Free Clara by Kurt Palka

the cemetery they bought candles and matches from one of the vendors at the gate. Inside it was already busy, shapes of people moving along paths, standing before graves, striking matches for candles.
    High above, the icefield shone like silver and the mountain stood black against the sky. Small yellow lightsglowed in houses along the mountain road and the Christmas fire burned on the Tölldner peak. The flames sawed in the wind and when they leaned west they shone onto the enormous cross of polished steel up there, and onto the trusses that anchored it to rock.
    First they went to the family grave of the monarchists from her mother’s first marriage, a corner plot with evergreens and Japanese maples, and with memorial tablets set into the wall. The monarchists were Count Torben and his family and her own two stepbrothers, Peter and Bernhard. Peter’s wife, Daniela, was buried there too; utterly loyal Daniela, who had doted on Peter and loved Clara like a sister. How proud the monarchists had been of their history, of the title and the heraldic family emblem.
    “But if you half-close your eyes,” Daniela had once whispered to Clara. “If you squint a bit, then that thing might also be a plucked chicken with just a few feathers left. Rather than a plumed helmet.”
    They lit candles and put them into small wrought-iron lanterns by the list of names in black marble. After a few moments of silence they walked to the other grave, the one of her mother and father and her mother’s side of the family. Albert would be resting here too, once his urn was installed and his name carved on the tablet. If the stonemason ever came back from his holiday. They lit candles at the foot of the angel with its wings chiselled in great detail and the face turned away and hiddenbehind the hands. In silence they stood close together in the dark for a minute, and left.
    LATER EMMA AND TOMAS came to the house to exchange small gifts. They did not stay long. As he was buttoning his coat, Tom asked in a low voice if there was any news from the museum and she just shook her head. Then he asked if they might perhaps take Albert’s wall clock. Emma would love to have it, he said.
    Clara looked at Emma, who was already standing by the door, waiting for him.
    “Emma?” she said. “Is that right? You want that clock?”
    “I’d love it, Mom. It would look nice in the living room.”
    “Fine. It’s yours.”
    The clock was the four-day Silverbell Napoleon that Cecilia had rescued from the bombed Vienna apartment. If Emma wanted it, she should have it. It would go to her anyway. Or to Willa. She wondered briefly if she should be more specific in her will as to who should get what.
    They left with the clock wrapped in a blanket, the two of them bent over and stepping carefully while carrying it downstairs to the car. Emma called another Merry Christmas from around the corner in the stairway. The lights went out and Clara pushed the button for them.
    She and Mitzi enjoyed the roast goose with potatoes and peas and a small green salad, and they shared a bottle of wine. There was no tree, just a small Advent wreathof evergreen on the table, with the four candles burning in it. By Mitzi’s place setting, Clara had put a purple cashmere shawl in a paisley pattern, nicely wrapped, and Mitzi had given her a small plate of home-baked cookies including almond crescents and vanilla kisses covered in cellophane.
    At eleven o’clock, when the bells rang at the stone church, they gave each other a hug. They were family to each other, now more than ever. Mitzi’s own parents were long dead and buried some place she did not even know, maybe in what used to be East Prussia, maybe in Poland, but she thought of them often and now in her old age she met them in her dreams, two people in shtetl clothes sitting side by side on a wooden bench. Mitzi had never been to a shtetl, but it was one of the many Yiddish words that came to her lately. In her dreams her parents