The Garden

The roses have returned. Pink and white, they sway gently when the breeze picks up. Perfectly still when it stops, as if bowing to the sun. As if breathing in the life they have been given. Oblivious to what lies beneath their tangled roots.

Marta kneels beneath the old arbour with the secateurs her mother once used for trimming the lavender. She clips away at the errant leaves. Her fingers brushing the petals with focused care. Across the horizon the Alps are soft and solemn. Unswerving in their gaze. The grass is too green, she thinks sometimes. Too green and too much for the barrenness of the past. The silence is more fitting for the iron fence and the barbed wires that skirt in amongst the tree line. Rusted now but the symbol still holds. She focuses on the task. Not ready for more than the beauty of the flowers.

Memory infiltrates when it can and she remembers, without quite meaning to, how Sepp used to press rose petals between pages of the Lutherbibel. “They’re holier than the book,” he had scoffed as he slammed it shut. He was laughing, always laughing, even when he wasn’t supposed to. Her mother scolded him for it. As much as she could. A slight uptick of her lips gave her amusement away. But she had tried. Magdalena had liked the scent that lingered between the pages for weeks. "Better than the smell of dust and moths,” they had laughed, cross-legged on the floor. She wonders how many petals were crushed after he left. Or how many bibles survived at all. Snip. Snip. Snip. She focuses on the task at hand.

There had been no funeral. They had never really spoken of it. They weren’t that kind of family. The kind that lingers around the dinner table talking into the moon long after the chicken has been devoured. When they were young their nanny Em had made sure they were safely in bed before their father returned. Their mother out at some benefit or other.

One day Sepp was there. The next he was not. That was all.

Magdalena had asked once where he had gone. Em said that Sepp had brought a shame, that only the Lord could understand. She hadn’t known what that meant at the time. Only that her brother’s name was not to be spoken out loud, not even in prayer. Especially not in prayer. Em left that year to be with a family with younger kids and better pay. Somewhere in Vienna she said. No idea where. The address is somewhere -scrawled hurriedly on the back of an old Christmas card. She didn’t remember where it went.

Not long after it came in black and white. A telegram. His name. Then DECEASED in all caps like it was his birth name. Like it belonged to him. Deceased.

Her father had taken his coffee to the study and closed the door. He never spoke after that. Her mother had scrubbed the kitchen tiles until her knuckles split but Magdalena knew the blistering sobs stifled by the sound of running water all too well.

The breeze lifts again. Stronger this time. It rustles the petals into a wave lapping against the air bringing with it the smell of ash and iron. She closes her eyes and waits for it to pass. When she opens them again, the roses have stilled. A sparrow trips across the grass. She places the secateurs on the stone bench where they had sat as children chattering excitedly about strawberry picking and the day at the brook. She wipes her palms on her apron. Her knees crack as she rises. The northern path is still there, just beyond the trellis. The latch is stiff with rust, but not locked. Nothing is locked anymore. There is no need.

The ornate iron gate creaks as it swings open. The path is narrower than she remembers. More alive. Decorated with ivy and forget-me-nots. The purple is stark like silent stars on a bleak night. She walks purposefully. Memory driving her forward like wind. The earth is damp beneath her feet. As a child, she had been here many times before but now it feels like a trespass. The birds do not scatter when she passes. Some stop to look at the human phenomenon. Most continue scavenging for worms. A squirrel pauses half way up an elm. Its black nose sniffing the unfamiliar for a moment before scrambling upwards towards its home.

She does not know why she came. But her feet know. And her hands know. And somewhere buried deep down her heart knows too. The name she goes by now was her grandmother’s. Marta had seemed easier somehow. Cleaner. Quieter. Untethered. Safer perhaps. There will be no marker, no stone, no name. She knows that. Just the old wire fence and the clearing beyond. And the barracks and the chimneys and silence that stifles grief into submission. She hesitates. She should turn back. But she does not.

She steps closer to the fence. There is nothing here of him. Even the sound of his laughter is no longer carried on the breeze. The metal fencing wraps around the building like chains. She tries not to think of it. His final days.

From the pocket of her apron, she pulls out the petal. Soft, pink, already fading. Kneeling she lays it carefully at the base of a post that holds the wire. It does not mark a grave. It cannot. She thinks of him then. Hand touching the hand of Serj.

Turning, she looks towards the rusted gate. Dachau. She vomits into the ground and watches it sink slowly into the earth.

"Pfiat di, Bruada. Du bist ganga für den, denst liabt host. I werd di ned vagessn. I werd mi allweil an di erinnern."*

It will never be enough. But she returns to the only place she knows as home. Between the petals and the alps and the bones that were never given their own name.

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*“Goodbye brother. You died for who you loved. I will not forget it. I will remember” (Translated by ChatGpt)