Surviving past pandemics, part 2

In the 1950s, Harry bought a typewriter for his mother and encouraged her to put her words to paper. Helene wrote a number of stories recalling her childhood in Bilin. She was a wonderful storyteller and apparently had an amazing memory – where it has been possible to corroborate details, I find she always ends up having given an accurate account of things.

My grandmother organized her stories into binders and in chapters, presumably hoping to create a book. She often used pseudonyms of her name (“Nehoc” for Cohen, “Lenow” for Löwy). Today’s story is in the chapter entitled “Child Without Childhood.”  It was found in the same binder as yesterday’s newspaper article about the 1889 flu pandemic.

Story by “Helene Nehoc” (translated and somewhat edited):

Earliest childhood: Influenza Epidemic 1889 /Helene Nehoc

The harsh weather, with snowstorms that never seem to end and howling winter storms could not have impressed this child somuch  that she would never forget such a day ever again. Little Helene Lenow didn’t find out until quite a bit later what really happened on that ugly day.

In the house, in which mostly music and laughter predominated, overnight there had arisen a frightening vacuum.

Neither her mother nor her big sisters were heard or seen. Not even Marischka, who was the long time house help, paid any attention to her. The child waited fearfully in her crib. Finally the girl came, took the little one out of her cage, and dressed her and brought her into the living room. There she told her that she had to be well-behaved and stay put, because it was icy cold and windy outside; in a few minutes she would bring breakfast in to her.  

She usually had breakfast in the comfortable kitchen and in Marischka’s company, who would make funny faces for her. She was annoyed at not being able to do so and she started to cry. Soon, Marischka came back, brought coffee, a piece of coffee cake, and a little plate of preserved fruit.

She put the tray — on which everything had been prepared bite sized — on a comfortable chair, and put a footstool in front of it and left after she had tied a bib on her beloved Helenku with her eyes all red from crying and she put her finger up to lips to show that she was to stay quiet, and then she left the room. 

Enene (which was her nickname) stayed sitting on her footstool without moving and listened carefully to even the quietest noise. Everyone who passed by the hallway went on tiptoe. Only the terrible storm was howling with a strength that did not seem to dissipate. Other than that there was a depressing silence. Even the very loud printing machines whose noise otherwise would be coming up from the basement to the top floor, were standing still, with the exception of the platen press which was used for express orders in a smaller format such as business cards, envelopes, or death announcements. On that strange day, the last of these were the only things that kept the machines going. The influence of the epidemic saw that neither man nor machine got even a short break. 

From a room in a faraway part of the house which was used for packing and storing manuals and handbooks, Enene heard the plaintive melody of the Moszkowski Serenade. Her brother, a music student, had gone back there to practice. He had no idea of the devastating catastrophe that had already happened.

The child, attracted by the magic of the music, woke up from her trance. With the instinct of a sleepwalker, she dragged the footstool over to the door in order to open it. She did not make any sound and followed the sound of the music. With her doll in her arms, she sat down on a little wooden box which was intended as a footrest for whoever was working in there. She paid attention to the melody of the music which she already knew. This time it wasn’t the power of the music that calmed her down, but the fact that it interrupted the silence which had brought her to such a panic. This fear was somewhat mollified by the presence of her big brother, but it never entirely left her. Fear of the unknown, a fear which later came back sporadically when Helene Lenow was an adult.

Before Max had finished his practice, there was a piercing scream from their parents’ bedroom. He put his violin down, grabbed his little audience member under his arm, and ran with her down the long, dark corridor which led to the living rooms. In the hallway, he put the little girl down and ran into the room where the scream had come from. Mrs Rosa Lenow had had a violent heart attack. The heavy smell of Hoffmann’s Drops (spirit of ether), which she always carried with a few pieces of sugar in her apron pocket, filled up the hall.

Enene stood on the same spot the whole time, just where her brother had left her. A miniature Lot’s wife. From there, she could see through the door that the storm had opened that someone was covered with a linen blanket and was laying on the bed. This door led to the room in which Mother’s brother Karl stayed when he was a houseguest. The hall was like an icy basement, but the child did not move from that spot.

Someone came out of the parents’ bedroom and carried the little girl into the living room, put her on the sofa, and covered her up with a blanket, kissed her and said: “Sleep child, sleep.” But the great excitement was really too much for her to fall asleep. This room seemed to be the only one that had been untouched by the mysterious events in the house.

Helene held her doll even more tightly, and was amazed that none of her big sisters came in to play with or read something to her. If someone had told her that with the exception of her, Max, and her eldest sister, everyone was very ill and that her other four sisters, following the advice of the doctor, had been brought up to an otherwise unoccupied room in the attic, she would probably have wanted to go up there to them.

After awhile, Ida dressed her for going out and carried her with her lips pressed tightly together, unable to speak even a word to friends. Enene was afraid she must have done something really bad, because Ida was really mad and didn’t want to talk to her anymore. A deep guilt made the poor little thing even sadder. She began to sob and put her arms around the neck of her big sister, who without saying a word, stroked her hair.

Enene knew nothing about who these people were, in whose house she was now supposed to live, and what they were called. Just as little did she knew why she had to leave home. Had she really been that bad? 

After a few weeks she was picked up by Ida, who wore a new black coat and a new black hat and gloves. She was very pale and looked even more serious than usual. Enene did not recognize her home.

Mother, Enene’s sisters, and Marischka all wore black clothes. Father and Max were wearing black bands on the arms of their dark suits. Everyone was unusually pale and had all gotten a lot thinner. 

Little Helene was the only one who wore a colorful dress and hardly missed Uncle Karl who had died. As a traveling salesman of an old Prague coffee and tea import company he had his own apartment in the capital city, but he took every opportunity — especially before he had a long sales trip — to spend a few days in the circle of his sister’s family, which he considered to be his own. Karl Kraus was one of the first victims of the influenza in this city. He died as a bachelor, 45 years old, and it had been his first and last illness. Helene Lenow could not know that her mother had lost the most ideal brother, her father his best friend and business advisor, her sister Ida her good genius. The rest of them would be mourning for the loss of the person they thought of as their second father.

Mrs Rosa Lenow recovered quickly from her heart attack — that is, she ignored her symptoms because she neither wanted to nor could afford the luxury of being ill. She was too important in both house and business, and she lived almost entirely on Hoffmann’s drops and strong black coffee, both with a lot of sugar.  

Adolf Lenow aged by 10 years in these weeks, and his four daughters who had been felled by the influenza won the battle of death thanks to the superhuman care and concern of the parents, of the two siblings Ida and Max, and the untiring care provided by the family doctor. But death did not give up so easily. Two of them succumbed at a later point to consequences of this evil plague.

Helene Lenow knew nothing about any of that. In her young brain, she only heard the T’ling, t’ling, of the platen printing press, which was woven together with the sad melody of the Moszkowski Serenade, which became a leitmotif — that creepy symphony of ghosts and spirits, to which the howling storm had lent its especially impressive voice.

***

The memories of the influenza epidemic were replaced with later even more horrifying catastrophes — beginning with the outbreak of war in 1914 and ending with the epidemic which was then known as the Spanish flu — even by the families that were affected by it, these memories were driven away, or at least the images had became much paler over time. The narrator managed to pay her tribute to the “Spanish flu” with double pneumonia, but without it happening to her that in her feverish delirium she was scared by the Moszkowski Serenade. However, during the second world war, when she disappeared behind the concentration camp walls which were covered with barbed wire, this sentimental melody, which was mixed with the T’ling T’ling, T’long of the platen printing press which in the meantime had become long since obsolete and had been piled on an iron scrap heap and with that the horrible feeling of being completely left alone, this time in a large family of different peoples who were speaking different languages.

This music piece is for many listeners a very nice da capo, but for the author of her earliest childhood memories, it is a piece of music from Hades, which she escaped from when she had already given up all hope.