I. Death from Powerlessness
Guido Raschke 1914 - 1925
A gravestone made of sandstone overgrown with green lichen is striking, even though it has lain in complete oblivion for decades. On the worn and plowed slab by rain, sun, and frost, loom the remains of Gothic letters carved into the rock with a sharp stone chisel. Next to them, as if new, completely undamaged by time, a black-and-white photograph of an eleven-year-old boy, affixed behind a glass cover, remains. When his mother commissioned it from a photographer in the Market Square, the photographer told his son, "You'll have a souvenir for life."
He lived with his mother in a corner tenement house on the Market Square in Goldap. Like most others, it wasn't completely destroyed by the Russians during the 1914 assault on the city. Since his father's death in the Battle of Tannenberg, he had been raised solely by his mother. He had no memory of his father. He knew his face only from a wedding portrait and a yellowing photograph in a Prussian army uniform. That was all that remained of Lieutenant Raschke. Everything, for he didn't even have a grave of his own. He left the world only two photographs of himself and his son.
The boy was born before the war. He managed to come into the world a few days before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Then his father was taken to the front, and his mother baptized him in the Protestant church after his grandfather, Guido.
He didn't remember the moment when Hannelore learned of her death. Perhaps it passed unnoticed. In his life, only she was present: a strong, decisive, and ruthless woman. He always feared her and obeyed her. He remained under her powerful influence, trying not to get in her way, not to oppose her, not to ask for much; he felt a respect close to complete subordination.
He didn't know people. He didn't interact with them directly, always through his mother. Clinging to her hand, he strolled the streets, entered shops, went to church every Sunday, and then, when the weather was nice, on trips to Piękna Góra. He saw people through the prism of his mother's judgments. She spoke with them, argued with them, and laughed with them. He always remained silent. Because even when they asked him questions, she forestalled him, not waiting for a thought to form in her little head, ready to be translated into words.
She spoiled him, but not in the way he wanted. He felt her coldness and indifference when she hugged him. And she never let him cry. "You're a man! You mustn't shed a single tear in your life!" she said. Whenever he burst into tears, she beat him until he stopped whimpering, exhausted. She bought him many things, but she made the choices before he expressed his true desires. She played with him, but only occasionally, and didn't allow him to mingle with his peers. "They might be a bad influence on you, my son," she would cut the conversation short when he saw other children playing together. And when school age arrived, she hired a home governess just so she wouldn't have to send her son to school. Her generous military pension from her heroic husband allowed her to afford such an expense.
Her mother stayed home all the time. She did nothing and rarely left him. Sometimes she embroidered doilies, which she later sold to friends. She embroidered them with thick thread, colorful flowers, feathery leaves, birds and butterflies, small country houses, and holy figures. She didn't clean, wash, or cook—old Gertrude did that for her. She didn't read books or newspapers, didn't visit—no one did that for her. In winter, she spent most of her time sitting in an armchair by the warm fireplace, gazing thoughtlessly into the flickering flames from morning till night. Sometimes she remembered her husband, briefly and fleetingly. He appeared in her conscience like a spark that had fallen from the hearth, and then, like her, burned out irrevocably in her thoughts. In summer, she spent most of her time at the window, propped up on a blue satin pillow, cooling herself with a scarf. She gazed at the Market Square, the church, and the rows of tenement houses, at the people below her, the sky above, and God knows what else. And only yawning interrupted her gazing. She enjoyed her idleness. She felt best in this state.
Only a whim compelled her to do something from time to time. Once, she wanted to bake a blueberry pie, but it didn't work out. The pigeons in the market square ate the sore spot. Another time, she took up knitting a sweater. It was supposed to be a birthday present for her son. But after a dozen or so minutes, the nine rows of stitches strung on metal rods found their final home at the bottom of the wardrobe. Moths had devoured the intricate construction and the skein of yarn wound around a cardboard rectangle. It was all she could manage.
"How boring anything can be!" she always sighed after such attempts, concluding, "You can die of boredom when you're knitting."
She often took Guido and they went for walks together to the park or to the market for fresh fruit and vegetables. She always pulled him by the hand when he didn't want to go. She didn't let him sulk or grimace. Sometimes he'd get a good thrashing on the butt. She felt good about it, but the boy suffered more and more. His life increasingly resembled a monotonous series of the same, routine days, boring and hopeless. Apparently, he hadn't inherited this from his mother.
Sometimes, when his mother had dozed off in the rocking chair, exhausted by her inactivity, he'd sneak up to the window with a small stool. Quietly and carefully, so as not to wake her. He'd stand on a stool, wrapped in a white curtain, and, leaning his elbows on the wooden window sill, he'd survey the scene with a curious gaze, trying to grasp the entirety of the events unfolding in the Market Square.
He saw children playing tag or hopscotch on a board drawn on a hard surface with a piece of broken plaster figurine. He saw unruly boys his own age pulling on their friends' pigtails tied with red ribbons, or slightly older ones who, for fun, stole apples from an old Jewish woman's wicker basket in front of a stall next to a butcher and fish shop, or others who tied an inflatable pig's bladder with a small pea to the tail of a stray cat and then spurred the terrified animal back and forth. He wished he could do the same. He wished he could be a part of it, not just a silent witness hidden behind the glass. Then he would look back at his mother, hoping she would say, "Yes, go, son, I give you permission. Go and play with the other children. Nothing can happen to you, after all." But as soon as his gaze settled on her sleeping face, the spell vanished, leaving him a feeble, bygone illusion. In its place came the fear of her waking up, of her screaming, of why she was standing on the stool in the window, of her danger, of her potential harm. This had happened more than once. More than once, he'd been given a good thrashing for it.
But after making sure his mother was still asleep, he returned to the Market Square, to remain a passive participant in all the events unfolding outside the window. There was always a lot going on in the Market Square. There were children, just like him, whom he missed. He felt a strange closeness to them, even though he didn't know them at all, and they likely had no idea he existed. So he gave people his own invented names. Over time, he began to recognize them, spotting new, unfamiliar faces, which he immediately named, baptized with the names of his toys, surnames from stories he'd heard told in the kitchen by old Gertrude, names of characters from books his governess read to him. In this way, he created a world for himself, the characters in it, and assessed their traits based on his own observations. The Jewish woman with the basket of apples was evil and wicked because she was old, ugly, and dressed in black. Moreover, she had once beaten a toddler with a stick who had clumsily tried to steal fruit from her stall. Mrs. Rogge was kind, because she was always smiling as she strolled across the Market Square with her white poodle on a leash.
Besides that, many other things were happening, different every day, different every day. Cars drove by. Sometimes one would pull up at the gas station to fill up the tank. Horse-drawn carts drove by, empty or loaded with various items. Sometimes planks, sometimes red bricks, sometimes green cabbage heads. The postman rode by on his bicycle, which my mother absolutely hated. And somewhere higher up, above the level of the Market Square, in the row of tenement houses on the perpendicular frontage, someone would occasionally wash windows or water the petunias exposed to the outer surface of the windowsill. Neighbors would often gossip for hours, propped up on soft cushions. Often, from behind a half-open window, the sound of a gramophone or a radio drifted by. Here, too, on this level of space, butterflies flew, white butterflies, lemon flies, flies, bees, and wasps, which occasionally perched on the outside of the glass, as if, pausing briefly in their flight, they wanted to invite the boy out, to savor the freedom that was theirs. And before evening, the church bell summoned the faithful to the last service.
Even higher up were the roofs, cats, and pigeons perched on the roof tiles. Occasionally, chimney sweeps swept the chimneys. Above them, there was only sky, swift swallows, the blinding sun, and the vastness of Divine Nature.
He never got to see everything. Usually, his mother would take him off the stool. She would be angry then, very angry. Most often, she would scream, shriek so piercingly and so loudly that his fear of her grew with every shouted word, engulfing him in its immensity. Sometimes to the point that he would start crying. And his mother couldn't stand it. It would end with a good beating. And always, when he lay curled up on his bed, exhausted by crying and the physical pain, he would be overcome by such utter helplessness that he would do anything to end her presence, to free himself from her. Maybe if he were older, he would dare, he thought. Maybe if he had a father, he would find support in him. Maybe if he died, he would come to him...
"I'm bored, Mutti!" Sometimes, when he couldn't bear it any longer, he would interrupt his mother's mindless staring.
"Then go play with your toys. You have so many of them." "She'd reply, not looking in his direction.
"I've already played with them. I'm bored," he'd retort.
"So lie down and rest! I'm tired and I have a headache," she'd cut the conversation short.
He'd walk away with his head down, return to his room, and continue to toil with his teddy bears, wooden blocks, and tin soldiers. Most often, he played prison. He was the stern commandant, the toys the humble and mistreated prisoners. He always tried to take out all his helpless anger on them. The teddy bears weren't allowed to play with the tin soldiers, because they could have a detrimental effect on their plush, soft goodness. The wooden blocks were shot down with a metal ball, imitating an artillery shot. Their army was utterly destroyed, without any survivors, powerless and helpless against the little boy's ferocity of the attack.
That day, he truly felt that he had had enough. He didn't bother with his toys. He lay down. And fell asleep. In his dream, he flew, soaring higher and higher toward the great blue window, beyond which everything was permitted and everything could be had.
In the morning, old Gertrude found him. He was cold. His mother didn't particularly take her son's death. It passed unnoticed. On a whim, she buried him in the cemetery above Przerosla, so that he could occasionally gaze upon his reflection in the lake's tears. "It's so wonderful here that my little angel will never tire of this beauty," she explained to people. Hearts of stone never change.
A year later, when she married a capital businessman she'd met by chance in Goldap, before leaving for Berlin, she erected a monument to Guidon as a farewell. It was as if she had presumed he would never return.
In the eleventh row on the main avenue stands the tombstone of little Guido Raschke, overgrown with green lichen, who died of helplessness.
Dying of helplessness is in itself a difficult death. For the dying person, this death is seemingly imperceptible, because it does not come suddenly, but rather, with each passing day, takes life away, bite by bite. It is monotonous, as monotonous was the life that preceded it. Its tragedy lies in its limited awareness. Death of helplessness is a response to the dying of the awareness of one's own existence
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