1 Konrad and Alexandra The Chronicle of a Great Love 1898 - 1998 Rolf Gross . Second revised and illustrated Edition Pacific Palisades 2011 2 Table of Contents Click on the underlined links 1. Konrad's Watch 1969 36.The Summer of 1905 in Ca' Savio 2. Konrad Arrives in Georgia 1898 37.Snowbound in Eydtkuhnen, 1905 3. Tiflis 1898 38.Return to St. Petersburg, 1905 3. Alexandra Dadiani, Tiflis 1898 39.Exploring St. Petersburg 1905 4. Chekhov's "Chaika" Henri the Goldsmith 40.Sophia's Birth 5. Alexandra's Necklace 41.Uncle Mouravi's Benz 6. Georgia on Horseback 42.A Family Reunion, Tiflis 1907 7. The Engagement 43.Niko and Claudia's Wedding, Tiflis 1907 8. A Sufi Sema 44.The Dadiani Castle, Zugdidi 1907 9. Ilia Chavchavadze 45.Strange Happenings, Svaneti 1907 9. New Year 1899 46.Calling the Dead, Svaneti 1907 10. Alexandra's Abduction 47.Adishi, Gocha Teaching Dream Work 11.Easter at Zedazeni 48. Ilia Chavchavadse's Assassination 1907 12.The Last Feudal Wedding 49.Tamara and Vladimir, Alexandra and Helena 13.Venice 1899 50.Konrad Learns Chinese, 1910 14.Fiesole and Florence 1899 51.A Stunning Discovery, Paris 1981 15. St. Petersburg, The Summer Ball 1899 52.Alexandra in Paris, 1911 16 . Alexandra Studies Medicine 53.Konrad in China, 1911-1912 17.Becky's Museum 54.Konrad's Return from China, 1912 18.Otto's Birth 1900 55.Alexandra's Journey to Munich, 1913 19.Vladimir 1904 56.Dahl's Examination of Alexandra, 1913 20. A Theosophists' Reception 1904 57.A visit to Kandinsky in Murnau 1913 21.Berlin 1904 58.Alexandra in Tiflis, Tamara's Quarrel 1913 22.Rheinsberg 1904 59.Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Winter 1913 - 1914 23.Munich 1904 60.The War Years, St. Petersburg 1914 - 1917 3 24.The Dahl's House, Katharina, 1904 61.Their Flight to Georgia, 1918 25.Claudia and Dioskorides, 1904 62.Tbilisi 1918 26.A Pilgrimage to Andechs 63.Alexandra at Forty, Tbilisi 1918 27.Steiner, Schoenberg and Kandinsky at the Dahls 64.German Troops in Tbilisi, 1918 - 1919 28.Music, Painting, and Psychology 65.A Visit to Tbilisi, 1982 29.Fashing, Munich 1905 66.Alexandra's Letters, 1983 30.Walking on Ice 67.A Concert in Kreuth, April 1989 31.Chamber Music 1905 A List of people in “ Konrad and Alexandra ” 32.Alexandra Learns to Drive Italy 1905 Sources 33.Fiesole 1905 34.Alexandra's Time 35.Meeting Clara Westhoff, 1905 4 Konrad's Watch Moscow, 1969 A heavy downpour drove me into a prominent shop on Moscow’s October Square. People crowded at the glass display cases behind which robust salesladies dawdled in socialist apathy. A big English sign said, "Russian Antiques"—a high-brow pawnshop! A motley array of old and new bric-a-brac filled the shelves, samovars, pots and pans, Russian lacquer boxes, second-hand clothing, art-nouveau bronzes, a life-sized statue of a Negro assembled from variously colored marble. The people stared at the foreigner. I had no intention of buying anything. In the back of the store I found a wall covered with amateur paintings: a young woman reading on the verandah of a dacha, flower arrangements, a stand of white birches, a leaning peasant hut at the edge of a meadow. A melancholy painting of dappled sunspots under trees, through which one saw the blue of the sea, brought back long-forgotten memories of the summers of my childhood on the shores of the languid Baltic Sea, where the shady beech woods reach to the water’s edge, and one could hear time sigh. This unexpected discovery became excuse for spending half an hour in the chaotic place. I was about to leave when my gaze was caught by an antique silver fob-watch lying in a locked glass case among enameled brooches, amber necklaces, and old jewelry. I don’t know why this watch attracted my attention. I am not a collector of antique timepieces. I bent over the case and one of the buxom sales ladies descended upon me. Uncertain, I asked her to show me the watch. She placed it on a black velveteen cushion. I knew she would not let me handle it. The watch carried the markings of a renowned Swiss manufacturer. A lid covered its dial, another its back. In place of a crown it had an ear for a chain. The key to wind it was missing.The saleslady pressed a pin, and with a click the lid sprang open exposing an inscription in large, curlicue, German letters: I stared at the inscription—my grandfather’s name. Vertigo overcame me, I grasped the counter. The sales lady darted from behind the table and offered me a chair. "Are you all right? It is terrible how many men die of heart attacks these days." The room began to turn, time collapsed. A string of long-suppressed memories ran through my dizzy mind. In Mid May 1945 we had fled from the advancing Soviet troops. Father, Mother, and my three siblings. We walked or hitched rides on the pony carts of the retreating German army. 5 One piece of luggage after another was abandoned. Carrying our heavy possessions had become impossible in the heat of spring. All our efforts were in vain. We never reached the West, where we believed the Americans would protect us from the feared Soviets. On the day after the German surrender, near the Czechoslovak border, the Soviet Army overtook us. Red Army men combed the thousands of refugees for German soldiers. They ordered my father aside. He had his hands up. A Russian soldier pulled the watch, which now lay before me, from his pocket. The soldier dangled his booty from his left hand. In the other he held an automatic. For the first time in my life I heard Father speak Russian. He begged for his watch, then shouted at the Red Army man. Nervously the soldier threatened him with his automatic. Father grabbed for his watch. The soldier hit Father’s outstretched arm with the gun and then continued, mercilessly beating him, to drive him towards a group of POWs by the roadside. Dissolved in tears, Mother ran after him. Her pleading was futile. Father disappeared down the road in agroup of POWs. For two days we hid in the woods and traveled only at night, carefully avoiding populated areas. Finally Mother and I decided to return home to the house in H— where we had lived throughout the war. Grandfather Konrad had given this watch to my father Otto in 1918 when he had sent him to safety in Germany. I knew the watch well. It used to have a small key, and once in a while father would let me wind it. The lady explained that the key no longer existed. I bought the watch and locked myself into my shabby room at the "Hotel of the Academics" with my precious treasure. The lady at the shop had polished the slightly tarnished silver casing. The few minor dents in the lid only enhanced its faded elegance. Its Roman numerals gave it a most distinguished look, and a small, separate dial in gold and blue showed the phases of the moon. I took the watch to a watchmaker in a bleak apartment block in the old part of the city. The old Jew whom I found in the overstuffed cubicle carefully examined Konrad’s watch through his eyepiece. He offered to buy it. What would I do with such an antiquated timepiece in the age of digital watches? He shrugged resignedly when I told him that the watch was not for sale. As he opened the lid the crazy idea struck me to invert its mechanism, so it would run backwards. The graying watchmaker shot me a puzzled glance. Was I serious? What for would I want a watch that ran backwards? "Oh," I told him, "it will count the hours you and I have lost during the last hundred years, and maybe it will tell me why there was so much suffering in this century." "Are you one of us?" asked the watchmaker examining me with his sad, inquisitive eyes. I said no, I was not Jewish, I carried an American passport but had grown up in Germany. He nodded, spread his hands acknowledging the inevitable and resorted to a mixture of Yiddish, Russian, and German. He explained that he could make the hands of the watch run backwards by an exchange of two tiny wheels, but the phases of the moon he could not reverse. 6 I was content to leave Alexandra’s time untouched. "Do you understand my German?" asked the old man. He lamented his relatives lost in the German holocaust and Stalin’s terror. He had lived through the horrors of the war, "which they call the ‘Great Patriotic War’ in this country." He let his gray head hang. Yes, I understood him. I let him finish and then told him of the life of Konrad and Alexandra, my grandparents, the watch, and Father’s fate. He peered over his glasses and smiled. "Now I see why you didn’t want to sell me this watch," and tilting his head, commiseration in his eyes he continued, "You suffered as much as we did. The world is a cruel place. Who will tell the story of the people who suffered through this terrible century?" When I left he hugged and kissed me, Russian style. "I wish you mazeltov, a long life, and glick in finding your lost people." A week later I picked up the watch.