On Shifting Sands

Life in the Buda hills was easy. Each morning, the family concierge woke her with a military whistle while Mari, the village girl, twirled around (without underpants because she's so poor, according to the countess her mother), plying her with bread, Jam, butter, and eggs.
Father was a judge. When his chauffeur had a day off, he drove his bottle green government car with a tank full of petrol just for fun. Her horse, Palinka, grazed in the meadow at their summer home, prancing as if he were a Viennese show stallion. In the fall, schools last day arrived too soon. Admiring her new hat in the mirror Bunny graciously accepted the class prize for religion. Sister Clotilda reminded the girls to hold onto their Christianity. Which meant as Bunny thought about it that hiding Jewish children was a good thing but flirting with German officers was bad. Bunny Esterhazy an aristocrat already knew the difference between right and wrong. Not like the girls who met the German soldiers on the Danube’s dark banks for chocolates and silk stockings.
Later that week the family decamped to lake Balaton. The sound of bombs sending her mother out of her mind. One late afternoon, she walked on the sandy shore self-assured in cork shoes, waisted culotte shorts and a chiffon blouse with a ribbon. She adjusted her ribbon, letting the cool Balaton breeze graze her cheeks, feeling as secure as her family’s thick Buda hills manor walls. She thought of the German silk stockings the girls from school bragged about. How vulgar they seemed now. A faint hum broke her thoughts. She squinted over the lake to see a black rubber boat, slicing through the waves, engines droning. The travellers looked like the Russian soldiers she’d seen in the Newspaper reports from the eastern front. She turned to call her mother—who had just looked up. As the boats red star clarified mother fainted onto the lawn, and father yelled from the doorway, “Get the car!” At that moment, her world broke like a string of pearls. Her fiancé the young pilot suddenly appeared and spoke quietly to her about the unfolding invasion. If he and Bunny were to be married, he stressed she and her entire family must leave in the next two hours. At sunset gripping a small bag of family silver Bunny, her family and an entire flight squadron stuffed themselves into a Red Cross truck. The cocky young pilots in their khaki suits sitting with her spoke of nothing but the brutality and rapes inflicted by the Russians on civilians. She blocked their horror stories out only to then see forced labourers close to their truck shot down for being slow by German officers. One of them a Jewish person wearing the yellow star fell against the truck. Why didn’t’ t they stop and at least challenge the Germans?
Overwhelmed she sobbed.
At the end of the drive she thought only of her friend Vera still in Budapest. She had not been able to say goodbye to her absolute best of friends! And that was such a rule of friendship— to say goodbye, to give a hug and a farewell
On the fifth night of their retreat from Hungary, for the price of the family silver they managed to find a place that had five people sleeping together in each bed. Lying next to a soldier reeking of sweat and her father snoring she had to distract herself with memories of Palinka. But on this journey things shifted quickly. And at 6am American troops knocked on the doors of their lodging and blasted out, 'Hitler has killed himself! At his side, Eva Braun'. Her fiancé hid his gun, and her father quickly put away his Judge photos. The desperation of their situation sank into her mood. The manor was no longer; her grandmother had been shot and raped by the Russians because she would not give up her jewels. There was no going back.
As winter set in day after day they competed for bread, vegetables, and eggs. She was now quite thin. Every day the pilots sniggered and boasted about their gains on the black market. But she did not join them. Now she had become an artist and walked everywhere with a drawing pad and pencils. ‘Hey, baby, how about sketching my girl so I can look at her? see cute ha?
Bunny jumped at the American GI. She pointed to his carton of Cigarettes and emphasized ‘for those.’‘Fraulein, I’ll only give you US dollars.’ She started to draw from his girlfriend’s photo. This well-fed girl had glowing skin lipstick and a chiffon blouse over her curvy form. Bunny was hungry and yesterday she had accidently come across her father stealing corn at the tightly run local market. Ever so quietly he had slipped the ears into his grey satchel. He turned and saw her. Putting his finger to his lips he grabbed her arm and said, ‘look calm.’ Maybe if father could steal, she could as well. She needed to survive and here it was like a job. Yet she despised this very thought because it put her on a par with the undeserving poor. She preferred genteel poverty.
She had handed over her sketch to the now smoking GI, grabbed his bag and ran onto the next train. The GI yelled and tried tracking her for a while but gave up and went back to his post. Vienna was full of displaced persons out of their mind with hunger.
Inside his bag, instead of cigarettes, Bunny found four vials of Penicillin. Penicillin had the highest value of all the black-market items in the sick city of Vienna. US Military police boarded the train and started to flirt with her. 'Hey, baby! Schnaps??'. She blew them a kiss winked and then covered the bag with her jacket.
At Vienna Neustadt, she hopped off and walked to another open-air market where a large woman in a dirndl sold eggs, butter, and bread.
‘I want all the eggs and butter you have and Jam!’
Nein Liebling!
But look, I have these. You need these, is that not, right? See over there, the pharmacist. He would pay you a lot…
'No kidding, Penicillin! Over here, Sarge! You're charged, baby'. As they drove her off, she saw the now familiar poster saying, ‘Pay ration prices only; buying on the black market is a crime.’
Dam! Up until this arrest she was the only one in her family and amongst the pilots who had managed to escape going to jail. Last week father paid for coal with stolen cigarettes and ended up doing an overnighter. And the week before, her mother travelled to Baden Baden to sell black market jewellery to the Mayor of that town. Mama had spent three nights in jail.
And now she had lost her first place.
Bunny put her head out the car window and shouted, 'The cost of living is too high’ to which a passerby pressed cigarettes into her hand. Here cigarettes were more important than clothes, horses, houses, silk stockings and even religion.
She would now get out of jail early for the price of five cigarettes!
Two years later walking past the immigration officials in Australia she vowed she would never do anything unlawful in her new homeland.