Love at First Sight - Part IV
In the late sixties, a photographer showed up at our family home to photograph my parents’ art collection. From the balcony of our living room, I saw a slim, graceful man dancing around an art piece, his thick hair winged out from his head in chaotic waves. I hadn’t yet seen the man’s face, but already I was in love.
THIS IS PART 4 of a SIX-PART STORY
Werner Forman (right)
Not only were Celia and I being watched; we were being followed.
By two hefty, not very subtle men in brown suits. They were behind us when we left for dinner with my parents, and behind us when we returned to our hotel. In the lobby, one of them came up close to me, and said: “Miss Schindler, is it true you will be traveling to Vienna from here?”
Well, that was pretty direct. I didn’t know what to say. It was true that I was flying from Naples to Vienna to meet Werner (I had lied to my parents about that, telling them I was taking a break from school and would be spending a few weeks with a musician friend in Vienna), but how had these two men -- actual, bona fide SPIES -- known that? From guarded phone calls? From surveilling us since we’d left London, or before?
Werner was a well-known photographer who by then had published dozens of books on the art of China, India, the Pacific Northwest, who had traveled widely and whose activities were closely watched by the Soviets. So of course it made sense that, by association, I was being watched, too. The two brown-suited men evaporated from the lobby when I said, yes, I was going to Vienna and why did they want to know, and Celia blurted, “Wow! Spies!” But the film noir aspect of my life deepened over the next year as my relationship with Werner intensified, and I continued to veil the truth of what was going on in my life with bullshit stories to my parents. I managed to secretly travel to Iran with Werner, where, because I hadn’t done the research, I brought skimpy sundresses revealing far too much skin, and had to quickly purchase scarves and a chador to cover up.
Of course, I thrived on all the intrigue and drama, a young, foolish girl who romanticized the craziness she’d gotten herself into. But a year later the seriousness of my situation was pushed right into my face when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia and closed the country down.
I knew something about horrific political events because of the persecution my parents had suffered in Germany and the lengths they'd gone to in order to escape. But I’d never experienced anything like it -- the grip a country could have over its citizens -- firsthand. When it became apparent that all communication with Czechoslovakia had ceased, I didn’t know what to do or think. Frustration, fear, panic, anxiety -- I experienced all those as I sat in front of the TV waiting for news. But my immediate reaction was to shut down and stop eating, a response I was to have the rest of my life when things got rough. I simply couldn’t handle the stress, and turned into a zombie.
Cover photo: Stokkete, Shutterstock