Gerta by Tučková Kateřina

Author:Tučková, Kateřina
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542043151
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2021-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

XXV

Toward dusk on Thursday, exactly three days after the New Year, Hubert Šenk stopped in to see Zipfelová. When he got to the cottage, he stomped the snow off his boots, brushed the snowflakes off his coat, then stepped inside, hung the coat up by the stove, and sank heavily down on the bench against the wall. He took off his hat and set it beside him.

“I’ve brought the paper,” he said to old Zipfelová and to Ida, who welcomed him with a cup of chicory coffee in her hand.

“What does it say?” asked Ida.

“That the next transports are being delayed again. They don’t have room for them in Germany,” he said, motioning with his head toward the door behind which the German women had their room.

“What else does it say? What’s going to happen now?” asked Ida.

“Maybe in the end, they’re going to want them to stay right here?” Zipfelová narrowed her eyes pensively. “They must know that we don’t have enough people to do the work.”

“It says here that we do:

“In total, approximately eight hundred thousand Germans have already left Czechoslovakia, and another seven hundred fifty thousand are to be deported to the Soviet occupation zone. Deportation to the American occupation zone has not yet been effectuated—it will be initiated as soon as Czechoslovakia meets the technical terms required by the Americans, namely that every German must carry an identity card. According to the plan, one hundred seventy-five thousand Germans will then be deported into this zone. Some one point six million Czechs have already relocated from the heartland to the border regions. This large number of Czechs offers a guarantee that the economic life of the border regions would not suffer catastrophic shortages even if the Germans were to leave all at once. According to the plan, however, the expulsion of the Germans is expected to take until July, so during this period, it will be possible to secure adequate replacements even for any German specialists.

“I’d love to know where they came up with that,” Šenk commented when he finished reading aloud from the paper. “Wouldn’t suffer catastrophic shortages? They should take a look at Führeder’s vineyard—specialists, they say,” he muttered. “Or they should take a look at the Heinz fields. They always yielded such a big crop, and this year, there was barely half, and they didn’t even manage to reap it in time. That’s what those hacks should be looking at.”

“May I have a look?” Ida leaned over the paper. “There, you see, they write about it too.”

“What now?” Zipfelová asked tersely.

“About Hitler’s son, haven’t you heard?”

“And you heard it where?”

“Over the holidays, at the Krupas’. Mrs. Krupová was saying that Hitler had a son who escaped, and here they write about it. Listen,” Ida said, taking the paper from Šenk.

“From London. Special bulletin from the Reuters news agency correspondent in Nuremberg states: ‘According to reports received, the Czechoslovak police have taken into custody a twelve-year-old boy in Bohemia who may be Hitler’s son. Hitler’s

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