We returned home late at night and my son, tired out from the day, sweetly slept in my arms, mumbling from time to time, „Grandfather… little hare… Grandfather… little hare, isn’t it?“ I gathered that this was a snatch of his unfinished conversation with his grandfather.
Eleven years later, my son and I would stand at the graveside of Kant in the centre of the town previously known as Konigsberg, on whose streets a paratrooper, my father, had been wounded. And now his grandson, my son, is serving as a frontier guard in a Baltic Military District.
It was a cold, damp day and drizzling drearily. We stood by Kant’s grave and my son suddenly said, „Dad, do you remember when I was in my first year at school and there was a huge underground explosion?“
„When you saved us?“ I said smiling.
„Yes, I remember how I ran from school and was afraid I’d be too late. I thought I wouldn’t make it and you would all be killed and the house would be destroyed. Yes, I remember. I dragged Markhaba down the stairs. She was little then, terrified, and she kept mumbling, ‘Mum, Mum’…“
„What made him remember that?“ I thought when we were passing the monument to Schiller near the drama theatre’. The monument… it had been spared although the city had been bombed so much that nothing had been left standing. A war is a war. I suppose it has its own laws…
„Yes, and that day when we went to see grandfather he took me to see his old friend! They had both fought at Konigsberg and for some reason, they started to talk about it, recalling the battle. Grandfather was an excellent raconteur. He described Konigsberg so perfectly that I was overwhelmed when I arrived here because his description was so exact. And did you know that he lay near the cathedral by Kant’s grave for half a day? That’s when he was wounded and heavily concussed. Thanks for bringing me here.“
My son’s words perturbed me considerably.
„I’m glad that we could be here together,“ I said.
And then I remembered that while he was alive, my father often dreamt of showing us Konigsberg, or Kaliningrad as it is now called. „You’ll see the kind of city it is,“ he would say. „Those castles which have miraculously survived are a real wonder! People have settled there for centuries. They knew how to build, how to live. It’s enviable how well they do many things. Let’s take cows for example. Do you know how much milk the Germans manage to get from their cows? We must go, we certainly must go there. You’ll see the places where I spilled my blood.“
