“A Clash of Humanity”

(from my garden)

August 6th is approaching, the date of the Atomic bomb dropping on the Japanese people in 1945.  I have read and studied this history and it is beyond shocking to me.  I have great love for these people who suffered.  By the way, my father was part of the crew flying a B-24 in the Pacific around this time and he came home a convinced a pacifist.   I follow his lead.

Lady Nyo

A Clash of Humanity

 

Leah walked into Big Lots, the one where her mother had thrown a shit-fit and insulted an elderly Japanese lady. Her mother was close to 90, and had done so the day before. She had flown in on her broom and stayed three days. In that time she managed to berate, insult and offend quite a number of people, local people who her daughter would perhaps see weekly. She didn’t spare the daughter either, and though the lumps were invisible, they again went deep.

But this last assault was the worst. The Japanese lady had grabbed the sleeve of her mother’s sweater and said playfully: “Give me that pretty sweater”. Her mother raised her hackles. She turned on the woman.

“How dare you touch me,” she hissed. The Japanese lady did not back down, but backed up. She seemed to have common sense. Perhaps she knew about snakes.

“I’m only playing with you. I don’t mean offense.”

Her mother’s eyebrow arched, the expression she used with ‘inferior folk’ when she, a little woman herself, tried to make others submit.

“Hah! You lost the war!” As if this made sense of everything.

Her mother’s words were ridiculous, some 65 years after the fact, but to her, a fine logic. The Japanese woman turned to her racks of clothes and her mother stormed out of the store.

The next day, her daughter made the rounds, apologizing to the employee in the food store for her mother’s insults, at another thrift shop where she became irate when she wasn’t immediately served, and then the scene at Big Lots.   The Japanese lady was as gracious as her own mother outrageous, and she tried to laugh it off. But Leah had seen the ‘look’ before; the hurt in eyes of people who were attacked by her mother. She saw the ‘look’ since she was 15 and had been apologizing for her mother ever since. In her home town people, total strangers to her, would stop and ask: “What is wrong with your mother!” As if she, at 15, would know. Later, much later she would know, but at that age, her mother was a constant source of shame and embarrassment.

“Your mother. She is German?”

The daughter laughed.   “Yes.” (This was a lie)

“She was the Bitch of Buchenwald.”

That was the name her family, except her husband, called her behind her back. She was that bad.

“Oh, I see”, said the Japanese lady, but of course she didn’t.

The daughter had no idea how to deal with her mother’s behavior, and it took four years of therapy to realize it was a particular nasty brand of mental illness. It wasn’t the daughter’s fault, nor did her mother’s behavior spring from what she, the daughter, did.   Nor was it the fault of the grocer, the employee at the thrift store, nor the Japanese lady at Big Lots.

Four years later, Leah, now dressed in a new, hand made kimono, obi sash and a silk parasol, had her husband drop her at Big Lots to pick up a gift. They were going to a costume party and she had picked this kimono to wear. It was peach silk, with a navy blue wide obi, with large goldfish swimming in the background. The final sash was a thin red silk rope, doubled and tied in a samurai knot in front.

She was wearing geta, and the clack- clack of the wood soles sounded like a horse on the flooring of the store. She immediately found a silver plated picture frame, a perfect gift for the queen of the party….and there was the Japanese lady.

“Oh, you look beautiful! But you dead!”

The daughter thought she was nursing the previous insult, but no, the Japanese lady was referring to the way she had ‘closed’ her kimono. Right panel over left was how people were buried….Left over right for the living.

Meicho was her name, and she was all of 80 lbs and only 4’8”. She picked up the hem and looked at the hand stitching and marveled at the patience the daughter of the Nazi showed in stitching the kimono. Tiny little stitches and a lot of them. She opened her wallet and took out two small pictures, stuck together probably from age and handling. One was of her at 16 and the other at 32. Both were taken when she was made up as Geisha.

She was so beautiful, as ethereal as an ageha, a butterfly. This wrinkled, little crone was once as classically endowed with beauty as any famous Geisha. The passage of time had taken that outward beauty but her gracious and generous heart was untouched.

Something had to be done! This stupid girl couldn’t be allowed to remain ‘dead’.

So Meicho did what any sensible Japanese woman would do. There, in Big Lots, in a store almost devoid of customers on an early Saturday evening, she undressed Leah. Off came the first belt, then the obi sash, then the inner belt and quickly she opened, and properly closed the kimono. Leah was wearing a lace bra and panties and they both giggled at the ‘inappropriate’ underwear.

Inappropriate for wearing a kimono.

Meicho slapped the woman’s belly good naturedly. “You get too fat to close kimono!”

She redressed her, correctly bloused the kimono so the vertebra in the neck showed (the height of sexuality in Japan) and rewrapped the obi sash.

Success! She wasn’t ‘dead’ anymore! She got a quick lesson in important Japanese words and how to bow correctly. Meicho got two kisses and the eternal gratitude from this now ‘alive’ woman. She was given quick instruction how to walk with dignity in her high geta, like a geisha perhaps, or a poor imitation of one.

Meicho demonstrated for her the ‘sexy’ figure- eight walk in high geta, the trademark of a professional Geisha. The feet are dragged at a pointed angle forward, in a looping curve, wide out from the body, but with the knees together. One foot slowly placed in front of the other. To do this and still stand, a Geisha would need the support of a maid, so tiny Meicho was her walking support. Back and forth, up and down the aisle they walked, throwing her feet out at Meicho’s direction. The hips roll in a very strange, sexy way and perhaps is why an experienced Geisha will use the figure-eight: It advertises what is under the kimono.

She left Meicho that evening with an overflowing heart. Maichio’s kind gestures had given her much room for thought.

Sometimes the borders between humans disappear, even when great wars are fought and there is bitterness lasting generations.   There will always be victors and vanquished. The human heart is capable of great evil and greater compassion.

Meicho had come from Hiroshima, had lost her family and had been burned in the fires of 1945. From this land of death there was always life to be honored, and she would find a way, even in repairing a badly closed kimono.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2015

“Alerts to Threats in Europe: By John Cleese

 

I woke up wanting to read something silly.  Life can be so somber.  John Cleese did it for me.  And going through my spam folder also made me laugh.  No, I am not interested in off market viagra from Canada.  Nor am I wanting a school bell or a fire pit.  Perhaps I am heartened that spam never really changes.  Nor do they make any sense.  But John Cleese does and I am glad for that.  This is a little dated considering what is happening in the world, and terrorism  is no joke, but Cleese has a good grasp of history, especially WWII.  I can appreciate that considering our President’s mouth just might get us nuked.

Lady Nyo

—

ALERTS TO THREATS IN EUROPE: BY JOHN CLEESE

by John Cleese – British writer, actor and tall person

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France ‘s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbour” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be alright, Mate.” Two more escalation levels remain: “Crikey! I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!” and “The barbie is cancelled.” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.

A final thought – ” Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC”.

 

 

Islamic Terror in Paris….

Marianne of France

 What has happened in Paris is unbelievable.  Well coordinated attacks on sites of mostly young people, with the purpose of creating fear, panic, a macabre political ‘statement’, along with death of innocents. . Am I surprised? No, just shocked. It was bound to happen and won’t be the last time.  Open borders where people are not checked, no passports, no real history of their actions and behavior in their home countries….though at the present time it looks like these were French Muslim terrorists, home grown though probably trained in ISIS camps in Syria.

We are now informed that the terrorists were wider spread, even unto other European countries and back to Syria.  A worldwide web of savagery.

It’s not like the world wasn’t warned as to what was coming: it’s just that people put it aside, believing it would happen ‘elsewhere’, that the threat and action of this savage violence wouldn’t touch them.  But it does, and it will again. No country is ‘safe’ from this sort of violence. The terror is already here and people feel like sitting ducks.

“Sitting duck” can breed hysteria and chaos. It can breed extreme right wing movements that become part of the problem of lawlessness.  It can create homegrown militias but then again, perhaps this is a reach back into our earliest history as a nation.  There was no standing army, the militias were the soldiers.  I come from the Glines brothers in New Hampshire.  Five of them serving in the Revolutionary War. They were, these militias, the standing army.

But we do have a standing army, and we also have the various National Guards. My son served 4 years in the Navy recently, and is now serving in the National Guard.  I would guess  he would be part of the ‘standing army’ if called.  For selfish reasons, I want Peace.

I am 3/4’s of the way through “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”.  It’s taken me 3 years to complete this book.  I had no idea how important this book would be to my present understanding of what is happening today.  The 1930’s and 40’s certainly lay the basis for WWII….and I can’t stop thinking of the similarities between the invasions and terror of the early Nazis (it was to get much worse…..) and what has happened in Paris last night.

Whether Brown Shirts of  1930’s Germany, or the black clad killers of ISIS:  their ideology all leads to death and destruction in the name of what?

You can call it religion, or ideology, but in the hands of evil, it renders death.

  Our hearts are with the French people but our heads should be pulled out of the sand.  Extreme violence such as we have seen in Paris, etc. will call for extreme measures from our governments.  The safety of our citizens and country depend upon a clearer understanding of what the world is facing.  We are not an island. We are a web.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, November 14th, 2015

“A Kapitany” (The Captain), Chapter 33

I started “A Kapitany” in 2007, left it and only came back to it this late fall. The general theme of bdsm had changed, had blossomed into something very different. Doing a lot of research on Europe and especially Hungary after WWII, and especially reading Keith Lowe’s book: “Savage Continent” made an impact. It also gave me a framework to revamp and complete this novel. To say that it changed is understating it. I became more interested in what was happening post Nazi, post Soviet, with the people of Hungary. It gave rewards in what had become a love story deepened. The influence of Be Bop, popular music of the 50’s and 60’s on Hungarian people was also interesting to me. This chapter has a nod towards that.

I think the strength of the Hungarian people and these characters comes from what happened to Hungary. War tears up society, but it also reshapes it. There is a caution though: today the rise of the right wing in Hungarian society and politics is is showing it’s head again. It stands as a warning to all of us that the destruction of WWII could happen again.

Lady Nyo

A Kapitany, Chapter 33

It was after three in the afternoon when Vadas returned from seeing Zoltan. He walked into the kitchen, looking for Elizabeth. Maria was stirring a pot on the stove.

“Maria, have you seen Elizabeth around?” He threw himself in a chair and bumped his shin on the stretchers of the oak table. It was scarred with knife cuts and pot burns. He remembered adding his own carvings with a knife Janos had given him when he was ten years old. Vadas traced a ‘bad word’ with his finger. He got belted from Janos for that trick. Maria had to cook and look at that all day, Janos said.

“Elizabeth was here in the kitchen, but my English and her Hungarian weren’t good enough to talk. She did knead some dough. Her wrist is hurting her, Vadas. She needs to take better care of it.”

“Yeah, she needs to stop beating me up. That will help her wrist.” Maria laughed.

“Perhaps if you speak only Hungarian she will learn faster?”

Maria poured a cup of coffee for him from the percolator on the back of the big stove. Vadas wanted to replace that old Aga with a new electric one, but Maria wouldn’t hear of it. She was used to this stove and too old to change. Janos kept a low fire burning in it throughout the night. Maria claimed only good bread, decent enough to eat could come from these old stoves. The new stoves made ‘store bought’ bread.

“Where have you been all day? The girl wasn’t easy with you gone.”

“I was seeing Zoltan, Maria.”

“And how is he?” Maria wiped her hands on her apron and sat down at the table.

“He’s doing pretty well. He’s lost weight and is pale, but his spirits are good.”

Vadas sipped at his hot coffee. He liked it strong and black. Maria was the only one who made decent coffee, strong enough for him.

“When I was visiting the aunties, they told me something. Zoltan is my half brother.”

“I knew.”

“What! Am I the only person on earth who doesn’t?” Vadas put his cup down and splattered the table.

“I nursed him as I nursed you.” Maria wiped up the coffee. “Your mother didn’t have enough milk when either of you were born. Let me see. Zoltan is about four years older? I forget. And you were born after your father returned from that work camp.”

“What happened to your baby, Maria?”

“They both died, Vadas. I was raped by a Russian soldier after the war. The baby was stillborn. I had milk but not much else. Zoltan’s father hunted in the mountains. He saved a lot of people around here. All the other men were either off fighting the war, or in the labor camps, like the one your father was in. But that was later. I was too young to carry that first baby. But I had milk. I was given Zoltan. Years later, when your mother had you, I moved in with her and your father and nursed you. You were a fat baby then.” Maria looked at Vadas over her cup. “You’re getting fat again.”

Vadas pounded his stomach. “It’s all muscle. Women get fat. Men get muscle.” Maria laughed.

“Tell me more, Maria. Tell me about those early years.”

“So much happened during the war years, Vadas. There were no men around. We did all the labor, plus the work of women. I was so young then, not even seventeen, and after the first baby? Well, I was lonely, too. So many had died around me. The old people were dying off from disease and the famine. There were no doctors. I thought if I had a baby I wouldn’t be so alone. This second baby died, and then not long after I met Janos. He was coming home from the war. He walked for months, hiding out in forests and caves. It was a miracle he made it back. So many didn’t. Your father came home but he was a broken man.” Maria sipped her coffee.

“But you never had another child?”

“No, those two were all I had in me. I grew attached to Zoltan. They took him away. Some aunt raised him.”

She sighed. “I was attached to you, too, but your aunties took you to France with your mother. You were just a baby. I cried so much, but I wasn’t wanted by them. I begged and pleaded to take me. When your mother came back with you after a few years, you had grown into a little boy and didn’t remember your old nurse. You were scared of everyone. You cried at the drop of a feather.”

“Living with Aunt Margit probably gave me reason.” Vadas laughed uneasily.

“It’s God’s miracle, Vadas, that both of you boys survived. More than half of the children in Noszvaj didn’t. I remember gathering grass and boiling it with any roots we could find to make soup. Some of the barn cats, the ones we could catch, went into the soup. We ate up the kittens first, then the rats. We ate anything to survive, shoe leather and bits of old harness. But we stopped that in winter when we had no more shoes.”

Vadas looked at the fat, old grey cat sitting on the ledge of the window. Maria smiled and sipped her coffee.

“You know, Vadas. Your Elizabeth will never know or understand what happened here, or what happened across Europe. The war was terrible, but after the war? It was worse than hell. It never really ended. Not for another ten years. It was sect after sect, different militias battling each other. We were in the middle. We were expendable. Partisans took their revenge on everyone. One village raided and slaughtered another. I saw men and women tied together by the Red army soldiers and thrown in the river to drown. We were rounded up and made to watch this. Men had their eyes gouged out and bugs put in their sockets and then sewn up. There were always enough ‘others’ to slaughter for no reason. Even the priests were hung. I remember women and children from another village locked in a church and set on fire. What happened after war was madness. This whole country reverted to savages. That was what we lived with. Your Elizabeth will never understand this, even if she reads a hundred books.”

Vadas shook his head. He knew the stories. The older people, they couldn’t forget them, and why should they? Perhaps in the remembering, in the telling, it made them grateful for life, for survival. Perhaps they also didn’t want to let old wounds heal, either. He wondered. They were the fallow ground, just waiting for blood, these memories, these stories, the next ethnic cleansing, and the next war. He was a man, had served a short time in the defense force. He knew how brutal men were. It could happen again.

No, this wasn’t Elizabeth’s war. And they weren’t her memories. But as she learned the language and lived here, she would hear them. He knew the resentment the Americans didn’t stop any of this. How could they? Hungary was Russia’s spoils of war.

Maria poured more coffee. They sipped in silence, thinking of the past.

“I asked Zoltan to move in here. He refused. He says he’s comfortable where he is and too old to move. I will deed over the lodge to him. Of course, you and Janos will live here until you die. You are as much part of this family as he.”

“We know, Vadas,” said Maria patting his hand. “You always have been good to us. Janos and I have no worries about that. We do worry about your woman. She’s been through a lot, yes?”

“I will deal with it. Talking with Zoltan today gives me new ideas.”

“You protect yourself, Vadas. Whatever it is you are planning, you protect yourself. You will have a new wife. Maria crossed herself. “Don’t leave this one a widow.”

Vadas changed the subject. “We have been talking about bringing her old auntie over from the States. She won’t want to live in Hungary. Elizabeth says she will stay probably a month. I can’t see her elderly auntie making that trip for just a month.”

“As long as she stays out of my kitchen, I will make her welcome.”

Vadas laughed. Two women in one kitchen was trouble. Three? God Almighty. He would move in with Zoltan.
“I have a lot of work to do, Maria.” Vadas got up, leaned over Maria and kissed her on the forehead. The things he learned in the last 24 hours! Ah, life was complex and too many secrets were kept in the dark.

He looked in on Elizabeth and found her sleeping. She looked tired even in sleep. Watching her he saw her mouth move and hear her murmurings. She was dreaming of something.

He sat down at his desk. There was much to do for the vines, always the vines. He needed to calculate the amount of fertilizer to use. Zoltan usually did that, not by a process of math, but by experience. He had rows and hills stretching out across the valley, almost to the foot of the mountains. He needed around thirty pounds of actual nitrogen to spread per acre, not too close to the vines. Grapes were deep rooted fruit. They went down five feet or more, some of the older vines. He needed to plant more new rows, and replace those vines not producing well.
Vadas worked on his calculations. The nitrogen he used was ammonium nitrate, which was 33% nitrogen. You multiplied the weight of a 50 pound bag which gave you 16 pounds of actual nitrogen. Three 50 pound bags gave you 50 pounds of nitrogen. He had acres of vines to consider. Ah, God!

He hated math. It always screwed with him. Only with the needs of the vines had he been able to do this. But he still hated math.

Of course, too much nitrogen would damage the grapes. Compared to other crops, grapes didn’t have a high nitrogen requirement. A high nitrogen dump late in the season would affect the vines ability to withstand winter. Up here at the foot of the Matra mountains, the winters were always severe.

Too much or too little, like wine and women, would unbalance life. Something was always screwing with him.

After a few hours of this, he had enough. He would have to dig deep for the fertilizer next year, between bud and bloom season, but for now, this year, he had it covered.

He moved to a club chair, first poking up the fire. Janos had a good supply of wood stored under a roof, but he needed more before winter. It was always winter when things broke down, stopped working or died. Vadas had only been attending the vines for the last five years and now? It was a make or break deal. If it was dry tomorrow he would take Elizabeth out to inspect the grapes. They would be small green bullets, but growing. He made a mental note to call around to his clients in Paris and Budapest. There were enough barrels and bottles in the caves to supply them now. He would also have to secure more buyers for the wine. Ah God, it never ends, he thought. It’s a race between weather and demands of the soil and fruit.

Vadas was happy. The news about Zoltan made him happy. He decided to listen to his favorite music: American rock and roll. He had a collection of old records he bought during visits to the States. It was rare he had a chance to settle and enjoy this music. He put on “Under the Boardwalk” by the Drifters. He lit a cigarette and stretched out, drawing the smoke in deeply.

Elizabeth stood at the entrance of the room.

She started to laugh. “I didn’t know you liked this kind of music.”

“Ah! My dance partner has arrived!” Vadas threw his cigarette into the fireplace and grabbed Elizabeth around the waist. He danced her around the room, dipping and swaying, twirling her around like a 50’s jitterbug. He was quite happy with himself.

After a few minutes, she was tired out, but Vadas continued to dance, putting on a show, one hand on his stomach, the other waving in the air, his feet gliding about. Elizabeth laughed at his antics, glad to see him in such a mood. Finally he flopped down in his chair, beaming at her.

“Wherever you went it certainly made you happy.”

Vadas turned off the phonograph. “I saw Zoltan.”

“And how is he?”

“Good. In fact, better than ever.”

“Oh, that’s so good to hear. He’s a sweet man.”

“Yes he is.” Vadas started to light another cigarette, and then thought the better of it. Elizabeth was around and he didn’t want her nagging. He would hold the ‘good news’ about Zoltan until they went to bed. Then he would tell her, when he could weave the tale.

“Come here, Elizabeth.” He padded the chair.

“There’s no room, Vadas”, said Elizabeth, laughing.

“There’s always room for you, Mouse.”

Elizabeth sat on his lap. Vadas pulled her into his arms. She tucked her head under his chin, as he looked outside at the trees. The afternoon had slipped away and dusk was falling. The rain was heavier. The night would be a good one for sleeping. Lying in bed, he would hear the pounding of the rain. It always comforted, lulled him to sleep.
Nothing was solved, and Miklos was still out there. But he had seen Zoltan. In less than a day he had gained a brother, some family. He felt happy. The woman in his lap was a big part of that. Whatever tomorrow would bring, he could face it. He knew Zoltan would have his back. Then again, Zoltan always did. It just was a bit different now.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

Lady Nyo

“A Kapitany”, Chapter 30

I have been reading “Savage Continent”, by Keith Lowe. I can’t put this book down and have been getting up in the middle of the night just to read more. It’s about Europe after WWII and it is nothing we in the US have been taught. At least most of us. The turmoil after WWII, when nation’s borders were expanded or condensed, when people who were minorities were expelled, slaughtered by ‘ethnic cleansing’ by new and vengeful governments and citizens, where starvation and disease were even more prominent than during the war years of rations and ‘without’….this book opened my eyes and my heart.

It is not an easy book to read because the horror of what happened is heart wrenching. Since the men were off fighting a war, the majority of victims were women, children and the elderly. I encourage everyone who reads this blog to get this book. It also influenced my writing of “A Kapitany”, though only in the past few weeks. This history can’t be ignored, especially when you are writing about conditions (as in Hungary) today. The impact of war and it’s devastation in the 10 years after will impact generations to come.

Chapter 30 is a gentle chapter. No warnings. Just two elderly aunties that have seen much and survived more.

Lady Nyo

A Kapitany, Chapter 30

Vadas walked down the street in Rozsadomb, a well heeled part of Budapest. He looked for the elaborate iron grill of their balcony, and saw the geraniums in pots. Aunt Eva was the gardener. Vadas remembered his mother and Eva spading up the flower garden when he was a child. They planted cabbages and turnips. He remembered some man helping to uproot the old rose bushes. Cabbages would feed them, Eva said. Roses only smelled good.

They had lived a long time in Rose Hill. Their home was part of an old mansion, subdivided into apartments. Before there were only old people around. So many of the rich, those who had built these villas, had fled Budapest for the west. They had settled in Paris, Toronto, in London. Now Rose Hill was again an expensive residential neighborhood in Buda. Some of the former residents had moved back in the twenty years since the Iron Curtain had fallen. Many of the new owners of these places were foreigners. Vadas wondered what his aunts thought about the changes around them, these new people. The last time he had talked to them, they had bemoaned the dying off of neighbors of many years. They had grown old, and despite war and political turmoil, claimed the world was moving too fast.

Vadas stood in the street and looked at the stonework of the building. Elaborate carvings and even more elaborate iron work on the balconies. This type of construction would never be reproduced now. Too expensive. The skilled workers, stone masons and artists who produced this decoration would have died off. Tastes had changed and now efforts were put into economical and fast construction. The housekeeper appeared on the balcony. Vadas waved to her.

He rang the buzzer at the door and was let into the vestibule. He climbed the stairs to the second story, ignoring the small elevator and was met at the door by the same woman. She led him down the small hallway to his aunts.

They were sitting with big smiles creasing their faces. Vadas embraced them, kissing both on their cheeks.

“You have come! You rascal, you don’t visit us much. How many times a year, Vadas? Perhaps you are waiting for our funeral to pay your respects?” Aunt Magrit was the fierce one, and pulled little Eva around in her wake.

Vadas grinned. “You look very well, dear Margit. As well as ever.”

He was fondest of Eva, who was younger by two years. She looked so old, but then, both of them were in their nineties. They had seen so much; war, the starvation after war, displacement, casual violence outside their windows. They had survived events many others hadn’t. Aunt Eva’s eyes had almost disappeared into the wrinkles of her face.

Still they shone with tenderness.

The housekeeper came in with a tray of coffee and Vadas took a cup, placing the saucer on his knee like he did as a young boy.

“Your last letter said you had a surprise for us? Come Vadas, you know we have little time left to play riddles with you.”

Aunt Margit always had a sharp tongue. She meant well, still was a formidable woman. Aunt Eva just smiled at Vadas. She was used to her sister and all these years nothing had changed.

“I am going to marry.” He took a sip of his too-sweetened coffee.

Both women looked at him and Aunt Margit exploded in cackles.

“You? The man who has run all these years from marriage? Hah! This news is unexpected. Tell us who this poor woman is. We will warn her.”

Aunt Eva had tears in her eyes.

“Ah, Margit, leave the poor boy alone. He means well, you know his heart.”
“Well, then. Tell us about your intended and wedding plans.”

“Well, it won’t be until after the harvest. I have hopes for this year’s grapes. The wedding will be in Eger.”
“We hear you have done a good job with the vines, Vadas. Your hard work is paying off. Your dear father would be proud of you and your labors.”

Aunt Eva nodded her head. She was the silent one when Margit was around.

Vadas didn’t think his father would be proud at all if he knew how he had made the bulk of his money. The past five years had made a difference, though. The grapes were producing well, and he had expanded his clients. At least that part was good.

“Elizabeth is a few years younger, past child bearing age, but still in good shape.”

He took another sip of his coffee. “She is a small woman, sometimes quiet. She is an artist.”

“Ah, good! She will paint a picture for us! Tell her I want one of the old house and be quick about it. I won’t live forever.”

Eva laughed at her sister. “Go on, Vadas, dear. Tell us more about this Elizabeth. It is good you are marrying a countrywoman. Poor Marta. After all these years, you are going to have a wife.”

They would not be pleased when they found out more about Elizabeth, thought Vadas.

“Actually, darlings, Elizabeth is an American. But she’s half Hungarian”, Vadas rushed to add.

“What? You are marrying someone foreign? Why? Why can’t you find a good Hungarian girl to marry, Vadas?”

Aunt Margit’s cup rattled in her saucer. Aunt Eva looked confused.

“Well, simply….I have fallen in love.” Vadas put his cup and saucer on the table besides him.

“Look, she is a good girl, a good woman. She is sensible and not someone who is just out to spend money. She wants to raise sheep after we marry. I don’t understand this, but she wants to sell wool to some market. She is industrious and she will be good with clients. She is smart. And pretty.”

“Wool?” Aunt Margit looked at Eva, her jaw dropping. “Does she understand the duties of a wife? Does she cook?”

Vadas laughed. “Oh, believe me. She understands the duties of a wife. I have taken her out for a test drive a number of times.”

Aunt Eva laughed and Aunt Margit blinked several times, the joke going over her head.

“As to cooking, I don’t know. Maria Kovacs has taken care of that so far. Two women in the same kitchen look like trouble to me so I haven’t encouraged this.”

“Well, that at least shows you have some sense for a man. So tell us, Vadas, in what church will the wedding be?”

Vadas knew he was in trouble now. He hadn’t given it any thought. He left these details to Soffia and Elizabeth.

“Oh, a good Catholic church. When I get back to Eger I will discuss this with Elizabeth.”

“A good Catholic church? Hah! You haven’t been to mass in years. Is this Elizabeth even Catholic?”

Vadas thought carefully how to answer. “We don’t discuss religion too much, Auntie. There has been so much on her plate. We haven’t had much time to talk about these things.”

“Have you met her family?”

“No, Eva. She only has one elderly Aunt. We will bring her over for the wedding.”

“Oh! Are her parents dead? Poor woman, to be alone in a country, planning a wedding and no one to help her.”

“Remember Soffia Horvath? She is helping her. She’s with her right now. They have been visiting churches and looking for a wedding gown.”

“Soffia! Oh, Vadas, that Soffia is not a good woman to throw at your bride. I remember her. She was quite something. Attractive, yes, but not wife material at all.”

Vadas laughed. If they only knew the truth about Soffia.

“I’m not marrying Soffia, Aunt Margit. She’s just company for Elizabeth while I am gone on business. She is serving a purpose and likes Elizabeth. Soffia is a sweet girl, don’t worry.”

They were silent for a few moments as the aunties digested this news about the intended marriage.

“I am very glad you are settling down, darling. I remember the sadness when Marta died. Oh, that poor lamb!” This from Aunt Eva.

“Thank you. Elizabeth is very different from Marta, but then again, this is to be expected. And I am twenty years older. I am different, too. Elizabeth is very curious about the vineyard and I have shown her the vines. She will adjust to being married to a humble wine maker.”

“Will this American woman want to live in Hungary? Aren’t we very different than the States?”

“She will adjust, Aunt Margit. She is in love with her Vadas and she will adjust.”

They talked about other matters, and Vadas relaxed when the conversation shifted from Elizabeth. How could they grasp anything about her? She was different, a foreigner, a woman not of their culture. But it didn’t really matter. The adjustment would be between them. And there would be plenty of it. First they had to get past Miklos. But that was still in the future. Nothing to bother the old aunties with.

“Well, Vadas. You know this news changes a lot of things. We were holding the estate for you, and you would get it when we died. But with your marriage, this changes. Would you want to live in that old house?”

“Elizabeth has seen it. I made it a point to show it to her. She has given some excellent advice on the murals and the restoration. She and Soffia are travelling around Eger right now talking to people to begin at least repair the roof.”

“Does she speak Hungarian?” This from Aunt Margit.

“No, just a little bit. That is why Soffia is so helpful right now.”

Both aunts looked at each other. “Well, she will have to learn, and fast.”

“What did she think about the house?”

“Ah, she loved it, Eva. Tears were in her eyes. She said she couldn’t marry me because I would think she was
marrying for the house.” Vadas laughed. “I convinced her otherwise.”

“Yes, said Margit, I bet you did. You always had a persuasive way with women. You know we heard stories of your exploits, Vadas. We might be old, but we still can hear and enjoy gossip.”

Vadas smiled. “Well, you don’t have to worry about rumors anymore. You will like Elizabeth. She is the soul of kindness and good sense. You will love her in time.”

They had asked him to stay for dinner and Vadas didn’t see how he could politely refuse. He wanted to drive back to Noszvaj that night but they had more to say. Aunt Margit went to instruct the housekeeper who also cooked for them, and left him alone with Eva.

“Have you given her a ring, yet?”

“No, Aunt Eva. I did pick up a box of jewelry from the lawyers in Paris, but there was nothing I saw on first viewing. I will look for something, probably in Eger.”

“Wait, Vadas. I have something to give you. I don’t know if you will like, but perhaps it will work.”

Aunt Eva left him in their sitting room, and went to her bedroom. She returned with a small box and presented it to him. In it was a diamond ring. Heart shaped, with a pave of tiny diamonds on either side, set in platinum. Vadas sucked in his breath when he saw it.

“I can’t accept this, Eva”. He looked with fondness at his aunt.

“And who am I to give it to, then? I didn’t think to give it to you for Marta, but then, it was all over so soon.

Ah, Vadas, how much our hearts were broken. We suffered along with you, darling boy.”

“It is beautiful, Eva. It is perfect for Elizabeth. She will love it. Thank you.”

Vadas embraced this tiny, frail auntie and held her long. He didn’t want her to see the emotion crossing his face. He was deeply moved.

After dinner and during the coffee that followed all meals in Budapest, the aunts told him they had another thing to talk about. They felt he needed to know this, and were wrong to hold it so long.

“Do you remember the man that came and helped your mother? He dug up the rose garden and helped her plant cabbages? It was Zoltan’s father. Your mother had a child by him. Your father was in prison, and your mother was very alone. It is hard for a women to face the world without a man, and she faced more than the world. She faced the Germans, and then the Russians. That house almost killed her. Everything weighed on her until it broke her health. That is why she died, Vadas, before her time. Don’t judge, Vadas, war does terrible things to people and especially women. You wouldn’t have known this. You were in France, with us. You were so young, just a baby.”

Aunt Eva did the talking. Aunt Margit was silent with the memories.

“The years after the war were almost as terrible as during the war. The starvation, the lawlessness in the cities, the rampages, and especially the famines, all these things happen, Vadas. What are we to do? We just go on. This child, Zoltan, was given to his father’s family to raise. Your mother didn’t have milk enough to nurse him. Cabbages and turnips were not good food for this. He would have died, one amongst so many babies who did. People suspected his parentage, but who could care? They all had their own worries. One child born above the blanket was not an event to produce much concern during those years. People had too much to do. This was nothing.”

This was nothing? Vadas couldn’t think straight. So, Zoltan was his half brother. What was he to think? Why did they not tell him before? Ah, God! He had almost killed Zoltan, had seen him awash in his own blood, and only a mercy had saved him. He, Vadas, had sent him into danger. He had almost died. He would have killed his own brother had he died. This blood would have been on his hands.

The two sisters couldn’t know what Vadas was thinking, but the shock of it was on his face. He felt physically sick and stood up. He passed his hand over his face, and walked to the window. The two women looked at each other in fear. They didn’t expect this old news, of sixty years duration, to do this to him.

At the window, Vadas took a deep breath. Zoltan was alive and recovering. He would do everything in his power to rectify what he had done.

He faced his aunts. The shock of this was still on his face, and his voice wavered.

“Zoltan is my brother? This is true?”

“Yes, Vadas, he is your half-brother. We didn’t know until recently that Zoltan was still alive or living in Hungary. We had lost sight of him many years ago. We just forgot all this. But we were visited by some investigator and he mentioned Zoltan had been injured. They also mentioned your name. We didn’t give any information, played two old rattled women, which we are, but it was time for you to know about Zoltan.”

Vadas was curious about this investigator. He didn’t want to alarm his aunts. He would find his own answers later.

“Since Zoltan is my half brother, then the estate should be divided between us.”

“There is the house and the hunting lodge. Since Zoltan is not married, we thought perhaps he could be settled in the lodge? But it is up to you, Vadas. You are the main inheritor.”

Vadas thought hard. What should he say to them?

“I was hoping I could restore at least part of the house for us to live in. I don’t know, it would be too expensive to restore the whole house. There isn’t any furniture in it. It isn’t something you can ask a bride to do. I was thinking we would live in the lodge until we could fix up a couple of rooms, and of course patch the roof first. Everything else can be later.”

Vadas looked at the floor. “I thought of asking Zoltan to come live in the lodge. I knew he was injured, and I visited him in hospital. He has no wife or children I know of. I think that is right, to deed over the lodge to him. Of course Janos and Maria would continue to live there. They have been there so long. They also can help Zoltan. All this changes everything, no?”

“Yes, Vadas, it does. And Zoltan living in the lodge is a good idea. He doesn’t know you are his half brother. We thought it would be up to you to tell him.”

Ah God, thought Vadas. I wonder what he will think. And why so long in the coming?

The aunties later said there was a warehouse in Eger full of furniture they had saved from the Russians, first from the Germans, and then later from the Communists. They didn’t know the shape of the stuff, perhaps the mice had destroyed the upholstery, rats had eaten the legs of tables, but it was from the house. Perhaps Elizabeth could see what was there and choose what she wanted?

Vadas smiled. He already knew of a nice bed needing a mattress. Aunt Magrit gave him her best severe look and Eva chuckled. Their darling boy really hadn’t changed over the years. Thank God something of life was still the same, even if in the telling it would make a priest blush in the confession box.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2007-2013

“A Kapitany”, Chapter 26….Again with a WARNING

This is a novel of bdsm, violence, love and also bad language. You have been warned.

In writing this chapter, I came across the Hungarian Labor Camp, Recsk, that was used very near Eger from 1950-1963. This was a Stalinist prison camp that came into Hungary on the heels of WWII and the Nazis leaving Hungary. The brutality of Stalin was a continuation of Hitler. There were ‘only’ 1500 people in this camp, but many never survived. It is hardly ever talked about in Hungary, in part because of the threats by the Soviet government. However, that is slowly changing and people are holding memorials to the victims.

The De La Motte House (from “The Great Country Houses of Hungary) built around 1773, was a visual inspiration. The influence is obviously French and apparently this was not that unusual for Hungary in the 18th century. Some aristocrats, and others from the French Revolution moved to Budiapest and the Hungarian countryside. The workmen and architect came from Eger, which is only 12 kilometers from Eger. The house had many frescos (based on Roman mythology) that have been carefully restorred. It is now a place for tourists and weddings, etc.

The famous “Bull’s Blood”, a Hungarian wine, comes from this region.

Lady Nyo

A Kapitany, Chapter 26

Both of them slept late, Vadas waking with a mild hangover. He fell into his bed without thinking of Elizabeth sleeping there. He was too tired to move. The drink and smoke of last night did him in.

In the morning Elizabeth got up before Vadas. She washed in the cold water from a pitcher on a table near a window. Vadas watched her from the bed, playing possum. He liked these moments when he could observe her. It was an intimacy, different from the usual stuff.

This morning Elizabeth moved carefully from the bed half way across the room. She couldn’t pour water into the bowl because of her wrist but dabbed at her face. She removed the Velcro cast and plunged her arm into the pitcher. Vadas wondered if he should rise and pour water for her. He decided against it, mostly because he was too comfortable. He needed more sleep after last night. Watching her was a nice way to begin the day.

Elizabeth pulled her nightgown over her head. She struggled free and threw it into a chair. Naked, she moved to look out a window. The windows were deep and she had to raise herself on toes to see the morning outside. Vadas saw the marks from Alexandra’s caning and the bruises of Miklos’ usage. She was a small woman, and since Miklos raped her, she had lost weight. She became quiet, withdrawn. It began to worry Vadas. Already he could tell she wasn’t eating enough or sleeping well. He heard her turning over in the middle of the night, crying out in pain.

In all his years playing the Dom, he never did what Miklos dared. Some had begged for pain, and that he could give. But there was a tipping point. There were times the woman demanded things of him he didn’t want to do. Choking them until they fainted. Then having to revive them, and quickly. Vadas had done these things. He knew there would come a time he would slip up, something would happen. He didn’t want to chance it now. The risks and thrills weren’t worth it. Perhaps he was growing old, soft, whatever happened to men. He didn’t know. He did know Elizabeth, probably by her innocence, had turned his sexual desires a bit more wholesome. He laughed to himself. Just the usual fucking and sucking. He enjoyed the simple passion of this woman. He was over the extreme. At least, for now. He could continue to tie her up, play with her, flog her, scare her. He liked to scare her; it fed into his power. He hadn’t made her beg, but that would come. Elizabeth was a curious woman. He could work with that.

She would learn her place in the marriage. She would come to know his. She wasn’t used to Hungarian men, but give her a few years. She would learn. That was if he could get her to marry. He was aroused, his cock swelling slightly under the covers. His thoughts and the sight of a fragile- looking Elizabeth were doing the trick. She made him feel young, and God knew he was far from that. No, perhaps it wasn’t so much sex. Perhaps it was just Elizabeth. He had a woman, one to care for. Perhaps that was all he ever wanted. Since Marta died, he hadn’t known many with real intimacy. He went through the motions, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Vadas watched her put on panties and a long skirt. She couldn’t put on a bra, couldn’t reach behind her back, but pulled a loose grey sweater over her head. She bent over and brushed her long hair, braiding it into one loose braid. Vadas smiled. He remembered his mother doing her hair like that. He was very young, but it was one of the things he remembered of her.

The morning sun was not encouraging. Pale, barely breaking through the clouds. It was misting outside, a good day to stay by a low fire. They drank their coffee and Elizabeth pulled a shawl over her shoulders in the hall. She saw Vadas put a gun in his hunting vest and take a handful of ammo from a drawer.

Vadas saw her expression in the mirror over the table. She looked confused.

“Don’t worry, Elizabeth. This is just a precaution. I haven’t been up there in years. There might be raccoons or skunks in the house.” Vadas gave her a broad smile.

“Vadas, you don’t shoot a skunk in the house. Are you crazy? That smell will never go away. You will have to pull it down or you will not be able to go near it for years.”

Vadas laughed. “Ok, then no shooting skunks. What about trespassers?”

“No, you don’t shoot them, either. You order them gone and then you call the police.”

“Ah! So you know Hungarian police, now?” Vadas laughed. The police here didn’t function like those in Budapest. They were slow to respond, and when they did, they wanted bribes on the spot. Not much had changed since the previous regime. Corruption was corruption, inbred in people with some small authority.

They drove to the main road in an old, open Jeep. Vadas turned off to a private, overgrown road. It was at an incline. They climbed a rutty road at least three hundred feet. The gravel of the drive had not been raked for years, now mostly covered in leaves. Twice he had to stop and remove limbs.

Before them was a high stone mortared surround with a large wrought iron gate. There were unicorns on top of the two main pillars, missing their horns.

Vadas got out and unlocked a small gate at one side. Elizabeth went through the gate and passed trees and bushes not trimmed in years. These trees and shrubs had grown up and covered the first floor windows. Even with this neglect, the house was a beauty.

Vadas could see from her expression she was impressed. He had not come up here in years. There were too many sad memories of the short life with Marta.

Elizabeth turned to him, her eyes wide. “This is a chateau! You didn’t tell me it would be so grand.” Elizabeth turned back to the house. There was definitely some French influence in the design.

“Well, I don’t know you would call it a chateau in Hungary, but it is an old house. Come, I have the key.”

Elizabeth counted eight windows on both the first and second floors. There was a small balcony in the middle on the second floor, and double wooden doors at the entrance. Just then the sun peeked out and Elizabeth saw the buttery yellow of the building light up. All over central Europe this color, Schonbrunn, was used. It was a color enriching with age.

“Oh, Vadas, it’s beautiful!”

“Wait until you see the inside, Elizabeth. Perhaps you will have ideas what can be restored?”

He unlocked the front door and Elizabeth passed under his arm into the wide and dark hallway. Vadas turned on his flashlight and told her to stay where she was. He would open the interior shutters and the dusty drapes.

Her eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness, even with the open door behind her. When Vadas came back with his flashlight, he aimed it at the ceiling, fully twenty feet above her. There were frescos of some Roman mythology. As he cast his light around the room, she saw faded frescos on the walls.

“Oh, Vadas! You grew up in this house? What a marvelous childhood you must have had.”

“Good and bad, Elizabeth, like most. Come, we go through this door first. There are a number of reception rooms.”

With the shutters opened and the heavy drapes drawn back, Elizabeth could see the interior. First was a large rectangular room banked with windows on the long side. The floor was parquet made up of dark stars on a lighter background. Frescos on these walls, too, but much faded. Some of the walls looked like the plaster had been gouged out. Elizabeth walked over and touched a wall gently.

“During the war, my parents moved outside of Paris. This house was looted, by soldiers mostly. Some locals joined in the looting. Very few family pieces were recovered after the war, so when they came back, they made do what they could find. We never really knew who destroyed some of these frescos, but we think it was not the soldiers. The Nazis were brutal, but they didn’t usually destroy property like this. They bombed Budapest pretty flat in 1944, so maybe I’m wrong. They went after my father’s laborers from the vineyards. Many were sent to Germany to the forced labor camps. The grapes? They were untended for years before my father could work them. He survived a few years after Recsk in the Matra Hills east of here.”

“What was Recsk, Vadas?”

Vadas looked up at the ceiling as if the answer was floating there. “Recsk, Elizabeth, was a labor camp. This was during Stalin’s time. Officially it was opened in 1950, but it held prisoners after the end of the war. My father was a broken man when he was released. He had worked in a mine all those years. He was considered lucky. He came back. I was too young to take over and by then the Soviets had Hungary in their fist. I spent my early years in Paris with my mother.”

“So no one lived here since the war?”

“Oh, we lived here, came back later right after the war, but our living conditions were greatly changed. Before we had a household staff, laborers for the vines, we had forests to sell timber. After the war? We had nothing except this house tumbling down around our ears.”

These memories had pain for him. “There were times we almost starved. We broke up what furniture we had to warm a room. If it wasn’t for Zoltan’s family and a few others, we would have starved to death.” Vadas laughed. “Zoltan’s father hunted deer on our land and brought us meat. I think our woods fed the whole of Eger after the war. The deer disappeared and we ate what we could find, which wasn’t much. My mother dug up her flower garden and planted cabbage like a peasant woman.”

Vadas moved through the rooms, pointing out the elaborate fireplaces. Some of the marble was missing, and the mantels had been shored up with rough timber. Mirrors had been bashed in, and windows were boarded up, the sashes missing. It was hard to see everything, but the house needed a lot of restoration. For a chateau, it was small, but big enough.

He showed her the first floor, and then led her upstairs to the second. The staircase was a double marble construction, and had wrought iron railings. The central hall was crowned with a fresco on the barreled ceiling. There wasn’t enough light for Elizabeth to make out the theme, but it was from some mythology, probably Roman as in the lower rooms.

They walked through different bedrooms with small closets, which would have been a room for an attending servant. There were no frescos in these rooms, but they did have windows that looked out to the dark mountains. Elizabeth wondered if these were part of the chain of the Matras mountains, where the prison camp Recsk once was.

The landscape outside from the second story view was breathtaking. Elizabeth saw rolling hills, forests, a river in the distance, and what seemed to be once a garden beneath where they were standing. Perhaps this was the flower garden where Vadas’ mother planted cabbage.

Except for the cellar and kitchens, they explored as much as Elizabeth had energy for. She felt tired and asked Vadas if she could lie down somewhere for a few minutes. She hadn’t this much activity since she visited the National Museum, where she had walked for hours. Vadas led her back to the central bedroom, a room at one time of great decoration. The white marble fireplace was rococo in design, though parts of it were missing. There were particular flourishes of Hungarian taste, with what looked like gargoyles flanking each side. They didn’t look French.
Everything in the room had been covered with heavy white sheets. What seemed to be a wardrobe, or armoire, against a long wall, was shrouded with sheeting. A table and individual chairs were covered. The bed was covered, the headboard and footboard, though there was no covering for the plain mattress. It looked old and stained. Elizabeth looked up, and there in the plaster, were great streaks, water markings where the rain had come through the slate roofs. She moved to a window, one of four in the room, reaching from a low ledge almost to the high ceiling. Outside, before her, stretched a landscape of incredible beauty with those rolling hills into the distance.

Vadas watched her. He wanted to see her response to the house. She turned to him and smiled.

“It is more than I thought it would be. It is so beautiful, Vadas, I haven’t the words. But there is so much sadness in the history of this house.”

“Good, I thought you would like it. And yes, there was much sadness. Now, come lie down, I will shake out this dusty sheet. At least the mattress is dry.”

The bed looked to be carved walnut, in the style of Louis XVI. There were no blankets so Vadas smoothed the sheet over the bed. He lay down and patted the mattress. Elizabeth lay next to him, her head on his shoulder. She pulled her shawl around them. Both of them looked up at the stained ceiling. Some plaster decoration had long ago fallen and lathe was exposed in sections of the ceiling.

“What do you think of the house, even with damaged ceilings?”

“I know I can’t marry you now. If I did, you would just think I was marrying you for your house.”

“Women marry for worse reasons, Elizabeth.”

“I will marry only for love, Vadas,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Yes, I will marry you.”

Vadas put his arms around her and placed his chin on top of her head. He looked out the window at the distant mountains and felt peace. It was to be short lived.

“I will marry you, Vadas, on one condition.”

“I’m listening, Elizabeth. What is this condition?”

Elizabeth drew her breath. “That you promise you will not go after Miklos. Or Alexandra.”

Vadas sat up and reached for a cigarette in his vest.

“Do you understand what you are asking, Elizabeth? He has violated the woman he knew was going to be my wife, and in doing so he fucked me over as he did you. How would it look to the men I know, men I work with, if I just walked away? You ask too much, Elizabeth.”
She heard the frustration and anger in his voice. She knew this lay beyond anything Vadas could deem reasonable. His pride, his ego, his manhood had been defiled. She was the one physically injured, but he, in typical male fashion, was the insulted.

“I ask this, Vadas, for us. Not for me, nor for you, but for us. You wanted a new life, a fresh start, then let’s take it. What is Miklos to us if we have a different life together? He has no part in it, darling.”

Vadas puffed on his cigarette. There was no way he would stop going after Miklos. This woman asked too much. How could he face the men he called friends all these years? How could he face Zoltan? How could he walk as a man among these men? They were friends, but he was still boss. No, she didn’t understand. He was made a cuckold by Miklos, and the world would see it. This was not how men settled things. Miklos must be found and brought to ground. Alexandra, too, but she was not as important. Miklos would pay with his life. Elizabeth would be revenged and so would he.

Vadas puffed hard on his cigarette, blowing smoke like a dragon. He was visibly upset. However, she had said she would marry. That was one concession he won. This other stuff he would work around. She didn’t have to know everything. A man kept some secrets for the sake of his dignity.

********

Vadas watched Elizabeth asleep in his arms. He needed her to climax, to scream in passion. He needed to reclaim her with this small act. Miklos had taken so much from him. Now, with this short hour of love making, he had her back under him. It was a beginning, as Elizabeth said. A small beginning, but it helped. He looked at the woman in his arms. She was only weak physically. She surprised him. This marriage might work out. He felt she was his, and in wonder, realized he had become something of hers. It was a strange feeling but had some truth to it. Perhaps this was how love began.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2007, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Tom Turkey walking into Thanksgiving

From: MEMORIES OF A ROTTEN CHILDHOOD, -PART 7, MY FATHER

My father was a tender man. He came back from WWII, from the Pacific Rim, probably shell shocked, certainly a pacifist.

It was somewhere in the 50′s. My parents had bought their dream house: a very old, and badly- needing- restoration pre-Revolutionary War house. My father, along with my 9 months pregnant mother, moved into this house and began the necessary restoration. I remember my brother and I were bedded down in what was to be the dining room.

Both my parents were biting off probably more than they could chew with this property. There were two barns, a few sheds, and lo and behold! An outhouse. That was the toilet…the only toilet.

My mother, being city bred, and also so heavily pregnant, refused to use that black walnut-built two seater outhouse, and since it was already winter, who could blame her? My father worked nights putting in a proper bathroom, and peace reigned again. Sort of.

(Black walnut is beautiful wood, and since they were surrounded with acres of it, that particular wood was used for just about everything, including the beautiful curving banister in the front hall. My father also tore apart the outhouse and used some of the wood in constructing a cabinet under the back staircase, accessible from the kitchen. It was a great place for us to play hide and seek as children.)

Thanksgiving was coming one year, and my father decided he would buy a live turkey, fatten it up and slaughter it for the day. I vaguely remember going with him one night, when it was already dark and cold, and what I remember was a very large, dark room, lit by a bare bulb hardly casting light on the proceedings. If I remember correctly, it probably was a poultry farm somewhere in Middlesex County, probably in Millstone. Back in the 50′s and 60′s, five miles from Princeton, all of this area was farm country. Very old, English, Scottish then Dutch countryside with huge acreage of farms, dairy and grains.

So my father brings home a live turkey, and with two kids and a toddler, he thinks he is going to make “Tom” dinner.
My father soon realized his now-country- bred children had made friends with Tom and the idea of eating a friend, well, this wasn’t on the menu for us kids.

My mother wasn’t about to pluck or clean a turkey. She was a nurse and ballet dancer and hadn’t education in this. She didn’t like to even touch fish to be cooked.

So Tom went to Ham MacDonald in Rocky Hill. He had 12 children and I am sure Tom served the purpose he was bred for very nicely there.
My father went to his friend in Millstone, Chester, who was a butcher, and got a goose. I think he decided on goose because of the quick disappearance of Tom and he knew any turkey carcass showing up on a plate would have been suspect.

So that Thanksgiving we had goose, which was rather strange because Thanksgiving wasn’t called “Goose Day”.

My father was a tender man. Perhaps WWII and the times made him tender. Perhaps having children made him see life through our eyes. Some men become harder faced with life. I think it was because of his nature. He practiced compassion, even to the sensitivities of children.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2011, 2012

A Thanksgiving Memory

Happy Thanksgiving!

My father was a tender man.  He came back from WWII, from the Pacific Rim, probably shell shocked, certainly a pacifist.

It was somewhere in the  50’s.    My parents had bought their dream house: a very old, and badly- needing- restoration pre-Revolutionary War house.  My father, along with my 9 months pregnant mother, moved into this house and began the necessary restoration.  I remember my brother and I were bedded down in what was to be the dining room.

Both my parents were biting off probably more than they could chew with this property.  There were two barns, a few sheds, and lo and behold!  An outhouse.  That was the toilet…the only toilet.

My mother, being city bred, and also so heavily pregnant, refused to use that black walnut-built two seater outhouse, and since it was already winter, who could blame her?  My father worked nights  putting in a proper bathroom, and peace reigned again.  Sort of.

(Black walnut is beautiful wood, and since they were surrounded with acres of it, that particular wood was used for just about everything, including the beautiful curving banister in the front hall.  My father also tore apart the outhouse and used some of the wood in constructing a cabinet under the back staircase,  accessible from the kitchen.  It was a great place for us to play hide and seek as children.)

Thanksgiving was coming one year, and my father decided he would buy a live turkey, fatten it up and slaughter it for the day.  I vaguely remember going with him one night, when it was already dark and cold,  and what I remember was  a very large, dark room, lit by a bare bulb hardly casting light  on the proceedings.  If I remember correctly, it probably was a poultry farm somewhere in Middlesex County, probably in Millstone.  Back in the 50’s and 60’s, five miles from Princeton, all of this area was farm country.  Very old, English, Scottish then Dutch countryside with huge acreage of farms, dairy and grains.

So my father brings home a live turkey, and with two  kids and a toddler, he thinks he is going to make “Tom” dinner.

My father soon realized  his now-country- bred children had made friends with Tom and the idea of eating a friend, well, this wasn’t on the menu for us kids.

My mother wasn’t about to pluck or clean a turkey.  She was a nurse and ballet dancer and hadn’t education in this.  She didn’t like to even touch fish to be cooked.

So Tom went to Ham MacDonald in Rocky Hill.  He had 12 children and I am sure Tom served the purpose he was bred for very nicely there.

My father went to his friend in Millstone, Chester, who was a  butcher, and got a goose.  I think he decided on goose because of the quick disappearance of Tom and he knew any turkey carcass showing up on a plate would have been suspect.

So that  Thanksgiving we had goose, which was rather strange because Thanksgiving wasn’t called “Goose Day”.

My father was a tender man.  Perhaps WWII and the times had made him tender.  Perhaps having children made him see life through our eyes.  Some men become harder faced with life.  I think it was because of his nature.  He practiced compassion, even to the sensitivities of children.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jane Kohut-Bartels

B24s, Liberators and Childhood

B24 Bomber

This is a repost from about a year ago, but it has some resonance with Memorial Day today.  The “We” that starts off this entry was my son, who is now serving in the US Navy.

We were watching a TV program last night about the B24 Liberator, these huge,  clumsy planes coming down a runway, shaking like a dog at the water’s edge, and you are silently yelling “Get up! Get it up!” because these huge birds don’t look like they are gonna make it.  The plane bounces right towards you, and you see (or the camerman sees) the beast rumble aloft, and you see the undercarriage and you wonder what miracle allowed this to happen.

This bomber was used extensively during WWII.  It was called the “Work Horse” of the Air Force.  My father was a B24 pilot and also a sparks man….and at 22 the oldest on the plane.  I remember old photos… found in his top drawer where his metals and other stuff were kept, war mementos  we children weren’t supposed to play with, but we did, like his gyroscope.  We spent hours spinning that on polished pine floors upstairs where our mother was too busy with the day to catch us.  These photos were shot during the release of bombs, going down on some city, and how big these  bombs looked.  Huge fat sausages, but deadly ones.  The men must have been standing over the bay door, straddling the hole, taking pictures.   I remember some of the photos, the instruments, the dials the stuff on the ‘dashboard’ of the plane, and the complicated stuff that seemed to be just dials and levers, the stuff that kept this lumbersome plane in the air and delivered it’s horrific bombs.

I didn’t  know what I was looking at, although I DO remember my father, every time he got into any car he was driving.  He would run his hands over the ‘flaps’ above, the dashboard, the dials under the steering wheel, an unconscious movement like he was ‘checking the dials’ on the plane.  Even in the new black VW back in the early 60′s.

The car built by the Germans, the very same nation they were trying to defeat and stop taking over the world.  I remember there was a bit of flack about that car, but Dad bought it new anyway.  It also floated, which was good when the bridge over the causeway flooded out.

It was something we just didn’t question, Dad running his hands over the interior of the car in front of him.   It  was something so ingrained in him that there were  no questions to be asked.  At least by his three kids in the back of the car silently observing his movements.  But they never changed, until the 9 months before he died in November, 1989 when he no longer drove.

Ford, apparently, I learned last night….produced the B34 Liberator.  Actually it was Consolidated Something but later it was Ford.  They produced 1 an hour.  They needed them because they were so damn slow that 11,000 in one August were shot down over Europe. Don’t hold me to that stat because that is what I thought I heard on tv. Apparently though, 18,000 were produced from 1940-45 in a tremendous war effort.  Willow Run in Detroit was the biggest manufacturer of planes outside of Russia.

I remember some of the names I heard as a child:  “Flying Fortress”, “Flying Boxcar”,  “Flying Coffin”, but I think the “Flying Fortress” was the B29.  I could be very wrong here.   This last (“Flying Coffin”) was the most ominous.  It’s because B24′s caught fire easily, something to do with the fuel tanks being positioned somewhere bad.  There were two bomb bays apparently, and a cat walk between  the soldiers had to navigate.  I understand  the only way they could enter and exit the plane was from the rear.  That made it hard to evacuate, especially with parachutes.  They also were almost paper thin, a design nod to flight, light planes, just chunky and weird looking.  Like pelicans a bit.

I remember my father saying it wasn’t an easy plane to fly…big, clumsy, and hard to steer.  But in the air?  My father was a joker, a very quiet man, but had a great sense of humor.  He also carried his German silver French Horn aloft and I can’t think of that without thinking of my father playing his beloved Mahler and Mozart in the clouds.  Celestial music, indeed.

The B24 flew higher than most bombers, cruising at 20,000 feet.  They also had a large payload…bombs….and were bristling with machine guns on the front, sides, belly, tail.  They are strange looking birds to us now, because they were very lightly constructed, rivets all over on small plates.  The cockpit is cramped and I can’t see how they could see out of those windows.  I can’t see how you could get those planes up in the air, period.  Filled with 8,000 pounds of explosives it must have been tricky.  The wings were designed differently, a new attempt for speed.

I looked at the photos and film of the men during WWII, the crews of the B24′s and they looked so young, (and they were) but they carried a burden on their shoulders  today that is hard to understand.  There were no therapies, no real counseling units, no real understanding of what these men saw and did during war.  They had radio for the only immediacy and film footage shown in theaters before the movie.

Then, only the understanding of others who had gone through the same.  Back then they were expected to shoulder the task and buck up.  They were supposed to act and be men.  Their bodies were patched up and either they were sent back in or home, depending upon the damage.  The causalities were horrific in these planes.  Somewhere I read the percentage of returning from a mission was less than 45%.  There are hard stats to grasp.

My father was stationed in the Pacific, mostly the Philipines  and Australia.  He was a runner and held the Army record for a mile for a while.  Something like 4.11 minutes.  He ran in the outback, and there was a native Australian, named “John” who would meet him at a big rock and run with him for miles.   They never said a word to each other, speaking different languages, but John could chase birds out of the air.  My father saw him do this.  They would run back to the rock, shake hands and part.  The next day the same routine.

My father came out of WWII a pacifist.  He would not tolerate a gun around the property, and we lived in the country where pheasants, rabbits and deer were there for the taking.  I remember Uncle George, a favorite uncle, who shot a brace of rabbits on our property, hung them up by a nail by the door and my father got it from my mother.  We had come home from school, off the school bus, and saw the dead bunnies.  She found the chorus of mourners around the door, with rabbit blood dripping down the white paint to the brickwork.

Uncle George was told not to bring a gun on the property again.

My father did have a Benjamin Franklin air pistol…..something you had to pump up with a long metal thing out the snout, and he could shoot a walnut out of a crook of a tree.  That was the only gun allowed because I think it shot rivets.  Those weren’t proper bullets.

He did have a Ivanhoe Reversible Long Bow….45 lb pull.  And we learned to ‘shoot’ with that, plus the deer arrows.  My father thought it gave the wildlife a fighting chance.  But I never saw him kill anything.  He was an excellent baker, and would go out in the misty mornings, early fall and pick the blackberries in the fields, along the hedgerows, and make up three pies by 9am.  He would put them on the box freezer in the cooling room (this was a pre-Revolutionary War house, and there were many strange rooms for different purposes) and we would sneak in and eat the crusts off  the pies before he caught us.  He never really minded us because he knew about hungry children.

Many years later, when I had run back home, avoiding a first marriage,…I brought two shotguns home and a guy I grew up with, Doug Craig and I went looking for rabbits and pheasants.  I had never shot anything, but thought we would supply a country dinner.  Doug had returned from Vietnam with shrapnel in his stomach area, and Doug was a little weird BEFORE Nam.  But he was a wonderful friend,  one of the best banjo players around, and somehow lived through me trying to shoot a rabbit we spooked in the back fields.  I kept shooting at his foot, because that’s where the damn rabbit showed himself, and Doug kept hopping around.  I guess after Vietnam a girl shooting a shotgun wasn’t so terrible.  Doug did shoot the rabbit and a pheasant that day, and I did all the cleaning. We shot that pheasant on old man Staats’ property, hid it in the bushes, walked up to  Staats, asked him (which was proper) if we could hunt bird on his land, he said no, and we left.  My mother was angry, not that we had shot the bird on his property, but because his passel of boys had been poaching our land for years.

I do remember tossing the rabbit head out into the ravine between woods, and that rabbit’s head slowly rotating around in the air.   I remember it’s slightly accusatory face turning around and around. Funny what you remember.

I overcooked the (young) pheasant and stewed the rabbit.  My father said it was the first time he had tasted rabbit in 30 years.  I guess my mother wasn’t big on cleaning and cooking rabbit.

Doug and I threw the rabbit pelt up on the copper roof.  It stayed up there for a long time until my father retrieved it.

Doug died around 1991, mugged in Philly, and lay in the cooler for three weeks until his father, Dr. Craig identified him.  Dr. Craig was the big animal vet in Princeton, and a general terror to our teen years.  He was all bark and no bite, but I can still hear him and his booming Scottish voice.

Another story.

Lady Nyo

“The Stillness of Death”, from “A Seasoning of Lust”

I am down with the flu so I am coasting.  The only good thing about this is  people don’t expect you to move much.  I’m presently sitting in state surrounded with books I have been trying to read for months.  If I act sick enough family leaves me alone and the only problem with that is you can’t run a household which consists of a lot of animals without blowing your cover.  I am yelling downstairs, getting hoarse, trying to evaluate who is where (dogs) and what is happening with the cats.  I am also falling asleep with the daytime meds that claim this doesn’t happen.

I have this pile of books, one of them Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, a fascinating post WWII study of Japanese life and culture.  She was ordered to Washington to do this study, and since it was during 1944, she did it by interviewing Japanese detainees in camps here in the States.

Now we have hundreds of books on Japan and the Japanese, but back then there was only John Embree’s Japanese Nation and some few studies done in the late 19th century.  So she’s breaking a lot of ground here, and one of the sections (actually a theme that runs through the entire book) is about shame and guilt.  She was intrigued that the Japanese she spoke with were less concerned with internalized, standardized rules about right and wrong, and more interested in others’ opinions.

Frankly, this is a deep study and blows the lid off a lot of mythology we Westerners have about the Japanese psyche and culture.

Ack!  I am also trying to get my bleary eyes around Kato’s  A History of Japanese Literature (the first thousand years).

Perhaps I will need two influenza to do this.

The Japanese have the most beautiful books, bound in such lovely styles, and the glossiness of them are a delight to hold in your hand.  Love Songs from the Man’yoshu is a book so beautifully done that it seems a physical work of art.  It is, because the papercuts inside are unreal.  The poetry, too.

Perhaps it is because the heat down here in the South is abating a bit, the rains are coming and there is a touch of that lovely fall we race through August just to sniff and embrace, but I am turning my head towards this study.  “The Zar Tale” is mostly in the can, and I am anxious to get back to a half-finished novel  “The Kimono” and see what can be made with that.

Beginning that book was like falling down a rabbit hole.  It started with an actual antique kimono I bought from a dealer in Atlanta, and it’s a heavy, black silk crepe, something a married woman would wear.  There are 5 chrysanthemum crests on  the body of the piece, with an ivory tan inside, but what is most beautiful, intriguing is this river of silver cloth embossed with embroidery that runs like a river around the hem in waves and up into the inner construction of the furisode.  It dates from the Art Deco period.  When I had that gown in my hands, it was like I was transported somewhere, where I didn’t actually know at the time, but I was to soon.  Writing a physical description to someone was like a transport back into some other time.  So….this book, a time warp from the 21st century with a magical, haunted kimono to the 16th century was born.

I am rambling now, and I use the excuse of the meds.  But pick up Benedict’s book if you want a good study.  Of course, there probably are many better now, but this work was seminal.

Lady Nyo

THE STILLNESS OF DEATH

Lady Nyo knelt on her cushion, her tea cup before her. She did not move.

Lord Nyo was drunk again and when in his cups, the household scattered for hiding places. In the kitchen was a crawl space. Three servants were hiding their heads under there and a fourth was wearing an iron pot on his head.

Lord Nyo was known for three things: archery, temper and his drunkenness.

Tonight he strung the seven foot bow and donned his quiver high on his back. He looked at the pale face of his wife, his eyes blurry, and remembered the first time he bedded her. She was fifteen. Her body had been powdered silk, bones like butter with the blush of ready passion coursing through her like a tinted stream. She was still beautiful, but too fragile for his tastes. Better a plump courtesan, not all delicate and saddened beauty.

In quick succession he drew back the bow and let five arrows fly through the shoji screen. Each grazed his wives’ ear.

Lady Nyo knew her life hung on her stillness. She willed herself dead. Death, after all these years with him, would have been welcome.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

From “A Seasoning of Lust” lulu.com