Now we have only three years left to that grand and, some folks predict,
apocalyptic and possibly fiery finale that will usher in a new Fraternity
and Union of the Spirit. How this will come about is a deep mystery to this
born skeptic, but I want to be there when it happens, and I will tell you
why.
It all has to do with my jungle chum, Gretchen.
The first time I met Gretchen, I sat tucked in between her German Oma and
my German Oma within the glow of a kerosene lamp in a dismal jungle kitchen,
and she stood outside in the dark. I could not see her face, but I'll never
forget her first words.
She said: "Can she play?" and both her grandma and my grandma
nudged me with their elbows and said: "Go out and play with Gretchen!"
but I just shook my head. My loyalties didn't come easy - not then, and
not today.
No two children could have been more different in personality and tastes
than Gretchen and I as we grew up together - she always chasing fun; I always
past my ears in causes. And yet, the two of us, inseparable!
It was believed by not a few of the adults that we were a bad influence
on each other. The Elders of the community tried hard to keep us apart;
even after we were grown and married, there was mild plotting going on in
churchly and administrative quarters to break our friendship up. No way
Jose! We were as though cemented to each other.
Gretchen had been a wartime child, as we all were - with a personal story
more tragic than most. We both had lost our fathers to exile to the Gulags,
but I still had a mother. Gretchen's mother, at the age of twenty-four,
was wounded mortally in the cross fire between the Hitler Army and the Communists
in 1941 and bled to death in front of her two girls - Gretchen, then five,
her sister, a year younger. Gretchen was asked to kiss the corpse good-bye,
which she refused to do but was given no choice in the matter.
Before this young mother passed away, with her last strength she willed
her little daughters not to her own mother but to her husband's mother -
knowing that times lay ahead that would make men and animals moan. She sensed
instinctively that if her children were to live, she had to choose the stronger
matriarch - and a wise choice it was, because her own folks perished also
- as I recall, as victims of the Trek of 1944.
Gretchen's grandma, part of that trek as well, was certainly no ordinary
woman. She herself had been forged in the fires of grief - in one murderous
night, long before Gretchen was born, she experienced the slaughter of her
husband, both of his parents and both of her own parents - due to marauding
bandits as revolutionary Marxist-Bolshevik forces kicked open the prisons,
unleashing the mob on the Germans in Russia.
With that mob came not just slaughter but diseases such as typhus. The Germans,
still living by the Bible, took some of their tormentors in to nurse them
back to health. She caught typhus and almost succumbed. When she came out
of her coma, she learned that one of her own teenage sons had died of typhus
in the meantime and was buried. In later years, she lost a few more sons
to the Stalinist purges; Gretchen's father being one.
With what was left of her truncated family, including a blind daughter and
the two little girls, this now old, tired woman made the retreat to Germany
through all the ice and snow of 1943 - 1945, always a wagon-length ahead
of the retreating German Army. She ended up, as we all did, in a religious
German colony in Paraguay where she commenced to pioneer the jungle.
I remember Gretchen's Oma well. While I was young, I always thought she
was a witch; she watched her grandchild like a hawk; the moment darkness
fell across the jungle village, she started yelling: "Greeeet-chen!"
And Gretchen would be reigned in for the night to forestall the romantic
snares laid out for the prettiest girl in the village.
As teenagers, Gretchen and I went into not-so-covert competition for the
available few males - most of our males were gone! In those post World War
II years, eligible males in our community were scarce.
The place to find them was at the village well. You never saw such diligence
as Gretchen started watering her roses! It was pail after pail, accompanied
with giggle after giggle.
Next came first Canada, then the United States. Just as was true in my case,
Gretchen did not have much of a formal education, but she knew how to cook,
and she cooked up a storm in a small German restaurant she decorated a la
Schwarzwald (Black Forest).
I threw myself behind a doctorate - entirely on scholarships and not a few
government loans, every penny of which I repaid.
She and her husband made their business a roaring success; she in her Dirndl
outfit, her sparkling personality and her perennial smile; he with hard
work and German sense of practicality. In a few years, they sold that restaurant;
bought property; charged rent; bought more; charged more; did this and that
- and, at the age of forty-three, the two of them retired - secure and independently
wealthy for life. It has been party after party ever since.
She still asks: "Can you play?"
Not me. I am the serious kind.
In recent years, she took up palmistry. I scolded her: "But Gretchen!
That's blackest superstition!" She said that it makes perfect sense
to her that our futures would be written in our palms; how else could the
Good Lord keep track of our destinies?
The other day, I took Ernst Zundel up to visit Gretchen. I intended to show
them off to each other and bask in the glory a bit.
Now Mr. Zundel is the very serious type as well; some people even claim
he is a bit pedestrian; but do you know that he gamely went along just like
a smitten Latin swain while she traced with a dainty pinkie the lifeline
in his palm? Predicting fame and honor as the outcome of his struggle?
I watched in amazement and envy!
After we left, Ernst said: "I like her. She is fun. She's like a 'Schmetterling'".
A butterfly. It fits her perfectly.
I told her later what he said. She turned absorbed and mum.
Next thing I knew, she had herself some stationary made - a butterfly her
logo.
Lucky are we who are given such true friends for life. My children call
her aunt. I call her my best buddy. There are very few secrets between us.
We have known each other for practically all of our lives; we are real family.
She still wonders, however, why in the world I can't play. I wonder when
she will grow up and stop playing.
The other day we had ourselves a serious conversation, and I complained
that life was much too short. I said to Gretchen, wistfully: "By the
time we wise up, life is over! Just think of it! I don't want to die, now
that I'm wising up at last and finally start living."
And Gretchen said in this shy voice: "You know what? I kind of look
forward to that."
It would be just like Gretchen, though, to send me first to check.
Three years from now it will be fifty years since Gretchen and I celebrated
our first New Year's together, soon after World War II - the goal of which
was to harvest our first kiss from what came to be known as the opposite
sex. No mean task, that, in that religious, ethnic German village!
Did we succeed? You bet! Beneath the paraiso trees!
I am calling her Gretchen, but that isn't her real name. I am protecting
her from what I call the Zundel-taint. She has been warned already by a
mysterious stranger to stay away from me; specifically, she has been told
the ADL is watching.
When she called me to tell me that, I said a bit aggressively:
"Well, now. What does that mean? Does that mean that I cannot bring
Ernst over to your house any more?" And she said: "Don't you be
silly. You know that Ernst is welcome. Anytime."
Here's what she wrote to me last week to wish me a Happy New Year:
"Dearest Friend:
Please take care of yourself. I really worry about you. You always have to be the pioneer, first on the dangerous frontier. Just take it easy; I want to meet with you in the New Millennium."
I can imagine why.
Here's to you, dearest Gretchen, on this last day of 1996! You are not part
of us and our struggle, but in your own indomitable way, you are one of
life's troopers!
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell; you see, I have friends in both places."
(Mark Twain)