ON THE WAY TO AMERICA     <<< Previous Table of Contents with Map Next >>>             Home INNSBRUCK Around midnight the train pulled into the station. We took a trolley to town and when it stopped in front of a small hotel we got off and rented a room. The room was heated, with a double bed with white sheets and a pitcher of warm water on the washstand. We had eaten the last of our bread and salami on the train to Innsbruck, so our first concern was to get food rationing cards. We were issued stamps for two weeks and told to get a job or leave town, for without a job we would not be eligible for additional food stamps here. The address of the employment office in hand, we stopped on the way for our first rationed breakfast—imagine, hot coffee with sugar and milk and two dainty rolls with a sliver of butter and marmalade. After breakfast we went looking for the employment office and found it packed with people. When we finally presented our papers to the woman in charge, the first paper she looked at was Vytautas's salary register. Seeing a swastika (a Nazi government stamp) on the document, without looking at the rest of his papers she handed him a card saying that he must be on the sidewalk here at 8:00 tomorrow morning. She then picked up my student booklet and said that I was to work in a factory in town and must report there before 4:00 this afternoon. I protested that I would not leave Vytautas and would do the work assigned to him. Without blinking she handed me a card, reminding me that I too had better be here in the morning. At 8:00 next morning a pick-up truck pulled up. The driver called out our names, told us to climb into the open back and took off. About an hour out of town, the truck stopped next to a vehicle parked in front of a shack in a snow-laden mountain valley. Freezing already we got off the truck and stood ankle- deep in snow to hear the driver assign us our work. Vytautas was to push a wheelbarrow over the narrow planks laid on fresh snow to where cement was being mixed; wait for the barrow to be filled, then follow the planks to where the foundations for barracks were being laid; dump the cement and come back for more. I was taken to a heap of used planks piled high as a house, given pliers and told to pull nails out of the planks and save every nail in the cardboard box. Left alone, I pulled on a rusty nail and the heap swayed from side to side and tilted forward. By the time I pulled out a few nails without the pile falling on me, I was called to the shack for lunch. No one had told us to bring lunch and as workers ate in silence we sat on a bench next to them pretending not to see the sandwiches or smell the aroma of soup drifting from containers on the wood burning stove. Stunned by the job, freezing bitterly, I spent the afternoon biding my time. By 3:00 the valley was deep in shadow and the driver took us back to town. We were walking to the hotel in step with a horse-driven cart loaded with corn. The wagon hit a bump, two cobs rolled off and in a flash Vytautas picked them up. Too tired to look for a place to eat, we followed the wagon until two more cobs fell off, then rushed back to the hotel, ate the corn raw and slipped into bed to warm up. This incident prompted us in the future to walk home on side streets lined with orchards in hope of finding a winter apple or pear on the sidewalk. More than once we shook a branch hanging over the fence. Next morning, wearing wet socks, wet shoes and damp coats, we had breakfast in a cafŽ, both saving for lunch one of two small buns spread thin with butter. It was snowing in the mountains when we arrived. After shivering outside for about an hour, pliers in the empty box, I walked back to the shack. Inside the driver was sitting on the bench near the blazing stove and reading a paper. Seeing tears on my cheeks he motioned for me to sit beside him and started asking questions—what brought us here, how long were we in town, what did we do back home. Then without saying a word he got up, walked out and came back with Vytautas, saying that this was no place for us, that he was taking us back to the employment office. At this hour the office was empty save for the two attending women. The driver told them why he had brought us back and while the ladies looked through our papers he stood beside us. Learning that Vytautas not only was a sculptor but held the title of professor, they apologized profusely for assigning him to manual labor. This time they sent us to the "Tiroler Glass Malerei und Mosaic" in town, assuring us that before the war this was the most prestigious stained-glass window and mosaic studio in the country. They called them up saying that we were on the way already and the kind driver took us there. The studio was in a picture-book gothic building. A tall, slim woman opened the door and took us along a winding narrow corridor to a spacious vaulted room where an iron stove burned cozily. She introduced us to an old man working by the window. He was as medieval as the place—a black cap on his white hair, eyes glimmering under bushy brows, white whiskers and beard covering the lips and chin. He was working hunched over an intricately detailed mosaic depicting colorful birds perched on vines heavy with fruit. Vytautas was to draw templates for stained-glass windows, the saints to be enlarged from pictures in a book as old as the place. He was to work by the window in an alcove, behind a faded red curtain partly tied back. I was to work in the room with the sage, and it was he who showed me how to split with a special hammer a round molten-glass "pancake" into mosaic units called tesserae. Pancakes of different colors were stacked on shelves in the adjoining room. Hiring us on the spot, the slim woman suggested that we move to the MariaBrun hotel up in the mountains. Before letting us go she called the hotel and arranged a meeting with the proprietor that afternoon. The three-story hotel was reached by a lift running to the ski area only one stop above it. It was not grand but modern, the views of the town from our room breath-taking. Two families were stationed in the hotel for the duration of the war: three grandparents, two mothers and three children escaping the dangers of war, playing games in the dining room after supper, happy faces, chatty voices and laughter ringing in the fireplace glow every evening. Day by day the world looked better. The workplace was heaven that lasted from the end of October to mid-December. Our first task every morning was to put the potatoes we brought with us on the stove so we could eat them baked to perfection for lunch. We dipped the potatoes into cod-liver oil bought in the apothecary, no stamps needed, the smelly fish oil tempered with a sprinkle of salt tasting irresistibly delicious. After work we had supper either in the hotel or in a communal workers' eatery where, sitting on benches around a long table, we had soup with chunks of meet, dumplings and vegetables. A pear or apple was handed on the way out. Soon we were strong enough to walk all the way up the winding road to our hotel. My first encounter with mosaics was just as rewarding. The sage did not mind me looking over his shoulder to marvel at how a seemingly gentle touch of the hammer produced a precisely shaped glass tessera, how his shaking hands and still-nimble fingers set the delicate piece into brown honey-smelling paste spread on parts of the drawing on paper. Day after day I cut tesserae for him, he picking the colors, I eager to please the master. The whole setting and the absence of talk—no instructions or explanations offered, no socializing—sank into me deeply. Concentration on the work at hand can be as nourishing as the daily bread. Marriage was not on my agenda. It did not enter my mind and Vytautas did not talk about it. At the time I saw myself as a small one-room edifice of glistening black stone perched atop a dark stone pinnacle that pierced the clouds, all windows open. There I was walking from window to window, looking at the stars so near, charting the winds criss-crossing my domain, storms raising a fascinating havoc. The rest of the world was bustling somewhere below. Visitors were welcome but none was to stay. At sixteen I had surprised my older cousin, a medical student, by saying that I wanted to have children but not a husband. I could not imagine myself living with a stranger. Two of my father's sisters were spinsters living full and productive lives. At eleven I made up my mind to take pride in being a girl. My sister, being older, paraded femininity and took to calling me a tomboy. I remember climbing into my favorite tree to think about it and realizing, point by slow point, that women had an advantage over men. Women experienced pregnancy, life growing and stirring in their own bellies. Women brought life into the world, and they nursed it and watched it grow from day to day. I wanted all that. And one needn't get married to have the experience. A girl who helped in our kitchen got pregnant, gave birth, and the world did not collapse. Men were deprived of these experiences. In these matters everything happened outside of their bodies and probably outside of their minds—the act itself, the consequences, the very notion that they may have left something behind and not even know it. It was already dark when the air-raid sirens sounded. We had just started climbing the hill to the hotel when an official ordered us to go back and follow the people to a shelter. Pushed from behind deep into the tunnel cut into the mountain side, we stopped moving when the push stopped. Water was dripping from the stone ceiling in several places, a drop steadily hitting the top of my head, when Vytautas, standing close behind me, whispered, "Marry me. I want you to be my wife." With shadows cast by a bulb swaying slowly in the heavy air, images of Father and Mother jumped to mind. Seated before me, both looking straight at me, they nodded their heads. And I said, "Yes. I will." When the air raid was over, following the stream of moving people we shuffled out of the tunnel. In the crisp night air a horrendous wave of anger stopped me in the middle of the crowd. Turning to Vytautas I said, "No, I cannot marry you. It was my parents who said yes, it was not me." It was preposterous even to think that I would ask anyone whether I should marry this or that man. "Every decision I make has to be my own or it will not work. Period. And that will not change. Ever." Pummeled by the crowd moving past us Vytautas said, "I understand." Not done yet, facing him straight I said, "I will never be a wife," adding, that "I would not be faithful and would do as I please. Always." Touching my hand gently Vytautas said, "That's OK." "What? You agree to that? And you call that marriage?" I shouted. "It will be OK, you will see," he said, guiding me away from the crowd. Did I detect a hint of a smile on his face? Outraged all the more, hands flailing in every direction, addressing the stars, the mountains, fate and whatever else that came to mind, I raged all the way up the hill. What was my life coming to? What was this delicious power, where from this energy steam-rolling me now? I reached the hotel breathless, emptied, exhausted, my parents' gaze still steady, their heads still nodding. Still unbelieving that this was happening to me, I entered the room, undressed, hit the pillow and fell asleep. Neither of us mentioned my outburst. A week or so later we were walking home after work when on the door of a building we were passing I saw a sign, "Marriage Licenses." Without missing a step I turned and opened the door. Vytautas behind me closed the door firmly. Following the arrow pointing to the second floor we climbed the steps and filled out the application. Told to come back in ten days to sign the final papers, we walked home holding hands in a luxuriating silence. Ten days later we stepped out of the hotel ready to sign our marriage certificate when the sirens went off. From the hotel's overview platform we saw at eye level a squadron of American planes approach the town, watched the bombs fall and explode, balls of dust rising, bursting into flames, the squadron flying away in formation as if it had nothing to do with what was happening bellow. The raid over, we rushed down the hill to the marriage office and found the building gutted. In the settling cloud of dust the intact staircase was leading nowhere. Someone told us it would take months before this office reopened in some other location. Anyway, our papers were now part of the rubble. That evening we got married in a ceremony we performed ourselves in our hotel room. Seated across the table, we each took a small piece of bread, solemnly fed it one to the other and chewed it, eyes fixed on each other. The words spoken were, "Yes, I will be your wife. Yes, I will be your husband,'' uttered almost in unison, unintended. The wedding was witnessed by my mother's brooch pinned to my shirt and my family photographs on the table arranged to face us both. No other promises were made by either side. By November the Americans were bombing Innsbruck more often. During our first air raid at work we were ushered to the basement of the building. The low vaulted ceilings looked reassuring, but listening to the whistle of bombs falling, hearing the eerie sound getting louder and deeper, followed by explosions that shook the building's foundations, unnerved us thoroughly. In that basement the notion that we might not get out of this war alive was palpable for the first time. Around that time our slim office lady asked me whether I was interested in doing some work for people she knew. The elderly mother and her daughter, whose husband was in the army somewhere in Russia, wanted to send him a manger with human and animal figures for Christmas. I was to build the manger, make the finger-high figures out of wire and cloth, and dress the animals in fur. It had to be done in three weeks, in their house, working two hours every evening after work in the studio. Vytautas agreed to wait for me in the cold at the bus stop. Upon my arrival I was served a deep bowl of homemade broth with vegetables, dumplings or noodles, every spoon-full savored every evening. After working undisturbed for two solid hours six evenings a week, to my regret and to the ladies' delight I finished the job in less than three weeks and got paid more than we had agreed on. At the end of November I found myself pregnant. Vytautas was shocked by the news while I wondered how one prepares for such an event. In any case our peaceful days were over—something definite, on a predictable date, hung now in the forefront of our minds. Extra money would be needed and having watercolors on hand I made Christmas cards. A miniature red-throated bird sitting puffed up on a snow- covered branch sold briskly in a stationery store in town. In mid December we were leaving the hotel for work when the air-raid sirens started blaring. Again the planes approached the city at eye level and again we watched the spectacle below our feet, buildings bursting into flames one after the other in a processional order. Innsbruck, this beautiful old city long settled in its ways, with streets and buildings scaled to families living in cozy proximity, wine cellars humming with friendly chatter, was under siege by aliens from another continent. The air raid over, we rushed down the hill to work. Our paradise was on fire, no one we knew was around. We had spoken about this happening and now that I was pregnant I felt a need to contact my family. Having saved some money, we decided to leave town, look for my sister's address in Vienna and visit her. My mother's vision of the Alps was made real in memorable detail on the way to Vienna. Our train ran next to a stream rushing over ice-laced stones sparkling on this sunny morning. The tracks wound through narrow gorges then burst into sunny snowed-in valleys, into villages with tall church steeples and people moving about their daily tasks, basking in a long-settled calm. We reached Vienna that afternoon and took the trolley straight to the Refugee Committee office where we found that both my brother and sister had not only registered but also forwarded their addresses where they had settled down, which we ourselves had failed to do. With my sister's address in my pocket we left the building. On the sidewalk we ran into friends from back home who invited us to stay with them in Vienna for a week or two. In Innsbruck we had recovered so fast and felt so good that we had neglected to take care of my husband's lungs. We caught up with it in Vienna and received for him food cards with fortified rations as well, cooking now and sharing meals with our hosts. There was so much to talk about. Our future lives were studded with possibilities and there were many perspectives to share. Learning that friends of my parents and a friend of my husband, a dancer, lived in the neighborhood, we visited them both. We located my friends' house number on the corner of a wall facing the street, but there was no building behind it. After poking around we found a footpath cleared of rubble leading through several room-shells to a locked door. We knocked and the son of the family I had known since childhood let us in. Hearing loud voices his mother appeared and led us into the remaining part of the house were they lived. The husband and the older son were at work, and waiting for them we spent the afternoon drinking ersatz (fake) tea with water biscuits, and talking, crying and laughing about the times our families spent together, weighing the possibilities of what was to happen to us now. When the men came home, exuberant sounds filled the bombed-out house again. Later that evening we visited the dancer and there I got a glimpse of Vytautas's past. Meila lived in an attic room dark at this hour, a small desk lamp in a corner insufficient to light the deeply recessed room. After an introductory glance, she started to demonstrate the steps she was learning in the school of a famous dancer. We sat down to watch her dance barefooted in circles and talk all the while, explaining why this step was right and this one was wrong and asking if Vytautas saw the difference. It went on and on, step after step, until her roommate appeared in the doorway. Vytautas jumped to his feet while I, introduced from afar, remained seated. I watched Sandra burst into cheers, hug and kiss Vytautas heartily. From what the three of them reminisced about I gathered that the dancers, both my age, knew Vytautas quite well. They must have shared a few memorable experiences, for a quick glance at me more than once stopped the young women from finishing a sentence. It was dark when we left, a street light in the distance lighting the snowed-in street. Walking in the middle of the empty street we followed Meila still dancing in front of us, all the way to the bus stop at the street corner. We stayed in Vienna a week, my childhood friend taking us sight-seeing to Schšnbrunnen gardens, to Marienkirche half destroyed, the opera house, a famous cafŽ and so on. For fear of losing his carving tools—our livelihood he called them—Vytautas was in the habit of taking them with him wherever we went. In Vienna, somewhere along the way he lost the precious bundle. My sister lived in Greiz, in the region of Thüringen, and we arrived there late in the evening. At the station someone pointed toward the street we were looking for and as we walked that way, the street twisting here and there, we lost all sense of direction. We were standing on a corner wondering what to do next when in the dark my name rang out—it was my brother-in -law who, on his way home, who recognized me standing under the dim streetlight. We might not have found them even in daylight for they lived in a building of many surrounding a yard, accessible from the street by a large wooden gate that was closed but not locked. The attic they lived in was furnished with a single bed, used by their son during the day, a table with two or three chairs under a deeply recessed mansard window, a low shelf on the wall next to the bed and a small coal-burning stove in the corner. Across the stair landing under a small window there was a small alcove, and there stood a crate turned on its side holding a few bags, several boxes, some utensils and a kerosene burner for cooking. My sister was visibly pregnant and her husband, having no regular job, kept the family warm by collecting coal at night between the railway tracks, which was forbidden. We slept on the floor on blankets, but decided to stay for Christmas Eve the next evening. Our futures being equally grim, there was not much to talk about—no plans to share, no hopes to entertain, plain survival challenging enough. I spent most of the time on the bed dozing, the child playing beside me, while Vytautas and my sister were getting acquainted. There we decided to go to Berlin to see a friend of my parents, a former ambassador to the Court of England, who had international contacts and might help us reach Switzerland and from there America. We celebrated Christmas eve with oatmeal and vanilla pudding cooked in milk "borrowed" from the child. In parting my sister gave my husband a gold five-ruble Russian coin which helped us in the future. We met again two years later in Munich, when my sister and brother came to see us off to America.     <<< Previous Table of Contents with Map Next >>>             Home