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Grey clouds hovered over sooty, melting snow on the rooftops in Lovag
Street, in the Sixth District of Budapest. After finishing work at five
I went to Eva's place, four houses away, as I did every afternoon. It
was the first week in March, 1944. I was twenty years old, and I knew
that along with all the other young men over eighteen I would soon be
called up. But when would it happen, and where would they send me?
Eva Blau, my sixteen year old fiancee, was standing impatiently in the
doorway of her family's second-story apartment.
"Come on, we"ve been waiting for you," she said.
"We're going to a seance at Alice Rappaport's. The rest are already
there." She pointed to the door on the other side of the stairway
where the Rappaports lived.
"You won't get me there!" I said. "You know I don't
believe in that idiocy. Go if you must, but leave me. I'll wait for you
at your place."
"We need you. You have to come. The spirits are more likely to show
up if more people sit around the table."
Eva kissed me and pushed me across the staircase. The Rappaport's living
room was dark. Alice, her seventeen-year-old brother Ernie, and Eva's
classmate Gaby Schuck were sitting at a small, round table in the
corner. A ouija board lay on the table with an ordinary drinking glass
upside down in the middle of it. Alice gestured for us to sit down and
she took a deep breath. Before she could say anything, I cut in.
"I don't wish to spoil your game, but I don't believe in these
spiritualist things. If you think my attitude might keep the spirits
away, I don't mind leaving."
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"Enter The
Madness" by R. Graniczny
Email: CapOldFart@aol.com |
"Never mind," said Alice. "Just
shut up and do as you're told."
The others knew the routine and showed me what to do. We each put
the tip of our right forefinger on the top of the upturned glass.
We made sure our elbows were off the table, which became tiring
after a short time. Alice told us to relax and blank out our
minds.
"Are there any spirits from the other world present?"
asked Alice in a respectful tone.
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Sure, and if you are not here, tap twice, I suggested under my breath.
I watched the glass that I expected the tapping to come from, ready to
surprise Alice when she tried to fool us by moving the glass herself.
The call to the spirits was repeated three times. By then I was trying to
establish eye contact with Eva to find out how long we were going to sit
there with tired arms propped in mid-air.
Suddenly the table moved and there was a tap on the floor. Everyone was
looking excited. Come on, Alice, I thought. Who do you think you're
kidding? You moved the table. It's obvious.
"Dear spirit, are you related to anybody present?" asked Alice.
Two taps in one of the table legs signalled 'no'.
"Do you have a message for us?" continued Alice. She interviewed
the spirit as an experienced reporter would.
Two taps.
What the hell is it hanging around for if it has nothing to say?, I
thought. I made a funny face and looked around, but nobody returned my
glance.
"Can we ask you questions about the past or the future?"
One tap.
"Will I get married?" asked Gaby Schuck suddenly.
One tap.
"How many children will I have?" Gaby was starting to warm up.
She was quite happy to use up all the spirit's goodwill and risk the
others missing out. I started to feel angry with her for her selfishness.
In the meantime, I knew Alice was tricking us. Just the same, the game was
starting to get interesting.
As we sat there wondering how many times the table would tap, the glass
suddenly traveled to the number two on the board, carrying my finger with
it. There was a circle formed by the letters of the alphabet on the board,
and an inner circle formed by the numbers from zero to nine.
It was an eerie feeling but it didn't make a believer of me. It's Alice, I
thought. She can't trick me. I decided to show up the silliness of the
game without upsetting the others.
"Will I be called up for labour service?" I asked.
The table immediately tapped once. That was easy, Alice, I said under my
breath. Here comes the hard one.
"When shall I be called up?" I said aloud.
The glass moved to number one, to number five, then to the letter 'M',
then to 'A', then to 'Y', and stopped there. 15 May!
I felt a chill down my back and my skin crawled. Then I snapped out of it.
Nice try, Alice, I thought. Everybody knows my age group is to be called
up, but nobody knows when. I'll remind you on 16 May that the spirits
weren't really there.
To this day I cannot explain how the date came up, but I was indeed called
up on May 15. Gaby Schuck got married after the war and had two children.
And Alice? Well, she was deported to Germany in the summer of 1944, after
the German occupation of Hungary, and never came back. What did the
spirits tell her about her fate? This question has haunted me down the
years.
"Hope Dies Last" |
The Séance is actually the first chapter of Tim's
autobiography, HOPE DIES LAST, which was released by Scribe
Publications earlier this year. It is available at Australian
bookstores under his full name, Tibor Timothy Vajda, or contact
the publisher directly at scribe@bigpond.net.au
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Hope Dies Last is Tim's first published book. His second book, Blood
Red Moon, was published on the Internet on August 8th. The full book
can be ordered from http://www.iuniverse.com..
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Tim migrated to Australia in 1956,
distinguishing himself in the field of Oral Implants and Biomedical
Engineering.
Between 1969 and 1993, he had 29 scientific publications to his credit and
lectured in Australia, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, England, Germany, the
U.S. and other countries. For the past seven years he has been writing
full-time, and is the author of short stories and interviews which
appeared in publications such as SYDNEY LIFE, an annual anthology
of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW), and NEWS-WRITE, a
monthly journal of the New South Wales Writers' Centre. Another story was
also featured in the Summer 1999 issue of The Rose & Thorn. Tim
and his wife Eva have been married for 55 years and have a daughter, Agi,
and son, John.
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