All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak by Caleb Wilde

Author:Caleb Wilde [Wilde, Caleb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781506481654
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

HE CAME TO ME THE OTHER NIGHT

Gerda and I had been meeting for coffee semiregularly. We usually picked a corner table in Dunkin’ Donuts. The corner table in any coffee shop is the table that says, “I don’t want to be bothered.” It’s the table the introverts grab, and it’s also the table that hears the deep, vulnerable stories and feelings. Sitting there, you can feel somewhat hidden—if hidden is even a thing at a coffee shop. Over those months, Gerda had told me her story.

When Gerda met Noshi, she wasn’t just a student at Heidelberg University; she had declared herself an orphan. Her dad, Hans, had lost his father in World War I, leaving young Hans to fend for his mother and three of his younger siblings. With the combination of a father lost to war, and the Depression that followed in Germany, Hans’s angst and anger found a home in the nationalism of Nazism and a fervent commitment to the Third Reich. After fighting in and surviving World War II, Hans was left even more bitter and disillusioned than he was before it began. His abuse and latent nationalism scarred Gerda’s youth, so she decided to escape through the ladder of a university education at Heidelberg.

“Leaving home was the most difficult choice I’ve ever made,” she told me. “I left two young sisters at home with Hans [she refused to call him Dad] and Mom. He abused me, and Mom did nothing to stop him. But I was okay with his abuse as long it wasn’t aimed at my sisters. You can find deep resilience when you know your pain is protecting someone you love.”

Gerda told me she knew that if she left, that abuse would probably go to someone else, like one of her sisters. She decided to go to university for a year and see what happened. If Hans started abusing her sisters, she thought, she’d go home. But if he didn’t—if her father managed to conquer his demons—she’d stay. That was her plan.

And then she met Noshi at a bar. Noshi was a kind, shy soul, but he gave her plenty of signals that he liked her. Gerda wasn’t sure she liked him. He was American. An American soldier. Dating him was sacrilege to many German men and women. I guess it’d be similar optics if a young American woman started dating someone from the Taliban right after 9/11.

For Germans in the early 1950s, the word “Nazi” didn’t carry the same connotation that it carries today. Our fathers, our brothers, our uncles who fought in the war were just cogs in the system, or so we thought. They were just nationalists who wanted to restore national pride.

“Even after the war, many thought that Nazism was a good idea that was poorly executed. The Allies weren’t the heroes we know them as today. They were the ones who put a stop to our nationalistic hopes and dreams. And being the slightly rebellious girl that I am, I liked that I was dating one.

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