May 4th 1945

It is not an easy trying to document another person’s life, I struggle with attempting to capture someone’s spirit. Whether it is the complexities of wartime politics bogging me down, the overwhelming evil humans are capable of inflicting, or quite simply me missing the forrest for the trees. But for whatever reason I missed the similarities between Anica and Aloitz’s stories. I missed how many times their paths crossed and then how one train ride would keep them apart for seven long years. 

In this discovery has come a natural beginning to their story. Aloitz and Anica left their respective homes less than 40 kilometres away from each other on the very same day - May 4th 1945. Their paths crossed in Ljubljana on the first day of their journey but from there their stories take different, twisted fates. It would take Anica a grueling eight days to make it out of Slovenia and Aloitz would not see the border for another three years!  

And so May 4th 1945 is where the story starts.

I have written about Anica’s  first few hours of departure in my previous blog post “The Knock”. 

The Knock

Anica (front row left) with her family before the war. 

I awake in a startle to the nearby sound of knuckles on glass. It is not a loud noise - only the shallowest of sleepers would hear it. I slide out from under my warm quilt and silently enter the kitchen of my sister’s home. Through the window Jernej stands. Sweat glistens at his temple, his breath fogs the cold glass.  I open the window, the air bites through the warmth of the room. ‘We must all leave now, get your family and go- the Partisans are close’. And with those few, frantic words he is gone, making his way invisibly through the night to warn others in danger. I stand there unmoving, the still open window and the reality of Jernej’s words cover my arms in goosebumps and tears well in my eyes.  I close the window in a fury, the tears dry before they have a chance to fall.

I take the stairs to the bedrooms two at a time. I have to wake my sister and her husband, collect our things and leave home - and we don’t have much time to do it.

I had prepared myself for this, envisioned this happening hundreds of times over the past two weeks. Waiting for it to happen - praying it never would.

I swing the door open to wake them and find them already collecting their belongings, the things they just could not bear to leave behind. They are silent, silhouettes packing by the glow of the moon. They had been waiting for the knock as well.

I quickly turn and leave towards my room,

Just two weeks earlier I kept my bag packed by the door - ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I slept fully dressed every night – two nights I even slept with my shoes on my feet.

But days and nights passed without event and the Americans were closing in on the Partisans. We heard their airplanes rumble over top every day, their Tommy guns within earshot. I believed the Americans would save us from Tito. The fear of being forced to flee lessened and I began to take items out of my rucksack and not return them.

And so tonight I find my satchel empty but for three pairs of underwear. I throw in a sweater, wool stockings, and 2 wool skirts. It is not hard to choose what to bring. I own very little. The Partisans having already burned down my family home in one of their revenge night raids, most of my belongings burning up with it.

I turn to leave my room and find Maria and Matija in the door. Their faces look too old for their ages. My own sadness was shadowed heavily by my sister’s. I had been hardened by the war, had lost so much already. But she had remained somewhat unscathed, protected by the luxury of a living husband at home.

Three of us leave the house silently and unseen through the back door - a knowing neighbour is a dangerous thing. 

We hurry to my brother’s house. Understandably, no one in his house answers our knocks on the back door. Knocks at the door in the night usually led to family members disappearing for months at a time. The fortunate ones returning emaciated, scarred. But most never came back home.

We throw pebbles and twigs at the bedroom window in vain. The house remains dark and still. Too much time has passed and we cannot wait any longer. We must move on. Perhaps they have left already. Perhaps we will see them on the road.

We take the main road out of Cerknica and as dawn breaks we join the hundreds of fleeing farmers and peasants. Many loaded down with rucksacks, the luckier families have horsecarts or mules. My satchel suddenly feels light with the absence of any food or drink. Those of us on foot travel faster but all I can see ahead and behind me is the sad line of shuffle dark blotches forming a squiggly line through the countryside. The sight of a countryside in exodus. 

Families and their loaded carts trying to make their way to the safety across the Austrian border May 1945

Astray

Short Stories. I have tried reading short stories but have never truly loved them. They always seemed to leave me hanging with no real ending, with too many unanswered questions and me feeling somehow slightly ripped off. This was not the case with Astray. 

Emma Donoghue’s collection of verbal snapshots depicting social outcasts. The stories of people who existed only in dust covered history books on back shelves of old libraries. Characters who were remarkable and mundane all at once. They lived in the margins of a society that did not accept them - they just didn't fit in. 

Characters like Mollie who worked as a prospector, cowboy, cook and saloonkeeper in 1860’s Arizona. The immigrating Irish couple whose attempt at reuniting in America was rife with disaster. The mother who goes crazy from guilt and the woman who disguised herself and became a prominent business ‘man’ in New York City in the late 19th century. 

These stories are fact-inspired, existing previously as a line or two in obscure newspapers or archives. Yet Donoghue makes the characters come alive with haunting detail and vivid imagery with plots that tell a full story - all in about nine to fifteen pages per story. It is remarkable. 

The Afterword** explains that many of these characters were in fact real people, while other characters were “invented to put a face on real incidents”. It is Historical Fiction at its finest - in fact Donoghue calls her work a “hybrid form”, existing somewhere between the real and the fabricated. 

The elusiveness of writing historical fiction is a concept I struggle with in my work. How free am I to manipulate the story, to deviate from the truth, to enhance it or eliminate parts of it altogether. Where does an author draw the line between fact and fiction? Or is it not a line at all, but a smudgy, blurry band where the two meet and meld together? 

Ferris wheel at Santa Monica Pier
in California. (taken January 2013)

As a writer, what are my obligations and as a reader what are my expectations? 

These are discords that I will begin to solve as I evolve as a writer. But for now I am content in my evolution as a reader - finally taking on the short story medium! My reading repertoire is ever expanding, perhaps it will include poetry next... ok, I don’t think I have evolved that much!

(In reality I have chiseled myself halfway through Wild by Cheryl Strayed)

**I broke my own rule of no prologues, no epilogues, no forewards and no afterwords. But I was on a flight with nothing else to read and desperation does crazy things to people. I am happy I read it.   It enhanced my understand of the stories. Maybe it is time to drop this rule? 

Prijatelji

All the girls at Spittal - a displaced persons camp in Austria.

 This photograph was taken at Spittal - a displaced persons camp in Austria.

These women were refugees in a post World War II world with nothing to their name, left to the mercy of aid organizations. Yet, they are smiling. They are happy to be together, happy to have a future (though scarily unknown) and happy to have each other.

My grandma, Anica is one of these women and so is my Grandpa’s sister, Angela. Angela and Anica were friends before my grandparents had met, fallen in love and married. They were friends and had no idea that they would become sisters-in-law in just a few long years. They were just two among a whole group, a band of sisters of sorts that joined together in a time of need and became everything to each other. 

The boys behind them (top left) made the girls laugh.
They made the boys leave so they could retake the photo.

Their friendships grew out of a commitment to survival made to each other. They bonded together over the hardships and toil of everyday refugee life. They shared everything in order to survive - pooling resources and providing slivers of stability in a world where they had very little control over their own future. These women all left family and loved ones behind in Slovenia - a place they had never dreamed of leaving. 

From Left: Slava, Anica, Heda, Danka, Mida, Slava and Angela 

Over recent years my Grandma’s eyesight has failed her and she can no longer see the photograph outside of her mind’s eye. Her eyes cannot identify who is who nor can she recognize herself in the tiny, old, fragile photos. 

Thanks to the modern miracles of technology I was able to scan and enlarge this very special photo and brought it for for my grandma on my last visit. Actually, I brought six copies of the enlarged photo; one for my grandma and one for each of the five women still alive from the photo. 

They are still her friends - 67 years later. They all attend the same Slovenian Church that they have gone to since they arrived in Canada back in 1952. They have attended each other’s weddings, celebrated the arrivals of new children and later mourned the death of each of their friends until there were just 6 left. 

My Grandma stared at the photo, seeing her twenty years old self looking back in sepia tone for the first time in years. Sporadically a story from my Grandma’s memory would be coaxed out by something or someone she saw in the photo and she would tell me a story about one of the women - stories of when they were all just refugee girls. Or she would turn to my grandpa and tell him a story in Slovene and they would both laugh - sharing a moment of their past together in the language that still comes so naturally to them. 

Modelling their new winter coats donated by UNRA
Danka, Angela, Anica and Slava

These women came to Canada together, they came to Toronto together, they roomed together, they worked together. They shared rent, shared meals, shared beds, shared dreams. They shared in each other’s lives. Of course in this photo none of them knew that yet - they were just girls and teenagers hoping for a better future than their past and present.  Smiling because they had each other. 

                                                                                   A nod to the beauty and power of friendship. 

three little dots

I had been feeling a little down about my writing as of late. I have been in similar situations before *see Writer’s Doubt*, but this felt different. Things were simply at a standstill and I was just festering. 

My book research was at a stalemate until I could squeeze in another interview with my Grandparents. My blog was getting dusty and it was not for want of trying. I had a whole cache of word documents with nothing more then 3 or 4 un-spirited sentences about all things lame and boring. I believe there is even an attempted blog post saved somewhere about the differences between green tea drinkers and coffee drinkers which I did not post - you’re welcome.

I was really starting to doubt that I could write anything interesting or well structured that someone would actually want to read. 

Then I received an email from the Editor of The New Quarterly asking me to write a biography of the literary journal’s Wild Writers Festival for the Waterloo Arts Awards ceremony as the festival had been nominated for an award. I was petrified. I am a very new member of the journal’s Board of Directors and this was my first task - I was nervous. No - I was petrified. 

I slowly read my assignment; 

• 3 bullet points, 45 words maximum. 
• A concise overview of festival or event career highlights

Seems simple enough.

I agonized over this. Seriously I did. 

I poured everything into those three bullets and emailed a document of exactly 45 words (a near impossible feat for someone as verbose as me), formatted into 3 bullets, with all words spelled correctly to the TNQ editor. Then I waited anxiously for a response. 

And then it arrived - a short little email indicating that my 3 bullets were “great” and appreciation for my taking this little project on. 

I was elated!

Sometimes it’s the little things, like 45 little words in the right direction.

Maybe that green tea drinkers vs coffee drinkers blog idea wasn’t that bad....

No it was. 

German Boy - to Epilogue or not?

My favourite books expose unique stories that introduce new, fascinating characters from history;  allowing a glimpse into foreign and obscure lives. Bookshelves around our home reveal that I have a special affinity for WWII era stories - to which there is no shortage. However the really special ones are few and far between. The German Boy documents a side of the WWII rarely told - written about the lives of those on the losing side - the German civilians. 

This is a really special book. 

German Boy is an autobiographical story of Wolfgang W.E. Samuel growing up in Nazi Germany. A little boy surviving the hardships of the German civilians; hunger, betrayal, death, bombings and degradation. It is an amazing story that is impeccably written, down to the last detail. 

The book was fantastic. It was so fantastic that I decided to break my rule and read the Epilogue. I never read Forewords, Prefaces or Epilogues. I feel that a book begins with the first sentence and ends with the last - that is the story. Nothing else. I broke that rule when I read German Boy. I was just so captivated by the story, by the way the story was written that I really did not want the book to end - so I read the Epilogue.

It changed the whole book...

The Epilogue tells you that Samuel went on to serve in the United States Air Force for 30 years! He flew against the Soviet Union during the Cold War and dropped bombs on Laos and Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

I was shocked and disappointed. There is a strong sentiment throughout the book towards the futility of war; the waste of human life it causes, the destruction of cities and land, the mental and physical scars inflicted on generations of people. 

Samuel survived the horrors war and observed all the useless destruction and death that the war machine causes. How could someone whose childhood, family, and country was completely destroyed by war then go on to perpetuate the cycle of destruction? How could he drop bombs on civilians just as bombs were dropped on him?  Why did he feel the need to inflict the same horrors on others as he had experienced? Did he not learn anything from his own story? 

German Boy is a remarkable book. Beautifully written, captivating and truly noteworthy. But, personally the Epilogue managed to taint the entire book retroactively for me - this has never happened to me before - then again I have never read an Epilogue before either. 

I should have followed my rule. No Forewords. No Prefaces. No Epilogues. 

Missing : A Book

I am not reading a book right now.

I am always reading a book. In fact, I usually have the next books I am going to read piled on my nightstand or desk. To be so completely and utterly Bookless right now is unbearable.  

Reading my book is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night. Diving into someone else’s world calms me and I sleep better - in the morning it is a quiet and calm way to start a usually rushed, busy, work-filled day. Some people meditate or do yoga - I read. 

Being without a book makes me feel disjointed and awkward, like my days are without a real beginning and end.  

I started to read “The God of Small Things”, being fully aware of the bizarre fact that two out of the three books I most recently read had ‘God’ in the title. (see “If God was a Rabbit). I cracked open the fresh, newly purchased book early one morning and began to read the immaculately manicured language of Arundhati Roy. It is written so beautifully that it orders you to read the same phrase over and over as you become immersed in the meticulously chosen words. 

Later that day I was in my doctor’s office waiting room. I had my book in my purse -as always - and pulled it out as I sat waiting for my name to be called.

Trying to read in a doctor’s office is a horrible idea. People hold old, crumpled copies of US Weekly or Chatelaine in front of their faces only to hide their wandering eyes and ears. This is certainly not the venue to be reading a book like this, a book that the New Yorker described as “A work of highly conscious art...”! I was reading the pages but I was not absorbing anything, I didn’t know the characters or what was happening, I wasn’t appreciating the language. I was too pre-occupied by all the chaos surrounding me. The baby crying, the old couple arguing, the nurses chattering etc.This experience ruined the book, albeit temporarily, for me. I will have to re-read the book, but I needed a break from it. 

That night, I picked up another book from a box of used books recently given to me by a friend. I did not read the back of the book and had no idea what it was about. I chose it simply based on it’s cover photo. The book was “Fine Just the Way it Is” by Annie Proulx. I read the first chapter and was smitten, I liked where this story was going. I fell asleep feeling content thinking I had found my book and pleased in my ability to judge a book by it’s cover. 

The next morning, I flipped to where I had left off in the book and began reading. About four pages into the second chapter I realized that this was in fact a book of short stories. I was not reading the second chapter, I was reading a completely new and different story. Ugh.

I was not in the mood for short stories and more importantly I wasn’t expecting short stories. I closed the book and put it back on the bookshelf. I would have to read it another time. And so I began my day feeling a little off - like something was missing. 

Later that same day, I peered into our mailbox which is usually filled with flyers and coupons, and found a package from sent from my sister in England...a book. ‘Inside’ by Alix Ohlin. So for the third time in two days I cracked open a new book. 

Now, here I am four days later, completely sucked into the worlds of Grace, Tug, Anne and Etienne. This book is fantastic and I relish in beginning and ending my days with short glimpses into the lives of these incredibly complex characters. I have found my book. I am no longer Bookless, for the next couple of days...

***I have since finished ‘Inside’ and will have a book review of it coming soon... 

I am now reading ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantel.***