Sokal's Story (Part VI)

When I realized it was already almost nine, I got up straight on my legs. I had to leave on the planned train, so much more because I did not want to see his wife. Sokal promised to take me to the station and we left.

And so with Benny Goodman it was like this. 

Several weeks after the Germans entered, Sokal had to escape from Ljubljana. He chose Trieste for several reasons. He counted that maybe he could find there some ship, with which he could sail away beyond the zone of German influence. 

After all Trieste belonged to Italy, which in spite of the Germans, applied much more mild politics toward people of his declaration. One way or another, not having good documents, he had to hide. 

He kind of coursed between Trieste and Ljubljana, which however came with great risks. The matter of selecting the appropriate place in Trieste was a long discussed topic by him and the whole Buszicz family during his last Sunday dinner with them. 

Even though they all knew well the terrain and reality, no one really had any smart idea, until suddenly one of Nina’s uncles, uncle Oscar, proposed that he had thought it all through and that in his humble opinion for many reasons the safest and best place to take shelter would be… the brothel. He even knew the right one in Trieste, and offered to arrange the entire matter with the owner, meaning the madam. 

After three days Sokal was already living there. After long negotiations it stood on this, that his stay would cost Sokal five American dollars a day, paid every month in advance and every month brought from Ljubljana by someone from Nina’s family. 

It was at this time a fortune, but it guaranteed, in full safety, theoretically, everything that the soul desired. 

The house found itself close to wharf, fairly high, as if on some very steep embankment. At first glance the wharf was reminiscent of a cliff, but after an exact examination it was discovered that this was no cliff, only rocks and an untold amount of different kinds of grotto, cavernous and inshore lairs, such typical for the ocean shore throughout almost the entire region of Trieste. 

From the front of a large nineteenth century edifice ran a normal street, but the area made, for an unknown reason, an impression of wilderness, even though to the port it was no more than ten minutes by foot. 

It could not be further, because the interested were received irrespective from the time of day or night. The room which Sokal got was outwardly a normal whore room. A large bed, mirrors, screens, sofas, a washroom, a table and drapes, a cabinet built into the wall, coated with gold-rose damask. 

Uncle Oscar, who brought and installed him here, showed him also other secrets of this room. The spacious cabinet had two well masked secret openings. One opening led to a long, thin corridor, a little drooping, with many turns, carved through the rock, ending at last at a kind of harbor, hidden in a giant cavern. 

The second opening led to steep stone stairs, which went straight down and completed the monolithic whole with the tunnel leading to the much lower placed cavern-chamber. There were no windows there, and the hole definitely remembered still Roman times, when Trieste was known as Tergeste. 

In the chamber there were several heavy oak pieces of furniture and a strange marble fireplace of a monstrous size. To the chamber belonged an enclosement divided by thin, decently imposing steel doors, able to store a stock of fuel, and being connected to a second underground grotto, to which even reached a little bit of daylight.