INTRODUCTION
Why Did I Call It a Delayed Life?
My life is not real life. It is something before the beginning of “real life,” a kind of preface to the narrative. It’s not yet what counts, merely a rehearsal. And someone is watching from behind, or perhaps from above, and passing judgment. There is a being that controls and judges my behavior. Perhaps it is not out there but inside me. Could it be my mother? Or my grandmother? Or something more internal … my id? I have no idea. But it is constantly present, holding an invisible mirror in front of me.
I can feel its approval or disapproval, the latter making me squirm inwardly, trying to suppress the nagging conscience or finding excuses for myself, although the negative feeling is extremely tenacious and cannot be shooed away. I make an effort to find reasons for having done or said what my controller finds unsatisfactory, but at the same time I know that I am only trying to justify my wrongdoing.
I don’t yet know how this connects to me perceiving my life as being delayed. For as long as I can remember, I have been more focused on tomorrow than aware about what I am experiencing at that particular moment. Even now, when I am at a concert, my thoughts are on the return journey and on tomorrow’s schedule and not on the music I came to listen to. When I eat, my mind is on washing the dishes, and when I lie down, I’m already planning what I must do when I get up. It’s never on the here and now, and I sense that I’m missing the enjoyment of the present. There is too much control: never letting go, never totally relaxing. There’s always the presence of the Watcher, forever passing judgment.
It must have been at a very early age that I began to delay my life. It was a way of indefinite postponement, a deferred satisfaction. How did I delay? I accepted the bitter fact that I would not get what I wanted, certainly not soon and probably never. I told myself I must wait patiently; perhaps fulfillment would come later. Or never. I thought that maybe if I put my hope on hold and didn’t think about it, one day it may turn out right.
In some deep place, I kept believing that the circle would come around and things would rearrange themselves in their proper sequence, that everything would resume its normal place. I just had to delay.
But in a strange way, these delayed passages—these empty spaces—have created gaps, so that the mosaic of my life has spots where the picture is left unfinished.
There are so many of these gaps. How shall I fill them? Time is running out; who knows how long I have left to live. Already I am the grandmother of four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Most of the people from my earlier years are no longer alive and cannot answer my questions. I shall try to gather the fragments and write them down; perhaps a blueprint will emerge that might fill the blank spaces on the mosaic.…
CHAPTER ONE
Childhood
My earliest recollections emerge from the empty nothingness, which precedes conscious memory. They resemble a picture flickering for an instant on the screen and disappearing again into darkness. Yet each of these fleeting pictures is suffused with emotion.
I have been placed on the baby scale on the table covered with a white oilcloth, in the doctor’s office. I am naked, and the metal is hard and cold on my back. I may be two or two and a half years old. Mother and the doctor in a white coat are standing over me. I am not frightened, because they smile.
Dr. Desensy-Bill was our pediatrician. I remember later visits, when she put her palm on my chest, tapped it with her middle finger, and then listened, pressing her ear to my skin. Her office was connected to the private quarters by a brown leather-padded door with brass buttons.
Sometimes Mother stayed to talk to the doctor and I was sent through the thick door—which, although heavy, moved easily and noiselessly—to play with her daughter Lucy. Lucy was about my age, but I didn’t take to her; she was boring.
Another memory. It is night and I am standing on my bed, crying and terrified. I must be still very small, as I am holding the cot’s protective-netting bar with both hands. Mother and Mitzi, our household help, are with me, trying to calm me. But I cannot be pacified, because just a moment ago, a hand came through the wall and wanted to grab me. Mother lifts me out of the cot and takes me to the other side of the wall, which is the bathroom, to show me there is no hole in the wall. Both she and Mitzi are telling me that no hand can reach through a solid wall. But they don’t know; they haven’t seen the hand. I have. When I stop crying, they put me back to bed, believing that I have been convinced. They cover me and turn off the light. Yet the terror remains, and for many weeks afterward, I can only fall asleep when the cot is pushed away from the wall.
From the darkness of unknowing, another scene emerges. It is most disturbing. I am in the bathtub, and Mother is sitting on the rim. Suddenly I see tears flowing silently from her eyes. Mother is weeping soundlessly. It frightens me, and I start crying, too. “What have I done?” I ask. “What have I done?” But she only shakes her head and doesn’t answer. I don’t know why Mother cried. Had someone hurt her? Was it my fault? Did I misbehave? I have no clue, no idea. Even now, as I recall the event, I feel sorrow, guilt, and pain.
My mother’s maiden name was Elisabeth “Liesl” Adler. She had a brother named Hugo, who was ten years older. Their mother died when Liesl was a baby, and her father, a judge, married again. Mother told me that her stepmother was fair and conscientious but lacked warmth and motherly love. I don’t remember Grandfather Adler; he died soon after I was born. Hugo also became a judge. He married but didn’t have children. I only saw him twice in my life.
Mother and I stopped over in Brno for two or three days on our way to a vacation in the Tatra Mountains when I was six or seven. I remember vividly two scenes from that visit. Mother broke into tears when we entered Uncle Hugo’s flat. It was the same flat where Mother had grown up; when she had married, Hugo had remained living there. The same furniture was still there, which brought back old memories.
Wilhelm Adler with his daughter, Elisabeth Adler-Polach
The other scene I remember was from court. Hugo, wearing the violet judge’s cape, presided over a trial while we sat at the back of the courtroom. When it was over, Mother commented that it was quiet and unexciting, and Hugo replied, “I don’t do divorces. That’s why my trials are boring.”
My parents moved from their native Brno to Prague soon after they married. They rented a little flat on the ground floor of a villa. There was a garden with a lawn, flower beds, and gooseberry bushes around the fence. I was allowed to pick the berries but didn’t like them because they were hairy and sour. Mr. Hackenberg, the owner, was a friend and party colleague of my grandfather Johann.
Copyright © 2020 by Dita Kraus.
