Educating Pizzy E-Book

Z.J. Galos

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 306

Beschreibung

Zol, aka Pizzy, Zoi, and Joe; a budding writer, enters for the first time a writers' workshop, his love interest, Anna, had recommended to him. During writing exercises, he revisits his past life as a kid, and he is amazed about the detail of his visions, his facilitators are extracting from his subconscious mind. These writing exercises enable him to access the world of writing ad set his creative and artistic side to open at demand. It reminds him of an athlete taking up a training program to reach a set goal. Pizzy's grandfather had prepared a secret hiding place for his family to keep them safe from advancing Russian troops. Mom's golden boy enjoys relative freedom in the post-war environment, where everything happening is an extension to his adventurous mind. With Mish, his girlfriend, he draws African animals and they become best friends, while Pizzy stays quarantined due to scarlet fever. While Joe excels at the writing workshop about the theme of 'awaking love', he recalls his first love, Michaela, whom he met as a student in Vienna. Meeting a young, rebellious woman at a party, Bea will accompany the equally bold architect to South Africa. Zol will meet in Crete, he visited with Bea and her sister, Kim, racy Marie. Does her brazen body talk hold for him another hot adventure?

Leseprobe

“Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”

Pablo Picasso

“Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.”

Marc Chagall

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 1.

I grew up in a house with two floors. Grandma loved the lower floor, half-recessed into the ground, especially in summer time. It kept us cool and the rooms served for food preparation, besides the main room adjoining the entrance, where she cooked our food on the long nose-stove. These rooms became important places for gatherings and happenings.

I came to this world upstairs in mother’s bedroom, with only Mrs Katona present. Grandma helped with the warm water and linen, as the midwife ordered her. Everybody referred to her as Katona, her surname. If a woman’s time to give birth arrived, people shouted: “Get Katona.”

I cannot remember my earliest days on earth other than through the descriptions of mother, grandma and grandpa. Granny always smiled and I hardly experienced her grumpy. She loved to bake and I recall the sweet scent of baked cinnamon wafting to my nostrils from an early age.

Grandpa built the house from scratch with his friends and neighbours helping him. They laid out the house as the inspector from the Borough advised and dug the foundations, and they took care with the setting-out of the main façade facing Station Avenue that became later part of a fashionable suburb. His friend Kobor lived in the same street further down towards the village square. However this south western area below village square, well known for the lush greens and leafy trees, nestled in the midst of extensive land used for farming.

Grandpa’s friend, Uncle Kobor, came to visit on late Sunday mornings. Grandma made tea and coffee and served her homemade cakes. Every visitor liked Grandma’s cakes. After eating our cakes, I escaped to play in the barn. Grandpa would not forbid me on a Sunday to play in the hayloft. I could hear grandpa’s and uncle Kobor’s voice grow louder as they shared tobacco for their pipes and a few glasses of clear spirits that grandpa provided from his cellar.

“Granny when will you make me Langos?” I said. A pizza Hungarian style of similar dough, baked in the clay tiled long nose-oven, or as we just called it Long-nose. I used to nag Gram about it at all times.

“All right,” Gram said, “I bake you some today.” Her promise made my mouth water.

“Janos,” she called Grandpa, “Janos, please stoke the hearth, I want to make Langos.”

Grandpa got up from his bench. “Come Pizzy”, he said, lets fetch some hard wood from the barn.

The long nose started to get into a fiery life of its own. The water in the copper tank began to boil. Grandpa stoked the Longnose for the clay-lined end of the oven to reach the desired heat, grandma required to bake the dough bread Langos.

The smell drew us to the kitchen like flies to the ready cooked food. I queued up as the only child in the house at the time, when Grandma heaved the pizza from the bowl of the red furnace’s glow. She shoved the Langos from her broad wooden ladle to the wide steel dish that kept it hot on the top of the Long Nose. She used a clove of garlic; she had peeled before to rub it over the hot slightly crusted dough. This method ingrained into me with the intense smell of the garlic dousing the sweet dough. My mouth salivated and my appetite became unbearable. I loved Grandma’s Langos.

In summer time, we sat outside the kitchen below the lush leafed cherry tree. Most of our lives revolved around the yard Grandpa demarcated between the house and the stables and the barn on the opposite side. He installed another gate for the area reserved for chickens, and Grandpa told us repeatedly to keep it closed at all times. To get to the barn one walked through this first gate and the first part of the barn where Gram kept the fodder and the straw for the cows. I used it as an ideal playground whenever Grandpa was away. Over the past year he had built the stables for the cows, separate ones for the pigs and the chickens, just in time before the Great War broke out.

The KK-monarchy employed him as a signals man and later as an assistant manager of the railways. He moved with his growing family from the small building assigned to a signals man to the new house he built, a great move. He advanced to assistant station master, but his superior did not agree with him and Grandpa blamed this on their opposing beliefs. Mr. Krasic took the view of the emerging new political trend and the new order to come under the Führer. Grandpa, being a royalist supported the ailing Emperor Franz Josef during the First World War and he was blocked to advance to the top post. He was worried he might lose his job and he discussed with Grandma the situation downstairs, mumbling words continuously, I could not understand.

The smell of fresh ground coffee hit my senses and I rushed downstairs to check out the cause of all the commotion. Grandpa greeted me and asked me with his rasping voice if I would like breakfast with him early.

“You are up already Pizzy?” Grandma said

“I heard you talking,” I said

“I told you, Janos, not to shout. You wake the whole house up,” Grandma said.

“The walls are solid and thick, the floors ash-concrete. I built it myself,” Grandpa said, “why it is noisy, mh?”

“You are noisy,” Grandma said.

“I will go then,” he said, “and sign the contract for hiring the two pieces of land.”

“If you think so, you do it,” Granny said, serving me steaming porridge. She poured some warm milk over the dish she served me with white raisins.

“To make it nice and juicy,” she added.

I ate quietly, staring ahead of me. I sensed that something greater would happen. I never saw Grandpa more excited than this morning, too small to understand the turmoil our world would soon tumble into.

I finished my porridge, thanked Granny and rushed through the outer stair to the upper floor through the covered landing into the passage. All doors to the adjoining rooms opened from here. Grandpa and Grandma’s room straight ahead, the bathroom to the right with its separate toilet to its left. The living room to the left side of the passage, through which mother’s bedroom adjoined.

The door to her bedroom stood open. Mom sat in front of her dressing table and brushed her long chestnut hair. I loved to watch her, the sound of her brush strokes recalled the wind that stirred the leaves of the cherry tree outside; the tree that dominated the yard, onto which the window of the living room faced.

“You are up early Pizzy,” she said, “could you not sleep?”

“I heard Grandpa shouting downstairs. Grandma gave me special porridge to eat,” I said.

“Did she? Grandma loves you,” she said, with a sad expression in her eyes, her head tilted to the side.

“Why does Grandpa shout, and why is Grandma sad?” I queried in my innocence.

“Grandpa worries about us and the war,” she said.

I wonder what the war is all about, I thought, as everyone I ask acts evasive without saying anything. “I am old enough to understand,” I said, but even mother just looked sad and said nothing in return.

The days reeled off in a way country touched the senses. The cock crowed at dawn and life, revolving around a smallholding that adjoined a family home, carried on the same way. Grandpa rose before dawn, ate breakfast and mumbled some prayers. Then he went off. Grandma tended to the chickens and she took me along to collect eggs. Then she fed the feathered lot.

Out of the early morning mist the ginger cat appeared, followed by the white one with dark spots on her head. They circled the pot of warm milk and dunked bread Grandma placed into their dish. They drank carefully. The ginger cat gulped down the bread. I watched their delicate pink tongues lapping the milk that formed ripples in their dish.

“Come Pizzy, come,” mother said taking me along to the flat that was apportioned to her in Meadow Street, where three grey blocks with red tiled roofs stood, recently built.

“The county had selected us, but Dad, called up into the army, could not be here to take the keys,” she said. “We have a right to the apartment,” she carried on justifying our visit to take possession. To me it seemed huge.

“It is roomy and comfortable,” she said, but her face remained sad. “We waited all these years to move into our own home and now the war messed it all up,” she lamented.

It happened, I think, two years before the war ended. Mother feared that if we did not move into the apartment, we might lose it. She mused how safe would it be to live alone there, with all men away in the war. The constant rumours about the state of the war unsettled the community and the outcome of it seemed disastrous as opposed to favourable reports, which people did not believe in.

“We must pack slowly Pizzy,” she said one day. Mother looked concerned and she appeared thin to me. She attended a Red Cross course and became a fully qualified nursing sister. Her quick action and knowledge would save my life. I recall the feeling of ice and fire. I was burning up with a high fever. Mom called the local MD and he came to visit.

“His fever is too high,” he mumbled. “I have no medication at my disposal to lower his temperature,” Dr Jan said. People called him ‘Taciturn Jan’. He left without a word. Mother did not give in.

“Do you think I‘d let my son burn up,” she said, but Dr Jan did not hear her any longer. She worked on me, her face flushed. I felt like sleeping and walking through fire and then suddenly through ice. I was in shock. Mother had taken off my pajamas, wrapping me into ice-cold linen, like a mummy.

My teeth clattered and my entire body shook.

“This will get you well Pizzy, just bear with me for a few times, I know it is cold,” she said ridding me of the cold wrap, as soon as my body temperature got down again and then she toweled me off. An hour later she came back to repeat the procedure. This went on well into the night. I cannot remember how many times.

I recall waking late in the morning after a sound sleep. The morning was crisp and clear. Ice crystals formed in the corners of the windows.

“It is the first frosty winter’s day, arriving early this year,” mother said, checking my temperature.

“37, 8 degrees Celsius,” she said and her face remained sad but her eyes became vivid. “Take an aspirin Pizzy and come for breakfast. Thanks god your fever is down.”

“What was it before?” I said. Mother looked at me concerned, tired-out from her ordeal of cold-blanket-wrapping me.

“It was over 40,” she said, “and moving up,” she smiled at me for the first time. “Come have breakfast. What would you like, your favourite?” she said, moving to the kitchen, while I washed up as fast as I could. My tummy rumbled. I could smell the toast.

“Here we are,” mom said, “two poached eggs and toasted bread, butter and red currant marmalade.” Mom made marmalade from the berries and fruits that grew in Grandma’s garden in hedges around the vegetable garden. There were black and redcurrant shrubs and apricot trees. I could not depart yet and play with my friends. The doorbell rang and Mom opened. “Good morning Mrs. Mia.” I heard the voice of Mish from next door. “Can Peezie play with us?” She stretched my nickname as only Mish could pronounce it. I smiled and walked to the door of the entrance lobby, taking a peek at her.

“Not yet,”…

“Hello Peezie,” she cooed, as she saw my face.

“Hello Mish,” I said, “are you well?”

“Go inside,” mother said harshly to me.” Turning to Mish, “he is not well yet.”

“I’d like something to draw with, maybe Mish has something,” I said before I went inside the lounge.

“Mish could fetch you some drawing paper and crayons?” Turning to me she said “Pizzy, what type?” I told her which make I wanted.

Mother could not go shopping, as she had to attend to her Red Cross duties. Mish took the money mother gave her and she went straight away to get the rabbit crayons and the brown covered drawing block that had tear-out pages.

Mother allowed me only to speak to her at the entrance for the following days, until my body temperature settled back to normal. I spoke to Mish on all the occasions offered to me. Mother acted concerned I would infect her with the bugs, I battled with for such a long time to rid myself from. Mish proved to be resistant to these bugs and she came more often to visit.

“What are you drawing Peecie?” she said.

“I draw exotic animals,” I said, whispering as if I told her a secret. She looked at my drawings, which showed outlines of the animals in soft pencil on the eggshell surface of the watercolour paper. Then I took the crayons and applied the colours. When mother came home, she lauded my efforts.

“I’ll show you how to apply watercolours Pizzy,” she said.

“Can Mish watch too?” I replied.

“Yes of course,” she added as she fetched her watercolour set from a drawer in her room.

I rang the doorbell at our opposite neighbour’s door and Mish came to the door.

“Come now Mish?” I said, “Mom is teaching us to paint with watercolours.”

“I’ll come later,” she said, “I have to finish the dishes first.”

“All right,” I said, “we’ll wait for you.”

“No, go ahead, you can always tell me later,” she said. “I must go now, father is not well.”

“I’ll see you later, Mish,” I said as she closed the door with care, to avoid alerting her father to notice that she spoke to me.

Mother helped me with the basics, I still remember today. She is more patient with the procedure, as I wish the colours would dry faster. Mom trained as a great water colour artist, before the war, painting flowers, pansies and lilies featured as her favourites. Then Mish came. I gave Mish a few pages of paper. “Try it Mish,” I said.

“No,” she replied, “I can’t.”

“Why not? Give it a try,” I said.

She watched me drawing and painting, applying the pale colours first. Then as I lost patience, I coloured in some with an overlay of stronger colours of the waxy crayons Mish brought me two days ago. Then suddenly she started to copy me.

“You are good at it Mish,” I said.

“You think so?” She said, “I like the way you paint Peecie,” she mumbled as she applied the crayons, her head tilted as she drew.

“Mish and I are a good team,” I told mom, as she came home from her duties.

“I’ll come and look at your work,” mother said as she changed clothes.

“Indeed you have done well. I like your Giraffe,” she said.

“Mish drew that,” I said. “Mine is the elephant,” I said waiting for her critique.

“It is good, but the ears are too big,” she said.

“It’s an African elephant,” I said, pointing to the encyclopedia that served as my model.

“I see,” mother said, “well observed Pizzy, I did not know.” Mom paused and smiled. I was happy to see mother smile.

“Can Mish come and draw tomorrow?” I said.

“Yes she can,” mother said. “I know her father does not encourage her in any way,” and her face turned to a sad expression as she looked out the window. The sky was dull and grey and the weather bureau expected another snow fall tonight.

The following days Mish and I finished a whole range of wild animals and some we made up. “Mother and I like your giraffes,” I said looking at her blue eyes that expressed a brilliant shimmer with her smile.

“I saw the giraffe in your picture book,” she said. “I like yours better.”

“Mine is how I see it, your giraffe is like a Mish original,” I concluded and she laughed. Mish drew, emphasizing the giraffe’s neck, with her own stylized version, decorative and softer in colouring than mine.

“I like your elephant,” she said, “he is mighty and huge with the two ivory teeth pushing into the air.” She held up the drawing to mother, who came into the lounge from her nursing duties, ahead of her usual time.

“Aha,” she said,” so many drawings. What will you do with them?”

“Can we hang them onto the walls?” I said and waited for her approval.

“Well, yes,” she said, “but first you have to select the ones that excel above all others.”

I prepared to hang Misch’s giraffe, using sticky tape.

“No,” mom said, “use pins rather. You can keep the drawings less damaged that way. I’ll bring you some pins.”

Mish and I selected the pictures and we made arrangements, changing back and forth. Which animal fitted to which mattered foremost. Then we changed the order again to hang the pictures in the sequence of their creation. Finally, we agreed, pinned all the pages to one wall and mom congratulated us.

“This calls for a celebration,” she said.

“This is our first art exhibition,” I said and beamed.

Mom called Mrs. Holzherr, who came to admire the art wall. These are beautiful drawings.

“These are from Mish,” I pointed out to her the selected drawings.

“I did not know Mish could draw like this,” she said and she had a tear in her eye.

“Let’s have tea and cake,” mother said and we took places at the dining table. Mr. Holzherr did not attend.

“He is ill,” Mish’s mom said. “He was on a binge again,” she whispered to mom who looked at her concerned. Despite that, we had a great time.

“Thanks for taking good care of Mish,” Mrs. Holzherr said.

“We are good friends,” I said placing my arm around Mish. She blushed.

Mrs. Holzherr smiled. “Thank you Pizzy,” she said.

Chapter 2.

I enter a pleasant low rise building, opposite the place where I usually take Barb to the doctor’s rooms. We are six in a class, but only five turned up today. I have high expectations to experience something new, as I drive to this venue on a Saturday morning. My lips hum a tune as I interpret the song: Autumn Leaves, with Keith Jarrett’s virtuoso piano play in the back of my mind. I almost drive into someone who lacks indicating his direction. It is a pleasant day, as are days with something new awaiting us, the sun smiling on us at last: The weeks of rain and El Nina behind us with her muggy embraces and wet kisses of a stifling atmosphere. I burst with energy, park my aged, but beloved Merc at the back of the spread out buildings, assembled like a village to enhance a similar atmosphere.

Entering the path to the Writers block, I do recall from a previous course, I can see Amabel’s chromium crop of hair. She might be prepared to take my poem and read the outcome of my efforts, as I have shortened it to the bare essence, as requested by her.

“I look at it,” she says and takes the typewritten pages from my hands. Her eyes already scan across the words with a sharp mind and scrutiny, her trade mark. “Have some coffee,” she said and I move upstairs to the bar table in a nook.

“I am Hugh,” the friendly face, framed with silver hair, greets me first. He stretched out a hand that I take. “Joe,” I say, nice meeting you. Behind Hugh a young woman in hippants with short-cropped brunette hair, enigmatic smile, extended her warm hand, slender fingers closed onto mine. She is sensual, are my first thoughts. “Nikk,” she said and next to her I greet the soul-friends G&T.

The first class starts sharp at nine. Amabel has a watercolour appearance, Some Whistler, some Turner painting appearance in her overall colouring that suits her. Pale lilac tights and a cape to hide the outline of her body keep me guessing. She tucks her arms below her cape and coils up like a cat, watching us with alert blue eyes. She challenges us to the art of writing. She thinks before she answers, or points out our mistakes, encourages rather than punish us with contempt, like we were at school once. I learn from mistakes, unpacking all previous indoctrinations from former studies.

I know a bit about opening up and become the creative person that takes over as I write. She can do more than that. “After all writers write, don’t talk,” she smiles with an enigmatic curl around her lips.

This suits not only me but also all writers present. One integer group for the task, we rate highly individualistic in our expressions, as we read our exercises aloud. We all strive to find our unique language, describing the thoughts and feelings we harbour inside us at this given moment to write about Amabel’s called up topics, she calls: writing on demand.

We all write with an urge of immediacy, stirred by the spark of the moment. I notice the different voices inside of each of us flowing to the arm and fingers, moving the pencils or the pens. I love the unison of scratching or smooth sliding sounds on paper. It is frightening at first, but as soon as I have written down the first word, I feel a great sense of relief and joy. The portal of creativity opens slightly and the words start to flow through my 2B pencil: The trickle of scribbles turning into a brook. As soon as I reach the stream, I hear Amabel’s voice stopping us.

Gill reads her writing first this time. She is fast off her mark, like an athlete. She runs down the track to finish with a sigh. Well on her way as a writer of chick-lit indeed, she stimulates our minds to take part in her world and run with her. Amabel looks at her with her sky-blue eyes and smiles, saying a few words of critique.

Then it is Tan’s turn, who is a softer, more lyrical writer and less factual than Gill. I call them G & T. They are complimentary to each other with their writings.

Hugh is next, suave and smooth, old boy’s romance and subtle wit in his approach. As I listen to his reading, I form different words for my initial writing. Amabel calls me and I soon run out of inertia’s steam. I loose myself; I repeat words I cannot read any longer. I land in turmoil. How can I express myself better next time?

Now it calls for more concentration, avoiding was and were. This never entered my conscious mind before. “Please no adjectives and adverbs, if possible,” she would continue telling us in her gentle and yet mind-penetrating way. I wonder how the fellow writers can adapt their minds to these exercises. They are young and bold, absorbing easier than me, with a glee in their eyes.

I like the mix of age groups and people. Hugh, skilled and in good command of the English language, is of great help, even if his style of writing leans towards Classical writers. His diction is clear when reading to the class, with a smooth voice that carries well. At first I have listened intently to G&T at first and have detected some comparison with my reading and Niki’s. Hugh stays in this class on his own, a pivotal hinge around which the two panels of voices swing and swirl, challenging old ways of expression. Amabel comments continuously, and she lets me repeat my sentences twice, making me alert to be a reader who has to work more carefully with his pronunciation. She is satisfied the second time. I have not peeked forward in the handbook, to see the next chapter.

“Just write simple and not pressurized or forced,” she says. That’s what it’s all about, I think. To access writing consciously compares to learning to draw like a child: “All my life I drew like Rafael, just to fight great battles to draw like a child”, Picasso said. The statement is analogical to writing, or any art form.

Depictions of ourselves give Amabel an insight of who we are, where we could make use of our talents for genre writing. I have touched on writing a romantic novel, [a book almost completed, but abandoned by a burst of new ideas]; have touched the genre of thriller writing, [I sketched-out an overall idea]; now I am into a competitive spirit of completing something that is reeling off my chest, like the nylon thread from a fisherman’s rod. It is mid-April and the competition closes in the last week of May. Happy writing. I feel challenged, but it will be the steepest climb I have had. I should try, encouraged by my spirited facilitator, who writes herself, inspired by our efforts, her eyes circling as she returns from her created space, she sighs, answering questions, just to return back into her own literary world with haste.

I have the cast assembled and I have to write sixty scenes. We discuss names and their meaning. The way we choose our heroes, will have an influence on the choice of names. I have a plot, but undeveloped heroes who lack completion of faces and limbs. They do need hands and feet, more than just a torso. I draw them out like icons and try to breathe life into them. They are supposed to be alert, alive, jumping from the pages, they are static, and formal, lacking still commitments and colour. The structure of writing chiselled them like sculptures in a museum; I have to breathe the life of my imagination into these Classical beauties.

I can hardly concentrate nowadays, with my mind trailing off to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Stop it now, stop it you fool, I cry inside to wake and summon my concentration. I leave the hackneyed ways of slogging for an existence for a moment behind. I need attention and pampering, as a baby needs, to finish my homework today. I will send the pages to Amabel for a critique and treat myself to some chocolate; I have kept a slab in the working files we receive as a handout on every course we attend. It is a present from Amabel to the writer, who needs an instant reward, as she explained.

How close it all sounds to the teachings of my late muse Anna Kyriako. I cannot help her face appearing with her smile, whenever I made a valid literary comment, or could turn a poetic idea into a reasonable form of words and rhythmic verses. She encouraged my writing from the start and like a mother watched over this child of a poet, growing-up fast.

I access the box Amabel handed me on my first day of her course. It depicts a cheetah for an incredible speed she can quickly reach hunting, to catch her prey and feed her cubs, who also have to grow up fast. I realize that cheetah’s do grow much faster into the art of hunting than we do into writing. They are left to their world and their innate toughness to survive, using those skills taught by their mother. I still have to grow-up in my mature physical age, learn fast to survive by the skills I need to acquire, to express my ideas. Amabel mentioned Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. I read-up in my book:

A moveable Feast and recall Mrs. Stein’s comment to Hemingway: accessable, meaning his writing supposed to be accessible. Slowly it dawns on me deep inside, why I am here. I do not write solely for myself, but for an audience. As Hemingway listened to Gertrud, I listen now to Amabel. I drive home with elation, but I have just touched the outer ring of novel writing, though a flow of renewed energy rushing through me.

Chapter 3.

Mish and I were close, like sister and brother. She touched me constantly, as friends touched if they agreed or asked for a nod of agreement. When I drew and applied colour to the figments of my imagination, she stood next to me, making her presence felt, pressing her thin legs to mine, not saying a word. She would let me finish and only then she spoke: “Peezzie, can we play outside?”

“No, I am not allowed outside,” I said, but refused to look up from my desk. The noise from the other children playing outside had attracted her attention.

“Can we just look from the window in the passage?” she took my hand and pulled me behind her. We ran down the steps to the first landing.

“The window is too high, Mish, how can you see what’s going on outside? I am not climbing the ledge,” I said.

“Then I will,” she said with curling smiles.

“But how Mish?” I said.

“Lift me up Peezzie,” she said and stood determined in front of the wall. I squatted down and circled her legs with my hands.

“Now lift me,” she said and I rose from my crouched position. I could feel her weight.

“Higher Peezzie, higher,” she called out, “I can see a few faces, but not all of them.” I lowered Mish down again and she frowned, disappointed.

“It will not work,” I said.

“Try it once more,” she insisted and I circled her legs at her knees and lifted her up once again.

“Yes Peezzie, this is it,” she shouted, excited. “I can see Steven and Bea and now Rudi and Annie,” she reported to me while I had the hem of her skirt tickling my face and I ducked to keep it free from my nose, as she moved. I did not want to sneeze.

“Hide and seek,” Mish said, positioning her body hard against the windowsill above my head. I could relate their shrieks to their faces as Mish called out their names; as she told me who shrieked or counted whom out. With her hands firmly placed on top of the windowsill, she stretched and rolled in my arms, her knees suddenly kicked out as she opened the window lever.

“It’s enough Mish,” I shouted, suddenly afraid, she would fall out the window.

“Just a bit more,” she pleaded, shouting from the open window to attract attention from the kids. Then she slipped and fell from the sill, half of her body slid outside.

“Pull me in, I am falling out,” she cried as her weight pulled on my hands and I had to strengthen my grip tightly to hold on to her slipping feet.

“I am ok now,” she gasped, her hands fastened back on the window handle, but I could not see anything as her skirt swirled around my eyes.

“Come down now Mish, I am getting tired,” I yelled at her. “Close the window.”

“I cannot turn the handle,” she said, “it is stuck.”

“Leave it Mish,” I said in a lower voice, “take your hands off the handle, I will put you down now, slow and steady, ok?” My forehead and hands started to cover with perspiration.

“Yes, yes” she said and her body trembled, her feet sliding down my clasping hands.

“Now let go of the windowsill Mish,” I tried to sound calm, but my heart raced.

I had to be adamant with her. She listened to me. I held her firm, still afraid she could fall, as I collapsed with her to the granolithic floor. She followed with her skirt up. Then she untangled herself, pulled me up and shouted at me for a change.

“Get-up Peezzie you will catch a cold.” She waited until I rose up, while she turned around.

“Thank you Peezzie. Now let’s go inside.”

Her face turned red from the excitement and the danger of challenging a fall from the window, which she trusted me to prevent. She rushed to the bathroom and I closed the door.

“It’s time for your medicine,” I heard mother call.

“I am here, just helped Mish,” I said.

“What does she need?” mother said.

“She wanted to see the children from her class playing outside. I had to lift her up to the window at the stair landing,” I said.

“You must not open the window there,” mother said concerned as she joined me in the lounge, “it’s dangerous.”

“Yes, I told Mish,” I said “but she said she knew this window. Her father had lifted her up to it many times.”

“She could have slipped and fallen out the window,” mother said concerned.

“No, I held her tight,” I said.

“I will make some cocoa,” Mom said and disappeared into the kitchen. She brought two cups of cocoa and blackcurrant cookies on a wooden tray.

“Where is Mish?” She said and placed the bear-mugs and cookie-plate on the table. The scent of cinnamon and blackcurrants made my mouth water.

“Did you wash-up Mish?” Mom said, as she joined the table.

“Yes Aunt Mia,” she looked different now, avoiding our eyes. We sipped our cocoa from the bear cups. Outside it became quiet, the children had left.

“When can we go outside and play?” Mish asked mom and smiled.

“In a few days’ time,” Mom said and smiled back at her.

I had finally recovered from high fever, but waves of temperature came back at night. When Dr Jan came to check on me, he murmured as usual, but with a satisfied expression on his face. “You have done a wonderful job Mrs Mia,” Taciturn Jan said. I heard them talking about mother’s method of applying cold compresses over my body that brought my high fever down.

I had to rest and Mish had to go too. I saw mother’s flushed face as if she had fever too, in a tireless effort wrapping me into cold wet cotton sheets until my teeth clattered.

“It is so cold,” I stammered.

“It will bring the fever down,” Mom gasped, her hands worked fast: wrap, wrap.

I believed mother and I had endured the shock of the cold cloth along my body. The sound of rattling teeth filled the room. I noticed they were mine and became afraid they will fall out of my jaws.

Then she finished once again, mom rubbed me down with a dry towel. I longed to slip into my pajamas that felt warm. “We have to do this a few times,” Mom said, but I drifted into the relief of sleep already.

I saw Mish standing in front of me, big hazel-eyed and with a concerned frown on her face. “What is it Mish,” I said, “I feel weak and need time to get up.”

“I wish you could play with me and my friends,” she said.

“It’s too bad I cannot yet,” I said “I feel guilty keeping you from playing with your friends.”

“No,” she said and her eyes radiated, “I stay here with you until you are well.”

“Thanks Mish, you are a true friend, I like you best of all.” She smiled and touched my forehead with her fingers. Mother stepped into the bedroom.

“It is time for another cold wrap Pizzy,” she said “Mish you can wait in the lounge.”