmother's house.

The principal's window was still open. I looked up. He was still standing erect at the window, still with wide-open arms; his hands held the paper flags that did not flap anymore as if there were a lull in the wind. His gaze was vacuous and directed toward the road.

I did not see the two girls from my class anymore, and everybody else had disappeared.  Nobody had waited, nobody had stopped, nobody would have been there when the flag was visible.

My grandmother ran a few steps toward me, worried about my long absence.  I ran toward her and shouted, Grandmother, he stopped the tanks!  Do you get it, with the motorcycle!

I saw how my grandmother turned pale like the wall of the house we stood in front of.  Two shadows of different heights leaning against each other were now cast onto the sun- drenched wall.  My brother came back in the evening. We heard his motorcycle, then the front gate fell shut.  With an unforgettable sound. My brother let the motorcycle fall against the wooden shed. We saw him come into the house. He barged into the kitchen, he staggered somewhat and ripped open his shirt above the chest.  His face was black. We saw three wounds on his chest, blood dripping from all of them.  Outside the metallic clank of the tank tracks grew louder again.

My brother had three stings on his chest. An errant wasp must have flown under his shirt while he was riding his motorcycle between the tanks. Because it was summer, a hot day, when my childhood came to its end.  It was Tuesday, August twentieth, nineteen hundred and sixty-eight. 

The following night, 500,000 foreign soldiers crossed over the border into Czechoslovakia in the region of the Vogtland and the Erz Mountains and other places.

The road of my childhood is a cobblestone street with soft shoulders which blend into the fields.

• Westberlin, December 1983 – May 1984

Farmer beaten from field

Schimpfermanns Frieder, round metal-rimmed glasses as a student, corn-white stubbly hair, then farmer, in his empty barn, last spring, from a rafter under the roof,  hanged himself.

Schimpfermanns Frieder, whom I took under my wings in arithmetic, at the school at the edge of his father’s fields, was bad with numbers.

I helped him in Russian, math, too, on behest of our teacher because Schimpfermanns Frieder was not my friend. And I probably promised him, too, that minus times minus and minus divided by minus always results in plus.

I don’t remember anymore what I promised him in Russian, but I still remember that we, the boys in our class, in his father’s big barn, hay stacked up to the roof, once in February, when the snow was waist deep on the fields and around the barn,  had a wonderful afternoon with him.

            Around carnival time, I was an American Indian with a headdress of feathers and a face covered with red lipstick, Schimpfermanns Frieder a cowboy, a trapper, with a glued-on mustache and a revolver belt.  On that afternoon in the snow, we shot at each other, outside in front of the big barn, with small blue plastic pistols, revolvers with a metal bolt that  hit a strip of paper. This made a crack. We did not have to die then.

During the next summer, Schimpfermanns Frieder, my  protegee in math to the end, he never learned Russian,  he simply did not believe me that another language could have letters different from those that he pronounced in his dialect, the dialect of the Vogtland; during the summer, Schimpfermanns’ Frieder dropped out of school.

He became a rich farmer in a country where minus times minus always became a plus, a simple calculation, just as I had promised him once.

Schimpfermanns Frieder, during the spring, the new eastern parts of the country for sale at bargain prices for years, the soil, the acres, and the fields examined by satellites orbiting the earth, in his empty barn, from a rafter under the roof,  hanged himself.

Schimpfermanns Frieder, who was not my friend, but my protegee in math and a trapper, and later on, a rich farmer, miscalculated. My promises did not come true, and the Russians, too, withdrew from the new parts of the country, and for Schimpfermanns Frieder, it was not important anymore which of the letters that made up their language they took home with them.

What do I care about Frieder Schimpfermann’s death; I could say, a farmer who miscalculated, a dim light who couldn’t count to two, who spoke some dialect and was not even my friend.

I don’t want to confuse the one with the other, the upswing of the country with the swinging rope that Frieder Schimpfermann threw  over the rafter of his empty barn. But I do want to talk about the soil, the fields, the acres where the wheat and rye stood in the early fall, white like grain at harvest time, like Frieder’s hair. I want to talk about the soil to which he belonged, now covered with concrete, sealed soil on top of which in the Vogtland the white temples of the West are growing.  Lace form Plauen, carpets from Ölsnitz, those with the crescent, textiles from the Vogtland, gabardine from Reichenbach: The factories in the cities are empty, with dust-covered windows; flour from farmer Schimpfermann's grain no longer exists.

And why am I sad in the new German states, I, the happy one after ten years of exile.;  I wish I had once promised Schimpfermanns Frieder that God would now watch over him, here, the place to which I have returned ,  the landscape of our childhood, now that Frieder may need my help again: Minus times minus, we found out, is, in the last instance, like love and death, not explained.

9/5/ - 9/14/1994

(Translated from the German by Jane Muller-Peterson and Wolfgang Müller)