Coffee Grinder - Demolishing Memories (Epilogue)

A beautiful diamond shines in my heart,

glittering in the heat of sunny days.

But there will come a time when raindrops

drum on the window sills

and bring unrest.

On those days, that sharp, beautiful diamond

opens a wound that has almost healed,

tearing even more

what remains of foolish dreams with its hard points.

With its hardness, it tries to cover up tender memories

of a long-lost love.

 

 

After my grandmother's death, we had several difficult months ahead of us, during which individual events were linked by deep pain and longing.
As for the house, my mother inherited half of it with my aunt Eliška, and they took turns looking after it on weekends. We believed that this was what my grandmother would have wanted.

I returned to Munich right after Christmas for my second semester. Life went on, returning—albeit with difficulty—to normal. Until the summer a few years later. That summer, floods came and destroyed my grandmother's house so badly that any repairs would have been a waste of money.

 

 The house had to be demolished. And that's when strange disputes began between my parents and my aunt Eliška. She had worked on improving the house as best she could, given her time constraints, but no one had set foot in the attic since my grandmother's death. When the flood destroyed the house, Eliška became interested in the space where the attic used to be. I only knew about the disputes superficially because I was finishing my studies in Munich and therefore spent much more time in Germany than here. The main subject of the various misunderstandings and exchanges of opinion was the original purpose of the attic room. Eliška believed that there must have been some valuables there that could now be easily converted into cash.

 She had accidentally got into financial difficulties and, although all the members of the family were helping her as best they could, her debts were growing day by day. My mother, on the other hand, insisted that the attic was just a place to store old junk that was no longer of any use – or had never been of any use.

 

I suspected that both of them were referring to the coffee grinder, which they believed had been left in the attic since my grandmother's death. I didn't know what she knew about it, whether my grandmother had confided her secret to them before she died. On the one hand, I understood Eliška completely. But I insisted that no one should ever sell the grinder. It was a family heirloom, a relic of Valerie, whom we had never had the chance to meet.

 

On that gloomy summer afternoon, Martin and I arrived for the demolition. It was quite a painful experience for the whole family. I will never forget one particularly unpleasant moment. The workers stood confidently in front of the house, hands on their hips, ready to get to work. I am a sensitive person, but I had no idea that seeing the house where I had spent almost every Easter of my childhood being destroyed would affect me so much.

I couldn't see through my tears. Martin put his arm around me and looked at me with compassion and understanding. My parents and Aunt Eliška were standing on the other side.

 

"So what's the deal with the land?" my dad asked the workers.
The confident young man in overalls laughed.
"Sir, what are you trying to pull? There's never been any land here!"

 

He gestured toward a lonely beam sticking out of the remains of a wall that had once supported a large old wardrobe. Its debris now lay in a pile of wood destined for the fire. 
It was hard to believe that there had ever been an attic here. The very attic that had served as a gateway between my world and Valérie's. But I knew better.

 

The old house where someone had always been waiting for me was gone forever. I was leaving the village and suddenly felt much older. Everything that connected me to my childhood was gone for good. All I had left was that precious coffee grinder with a picture of a blue windmill. It stands on a cabinet in my apartment as a beautiful, colorful reminder in the middle of a gray world.

 

No, I don't want to forget how to dream.

 

Just a strand of raven hair

Like a stream running through the garden

The night is a beautiful fairy

Weaving a wreath of stars

And secret love

And white flowers of night trees

And a longing whisper:

"Valerie!"

Black blends with white

And there is a hiding place in the garden

And the house dawns

At the hour that never strikes

And the sweet scent of autumn

In the middle of a summer night

And a pleading cry:

"Valerie!"

Grandmother's house

And a gravestone

Hides a white body beneath black marble

And an old grinder

That pours the bitterness of coffee into memories

And in the silence of the winter night

A desperate cry:

"Valérie!"