PEBBLES
To Indrani and Anondo Written after a Budapest trip in 1983 I was climbing, lost in thought. My son and daughter were keeping up a few steps behind, quietly. Rounding the steps to the third floor landing my son asked, "Daddy, is this the place where the thing with the saccharin happened? " The answer to that question was "no". Yet, I was tickled to see that, apparently, the story had taken on a dimension of reality in the kids' minds. I said, "No, that happened somewhere else. Perhaps we can go there another time, if you like." We were halfway up the circular stairway of No. 11 Csanády utca in Budapest, a five-story apartment building. I had lived here as a child during the war. The stairs were winding around the elevator shaft. The tired, old elevator was visible through the elaborate grill work guarding the shaft. By dropping two forints (the local currency, worth about a dime) into the slot by the buttons we could have used it, but I decided for all of us that we would climb, as I had always done some forty years before. This trip was a search party for my youth. Almost thirty years after escaping from Hungary in the wake of the 1956 revolution, I was back, with my American children, trying to find, and trying to share with them, pieces of my past that I had not been able to adequately describe to them. We came here driving, and I found a parking place right in front of the building. Stepping from the car and waiting for the kids to scramble out, I looked around. Yes, the corner store was still there, but it now had a bigger sign over the door. The cobble stones looked the same. And the faint, staccato tapping noise I could hear suggested that the walnut packaging workshop, two doors down, was still in operation. I used to watch the row of young women sitting by the counter, cracking walnuts with small hammers — one precise tap — and smoothly easing out perfect walnut halves from the shell with a pick, all in a flash, hours on end. "Come on, guys, let me show you something", I said, and crossed to the low, basement window to the left of the building's entrance. "Look in here" I continued, stooping. We were crowding the small window, peering into the gloom inside. Alas, all we saw were dirty walls and small debris on the floor. "What about it?" asked my daughter quietly. She was using her indulgent tone of voice, the one signaling "OK, Dad, do your thing, if you must. . . " . I was afraid we were off to a bad start. I used to love to stand at this window and watch the man inside turn sticks of wood into spiral table legs, like magic. "It used to be a carpenter shop", I answered sighing, "guess it's gone now. Come, let's go in the building and see what we can find." Traversing the hallway, we stepped into the central, open courtyard. Communal clothes lines on the left. In the corner a wooden structure to spread carpets on, so you can pound them clean with a whisk. Shabby, gray stucco, spotty paint. The word "Óvóhely " (air raid shelter) still printed on the wall, rather faint after forty years. A large arrow obliquely pointing the way down to the cellar. On each floor above the courtyard gangways ran all the way around, the apartments opening onto it. I pointed skyward, "Hey guys, I used to live up there, in the corner." My daughter dutifully glanced up, but immediately, and without comment, followed her brother to a kitten, perched on a windowsill. I caught up and said, "This is where we dragged the dead horse." "What horse?", in unison. I seemed to have their attention. "Haven't I told you about that?" I was sure I had. "It was toward the end of the war. The Russians had already taken our half of the City, but the Germans were still fighting on the other side of the river. A horse was hit by some bomb or grenade right in front of the building. One of the neighbors saw it happen, and came running to tell my father about it." The kids were not missing a word. I continued, "Dad went to rouse all the men he could find on our floor, and led them downstairs. I tagged along. The horse was dead on the pavement, the cart it had been pulling, unhitched, alongside. The owner of the poor beast was nowhere, he had probably gone to get help. The men started to drag the horse by the legs toward our building. I remember worrying -- what if the poor horse isn't dead? Finally the men somehow managed to drag the huge animal all the way into the courtyard." "Oh, yeah! Now I remember! You ate the horse, didn't you!?" exclaimed my daughter. "We sure did," I replied, almost re-living the episode as I said it. "The men butchered it then and there, and each family hauled away large hunks of it. It was the first meat most had gotten to eat in months, I know it was for us." "Eeeeyoo" my daughter whispered, looking nauseated. She had a hard time accepting that her dad had done something quite as gross as eating horse meat. The image of that meal was as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. I could see my grandmother working at the tiny wood stove, trying to cook a large slice of the meat. There was, of course, no shortening, no salt, no condiments of any sort. She was moving the meat quickly around the pan the whole time to keep it from sticking and burning. How wonderful it smelled! I could hardly wait. At last, all five of us crowded around the small table and she presented the feast: a hunk of somewhat burned meat and boiled split peas. I was the youngest, so Grandmother served me last, except for herself. I could still feel the pang of anxiety — nearly fear — I felt looking at my portion (on the pot cover, as there weren't enough plates) and comparing it to the others, mentally measuring and weighing it: did I get a fair share? was I still going to be hungry after finishing it?... I extracted the purring kitten from my son's arms, took him by the hand, and led the way toward the staircase. I suppose it was the recreation of the horse story that reminded him of the saccharin episode about halfway up. *********************** By 1944 air raids had become routine. I remember practically living in the "air raid shelter", a simple cellar with a furnace and some storage space. I remember, later, when young men in uniform took my father away. I remember when my mother tried to explain that she, too, was going to be taken away, and that I was to stay with Grandmother. And I remember not understanding any of this. My father reappeared shortly after my mother was gone. He had escaped from one of the train stations on the way to the work camp the Germans were taking him to. He came back to check on us. His clothes were torn and he badly needed a shave. I had never seen him like that before. Finding that my mother was not with us sent him into a blind rage. He blamed my Grandmother and screamed at her. He said she should have tried to help her hide, or get friends to help her. He was striding back and forth in front of Grandmother, waving his arms and yelling. That's another thing I had never seen him do. I remember crying and crying, till he finally took me on his lap and tried to explain. He did not succeed. I was scared, terrified, and continued crying. Besides, I was too young to understand the things he was telling me about. How could I understand that one group of people, the Nazi's, were rounding up another group of people to ship them off to concentration camps? Expecting to be shipped off himself, he had told both my mother and grandmother to be sure to stay put and wait for him at all cost: he was sure to get away and return. He knew that the Germans and the Hungarian Nazi Party did not have enough people to personally arrest every Jew. He had hoped that my mother would just ignore the posters, all over the City, listing places and times where Jewish women and old people were to report for registration and eventual deportation to camps. He had hoped that she would find a way to wait for him. But she had been afraid, and like thousands of others, went voluntarily as instructed by the posters, and was shipped away. Father left the next day, telling us that he was going to try to find mother and bring her home. During the next several weeks he kept reappearing and disappearing repeatedly. He was caught and arrested time and again. He escaped seven times altogether. Eventually he gave up and stayed with Grandmother and me. Somehow he arranged for us to move to a building with the emblem of the Swedish Embassy by the entrance -- one of the "protected houses" set up by Raoul Wallenberg. The three of us lived there for some weeks. Most of this period is a jumble in my mind. I know from accounts that I was quite sick there: I had a severe case of multiple vitamin deficiencies. The saccharin episode, however, has always been crystal clear. The building was teaming with people, five or six persons to a room. Food was scarce; I remember the constant feeling of hunger and stomach aches. One day, as my father called me, I could tell from the tone of his voice that there was something special. "Listen carefully", he said. "Through an old friend I managed to get a little cocoa powder and dried milk. Grandmother will fix you a cup." "Really??" I could hardly believe it. "Now?" "Yes, in just a minute. You know the nice lady two floors down, who always wears that red robe?" I knew. I didn't like her. She had false teeth that always seemed like they were about to fall out. She scared me when she smiled at me. He continued, "I want you to go downstairs to her. Be very polite, and tell her that your Daddy sent you. She will give you some saccharin. She is diabetic, you know? Since there is no sugar, we will use that in your cocoa." "Thanks, Dad, can I go now?" I asked breathlessly. "Yes, go. Just one other thing — don't say anything about this to any of the other kids, they would only feel jealous or envious. You don't have to share it, you are sick." I was enormously thrilled, and flew down the stairs, two steps at a time. The lady was very nice. She knew about the cocoa. She told me to wait a moment while she went inside to get her saccharin. I held out my hand and she dropped the tiny pill, just a little bigger than the head of a pin, into it. I held it tight, said thank you, and was gone. The smell of the cocoa, as I reached the door upstairs, was almost unbearable. I went racing through the hallway to Grandmother, just as she was pouring the cocoa into a cup. I opened my tight fist to drop the little tablet on the table — nothing. It wasn't there. I felt like lightning had struck me. I stared at my empty hand and started to cry. My father went crawling down the stairs, looking everywhere, finding nothing. After a long time and with much cajoling from Grandmother, I stopped crying long enough to taste the cocoa. It was bitter, very bitter. I cried some more. . . From this building, when the protection by the Swedish Embassy was no longer observed by the Nazis, we were all transferred to another part of the City, designated as the Jewish Ghetto. There we survived until Russian troops pushed the German forces across the river. My father then led Grandmother and me, plus a friend and his son, back to our old apartment in No. 11 Csanády utca. The apartment had been hit by a bomb that came in through the roof, but one small room in the rear, opening onto the stairway (it had been the maid's room at one time) was relatively intact. The five of us settled in. It was here that my father tried starting to rebuild a normal life again. And this was the place I returned to, forty years later, with my children. ********************** We finally made it to the top the stairs. To the right was the front door to my old apartment. I stopped for a moment to let a whole flood of memories wash over me. This is where I had seen my mother for the last time. This is where I nearly died of fright once when I watched a bomb hit across the street during an air raid. And this is where my Grandmother used to visit on Sunday afternoons and would make me her special omelette with jam — the very finest thing in the world... My plan was to ring the bell to the old apartment and see if I could talk my way in — I wanted the children to see it. But when the two of them caught up, I motioned them to follow me to the gangway instead, above the courtyard. Somehow I was hesitant to ring that bell, and tried to gain a little time. We leaned over the railing. I pointed across, and said to my son, "Remember the stories I told you about the little girl next door, Agnes? She was my girl friend when I was your age — sort of... She lived right over there." As I said this, I saw the shiny brass rectangle nailed to the door. It looked familiar. I quickly strode around to get closer. Sure enough, the family name "LAX" was engraved on it. Could it be that they still lived here, after all these years? I impulsively knocked on the door, hard. Not knowing who would open, I tried to think of what I would say. A short, portly man opened the door wide and looked us over, first me, then the children, one by one. He had well creased crows' feet by friendly looking eyes. He said nothing, just stood there, his eyebrows like question marks. "Bocsánat (excuse me)", I started haltingly in Hungarian, "I saw the name on the door and recognized it. I used to live next door, as a child. Is the Lax family still here?" "No, that's just the old plate, it never got taken off. My name is Radványi. Yours?" "Stangl..." I didn't have a chance to say more. The little man practically jumped. "Oh, yes, just a second", he said, disappearing. A moment later a middle aged, plump woman came from the back of the hallway at a trot. She had a frayed, light blue cotton house dress with an apron, and her slippers made flapping noises as she hurried. She looked a little familiar, but I couldn't place her. She wore a big smile as she approached with eyes brightly sparkling, arms extended wide, saying, "My goodness, Peter! I am Évi Lax!" and with that she enveloped me in a trembling hug. She held me for what seemed a long time. And it came to me. My little friend, Agnes, had an older sister. I hadn't remembered, but this Évi must be her. And she reminded me of Mrs. Lax, their mother, that's why she seemed familiar. Mrs. Lax, a memory almost completely lost behind the years. The image struck me as I realized that Évi was crying while holding me, and burying her face in my shoulder. We were in the cellar, during one of the interminable air raids. I was sitting on the cement floor, leaning against Grandmother' s knee, who was trying to read by the light of a candle. I was playing with cards by myself. The cellar was full of people. Everyone was quiet, trying to listen to the dull thuds, sometimes followed by deep rumbling sounds — bomb explosions — trying to judge how far away they had hit. Suddenly there was a lot of noise, heavy steps, door creaking, cursing in German, and a woman's scream. A small group pushed into the cellar: three Gemman SS officers, the last one dragging a small, rotund woman by her shirt. Trying to shove the woman ahead, he yanked on the shirt, which ripped. He then just tore off the shirt and pushed her forward for all of us to see: Mrs. Lax. She stood there with shoulders hunched, and arms crossed in front of her to make up for the torn shirt. With the Germans behind her she seemed tiny . One of the officers stepped forward, and while pointing an accusing finger at Mrs. Lax, started yelling at us in rapid and very loud German. I kept pulling at Grandmother's skirt and whispering "What is he saying?" Grandmother pulled me to her lap and signaled with her eyes and hands to stay quiet. Finally the officer turned and waved a hand at his young partner, who stepped up, detached a rolled up whip from his belt, unfurled it with a flourish, and hit Mrs. Lax across the shoulders with a resounding crack. She jumped, let out a muffled cry, then seemed to shrink. The young soldier swung again and again. The whip hit her shoulders and her back, its end curling around her crossed arms in the front. I saw thin red welts rising after each blow, with little beads of blood forming on her skin. When the beating stopped at last, Mrs. Lax was quietly whimpering. The German threw the torn shirt at her. She held it in front of her, not attempting to put it on. Without a further word the three officers turned, pushing her with them, out of the cellar. I never saw Mrs. Lax again. There was deathly quiet. I kept looking from face to face. I saw tears quietly rolling down cheeks, I saw eyes turning away, hiding behind fluttering lids, trying to shut out the scene a moment ago. Finally I asked Grandmother again about what had happened. Being Jewish, Mrs. Lax was supposed to have reported for deportation into concentration camps some days before (as my mother had done). Instead, she just stayed home and was hiding in their apartment while everyone else was in the cellar. Someone, a Nazi sympathizer, must have reported her, and the German search party came to get her. They had beaten her publicly to give all of us a lesson. I had trouble re-focussing on the present, and listening to Évi's excited chatter as she held me at arm's length and went on and on about the marvel of seeing me again. She was, of course, speaking Hungarian, of which my kids understood nothing. I turned to them, one hand still held by Évi, and tried to quickly bring them up to date. Meanwhile, Évi was trying to herd us to the living room and make us sit. All the while she was apologizing about all the mess in the apartment. Her husband just quietly looked on, not interfering. We settled down around the coffee table. Over my mild protest, Évi ran to get coffee and sweets. A halting conversation started, with me sporadically trying to translate. Agnes was out of town, on vacation. No she didn't live in this apartment, they had their own. She will surely be thrilled to hear that I stopped by. No, Daddy Lax was no longer around, he had passed away five years before. Yes, Agnes had married, three children, all bright and beautiful . . . Évi got up and stepped from the room, only to be back a moment later with a shiny-eyed fifteen-year-old girl, Mari, her daughter. She went and sat next to my fourteen-year-old. They were shyly smiling at each other. I wished my daughter could speak Hungarian, but, alas. I asked Évi if I could show my children the balcony. We all stepped out, Évi and Mari behind us. I said to the kids, pointing, "You see the bay window just over there? That was the apartment I used to live in." "But you said that the apartment was bombed out, didn't you?" "Yes, most of it was in the end. But there was still one room in back which was intact. From the look of that window it seems like they did a good job rebuilding it." "Can we go see it?" "I hope so", I said, "we will have to see if the people living there now would let us in. I would like to have you see at least the little room in the back. That is where five of us stayed for several weeks, without electricity or heat, just after the Russians took over 'Pest." "Daddy, is everything the way you remembered?" my son asked after a little pause. I looked around. "Well, more or less. Many things look the same, but they feel a little differently. It's hard to explain. That building across the street, it didn't use to be there, did it?" — this last to Évi in Hungarian. "No, there used to be a scrap metal yard there" Évi said. This generates another image, as almost everything she says. Just days after the fighting died down, roaming around with two friends among rusted machinery and mysterious pieces of equipment, after having climbed in through a hole in the fence. We find a large metal trunk with one latch hanging open. We try the other, it gives. The lid is heavy, but we finally raise it. Inside, the trunk is full of neatly stacked rows of ammunition. Several ribbons of machine gun cartridges, several rounds for a fairly large gun, 15 or 20 millimeter. These are yellow and about six inches long. We are fascinated. Then my friend, Tomi, starts to tap one of the rounds with a rock. I am scared, but watch. After a while he is able to unscrew the tip, and pulls out a cotton sack, the size of a hotdog. It tears easily, it is full of blackish granular material. Soon we are all tapping and opening rounds, and a good size pile of gunpowder is building. Then we stand back, and Tomi lights a match and throws it at the pile. Even before the match lands, the pile leaps into a column of flame at least two stories tall, with an awesome whoosh. We jump back, terrified, but incredibly, unhurt. Several people across the street also see the flame, and we all get grounded for several days... I turned to my son. "Before this building was built, you could see into the next street behind it, over there. Do you remember the story I told you about the air raid I saw from our window here once?" "After a while the air raids became almost constant. Sometimes the steady, high-pitched sound of the siren signaling ' all clear', would actually be interrupted by the alternating high-low whine announcing a new one. We were all organized to stay in the cellar for days at a time, but it was necessary to come up for some fresh air, light, and sanity once in a while. I came up with Grandmother one afternoon, just after a raid was over. We climbed all the way to the apartment. I went straight to the window while Grandmother was putting clean clothes and canned food into the basket we were going to take back down. Suddenly, the siren sounded again like an ambulance, announcing a new raid. Grandmother called me to go to the cellar again. I pleaded with her, we had just come up! While we argued, I saw a cluster of dots high in the sky — airplanes. I was watching carefully, and interrupted Grandmother to call her to the window. She tried to look, with old eyes, but couldn't see, and wanted all the more to go downstairs. She was trying to pull me by the hand, while I was hanging on to the window frame, still watching. Suddenly I saw some new dots, moving a different direction from the planes. I called to Grandmother, 'Look, there are some more!' This time she didn't even try to look, she was just pulling me and threatened to spank me if I didn't come right away. I was mesmerized, watching the dots. I thought I could see them get bigger. Just as I realized that they may be coming nearer, there was a sudden, incredibly brilliant, multicolored flash outside. A tremendous, thundering crash shook the building and cracked the window in front of me. I froze, felt paralyzed. I thought I could see a hole open in the cobble stone pavement, as though in slow motion. A cloud of dust and debris rose to obscure everything. I felt my heart pounding in my throat. I finally tried to move, tried to run, but my legs wouldn't respond. With wobbly knees, I stumbled toward the hall and the staircase, holding Grandmother's hand." Évi said, "You know, I think I can remember that time. Your grandmother was a wreck. She kept complaining in the cellar about how stubborn you were, how she could not drag you away from the window." I asked, "Évi, do you think we could see our old apartment?" "I don't see why not, I know the people there, they are very nice. Let's go and see..." and with that she was already leading the way next door. We followed as she went to press the doorbell. A slim, dark-haired man, about my age, came to the door. "Szia, Évi, mi ujság? (Hi, Évi, what's news?)" he said with a friendly smile. "Hello, Gyuri (George)". Then, pointing at me, "This is an old friend of ours, Peter. We grew up together. He lived in this apartment during the war, and now is back from America with his children." She stepped to him, put her hand on his arm, and said, "George, would you let them look around?" George did not hesitate. He beamed at me and said "Velcomb to Boodapesht! Pleez comb een!" and stepped aside. As we filed in the hall, the door from the kitchen opened a crack and someone looked through. George switched to Hungarian "It's all right, mother, these are friends." And to me, "Don't mind her, she is very timid." Évi turned with a wave of her hand to go home as George crossed the hall and opened the door for us. As I stepped in, I was surprised not to recognize the living room. The bay window was there, but the doors on both sides, leading to the other rooms, were not. The room was over-furnished with several little side tables, glassed cupboards, tables, couch, chairs. There were doilies and little knick-knacks on every surface. As soon as we were seated, with my kids on either side of me, George was full of questions. When did I leave Hungary, where we lived now, what I did for a living, did I own a house like all Americans are reputed to, how much money I earned. I tried my best to fill him in. Finally, I had a chance to ask my questions. "When did you people move into this apartment?" "Sometime in 1945". He turned to his mother "Anyu, when exactly did we move in?" "In the late summer" she answered. George continued "I remember that the place was a terrible mess. Big holes in the walls and the ceiling, you could see the sky from that corner over there. And the front wall, with the bay window, was almost completely gone." "I know", I answered. "We left this apartment in 1944, before it was bombed, and returned I think in February 1945, when it had been hit several times. I can still picture the whole in the ceiling, the snow was coming in through it. Then the front wall was hit by a grenade the middle of the night about a week or two later. That was when the bay window went..." "Where did you actually stay? The place did not seem fit to live in when we got here! " "There were five of us, and we all slept, cooked, and lived in the little back room, off the hall", I replied. "Oh, we made that room into a kitchen. You see, we separated the place into two apartments. My parents have two rooms, and we have the other two." That explained the changes that I had not been able to figure out. "Do you mind if I show the little room to my children?" I asked. "Of course not" and he was already on the way. The kitchen — our little room — was perhaps nine feet by twelve, barely big enough for all of us to crowd in. For a few moments I said nothing. I looked at the sink, but pictured instead the small mattress on the floor in that corner, where Grandmother had slept. In the place of the cupboard had been the other mattress, shared by Father and me. Our small wood stove was in the same place where now an electric range stood. The kitchen was neat and well lit, a far cry from the dingy, dark hole I remembered... I drew my children to me and said to them, "You know, I just remembered something that I think I had never told you about. See, I slept on a mattress over here, almost under the light fixture here. At that time there was a big, heavy glass globe up there. When the grenade hit, taking down the wall in the other room, that globe came crashing down between me and the stove. I don't know what scared me more, the lamp crashing, or the grenade." We continued the conversation by the kitchen door. George asked "Was all the broken furniture we found here yours, then?" "Yes, if you moved here in the summer, everything you found here must have been ours. Most everything was destroyed by the bombing, so we just left it all." "Tell me one thing. There was a part of a horse, or cow, or some large animal, out on what was left of the balcony. Do you know anything about it?" I was puzzled. "What exactly did you find?" I asked. "Huge bones. A whole bunch of them. We could not figure out how they got there, and I remember imagining all kinds of mysterious things about them as a child." "Well, we had slaughtered a horse that had been hit by a grenade, down in the courtyard. I don't actually remember the bones, but my grandmother must have put them out on the balcony. Garbage collection was only one of the luxuries we had to do without at the time..." George laughed as he turned to his mother. "You see, I told you they must have eaten the horse!" George's mother, who had said very little during the whole episode, just looked at me, her earlier reserve, and perhaps suspicion, gradually displaced by compassion in her eyes. Eating horse meat must have been nearly unthinkable for her. She must have been better off during the last weeks of the war than we were. At that moment I could almost taste that horse meat again. No meal in a five-star restaurant could ever generate the same feeling of satisfaction. I thanked George and his mother for allowing a foreign tribe to invade their home. He was very gracious. With a big smile, he made me promise that we would stop in again the next time we were to visit Hungary. The children were walking down the corridor on either side of me, holding my hands, as we returned to Évi's and settled again in her living room. But the conversation was halting. After all, we really didn't know one another and all of us were preoccupied with our own impressions and recollections. Finally my daughter asked whether Évir emembered my parents. I translated, and Évi answered brightly. "Of course I do! Nusi néni (my mother's name with the customary "auntie" designation) was such a nice lady, she was our favorite neighbor. She always called us in and had something for us — cookies, candy, or something she had made..." Mari suddenly stepped behind her mother on hearing her say this and, leaning over the couch, whispered into her ear. Évi thought a moment, then nodded. Mari ran from the room, Évi looking after her with a loving little smile and not a little pride. Mari was back a moment later, running straight to me, extending her arms, showing me... Two hands full of pebbles. Some little, some bigger, one quite large. Different colors, all of them painted. Painted with care, precision, imagination. There were flowers, bugs, little animals, tiny landscapes, clown faces. My throat suddenly felt very dry. My mother... she had painted these. She was a graphic artist by profession and I remember the little pebbles she always used to paint for me and my friends, and for all the children she knew. My kids came over to look. I tried to tell them about the pebbles, but it was hard to keep my voice from shaking. I had brought them here exactly so I could show them fragments of my past, but somehow, I was not prepared to run into anything quite so intimate, anything so directly linked to my own mother. . . Mari was patiently holding the stones while each of us were looking at them one at a time, dropping them back into her cupped hands. She seemed to be watching me closely the whole time. I thought I saw a peculiar gleem in her eye. Finally she said to me, quietly, "Would you like to have them?" I just looked and stared at the girl, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. Somehow, this child of fifteen understood the real meaning of these pebbles had for me. They were painted by someone who lived some twenty years before she was even born, by someone who could not have meant much personally to her. They were painted for Évi or for Agnes when they were children, and they were passed on to Mari from them. She was holding them gently, delicately, showing that they were prized possessions. Yet, she was ready to offer them to me! I was unable to speak. I did the only thing I could naturally do at that moment — I put my arm around her and drew her close. She did not resist, she smiled at me with surreal charm. I finally managed to say "I am sure you would rather have them. But perhaps we can take just one or two, so my kids have something to remember from this visit, OK?" My children were very quiet. They chose one pebble each. Mari was patiently waiting. Finally I took one as well. Mari turned to go, flashing her little smile one more time, to put the rest of the pebbles away. I have no clear recollection of how we said our good-bye's to them, but we found ourselves on our way down the stairs. Turning into the courtyard, I had one final impulse. I strode over to the cellar door, calling to the kids, "C'mon guys, want to look at the air raid shelter?" They came, my daughter rather slowly, uncertainly. I tried finding a light switch but failed. There was just enough light to see the first part of the stairs, so I started down. They followed, tentatively. As I turned the corner to the next set of stairs, it was much darker and smelled mustier. "Dad, I'm not going down there!", rang out my daughter's voice defiantly. "What's the point, anyway?" I was tempted to start an offended lecture about all the weeks and months I, and everyone else, had spent in this cellar, hoping that we would survive till the next day to see daylight again. But I caught myself. It was I who needed to make this trip. I needed to revisit places, people, memories. I tried sharing some of them with the children. But is it possible to make them 'relive' my youth? Certainly not by forcing them to go against their will. So I turned around and we went back to the car. The drive to the hotel was quiet. I wondered how much of an impact this — to me, incredible — afternoon had made on them. For a time, I had no clue. Then my son said, "Daddy, would you keep this pebble in your pocket for me? I don't want to lose it. " |