Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

I was content to leave Alexandra’s time untouched.
"Do you understand my German?" asked the old man.
He lamented his relatives lost in the German holocaust and Stalin’s terror. He had lived
through the horrors of the war, "which they call the ‘Great Patriotic War’ in this country." He let
his gray head hang.
Yes, I understood him. I let him finish and then told him of the life of Konrad and
Alexandra, my grandparents, the watch, and Father’s fate.
He peered over his glasses and smiled.
"Now I see why you didn’t want to sell me this watch," and tilting his head,
commiseration in his eyes he continued, "You suffered as much as we did. The world is a cruel
place. Who will tell the story of the people who suffered through this terrible century?"
When I left he hugged and kissed me, Russian style.
"I wish you mazeltov, a long life, and glick in finding your lost people."
A week later I picked up the watch. The watchmaker gave me a small key. As I wound
the watch it chimed! I put it on my bedside table and as its silvery bell counted the hours of the
night, its hands slowly recalled my grandparents’ lives.
My great-grandfather Gymnasial Professor Julius Rost had died prematurely in 1890,
leaving his wife and two sons behind. Money was short and as soon as his son Konrad had
finished his degree in botany in 1895, he decided to accept the offer of a good position at the
Caucasian Department of the Imperial Botanical Gardens in St. Petersburg. It came with
Russian citizenship and a contract allowing him to spend a sabbatical leave every few years to
teach in Tiflis, Georgia.
There Konrad had met Alexandra Dadiani. She came from an aristocratic Georgian
family who owned large tracts of land in Western Georgia. They got married in 1899. My father
Otto was born in 1900.
In 1918, when the Soviet terror threatened to flood Georgia, my grandparents sent Otto
to Germany. They remained in Tbilisi. My father never saw his parents again. The outbreak of
World War II put an end to a sporadic exchange of letters. A postcard mailed in 1943 through
the Red Cross in Geneva signed "In Liebe Konrad und Alexandra," no date, no address, was
the last message that reached us. The only tangible remains of his parents were Konrad’s
watch, a bundle of letters, and a portrait of Alexandra.
The portrait hung in Father’s study in H—. It showed Alexandra at the height of her life.
The head slightly turned, her deep-blue eyes fixed the viewer with an inquisitive, taunting look,
which together with an ironic smile around her generous mouth, gave the impression of a
sharp, possibly dangerous intelligence. She had an elongated face, with strongly-modeled
cheekbones, finely delineated eyebrows, a prominent, aristocratic nose and dark hair: A
formidable woman.
Her décolleté exposed her long, elegant neck, a charming clavicle depression, and an
unusual necklace of omega-shaped gold links.
The painting cast a magical spell on my childhood. I imagined that her eyes followed
me, and in unobserved moments she would talk to me.
I never met my grandmother.
Yet, before any other woman I fell in love with Alexandra.
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