Robert Metry

A random array of fresh flowers near the entrance of the cemetery designates the new graves. Every time she comes here there are a few new graves, with no name. She’s always amazed by the length of time it takes to name a death. To register it, announce it, carve it in stone. The way the fact of the death hovers amongst the living until it [the name?] is put down. Mounds of earth, like new born babies, form still unformed. The freshness of it, the aliveness of the pink and peach gladiola, white lillies, a sunflower, asters, red, yellow and orange roses.

She walks past Martha Müller and her husband Paul. Martha died 27 years before her husband 51 years ago. He was presumably longer without her as [than] he was with her, or at least the same amount of time. She walks past a row of graves of men, all died in 2006/2007. Their graves are well kept, perhaps their wives attend to them. In between the branches of a group [weak word] of fir trees in the background she notices cave like spaces that look like mouths, opening and closing in the breeze. [I like the simile] She loves fir trees and cemeteries. She grew up in the Black Forest, surrounded by fir trees and visiting the family grave [site?] with her father each Christmas eve. Her father had made it seem as if visiting the cemetery were the only event in the year that counted. Maybe it had really felt like that for him. It burnt itself into a secret part of her like a flame struggling against wind or rain. When it goes out it’s rekindled again.

She sits down on a wooden bench in a spot where the sun partially touches her through the branches and leaves of two lime [linden?] trees. The crowns of the trees meet above the middle of the path and are shaped like the roof an arch. The bench she is sitting on stands obliquely opposite the grave of Anneliese Metzenthin, 1936 -1985. “Geliebt, beweint und unvergessen”. (Beloved, wept over and unforgotten). A rose is engraved over the name. Anneliese Metzenthin wasn’t much older when she died than she [the narrator?] is now.  She likes her name, lots of “I”s and “e”s, but that’s not it. The name somehow sounds kind. There’s a trimmed hedge around her grave with a few busy lizzies and other small red flowers. She thinks of her friend Cristina telling her that “cutting roses is an erotic act” -  “Collige, virgo, rosas” – Girls, enjoy your youth and beauty, cut the roses while they are in bloom before time will spoil them. [“gather ye roses while ye may…”]  [use of “her” and “she” confusing, whether narrator or subject]

The cemetery is called Waldfriedhof Pankow (woodland cemetery Pankow). It’s in the former East of Berlin where she now lives. Her mother’s family on both sides is from Lichtenberg, which is also part of the former East. Her grandmother had never shown her where she’d grown up, only the places where she’d lived after she was married and better off financially. Her mother can’t remember where her grandmother lived in Lichtenberg. She’d often asked her mother to go to Lichtenberg with her but she doesn’t want to go there. “I wouldn’t recognize anything”, she says. [confusing use of “her” and “she”] [there is a richer story here; I would love to hear it told with more passon/emotion]

A wedding photo exists of her great grandmother (on her mother’s side) Anna Blau and her husband. She’s upright. Slim. Even her gaze is upright. Not warm, not cold. Her wishes don’t betray her [she does not betray her desires?], she keeps them to herself.  Born and died in Lichtenberg, her husband swallowed up in the second world war. As the Russians were marching in he was at work, a stationmaster. He was still wearing his uniform. He was going to make it home in time. That seems to have been the event of his life.  A civil servant’s life in which you die because you forget to change. He didn’t seem to mind. “I don’t mind” his face is saying, because – it’s not my fault [his face in the wedding picture? It predates his death]. Like a child that one day doesn’t come home. He was never found. Anna married again and opened a pub with “uncle Willy”, as her mother called him.

She hears a plane pass overhead, its belly hidden by the trees. Pankow is in the air corridor to Tegel airport. All these people, known and unknown to her, passing through her mind with their one event [unclear] life and their name in stone. What will her event be? Has it happened yet?

The breeze gets stronger, so that it now lifts her scarf at the edges[1] . A woman in a cream and brown outfit further off to her left is attending to a grave, leaning forward, stepping back, rubbing her hands together, kneeling down to pull some weeds. [clear, concise, neat!] When did she get here? She walks towards her to pick up a watering can. Her footsteps on the gravel sound unfamiliar. Suddenly four women almost meet on a crossroad of paths, a couple of elderly women with small dogs, the woman attending to the grave and a woman dressed all in Jeans material [blue denim?] walking back the same way she [who?] had come earlier. They look like figures on a board game, mechanical, choreographed, as if adhering to a law of symmetry in accordance with the paths. The cemetery was in fact designed geometrically with lime tree avenues and double paths at the turn of the century. It runs along a road that used to be called Bahnhofstrasse (Station Road). During the cold war this was the wall strip running parallel to the S-Bahn station Wollankstrasse. Another 50 metres of the cemetery area was taken for an extension of the wall strip. For people trying to flee from the East to the West, the cemetery was a favourable [favored?] point of departure. A labyrinth of stone and tree, masking other vertical entities as long as they were sufficiently sharp and fast to conceal their mobility. She wonders if any one of these escapees is buried here and which ones got away.

She is not going to be buried here. She’s not going to be buried anywhere. She wants to be burnt and her ashes strewn into a lake. She often pictures it. A small lake surrounded by trees, a secret spot, which only few people find their way to. It’s very quiet. She keeps trying to find a lake like that, but like many others, she doesn’t succeed.  [vivid contrast between the earth of the woodland cemetery and the water of the lake, which is also wooded; secret lake vs public cemetery; I’d love to see this expanded]

It’s getting cold. Even though it’s early September it feels like late Autumn. The weather has changed from warm to cold from one day to the next. She gets up from the bench and walks towards the exit. Her bicycle is parked outside. She gets on her bike and cycles back through the park to where she lives, just a couple of streets away. Ever since the neighbouring Prenzlauer Berg has become more and more expensive and bourgeois the district has been booming. There are four building sites in her street alone. Old houses getting restored, new houses being built. Mostly young professionals and families move here. Unlike Prenzlauer Berg there are still a lot of people from the former East living here. But that will change.

The houses and building sites flit past her eyes like a smudged film. She can’t hold on to any of it. She has no memories of this place. She has hardly any memories of the place where she comes from. The memory of the cemetery in the Black Forest is more like a tattoo. [vivid simile] She doesn’t feel it anymore. Each house in this street is familiar, she walks along it every day. [“no memories” and “familiar”: the references seem inconsistent] She’s nearly home but it feels as if she’s not going anywhere she knows. It’s a feeling that reminds her of the graves of the newly dead, her life like their death hovering.

I enjoyed the story but found it hard to read in places trying to relate third person singular pronouns to their antecedents.  You bring the cemetery to life and convey its significance to the narrator.  The people in her life, by contrast, are stiffly drawn.  I felt little emotional attachment to them.  The cemetery as a jumping off point for escapees from the East is particularly significant as the 20^th anniversary of the Wall’s fall approaches.  You could write a fascinating narrative on this aspect, relating it to people and events.  Keep writing!