Ancient Furies

by Anastasia V. Saporito

  “Oh, please shut up,” I snapped, remembering what had just happened in the shade.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Do you miss school so much that it makes you bad-tempered? Don’t worry, it’ll open again soon.” Kolya smiled. “What’s the matter, Asya? You’re so tense. Has something happened?”

  I remained silent, and Kolya shook his head and rose to go out and sit under the tree to read. In a few minutes I heard voices and went to the window to see Kristina sitting with him and talking. In just a moment Kolya came back into the house.

  “Asya, why don’t we just walk around the garden a bit?”

  “All right.”

  “I know what happened in the park today. Kristina told me everything. It’s such a terrible way of finding out. Sooner or later you would find out, of course, but I’m so sorry that it happened this way. The world is full of bad people. I’m so sorry it happened in such a cruel way. I wish I had been there to beat his brains out.”

  I looked at Kolya, remembering his head wound and the talk we had. I thought again how nice he had become, suddenly surprised to realize this was the same boy who had taken coins from my bank as a bribe to play games only a few years earlier. I was just twelve years old, and Kolya had not yet turned seventeen. We had grown together and had both matured rapidly over the past few months. I had never paid any attention to him, and now I felt that we had become friends. Somehow this terrible war had brought us together, given us a chance to know each other better.

  “Are we friends again, Asya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go to the beach tomorrow and see what the murky old Danube looks like. What do you say?”

  “I’ll ask Papa. I’m sure he’ll let me go as long as I don’t go alone.”

  The next morning my period started, and when we arrived at the beach I remained dressed in spite of the heat. Kolya jumped into the water immediately.

  “Hey,” he called, “are you going to bake until you’re crisp and then jump in the water?”

  “I’m not going in the water today,” I said, feeling a blush come over my face.

  While Kolya was swimming, my thoughts kept drifting back to the frightening event in the park. I could not reconcile the two apparent extremes I had experienced: the man on the bench, a Serb, a fellow Yugoslavian, who had frightened me and acted so disgustingly, and the German officer, one of the “merciless invaders” responsible for the death and destruction now all around us, but who had been so kind and gentlemanly. It would not be the last time I found myself trying to understand and reconcile the differences in people.

  Kolya came out of the water and sat next to me without saying a word except to suggest that I put on a wide hat because of the sun. We talked briefly between his trips to the water to swim. He never asked why I wasn’t swimming, but probably thought it was due to the episode in the park. He knew how much I loved to swim—how I was always the first one in even when the water was icy cold—and I was terribly embarrassed wondering if he understood. I would never have an opportunity to ask him.

  Kolya came to the house the following morning to ask if I would like to go to Kalamegdon for the day. Uncle Borya was talking to Mother and Father when I returned home that afternoon.

  “Where have you been, Asinka?” Mother asked.

  “At Kalamegdon, looking at the animals and walking.”

  “Did you go alone?”

  “No, Mama, Kolya and I went together. There were lots of people. It was more crowded than usual, but we didn’t see any friends, perhaps because it was so hot.” I was surprised. Mother had never asked about my activities before, and it puzzled me.

  Borya stayed for dinner as usual, and I excused myself as we finished, going to my room to study. Although school had ceased, Mother insisted that I continue reading in both German and English each evening. After Borya had left, Mother knocked and came into my room to sit on the bed.

  “Asya, dear, when was the last time you had your period?”

  “Yesterday and today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why, Mama, how could I not be sure of something like that?”

  “All right,” she said with a gentle smile. “Goodnight, dear, and sleep well.”

  I lay on my bed for a long time, wondering why Mother had suddenly developed this interest. She had never before even indicated that she knew that my period had started, had never mentioned anything to me. I could hear Kristina still cleaning up in the kitchen, and I went to ask if she had any idea why Mother had seemed so interested.

  “Well, there are so many troops in town . . . and you and Kolya have been seeing a lot of each other lately . . . and . . . I suppose that she is a little worried.”

  “Worried about what?” I asked impatiently. “What could troops and Kolya possibly have to do with me having my period or not?”

  “Come on,” Kristina said gently. “Let’s go to my room, and I’ll try to explain.”

  I sat on the bed, wide-eyed, awaiting the explanation from Kristina.

  “You see, dear, your period is a sign that you are passing from childhood to womanhood.” She paused, grasping for words. Obviously uncomfortable, she began again, only to pause again.

  “All right, Kristina, so now that my period has started, I’m no longer a child. Sometimes it seems to me that I was never a child. Besides, you told me all of this before, remember? What I want to know is just what troops and Kolya have to do with all this?”

  “Oh, dear. You see, God has made us in such a way that when we no longer have our period, then it’s usually a sign that God loves us and that He has chosen us to have a baby.”

  Kristina paused again, uncertain of how to continue; not knowing how well any of it sounded, she looked at me rather helplessly. By then, of course, I was more puzzled than ever.

  “Is that true, Kristina? If God loves us, then He sends us a sign? He terminates our period, and that way we know He is going to give us a baby?”

  I was thunderstruck. Deep in thought, remembering when I had seen women who were fat and that Mama had said were going to have a baby.

  “Will I get fat, too? I hate to be fat. You mean when my period stops, I’m going to get fat and have a baby?”

  “Yes.” Kristina shifted uncomfortably, realizing that she had confused me completely without really explaining anything. “Well, let’s not think about all this now. When the time comes, you’ll find out a lot of things, but in the meantime you just forget about everything.”

  Dear Kristina, my confidante, my substitute mother. She hurried from the room, leaving me mystified. If God loves you very much, I reasoned, then He chooses you to have a baby . . . and to let you know, he stops your period. Well, that sounds all right, I think. I fell asleep still wondering what any of this had to do with troops and Kolya.

  June 22, 1941: Operation Barbarossa began as German troops crossed the border and launched a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union, breaking the Soviet-German nonaggression pact without warning.

  July 20, 1941: Prime Minister Winston Churchill began his famous “V for Victory” campaign during a radio broadcast heard in the countries of Europe already involved in the war. The first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are a tonal representation of three dots and a dash—Morse code for V—and always introduced the news broadcast of the BBC. The sign was quickly picked up by the Allied countries of Europe.

  My unfortunate event in the park did not reduce my determination to walk through Belgrade as much as possible, and each time Mother left to attend a funeral I took the trolley into the city center. I made sure that I was not in a position to be alone with any strangers, staying only in areas that had many civilians, and leaving if other people began to leave. The German army had taken over many of the buildings for various purposes, but they hadn’t changed anything. I simply wandered about the city, careful to avoid any contact with the soldiers who were seen almost everywhere.

  August 30, 1941: German forces began th
e siege of Stalingrad.

  September 6, 1941: Germany issued an order requiring all Jews over the age of six in Germany and all Nazi-occupied countries to wear the Star of David on their arm.

  The next few months flew by. I turned thirteen, and on my Name Day that year Mother gave me a small icon to be placed on my night table, next to my bed. Autumn turned quickly into winter without any sense of the passage of time, at least for me.

  December 7, 1941: The Empire of Japan suddenly, without warning and without a declaration of war, attacked the United States at sunrise as wave after wave of Japanese carrier-based planes bombed the U.S. Navy fleet lying at anchor at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.

  December 8, 1941: The United States declared war on Japan.

  Without the regularity of school and church and family dinners, time simply seemed to stop for me, to be replaced with endless boredom. Mother continued the language calendar, but French was eliminated, and English became the language of the day three days each week. Mother insisted that English and German were the languages I was to concentrate on.

  I read a French book that winter, surprised that I had forgotten so much. Mother’s efforts however, seemed to reawaken my eagerness to learn, and I read voraciously in German and English. When Mother spoke English, she sounded exactly like Miss Spencer, and I looked forward to practicing with her.

  December 11, 1941: Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and the United States quickly reciprocated.

  January 20, 1942: A small group of men in Berlin sat down at a meeting which had been called by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi Security Service and Security Police. The meeting was held at a large villa that overlooked Lake Wannsee, and this has since been called the Wannsee Conference.

  A memorandum to all ss officers sent by Heydrich five days after the conference was headed “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” and stated that “all preparatory work is completed.” Following this conference, the whole Nazi apparatus, particularly the ss, became involved in the systematic killing of European Jews. Historians still debate the real importance of the conference. Most historians agree that the mass killing of Jews had been set in motion by Hitler himself months earlier.

  In March 1942, the German occupation announced that a branch of Munich University would soon open in Belgrade and that all German-speaking people with an appropriate scholastic background were encouraged to attend the Deutsche Wissenschaft Akademie—München (the German Academy of Higher Studies—Munich).

  My parents decided that I should enroll, and I readily agreed. In fact, I would have looked forward to anything that offered an opportunity to learn and that promised a break in the boredom that had settled on me with the occupation. My enrollment, however, was postponed, as our family began a downward spiral from which it would never recover.

  One bright morning, Mother sat at the piano playing one of her favorite pieces. It had become my favorite as well, and I sat on the floor, my knees drawn up and my hands clasped around them, leaning against one of the legs of the piano with my eyes closed, completely lost in the soft passages of Schubert’s Serenade.

  Suddenly someone pounded on the front door. Father motioned for Mother and me to remain seated as he rose to answer the door.

  “Sir,” a German officer said as he brushed past Father, “this house has been requisitioned. It is now the property of the Third Reich. It will be returned to you when the Reich has no further need of it, but you are to vacate the premises immediately.”

  The officer handed Father a piece of paper, as a soldier who accompanied him pasted a large sign across the front door—“Beschlagnahmt.” We tried desperately to gather a few things together. The officer held up one hand to stop the activity and addressed us.

  “You are to take only those personal toilet articles and clothing which you can carry. And you are to leave immediately.”

  Mother faced him, now almost in tears.

  “Do you realize that my father shipped most of these things to Switzerland even before the Russian Revolution? It took us years to gather everything together and to make a new home here. And now you want us to just get out? What kind of people are you? What assurance do we have that when you leave, all these things will still be here?”

  “None, Madame,” he replied with utmost politeness. “But my orders are that you are to leave the premises immediately with only those personal articles which you can carry.”

  No reasoning, no pleading, no tears—nothing helped. Aunt ’Lyena begged without success to take the stamp collection she had begun so many years before at Kotchubeyevka and which filled a large album. We simply walked out with a change of clothing and the few toilet articles—soap, toothbrush, comb, etc. —that we were able to grab; out to the street where Father tried to console Mother and Aunt ’Lyena, and to assure us that everything would work out—we would all be fine, we would manage. But his customary “Everything is in order” rang hollow.

  We walked to the trolley line to get the next trolley into Belgrade where Father stopped to speak to an acquaintance—someone he knew from his associations at Russkii Dom—where he obtained the key to a vacant apartment. The owners were out of the city temporarily, and we would be able to stay in the apartment for about two weeks. Long enough, Father assured everyone, to find more permanent housing. The apartment was small, but clean and orderly. Aunt ’Lyena voiced the only concern when she complained gently that there was not even one icon to be found in any of the rooms.

  Father’s time was spent trying to find a place for us to live. At the end of our two weeks, he announced that there simply wasn’t a vacant apartment to be found and that we would move the next day to stay at the house in Yaintse until something could be found in the city.

  Father was permitting acquaintances from Russkii Dom, whose homes had been damaged by the intensive bombing, to use the house at Yaintse until they found other accommodations in the city. When we arrived, I found that three couples were occupying space in the living room, and two other couples were in the “attic,” an unfinished place below the rafters where a rough floor had been laid, reached from a ladder in the living room. I gave my bed to Kristina and again curled up on my windowsill.

  We were not as crowded as we had been during the bombing of Belgrade. The house was large enough to accommodate all of us without undue stress, and everyone made the best of the situation. I continued practicing English with Mother, studying, and reading—rereading—the books we had brought to Yaintse.

  A few soldiers remained to occupy the police station. However, most of the Germans had long ago moved on to Belgrade, and I felt secure enough to resume at least short walks through the village. By May, the fields had been planted and green sprouts were everywhere in view. The small meadow adjacent to the house was lush with spring flowers, and if the house began to feel crowded, I could spend hours lying in a quiet spot watching fluffy clouds, building dreams from them. Those hours allowed me to completely forget the war and the difficulties of the occupation.

  I was content in Yaintse, but the time wore heavily on my parents. Without her piano and her friends to talk to, Mother grew depressed and more and more irritable. With the police chief gone, and the station now used as the local occupation office, Mother no longer had access to the bathroom and running water, which had helped to make Yaintse at least tolerable for her. The farm couple below us, Mirko and Jovanka, did not have inside plumbing, nor did most of the village. Father, concerned for us all, rose early each morning to leave for Belgrade and continue searching for a suitable apartment. By the end of May he had found a place, and we all looked forward to returning to something closer to a private family life.

  TWELVE

  Jovan

  June 10, 1942: In Lidiče, Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo massacred 175 men and leveled the village in retaliation for the killing of a Nazi officer. Reinhard Heydrich, infamous for his persecution of Jews, had been wounded in a grenade attack on his car on May 27 and died on
June 4.

  In the first week of June 1942 we moved to an apartment that Father had found on Kralia Milutina Street, not far from the central plaza of Belgrade. It was a convenient location and a pleasant place. It even housed a piano that Mother would be able to play. Two separate rooms had been rented to two men, but they never interacted with us. We had three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small sitting room, and in the beginning Mother seemed to be quite content, almost happy again. While we no longer entertained or had guests for dinner, our friends often dropped in to have tea and whatever Kristina had to offer. Aunt Lyalya stopped by regularly, and Uncle Borya continued to be a fixture.

  We spent weekends in Yaintse, and in the city Mother, Aunt ’Lyena, and I began daily visits to a large hospital some distance from the apartment. We went first to visit friends who had been hospitalized due to illness or injury, and then, seeing a need, to read letters, newspapers, or even books to anyone who asked. Soon, however, Mother became more withdrawn. Aunt ’Lyena had changed little, but she also seemed unable to help. I asked only once if she knew what was wrong.

  “Aunt ’Lyena, what’s bothering Mama? I know things are not as nice, but we’re all well and together.”

  “It isn’t aaaaanything speeecial, dear. It’s ooour situation, our faaamily. Eveeerything is faaaling aaapaaart.” She began to cry. The question upset poor Aunt ’Lyena so much that I could never bring myself to ask again about Mother.

  I don’t think Father ever worked at a regular job since leaving the army at the end of the revolution. Throughout my childhood, both Mother and Father were simply together, unless Mother was at the stables and/or Father at Russkii Dom. We were not wealthy by any means, but there was never any apparent concern for expenses. Looking back, I believe that Mother’s parents had established an account in Switzerland that would accommodate her education expenses, personal needs, travel, etc., probably sufficient to include anticipated university expenses, and that she was able to access the account once settled in Belgrade. Access to the account may have been stopped by the invasion and occupation, or perhaps the funds had been depleted by the purchase of our home in Dedinye pending the sale of our home on Dr. Kester Street, which had been delayed by the war.