WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Hanns F Skoutajan

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s a bit of a come-down for us who slave over syntax and spelling, who strive  to make sentences flow,  who try not to play too loose with facts.

Would that I had become a graphic artist, a painter or photographer like Edward Burtynsky who tells  the awful truth  of man’s profligate ways with the environment through the lens of a camera. He shows the story with photos pf mountains of used tires, endless vistas of oil pumps and derricks, the hell holes of Fort MacMurray and much much more. I have recently visited his gallery at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Should it be “anti nature” in this case? Surely those pictures are more powerful  than any multiple of thousands of words.

All this became very personal for me a few days ago. I had engaged in one of my frequent forays into Google to check how I might have been misquoted. Better than not being quoted at all, I suppose. To my surprise I saw my name but the narrative was in Dutch, a language that I do not understand.

I clicked the symbol which said “Klicken” and before me unfolded “de Beelderbank,” an album of photos from WW 2, postwar and prewar, of soldiers, farmers pushing carts loaded with mattresses and other worldly goods out of war’s way.

There were also pictures of refugees from other lands e.g. Czechoslovakia. Among them to my utter surprise was one of a young Hanns Skoutajan, age 9. It was taken in November 1938 - 75 years ago, at the YWCA in London, England  where my mother and I were located prior to our ongoing journey to Scotland and reunion with my father.

As one of the more politically endangered activists he had been shipped out ahead of us.

On this photo I sport a radiant smile . No wonder for I had just unpacked my miniature electric train which according to the caption was the only toy my parents allowed me to bring along. I recall “back home” wrapping the tracks, the engine and five cars in my shirts, socks and underwear and stuffing them into the back pack to be portered by me to Britain and beyond - who knows.

 

Mother and I had managed to circumvent our enemy, Hitler’s Reich, by travelling through Poland by real train and then by ship from the Polish port of Gdynia to Britain .  There was one, at least one, hot spot on that journey - the Kiel Canal that crossed German territory from the Baltic to the North Sea.

I witnessed with some trepidation as officers in their hated/feared Nazi uniforms with the swastika held in the claws of an eagle on their caps, boarded our ship. Was it to arrest us? Happily it turned out that they were the canal pilots. There is a reason why I have a warm place in my heart for the colourful Union Jack. I first saw it flutter from the mast of the MS Baltrover and trusted in its protection. It was another ten months before the war broke out.

On the photo my little train sits on the floor in front of me in this new exile. I beamed at the camera at the presence of my beloved toy now free of laundry.

But the Trix Express train’s “Odyssey From Tragedy to Freedom” was far from over. It was yet to cross the stormy Atlantic and half a continent, yes, by train, always safely tucked in the rucksack on my back.

The train, no longer functional, is long retired like myself. It rests on a bookshelf in our living room as a memento of my life’s journey. 

That photo on the Dutch Beelderbank is indeed worth thousands of words. I have written many of them about that journey, its circumstances and destination and the many adventures en route. Indeed the picture has invoked these words that I gladly share with you, my readers.

Welcome! 

SQ 11/08/2013        

     

YESTERDAY

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Senescence,” the dictionary tells me, is “the condition or process of deterioration with old age.” Why did I have to look it up when I have some very personal acquaintance with that condition, such as my forgetfulness? As I write, but more embarrassingly when speaking, the right word escapes me  and leaves me groping.

There is another condition that manifests itself with the advancing years. I call it “anecdotage.” While the right word or expression flees my stories, especially reminiscences, only too readily come to the fore. I vividly recall events from the past. Indeed, many of my Spirit Quests are loaded with those reflection on bygone times.

I have always enjoyed the stories of Mary Cook in which she describes  life in rural Renfrew County. Having ministered in that area of eastern Ontario for five years I have some appreciation of the setting. They used to be published in the local paper, alas no more.

There is also some wishful thinking that colours these stories that turn them out to be rosier than in their reality. Thus memories of my childhood on that farm in remote northern Saskatchewan lose the despair and hardship that were a daily fact of our life. I cherish the memories of my dogs  as I described it in a recent SQ, of Blacky, the placid horse on which I learned to ride, the pigs we named after Nazi leaders that we had managed to escape.

I remember the newsboy in Prague with his bundle of papers under his arm brandishing the latest  copy calling out “Halo Novini!  and with a loud voice proclaiming the unhappy headlines of the day. In the fall of 1938 they were unfortunately plentiful. 

My parents and I had managed to escape the Nazi invasion of our hometown. We were forced to exchange our comfortable apartment for an attic with other refugees. We slept on straw mattresses and went for our meals to a soup kitchen set up for the many who had flooded into this still free city. I often wonder what became of that news vendor or those who stood in line with us at the kitchen window. We were among the fortunates who were helped by conscientious Brits to make it out of the caldron of central Europe. True, on coming to this land we were faced with hard and unfamiliar work and lived in unbelievable hovels that were minus the most basic of amenities. 

 

Having struggled with learning disabilities had made my education process a bit of drag. In those days there were no learning disabilities, you were either smart or dumb. Guess what! I was forced to work very hard and was deprived of those times that are meant to be so much a part of college life. I have a better recollection from the distance of years. Queen’s University is one of the highlights of my life and I felt greatly honoured to have an honourary doctorate bestowed on me by my alma mater. 

I also remember fondly the congregations that I served as minister and the people with whom I worked and worshipped and came to know quite intimately.

Those times are not forgotten but form the matrix of 84 years of my life. What I am today is made up or at least enhanced by the memory of those events  of long ago. I wonder what my own  children will remember of their childhood and youth. What funny stories will they tell of their father years hence.   

I spend much time at the local coffee shop with other octogenarians and some much younger than I exchanging our tales of life. I know that there are some who would rather forget the past and live in the now.  I pity them for the wealth of the now  is constituted by the events of long ago. 

I have called it “Spirit Quest,”  the opening of the mind to the past that made us what we are, to discover that there is a Spirit that has accompanied us on our way and still is with us now. 

01/ O8/ 2013

JUL

16

LIFE AMONG THE DRY BONES

Hanns F Skoutajan

There are various kinds of screams, at least two I can identify. There is the scream of pain and horror; it begins sharply and ends just as abruptly as it began. There is the kind of scream  that starts suddenly  and then trails off. Like steam from an engine, it blasts forth and as the pressure diminishes so does the intensity of the sound. It seems to announce a release. It was the latter kind that pierced the air and echoed through a poplar grove on an abandoned farm in northern Saskatchewan.

A few weeks after arriving in this remote setting that had become home for us , mother ventured from our primitive log cabin to explore the surroundings. She walked behind the barn, an empty and partly collapsed building unsafe for man or beast. Someone a long time ago had hauled logs from a distance, there were no such trees in our area, to build this barn. The builder had been quite a craftsman with the axe. He had squared the timber  and fitted them neatly together, but now the whole structure was rotting away.

It was spring and the leaves were bursting from their winter weathered branches. Winters in this northern country were long and severe as we were soon to discover. But now all of nature was speaking messages of hope . Grasses and  ferns were rising from the ground as if rudely thrust from below. We were amazed at the speed of growth.

Mother was alone for the day. Father and I, along with others, had gone some miles to another farm to fetch some cows which we would now have to learn how to milk. She, nor any of us, had ever touched a cow before let alone extrude milk from the beast.

She had time on her hands. It was good to be alone with her thoughts. She walked slowly along the edge of the woods behind the barn taking in all that was so strange but now was ours, something she found hard to accept.

She felt a sense of ambivalence. She was aware of how far she was from her former home across the sea. With the growing hostility between Britain and Germany the link with her family seemed like an elastic band  almost stretched to the breaking point. War seemed inevitable and with that, of course,  a total separation. 

Her thoughts were often with her mother, her sister and brother and their families. She wished that they too might have emigrated. How wonderful it would have been to have them all nearby sharing the hardships as well as the freedom offered by this new land. Certainly her brother-in-law Max, a man skilled with his hands, would have been far handier on this pioneer farm than her intellectual husband, although he was quickly learning.

She walked on and at length came upon an opening among the trees that looked like it might have contained a narrow farm lane. From directly behind the barn  it entered the woods, no more than two ruts  and even these were overgrown with weeds while the space between them was well on the way to returning to the bush from which it had originally been cut. 

She decided to follow this trail to see where it would lead. Occasionally the ruts turned into mud puddles and she had to resort to stomping  through the brush along the side.  She felt curious about the destination, indeed, she almost felt drawn.

The road mother was following took a number of turns to avoid some willows that grew along the edge of a swamp, or slough, as the locals called it. Then the road opened into what must have been a clearing  some years ago, now, of course, it was filled with tall weeds and low brush. Even some saplings made an effort to grow among them.

She stopped and looked. The road seemed dead-ended. She was puzzled  by white objects she glimpsed among the grass. Advancing a few steps further she saw a good many more and recognized them  to be weather-beaten bones. There was a whole carcass lying there, the rib cage of a large animal, a cow or a horse perhaps. She felt strange as though she had entered into some macabre mortuary. Then she spied a skull. She had never seen one before. Afterall she had been a city person.  Obviously this road she had been following had been used to transport dead animals to be left in the woods to rot.  Now all that remained were their whitened bones. 

“Is that all that there is to life when it is past?” she wondered. “We too share this mortality.”

Mother wasn’t sure of her beliefs. From a scientific point of view she saw no evidence of an after-life, only whitened bones and even these eventually crumble into dust. If religion, the belief in God and life beyond death, could make people decent and responsible , then fine and good, but should we need such primitive incentives? Surely humankind can rise above such superstitions. But on the other hand she remembered the SS brutality, the horror of concentration camps that we had been fortunate to avoid, just barely. The very thought of father caught in their hands could still make her shiver. 

Thus mother reasoned as she stood among the piles of bones. But there was another thought, or perhaps it was only a feeling, that presented itself; had she not experienced something unusual, well, perhaps spiritual, at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague less than a year ago when not only November weather had darkened the sky? The future seemed bleak indeed. Her Catholic upbringing had planted some seeds of spirituality that had lain dormant  deep inside her psyche. There were times when they gave slight signs of life, “intimations of immortality” perhaps.

Suddenly she glimpsed something crimson, like a burning ember. There among the grass and scrub, it glowed. It seemed to have discovered her almost as she discovered it. Or had this fiery eye seen her as she came through the woods, perhaps had seen her a long time before and drawn her to itself?

The red eye held her as she held her breath. They confronted each other, the red eye challenging her to draw near.  A lump formed in her throat. She was aware of her 

aloneness in this valley of dry bones. Slowly she advanced across the clearing and then recognized what it  was that had bound her in this spell.

A scream formed in her throat, pressed out and rang among the trees and bones. A Tiger Lily growing straight and tall between the piles of skulls and ribs dared to announce life among the dead. The scream was long as the pressure  of the anxieties and stresses that had piled up over the months  of uncertainty and waiting  were vented. 

Her arms, at first flung into the air, came slowly down and embraced her chest. Her scream diminished into sobs . Her eyes gushed tears  that blurred the glowing, crimson flower.

She did not kneel to pray or utter invocations, intercessions or words of confession. They were all there, unspoken, yet most real  and clear in this Epiphany.

Many years later mother confided this event to me. It had been a turning point in her life, a spiritual awakening, an experience that confirmed for her that she was not alone.

*                                                          *                                                           *

The above story was taken from my book Uprooted and Transplanted: A Sudeten Odyssey from Tragedy to Freedom, 1938 - 1958.  I was reminded of it as I walked along the street in the New Edinburgh area of Ottawa. Along the side of the avenue there were large clumps of very tall Tiger Lilies with big crimson blossoms just like the one that mother had encountered. 

Hopefully this story has meaning for you as it has for me. There is a Spirit that is alive among all of nature. Dare to discover it.   

SQ 15/08/2013

See SKOUTAJAN’S PAGE  for previous writings