Ancient Furies

by Anastasia V. Saporito

  The following week, when I turned fourteen, Father told me quietly that we would be moving in a few days. He still steadfastly refused ever to discuss finances within my hearing, and I did not understand his apparent embarrassment. His usual “Everything is in order—no need for concern” was not at all convincing, but I tried to act as though there were indeed no need for concern.

  “Asinka,” he continued gently, his hand on my shoulder, “Mama is very upset because of the occupation, so very worried about many things. Please try to help her . . . to spend some time with her.”

  “Papa, I try, but she always waves me away. She has just shut me out.”

  The next week Father led us to an old garage in Belgrade—an automobile repair complex—closed since the beginning of the German occupation. We entered through wooden doors built to accommodate trucks, to find a very large, open area with a high roof covering repair stalls.

  Father closed and barred the wooden doors and showed us a regular-sized door built into one of the large doors, which could be locked and through which we would enter. The central repair area was surrounded by a narrow, one-story part of the building that had been divided into separate rooms originally meant for various business purposes—toilets for customers and mechanics, and several rooms that formerly held parts and supplies.

  On one side of the open repair area we found the three connected rooms which were to be our home and which adjoined the former main office of the garage. One room, apparently a former waiting room for customers, held some old office furniture, a couch, a desk, a couple of extra chairs, and a small two-burner kerosene stove. Two large windows viewed the repair area, and a rusted iron cot lacking a mattress stood in one corner. A toilet and sink occupied a closet in another corner of this main room. Two other small rooms each held a rusty old iron bed without a mattress.

  Father located mattresses someplace, and we settled in to make the best of it—Mother and Father in one “bedroom,” Aunt ’Lyena and I in the other, and Kristina on the couch in the adjoining main office area. Aunt ’Lyena prepared to settle on a mattress on the floor, but I insisted that I would prefer the floor and that she must take the bed. The next day, it was decided that Aunt ’Lyena should move to the house in Yaintse.

  The day after we took her to Yaintse, I returned from a short walk to find that Kristina had left. She had chosen to slip away while I was gone because she knew that neither of us could bear to say good-bye. Mother told me that she had returned to her family in Slovenia, since there was so little room and since she was no longer needed as before. Kristina’s departure filled me with overwhelming sadness, but I would soon miss her more than even I thought possible.

  The first few weeks in the garage must have had a terribly depressing effect on my parents, but I took it in stride. The garage itself and the repair area smelled strongly of automobile grease and oil and gasoline—smells that were new to me—and I found it very exciting to explore the cars and trucks that stood about in various stages of repair when the invasion had halted everything.

  No kerosene was available to us or to anyone else at that time in Belgrade, and the weather was growing colder. Mother had changed a great deal since the start of the war. So had Father. When we moved to the garage complex he stopped working, concerned about leaving Mother and me alone in the garage at night. Without electricity we had to rely on carbide lamps for light, and they had to be dismantled and cleaned after each use. The mess, but mostly the horrible smell when they were cleaned, was something I didn’t think would ever leave my senses.

  The hospital that Mother and I had started visiting was only about a block away. Mother joined me again in visiting the sick, and our daily visits kept us both occupied. By the third week, however, the reality of our situation began to wear on her. Our new living quarters did not provide even the illusion of a home, of course. In early November Mother began to complain about the garage and to suffer from constant headaches. She spent more and more time at von Der Nonne’s riding academy, tending Silva, frequently spending the night. Father was gone all day, usually returning just after dark, just at dinnertime.

  The weather was still quite warm, and I went swimming at Gypsy Island as often as possible. Perhaps as a result, I became deathly ill. I came home from an afternoon at Gypsy Island feeling very weak and hot. I went to my room to lie down and stretched my hand to touch the coolness of the concrete floor. I awoke for a few moments to see Mother looking at me with concern and Father looking beside himself with worry as he applied a cool cloth to my forehead.

  “She’s burning up with fever,” I heard him say before drifting off again.

  Father contacted our doctor, who came to the garage that evening.

  “Vasilii Metrofan’ich,” the doctor said when he had examined me, “your daughter is very ill. She has a very high temperature that we must bring down right away. She has pleurisy, and the concrete floors here aggravate her condition. She is badly underweight, and I suspect that she is anemic, though we would need a few tests to be sure. The temperature we can deal with without difficulty, but as for the rest . . . These times are harder on children, you know. They become discouraged and saddened, and everything is magnified.”

  I heard Father start to respond, but I drifted off into sleep or semiconsciousness again without understanding. Children, of course, are often far more resilient than adults believe them to be. By the following morning the fever had broken, but I remained so weak that I had to remain in bed for several days. My chest hurt so badly I could not draw a deep breath. Father hovered about me when he was home. He looked so worried that I tried desperately to get better for his sake.

  Mother remained at home with me while I struggled to recover, but it seemed to me that when she was not quietly weeping and even more distant than before, she was angry and vindictive.

  “How could you be so irresponsible? How could you do this to us? Running around Belgrade without a sweater when the weather is chilly. And swimming in November! Now we have additional worries—and more expense for medicines.”

  I wanted desperately to be well enough to resume my walks and trolley rides through Belgrade, but instead I grew weaker and began to be withdrawn and distant myself. Father was both attentive and affectionate. When he was at home he tried again and again to rouse me, to cheer me up, with his old Gogol-Mogul eggnog.

  “Here we are, Asinka. Gogol-Mogul,” he said. “Just like the old days on Dr. Kester Street, only better. Now drink it all down. We have to get some weight on you. You’ve gotten so skinny you can’t even make a puzik for me anymore.”

  His remark brought back a special memory and made both of us smile warmly. As a child of perhaps four or five, as I walked about in our home on Dr. Kester Street, Mother, always concerned about my posture, would watch me and gently say, “Hold your head erect, Anochka, shoulders back and straight. And pull your tummy in. It should be flat.” I would always correct myself for Mother, but as I left the room, I would pout and shamefully push my small stomach out as far as I could. If I encountered Father in the next room, he would always smile broadly, saying, “Ah, ha, my little Puzik” (a Russian diminutive for ‘fat, little belly’) as he snapped his finger against my belly, and I giggled as I pulled it in and rushed for a quick hug.

  “Thank you, Papa. It is good, and I wish we were all back on Dr. Kester Street.”

  Father’s eggnogs did the trick, at least partially. I was much stronger physically by the following week, but couldn’t shake the sadness and silence I had slipped into, and Father’s concern deepened. I don’t know how he arranged it, but on a warm sunny morning in November he happily told me that he had spoken to the German officers who had requisitioned our home in Dedinye and had received permission for me to spend the day on the sun porch.

  The house looked exactly the same except for the German staff car in front. The yard was just as lovely. The flowers were few and faded with the onset of fall, but the trees were still colorful and bright, and the light
in the autumn was rather special. As we approached the door, Father explained the ground rules for my visit.

  “Now remember, Asinka, the Colonel was very good to allow you to spend the day, but you can’t go through the house or even to your room since everything is occupied by the officers now. You can only stay on the sun porch. But it’s a beautiful day, and you will be able to rest quietly.”

  “Yes, Papa. I’m sure it will be nice.”

  Father rang the bell, and an officer let us into the house. Father went with me, through the kitchen, past the door to Kristina’s room, and up the few steps to the sun porch.

  “Ah,” he said, “it is so beautiful up here. Now you rest, and I’ll be back to pick you up this afternoon.”

  Father settled me on a chaise lounge facing the windows that the sun streamed through, and we embraced and kissed good-bye as he left. It did seem to work. I was fondly remembering the good times we had enjoyed in the house when suddenly the sound of gunfire very close by startled me. I moved quietly to the windows that looked over the wall into the grounds of the White Palace to see what looked like fresh graves being dug close to the wall, and a group of German soldiers with rifles lined up facing the wall. I didn’t want to see anymore or even to think about what I knew must be executions taking place so close to me, and I returned to lie down.

  I heard the sound of rifle fire twice more before the sound of voices faded, and I tried very hard to think only of Kristina and Aunt ’Lyena. I fell asleep, and sometime in midafternoon I felt a sharp sting on my left foot and moved quickly to slap at a large, green fly that had come through the open windows. I laid back down and, in the silence and warm breeze, drifted back to sleep for about an hour. When I awoke, my foot was throbbing and badly swollen.

  By the time Father arrived to pick me up, the swelling had increased and spread higher on my leg, and it was difficult to walk or even to stand.

  “What’s the matter with your leg? What happened to your ankle?”

  “I don’t know, Papa. A fly bit me when I was asleep.”

  I had to lean heavily on Father to hobble back to the trolley stop and return to the garage. Mother looked on unsympathetically as Father placed compresses on my ankle to try to bring the swelling down. She seemed to be thinking that no matter what they did I was still a problem, and I resolved even more to get away from home as soon as possible. The following day the doctor returned to see me, this time to lance the bite, the source of the swelling, and to provide more medicine.

  “I think she’ll be fine. The fly had probably landed on some rotted food or meat, and the bite was infectious. It was the beginning of blood poisoning. She has a slight temperature, but I believe we have caught everything in time, and she’ll probably be fine in a day or two.”

  I didn’t tell him about the rifle fire and the graves, and I never told my parents. I don’t know why. Perhaps I thought they would not believe me. But even if they did, they would only have worried and fretted about it—more worries brought on somehow by me. I had recently heard rumors that our Orthodox priests had been hung by their beards in a central plaza of Belgrade. Thank God I never saw anything like that, but the rumors added to my depression.

  The following day I started to hobble about in the garage, and within another day or two I began to take short walks as my strength slowly returned. Mother cautioned me and complained, but more gently now. I could see real concern in her eyes for the first time in a long while and the sweet sadness I remembered from before the invasion. I wanted so much to rush and kiss her, hug her tightly, but the memories of being pushed gently away so often always stopped me.

  As my strength returned over the next week or so, I gradually increased the length of my walks and my time away from home. Mother’s disapproval increased with the length of my walks, and one day I returned after sunset to find both Mother and Father waiting for me.

  “Where have you been all day?” Mother asked.

  “Oh, just walking. Mostly in the parks, but I went to the old market where the big fish tanks used to be.”

  “Sit down, Asinka,” Father said. “We need to have a talk. You know Mama and I are concerned because of the occupation and because you are spending so much time alone. We think you need to get back to studying.”

  “I do wish that Trécha Zhénska was still open, Papa. I miss school very much.”

  “Well, Mama and I have been thinking about it, and you probably remember that the Germans have opened a branch of Munich University here in Belgrade. I have spoken to the people at the Akademie about you, and they agree that you are qualified to enroll. Mama and I think it would be good for you to get back to a little organized study again. What do you think?”

  “Oh, yes, Papa. That sounds wonderful. When do the classes begin?”

  “The next term starts the first week in January, so there isn’t too much time. You will need to register in the next week or two. Mama and I are glad to see that you want to get back to studying. Now, young lady, I want you to stay close to home, both here and in Yaintse, until school starts, so that Mama won’t have to worry so about you. Agreed?”

  “Oh, yes. But there’s nothing to worry about. I just go to Topcider and Koshutnjak and some of the other parks. And the people I meet are always very nice.”

  “I know, Asinka, but Mama worries because of the soldiers.”

  December 2, 1942: The first self-sustaining nuclear reaction was demonstrated at the University of Chicago.

  December passed quickly, and the first week of January 1943 I began spending my days at the Deutsche Wissenschaft Akademie—München. The German Academy of Higher Studies—Munich was really a business school designed simply to train proficient office personnel to meet the needs of the Nazi occupation bureaucracy.

  The classes were German shorthand and typing, light bookkeeping, economics, and a “social studies according to the Reich” class, nothing that required any home study. I thought of the German shorthand courses as learning a new and different language, and I excelled in all of the classes. The classes were interesting but not challenging, and my attendance didn’t curtail my wandering. I simply walked after classes until nearly dark before returning home. Mother wasn’t concerned because she thought I was in school or studying. On the days we spent in Yaintse, I wandered throughout Belgrade after classes, usually catching a late streetcar to Yaintse, arriving at the house just as darkness fell.

  I returned from my classes earlier than usual one day in April 1943. There didn’t appear to be anyone at home, and I thought that Mother was probably at the stables. I started to leave again to take a short walk, when I thought I heard a noise from the room my parents used as a bedroom. I went to the door to investigate and found Father sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He had obviously been crying, and he looked up as I entered.

  “Papa, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing in particular, Asinka.” He answered, trying to hide the fact that he had been crying. “These are very difficult times, and our family just seems to be disintegrating. ’Lyena off in Yaintse all the time, Mama more and more upset all the time and so often away at the stables. Since Kristina had to leave, no one is ever at home. We are never together as a family anymore, and I don’t seem to be able to do anything to help. And I’m worried about Mama. She has had to go through so much in her life.”

  I sat down next to Father on the edge of the bed and stroked his hair.

  “Poor Papa,” I said, remembering the words he so often used to reassure me. “That’s life, I guess, just life. Everything will be in order again soon. We’re going to be fine. You’ll see.”

  I placed one arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek as I so often did. Father turned and embraced me, kissed my cheek, and seemed to be fighting tears. He kissed me again, then again, but this time on the lips—hard. Something was wrong! His eyes were glassy, glazed.

  I was suddenly frightened and didn’t know how to respond, how to get away. Father s
eemed a stranger, unrecognizable. As he tried to kiss me again, I managed to get my hands together against his chest, close to his throat, and as his hand brushed my breast I screamed and pushed against his chest with all my strength. Father tumbled to the floor, and I jumped to my feet terribly frightened.

  As Father sprawled on the floor looking dazed and disoriented, I ran sobbing from the garage and onto the street, now beginning to darken. I was truly frightened for the first time in my life. My links to security had been cut one by one over the past two years, but the firm anchor that Father always represented was suddenly gone, disintegrated in an instant. I ran headlong down one street after another in a panic, without any awareness of where I was or where I was headed. I paused for a moment to try to catch my breath and to stop sobbing, trying to think of where I could go, when I saw old Jovan’s basement across the street.

  I ran down the few steps leading to the door of the old man’s basement and knocked loudly. There was no answer. Jovan had not returned from work yet. I sank down next to the door, crying.

  For the first time in my life I was truly frightened—terrified. And I was terrified of Father, my last source of security! I tried to plan an escape route if he appeared and to think of where I could go. I cowered by the door for what seemed hours, until it was almost completely dark. Finally Jovan arrived at the top of the steps, looking down at me in amazement.

  “What’s wrong? What has happened, my child?”

  “Nothing has happened, Jovan,” I answered, drying my eyes.

  “Come in, come in. I’ll make us a cup of tea, and you can tell me what’s bothering you. Remember the stairs now. Be careful.”

  I followed the light from the old man’s candle down the broken stairs to the basement. His wife’s photograph was still propped against the back of the chair resting on the piece of lace curtain that he was so proud of. He busied himself with starting the stove and putting a kettle of water on to boil.