CHAPTER I

A crisp, cold morning we--Zuli, Babi, Mari and I--arrived to Subotica. A trusted maid protected Babi's apartment, miraculously, nothing was stolen, nothing damaged. Subotica changed hands--again and yet again--with minor scrapes and bruises only. It was again part of Yugoslavia. There was something eerie, unreal in the air. It took us a few days to discover. Everyone was gone. We did not meet one familiar person, we did not see one familiar face.

And yet, we settled into an almost normal existence. We walked, talked, ate--coming out of a long nightmare.

A few days later we heard there were some American soldiers in town. Babi was elated. We invited them over (her English was fluent, at this time, she started teaching us as well) and had some heavy drinking and eating parties, they brought food, cigarettes, liquor, coffee! We watched from the sidelines as Babi entertained 5-6 young uniformed Americans with wild abandon. She encouraged us to join in: "We should go to bed with them, get pregnant and they will have to marry us, we can get to America!" she urged.

In the meantime Zuli was suicidal. She had horrible mood swings, keening after her beloved Imre, throwing herself against the wall, on the floor, in real anguish and agony. She climbed on the toilet and told us she would jump out of the bathroom window. I looked at her and looked at the window. I felt quite safe leaving her alone in the bathroom.

A few weeks later our parents also arrived. We moved back to our apartment which was also spared. Used as headquarters for high class German officers, who continued employing our old cook, we moved back to the luxury of fine china, Persian carpets, sterling silver, a well-stocked library and an even better stocked wine cellar.

The corner ice cream parlour re-opened, so did the newsstand. The sun started shining and the mud dried. Father came home with horror stories every day about the Russians who seemed to have few passions in life: women, drinking and watches. They never seemed to have enough of either. Six-seven wristwatches on each arm was a common sight, as they staggered drunkenly around town, looking for women. Apu made friends with two high-ranking Jewish doctors and invited them to the house. My mother always knew how to adapt. She cooked festive dinners, elegantly served to these young men who grew up under a communist rule, under an austerity which we just started to fathom from their stories; they were--of course--awed. They brought food, ice, all commodities in short supply. They also brought some pretty, buxom nurses, and our house resounded with music, laughter, song, conviviality night after night. When they got transferred, one of them seriously warned my mother in Yiddish: send the little girls to America. Communism is no good, send the little girls away.

Mother had a mission in life: to make do with our new, limited circumstances. She attacked her closets, unravelled old sweaters, scrounged, traded, had old sheets dyed: her twins will continue to be the best dressed girls in Subotica. Her knitting needles never ceased to click; one day she triumphantly brought home some poorly finished white leather. "I will have leather jackets made for you," she exclaimed, "like no one ever saw." And she did.

It was suddenly May, the burst of flowering trees scented the air, we stood at the end of the korzo, facing toward the train station, licking our ice-cream cones, when we saw them. A bedraggled, column of people coming down the street. Some supporting each other, some women bald, all emaciated. What was this? A crowd suddenly gathered looking at them: ghosts. "They are coming back from the concentration camps," someone whispered. There was an eerie silence. Of course, by now, we had heard rumours about the concentration camps. But this was different. Suddenly we saw two friends with their mother. We ran towards them. "Greti, Olga", we shouted incredulous, "what happened?" Their mother started crying. We urged them to come up right away, we lived just a few steps down the street. They did. Our mothers were hugging and crying. "Where were you?" Talking, eating, bathing, dresses were exchanged. Names, names, names rattled off, most accompanied by a shrug. "I don't know," or, what became the euphemism, "She will not come back." The words "died", "killed", "perished" were never used. There were no stories exchanged. No one talked. There were silences, and there was a re-grouping of energy. There was a terrible effort to forget, to get on with life.

During the summer we took courses to prepare for an examination that would enable us to enroll in the 5th grade of gymnasium.

And then spring turned into summer, suddenly, scorchingly and there was nothing to do, nowhere to go. In May, we heard the war was over. We looked at each other unbelievingly, by then we did not remember anymore that somewhere there was still a war going on.

Young men in uniform were all over town: Russians, Americans, Yugoslav partisans. Sometimes one of them collapsed on the sidewalk in an epileptic fit; twitching, foaming at the mouth. "Soldiers' disease," they called it. "Nerves." Vinyi explained.

And in the fall, school started again.

The old gymnasium Zenska Gimnazija was slightly damaged, some windows broken, shell holes like giant pockmarks disfigured the face of the building. But it was the old school, the benches bore the hundreds of engraved initials, painstakingly done during long, boring sessions of geography, history, or while concentrating on a difficult math assignment.

We were an odd assortment of girls on that first school day. One girl towering above us all, in uniform. She was rumoured to be very old. "She is seventeen," my friends whispered in awe. "She was fighting with the resistance in the forest since she was thirteen years old".

A shy, black-haired girl, with two fingers missing on her left hand stood alone. She seemed extremely self-conscious, trying to hide her hand between the folds of her skirt. "Sarah was in Auschwitz," someone remarked, "she would not say how it happened, but I heard.…"

Snatches of conversation reached me, "...and where were you?" and "…that's nothing, let me tell you..."

In all that hubbub it dawned on me. We were exchanging adventures. Not the usual adventures we did on the first day of school, the farm vacation, the lake, the mountains; but about the "Great Adventure" that marked us all, some not quite as visible as Sarah, but irreparably nevertheless. We were exchanging stories about a horrid time we did not comprehend, into which we were dragged unprepared, from which not even the most loving mothers could shield us. Some of us carried dreadful secrets deep inside, and were silent, some talked incessantly because the burden was too great to carry.

The school bell rang, we stood at attention to greet our teacher. She sat down behind the desk and adjusted her glasses, smoothing out a sheet of paper in front of her, she started calling names: "Abel"--"Present"--"Ackerman"--"Present"--"Barta"--"Present," she droned on and I was watching a fly on the broken windowpane. There was a hushed excitement in the air. Expectation, joy, a new school year has started, and we can be children once again.  

 CHAPTER II

 The next two years went by fast. School, friends, parties, a semblance of normalcy. Large family meals where friends were always welcome, friends who were alone, friends who were hungry for love, food, companionship. They always found it around our table. The outstanding event was the return of Miklos, Babi's husband, who was in a forced labour battalion and we presumed was lost.

The doorbell rang one evening--our parents were out. I looked down from the balcony and heard one word only "Miklos." I could not believe it. My beloved "cousin" came back! I rushed down, hugged the bearded, emaciated man, who smiled shyly and asked about his wife. By then Babi was back in Budapest with her mother, and left instructions that she never wanted to see her husband again. How am I going to tell him that? I'll let Vinyi handle it.

He moved in with us for a while, we talked in whispers about what happened, in few words; he wanted to get away, away from this town, and soon he was gone to the capital, with his dreams shattered. He remarked once pathetically, "I only survived because I wanted to see her again." I found a poem he wrote to his wife. I was in love with him.

We had another couple of people sharing our apartment: a young woman whose family "disappeared", a young doctor whose son and wife "disappeared" as well. We were happy when these two announced their intention to get married.

Miklos was always an inordinately intelligent, hard-working, ambitious man and soon obtained a high government position in the capital: Belgrade. He was in the international commercial department because of his knowledge of languages and one day brought down two Jewish American businessmen to Subotica. My mother was extremely excited and happy preparing one of her famous, lavish feasts, and prepared beds for them in our apartment with her best satin sheets. In the morning the rotund, short fellow came to breakfast and remarked to Miklos: "I only saw satin sheets in a whore house before." Miklos translated blushingly.

We took several trips to Belgrade on the unheated early dawn train. When we shivered from the cold, Vinyi pulled out her silver pocket flask: "time for your medicine, girls." We each took a healthy swig of good old apricot brandy. On one of these trips we met one of Miklos' "Americans" who took us out for a lobster dinner in a fashionable hotel, and he and Vinyi danced till the wee hours.

For our 16th birthday, Vinyi planned a party. We borrowed an electric record player, some dance records, there was baking, and cooking, we invited "our gang", played parlour games and had a wonderful time. Apu was furious. He predicted trouble. It happened the next day. Police came to the store. "You are a bourgeois with fancy tastes. You have too much silver, crystal, food, while others are starving. You better watch yourself." Will we forever be on the wrong side? Once Jews, once "bourgeois"?

I fell in love with the "boy next door". Janos survived several camps, a bout with typhus, returned and didn't find his family. He reclaimed a room in the old family home, and decided to try to get "out of here". Janos was a frequent guest at our table: his mother was one of Vinyi's close and now much missed friend.

One day during recess Janos came to my school, told me to get out of there. Flabbergasted, "how can I skip school?" he took charge. We got on the tram going to Palics, he asked me to marry him, and produced a slim golden wedding band from his pocket. I was not quite 16 years old. We kissed. He sent a huge flower arrangement to my mother and father and formally asked for my hand that evening. We were too young, my parents protested. We were too old, we felt, wasting our time with school. "Out there," things are happening "out there," we have to get on with life, reclaim the lost years, he will try to get out of the country and I will follow. I was in a daze, happy, in love.

During our second year of school, an early spring trip was planned to the coast. We had never seen the sea before, our summers were usually spent in the mountains. We pleaded and cajoled, Vinyi had serious reservations, talked to Lili's mother, finally they both gave in and the big day came, we were on the train. Approximately 25 girls, each of us with 5 kilos of potatoes, salami, etc. Since we knew that in the still war-ravaged country food would be scarce. It was an incredible journey: Split, Hvar, the SEA, being away from parents, we were in seventh heaven.

So much so, that next summer, Apu finally relented and let us (Vinyi and the two of us), go for a brief summer vacation to Crikvenica. It was probably the best few weeks of our life: we were young, pretty, every boy wanted to dance with us. We were serenaded every night under our hotel window, we were photographed in our white two-piece bathing suits, we swam, we danced, we walked, we flirted, we kissed; the one brief, careless, happy summer when we were really young.

Letters came from Switzerland, then from Paris. Vinyi started making plans. "You will get repatriated," she declared. "You are Hungarian citizens, you will go back". She was in touch with Zuli, who by then made it to England with the help of a "marriage" and lots of money. Zuli will take over from there. Miklos, in the meantime, was sent with a commercial delegation from Belgrade to New York. On the last day of their official visit, he told his colleagues that they would have to board the ship without him. Everybody was getting "out". A card came from him from Paris (I still cherish it) "The world is beautiful, large, study, get out".

Packing people were hired and all the best china, linen (our trousseau), paintings, carpets, furniture, sterling silver was carefully packed and loaded on the train.

The day of our departure arrived in early September. At the station we were taken into a room and two rough, fat, smelly peasant women stripped us and did a body search. Terrified and dazed, clutching our tickets, listening to last minute advice, we stood by the train. Vinyi wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and quickly thrust it in my hand. Startled, I almost dropped it. A heavy gold bracelet was wrapped in the handkerchief.

Our beloved Annus nÈni and Laci býcsi in Budapest put us up; the furniture was stored. Waiting. Things were not as simple as we imagined. Zuli had her own problems in England; Hungary was quickly turning into a totalitarian state as well, passports were not being issued with ease. Lawyers had to be hired, the Faragos got weary of having us, when the "few weeks" turned into "many months". We were shifted over to Apu's sister. One of the witches. A dreary apartment where, for the first time in our lives, we were made to feel unwanted, unloved, a burden and a nuisance. In a cold room that was once a warehouse, were the meager food was tossed to us reluctantly on a cluttered table.... It was decided that maybe we should learn a trade: I chose a pastry shop, Mari a shirt-sewing factory. A few difficult, dreary, cold months followed, relieved occasionally by a movie, a visit with the family (the aunts, all on the verge of leaving, planning an escape, yet at the same time, still carrying on various jewelry stores.).

I finally got the passport. It was early April, a few months after my 17th birthday, I had a few cases packed with silver, tablecloths, paintings, Persian carpets, leaving all the china (too breakable, not too practical for South America, Mari suggested), all the furniture behind.

The first flight of my life, and—incredible--I landed in Switzerland where Zuli was waiting for me. I WAS OUT!

Janos was well-established in Paris, and we applied for a visa to follow him. Catch 22: she needs to prove that she is married before she can follow him. How can I get married if he is there, unable to come to Switzerland (barred for life, after entering illegally with a stolen passport, he served a few weeks in jail). But obstacles were slowly overcome and we enjoyed the idyllic mountain village of Egg, the smell and tinkling bells of the cows, the magnolia trees. Somehow Janos managed to slip over the border and we spent a wild and happy few hours together, full of promise and hope. Paris, the city of light, the city of love, on May 8th, 1948 we were married in the presence of Zuli, by a stern judge who accepted my whispered "Oui." We had lunch at "Prunier".

8 Rue D'Artois. Janos had enough money for a somewhat better hotel for 2 days. But we managed to have fun. Zuli called for two more days: "Are you happy? I can annul the whole thing, take you to London, you can go to school." I was happy. She left me the precious steam-ship ticket, the "net" (a kilo of 22 karat gold formed the well-concealed handle of a string shopping-net) the "ring" (4 karats) and she was gone back to London, and a budding serious romance with Dr. Rosenthal. She was beautiful, barely fifty, receiving daily love letters from an obviously smitten "older man".

Some relatives of Janos appeared out of the blue, with some money. We discovered the pawnshop (quaintly called in French "mont-de-piÈtÈ"). We had a few exciting nights: the Lido, the Folies Bergers, the Casino de Paris, the Lapin Agile. We went to the Louvre, to the MusÈe de l'Homme. We shopped for wine and milk with ration cards. I got a child's rations, plenty of milk although I always hated it. It was May, it was Paris, it was a dream. One evening Janos got me drunk on champagne and when the taxi stopped at the hotel the cab driver got out and told Janos (who was already bald, and looked way older than his 24 years), "you will not take that child to a hotel, I am going to call the police." Janos protested, "that child is my wife." A crusty old Paris cab-driver found me too young ...as did the lady where we ate; at the Yugoslav JOINT run mess hall, she exclaimed incredulously, when Janos introduced me to her, "this child is your wife?"

But I managed to get pregnant.

Peter and Zsuzsi were already on their way to Venezuela and we received our visas as well. Janos had a contract to work at a tannery in Maracaibo. The "Jews" told us that we should go anywhere we can, except to Israel. Things looked unsettled, dangerous, in spite of the historical resolution already in power. My precious steamship ticket was sold, we asked for and were given tickets from the "Jews".

And then the ocean crossing. We had to go to Cannes to get the boat. The voyage was a nightmare. A mustered out ship, under Italian management, the Jagiello was carrying Europe's poor, war-weary, Holocaust survivors, dozens of nationalities and languages; all looking to make a new life. Never having traveled or packed for a trip like this, we had our luggage loaded and retained practically nothing for our personal use during the trip. No change of clothes, underwear, etc. two hapless youngsters, embarking on the trip of a lifetime, with practically nothing more but a toothbrush and the grand total of $ 10.00.

The ship made a stop-over in Madeira. It cost $ 5.00 to disembark, and see the island. Of course we opted for it. Did it really make any difference that we arrived to Venezuela with $ 5.00 or $ 10.00? Not at all. But the sights and sounds of that enchanted tropical paradise will stay with me forever. Carpe Diem. It always proved the right thing to do.

That lush tropical oasis, with a mountain in the middle, with girls dressed in short red boots and heavily starched embroidered white skirts, the fish market where a gigantic sleek, black fish maybe 4·-·5 meters long was cut into pieces and sold, the smell, the blood-slushy white marble floor, the Madeira wine, the embroideries, the heady smell of the flowers, a bougainvillea covered creek meandering below. I would've been ready to settle down then and there, I was so smitten by the landscape.

But back to the ship, the vomiting, the stench, the bunks with about a hundred other women (and children) crammed together in steerage, the monotonous food: pasta and red wine. Janos managed to ingratiate himself with the first class passengers, his dexterity in ping pong and chess, his charming way with females made him a darling with the more affluent emigrants, all headed to the uncertainty of Venezuela. He spent some happy moments while I was being miserable.

We managed to befriend a Yugoslav doctor, who established beyond any doubt that I was indeed pregnant, and promised to "help".

And then we arrived. La Guayra in 1948 in the middle of July. The suffocating heat, the sweat-glistening black bodies of the men unloading the ship, the dirt, the stench, the mangy dogs, rooting in the garbage. But Peter was there, as he would be for the next few years, to ease every crisis.

But let me start a new chapter--as a new chapter loomed frighteningly on our horizon.

CHAPTER III

Of all the difficulties I faced up to now, none proved more daunting than starting a new life in Venezuela. The memories are still so painful, that I will try to somehow mitigate them, while adding at the same time: it was the best of time and it was the worst of time.

At the age of almost 18 one is at the peak of receptiveness, sensitivity, having lived long enough to be able to classify verbalize/ internalize experiences, having lived too little to have had too many. This is true in any environment. Taking a half-baked human being and thrusting him/her into a completely alien environment makes for emotional, physical overload/short-circuit.

(I just finished reading Mukherjee's Wife--a young Indian girl, recently married, emigrating to New York City from Calcutta. The constant state of shock, disbelief, lack of family, etc. spins her into a mental state, that eventually leads her into killing her husband. She had my empathy and understanding.)

My story of Venezuela will be fragmented, probably not in any order: chronologically nor in order of importance; in digestible vignettes. I am not trying for a literary masterpiece, but for a brief (?) glimpse into what happened, telescoping 13 very difficult years unto the written page.

Peter & Zsuzsi--my brother- and sister-in-law preceded us by a few months. Theirs was not a happy marriage. Her bitterness reflected that and infected all who surrounded her. He was handsome, charming, lovable; I don't want to dwell on him, the memories are too painful still, because I loved him more than I ever loved any other human being close to me. He instantly became a brother, a father, a mother, a friend, a confidant and a trusted ally, a source of constant joy with his laughing eyes and wonderful sense of humour, he made me forget my troubles with his sparkling vivacity. He is dead, but the fact that I survived the next seven years are almost exclusively to his merit.

They settled in Maracay, where Peter landed a government job. An incredible stroke of luck. We visited with them very often, for a good meal, for advice, for cheering up.

We told them immediately that I was pregnant and that Janos decided that we could not keep the baby--I would have to have an abortion. Zsuzsi objected. "I also had one. Now that I am trying to have a baby it is not working, don't do it." I was bewildered. How could I not do something that Janos decided I had to do? We couldn't afford it, Janos did not get the contract/job offer that made us come to Venezuela in the first place. The "Jews" paid for one week in a room and board "pension", and then we were on the street.

The Yugoslav doctor obligingly came to Maracay. We could not afford even an aspirin tablet to ease the pain. On the kitchen table with a large sheet my legs were tied around my neck, I was told to keep quiet, the neighbours should not hear anything, clink,clink went the instruments, plop, plop. An excruciatingly painful half-hour later I was pregnant no more. Janos decided to give him as a remuneration MY treasured gold stop-watch.

The first job. Miklos wrote from Colombia that he has some business connections in Caracas, maybe I could work as an English secretary. It took them exactly half a day to discover that I neither spoke enough English, nor could write it, nor did I know how to type, but I was given a paycheck of about $ 2.00. I wish we could've afforded to keep it as a souvenir. Never was there money earned with more terror, more chutzpah, more effort.

The next job was in a jewelry store. Maximo Blum (decades later a Rabbi in Port Charlotte told me that he was a good friend of Maximo Blum in Caracas) had a huge store, hired me based on the unlikely sounding story that I worked for many years in my grandfather's jewelry store in Budapest. This time it took an entire week before co-workers complained that I couldn’t even tell customers the price of the merchandise I was supposed to be selling.

I answered an ad for minding a baby. The huge, unkempt Italian mother came to the pension where we lived, took a look at me and asked, "how old are you anyway?" I assured her I was 20, and had lots of experience with children, having done it for years in my native Yugoslavia. She reluctantly hired me. Two months of hard labour followed. I was supposed to keep the child's room clean, keep the child entertained and cook for him. My workday, which started around 7 a.m. after a long bus ride, ended when I put the little boy down for his afternoon nap.

The husband turned out to be a Hungarian Jew, a psychiatrist, who absolutely refused to speak even one word to me. The child looked odd even to my untrained eyes. After 2 months of this, I talked it over with Janos, that maybe the mother should be alerted, that the child is not quite well. After screwing up my courage I sat down with the mother, and told her that maybe the child should be examined, etc. She fired me immediately. It turned out--I learned later--that they were of course aware of the fact that the child was a severely retarded little boy, and she suddenly realized that her "experienced" child-care worker probably never had anything to do with children in her life.

Janos in the meantime tried many different things, most of which were failures: his stint at the tannery was scary, back-breaking work on top of it, but this is, after all, my story, not his.

An ad caught my eyes in the paper: salesgirl wanted in the American Book Shop, should be fluently bilingual and have experience in selling books and records. That none of these even remotely described me, did not bother me in the least. At the assigned time and place I joined a long line of probably very qualified girls. It was my turn. "Write down your name," the bespectacled, brown-haired middle-aged, pleasantly smiling man told me thrusting a paper in front of me. He looked at the Fenjves. He asked in a heavily accented Hungarian "Magyar vagy?" "Igen," I stammered. "Zsido vagy?" I nodded, bewildered. Stand over there, he waved me to the side. ("Are you Hungarian?" "Are you Jewish?")

The job, the kindness, that changed my life.

The work was hard and I had a lot to learn. But there was some money coming in, and I learned; God did I ever learn. I learned Spanish, I learned English, I learned about music, I learned about selling books and records, I learned to keep records, I learned typing, I also learned that there are people who are nice and helpful. I had a job that made up for almost everything that I did not have. It was civilized, a little oasis in a country that was full of terrifying new things. I made a friend. Mary, to this day, is a lifelong, close friend. The Viennese countess, who spoke a good Hungarian, who was in the throes of divorcing her husband. "He doesn't work, doesn't earn any money and doesn't even f---k me." I was awed. I never heard anyone talk like this before! I was absolutely smitten with her worldliness, her elegance, her down-to-earth-ness.

Fourteen months? A lifetime. We rented a room in the Villa Carlitos in El Paraiso. The horse-race track was nearby. Peter came to Caracas and we decided to go to the races. I looked around bewildered: I was the only female there. Different countries, other mores, when the race neared its climax the men went wild, and they--four, five of them from every direction--pounced on me, grabbing my breasts, my behind thrusting their hands everywhere: it was unbelievable. Peter and Janos fought them off and carried me out of there screaming. I could never again go to a racetrack. Even occasionally seeing a horse-race on TV brings back the horror of that moment...we all learned something that day.

Zsuzsi & Peter had a little girl in the meantime, and so did some other friends, and the desire for motherhood became unbearable. When I became pregnant again, we rejoiced. We are going to prove to all these complaining ninnies that having a baby in Venezuela is not as dreadfully difficult as they maintained. We lived in one room. I approached the land lady (Czech Jews, having arrived somewhat earlier, they were "affluent") and blurted out my happy secret. She looked at me: "Not in my boarding house you don't. You better get out of here fast." So much for human relations. One lives and one learns. The hard way.

We quarreled. I vomited. I worked. One day Janos slapped me hard across the face. I can still see the ugly brown sofa on which I was sitting. I could not believe it. This is my husband. He is supposed to love me. I am carrying his child, I am so lonely, he is supposed to be my friend, he is supposed to protect me. That day something broke irreparably inside.

I lost my job at the bookshop. Darling Jules Waldman, may he rest in peace, could not support me any longer against his bitchy store manager. She was going through a very painful period, because Waldman was getting married to a very young and pretty Hungarian woman and her years of unrequited love have come to an end. She took her rage out on the employees.

A short stint at a furniture factory followed, where I vomited all the time from the fumes, the heat, the dust. Nevertheless, I courageously hung on for a while.

We found an affordable house-share (2 rooms) in Catia. Catia was, and remains, the worst slum of Caracas, way up in the mountains where some real cement houses alternate with the tar paper-covered packing crate shacks inhabited by the majority of Caracas' poor. We shared the house with a German family. They had one child and she was expecting the second one at about the same time I was expecting mine.

One day on a bus downtown, I heard a mother and daughter speaking Hungarian behind me. She was also pregnant. But she had a mother. I had to get off the bus, I was sobbing and vomiting out of control leaning against a wall, the unforgiving sun burning my back, I was really truly miserable.

Janos worked as a salesman and was often gone. I was often hungry. There was very little money. One day I went to the small bodega on the corner, very shy, very scared, and asked for a locha of coffee, (about a penny) and a locha of sugar, and a "real" of bread. I was one of the barefoot, pregnant, dirty, sweaty, dishevelled women, my husband's shirt covering my swelling belly, we were sisters under the skin with the other black/brown women doing their shopping in a similar fashion. He looked up at me and said: "A usted misia no le fio"...."You I cannot give credit to any more. You owe me too much." I slinked out of the store, blushing, crying. By the time I got home I decided that this was all right. This was as far down as one can get, from now on, we would get out of this.

And, miraculously, we did. A friend called that she heard about a temporary job, about 3 weeks, a businessman from the USA needs an interpreter in the Hotel Avila. What joy, what bliss. Just sitting in his luxurious air-conditioned room gave me a lift. One day he had a meeting with American businessmen and did not need me, he left me alone in the room. I took a bath. A real bath in a real bathtub after years of showers that more often than not produced just a trickle of water.

We started making friends. Imre Schreiber from Subotica was also a salesman and he sometimes drove up during the day to see how I was doing. He brought me milk and made me drink it. In the 40 or so years that followed I often found him irritable, but those acts of kindness when I really needed them were never forgotten.

The Kallos, the Szabos, so many people in the same boat, all dead now... but they made our everyday life bearable.

We bought a washing machine. We bought a crib. Janos decided that I should go to a private hospital to have the baby. Betty was born in November, 1950 at the Clinica Aranguren. I could not believe it when I held her in my arms. This tiny, skinny, ugly little thing is my daughter. I am a mother now. How can one feel such emotions, such love, such fear, such absolute incredible turmoil of panic and happiness. Janos was disappointed. He wanted a son. His brother had a daughter, he wanted to go one better. However, it was love at first sight. No matter what happened later, Janos was a wonderful, loving father and is one to this day. An acquaintance was hospitalized with appendicitis in the adjoining room. His beautiful, young, shapely Italian wife visited. Janos visited me. I can still hear the clicking of her high heels on the mosaic floor of the hospital, as their footsteps receded when visiting hours were over. I knew he was going to take her to bed.

The baby did not thrive. I nursed her and bathed her and diapered her, and the days and nights seemed to blend into each other, she remained too small, too frail, the little round face dominated by those incredible huge dark eyes, looking at me with as much awe as I was looking at her. What is one supposed to do with this little bundle?

Tremendous generosity: a gift arrived from Miklos $ 50.00. Our baby was at least well-dressed.

"You are too smart to be changing diapers all day," Janos declared, "you must find a job, we cannot manage." I did. A succession of very primitive maids followed, some forgettable jobs as well.

We went to the beach sometimes on Sundays (the week-end as a concept was not yet invented in Venezuela. Work weeks were 6 days long). Janos decided that we could safely leave Betty on the makeshift crib we devised from two chairs. She was asleep, she could not even turn, she was only 5 weeks old. Halfway to the beach I felt very uncomfortable. The ghastly vision of the baby dangling, kicking, screaming, by her neck between the two chairs.

And we continued with our visits to Maracay. Imre & Lili also came. We were all trying to figure out what to eat. Imre decided that there were so many pigeons on the roof, we could catch them and eat them. He climbed on the roof, and indeed, we had a half-dozen little birds in no time. They made a passable chicken paprikas.

Or the time a huge vulture landed in the yard. He landed all right, but could not take off again, they are so big, they need a runway. He kept losing weight, after about a week he managed to take off and disappear.

Or the baby deer that Peter picked up, abandoned in the fields. Zsuzsi fed it with a bottle, and that little deer followed her around, licking her arm, endearing itself to all of us.

The sultry, humid days, the parched, scorched earth begging for rain, late in coming that year. Then one night in Maracay, the skies opened, the noise, the downpour hammering on the roof. We all woke up and in no time, all four of us stood naked, laughing in the courtyard, face turned up to the rain, drinking it all in, body and soul.

The boys: Peter & Janos learned to drive a jeep they "borrowed" from the department. They also banged it up quite a bit. But they did learn how to drive, now Janos needed a car. The old jalopy, his first, lasted about a month.

Always on the lookout for food, Janos decided that next time he drove out to the "interior" he would buy a little pig. He arrived one evening with a pig, that was not so little anymore. About 20 kilos, tied in a sack. When we got him out into the patio, he was happily running around. How will this large, ugly, black animal be transformed into food? It has to be killed first. Janos was quite queasy, and I of course, would not even look.

It was an incredible mess. Janos banged him over the head (after chasing him for half-an-hour) and then all the blood, and the mess, the entrails, how to clean the skin, we tried with a razor! finally we decided just to forget about the skin. We did not have enough space in the fridge (half a fridge), gave some meat to the landlady, to let us keep some in her half... it was a disaster, which we of course, never repeated again. Although Janos and Peter killed some chickens in Maracay, which I (Zsuzsi would not touch it) was quite adept at cleaning.

We decided to move into a better place. An apartment. The price was beyond our means, so we rented a two-bedroom apartment and sub-let two rooms to a German couple. Horrible people, we hated them, but they paid on time. In the "dining room" we put up Betty with the maid and the maid's little boy. Janos and I slept in the living room. One bathroom. The Taj Mahal it wasn't, but so far the nicest place we had. We also acquired some furniture. I worked in a housewares (fridges, stoves, etc.) store, typing purchase contracts.

One day Janos told me that he was bringing a friend for dinner. I should prepare something nice. I looked horrible, tired all the time, with the job, the baby, the cooking, the huge, sloppy maid spent her time taking care of her little boy. In walks this beautiful, tall, slim, German girl. I knew that she was Janos' girl-friend. I smelled this smell before. The way he treated me and treated her, he also made it quite obvious. He let her touch MY baby. He let her TOUCH my baby. That was the most hurtful thing of all. He never denied it even.

Janos was in jail in Valencia. It is a long story, and it is not my story. I took Betty, who was by then about 10 months old, to Maracay, left her with Peter & Zsuzsi, and went to visit him. What a humiliation. The guards and the prisoners all gawking, I traveled by train from Maracay to Valencia.

While Janos was in jail, some of our friends were trying to be nice to me. One evening the Kallos came to pick me up to go to the movies. They were playing Gone with the Wind, which we never saw before. I was terribly excited. They brought along their tenant (everyone was renting out rooms to newcomers, to be able to pay the rent) a very handsome Hungarian guy. The movie was fabulous. We had a few drinks afterwards at an outdoor cafe. Then they drove me home. Szilasi got out of the car and whispered in my ear, "I will be back in half an hour". It was close to midnight.

He came back. In the next couple of hours, at age 20, I learned what the big deal about sex is all about. It was, to say the least, a revelation.

From then on, sex became my drug of choice.

"Dolly," Peter declared, "is going through a delayed adolescence."

CHAPTER IV

Things went from bad to worse in our marriage. Janos, ever hot-tempered became very jealous and very suspicious. I was happier, calmer, more secretive, evasive. He was drinking a lot. There was a lot of "abuse" as it is euphemistically called today. Simply, he beat me often. We both realized how terrible things must be when Betty, at age 2 piped up during one violent argument and confronted him: "Janos, why are you always shouting at my mommy?" It nearly broke my heart.

She was a wonderful, precocious little girl. She spoke fluently in long, intelligent sentences by the time she was 16 months old. We did not think much of it, as we had no other child to compare her with, except slow, blond, spoiled, placid Olga whom we did not like too much.

We enrolled her in a day-nursery. She was still extremely frail and had frequent fainting fits. Grand-mal seizures, but we did not really know how bad it was. She would start crying, twitch and faint, foam at the mouth, and remain rigid. The best I could invent was to get down on the floor and breathe rhythmically into her mouth until she came around again. It was frightening, it seemed to sap her energy, she always had to sleep afterwards. Once it happened as we were crossing the busiest thoroughfare, I was carrying packages, she wanted me to lift her, I could not do it, I begged her to hold on until we cross, she had a fit then and there, I was kneeling in the middle of Sabana Grande breathing into her mouth, with the cars whizzing by on both sides.

We liked going to movies. Wonderful European films: Sylvana Mangano, Sophia Loren, the great French ones, etc. etc. one day walking up to the cheaper seats at the Boyaca, I twisted my ankle and told Janos, "I think I broke my ankle," he laughed, "come on, you must be kidding." I valiantly walked up the steep flight of stairs, sat through the movie with my throbbing and by now very swollen ankle (he of course fell asleep, as he always did during movies), afterwards I insisted to go to an emergency room. It was, of course, badly broken. The doctor put a cast on it, calling out to Janos, "your daughter is ready, take her home." Janos looked older than he was, but was really hurt that someone took me for his daughter...on top of my proving him wrong. A couple of weeks later I was still in a lot of pain, but luckily I had experience with broken bones, once set and in a cast, they should not hurt. I begged him to go see another doctor. We heard of a wonderful European orthopedist in Valencia. Dr. Frey, after inquiring whether we went to a shoemaker to put on a cast, took one look at the X-ray and told me to hold on tight. He had to break it again. A loud crack, a horrible pain, but once he put the cast on, it did not hurt anymore. Should we have waited another week, I would have been crippled for life.

By now the diamond was gone, the gold was gone, the inheritance from Janos' relative was gone, my Persian carpets were gone. The ingenious package from back home: a bottle of slivovitz neatly braided in raffia, between the bottom of the bottle and the raffia covering 5 gold Napoleons. That was gone too. The real blow came when a handful of my nice little jewelry that we pawned expired--in spite of Janos' solemn promise that I would get them back--and the last remnants of my childhood treasures (the beautiful sapphire/diamond platinum ring) disappeared down the drain of that horror that I lived every day in Venezuela.

We quarreled and made up, Janos started his own business with me working in the evenings. He was also feeding me little pills to keep me awake and alert longer hours. Two jobs: one during the day, one in the evening, household, child, entertaining, the oppressive constant heat, the constant battle for the next bolivar, the constant misery. The bugs. The ever-present bugs. One evening we went to a movie after doing our weekly shopping. Our car was broken into and all the grocery stolen. We had very little to eat that week.

Finally my mother got her exit visa. I was overjoyed, I will turn my life around, we are going to have another baby, forget about everything else, Vinyi is coming, she might be there for when the new baby comes.

Mr. Beguelin, my antisemitic Belgian boss, threatened that he would not take me to the hospital if I started having the baby behind the typewriter. Saturday I was still behind the typewriter, I accommodated him and had the baby on Sunday.

The Kallos were sitting with us at the Clinica Aranguren, and Agi proposed that maybe we should start playing bridge, if nothing happens. So things started happening fast, the doctor didn't have time to put his rubber gloves on, and there was that screaming little redhead. Pablo was born in August, 1953. I could not believe it, a BOY. How is it possible that I produced a boy? I looked up, saw the baby upside-down in the doctor's hand, the umbilical cord twisted over his tummy, but unmistakably, there was a little penis right above it too.

And four weeks later Vinyi arrived. Scant days after her 50th birthday. With a waist like a young girl, in a polka-dotted dress full, long skirt--the latest fashion--carrying a huge doll for Betty.

All those weeks of anticipation. Janos' constant teasing, sarcastic remarks, every stupid joke on mother-in-laws he could think of, it all did not matter now. My mother finally arrived. Life will get better for sure.

It got worse. Pablo was six weeks old, I was sitting and nursing him. The maid in the kitchen, Vinyi sitting around. Janos stormed in shouting: "You women are all hanging around here with your pricks up each other's asses, while I am breaking my back working for you, you think marrying me was an insurance to support you for the rest of your life? Go out and get a job!"

I did next day, leaving a screaming Pablo, a bewildered Betty, a terribly upset Vinyi. Walking down the street, my milk started flowing, mingling with my sweat, tears, I was in no condition for a job interview that day.

And finally, that memorable evening, months later. We already got into a routine of Vinyi taking care of the children, a beautiful huge, pink, healthy red-headed Pablo, always smiling, smelling that adorable clean baby smell, a wonderful playful Betty, me working nights and days, Janos going out most every evening, drinking, playing bridge, whatever.

I sat on Vinyi's sofa, her bed in the living room, when he stormed in, drunk, yanked me up by the arm and started hitting, kicking me, shouting all the time that we were brewing a conspiracy against him, but I will never, never have the children, you can both go to hell, but never, never will you have the children.

Vinyi got up, trembling, dressed, asked me to send her clothes after her, she will call me, and walked out into the night. For days, frantically searching, I did not know where she was. The Kallos helped her find a job as companion to an elderly lady, she was also sewing for Agi. She applied for a visa to the USA and in a few weeks she was gone. Also, my last hope for a normal life. She warned me, that I have to take it, I have to stay, I have to go on, for the children's sake. She also told me very sadly, "I hope you never ever experience the horror I did."

Mary returned a few months prior to this from Maracaibo where Waldman started a second store, with an adopted daughter and an American husband in tow. The American (Jewish, his grandfather was a rabbi in Hungary) engineer and I took one look at each other, and we fell in love. It was the most devastating, overwhelming, impossible, earthshaking experience of my life. He was many years older than I, not handsome but extremely masculine, intelligent, witty, educated, New Yorker sophisticated, the attraction between us was what novels and movies are made of. It was doomed from the start, it probably caused more anguish and pain than any other relationship in my life, but it was a tidal wave that was impossible to resist.

Things quickly fell apart with Janos. I begged him for a "modus vivendi": I will work for him, I will live with him, I will continue entertaining, bringing up the children, being a hostess, everything, anything, but please, please never touch me again in any way shape or form. An impossible enough request.

Peter came to visit one day and I ran to him hugging and kissing him. Janos lost it. Accused me and him of being lovers, which of course was ridiculous. He beat me up again. This was the end.

I had a good job. I begged him for a divorce. We went to a lawyer and drew up and signed a contract: I am going to move out with the children, as his office is in the house. He will pay some child support. By now his business started to take off.

I moved to Mary's; by this time she and Peter were in love. Zsuzsi refused to divorce Peter...but this is another story. I found an apartment, took some furniture, a maid to look after the children, I was free, free! Mary's husband (I'll call him A.) disappeared. His adventurous nature continually drove him from job to job, from woman to woman--leaving us both. But I was happy. I did not need anything or anyone, I had an oasis of quiet, my children, my job.

Janos kept harassing me. Arriving at any time, taking the children away, scaring the maid into obedience to him. Once he brought Betty back bleeding, they had a car accident. I called the lawyer, complained. He laughed, "You should be happy that he lets you see them." The judge awarded him custody of the children.

I was stunned. Without even hearing me out. It went to court and I lost my children. What was I trying to do? How can I put my life back together when every breath I take is pending upon the good will of Janos, who obviously is determined to ruin me.

I took the children to Maracay on the week-end. Peter knew all about it. He told me that Janos called the police and the neighbours and he got sworn statements that I abandoned the home. With this in hand and some bribe money he got the judgment. Peter was terribly angry. I begged them to keep the children. Zsuzsi didn't work, let them bring them up with their two little girls. I will try to get my life back together, but please look after my babies.

I went back to Caracas and looked at the empty crib. I contemplated suicide. Is it really worth it, going on? I was 24 years old, but I was old, haggard, tired. I was a loser, Kallos Pista told me, I was scorned by all.

An ad in the paper caught my eye. Oil company in the "interior" is looking for bilingual secretary. I applied for the job at Texaco. I went to the bank where, for the first time in my life, I had an account with $ 300.00 saved. I thrust the saving book across to the teller. He looked at me, surprised. "Your husband withdrew the money yesterday," he said. I did not have a penny to my name. Texaco gave me a small advance on my first pay, they would fly me down to the camp. Another new chapter.