I thought I would put this in the form of a letter. It's easier to write when you know whom you're addressing; otherwise the voice is impersonal and abstract, like speaking into a microphone that could be connected anywhere or nowhere. It is the account of my own thread in the ribbon of events that forced us to escape, separately, and brought us together in Alaska House near Frankfurt.

 

It is best to begin by describing the rumble of distant thunder that could be heard on the horizon right after the war ended in 1945. On May 8 of that year the Germans fled Czechoslovakia after capitulating to the Czechs; they had been squeezed between the Americans to the west and the Russians to the east. That day should have marked the end of the war for us, but we didn't know it at the time; no one had yet arrived to liberate us. The Americans had been very close to Prague--Patton was in Plzeò, two hours' drive for a tank--and could have reached Prague soon after the Czech uprising had begun on May 5. But the Russians insisted on liberating Prague themselves. They were three days' drive away; Eisenhower consented; so on May 9, they rolled in, to all appearances the happy and magnanimous liberators. The soldiers certainly were happy enough: young boys driven through an exultant crowd on trucks or oxcarts, shaking hands, signing autographs on every available scrap of paper, returning the greetings people shouted to them in accented Russian. It seemed the best of times: the war was over.

 

I don't know who if anyone among the Czechs knew that a new occupation was being prepared. To feel free meant to trust that one had been liberated by the right people at the earliest possible time. It meant unquestioned and final relief. One of our neighbors had sworn during the war that as soon as it was over he would boil a vat of the despised potatoes and throw it out of his fourth-story window, and now the chance would come (it never did, however; a year or so later no one was in a position to spare any). For me, age nine, the image of the end of the war was this: the sight from our fifth-story window--early in the spring morning of the 9th--of father arriving at the house in a small car, driven nevertheless by a chauffeur, in his hat and light overcoat, after a four- or five-day absence. He wore a small paper flag of the republic--the blue triangle reintroduced into the red and white field after its six year exile--pinned to his lapel. He was tired or he wasn't, I couldn't tell; we were happy to see him walking toward the house.

 

We knew, of course, that the little flag--the only authoritative emblem that short notice could produce--meant that he was a member of the revolutionary council. We had spent the past four days in the cellar of our apartment house and had been kept informed by the radio. It had been clear from the broadcasts from May 5th on that an uprising had occurred and that there would be fighting.

 

Around our street fighting was minimal. At one moment during those four days a German tank, seeing the prewar flag draped from our windows, had blown a hole into the middle of the house. Prezisionsarbeit, doubtless, but too precise: in the middle, behind the intended mark, was a brick wall separating two apartments, and it stopped the shell. At another moment, coming up to street level, I saw a dead German soldier across the street. Lying on his stomach, anonymous, distant, shrouded in a helmet and grey trenchcoat, he was motionless in a way I had never seen before.

 

The radio at one point reached right into the house. It announced the composition of the revolutionary council: Professor Pražák as president, and four vice presidents of whom Prof. Machotka¹ was one. (Another one was Smrkovský, who twenty-three years later participated in the Prague Spring). Everyone cheered; Mother received kisses. I didn't know how much enthusiasm I was allowed to show (I never did, being very sensitive to her mistrust of it), but the inward excitement was magnificent. That's how we knew. On the afternoon of the 8th, we left the cellar and from our windows watched the Germans flee. The butcher from across the street was firing his pistol at their departing backs (even then the gesture did not seem either brave or honorable, but the time didn't seem right for quibbling); he must have hidden it the whole six years.

 

I don't remember our reunion with father; only his arrival is vivid. Before long we learned that he and his colleagues had been directing air drops of weapons, changing hiding places every few hours, broadcasting to the populace. The Council was temporary, only self-appointed, to be replaced by a legitimate government when elections could be held after the return of the exiles (President Beneš's government from London and communist-recognized exiles from Moscow). The Council in its four vice presidents nevertheless represented the four political parties that had existed before the war and that would run against each other in the elections of 1946. You cannot read any history of the uprising in anything published behind the Iron Curtain; it had never existed². Only a small book, published in the States and written by father and several fellow veterans, will outline it for you³.

 

Of the four parties, one, thanks to the liberation of May 9th, found a sudden popularity: the Communists. At the elections they won a plurality, therefore the most important ministries. This in itself was only a gathering of the clouds, not the rumble of thunder. I don't know, nor do I know who does, what Moscow was doing at the time, but it was certainly watching.

 

We went back to school. I don't remember where Georgia went, though a vague memory places it in our quarter (section, or neighborhood, one should say, but the word feels as right as "quartier" or the original "ètvrt"). Since the third grade, in 1944, I had attended a downtown school, which was a bit elite. What was most elite about it was that it taught English, illegally and secretly; the subject was not listed on our schedule cards (something like "study hall" was there in its place) and we were not to mention it anywhere. The secret was well kept until just before the end of the war; somehow the Germans found out, and arrested and shot our principal. To have run a school for six years with death no further than a child's loose word must have taken even more bravery than the more typical resistance. And it was a pricipled bravery, not an egoistic one; much later, I saw something similar in Paris in 1978, when I attended a demonstration marking the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, whose heroes were four or five Russians who had protested in Red Square and been sent to psychiatric prison. Five years later they were released, and got to the West, perhaps because they were Jews. They, too, stood to gain nothing personal, nothing even remotely their own.

 

Now the school reopened, but classes met in various students' homes; we finished the school year and started another one in a larger building a block away near Jungmannova ulice (a building which has since been replaced by the Národní Tøída Metro stop). I recall several experiences, as one would, but one is of particular interest because it served as a reminder that the last war was not all that distant. You may not remember the shortage of milk. To help make up for it, they distributed milk in school: students got a cup each from large vats filled with reconstituted powdered milk. I remember our class not getting any while older children did, and being puzzled, angry and disappointed. Of course later I came to understand that adolescents needed the calcium more than the ten-year-olds, but not then.

 

I was aware enough of politics--well, why not: father was vice president in the Bohemian regional government after 1945, active in his party, noted as a professor--to know that his party came in second in the elections of '46. For anyone unfamiliar with Czech history it had a name that could be misconstrued--National Socialist--though of course it had nothing to do with the German version that gave the Nazis their acronym. But it certainly was a socialist party; in today's spectrum, it would be a democratic socialist party of the Scandinavian type⁴. I remember being told what elections meant, and wondering how one actually marked one's choice on the ballot: write it on with one's best handwriting? If so, could I do that for father and mother, and write Nár. Soc.? Or were abbreviations excluded?

 

The election was legitimate, though hardly reassuring. Father continued working for the regional government, though in a smaller role, and professing his sociology. There was one perk of his position that is important to me now, though at the time it would have been hard to convince me: his office had a box reserved at the Opera. For every performance, the ticket would trickle down from the regional president and, almost as often as my father cared, stop at his desk. It did not seem at all unnatural to me that the government chauffeur assigned to him (named Smetana; how many people elsewhere had chauffeurs named Debussy to drive them to see Peléas et Mélisande, or Bruckner to hear a long symphony?) would take us there, nor unusual that I should be spending so much time at the Opera, nor excessive that I should have seen The Bartered Bride nine times; but sometimes it all seemed to be too late in the evening and I was tired. Other times I resented going. I thought I remembered very little of what I had heard, but years later many operas felt like an old shoe right away as soon as I heard them again.

 

I am speaking of the years '46 to '48, and of the distant rumble on the horizon. Memory operates all the time we are awake, and time flows at a constant rate; all the days are the same length. But we only remember some things. During those years, I would have a hard time distinguishing one day from another in my memory. Under hypnosis, I could remember a lot more--but of much less significance. Another memory left a kind of question about myself. Father's office was going to greet a delegation of peasants (I think we still called them that, but the implications were neither medieval nor snotty); as part of the show, a child in national peasant costume was a required prop, needed to stand with the greeting party. I agreed to do it; a few days later the regional president's chauffeur picked me up in his silver Tatra to be fitted for a peasant costume and drove me to--I disbelieved this at first--the opera's backstage, to the costumes for The Bartered Bride. I was outfitted well, I must say, but in an unreal costume. At the ceremony itself, the two sides faced each other, hosts and guests, but the guests--the descendants of national costume wearers--were in grey suits like everyone else. Mine was the only costume; it was false; and I stood symbolically with the wrong side. I knew then, not just later, that I had no idea what I was doing there (that was my way of accounting for my discomfort at standing out in all that color). Later there was a reception at Hradèany given by Beneš; other dignitaries arrived, among whom a face I recognized from the newsreels as father's colleague, Jožka David. He came over to me--a convincing little peasant--and when I told him my name his face fell. He looked as if he had been had. I explained, of course. But I never did lose my acute discomfort with costumes.

 

I became aware of the gathering storm--not aware but certain--on a ski trip with my school in February '48. The radio announced the sudden resignation of the government and the formation of a new one. More ministries inexplicably went to the Communists; some went to father's party but were held by quislings (I obviously knew something already if I knew what they were). None of the kids quite shared my unease, I think. The snow was good enough and for a few more days we skied, raced, fixed broken bindings (they were primitive then), and I suppose sang a lot like good Czech kids. When we returned, mother was waiting at the station. That, I knew, was serious. So were her careful movements in the street.

 

The history of the coup, if you want to understand it, is best described by someone else. I recommend Tad Szulc's book⁵. But it was not long before our lives changed the way 1987 gives way to into 1988 (I am starting to write this on New Year's eve). Looking back, one would like to think that some part of time might have been turned back. No part at all, of course, but it is thinking, not wishes, that tells us that. It is like wanting to turn back one little second of the rush of events that produce an accident.

 

There was a stillness in the house, like before Christmas when father, unseen, would actually be rushing to put up a tree and lay out all the presents while we waited in some far off room for that brief eternity before the bell rang and Ježišek (Kris Kringle, best said) announced his presence. The stillness was of father packing his suitcase, but I didn't know that. His mother was there; that was unusual. He came out of his study, smiled at me, and said he was going downtown. He was moved and I knew he was lying, but I didn't say anything. I knew he didn't want me to question what was going on. He gave me a hug and a kiss, something not expected of a man going downtown, and a bigger one to mother. It was afternoon; I remember the warm light.

 

He was, of course, escaping, and on the shortest possible notice. A student of his, a Communist then but more loyal to person than doctrine, warned him that his arrest had been voted on by his cell. It was two days away. How long father took to contact the undergroundand pack and go I don't know⁶; less than a day, surely. He simply disappeared that day.

 

Mother was tense, more than usual. (How often during those years, or during the war years, could anyone let go, and break out into play or laughter? or just smile, content with himself?) Within a few days she asked me what one thing I would most want to take with me if I ever had to choose one. I chose my beautiful wooden model of a 30s roadster, a large affair with an engine compartment big enough to serve as a cigarette case. (I think I know now why I loved it so much: during the war, walking downtown with father, I saw it in a display window, asked if I couldn't get it for Christmas, and right away felt the doubt: this was such a nice store, maybe all the toys in it are for German kids only. But at Christmas it did appear. Was I granted an exception? Did someone speak for me to the High Command? Was it the same car or one just as good? And I thought so hard about that, and was so happy, that I didn't realize it really was a cigarette case.) It was a theoretical choice only; when I did pack, I packed only the clothes I could carry in a knapsack. I don't know who packed for Hana and Georgia, nor how you two looked or talked or even what you might have felt; I don't know if I was just frozen with tension. We soon left the apartment.

 

I don't remember where we went first. It must have been close, to arelative in Prague, because in a day or two we found out that ourapartment had been sealed; they had just missed us⁷. Shortly after, we took the train to Jihlava, for mother to say goodbye to her father and brothers and sisters, and a few days later followed a zigzag odyssey across Czechoslovakia as mother made one attempt after another to find an escape route. The details of this are very murky, but I do know that the peregrinations took six weeks, and I do remember some details of them. Once we were in a car with Olga Bradáè and a driver; it was night; we had been awakened from blissful sleep and once in the car started falling asleep again. That attempt at escaping failed in some way; perhaps that was the one where there was too much snow on the ground and our tracks would have given us away.

 

We also took the train to Bratislava. Childish memory tells me that it was incredibly distant, but the map tells me that it was only 200 miles or so from Prague. Did I by then know we were going to escape? Mother never breathed a word, of course, and refused to answer my questions, but the travels were long, peculiar, and unplanned. Something was up, and a kid of nearly twelve is not unperceptive. But I now think that I didn't want to know because I felt mother didn't want me to know. Whatever she was doing needed protecting. But she protected herself, too. In a hotel lobby in Bratislava we all sat in overstuffed chairs, waiting for something, and I felt unexpectedly sleepy. I woke up not knowing how much time had passed; Hana andGeorgia were asleep, too, or just waking, and to all appearances Mother had been awake. I just thought we had become sleepy, but it all did seem peculiar. Shortly after, I think on the same day, we left for the train station and traveled back to Prague.

 

Mother only told me later that she had given us sleeping pills. It was too dangerous to have three kids fidgeting and asking questions. What she was doing was trying to arrange for a crossing near Bratislava, and the deal failed because they asked for too much money. For some reason the figure sticks in my mind: 50,000crowns, which was $2,000 then⁸. Mother had only half that with her. Later, probably in Germany, we learned that this outfit actually took their charges half-way across the border and killed them. They were later caught and executed. (I wonder whether it was for murder or for abetting escape.) It's funny that when I first heard of this I didn't feel any fear, nor was I afraid while we were traveling back and forth within Czechoslovakia. I just froze emotionally, and it protected me.

 

In Prague we stayed at two different places that I recall, but there may have been more. Even I knew that we couldn't go back to our apartment, but what I didn't know was that some of our relatives would not have us; they found it too dangerous. Mother was bitter; but strangers were found who took the risk. One says "were found", and wonders what it means. There was an underground organization that helped people cross and doubtless it helped them find shelter first; I cannot see how without them we could have survived in Prague for even a few days or found an escape route. By this time I believe Mother had tried three or four different routes and they had all failed.

 

One of our lodgings was in an unfamiliar section of Prague; it was a large house and we stayed in a single room with very large windows--perhaps some former conservatory--whose only furniture was mattresses; I remember waking up one morning with that sense of not knowing where I was⁹. We all have that at times, but this was more than that, a kind of dread; I imagine that I dispelled it as fast as I could. A day later, I think, and in another place, a well furnished and smaller apartment closer to downtown, I saw my first underground contact. Forget all the films you have seen: this man¹⁰ was beautifully dressed in a grey sharkskin suit, wore large rings on his glistening fingers, and spoke in mellifluous tones. It was a sunny afternoon. It was either then, or on a second visit in the evening, that he told us that because a family with three small children was too much of a risk, we would have to cross separately. I don't know whether he or mother turned to me, but the question was obvious: would I go first? I said of course with a dryness and determination worthy of a kid holding everything in, and was told that I would set out the next day. I would spend the night with another person in another place, and meet the person I was to cross the border with.

 

I do not remember the goodbye and I don't know what I felt. I think I reassured myself that Mother would soon follow, but if I had not been trying to be brave I might have reminded myself that I neither knew whether Father had made it across nor could be sure that any of us would when our turn came.

 

I was driven to a small fourth or fifth-floor apartment in a modern building in another section of Prague and right away started to like the kind man who put me up. I am sure Mother remembers his name, but it might still be best to keep it to oneself. Either that evening or the next morning I met the man who was to act as my unofficial guardian while crossing with me: a member of parliament named Blaško¹¹. I remember him as tall, quiet, and Slovak. A car came for us early in the morning, took us to the railroad station (I seem to remember it was the Wilson Station), and there we met another man who was to cross with us (not introduced to me at the time, for reasons of security, but he is Ivo Ducháèek). We bought magazines to read, some salami, and I was to call them uncle. Ducháèek had a rucksack like me and we were to look like we were going on a holiday. For some reason I remember the train pullingout of the station and the sepia-colored sports magazine I was reading (to look authentic, a kid like me would be presumed to like sports; the magazine was strange to me but I liked it).

 

As I write about this I have the sense of coming to the boundary between the past and the future. I must have felt it then; and certainly for several days or weeks before that I must have known that there was no home to go back to.

 

In fact the exact boundary in my memory is the train pulling out of the station. (I am continuing much later, in August 88, and in the meantime I have crossed another boundary: the fortieth anniversary of these events.) Memory is a process, not a state, and later images can invade earlier ones without our knowing; so perhaps all the heavy meanings of movie trains pulling out of movie stations invade this one--but I don't think so. That really was the leap into the void. A car can always stop and turn around, but a train moves only forward. What I did not know was that it was also starting to cross the boundary between a part of my life which was to be remembered (or forgotten) as the fixed and distant past, and a part which would evolve and remain continuous to this day; anything happeningto me in Germany just one day later would be located at the beginning of a new sector of my memory.

 

But as the train pulls out I am still in the old sector. Of the train journey I only remember two mileposts: two changes of train, one in Plzeò and one in Klatovy. At one of the changes we were to meet a guide in a cafe; we went upstairs to the quieter room, ordered a chess set, and my two companions started to play. Soon a man came over to kibitz and after a reasonable interval left with us. This was probably Plzeò but it doesn't matter. In the train from Klatovy our party had somehow become complete: a young married couple and--here memory falters--probably another man; I seem to remember his rucksack, but then we all had one. The train was local and wound its way through the foothills. It was dusk by the time we got off, at the smallest possible station and with the assumed cheerfulness of people making clear to others that we were looking forward to a recreational hike in the mountains. A hike that began, improbably, at seven in the evening.

 

The time sticks in my mind for some reason. (What sticks is that wemarked it in our memory, and it was either a quarter to or a quarter past seven; we all must have known that it was another boundary.) We started slowly uphill from the tracks, heading for the woods above, our movements those of people on an excursion. I simply followed, not knowing nor allowed to know how far we were from the border or how long it would take to get there. We entered the dense wood and night fell immediately, a half hour early. And now I lose the exact thread of events; we walked through the night but the order of things is no longer clear. Most of our hike was through woods, and the few times we crossed meadows it was pitch black anyway. Somewhere near midnight we were to exchange guides; the one who had taken us to this point broke our silence to whisper that he would hoot like an owl and if there was an answer, that would be our next guide. I forget what the alternative was if there was no answer. But his low hoot, repeated once or twice, was finally answered, and a bit later a figure emerged from somewhere and led us on. Did we thank the one who left? Know his name? I don't know. In the darkness we could see little points of light moving in the distance: border guards loyal to the democratic regime who did not want to run into anyone escaping. I felt important because I had been entrusted with a slip of paper with a code on it; a kid was unlikely to be searched if we were captured, and I was to pretend to go to the bathroom and flush it down the toilet.

 

Most of the time I don't remember being frightened, or thinking about father and mother and Georgia and Hana; the escape, the long hike, the darkness, were simply things that had to be done or endured. Again I put myself into an unfeeling state, well protected against the danger and our separation. But falling into a cold creek, which we couldn't see because we carried no light, did break into the Stoic rhythm. I felt cold--finally I felt something--until I was dry again. And having to pass right by a well-lit mill--taking turns running through the shaft of light one at a time--does stand out as frightening. And later, hearing a sharp bark close by, as we stumbled onto a village, did nearly panic us. It wasn't just the one bark, but the second and third, and then the pandemonium of what must have been a fox farm. We stopped and ran and a few hundred yards further listened for the barking to subside; but how soon would we know if anyone decided to take notice? In the event, no one did, which means that no one cared to.

 

Sometime before daybreak, we all lay down to nap. It's not clear to me why we chose that moment, because we were actually close to the border; I didn't know it, though the guide must have. I think we could have crossed right then, but it occurs to me that if we had, where would we have gone? Would there have been anyone to explain our presence to? And what would we have looked like? As it was I woke up, pretty fresh, and it was light. The guide told us which way to continue and said goodbye. We walked on for perhaps a half hour, clambered down a steep meadow toward a creek--and there was the border. A milestone told us that. On the other side of the creek the meadow rose sharply uphill. But there was a moment's fright, the thought that an idiotic joke was being played on us and all these efforts: the word Germany was on our side of the stone, the word Czechoslovakia on the other. We stood there paralyzed, wondering if we had blundered during the night and were about to reenter the prison's circumference. Or maybe the sign was telling us that we were facing into Germany? (I remember proposing that.) We never made the decision; it was made for us. A farmer and his wife stepped out of their farm on the other side, far uphill, and gestured to us violently to run up toward them. We did, and they berated us for our indecision in German (the language had never sounded reassuring to me before); just a week earlier, someone had been shot by Czech guards from the other side when already halfway up their hill.

 

They had a telephone, called the nearest American Army post, and pretty soon a couple of jeeps arrived to take us toward the interior. The drivers were GIs, my first Americans. They were just like the ones I would later see in the movies, except that the reality came first and the movie image later: not grim, not even laconic, they recognized the seriousness of our escape by denying it. They joked with me about my name, which I translated into English and they pretended to hear "ball", and I thought they were kind and liked kids. They drove us to a confusing check point in a Bavarian village whose name sticks--Furth im Walde (Ford in the Woods), which in Czech can be plausibly mistranslated as "still in the woods"--where someone else checked our identity. There was a good bit of waiting, and finally we were driven to an Army base in Straubing. The accomodations were by the standards of our escape luxurious; only a few people to a room, clean sheets, baths and showers, food that was solid and seemed delicious. This was a relocation center, it became clear eventually, for refugees who might have some political history, and whom it was important to sort out carefully. We didn't know how long we would be there. We were questioned in detail by what I remembered as the Counter Intelligence Service.¹² A Czech interpreter was there, and that was much better than my few words of English. I told them that I was looking for my father, who he was and what his function had been and when I thought he had escaped. This time the attitude was tight-lipped. No one said anything; like interrogators taking themselves seriously, they asked questions and didn't give answers.

 

While we waited, not knowing quite what for, the young couple who was of our party turned out to be enterprising and offered to make handpainted silk scarves for the GIs. They had their kit, some blank scarves, and this intrigued me; I had always enjoyed drawing and wondered if I could help them. They appreciated my offer--with a shade too much enthusiasm it turned out--and asked if I was good at painting nudes. I retreated in embarrassment. (I do paint nudes well now, but I warn my fellow psychologists against seeing anything teleological here.)

 

I simply could not believe how well American soldiers were fed. Admittedly ours was the Officers' Mess but I was told it was not very different from that of the enlisted men. Every meal was copious and tasty. (Oh, my taste is different now, but that's another matter.) I tasted my first corn flakes and Coca Cola; coke was strange but interesting. The officers were dressed in clean and carefully ironed uniforms. After one meal I was asked by the officer who drove a robin's egg blue Buick--a wonder among cars then, the pride of its owner, with a swept back and front fenders that met the back ones--who I was. It was like an invitation to an after-dinner speech, and I was confused and again embarrassed. I stood up to answer but remember disliking what I said.

 

For about six days the members of our party disappeared one by one (well, two, for the couple). They were each taken to their destination, whatever that was, and only my guardian Blaško and I were left. On the morning of the seventh day we were told that we too would now be taken somewhere. A sergeant of Czech origin drove us across what seemed like a large part of Germany, offered us excellent sandwiches (those and the olive drab of the car, as well as its smell, are vivid in my memory), and toward evening stopped in Frankfurt at the American consul's house. This was a private residence with a lovely garden; it was dusk, I was sent to playwith the charming little girl who was his daughter, and we had dinner. This setting was memorable because it seemed so elegant; and the wonder was that Czech was spoken, the consul having the distinct advantage of being of our origin.

 

Our eventual fate was still a sealed envelope. The sergeant must have known where he would take us after dinner, but we didn't. It was a barbed wire gate well outside Frankfurt¹³, which opened and revealed a very large villa which could have been a resort hotel. The barbed wire was double, in fact, but in post-war Europe that was barely remarkable. We walked in and found no one inside; there were lights, however, and gentle noises upstairs. We walked up one flight and found a group of people huddled around the radio listening to the news. My father was one of them.

 

As a child I seldom just felt things; I thought around them, tried to understand. The shock was about understanding how we were together: did the people who sent us there know, or were they sending me there as a ward of Blaško's? This was, we were told, a house for political refugees and the barbed wire fence was to keep people out, not in; and he would be one of those needing protection, like my father. The first alternative now seems more likely, but the point is that at the moment I thought hard. Myfather was even more shocked: why was I alone? I explained as well as I could but of course I had no news of my mother. We talked a long time--with the others listening in; they all needed to know everything that touched the exile's life--and then my father's roommate (Èížek, the member of parliament) moved out of their room and I took his place.

 

I don't remember the week that followed very clearly. I played ping-pong, got to know the political figures, watched them without their facades. It took no time at all for everyone to reveal their peculiarities, wrinkles, warts, weaknesses. One has to picture agroup of variously important figures, all deprived of their past function and allowed to develop no new one. Little is left for them but to try to figure out what had happened, magnify their past importance, salvage some dignity, and pass the time of day. Few came off very well. Some attached themselves to dignity: one general appropriated the communal can of shoe polish to himself and shined his shoes to a mirror finish at least daily, only to lose the shine after a few minutes of his regular, stately constitutional on the dusty path. Others jogged and exercised¹⁴, sunned themselves, repaired valuables with wire and string; all argued. I liked some of them and don't care to remember others. My father was the group's representative by virtue of his knowledge of English; his title was Sheriff. He was Sheriff of Alaska House.

 

Into this aimless routine, a week later, came an announcement which interrupted my ping-pong game: someone claiming to be my mother was at the gate. No one could be let in without permission from the Commandant of the army camp which had jurisdiction; I should go to the gate. It was mother, Georgia and Hana¹⁵.

 

Mother particularly looked haggard. She explained that they were hungry; they had passed through some of the refugee camps (which were miserable affairs), found out from one of father's former students where he was, and came by train. She asked if I had anything to eat. This was a poignant thing for me to hear. I did have a shopping bag's worth of chocolates I had been given by a Protestant minister who had taken up a collection on my behalf earlier; I brought down most of it. All this time they stood outside the gate: this was Friday, and the Commandant had already left for the weekend. There was no second-in-command with authority to make such a substantial decision. One sentry--a bear of a man with a heavy jaw, unshavable chin, beer belly, and colts strapped low on his thighs--said it all looked pretty regular to him, took it on himself to risk court-martial, and let them in¹⁶. We were together two months after father's hurried exit.

 

All that happened after that moment involved all of us, and is part of another story. You might want to know that there was no court-martial, and that I always liked that sentry in particular.