Secrets are dangerous. Never have a secret you cannot tell anyone. It grows in you like a cancer and will eventually kill you. The old Serbian folk story Tzar Trojan's Goat Ears will tell you more.
There is one secret in my life I have never told anyone. It haunts me. I feel guilty about my mother who is not living anymore. I wonder why I have never found the courage to tell her the truth. She died without ever hearing how it had really happened many years ago, in my childhood.
It was during the World War II and the time of the German-Hungarian occupation. We lived in Vojvodina, a flat, fertile part of the Pannonia Plains, between the Sava and the Danube rivers. Vojvodina, the breadbasket of Yugoslavia. My family's home was in the capital city of the province, named Novi Sad, a city with a long cultural tradition, known for the diversity of minorities, including Hungarian. For many years, in the past, it had belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The cultures grew intertwined in many ways, so that people still enjoy the same kind of music, food, and lifestyles.
In our quiet Loncharska (The Potters') street, one of the oldest in the city, apart from the Serbian, there were a few Hungarian families. Never really aware of the national differences before the War, we always naturally had fine neighborly relations with other families on the same block.
My mother was a hard-working woman, constantly doing something, but she always found time for other people. In the morning, while she was cleaning, dusting, or putting her big down pillows to get the sunshine and fresh air on the window sills, she would often stop to talk to the neighbors passing by on their way to work or to the market place. She gave a recipe to one, some herb tea to another, yet another (with a small baby) counsel on timely pot-training or thumb-sucking. An experienced homemaker, my mother was always glad to help.
She was thirty-four years old when the War broke out; a healthy, attractive woman, always singing while doing her work. Her crystal clear, melodious voice was ringing at all times: she knew countless folk songs, chansons and popular romances. Quite often she sang the church hymns from her Nazarene hymnal book that she had brought with her when she got married. Those melodies, like the familiar scents, still linger around, bringing back sweet childhood memories.
Mother loved natural fragrances, but never used perfumes, believing that cleanliness, absolute cleanliness was enough. Among my fondest memories is that special fresh, feminine odor of my mother's rosy petal-like skin when, on rare occasions, I got to curl up in bed with her and put my head on her bosom.
I love herbs and plants myself, certainly because I can remember my mother using fragrant herbs and plants for cooking, natural medicine, coloring Easter eggs and cloth, even keeping insects away from the house. In her chest with fine linen she had dry lavender flowers whose delicate color and fragrance inextinguishably saturated all her belongings. Lavender fragrance has powerfully permeated my memory, reminding me of my mother, her femininity, even the color of her eyes.
Since Mother had a green thumb, our yard turned into a multicolored carpet of sweet-smelling flowers. They were like mother's intimate friends. She knew their individual names and observed their growth with constant care. During the watering, she talked to them with tenderness, like to her own babies. All those pink and red geraniums, vibrant rose moss, heavy, luscious snowballs and tall pink and white oleander trees whose heavy Mediterranean scent pervaded the whole neighborhood. Mother was the queen of that glorious paradise, fully aware of its beauty, always perpetuating and creating it everywhere she went.
At the bottom of our yard was a tall brick wall and a heavy wooden gate opening to a wider, busier street leading to the market place and the local bus station. Farmers from the neighboring region came to town with their produce. During my favorite, watermelon season, they would come with their heavily loaded wagons full of huge watermelons, golden-ripe cantaloupes, and sweet smelling honeydews. The farmers slept under their wagons, so they could start trading early in the morning, before people went to work. I envied them for that "Bohemian lifestyle," not realizing the hardship behind it.
Going to the open market with Mama was a real treat. She enjoyed shopping for food, enjoyed the lush abundance of the rich, healthy-looking nature's gifts, just as much as she enjoyed chatting with the country folks. She knew many of the farmers and their families, and always shopped from the same women with freshly starched and pressed aprons, whose cheese and other home-made products were wrapped in snow-white, clean towels.
Another favorite stop on our shopping list was the place selling the earthenware: jugs, bowls, yogurt mugs and plant pots of all kinds and sizes. Mom always needed those to repot her plants, and sometimes, if I were lucky, I would get a tiny, little one, not larger than a thimble, for my little garden.
The shop selling handmade wooden objects was another attraction. Mom usually bought fruit bowls, mixing spoons, dough boards and pins there. They also sold miniature ones. I was ready to promise anything to get one of my own. And I did get a tiny wooden kneading board with a little dough pin. I used it whenever Mom was baking bread or some kind of pastry. She would give me a little bit of dough to work on while she did hers.
My dough usually looked darker, from my too-impatient-to-be-washed-properly hands. I kneaded and kneaded the soul out of my baby-dough (as we called it), and was quite hurt when nobody wanted to eat it after it had been baked together with Mom's bread.
Leather goods shop was our next stop in the market place. It smelled so friendly! Apart from hand made purses, bags, belts and pouches, it sold slippers made of black velvet embroidered with rich-colored silk and beads. I loved those oriental-looking slippers because of the little heel and their feminine look. My mom had a pair, so -- naturally -- I had to get a little pair for myself. It was essential to have all the accessories of womanhood; when Mom was not at home, I would put on her high-heeled shoes, feathery hats, silk gowns, and anything else that caught my fancy, to parade in front of her large, three-winged mirror, admiring myself and daydreaming about the life ahead of me when I will be like Mom and do all the grown-up things.
When the War broke out, Yugoslavia was divided between the occupational forces (German, Italian, and Hungarian). Vojvodina was ruled by the Hungarians (in Backa region) and by the Croatian Ustashi (in Srem). Father was taken to the concentration camp in Backa Topola, Vojvodina. He lost the right to practice his profession (like the other Serbian lawyers and physicians) and his clients and unfinished cases -- in short, his entire office -- was turned over to a Hungarian attorney. The camp where he was held did not match in horror those in Germany, but the prisoners slept on the floor with a little straw for a bed, were poorly fed and kept behind the barbed wire, separated from the outer world. We never really learned the hard details of that period in Father's life. Complaining was something we never heard from our parents.
On the occasions when we came to visit him, Mom brought food, clean clothes, and some small items that were allowed. We stood on the other side of the fence, looking at Dad's smiling face, and touching his fingers through the wire. We all smiled and talked at the same time, never succeeding in saying all we wanted to say, never quite hearing each other from the excitement and repressed sadness. Then, we took a long train ride home, remembering all we had forgotten to say or ask.
More than thirty years later, both my parents dead, I discovered Dad's letter, dated July 11, 1941, written after our visit to the camp. The letter was full of love and tenderness, expressed so simply yet dramatically, with life-threatening conditions not mentioned, yet so present. Mom kept the letter in her chest with fine linen, her mother's embroideries, dowry, and other precious, intimate memorabilia. I still have it, the paper yellowed with age, the ink faded.
During the Occupation time, I was too young to understand what was going on. Mother did her best to conceal the reality from us. Therefore, in spite of everything, we had a happy childhood. Only now can I fully understand what courage it took a young woman left alone with two small children, husband in the concentration camp, no job, no security of any kind, to lead the life so uncertain and threatening. She had no one with whom to share her fears. Most of our relatives were scattered throughout the country, friends having enough worries of their own.
For a long time, before the War, we were the only household in our street that had a telephone. My father's law office was in our home, since it was spacious enough and it was more convenient that way. Mom acted as Dad's secretary, working in the house and taking care of us children, while he was in the courthouse, a big, massive building close to our home and to the market place. We called it Dad's factory where he "made" money.
Early in the morning Dad's clients, out-of-town farmers, would come to see him before the market opened. Mom often remarked that we had no privacy because his office was in our home. However, she was an excellent help, genuinely interested in his work. If he moved into another office, downtown, he would have had to hire a secretary, and he knew nobody would have done such a good job as Mom. He often told her so. She knew all the clients and their cases, always reminded him of important deadlines. She also had a keen intuition and knew who was guilty, who innocent and, especially, who had no intention of paying Dad for his work. He never did anything about it. It was enough for the farmers to say: "This is not a good year. The crops are poor," and Father would accept that excuse with a smile. Mom was not less supportive of the poor, but she knew that many of Dad's clients simply avoided their obligations without an honest reason. She would remind him that he had two children to raise and educate. To that he would usually smile and say: "Don't worry, we won't starve." She did not want anyone to get away with lies and cheating, but his life philosophy was: "I would rather have them cheat on me, than cheat on them myself. We are both happier this way." And he would quietly explain that he became a lawyer to help the poor and uneducated, not to add to their hardship. The son of a farmer himself, an avid reader, deeply knowledgeable in the world history, my father knew how peasants suffered, through the whole history, from poverty and ignorance. A great idealist, he wanted to make a difference! And now, each time I find out I've been cheated by someone, instead of being angry, I remember my father, with a smile, thinking; I am glad to be living my father's philosophy. It is a good one.
Being the only family with the telephone in our street, naturally, we had neighbors come to use it whenever something significant and out of ordinary was taking place: if a pipe burst and a plumber was needed urgently, or if a pregnant neighbor went into labor suddenly. Neighbors loved to stay and chat with Mom long after the telephone conversation was completed. However, when the War broke out, everything changed. Father lost his office, and the telephone was canceled as a luxury. Nobody was in the mood for chatting. The children did not play in the streets anymore. It was not safe.
There was plenty of room for my brother and me to play in our yard. Certain spots there especially intrigued my imagination. In one corner, close to the big, wooden gate, it was always dark and shadowy. The plants did not grow well there for the lack of sunshine. Among stones and bricks, I usually buried my first teeth that kept falling out. My grandma had told me, half-jokingly, that the new teeth would grow strong and healthy if the fallen ones were buried under a rock. I took it seriously and buried them in that corner. Nobody knew about it, I believed. That is where my brother and I built our fortresses and castles. My brother, three years older, showed more talent for architecture. His creations not only looked better but outlived mine.
The woodshed was another spot of interest. I don't know why I found it so fascinating. It was spacious and orderly, with neatly arranged wood and coal for heating. At that time, in every room we had large ceramic, glazed faience stoves that matched in color and design the rest of the room: the color of the drapes, walls and upholstery. In Dad's office, though, there was an iron furnace, pink in color, with silver ornaments, and -- for some reason -- I had developed special attraction to it. It was beautiful, and I have always been sensitive to beauty around me. The kitchen had a large wood-burning stove on which Mama cooked. It was not only efficient, but also pretty as the antique objects tend to be. After the War, it got replaced with another, modern stove. That is where Mom spent many hours cooking her delicious meals for us. I still can remember her red face during the hot summer days. Only now I understand what a sacrifice it was to suffer that doubled heat for us. She never mentioned it, we took it for granted.
There was a wood supply in the shed for at least two years, cut and neatly stored. First were small sticks to start the fire, then larger pieces for the kitchen stove, then logs for the ceramic furnaces. During the War time the wood was scarce like everything else, so -- apart from the necessary cooking -- only the living room was heated. We slept in cold rooms. Mom said it was healthier.
A big chopping block stood in the shed, and it had dark blood stains on it. It is where Mom chopped the heads off chickens. In those times they were not sold frozen like now. We never saw her do that and could hardly imagine our soft and tender Mom that loved everything alive do something as cruel as that. She had told us, off-handedly, once, how -- when she got married -- she could not bring herself to do it. Dad would do it for her, and often some of his clients volunteered. They were farmers, used to that, they would say, smiling, and Mom was too young and beautiful for that kind of work. She was twenty-one when she was married, the only daughter of her aging parents, preceded by three brothers (one of whom had died young). In her parents' home, she had been treated with special love and care, which included a Nazarene discipline, simplicity and hard work.
Mom had been trained to be a perfect wife and mother. When my brother and I were born, she wanted us to have fresh, good food, so she started slaughtering chicken herself. She had a strong motivation then, she said, so it was not that hard, after all. Now, thinking of it, I must smile at how little we understood what she was really saying.
As a child, I used to sit on that chopping block in the woodshed and cry bitterly whenever I felt lonely or hurt. The shed was my refuge in the times of crises. I would go there and whisper to myself, "Nobody loves me, no-o-o-body loves me," dragging it so sadly that, after a while, I started believing in it myself. The bloodstains on the chopping block reminded me of death, and I thought how I was going to kill myself there, since nobody loved me anyway. When "they" found me there, they would understand how much they really missed me, but it would be too late. Those thoughts would come whenever I thought "they" hurt me with what I saw as a smaller piece of cake or a harder chore. I can still remember that, but now I can also remember and understand that the love with which both my brother and I were abundantly enveloped, warmed and nourished, was of unusual quality. It has never been matched in any way after we lost our mother. Soon, we found out that not all children had that luxurious gift either. To this day, that love is still nourishing and protecting us, long after our mother is gone.
There was another spot in our yard that I remember with fondness.
It was a water pump. Mom had told us many times how important water was for the life of living creatures. She also told us, repeatedly, that water is not to be spared if we wanted to be healthy. She always washed fruits and vegetables thoroughly, she always used brilliantly clean white towels in the kitchen and the bathroom. We had two pumps in our yard. One was for the cistern containing the rainwater used for washing, and the other, larger, for the water we used for cooking. Our city did not have running water yet, and to get the water for drinking we had to go about five houses further to the corner of our street. As the youngest member of the family, I was the water carrier. It filled me with pride. After the War, among other things, the city of Novi Sad got the running water. Mom kept both pumps, anyway, especially praising the effect of the soft rainwater on our skin, hair, and the clothes.
I do not know whether it is Mama's influence, but I have always loved water. I played with it, splashing myself lavishly during the hot, summer days. In winter, water would often freeze, although the pump was "dressed" in a heavy straw "coat."
Mama cooked and cleaned and washed by herself. In "better times," however, a certain "wash woman" used to come to do the "big washing." Next to the woodshed, we had a washroom with a furnace and a large copper caldron. Mom always liked her laundry to be boiled, to kill the germs, she would say. Also, her favorite color was white. Everything had to be white: the bedding, our underwear, tablecloths, towels, our clothing, too. She strongly believed that women wearing dark colors were actually lazy, avoiding to wash their clothes often enough.
A day before the "big washing," Mom would collect all the laundry, doilies, drapes, and everything. Early in the morning she would start the fire under the big kettle, homemade soap shredded, melting in the boiling water. The smell of soap lingered around the house, and it unmistakably meant "the big washing." If we had a woman come and help with the washing, Mom cooked a better meal. She always said that the hard-working people needed -- and deserved -- a good, nutritious meal.
That day I would pump and pump water endlessly. It was needed for soaking, washing, rinsing. Mom always repeated that one could not have a hygienic (her favorite word) life, if one was stingy with water. I think I was successfully brain-washed in the spirit, because, much later in life, I still could not order lettuce in a restaurant, doubting that it had been washed properly.
For me, the washdays were a great fun, not only for the soap odor and the feel of complete freshness, but the yard crisscrossed with clotheslines heavily sagging under the clean smelling sheets, tablecloths, and linen. I loved to play a solitary hide-and-seek under them, imagining intricate, exciting adventures taking place in that strangely fragrantly wet maze. Mama's nightgowns and aprons stirred my imagination more than the windmills did Don Quixote's. They were so pretty and feminine otherwise, the embodiment of my mother, sad and dead without her. Her aprons looked cheerful, though, their ruffles dancing in the breeze.
The night after the big washing, we would all fall asleep tired and happy, lulled by the fresh smell of the completely changed and thoroughly cleaned home. Mom always talked about the great feeling of "total cleanness," and later in life, with her already gone, I knew exactly what she meant with that and many other sayings of hers. It felt like re-tracing her inner life, naturally walking in her shoes.
The wash-woman would usually stay till dark. Then, Mother would give her a good dinner and also pack food and clothing for her to take home. I remember the wash-woman's hands while she ate her meals. They were white, washed out, soft and wrinkled. Often they broke and bled. One of the women told us how it made it difficult and painful to wash every day if the hands were constantly breaking. She told us how she had found an inexpensive, simple way to cure them. In the evening, after finishing the washing for the day, she would rinse them again in her own urine. It would heal them and she could wash again the next day. I was shocked. The mixture of sickening nausea and compassion for the woman made it a strong experience that I have never forgotten. The woman did not complain of hard life, did not feel sorry for herself, just felt grateful and relieved for finding a simple, inexpensive cure.
Those colorless, puffy, wrinkled wash-woman's hands reminded me of the other, reverse side of the ginger bread cookies sold at the country fairs. I had been told those pretty dough-hearts, dolls, or horsemen were not to be eaten, just for ornament. And, really, one side was ornate and colorful, the other colorless and wrinkled. Secretly, I tasted the brilliant colors off the surface. Yuck! ... bitter and unpleasant... the colorless part bland and tasteless. Both - disappointing. Is that how things are in life?
The time of the World War II was the time a child should have never had to live in, yet with all the atrocities of War (that war, any war), the children survived and even had beautiful time because of the love by which they were surrounded, enveloped, nourished, and protected.
That goes beyond my mother's courage and love and includes many other adults whose awareness and love protected us (as much as possible) from the evils and cruelties of life and war. In my childhood, at the time, all adults were called "uncles," "aunts," "grandpas" and "grandmas," even if we hardly knew them. It made it much warmer and safer, and rightfully so.
I remember an old woman, small and frail, her back bent with age. Her name was Angelina and everybody called her Baka(Granny) Angelina. She had warm, sparkling blue eyes and a smile on her wrinkled face each time she saw us. She would engage in some small conversation while taking us to her home, opening a big canister, and giving us a cube of sugar. Baka Angelina's smile and that cube of sugar in the middle of the World War II made the War so much smaller and less memorable than her gesture. Fifty five years later, there is a war in Yugoslavia again, a civil war. Children still call adults "uncles," "aunts," "grandpas" and "grandmas," even though they are not related or may not even know each other. On the public transportation I saw adults get up and offer their seat to the parents with little kids, even to the little kids themselves. The old folks would take anybody's child and keep in their lap during the ride. The message is, "Although we are a nation without future (due to the War and politics), this is our only future, our children. They must survive to live in better times." Only love can change the world and heal the wounds of war. Many children, like myself, have survived the WW II and had a good, fulfilling life afterwards, if there had been enough love to counterbalance the horrors and the hardship. There is no doubt that there are angels and I have met some of them in my life. We all have.
During the WW II, at the corner of our small Loncharska street in my native town of Novi Sad, there was a grocery store. It belonged to "Chika Rogulash" (Uncle Rogulash) and his lovely wife. That little shop was one of the most exciting places in my childhood. "Uncle" Rogulash was another adult loved for his limitless goodness. Of course, he was nobody's uncle, but -- at the same time -- he was so much more. The kindness he had spread to the whole neighboring community, especially children, will never be measured, especially as his life was unnaturally severed much before his time.
Uncle Rogulash and his wife lived in a simple house with numerous tenants. They had their small grocery store in one crowded room. The store, nevertheless, served the whole neighborhood and was one of the most fascinated places to capture a child's fancy. For a child of my age (with an imagination always ready to be flared), all the grocery stores had an unexplainable magic around them. I will never know exactly why, but the immense variety of the items stored in them and the unusual concoction of the resulting odor have something to do with it. Those old fashioned grocery stores carried practically anything a human being may have needed or wanted, which is much more than the name promised. I felt that Uncle Rogulash's store offered the abundance of exciting things worth years of my exploration. Much of that was stored in big, open sacks: sugar came either in cubes, crystal, or in powder form; there was also salt, flour, rice, as well as all kinds of herbs and spices that added to the aroma of the exotic. How Uncle Rogulash knew what he actually had in there and where to look for it, I never could figure out.
The store was neatly arranged, though crowded and packed with unrelated items such as calico cloth, velvet ribbons, lace trimmings and threads of all kinds and colors. There were all kinds and sizes of nails, screws, bolts and tools -- from tiny to huge -- hammers, wrenches and keys, a rich array of plates, dishes, pots and pans. All of this was more than a child's imagination could peacefully take.
The store smelled so strangely, yet so friendly, invitingly and, somehow, faintly familiar, like in a dream. Even the word "grocery, grocery, grocery" had something magic, promising and not quite revealing in it. Of course I was eager to go there, with my mom and by myself. I have not even started telling you why I really, I mean really, and absolutely, had to go there. One reason, of course, was that -- after I bought what Mama had wanted -- I could keep the change. But there was another reason too.
Uncle Rogulash had a strange looking "foreign machine" filled with the most desirable objects that a child could fancy. He called it an "automate." Since I did not know what it meant, I was fascinated by it, free to imagine anything. That machine would swallow my coin and after long gurgling, shaking, and decision-making (on the part of the machine) and sweaty, palpitating anticipation (on mine), it would spit out a charming little ring, a pair of precious "golden" earrings, or a bright colored marble, a little car, or something similar.
What will it choose to give me? My heart raced with excitement and apprehension, because there was no telling. Each time, the old machine would shake and cough, gurgle and spit, just like any other old folk. This one, however, gave you a scary feeling of gambling with all you had on one side and all you wished for on the other. And that is what real gambling is all about.
Sometimes I would get a marble. Then I was truly sad. I took this gambling quite cosmically. What did I do wrong, lately, to deserve this? Of course, yes, I did fight with my brother over his peace of cake, but it was bigger than mine. When we fought, I made sure he was not clearly a winner. I scratched him so ferociously that he usually quit.
Eternal cosmic questions of human condition always interested me, of course, but there was this machine in Uncle Rogulash's store that kept my attention. I was eager to go there and, therefore, I was such a good, always-ready, Mama's helper. There was always hope, always a chance to get exactly what I wanted, not any of those useless boys' gifts. If we are watched from the above, as Mom says, and our thoughts are known, too, why do I get wrong things? Life is either altogether unfair, or I must have done something wrong. I had poured my milk into the sink when Mom turned her back to me, the other day, in the kitchen, but I hate milk. It always gets this slimy crust of cream on the top, and I hate when it slithers down my throat.
Whenever I got those boys' gifts from the machine, I could give them to my brother, of course, and I eventually had to do so, but I had given my coin for it and I needed a ring!!! I resented the unfairness in life and its distribution throughout the world since an early age. At that point, I had not reached the stage of altruism yet, where giving was expected to make me happier than receiving.
After all, what I had received was my fortune, not my brother's. One cannot trade or give up one's fortune, can one? With all of these complex issues, there was one more chance involved there, too. When Uncle Rogulash was not busy with other customers in the store, and if the Providence had been in bad mood on that particular day, insensitive to my needs, that is, so that I got another stupid marble or a car, Uncle Rogulash would (like a Deus ex Machina) open the machine and take out just what I wanted. The first time he did it, I was flabbergasted. I did not know one could do that. Even later, when repeated, it felt strange. Not quite right. As if cheating on one's destiny, and, yet, there was only one thing I really wanted and had use for: a ring! It seemed, with a Providence, you never knew. With Uncle Rogulash, it was much simpler. He cared, and gave me exactly what I wanted. The Providence either did not always care, or was busy somewhere else. That was annoying at times, but also exciting.
There was a reason why I wanted only one thing. Apart from the golden rings (with a choice of a ruby or a sapphire in them), there were already mentioned earrings. They were pretty: gold with three little "precious" gems: red or blue. But, they were designed for pierced ears, and my ears were not pierced. That was rather unusual, because almost all girls around me had pierced ears. If not in the city where we lived, but definitely so in the country where my grandparents lived. That was the thing to do at child's birth. And the tradition was for the grandparents to buy those first earrings: with three rubies for a brunette, or the sapphires for a blonde, just like those in Uncle Rogulash's machine. Later in life, with luck (or some kind of skill) the girl may hope to get genuine diamond earrings.
My grandma wanted for me to have pierced ears, but my mother didn't let that happen. She didn't want her baby painfully pierced for such a barbaric reason. Her ears were not pierced either. (People of the Nazarene faith did not foster vanity). At that point I did not have a say in the matter, and so, years later, there was only one gift in Uncle Rogulash's machine that I was looking for -- a ring! Through the years my grandma sometimes commented, on the side, about the "new generation of mothers" and "new, city customs," that ignored good, old traditions of ear-piercing at birth.
Uncle Rogulash was a good man and a grateful neighbor, for ever in debt to my mother for teaching his young wife to make his favorite poppy-seed strudel. He solved our family across-the-generations problem by simply giving me what I wished.
But, that too stopped with the War. Rogulash family was one among the first to disappear in the bloody "razzia," during the savagely cold, snowy winter of 1941. Brutally expelled from their beds in the dawn of a frosty morning, hardly dressed at all, they were led -- with many others -- to the bank of the Danube, where they were shot and thrown into the wholes cut in the ice of the solid frozen river. Many people, too old, too young, or too weak to walk, were shot on the way and left in the snow.
"Razzia" lasted a week or less. People had been ordered, in advance, to stay in their homes with the drapes down. When, after a week, they were allowed to come out, there were almost all Jews and many, many Serbs missing from their homes, their property "confiscated". Some blood stains and human brains were still left in the snow, in spite of the careful but hurried cleaning that took place before the "razzia" ended.
That action had probably been taken to instill fear and subordination in people. Soon, it was officially acknowledged as a political mistake. The Hungarian government saw Vojvodina and some other parts of Yugoslavia as "historically" Hungarian, since they were part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy earlier, joined into newly formed Yugoslavia after the World War One. "Razzia" was explained as the "cleansing of the country from the politically inimical element." The truth stays: it was an inexplicably bloody and unnecessary massacre of the peaceful, helpless citizens, and it left them in fear and terror. Atrocities like these were a common place during the occupation in the World War II in other parts of Europe as well.
I was too young to understand any political implications, and Mama bravely tried to conceal the horrible truth from us. While the sounds of the soldiers' boots were heard approaching on the frozen ground that infamous morning, Mom told us to crawl under the bed and stay there hidden, just like when we play hide-and-seek. We were not to -- by any means -- go to the door with her, if we hear the bell. We did not ask too many questions, but I, the curious one, had to peek through the blinds. What I saw then, did not resemble any hide-and-seek play.
The following spring, when the Danube thawed, the masses of decomposed human bodies slowly floated towards the Black Sea, some of them caught in the bushes and twigs along the riverbanks. Those swollen, dehumanized carcasses, white as the wash-woman's hands, stayed in my childhood memories as the images of War, together with the bloody snow and my dad's sad eyes on a smiling face behind the barbed wire.
When we were sick with usual childhood ailments, Mama would use all the natural home remedies known in our culture's rich tradition from chicken noodle soup to chamomile tea to home made plum brandy instead of the rubbing alcohol. We would stay in bed, and she still had to get the groceries, cook our meals, wash and clean. To keep us entertained while in bed, she would give us books and we practically learned to read by ourselves, much before we ever went to school. There were some miniature objects in her vitrine that I had the right to play with only when I was sick in bed. One of them represented a little girl of my age sitting on a large potty. A golden coin was coming out of her little bottom where something else would commonly be expected. The figurine was made of white porcelain and was really cute. I have always identified with that figurine, for obvious reasons. I still have it in my vitrine now, but the golden coin is missing. I vaguely remember being the one who had thought the coin was "real" and broke it off.
Another valuable object that my mother cherished and carefully cleaned during her dusting rituals was a lovely rose made of fine German china. I have it in my vitrine now, the gentle pink of the petals reminding me of my mother's delicate skin. My mother. The woman I have loved most in my life, the woman who gave me life, the woman whose life I almost took. I do not mean at childbirth, although it must have been terrible. Heavy with me, she had fallen on the ice at the door of her in-laws' home and broke her leg. For ten days, as a part of her body, I shared the pain with my mother, then was born a week prematurely. My mother had no milk for me as she had had for my brother, three years before. Since then, things did not come easily to me in life, but I have enjoyed them more.
Only things we love can kill us, claimed John Galsworthy in The Forsythe Saga. And I believe it. I would say, tragically, it is also true that we kill what we love. Usually, through ignorance. At least that is how I almost killed my mother. Had her killed, rather. Definitely added to her hardship during the War. Here is how it happened.
At the corner of our street, across from the Uncle Rogulash's building, there was a house with several tenants. The apartment facing the street belonged to a fat, middle aged Hungarian woman. I did not know, at the time, that she was Hungarian, because we never labeled people by their nationality, before the War. In this case, however, it has been crucial. That woman spent her time sitting at the window, framed in it, her fleshy, doughy breasts displayed on the window sill, filling the whole space. I could see her there whenever I left home, and she was still there when I returned. For a child of my age, that was nothing to think about.
One day she stopped me to talk to me. I felt flattered. Among other things, she asked me about my parents and what they thought about "everything." "Everything" meant Occupation, of course. That much I knew. But all those new, long and sophisticated words had no meaning for me. I had just started the first grade when we were taught: "The head of our country, Yugoslavia, is King Peter." Then I got pneumonia, chicken pox, measles and some other children diseases, so I never finished the first grade. Since I could read and write well, and I knew my math, they enrolled me in the second grade the next fall. The first thing they taught us was: "The head of our country, Hungary, is Horthy Miklos." I hardly noticed the difference. It came later. I was mostly absorbed in studying our new teacher: she wore black silk dress, black high-heeled, laced boots, and never smiled. Her favorite pedagogical tool was a bamboo cane, and she used it often. All the students had to sit with their arms crossed behind their back and talked only when asked. If they forgot that, the bamboo cane was used on the hands for the girls, on the bottom for the boys.
The change from King Peter II to Horthy Miklos meant the War, the Occupation, concentration camps, regular bombing, rationed food, and razzia. We soon learned, too, that it also meant staying inconspicuous, not speaking Serbian in public, in order to survive.
I was too young to comprehend it all. Too naive to recognize the Wolf that looked more like Grandma. I thought grandmas were warm and loving like my Grandma, like Baka Angelina. Being a typical Red Riding Hood, I made a mistake.
To show off, I took the time to explain to the neighbor that Dad was not at home with us, which was bad, but it was not going to last long. "It won't last long," had been the favorite saying of the people around me. That is what I heard when the adults talked about the War, the Occupation, the hardship. The magic formula for the oppressed. If your life consisted of fear and hope, the latter kept you going. The woman asked me what I meant. "Well, the Americans will liberate us, of course," I explained. "And the partisans," I added, feeling smart and important.
The word "partisan" was another sophisticated word used by adults, only in whispers, meaning the underground liberation movement (as the history books called it later) or the communist bandits (as the occupational forces called them at the time). Actually, most of the time partisans were local people, ordinary people, who had to flee their homes in order to survive. They had no other shelter but the mountains and forests in which to hide, summer or winter alike. They would sometimes try to visit their homes during the night, would be caught, tortured to betray the others and, eventually, killed. In other cases, they would just visit homes of their relatives, friends, and acquaintances (at a great risk for all involved), in order to hear about their loved ones, maybe get some food, medication, or clean clothing. Most of the time that was not possible either. Some of my father's pre-war clients and acquaintances from the villages in the area were "partisans". They were farmers, often not educated nor interested in politics. They did not necessarily know what communism meant. Those who survived, learned later. During the war they would come in the dark, eat, sometimes stay overnight, sleep lightly, fully dressed, then quietly disappear. They must have loved children, because they would hold me on their knees, tell silly jokes to make me laugh, while their eyes stayed sad like in a hunted animal. Often, they would comment how good it was that our home had two exits to two different streets.
When I mentioned "partisans" to our neighbor, I still was not sure what I meant, I just wanted her to know I was not a little kid, but an adult who knew everything. Soon, I forgot the conversation, since I never thought it was of any importance.
After a while, Mom received an official, registered letter from the Court in Hungary, called "Curia." She was charged with conspiracy against the state, collaboration with partisans, and the adverse political activity. This was a very serious charge. People were disappearing overnight, killed for much less than that. Mother thought and thought, worried endlessly, and could not understand the accusations. She has not been interested in politics ever in her life. Then, she asked my brother and me if we had talked to anyone about such matters. We denied readily. She did not tell us any details, trying to spare us, as always, so we did not quite understand it. Silently, she was hastily making arrangements to go to the city of Szegedin in Hungary. She borrowed a decent-looking suitcase, took her best clothes and had our father's colleague, an attorney, accompany her. He spoke Hungarian fluently and was married to a lady of German origin. During the War, that put him in better standing. His wife was a washed-out, skinny blonde with a nasty temper, quite unpopular. His friends were joking that he needed a war to finally get some use out of her.
Now, he was worried about the charges and told Mom he did not expect anything good. It sounded like a common practice: a false accusation of a political nature, the culprits ending in jail, the property confiscated and looted, the informers, like stray dogs, given small bones to keep quiet. He was hoping, against all odds, that the trial would show the accusations as malicious, false, and with an ulterior motive; our Mother as a peaceful citizen, socially not in the same category with the informant, minding her own business and her family, and without any political involvement. He insisted that Mom dressed elegantly with her beautiful blonde hair styled in the latest fashion, nails manicured, to project an image of a young, attractive, attorney's wife with no care in the world but her family and her looks. The informant, a fat, sloppy big-mouth woman with a shady source of income and no job, he hoped, would do herself in without anybody's help.
Always thinking about her children first, I am sure Mom listened carefully and put all her abilities together. She must have prayed earnestly. Her love and faith, and the fact that she had not done anything illegal, must have given her strength. She felt innocently accused, especially as she did not know where it all started. And so, she was packing to go, and -- unusually quiet -- I was following her around like a shadow.
The morning she left we were still in bed. It was dark and very early. When she leaned over my little bed to kiss me, my heart stopped. I was speechless. There was nothing to say. Dark, heavy, unclear but ever-present guilt enveloped me. Then, she was gone and our home grew strangely and empty without her. I prayed. I prayed hard with all my power, sincerely and earnestly, promising God to be good for the rest of my life. Just bring Mom back, God, please. Just bring Mom back.
The days that followed, oblique and shapeless, were spent in waiting and worrying.
Then, all of a sudden, she was back. We will never quite understand our luck. A miracle it was, a miracle! She was at home again! Acquitted of all political charges, since there was no evidence of any kind. Some accusations were actually turned to her favor: the fact that she was often heard happily singing Serbian songs. The judges saw it as her contentment with life and the overall situation, as opposed to the unreasonable malice of the neighbor. Mom explained that she sang all the songs she knew, some of them even Hungarian, but in her mother tongue, the only language she practiced. Her goal, of a mother, had been to raise her children as healthy and happy. The judges actually paid her compliments for that. She had to pay all the court expenses, though, and was not aloud to travel without notifying the police. She also had to report to the local police weekly. But, she was alive and free! Our life went back to normal again.
Pretty soon, in the blissful happiness of her return, I forgot what I had done and never told her the truth. The memory of my guilt was securely locked in the dark, inaccessible cell of my mind, together with the swollen corpses afloat the Danube River and my father's sad eyes behind the barbed wire. When Mama died and I started reliving our times together, many details sprang to life. The memory of my guilt returned, this time much clearer.
Now, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I feel obliged to tell you the truth: for others to learn, for me to earn forgiveness.