Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

the watch well. It used to have a small key, and once in a while father would let me wind it.The lady explained that the key no longer existed.I bought the watch and locked myself into my shabby room at the "Hotel of the Academics" with my precious treasure.The lady at the shop had polished the slightly tarnished silver casing. The few minor dents in the lid only enhanced itsfaded elegance. Its Roman numerals gave it a most distinguished look, and a small, separate dial in gold and blueshowed the phases of the moon—Alexandra’s time.I took the watch to a watchmaker in a bleak apartment block in the old part of the city. The old Jew whom I found in theoverstuffed cubicle carefully examined Konrad’s watch through his eyepiece. He offered to buy it. What would I do withsuch an antiquated timepiece in the age of digital watches? He shrugged resignedly when I told him that the watch wasnot for sale.As he opened the lid the crazy idea struck me to invert its mechanism, so it would run backwards.The graying watchmaker shot me a puzzled glance. Was I serious? What for would I want a watch that ran backwards?"Oh," I told him, "it will count the hours you and I have lost during the last hundred years, and maybe it will tell me whythere was so much suffering in this century.""Are you one of us?" asked the watchmaker examining me with his sad, inquisitive eyes. I said no, I was not Jewish, Icarried an American passport but had grown up in Germany.He nodded, spread his hands acknowledging the inevitable and resorted to a mixture of Yiddish, Russian, and German.He explained that he could make the hands of the watch run backwards by an exchange of two tiny wheels, but thephases of the moon he could not reverse.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 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, "Yousuffered as much as we did. The world is a cruel place. Who will tell the story of the people who suffered through thisterrible 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 mybedside table and as its silvery bell counted the hours of the night, its hands slowly recalled my grandparents’ lives.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 theoffer of a good position at the Caucasian Department of the Imperial Botanical Gardens in St. Petersburg. It came withRussian 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 estates inWestern Georgia. They got married in 1899. My father Otto was born in 1900.In 1918, when the Soviet terror threatened to overwhelm Georgia, my grandparents sent Otto to Germany. Theyremained in Tbilisi. My father never saw his parents again. The outbreak of World War II put an end to a sporadicexchange of letters. A postcard mailed in 1943 through the Red Cross in Geneva signed "In Liebe Konrad undAlexandra," no date, no address, was the last message that reached us. The only tangible remains of his parents wereKonrad’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, herdeep-blue eyes fixed the viewer with an inquisitive, taunting look, which together with an ironic smile around hergenerous mouth, gave the impression of a sharp, possibly dangerous intelligence. She had an elongated face, withstrongly-modeled cheekbones, finely delineated eyebrows, a prominent, aristocratic nose and dark hair: A formidablewoman.Her décolleté exposed her long, elegant neck, a charming clavicle depression, and an unusual necklace of omegashapedgold links.The painting cast a magical spell on my childhood. I imagined that her eyes followed me, and in unobserved momentsshe would talk to me.I never met my grandmother.Yet, before any other woman I fell in love with Alexandra.I sank into restless sleep on that night in Moscow and the ticking of the old watch spun me into a sequence of hopelessmuddle 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 onepersonal souvenir. Father had removed Alexandra’s portrait from its frame and packed it in the suitcase now lying in the6