Whispers in the Wind
by Bartholomew Lamb
It was pitch dark and uncomfortable under the Grull Skat, a maple tree that remembered Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. Whispers and chuckles of hushed voices merged in the autumn swirl with the rustle of Grull Skat’s leaves that prematurely turned red, orange, and yellow, if not in surprise, then in shame. The silent dwellers of the entire mountain of the Evangelical Cemetery, from the street at its foot to its top, scratching the sky, lay now unearthed and dumped in the chaotic heap under Grull Skat’s canopy.
“You are sitting on my femur,” complained an irritated voice.
“I am not sitting on anything. Where is my wedding band? They stole my wedding band. My entire finger is gone!” an outraged voice chimed in.
“You finger? Ha! What’s a finger?! Your precious little finger is nothing when compared with my head. Where is my head?! Does anyone have two heads?” asked a thundering voice.
“I have three heads but no shoulders,” someone whispered in panic.
“Entschuldigung, meine Damen und Herren!” A commanding voice rose above the noise of chatters. “Entschuldigung! This is Hans Obershnittzel, der Kommandeur of the Fifth Pilot Division of Oesterplatte speaking. Like all of us here, I, too, am lost in this assault on our eternal peace. I am outraged! I am embittered. Our tombs have been desecrated and plundered. Not only are my bones, my family’s bones, my Iron Cross, and my family’s black-marble altar gone, but my family history has been erased forever.”
“Who is this guy?” asked a hushed woman’s voice from the bottom of the pile.
“Were you born yesterday? It’s Captain Hans Obershnittzel. His airplane went down in 1916 over Shizenhollen on the Western Front. The Obershnittzel family plot was the second to the left in the main alley, just when you passed the main gate,” explained another woman’s voice.
“Ah, so! Now I remember it,” said the first woman’s voice. “It had a full-size airplane sitting on a black marble slab. And the tombstone was huge, like an altar, with many sculptures of Italian angels with trumpets, like in the Saint Mary Cathedral in Main Plaza. I used to sit on the bench there, under the chestnut tree to contemplate in my dark hours when I was alive in flesh and blood. You could see from there the Gulf of Gdansk waters glitter in the rising sun. I’m feeling nostalgic now… All is gone now but the chestnuts and maples.”
“We live in memories. Once memories of us are gone, we perish in stardust forever. I feel fear,” shyly interjected a sad voice coming from the other side of Grull Skat.
Hans Obershnittzel’s voice rippled down the slopes of the old Evangelical Cemetery to carry its message across the street of chestnut trees in the valley, then up again, to the old Jewish Cemetery and its neighbor, the new Catholic Cemetery on the sister mountain. His powerful voice reverberated in thunder above the city, which lay unaware under the blanket of sleep:
“Fellow citizens! History has been murdered! It lies slaughtered in our crushed monuments; in our broken portraits; in erased inscriptions. Our graves are empty. Our bones are scattered in this dump stake to be burnt at sunrise.”—A few poignant sobs emerged from the pile.—“But fear not! This is not our last battle! Our ancestors built this city for us, just as we have built it for our children. Our spirits will continue to live on long after the memories of us fade. Follow me! Let’s step down from this mountain together! Let’s breathe our spirits into the pulse of the town of Sopot, our city!”
A squall came down from the mountain in answer to Captain Obershnittzel’s call. The wind of many thousands of spirits ruffled the chestnut trees at its foot in farewell on its way to the city. Heavens shed a rain of sentimental tears.
A hundred years had passed since then, and Grull Skat continued to tell stories about those who had left that night. And chestnut trees keep repeating them today as though the stories had indeed happened.
BIO: Bartholomew Lamb is the pen name of a Polish-American/Canadian mathematician and emerging writer who lives in Texas.