by Sachi Parker
“Well, you can’t stay here,” she said.
I looked around at the empty grounds. She had a good point.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Jane suggested. She was joining her family in Trieste, Italy. Her father was the American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, and during his mission they were living in Prague. So they were meeting up halfway for a few weeks of summer vacation on the Adriatic coast.
“Trieste?” I pondered.
“Sure. You can try to call your parents from there.”
It seemed to make sense. I didn’t want to be a burden on Jane and her family—she was a year older than I, and we weren’t exactly close friends—but there didn’t seem to be any other choice.
So we went down to Lausanne and caught the train to Trieste. Jane paid for my ticket. It was an all-day trip, as we had to make the trek straight across the top of the boot to eastern Italy.
At the train station we met Jane’s mom and dad, and her sister Ann. We went to a luxury hotel in the heart of Trieste, and I stayed in Jane’s room.
I knew I was incredibly lucky to be there. Jane’s parents paid for everything. We spent the days at the beach, which was right at the northern tip of the Adriatic Sea. There were lots of beautiful Europeans, male and female, cruising the sands in the tiniest of bathing suits. I remember everyone kept asking me if I wanted ice cream.
I didn’t want ice cream. I didn’t want anything. I had a very numb feeling inside, which at night was replaced by a pain around my heart. I didn’t know what was causing it, but my heart was hurting.
So much so that I could barely sleep—and when I did, I would wake in the middle of the night with a deep, profound feeling of sadness. Yet, I didn’t know why.
I didn’t voice any of this to Jane or her parents. I felt guilty enough freeloading on them; the least I could do was maintain a cheery disposition. That was the Japanese way.
One night, I woke at around 2:00 A.M. There was the pain again, the pain in my heart. I got up quietly. Something was telling me I needed to leave. I needed to go out.
I quietly got dressed. I put on my tight blouse and my miniskirt—and no underwear. Not one brown shred.
I went into the next room, where Jane’s parents were sleeping. I saw her mom’s high heels under the dresser. I took them and sneaked out of the room. Outside, I slipped on the high heels and left the hotel suite.
Downstairs, I crossed the hotel lobby. I felt the doorman watching me quizzically as I stepped out into the warm night. I knew that if I looked at him, he would stop me. So I didn’t look. I headed down the sidewalk and turned the corner, and now I was on my own.
The Trieste streets were empty and quiet. My high heels click-clacked on the cobblestones as I made my rudderless way through the city, strutting along in my sexy, tarted-up outfit.
Unwittingly, and yet as if by design, I found myself in the seediest section of town. There was nightlife here; people were moving in the shadows: large, indistinct shapes; muted snatches of their conversation echoed against the buildings. Who were they? Thieves, perhaps; drunks, prostitutes. A dark, threatening sexuality was in the air. Men and women were humping openly against the building walls. Other men circled around, eyeing me prospectively as I walked along. Some would move closer; some would even stand in my path and make me swerve around them.
Now the prostitutes emerged from the dark, gathering in pockets and glaring at me with territorial hatred: “Who is this little bitch, in her miniskirt and high heels, and what is she doing on our turf?”
What was I doing there? What was I thinking? I don’t know. It was all very dreamlike and Felliniesque, without the saving grace of comic absurdity. I knew I was in danger—I could feel it all around me—but I didn’t really care.
I was being adventurous, the way Dad had suggested. I was having an experience.
Basically, I think I wanted to die.
So I stopped on that dark, dangerous street, vulnerable and surrounded, and waited for something to happen.
Finally, one aged prostitute detached herself from the group and approached me. She was in her sixties, maybe older, wearing garish clothes that clung unattractively to her body, her face caked with makeup. Her eyes gleamed savagely in the glint of the streetlight. I felt a sudden, paralyzing terror—this is it. She’s coming to kill me. She’s going to rake me with her clawlike nails, slash me open with the stiletto hidden in her garter…I couldn’t move. I was trapped in my death wish.
When the old woman got very close, she put an arm around me and asked, in a gentle voice, “Dove abiti, cara?”
Somehow she had grasped exactly why I was there, and what I really needed. My eyes filled with tears, and I started to cry. She hushed me, cradled my head against her bosom, and gently turned me around and walked me back to the hotel. We didn’t speak much—I had had some French in Aiglon, so we could manage a few words here and there—but most of our conversation was spoken with our eyes.
Back at the hotel, the doorman was waiting in the lobby. I can imagine what a sight we were, the two of us dressed up like ladies of the evening, and one the genuine article. By all rights, he should have barred the old prostitute at the door and called upstairs for Jane’s parents to collect me.
But he didn’t. Somehow he knew exactly what was going on. He and the woman traded glances, and there was one of those miraculous moments of unspoken human communication. He nodded and stepped aside, letting us pass. He was probably relieved to have me back, and grateful to the woman for her kindness.
Back in my room, the woman undressed me and put me to bed. When she saw that I’d been wearing no underwear, she tsked disapprovingly, but kept her silence, so as not to waken Jane. Like Katie Sokoloff, Jane was a sound sleeper and never stirred.
The woman tucked me in and sat by my bedside a moment, stroking my hair, whispering soft, comforting words. Then she bent down, kissed my forehead, and left.
I never saw her again.
• • •
AFTER a week in Trieste, we took a ferry south to the coast of Yugoslavia, where we stopped at another beach resort on the Adriatic, and stayed about two weeks.
I don’t remember much about this time, except that there seemed to be an awful lot of Germans on the beach. Most of my days were spent on the phone, trying to contact my parents. After hours of blind-dialing, waiting on operators, listening through bad reception, getting tantalizingly close and suddenly losing the connection altogether, all I could safely determine was that my dad wasn’t in Tokyo, and my mom wasn’t in Los Angeles. This narrowed the field of inquiry somewhat.
It seemed I was on the phone all day every day, and getting nowhere. I was miserable, and still haunted by a feeling of vague sadness—and feeling guiltier all the time for taking advantage of the Wises’ kindness. They had been incredibly warm and gracious, but sooner or later I knew I was going to wear out my welcome.
We left the coast and drove up to Zagreb, the capital of Yugoslavia. From here the Wises were taking the train home to Prague. I just couldn’t tag along anymore. The moment of truth had arrived.
Or rather, the moment of untruth. I rushed up to them on the platform with a big patented smile on my face. “Finally,” I told them brightly. “I got hold of my dad! He’s sending me money right away, so everything’s fine. You guys can go ahead without me. I have to wait here for the money.”
None of this was true, but the Wises bought it. Or at least they said they did. They could leave me now with a clear conscience. There was nothing unusual in this, by the way. In those days, it was quite normal to see teens traveling by themselves all over Europe. The Wises weren’t abandoning me. They were letting me enjoy my independence.
They boarded the train, and I waved cheerfully as it chugged away. “Goodbye! Thanks for everything! Goodbye, goodbye!”
So, now, instead of being stranded in Switzerland, I was stranded in Yugoslavia. What an idiot.
There was a hotel across from the train station. I walked ov
er and went into the hotel bar. I sat on a stool, put my head on the bar, and started crying. What was I going to do now?
There was an elderly couple in their seventies at the bar. They were sitting close and chatting intimately, with a relaxed, casual familiarity that indicated they were married. There was something a bit rustic and out of place about them, so perhaps they had ventured into the city for a romantic date night. If so, my sobbing at the bar may have put something of a damper on their ardor.
In any case, they got up from their stools and came over to see what was wrong. They spoke only Yugoslavian, so even my little bit of French wasn’t going to help me now. Still, they saw my distress, and much like that prostitute in Trieste, they understood without words.
They sat beside me and comforted me, and somehow managed to construe that I was stranded and had nowhere to stay. So they brought me up to their hotel room and had a cot set up for me, and I stayed the night with them. This was, all in all, a remarkable thing.
I had already imposed on one family for the last three weeks, and I really didn’t want to start all over again. I had no idea what to do next or how to proceed, though, so the next day, when they insisted, through some universal gestures and inflections, that I go back home with them, I meekly accepted.
We drove into the Yugoslavian countryside to their farm, a good five-hour ride. I could see when we arrived that they were of very modest means. It was a run-down working farm, with lots of vegetables and chickens. Everything was old and rusty, but it all worked.
I stayed with these wonderful people for about two weeks. I helped out with the chores: milked the cows, fed the chickens, shared the cooking with the old woman. There was plenty of work to do, and I slept really well—no pain in my heart at all. It got cold at night, but they had the Hungarian eiderdowns!
I loved that couple. They treated me like their daughter, and the setting put me in mind of that palomino farm up in the hills of Malibu, with Ricardo and his mother: simple, hardworking people who were full of a love of nature and life. There were no pretensions, no demands, just a regulated sense of peace and harmony.
The old man had a great deal of work to do on the farm, but he would always take time out from his busy day to drive me down to the local post office so I could make my calls in my ongoing attempt to locate my parents. After an hour or so without success, we’d head over to the local bakery for a treat. I remember the pastries were denser and less refined than the fluffy ones you’d find in the French or Swiss bakeries. These were earthier, more typical of the people, whom I found to be unfailingly cheerful and friendly in spite of their inescapable poverty.
Still, much as I enjoyed this new world and these new friends, I was growing desperate to find my real family. I called and called. Finally, one day, instead of dial tones and static, I heard a familiar, English-speaking voice at the other end of the phone: “Hello?”
I was stunned. “Dad?”
“Hey, Sachi! Sach the Pach! What’s up?” His voice was sunny and gregarious. He sounded as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
I felt an immediate need to match his good spirits. “Nothing. I was just calling to say hello,” I answered, without a trace of irony.
“Where are you?”
“Um—I’m in Yugoslavia.”
He laughed. “Yugoslavia? What are you doing there?”
“Oh, just hanging around.” I was being very cool. “Uh—where are you?”
“I’m on the boat,” he replied casually. The “boat” was his private yacht, Happy Pappy. It turned out he’d been sailing the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Greece, all this time.
We made a little small talk, and then I mentioned that I needed some money to get home. Or wherever I was going.
Dad was quiet a moment. “You know, your mother is shooting a television show in London,” he said. “You should go see her.”
“London?”
“I’ll wire you the money.”
“Oh, okay.”
I told him exactly where I was, and he said he would take care of everything: problem solved. “Enjoy your summer!”
I hung up. I should have been vastly relieved, I suppose, but instead I came away feeling unsettled by this surreal collision of three wildly incongruent worlds: Dad sailing the Mediterranean, Mom shooting a TV show in England, and me stuck on a chicken farm in Yugoslavia.
My surrogate parents drove me to a bank in Zagreb, where the money was wired. Then they brought me to the airport, and we said goodbye. I couldn’t have expressed my gratitude sufficiently even if we’d spoken the same language, but I think they understood how I felt. They were stoic, unemotional people, but I owed them so much—God knows what would have happened to me if they hadn’t come along and helped me. I kept in touch with them over the years, and sent them a Christmas card every December, until they both passed on about thirty years ago.
I arrived in England and found my mother on the set of her new TV show. Shirley’s World was her attempt to break into sit-coms. In it, she played a globe-trotting photojournalist with a crusty but charming editor played by English actor John Gregson, and it was shot on location all over the world. The main base was at Pinewood Studios, just west of London.
The show was not destined to be a success—in fact, it was an outright flop—and Mom seemed to sense this even as they were shooting it, because she was in a foul mood on the set, and didn’t seem to be getting along with anyone.
She was delighted to see me, of course: “Hi, sweetie! What are you doing here?” I didn’t bother to tell her that she had forgotten to pick me up in Switzerland. I was afraid it would upset her. At the same time, I think I was afraid that it wouldn’t upset her. She might have even wound up blaming me for the oversight.
Anyway, we had a nice visit, for about a day or two, and then she shifted back into work mode, and I suddenly became a great inconvenience. She had enough problems dealing with this godforsaken show; she didn’t want to have to deal with me, too.
She called the headmaster of Battisborough, the boarding school I was transferring to in the fall—I don’t know why they had decided to move me out of Aiglon; maybe because they couldn’t remember where it was. “My daughter is here in London,” she told him. “Is there something you can do with her?”
The next thing I knew, I was on a train to Devon.
Battisborough House was run by Anthony Fiddian-Green, who used to be in charge of the girl’s dorm at Aiglon. So I already knew him and his lovely wife, Susan. They had taken over this run-down centuries-old stone mansion and were in the process of fixing it up for the fall term.
For the rest of the summer, I became their errand girl and all-around handyman. I helped clean up the dusty rooms, paint the walls, wax the floors—whatever needed doing, I did. I stayed in the house and ate my meals with them and became a temporary member of their family (my third of the summer!).
Battisborough, in the county of Devon, is an absolutely beautiful spot, right on the southwest coast, near Plymouth. Looking south to the English Channel, the house sat on a green sward not far from a series of dramatic rock cliffs and coves abutting a deserted coastline. As I recall, there were never any people around, only sheep. I would often navigate the narrow sheep paths through the brambles and gooseberry bushes and down the steep cliffs, and take long walks on the lonely windswept coast, exploring Bugle Cove and Mothercombe Beach. I had long grown accustomed to being alone, and I felt totally in my element wandering barefoot in the sand with the wind whipping my hair and the spray of the ocean misting over me.
• • •
I didn’t go back to Japan that summer. (There was no one there, anyway.) I stayed at Battisborough, and as the fall term began and the other students—including boys; hooray!—arrived, I resumed my studies.
Not that I studied much. Battisborough was based on the Summerhill model. Summerhill School was founded in Suffolk, England, in 1921 by A. S. Neill, a Scottish writer who believed that children flourish most
without adult authority. His progressive school stressed freedom and autonomy. So, at Battisborough, you were defined by your own idea of success. There were no bells; you went to class any time you wanted to, and if you didn’t want to, you could just play. It was, for most kids, an ideal situation.
It wasn’t for me. Much as I bridled at authority, I was lost without it. Given the choice, I never went to class. My grades sank to a level not even imagined before.
Yet, in spite of my low academic performance, I was considered the most responsible, level-headed kid at the school. Some of the other kids were messing around with drugs and alcohol. They came from money, so there was plenty of acid and LSD and cocaine floating around the dorms.
I didn’t touch any of it. My biggest vice was going for walks on the beach. So my bond rating was pretty high. Everyone in the faculty trusted me—and I took advantage of this.
There was a separate cottage on the grounds; I used to walk by it on the way to the beach. Nobody was staying there, and it seemed to be going to waste. I would have loved to have that cottage as a dorm room all to myself. At the moment, I was rooming with an American girl named Anne Hearst (younger sister of Patty Hearst, who was famously kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army just a few months later). Anne was nice enough, but I liked the idea of being on my own and independent.
I brought up the idea of the cottage with Mrs. Green (we never bothered with the “Fiddian” part; they were always “Mr. and Mrs. Green” to the students). Mrs. Green, who was very fond of me, discussed it with her husband, and they agreed that I was trustworthy enough, so I moved into the cottage. I loved that place. It was small, but there was a kitchenette with a hot plate and an electric kettle. There, I was completely, serenely alone—except for one fateful night.
It was my second year at Battisborough, the spring of 1974. I was seventeen years old, and the new great love of my life was Bradley Foster. There were only about eighteen kids at the school, half of them of the male persuasion, and most of those were pretty dicey. Brad was head and shoulders above the rest, the pick of the lot, and it was my good fortune to have nabbed him. He was tall, handsome, and very sweet.