Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

I sank into a restless sleep and the ticking of the old watch spun me into a sequence of
hopeless muddle dreams, mixing Alexandra’s picture, our flight from the Russians, and my
father’s life.
I was back in the hot days of May 1945 fleeing from the Soviet armies. Mother had
allowed each of us to take along one personal souvenir. Father had removed Alexandra’s
portrait from its frame and packed it in the suitcase now lying in the ditch beside the road.
Mother was trying to flag a ride on a German military convoy. In that unobserved
moment I dashed back, opened Father’s suitcase, dumped its contents, and rescued
Alexandra’s painting. I hid the canvas under my clothes and told nobody of the painting I wore.
The dream changed to the summer of 1945.
I was sitting at my father’s hospital bed chasing the flies from his face. Father drifted in
and out of awareness. He had contracted typhoid in the Russian POW camp. In a panic the
Russians had sent him to this German hospital. It was very hot and the windows were open.
The country was covered by a thick, brown smog reeking of burnt corpses. He was very ill but
immensely lucky.
My dream shifted again. In August father came home from the hospital. Mother and I
were suppporting him from both sides, half-carrying the emaciated, hairless man into our
house in H—. He saw Alexandra’s portrait in the old frame hanging on the wall. I told him how I
had saved it. Father smiled wanly. This smile on his gaunt face will forever remain
superimposed on Alexandra’s haunting portrait.
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