The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero

by Paulus Hochgatterer

Genres: World War II

Synopsis

"This is a beautiful book, a masterpiece of brevity and depth" New European

"This tense novella builds to a final reckoning" The Times

In October 1944, a thirteen-year-old girl arrives in a tiny farming community in Lower Austria, at some distance from the main theatre of war. She remembers very little about how she got there, it seems she has suffered trauma from bombardment. One night a few months later, a young, emaciated Russian appears, a deserter from forced labour in the east. He has nothing with him but a canvas roll, which he guards like a hawk. Their burgeoning friendship is abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a group of Wehrmacht soldiers in retreat, who commandeer the farm.

Paulus Hochgatterer's intensely atmospheric, resonant novel is like a painting in itself, a beautiful observation of small shifts from apathy in a community not directly affected by the war, but exhausted by it nonetheless; individual acts of moral bravery which to some extent have the power to change the course of history.

Longlisted for the Austrian Book Prize 2017, this subtle, evocative novella will appeal to readers of Hubert Mingarelli's A MEAL IN WINTER and Jenny Erpenbeck's THE END OF DAYS.

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Release date: July 23, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 112

Sample

The swallows are here. That happening can change everything. You’re standing somewhere, outside the house for example, deep in thought or gazing at the clouds as you might on any other day, and after a while you notice that something’s different. First you let your eyes wander along the horizon, over the hills, the roofs, the tops of the trees. Then you check for a whistling in the air, a hum or perhaps a smell. Finally you look to see whether you’ve torn a hole in your clothes without noticing, on a sleeve perhaps, on the knee or beneath an armpit. You can’t see anything. Then you realise: the swallows have returned.

Otherwise everything is the same as it was yesterday. The clouds coursing across the sky, the molehills, the broken branches lying beneath the fruit trees, the nuthatch hopping up and down the wall of the barn. Nuthatches are lucky, Laurenz says, just like tortoises or hedgehogs or stag beetles. Magpies and foxes bring bad luck, he says. The swallows dart down, making loops between the barn and the stable. These are the ones with white bellies and V-shaped tails, not those with forked tails and red throats. Barn swallows, house martins. It’s silly how I always get them mixed up. Occasionally they perch on the ridge of the barn roof for a few seconds. I can’t remember now whether swallows are supposed to bring good or bad luck.

I return to the house, climb the stairs, turn right into the girls’ room and take from the cupboard one of the brown notebooks, a pencil and the little pocketknife with the horn handle. Nobody sees me. Back downstairs and outside. From the barn door I run diagonally across the meadow to the garden, along the picket fence and then up the hill between the fields. Right at the top, next to a stunted blackthorn, I spin around, and again, and again. Then I sit on the grass. Here, right beside the bush, the ground is almost always dry. I look around. From here I can see everything. This is my place.

They say my name is Nelli. Sometimes I believe them, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I think my name is Elisabeth or Katharina. Or Isolde, like the young sales assistant in the hat shop. She’s the reason I go into town from time to time. When I stand outside the shop and peer through the window, I see Isolde’s torso floating around inside, back and forth along the shelves. The head with its auburn plait floats on top. I can’t see anything from the waist down. I imagine her lower half having sat itself down somewhere. Perhaps all the toing and froing has become too exhausting. Perhaps it doesn’t like the plait or the way in which the upper half says, How may I help you? But I don’t tell anyone these sorts of things.

They say I’m thirteen years old and that there’s a document, or more precisely a piece of paper with a stamp, showing my name and date of birth. I don’t care about my birthday. Nobody celebrates birthdays here. Name days, yes; birthdays, no. Nobody knows when my name day is. Whenever I ask they just shrug. Whenever I ask about school they get nervous. Laurenz says that people do have to learn, but everything in good time. At the moment, he says, it’s best for everyone if I wait a while before going to school. I don’t know what’s really best for me.

There are some things I’m certain of. I’ve been here for one hundred and forty-six days. I have a plan. Sometimes I lie.

On the third or fourth day I started making tally marks in my first brown notebook, on the last page, one for every day. Four vertical lines and one across, bunches of five. “How do you know how to do that?” Laurenz asked. “No idea,” I said. “Like a fighter pilot,” he said. He was the one who gave me the notebook, because I looked like the kind of person who enjoyed writing, he said. He used to look like that when he was younger too, he told me, which was why they sent him to the seminary and then he became a writer at the front. In the middle of winter he would sit in the bunker writing daily reports. He cut off the tips of the right thumb and index finger of his woollen glove to give him a better grip on the pencil. That’s the only thing that really interests me about his story. I find everything else – snow and bayonets and man against man – really dull. I talked to Antonia, who promised to knit me gloves with fingertips you can fold back. She’s in the fourth year of secondary school and knits so beautifully you would think her things were made in a factory.

I’m squatting on my heels, just looking. The roofs of the town, three church towers, the town hall, the hill where the rows of fruit trees meet, the beech wood, the neighbouring houses, the ditch with the fire pond and the beehives. Far to the south, the mountains. The Sonntagberg, the Hochkogel, the Ötscher. That’s what they say. Every mountain has its own place and every mountain has its own name. There’s a church up on the Sonntagberg, you can see it very clearly.

Just now the sky is empty. The sun and the clouds don’t count. The moon and the stars wouldn’t count either. Aeroplanes count, as do geese that fly in a wedge formation, and buzzards when they circle up above. Swallows would count too, but I can’t see any at the moment.

Annemarie is coming. I can hear her rapid, slightly uneven footsteps on the gravel path. Then she stops. I focus on the spot where the path meets the brow of the hill. The first thing that comes into view is Annemarie’s parting, her dark-blonde hair combed tightly to the side. It’s plaited behind the ears. The ears themselves stick out like little wings. The sleeveless tunic with its flowery pattern and buttons that are mere decoration. Six tiny, light-blue buttons that are sewn on and don’t actually button anything up. The satchel straps over her shoulders. Noticing me sitting there, she lifts her head. Her face is triangular, blotchy and wet. I get up. “What’s wrong?” I ask. She doesn’t respond. “Why are you crying?”

Everyone calls her “Little One”, even though she’s actually quite tall for her eight years, the second tallest in her class, she says. She’s the youngest of the five sisters, which must be where Little One comes from. Grete, Katharina, Antonia, Roswitha and Annemarie – the five sisters. I worked out who was who after a few days. All five girls look like their mother. “Nature decided against the father,” Laurenz says. Why does a girl need to look like her father, I wonder, but I don’t say anything. “Leo looks a bit like his father,” Laurenz says. That’s not much use to the father, however, for Leo isn’t here at the moment. Leo, the only son.

Annemarie stands there, staring past me, tears running down her cheeks. “What’s wrong?” I say. . .