A DOUBTFUL INHERITANCE: a novel in the form of an autobiofiction

By Dr Ted Todd

"A Doubtful Inheritance"

This novel was part of the work for a  PhD in literature/writing at Swinburne University 2014

About the book:

The book is a novel but written as an 'autobiofiction'. The main character is a child of the Holocaust’s and h

• Language: English
• Publisher: BLUESTONE PUBLISHING
• Release date: Jun 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994591913

Book preview

At the Esalen Institute of Human Relations, California 1979

The encounter group session is declared closed. I rush to leave the damn room, stumbling out into the bright warmth of late autumn California sunshine. I’m stunned and numb and yet full of energy, needing to move, to run and climb the cliffs in front of me down to the ocean. I move towards the rocks hanging over the waves of the Pacific, the ocean’s waves crashing below me onto huge boulders. Moving is good, it is necessary. Stopping is impossible.

I notice nothing; see no one through my rising tears. I climb down toward the sea, scrambling over the rocks. Frothy waves collide one after the other foaming and toppling over, spraying me, tasting as salty as my tears. Weeping turns to bursts of sobbing, as I stop on the last boulder at the edge of the ocean not knowing what to do. I can’t go any further. My feet slip; I grab a jagged rock cutting my hand. A few drops of blood splash down bright red. The next wave washes it away leaving no trace of it, of me.

Stumbling again, slipping between two huge wet boulders, I catch my footing and manage to straighten up. The sea seems to have becalmed, stopped rolling, waiting perhaps until my tears come again.

I’m trying to breathe deeply to calm myself, crying and laughing in disbelief at how or what I feel. Questions and rage come rising and fading away, storming inside my head. Questions I know I will never be able to answer or am too ignorant or stupid to ask. Relief, doubt, insight and disbelief churn in confusion. The sound of my brain yells at me if I fall silent. There is so much noise; so much I cannot comprehend, sorrows and fear, anger and doubt I hoped were not in me, things I wish had never happened.

Where has everyone gone?

Where are the grandfathers and fathers and cousins and aunts and uncles?

Why me?

Because I am?

The sun is declining into the sea, slowly darkening the blue sky above Esalen. I try to focus on the immensely beautiful world of nature – focus on anything, anything as long as it is outside of me. The universe does not seem to have been shaken by what happened to me; the universe is not bothered about me; about what I feel or whether I exist.

God died a long time ago;

Nietzsche said God is dead,

God said Nietzsche is dead...Ha.

The breeze strengthens, rapidly becoming a cool wind. Gulls screech, flying low, searching for a feed in the shallows. No sight of whales today, only a new sight of myself. I’m fixed here to the rocks, wishing I could become like the gulls: unfeeling and simple. I throw stones at them, feeling more and more dread, watching the panic rising within me. I force my breath in and out. Om Namah Shivaya Om… Something else suddenly rises. Yes, better feelings, almost good ones. The panic recedes, my heart warms a little, and wretchedness turns and churns mixing with joy. How can this be?

The good feelings do not last long. Heart and throat tighten again in an attack of emotions. Snippets of memories, sentences and words with no one to speak them, belief and hope boil together in my throbbing head. Enormous tiredness hits body and soul. I am punched in the head and the guts simultaneously. Is this why people commit suicide? But no! I reassure myself yelling, ‘Not Me, Not me, you bastards...’

Sitting down is an idea I accept, feeling heavy and still as a rock, hardly breathing again. I suck in the cold salty air and blow it out. ‘I’ve got to hold it together.’ Tightening my muscles, I hear someone yell out a terrible anguished scream. It is me. The air is sharply cold now; I shiver and hug my arms around my body, wanting to be warm. Fatigue hits in waves to match the rhythmic movements of the ocean. Dragging air in and pushing it out is having control.

*

Time has passed. Feeling weak is winning me over. Time to go back, enough of this, I can’t take or want anymore. I drag myself up the cliff. The exertion warms, energizes but fuels an anger that makes me bellow at the sky like a wounded animal. I howl, swearing in English and Hungarian - where did it come from yet again? Groaning, frustrated, then bursting out laughing all at the same time at the ridiculousness of it, of me? Near the top of the cliff, out of breath, I am crying softly again the pain of feeling sorry for myself.

*

Today it is California in 1979, but for me the time warps back to 1950, late August I think. It was then, a few days before my ninth birthday that Mum told me that my father was officially confirmed dead. In a small squeaky voice, she added so, your father will not return from the war …I could see that if you were dead you won’t return from anywhere, but mum was not being humorous.

*

I am Tim, 38 years old, married with three lovely daughters, successful enough in business. I was born in Hungary, but now I’m an Australian citizen visiting America for two weeks, exploring the world and myself, trying to determine what I am about, what life means, how to be, how to find the ‘real’ me. Pain is the motivator for so much I do. I want to know why my life feels the way it does, why I feel so permanently uneasy. I live and cope well enough, but there is a gaping hole in my soul. It does not make sense but I don’t feel entirely authentic. I live a life that I often think of as an invention.

I came to this encounter group at the Esalen Institute of Human Relations, the Mecca for psychological, spiritual and personal growth workshops; a big deal movement in the seventies. The beautiful institute is on the coast of California and named after a long dead Indian tribe called the Esalen.

In the jargon of the times the encounter group is called ‘Getting in touch with your real self’. It goes on all day and half the night for five long and often trying days. For me the five days of encounter group activities and dialogue are variously serious and meaningful, sometimes cathartic, or hilarious, or even silly at times. Sometimes I think it is destructive and mind-boggling, making more confusion than clarity for each of us – for me certainly. Still, I know it is providing me with at least a handle, a way to see what one’s inner workings are about. And yes, it is very revealing about how we live and function. I begin to understand that one has to be able to conceptualize one’s psyche and how it works, in order to understand self and life.

On the fourth day I am in the ‘hot seat’ - finally having managed to work up enough emotional energy and trust of the group, I suppose, to ‘expose and explore’ myself. To do what? Say what? I have no idea when I start. I hedge, fence and dance around the black hole of my heart, waffling on about my business or wife, children or mother, until I become aware that I am indeed just mucking about in the shallows. I’m looking vacantly at the floor, out of subterfuges, so I stop speaking. Hopefully I can get out of the hot seat. Everyone is silent. Is the challenge over? Oh well, I’ve done what I could, nothing worthwhile, it’s disappointing.

Anton, our facilitator is a famous psychologist, author and guru figure. In the eyes of the participants he is variously arrogant, bombastic, cocksure and yet all-knowing and helpful too. Begrudgingly we love him, hate him and I, at least, envy him.

The silence grows oppressive. Anton the facilitator quietly asserts: There is more to come is there not?

Fuck. He is right.

The question is a statement. I sit up in surprise, taking a deep breath, and launch into how I always feel as if some part of me is missing. Now it is just pouring out without me thinking about any of it. I speak for a long time before I stop, feeling at risk again, wanting to leave the hot seat. Something in me, however, just moves on and on. Even though I want to stop, I hear words floating into the air as if pre-recorded, as if nothing to do with me. Words are tumbling out with a will of their own. Words about my dead father and my original, mostly unknown, dead family.

As my words tell stories, snippets, feelings, thoughts, forty people and Anton the wise-man facilitator listen in respectful silence. This is what it’s all about this ‘encounter’ thing; to help people recall, re-experience and explore buried pain. The idea is that re-experiencing, recalling old buried pain will bring it out of the unconscious into the present time and situation where it might be integrated, seen as the past, so one could let it all go. It is necessary to do this in order to free one from being impelled by the past and its pains. Only by letting it all out could one be free to make saner choices and to live in a more peaceful way. So Anton, tells us. I resist it at times but the process is beginning to make sense. I can see that it offers hope that one could indeed let go, but of what exactly? What do I need to let go of that I appear to know little or nothing about?

I’m sitting on a small child’s stool in the middle of the room, feeling hot and shaky, people are watching, while Anton’s shaved bald head nods at me, Yes or yes, but go deeper. Now and then when I hesitate he pokes a mocking or even aggressive comment at me: Oh poor Tim is lost for words, or is he playing hide and seek with us…?

Who the fuck does he think he is? What can he possibly understand about me? But while he makes fun of my tears, mocking and challenging my sadness I know he is also supporting me, wanting to help. I nod agreement, or yell at him, about the things he suggests as possible interpretations of what I say. One moment I’m thinking this is really valuable, and then I figure it is useless bullshit emoting at best.

I don’t know how long I have been sitting here. Now, like a bursting soap bubble, an overwhelming sadness comes. I have never known such sadness as I now find boiling up. My heart hurts with an actual physical pain. I want to say how I feel, but I burst out sobbing incoherently. God knows why or what.

Anton pushes again, What’s going on? Put words to it...it is all right, feel what you feel - but do not let the child take it all. Be the adult you are now. Explain what is going on, be in touch, put words to it man...

Fuck you! Fuck it all!

I spit out, angrily but at whom or what? I get more and more upset sobbing, choking in my throat.

Calming a little, I blow my nose, wipe my sweating face and head. After a moment of feeling blank I declare, That’s it. No more. But barely do I utter this, and there are more words tumbling from my mouth. I try to smile at the people around me feeling apologetic I’m taking so much time. Some smile back encouragingly. All these people are still listening intently to every word I say.

The sun has gone lower filling the large room with yellowish rays. Hell, I must have been talking for over an hour. And yet they are listening, some have tears in their eyes. This is empowering, I think, looking around, confirming a sort of right to say whatever I will and have said. Perhaps I’m speaking for many of them, or all of them? Maybe some of my pain is what they all feel? I mean, no one is here just for the fun of it.

Anton shifts in his low guru style seat, You look like you have gone back into your head. I look at him and an unbearable heat rises in me; I nearly vomit bile and hot tears. Then, I begin to mumble about more things I don’t know about. Someone who has my words is launching into something, a story that’s new to me, but Anton puts his hand up, his broad palm signaling me to hold it a moment.

Stop a minute. Your name is not Tim, that’s an English name. Your accent might be Hungarian. What is your real name?

I am taken aback by his question. Before I know it, I snap out Tibor Weisz. The name I was born with. I had not used it for the last thirty years. The man’s shiny bald head nods knowingly, satisfied that this really is my name.

Go on now, but remember you are Tibor Weisz. I feel like growling at him again to get fucked. He is a conceited, cock-sure, bombastic bastard, what’s my name got to do with anything anyway? I love, abhor and resent him. My strong reaction to him interests me, so I don’t say anything for a minute. And then from the belly of my subconscious I heave the stories hidden there. I don’t know how long I talk or cry. Finally spent, I sit in silence, in awed wonder at the things I’ve heard myself say. I try to reflect, to make sense of it all, to put it into a rational context, but nothing fits. Something keeps pushing, pressing me on. There is more to be said. It is oozing up and out, an erupting volcano, a king tide, a must happens, a spirit is forcing me to go on.

I hear a familiar female voice in my head, it’s Mum;

When your father comes back everything will be all right.

Up it comes, boom, bang, crash! Up it comes like bitter bile over and over

When your father comes back everything will be all right.

When your father comes back everything will be all right.

When your father comes back everything will be all right.

When your father comes back everything will be all right.

When your father comes back everything will be all right.

I see stars in front of my clenched eyes. My body is rigid and tensed to breaking point.

That is, it: that’s it!

WHEN YOUR FATHER COMES BACK EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL RIGHT.

That was my fantasy, a hope held so tightly all my life, but I didn’t know it. I did not know I had this built into me. And everything certainly was not all right in my young life. Nothing much was actually. The little Hungarian boy Tibor is still very much alive inside of me. Astonished, I know with a rush of comprehension that I still believed, at the age of 38, that my father will one day come back and fix everything. Here I was, a grown man who didn’t know he was still waiting for his dad to come back to fix up the world and make everything right.

I’m haunted by unknown memories, by ghosts that lurk in me, unfulfilled dreams.

I suspected it though. Or did I? I am so heavy now, a silent lump of non-sense sitting on a small hard chair. I need a cigarette. I’m confused, unable to think, in awe at the realization of what tumbled out of me. I just want to think about it. All this and more arose from a hidden part of me. It is shocking. Oh, I knew I had memories for sure - or is it feelings - deep in there, the sort of fixations that one half feels without words, sense or concepts. Now I knew I was an orphan of sorts, or had I felt that way all my life? I will never have a father; will never know what it would be like to have one. Or a grandfather, or have roots, a sense of continuity from the past.

I weep a dirge for a long time, hysterical tears, pictures, ideas, feelings flashing, flicking inside me mixing with saliva and sweat. People are watching. I feel guilty but why? And, they are not the jury!

Recovering some, I sneak a look around. There are faces, there is compassion filling the room, and that connection allows more, but gentler tears. In a fog, I finally fall silent. I am now a father myself. The thought of my young daughters cheers me up a little as I relish the love that I feel for them. Tears again, such tired little childlike tears tasting so familiar. I must come to grips with the fact that the fairytale I have lived is just that, a nonsense fairy tale, like a loved ‘book’. Why does it still haunt me? What had it done to me? All that happened to me, and all that had not, is driving my life, without my awareness. It feels heavy, ridiculous and depressing.

Sitting so very still, afraid to move, to break the moment, something floats up into consciousness. A lighter sensation, a pleasant breeze flows inside me. I’m a little clearer as if something is explained. Yes, something is illuminated. Not much, maybe nothing in the end. My losses can never be truly explained or replaced. Relief and utter sadness – thoughts and feelings mix devastatingly, now with an awareness that I must learn to live with all this; my one and only life, beware of imitations.

*

Later, walking around the dark paths of Esalen I hear the sounds of a reed flute played by someone who sounds like I feel. I am pushing away feelings. I want to be rational. There comes a time in one’s life when the idea of ‘waiting’ for something - but what exactly - must end. I have always lived as if I have not yet started the ‘real thing’, as if I was still waiting for my real life to begin. Silly stuff this, life is not a dress rehearsal. The performance is always a premier event, a new narrative. A life is written; but this actor did not know the plot. The actions that came and went, the living that passed so far were as unknown bits of fact or fiction.

What to do now?

Where to go now?

Who am I now?

The same as before?

Yes, and no. I don’t know.

Asking such questions is not satisfactory. Is it that I have lost my identity, my roots, my people, or that I have never had these to identify with? Is it the realization that who I am, is not who I intended or hoped to be? Which would have been what or who exactly? Do others know exactly who or how they are? A stupid question I’ve always pondered, trying to figure it, figure me out. Now, there is more understanding, perhaps I can dig deeper into the well, deeper than the shallow one I’ve drawn from until now.

*

On an airplane floating somewhere above the ocean, on the way home to Melbourne, such thoughts mix in my mind, pushing me to consider things I’d rather forget, or rather recall? Hell’s bells! It is 1979, not the childhood years! Just leave it. Leave it all behind now, the job’s done, she’ll be right, no worries... Bob’s your uncle (who is Bob and why is he my uncle?) A stitch in time gathers no moss, a rolling Tim gathers no stitch. Am I funny? Yes, I am.

In the middle of the night, unable to sleep in the dark droning of the plane, I live thus and muse on. Feeling heavy, lead-like and about that color, I scramble out of my seat carefully stepping over my sleeping neighbors and wobble toward the toilets. I note blank looks on sleeping faces, hair messed, limbs in awkward positions spread in narrow seats. Some snore with their heads at angles impossible to maintain, others just pretend to be asleep, hoping to fool the universe. We do that don’t we: try to fool the universe? Pity I cannot do it. Blowing my nose, I curse the cold I think is coming on. Sitting down, again intending to sleep, I light a cigarette, put it out, take a drink and shut my eyes. I want to be out of it, out of existence, out of my never stopping thoughts. It would be good to spend the next few hours blanked out, resting the spirit, but as I try to shut off the exhausted brain box, something else comes.

*

The reality of a dream jolts me back to consciousness as if someone had hit me. My heart is racing; I am hot, dry and rigid. Just a dream, I assure myself. I am in an airplane flying home, I reassure myself. But, I know the dream story, recall the scene. Mum spoke in my dream, looking her usual beautiful self.

Your father Lajos has been now officially declared missing and probably dead somewhere by the Don River so he won’t be coming back...

And then again as if she spoke in an endless loop the same words. Mum explains.

A friend of our family, Albert, had made it back years after the war ended and recounted your father’s and Uncle Andor’s final moments to the authorities and then to me.

Good, hell, …I am definitely awake now. Another cigarette is lit. I’m in some shockwave though, things are churning guts and my whole body. The dream seemed so real, or no, like a movie, but not one I want to see. I do not want to see again the declaration of my father's death. Do I? Or perhaps I do want to see something new in it? An aspect previously missed or misunderstood? I call a stewardess, asking for a large Scotch. The plane drones on, the darkness outside allows it to do so. My smoke curls upward, I stand up stretching; my hand trembles, tinkling the ice in the glass. No one cares.

I am taken aback at the capacity of my memory to re-project the scene of this old story that no one else knew, for it was never confirmed by anyone else. The man who told Mum was ‘pretty sure’, but not ‘absolutely’, that it was my father and his brother Andor that he saw. But he looked certain, Mum said at the time, trying hard not to burst into tears.

I see the obviousness of why the dream came. Just a memory, turned into a film by my restless mind. A show that didn’t have the end I wanted. A movie with a bad story and bad directors; that’s the human race. That’s my early years, bad narratives are what most of my stories are about.

A Jewish Joke, but is it funny?

In a small village in the Ukraine, in 1935, a terrifying report arrives: a young girl had been found murdered. Realizing the dire consequences of such an event, the Jewish community instinctively gathers in the synagogue to plan whatever defensive action may be possible under these circumstances. Just as the emergency meeting is called to order, the president of the synagogue runs in out of breath and excited: Brothers, he cries out, I have wonderful news! The murdered girl is Jewish!

Source: Novak & Waldoks, 1981, p. 73

Part 1.

The Father

Near the Don River, Siberia, USSR 1945

The late afternoon sun casts dark shadows as an angry wind blows smoke on a brown and barren land. Relentless sounds of bombs and shells echo from far away. The flat landscape seems to have no edges, no end as it winds away from the eye toward the horizon. Somewhere near, perhaps on the edge of a few trees there is the Don River’s muddy waters floating dead bodies and junk downstream.

Silence alternates with catastrophic sounds.

God is not here. Destruction and death rule all there is.

A timber hut, barely upright, leans to the left waiting to fall, but hangs on to that half of itself that is not torn away. It was never more than a makeshift shepherd’s shed. Weathered gray, roughly hewn timber walls now smoked charcoal black, hold up half a roof. The other half in tatters flops away down the back. The air blows in misty white smoke and then suddenly clears. Once grassy green fields are covered with ash and rubble, foreign bits of metal and unrecognizable things; the scrap of war. Torn clothing, caps and blood stained jackets, twisted rifles and shrapnel look almost as if they were arranged on the fields. Dead bodies are planted in hollowed out earth, bodies that look as if still moving are frozen in pose. The griminess of the earth and the darkness of the late afternoon clouds cover this world with the gunmetal thick mist of the color of war. Now and then the sun pokes through the haze, smugly shining. Sounds recede or close in, as if arranged by a director. Fear rises as a noise full silence comes and goes, threatens and surprises. The scenery waits ominously for more devastation. The tragedy of war is not yet finished.

Lajos holds his unconscious brother Andor; his arms are around him as they recline against a wall of the hut. Strangled timber beams and iron give the illusion that the two of them are hidden for now. Lajos is aching, hoping for quiet and sleep, but he is worried about Andor. Lajos prays with each silent lull that it will stay that way. Through an opening in the back of the hut, he can see what is left of his group of ‘Jewish work serviceman’, and the few Hungarian regular soldiers as they move unsteadily further and further away. They are leaving, straggling back toward where they came from yesterday. Dirt covered tattered uniforms and limping bodies tell the story. Lajos can almost recognize some of them. Suddenly another dark smoky cloud billows across painting the sky red. The sound of shells shatters the earth nearby.

Lajos hopes that he and Andor will not be missed. Not yet, not ever. Andor is badly hurt. A piece of shrapnel is lodged in his thigh and another in his back. Lajos is so exhausted that he can barely think. His ankle is twisted; his nose is bleeding. Pain is shooting through his body. He knows Andor cannot walk on his own and won’t survive if he leaves him here. Lajos bandages him up as best he can with his shirt. Minutes ago, when the other soldiers got to their feet to leave, his weary mind screamed, ‘Don’t move, and don’t go on’. In a moment of lucidity he reasoned that he had a legitimate explanation to fall behind. Even that murderous Jew-hating bastard of a unit commander couldn’t blame him for dropping out; though of course he would. Lajos had thought for some time now that it would be better for them to take their chance with the advancing Russians. The Ruskis can’t be any worse than their own countrymen - hell no one could be.

‘But if the unit commander came back looking for us he would shoot both of us,’ he spoke out aloud. What they would be shot for seemed nearly funny. ‘Shoot us for being half dead?’ Would he come back? The terror of the unit commander stabbed at Lajos’s bowels. He needed to evacuate, and to satisfy hunger and thirst all at the same time. They’ve had nothing to eat since when? Yesterday or was it the day before? Andor moaned, his eyes flickering with the pangs of pain. If the commander came back, perhaps they could fake being dead. Lajos drank his last drop of water and then fell asleep.

The Hungarian army, or what was left of it, consisted of the commander, fifty odd soldiers, and a few remaining Jewish ‘work servicemen’. They struggled on, retreating. No one cared about anything else now, but to get away from the advancing Russians. The Jewish men were forcibly taken into the Nazi Hungarian army that allied itself with Hitler. The government of the day justified this by saying that this was better for Hungary than being overrun by Germany. These Jews, so called