My Grandmother's Braid Read online

  ALSO BY

  ALINA BRONSKY

  Broken Glass Park

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  Baba Dunja’s Last Love

  Europa Editions

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  New York, N.Y. 10019

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  www.europaeditions.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2019 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln.

  First publication 2021 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Tim Mohr

  Original Title: Der Zopf meiner Grossmutter

  Translation copyright © 2021 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Cover illustration © Ginevra Rapisardi

  ISBN 9781609456467

  Alina Bronsky

  MY

  GRANDMOTHER’S

  BRAID

  Translated from the German

  by Tim Mohr

  MY

  GRANDMOTHER’S

  BRAID

  SUNSHINE INN

  I can remember the exact moment Grandfather fell in love. In my eyes, he was ancient—already over fifty—and his new, delicate secret hit me with a wave of admiration tempered by schadenfreude. Up to then I’d always thought that I was my grandparents’ only problem.

  I sensed that Grandmother wasn’t supposed to know about it. She’d already threatened to kill him for far lesser offenses, like when he crumbled bread during dinner.

  I was nearly six and knew a thing or two about love. While in preschool in Russia I’d fallen in love with three caretakers in a row, sometimes the affairs even overlapped. In the nine-story apartment block where we’d lived before we emigrated, there wasn’t a girl under eighteen that I hadn’t at least had a brief crush on. When my grandmother noticed my gaze lingering on bouncy skirts or ponytails on the street she held her hands in front of my eyes. “Careful your eyeballs don’t pop out of your head. You’ll never get a girl anyway.”

  In silent protest against this prophecy, I subsequently fell in love with a woman I’d never seen. I saw her name on a poster and just liked the look of it: Rosa Silberstein. At home I hummed the five syllables of her name to myself over and over again until my grandmother listened more closely and ordered me to cut out the nonsense, things were grim enough as they were.

  Not long afterwards we arrived in Germany as quota refugees and Grandfather met his love.

  At the refugee home, we were, as Grandmother noted unhappily, surrounded by Jews. She’d never made a secret of her antisemitism: “Not because of Jesus or anything. I have genuine, personal reasons.” She’d nearly burst whenever she had to keep herself from using certain curses during toasts with the neighbors. Then she’d revel in the fact that she’d managed to gain access for us to the privileges of the golden West under false pretenses. “Just so you don’t think we’re really Jews,” she hammered home to me while feeling my forehead for a fever, “Opa had an uncle who had a brother-in-law. He had a Jewish wife. That’s why we’re here. That’s how it works. Don’t ask.”

  I nodded eagerly, as if I’d been convinced of something as a result, or at least understood. I’d never seen an uncle of my grandfather, not to mention the wife of his brother-in-law. Generally I tried to avoid talking to Grandmother unnecessarily, first and foremost because I never knew what sore spots my questions might expose. I barely remembered crossing the border, except for the fact that Grandmother immediately seemed disappointed.

  The home was a former hotel with a cracking plaster façade and a sign still adorning the entrance that said “Sunshine Inn.” Most of the residents walked to synagogue on Friday evenings, where, after services, there was a buffet that was both lavish and free of charge. Grandmother ironed my blue pants every Friday and cut my fingernails so she didn’t have to be ashamed of me. She was intimidated by the real Jewish children.

  Despite her distaste, she would never consider skipping Shabbat. She grudgingly honored it by dressing up: she coiled her dyed red braid atop her head like a snake, and made her polka-dotted dress festive with the addition of a silk flower at the neck. Behind her show of confidence I sensed her deep fear of being exposed as an imposter and being sent back to the collapsing Soviet Union.

  While the shabbiness of the refugee home disappointed Grandmother, the shiny, new synagogue elicited a respectful word or two. She wholeheartedly welcomed the fact that women sat separately from men during services: “I’m happy not to have to see their grouchy mugs for a while.” She sought out the neighbors she knew from the refugee home and ensnared them in long conversations at the cold buffet before she inconspicuously—she thought—swiped this or that food item.

  The next morning she’d unwrap the rolled pancake or savory pastry from the napkin and dish it up for Grandfather. I was permitted only to watch: the food had been touched by strangers’ paws and was therefore not fit for me to eat. As she was serving breakfast, she went over all the previous day’s conversations. Grandmother looked unfavorably on most of the new acquaintances: she was suspicious of people who left their homelands, except when it came to us.

  “Of course, there are also some decent people,” she said on one single occasion, and Grandfather and I listened closely. “I met a delightful woman. Her name is Nina and she teaches piano. Lives here with her daughter. The girl’s Maxi’s age, but normal. No husband, lucky her, bringing up her illegitimate daughter all alone. You know her, Tschingis, you carried a sack of potatoes upstairs for her once. Why would she need so many potatoes when it’s just the two of them? You’d let me break my back but you’ll play the gentleman for others.”

  My grandfather’s hand twitched for a second, and the filling of ground meat and leeks burst out of the pastry he was eating.

  QUACK

  In Germany, Grandmother took me to the pediatrician. Actually, she explained to me on the way, this was the real reason for our emigration: to finally be able to take me to an upstanding doctor for treatment, one who could give hope to me—and more importantly, to her—that I might survive into adulthood, even if it meant Grandmother would have a millstone around her neck for decades.

  She had my medical files with her, they were bound in leather and looked like the rediscovered handwritten manuscript of a lost classic. The files were filled with diagnoses, glued-in blood and urine analyses, and unreadable notes from various specialists Grandmother had consulted and who had regaled her with conflicting opinions. Slips of paper or prescriptions sometimes slipped out of the files, and Grandmother quickly gathered them up and stuffed them back inside.

  The German doctor’s office was colorful and bright, and the memory of the Soviet polyclinic, with its painted-over windows and hygiene warnings full of threats and commands, seemed like a fever dream. A mountain of toys rose on the worn carpet. I knew that I wasn’t allowed to touch any of them. Anything that Grandmother hadn’t personally disinfected was contaminated with germs. Still, I enjoyed just looking at them. The nurse weighed and measured me and gave me a smile that made the back of my neck warm.

  To Grandmother’s indignation, we had to go back to the waiting room after that. It was full of children of different ages, all of whom were spreading diseases. One coughed, others sneezed, and Grandmother suspected the ones without obvious illnesses were hiding contagious rashes beneath their clothes. She pulled me frantically onto her lap, and I wa
s definitely too old for that. Though she had publicly humiliated me so often that I felt immune to nearly any embarrassment.

  “If I’d known about this chaotic situation, I’d have brought facemasks,” Grandmother said, trying to wrap her scarf around my mouth and nose, which suffocated me and itched horribly. “Now sit still, Grandma’s not a trampoline.”

  “I’m suffocating,” I rasped.

  “Asthma?!” She rummaged through her bag for the spray—she’d brought a large number of them across the border with us out of precaution—without bothering to free me from the stranglehold of the scarf.

  Luckily we were called into the examination room at that moment. The doctor was a man, which my grandmother approved of enthusiastically, since she trusted men more, at least when it came to medical questions. She smacked my medical files down on the table. “Chronic bronchitis, chronic sinusitis, chronic gastritis, moderate myopia, vegetative-vascular dystonia, allergies, diminished growth, mumbles, decelerated reflexes, decelerated cognitive development, early childhood trauma. But you can see for yourself.” She spoke only Russian.

  The doctor bent forward with a furrowed brow. With one hand he shielded himself from my grandmother’s stream of words while he stretched the other out to me. After a moment’s thought I took his hand. From the German words directed at me I was able to filter out some I knew, laid myself down on the examination table, and pulled off my T-shirt.

  The doctor sat down next to me and listened to me with the stethoscope, holding up his hand every time Grandmother opened her mouth. He shined a light in my ears, pressed around on my throat, and knocked on my back. This last thing I took as an encouraging sign.

  “What?” said my grandmother when he made a waving gesture in our direction. “What does that mean—Tschüß? What does gesund mean?”

  I explained it to her when we were out on the street and she had stuffed the medical files back in her bag.

  “How do you know that?” she asked. “Who taught you? We only just arrived, and you’re an idiot.”

  I shrugged. In my fist I held the gummi bear I was allowed to take from the jar as we left.

  “What a quack,” said my grandmother. “He didn’t take any X-rays. Even our drunken hags are preferable to that. What do you have in your hand? Can’t you see the bacteria stuck to that thing? Do you want to get sick? Give it to me.”

  I handed her the gummi bear and Grandmother popped it into her mouth.

  BIRTHDAY

  The nurse’s smile had made me remember why life is beautiful despite it all: there are women everywhere. The first weeks in Germany had gone by in a fog, and now I felt as if I was waking up again.

  I’d always thought of women whenever I felt a cold claw gripping my heart. Grandmother had started to prepare me for my demise very early. The notion that time was trickling away gave me a sensation like goose bumps, and I wanted to soak up as much beauty as possible. I loved everything about women. The thin ones were lithe and fragile like daddy longlegs. The sturdier ones radiated warmth and plushness. If women were big I admired their strength, and if they were small I regretted the fact that I couldn’t protect them. That my grandmother was also a woman never crossed my mind.

  On every birthday Grandmother greeted me with the words, “Oh miracle, thanks be to heaven and myself, he pulled it off again.” She gave me socks and mittens she’d knitted herself, and later presented me with a giant cake, the sight of which always plunged me into despair. I knew how it would end even before Grandmother announced: “Look, once again Grandma spared no cost or effort and hunched over my work all night. Chocolate cream, three layers. The freshest eggs available here. Take a good look at it, from every angle. What do you think? It tastes divine, you must believe me.”

  I believed her immediately without even asking whether I could try a slice. I knew the answer so well that I could recite it to myself: “Do you no longer need your pancreas? This kind of food is for normal people. You can eat it with your eyes, which is healthier anyway. You may also smell it.” She dragged her finger along the cake plate and held a creamy dollop up to my nose.

  I’d never had any friends, which I thought was normal, because my grandparents didn’t have any, either. In Russia, Grandmother had usually invited one or two random neighbors for my birthday, but they never came back again. My seventh birthday came around during the first months in the refugee home. I wondered whom Grandmother would invite this time so as not to have to eat the cake alone with Grandfather.

  Grandmother found the Germans suspicious from the start, and besides, she didn’t know any—setting aside the unsatisfactory exchanges of words with the pediatrician or the refugee home’s maintenance man. “We have to stick to the Jews,” she concluded with resignation, inviting the delightful neighbor with whom she’d chatted about my streptococcus at the synagogue. “Nina’s her name. Can you remember that? N-I-N-A. Very polite, fine fingers, not surprising given her profession. Don’t scare her off, you philistine idiots.”

  It was my grandfather who opened the door for Nina and stepped silently to the side to let her into our little apartment, which consisted of two hotel rooms that had been combined since our little family represented a “married couple with male child.” For a brief second he flinched and it seemed as if he wanted to keep her from entering the barely existent foyer and his life. Then he took the crucial step to the side. She came in and grazed him with her shoulder as she went past.

  Nina looked as if she’d been drawn with a soft pencil. She had a pretty parcel with her, which Grandmother took from her and quickly stowed in one of the cabinets. A girl entered the room behind the visitor, and she looked like a little copy of her mother.

  “Delightful girl,” said Grandmother before the guests even had a chance to say happy birthday to me. She poked me in the back so I’d make space. “Please sit right down! The tea will get cold. Tschingis!” She shoved my motionless grandfather to the side. “What are you standing around for, go get another chair. Nina’s daughter, you can sit here on the couch. Careful with the tea. Scalding is the worst kind of injury you can get. I only ever give my idiot the cup once it’s cooled.” She put a half-filled cup of tea on the windowsill for me.

  They were our first guests on German soil. Since the kitchen was too small, Grandmother had set the table in the larger of the two other rooms. The table was pushed next to the couch where she and I slept at night. “Now please sit down, dear Nina. Tschingis, aren’t you listening? You’re sitting here.”

  We sat around the table and Grandmother talked. When the conversation turned to me, which was often the case, I felt a look of concern from Nina and one of schadenfreude from her daughter.

  “I don’t know how I can send him to school, dear Nina. Here they want six-year-olds in the first grade, the cruel bastards. How can one possibly let a creature like this out of the house? That would be irresponsible of me. He can barely digest anything, and the other pupils will make mincemeat of him, don’t you think?”

  “I would hope not,” said Nina kindly. I didn’t dare look in Grandfather’s direction.

  “You’re a teacher, you must have experience with children who are mentally and physically disadvantaged.” Grandmother kept her focus on the visitor.

  “Unfortunately not,” said Nina. I felt a twinge: I would have liked it if she’d contradicted Grandmother, which some people actually dared to do when they first met our family, they expressed their astonishment at the assessment of my mental and physical condition. The bravest among them even suggested that there was nothing peculiar about me at all, which was brushed aside by Grandmother with an, “As if you know anything!”

  “What are you sitting around for, Tschingis? I baked, with my own hands. With the best ingredients. No garbage from a confectionary shop. I don’t want to poison anybody.”

  I followed with wistful glances as the big slices of cake were put on plates a
nd slowly disappeared. In front of me was placed a plate with a greenish mound on it that slowly turned brown. My tea was still cooling on the windowsill.

  “Pay no attention to him, dear Nina and Nina’s daughter. I grated an apple for the poor lump, unfortunately it’s all he can digest. My work never lets up.”

  Grandfather sat there silently. I wondered if it was the first time I’d ever seen him focus so intensively on someone, or if I just never noticed because Grandmother’s presence completely dominated my attention. Because it seemed indiscreet to continue to try to read Grandfather’s feelings, I turned my attention to the girl, who had a nice, round face but who started to kick me under the table.

  “You’re a happy woman, Nina, because you’re single and have a normal child. Just look how delightful she is. So quiet and polite,” said Grandmother while I tried to maneuver my shin out of kicking range.

  “Your son makes a nice impression, as well,” said Nina.

  “My son? You’re just flattering me. I don’t have a son, never had one. I’m an old woman long past menopause. This creature is my grandson. What all I’ve endured with him. Every year counts double for me.”

  Nina remained silent, shocked.

  “But that guy,” said Grandmother, gesturing toward Grandfather, “he still looks like a boy even as an old bag. It’s the Asian genes. They just don’t age. Their skin is much thicker than us whites’, understand? They just keel over at some stage. Heart. Tschingis, say something.”

  Grandfather sat upright. Grandmother’s stream of words just beaded on him and rolled off like a summer rain.

  “And how Jewish are you, Nina? A quarter? An eighth? You just look too delightful.”

  Nina took a sip of tea. Something in her face changed. I cringed because it looked at first as if she were about to break out in tears. She held her cup in front of her mouth for a long time, and I slowly realized she was trying to stifle a fit of laughter.