Sokal's Story (Part IV)

Celina for the evening repast brought on a tray a porcelain jug with hot water, a teapot with tea concentrate, sugar, marmalade, lemon and also warm yeast-raised cake cut into pieces. 

As she was leaving, I asked her to also bring butter. Spoiled by my mother, always this kind of cake I ate with butter, without butter yeast-raised cake might as well not exist for me. 

“And Benny Goodman?” I asked, being convinced again how merciless time passed so quickly. 

“It’s still a long story, but I’ll try to be brief.”

Despite several checkpoints, during which two times we were required to open the trunk, Zeleck finally managed to get Sokal to Carinthia, where once, still with aunt’s husband, they hunted in the woods on the border with Slovenia. 

Zeleck knew many people there and knew the terrain excellently. Indeed the border was well secured and only thanks to Zeleck did Sokal manage to exit Austria. While sending him off, he gave Zeleck all his Austrian currency and all the papers for the Citreon and told him that he should hold on to his aunt’s car and register it to his name. 

When at some Slovenian train station by the border completely besotted Sokal waited on the seriously delayed train to Ljubljana, he saw two others like him. 

Late in the evening he was at his destination. In Ljubljana lived his classmate Nina Buszicz, with whom for some time he had even had an innocent romance.

Nina was a walking double of the first at this time French film star, Michele Morgan, and came from a patrician family in Ljubljana. Unfortunately, when it came out, what Sokal had spritely hidden, that he was younger than Nina by almost five years, her romantic feelings transformed into maternal ones, and their romance turned into a great friendship. 

In any case after the third year Nina for some reason had interrupted her studies, and then from Ljubljana to Vienna never returned, yet the entire time since then, though sporadically, they corresponded. 

On account of his priceless baggage, Sokal stopped at the best hotel, which remembered still visits from members of the Habsburg dynasty in the time of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. Even though the previous night he did not sleep at all, for very long he could not fall asleep, constantly beset by the horrors of the previous day. 

He awoke before noon and after a very late breakfast, which was brought to his room, found in a not too capacious local telephone book Buszicz’s name and through the hotel telephone switchboard got a connection. Nina picked up. 

She was very excited and required Sokal to come immediately. As it turned out, the Buszicz home was less than a hundred meters away from the hotel and both belonged to the same plaza. 

Sokal was manically afraid of his treasures. To avoid arousing suspicion, he paid up front for a five day stay, but with all his baggage arrived at Nina’s. It was a Sunday. Not counting the hotel, the Buszicz family’s home was the most sumptuous residence on the plaza. 

The large, yellow renaissance building consisted of a high ground floor and two additional stories. The larger right side of the ground floor was occupied by the gigantic chancellery of Nina’s father, the attorney, in fact the most powerful advocate in town and the entire region. On the left was the dentistry cooperative set up by Nina, who employed three board-certified dentists. 

Sokal did not even know that three months ago Nina had married her father’s right hand man, also an advocate, older than her by twenty years; she was happy. Nina had also three younger sisters and two younger brothers and everyone lived together in this humongous palatial home in the center of Ljubljana. 

Right off the bat Sokal told Nina in great secrecy his transits from the last forty eight hours, asking, if it were possible, in help in securing his priceless, though modest enough, and even poor looking, baggage. Nina thought a moment and said that for now the best safe deposit would be the strongbox, which stood unused in her study in the medical office. 

Soon in any case she took him there and left him alone, saying that in fifteen minutes she would be back. The strongbox was imposing, the height of a regular cabinet It had two parts, one on top of the other. 

The lower part was a very strong oak shelf, on it resting a fireproof strongbox. It was American, of the firm EMPIRE, it had even the plate of its distributor—it was traded by one Krasilovsky of 6 East 39th Street on Manhattan in New York. 

It had three locks on three complicated keys and a central knob for a five digit combination. Impenetrable. When Nina returned, Sokal was already ready. He had time even to select from the whole, happily saved jewelry of his aunt a belated wedding gift for Nina. 

It was one of the precious watches, of which Tante Ute had a giant collection—gold, streamlined square CARTIER SANTOS, never used, in the beautiful original packaging, it looked like it was bought yesterday, especially for this occasion. 

He wanted to give this to her immediately, but the touched Nina said to do this during dinner, which would be at any moment and to which would sit her entire large family.