Follow: The Story of a Butterfly

By Emma Gardner

The caterpillar enters the chrysalis state to be transformed.
When the time comes to continue its life as a butterfly,
it has to struggle to break free and that struggle strengthens its wings, to be
ready to fly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514456057

Emma Gardner

Richard is a writer/performer from Janesville, WI. After teaching middle school for over a decade, Richard decided that living a dream is more than just something you say. One day he woke up and started to follow his dream of writing music and children's books. Now, Richard creates on a daily and his dreams became reality.

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INTRODUCTION

Before the plane had landed at Maiduguri airport, two jeeps ran the length of the airstrip in opposing directions to chase the cows off. After landing, and as George descended from the plane with curious anticipation about his future life in Nigeria, a protocol officer ran up to him asking if he was the gentleman from Canada. George considered himself a gentleman, and he was from Canada, so he said yes.

The officer asked for his baggage coupons, took his hand luggage, and with utmost courtesy, helped him into the back seat of a flashy Mercedes. By the time they reached a lovely guesthouse, his luggage was already inside. A steward in blue uniform was putting his clothes away in the bedroom. Another, in white, asked him what he wished to eat and drink. George dropped into a deep armchair and stretched his legs to the extent of his six foot two inches. He was really surprised by the unexpected reception. When he'd answered the Nigerian government's ad in one of Toronto's daily newspapers looking for a principal architect for the Ministry of Works and Housing in Borno State, he hadn't expected anything like this. He was also surprised because he had not advised his future employer of the time of his arrival. However, before his favourite drink arrived, two men rushed in. Without a word, they packed his clothes back into the suitcase and told him in Nigerian English, 'Pliss follow, sah.' They escorted George into a less luxurious car than the Mercedes of his arrival and drove him to a dilapidated hotel, where they dropped him off.

George knew the experience was too good to last. Later he learned that the Borno State government was waiting for the Canadian ambassador arriving on the same flight.

THE WAR

One had to be flexible, versatile, resilient, and tough to follow George and his dreams. My training began at a tender age when the air raids started in 1944.

Budapest prepared for underground living. At the wail of the air-raid sirens, we had to run to nearby bunkers when going to or coming from school. This experience is still responsible for the squeeze in my stomach every time I hear the siren of an ambulance, police car, or fire engine.

The schools closed early, before my brother (two years my senior) and I could finish the school year. Our parents sent us to a farm in the country for our safety, not realizing that this farm was close to the big industrial city: Győr. Győr was bombed day and night. During the daytime, hundreds of Allied heavy bombers dotted the sky. Little silver beads glittering in the sun, they flew in precise formation over the countryside, arriving in wave after wave. It was over us where the German fighter planes met the invasion, engaging them in aerial combat. Spent machine-gun bullet shells were raining down, sometimes close enough to hear the whistle they made flying through the air. We did not know where to hide; there was no bunker. Stay in the house, it could collapse on top of us. Hide in the potato pit, we could be buried alive. We ran into the orchard and hid under the biggest plum tree when a plane approached us with a terrible screaming sound, the most horrible sound I ever heard. It was coming closer and closer, pulling a tail of smoke behind it. The screaming became louder and louder, and its pitch higher and higher. We didn't know where it would hit, only that when you heard the crash, you would know you were still alive. I put my arms around the tree trunk and pressed my face against it with eyes closed. Shaking violently, I promised one pengö, a fortune to us at that time, to St Anthony, my favourite saint, if we survived.

He helped. The plane crashed about 500 meters away in a wheat field, setting it on fire.

During the night raids, we used to stand outside, watching with a mixture of fear and wonder as the allies bombed Győr. Stalin lamps ---flares on parachutes---were hanging in the night sky to illuminate the darkened city. Searchlights, star shells, anti-aircraft shells, and exploding planes were creating a giant, luminous firework in the night.

This was our introduction to the war during the summer of 1944. I was nine years old.

When the Russian front advanced, Dad came with the company car to collect us, slipping back inside Budapest just before the Germans shut the civilian traffic down in and out of the city. From thereon I wished I had never been born. Our experiences on the farm were fun in comparison.

Awakened by the sirens out of a sweet dream, we dressed in a hurry and ran to a limestone cave fifteen minutes running distance from our house, which sat on a hilltop on the Buda side of Budapest.¹ The cave was bombproof and big enough to accommodate the whole population from the nearby hills. However the entrance was not and the hysterical crowd tried to get in all at the same time. We were often still queuing outside when the bombers were already on top of us. Later, the air raids were more frequent, two or three times day and night. We kept running back and forth between home and the cave. Often we were only halfway when all hell broke loose around us. The bombproof cave was not much use anymore if we were just to be killed in the process of getting there, so we stayed home, trusting ourselves to God's will.

Our storage cellar that was nearly all underground had been converted into our bunker with reinforced beams in such a way that it would hold up even if the house collapsed because of an explosive blast. However, it was not strong enough to resist a direct hit. Sitting in there during air raids, knowing that it was not bombproof, we listened to the horrifying sound of the falling bombs getting closer and louder, never knowing whether they would hit the house or not. We put our heads together so that we would all die at the same time if one of them did. If I had only known these would be the last times our family was so close together.

By December the Germans had blown all the bridges up, paralyzing the city life. We were more or less ready for the siege, if anybody ever could be ready for a thing like this! Dad had bought several cast-iron stoves, in case the central heating was damaged. Also a cast-iron, wood-burning cooker, in case the gas supply stopped. A lot of paraffin lamps and candles plus a pocket dynamo flashlight, in case there wouldn't be any electricity. We stored water in the bathtubs, the big boiler in the laundry room, and every imaginable container, in case the water supply was cut. We had plenty of coal in the cellar. Dry beans, peas, lentils, corn and wheat for the chickens, sugar, lard, preserves, and paraffin for the lamps filled the pantry.

We celebrated Christmas in our huge living room, which stretched the length of the house. In front there was a glassed-in winter garden and, opposite, a folding glass door. This, when opened, made the room become one with the terrace and offered a magnificent view of the mountains and the north of Buda. As per war regulation, the windows had to be blacked out, for the smallest light could have attracted attention from the sky.

After Christmas the bombing stopped, giving way to an equally terrifying experience: the shelling. The Russians on one side, the Germans on the other, and we were in the middle. The central heating went on the blink. The gas, the water, and the electric power were cut. We moved downstairs. The bunker became our bedroom, jamming five beds in there for the four of us and the maid, Gisele.

Dad connected the wood-burning cooker to the chimney in the maid's room downstairs, turning this small place into our kitchen, dining room and lounge together. He kept fixing the one window in there, like a jigsaw puzzle with bits and pieces of broken glass and adhesive tape. We ran to the bunker whenever the shelling started up. All the windowpanes were gone in the house, of course, and the huge living room upstairs provided an open passageway to the occasional shell---in one side, out the other---taking our Christmas tree along! The snow blew in as well and that was not so fortunate. It meant Dad had to shovel the snow out before it melted and flooded the rooms underneath where we lived. Each time he gave us count of how many shells---glowing red---passed on his left side and how many on his right. Gisele ran the same risk to be killed on her way to feed the chickens at the back of our garden.

When hand grenades, machine-gun and rifle shots joined in---in addition to the shelling and giving a crescendo to the siege---we transported the chickens into the other storage cellar next to the bunker. The cluck and cackle didn't make any difference to the noise we already had. The shelling and shooting were not constant; at times there was a little intermission. Then we ran outside to collect snow for cooking and washing ourselves, trying to conserve the water that was stored.

On one of these occasions, two German soldiers stormed into our garden, shouting and waving their guns at us. They claimed that someone tried to kill them and the shot came from our house and we were all traitors. Lining us up against the wall, they were ready to execute us when Dad appealed to them. 'Listen, before you shoot innocent women and children, why don't you search us and the house first and if you find a gun, shoot me, but me alone!' he said in German. They agreed, turning the house and us inside out and spending a lot of time digging in the coal cellar. Finding nothing, they left as abruptly as they came. Dad seemed to turn quite pale. Little later I saw him throwing a parcel, wrapped in brown paper, way out into the valley. He was but a foot away from death. He fought in the First World War and kept his old gun as a souvenir.

As the shelling started up again, we all ran to the bunker but Dad decided to sweep the kitchen. I think his nerves must have been near to breaking point and he had to do something. As we sat in there, listening to the explosions and the sound of the broom in-between, the house received its first hit. One of the shells coming from the north was too low to pass through the living room. It hit the threshold, changed direction, and exploded in the food elevator shaft that connected the kitchen with the living room, knocking the wall to the staircase out with a big bang. For a second we thought we were all dead. Slowly coming out of shock we smelled the gunpowder and dust pouring into the bunker under the door. We were deaf, hearing nothing but the ringing in our ears. The sound of the sweeping had stopped. Then Mum's voice, just as if were coming from a grave, said, 'Father is dead.' None of us could move. We just sat there with horror and emptiness inside.

After about a minute that seemed to last forever, the broom came to life again. We all ran outside, shouting and laughing in tears. 'Dad, Dad, you are alive, you are alive!'

'Of course I am alive; why shouldn't I be?' he said indignantly. He was all grey, his bloodless face covered with mortar and gunpowder. My brother and I leaped into his dusty arms, and Mum made him promise that he would not sweep the floor again during raids.

We could hardly wait for the war to end and the senseless killing to stop. Anything---we thought---just anything would be better than the Nazi regime.

On a sunny day in February a sudden silence befell the surrounding hills. We were so used to the noise that the silence was almost deafening. Running outside to see what had happened, we spotted some small bundles descending on the hillside from the north. They were Russian soldiers in white camouflage. On reaching the house, Dad invited them inside (as if they would not have come in otherwise!) and they seemed to be nice people. Mum offered them hot tea; they gave us bread and bacon. Bread! We had not seen bread since God knows when.

After warming themselves up a bit, the soldiers continued their war. They went upstairs into the master bedroom. Dad and I followed. One of them dragged a chest of drawers in front of the north-facing window and was about to place the machine gun tripod on top. Then something extraordinary happened, something I have never seen in any war movie! The soldier noticed the nice shiny surface of the furniture. There was a war going on and he was supposed to fight the enemy, but no! He actually noticed the shiny surface of the furniture. He took a painting off the wall, placed it face down, set the tripod in position, and started to shoot. Dad stood behind him muffling his ears with his hands, shouting at him frantically, 'No, no, noooo!'

Baffled, the soldier looked at Dad in astonishment. How dare a civilian give him orders! He could have shot Dad with his pistol but for some reason he didn't. He just stood there stupefied. Dad continued shouting, not because the painting was much more valuable than the chest of drawers, but because he was shooting the wrong way! 'That is the direction you came from!'

The soldier continued just looking at him. Finally, Dad remembered the Hungarian-Russian dictionary purchased before the war, made a run for it, then one by one, pointed the words out to him: 'You . . . shoot . . . wrong . . . way,' he said, vehemently throwing his body language in as well. 'Russians . . . there.' He pointed to the north. 'Germans . . . there.' He pointed to the south. The Russian soldier smiled, patted Dad on the shoulder, and continued his war, shooting in the other direction from the winter garden of our living room.

The front-line soldiers were the elite, the real soldiers, the ones who fought the war, but the second wave of the Russian army was quite a different story. They were a mob, wanting a pay-off, revenge, or a reward; I do not know what. Looting and raping, they took everything they wanted and raped all the women they fancied. My pretty mum has turned herself into an old and ugly woman at the age of forty, by wearing a horrible-looking hood tied under her chin. I could hardly recognize her. Not yet ten, I was out of the danger zone. Mind you, to some soldiers this was no criterion. They raped from eight to eighty. The screaming all around me day and night was another terrifying sound. 'Peeling potatoes' were the two magic words the soldiers learned in Hungarian, which was the excuse to round up young women and take them away. A girl I knew was tied to a table and seven soldiers went right through her, one after the other. I do not know how Gisele escaped this.

When Dad attempted to be friendly with this mob, he was relieved of his wedding ring, watch, and pocketknife. As they went through the house, they took everything that got in their way and was small enough to carry, including our food reserve. Between two waves of looters, I---being the smallest---was pushed up to the tiny attic above the dropped ceiling of the bathroom. Then the family handed up all the valuables that were left in the house, including our clothes. Since the small inlet was situated in the adjacent little toilet high up near the ceiling, nobody noticed it.

When the looters attacked our chicken stock as well, the killer instinct woke in my sensitive little mum. She became a lioness about to feed her cubs, killing all the chickens that were left. She broiled, boiled, and baked them and then Dad climbed to the flat roof to hide the lot. After the chickens were finished, we ate the chicken feed. First the corn and then, from the wheat, Mum conjured up a soup. This, when cooled, became a paste-like substance that we baked on top of the stove, and gave us some variety in our menu.

Our water supply was getting very low as well. As long as snow was available, we kept melting it, topping up the water reserves till one day a soldier dipped a dirty bucket into it to water his horse. From thereon it could be used only for washing while it lasted, then we started to stink! Later the supply returned but the pressure was too low. It only reached the bottom of our hill, so Gisele, Brother, and I walked down the hill every day to fetch water. Mum and Dad stayed home to guard the house against looting civilians.

On our first trip out, I met with the horrible reality of the war. The snow mercifully hid the bodies but not quite. Here and there a stiff hand, a leg, or half a head was sticking out.

When the bombs were falling, I had faith that they would not hit us. When the Germans threatened to kill us, I didn't really believe them. I had the faith that as long as Mum and Dad were around, nothing really bad would happen to us. They would protect us somehow. However, these were dead people and maybe they felt the same way, yet they died. Hanging on to my buckets in a kind of shock, I tripped over a pair of boots sticking out from under a broken-down truck. They belonged to a German soldier staring at me with his terror-stricken dead eyes.

A little luck came our way when a general put up his headquarters in the master bedroom. They fixed the windows, installed a stove and an army telephone with a red telephone line. The general was handsome and a very nice person. Proudly---pointing to his Hungarian-style moustache---he claimed that his grandmother was a Hungarian.

This set-up saved us from the mob. There was no more looting in our house. An honest exchange system developed between the soldiers and us, exchanging our leftover valuables for food. I remember that Mum's alligator purse, for example, fetched a kilogram of lard, and so forth. This arrangement tided us over the difficult times. Unfortunately, generals do not stay in one place for too long during wars. Sadly we had to say goodbye to him and his staff one day. Dad, having a smart idea, left the red telephone line up, and whenever looters came, he pointed it out to them and said 'general' in Russian. This was our magic word.

One morning, after the army headquarters moved away, a very unfriendly troop stormed our house, dragging us out of bed and making us dress at gunpoint. It took some time to understand that we were about to be taken for forced labour. Mum had influenza, running a fever. She refused to get up. Opening her nightgown on the front, she pointed to her chest and said, 'You can shoot me right here but I am not going anywhere!' She could be stubborn sometimes. We had a few uncomfortable minutes. Finally they left her alone and pushed the rest of us outside with gun barrels. We were given shovels and pickaxes to clear the ice and snow away from the streets in our neighbourhood. This work lasted till spring arrived.

The end of winter was good and bad at the same time. It was good, for people were not freezing anymore and it was bad for the same reason. The dead bodies started to thaw. They were a threat to the city. To evade an epidemic outbreak, the bodies had to be got rid of, and fast. Mass burials began in parks, squares, and any places without pavements. Bomb craters were welcome commodities.

It happened during this time that Gisele came running breathlessly one day with the news that there was an overturned freight train with abundant coal spilled all over the grounds and we too must run before all was taken. Since our coal supply was very low, Gisele, my brother, and I went to coal collecting. This was the longest trip we made away from home since the siege began. Along the way everything was in ruins. On arrival at the railway, we mingled with the crowd collecting the coal. Taking a break after a while, I took a stroll in the park nearby. The hospital on the other side was intact. I noticed an old woman standing in the distance, wailing; her hands held her head as if she was about to lose it. The force of curiosity set my feet in motion. As I drew near her, I could make out the words. 'It is my son! Oh my God! I recognize his foot. Please, somebody help me to get him out of there. It is him, I know. He was in this hospital!'

She had gone half mad. My legs continued till the scene opened up for me. It was a mass grave, about 20 × 6 × 4 meters, filled with bodies as white as wax. They were just thrown in there, lying in the grotesque positions as they fell. They were naked with open eyes, seemingly all staring at me. There were bodies without arms or legs, and there were arms and legs without bodies. There was a body of a woman with a big burnt shell hole right in the middle of her chest. Someone had thrown a sheet of plywood on top of a particular group so that only the arms and legs were protruding. The old woman was pointing to one of the feet, her face more terrifying than any of the dead.

I broke out in a cold sweat as a dreadful thought shook my mind: what if I get pushed in there by accident? My legs were rooted to the ground. Suddenly someone dragged me away from the edge and I ran with all the strength left in me. Gisele grabbed my arm, asking what had happened. I could not talk. No sound came from my throat. I was in deep shock just standing there, and started to throw up. She took me home.

For months I could not sleep properly. I kept dreaming that I fell into the ditch and couldn't get out. The dead hands grabbed my feet as I tried to climb the side and pulled me back. Frantically shaking my feet loose from their cold grips, I walked all over the bodies, trying to find a way out. I could never get out of there. I woke up instead with a scream, drenched in sweat.

This was my recurring nightmare for years to come.

SOCIALISM

After the war, the dark socialist regime followed with its total lack of freedom.

The Nazis killed people for being Jews or Gypsies; the new regime prosecuted them for different reasons. The secret police was the same; the name changed from Gestapo to Avo. There were kangaroo courts, tortures, and executions. The dreaded black car went around at nights and picked people out of their homes as traitors. They disappeared without a trace, mostly for being the elite, the intellectual, and the well-to-do of the previous regime. Therefore they must be friends of Western civilization and enemies of the state, simply because of their different political views. A bad word by a malicious neighbour was enough to send an innocent human being to prison.

As president of a big firm owning a family-style house and living in comfort, Dad also became an undesirable individual. He was not to be trusted; hence we all became dirty, imperialistic, capitalistic sons of bitches. He was degraded down to a bookkeeper serving under a young 'proletarian' worker, who had the responsibilities of running an entire company without the slightest knowledge of how to. Brother could not get into university. So he shovelled coal to make some money, and Mum grew flowers to sell on the market.

Our house was nationalized. That meant we had to share our home