Žižis family at Bagnoli DP camp & beach below.
baby Saulius died of preventable (apparently the required antibiotics were not available to us as DPs) dysentery in the camp and is buried in Napoli (see @ flic.kr/p/8Nb2sr). with only one exception my memories of Napoli are a bejewelled kaleidoscope of vivid imagery: islands in the Bay of Naples; azure skies; bubbling bright yellow sulphur springs in the core of an extinct volcano; coloured fish in the stunning world famous Napoli aquarium (later burnt down i think). i have no memory of the burial accessed by the above link. the exception is of me, & Rasa, with my father wheeling the pram with Saulutis in it crying & crying in a dry irritable voice when my father suddenly snaps & reaching down into the pram does an action over the face of Saulutis as might be done when ruffling someone's hair. no damage was done and the baby continued crying as before - he must have been seriously ill by then. my memories of italy begin on our protracted 4 day train journey from Fellbach in Stuttgart Bavaria during which we were frequently delayed & stationary on sidings. i was entranced by glimpses of lizards with vivid green heads scuttling on stone walls i could spot from the train window. it seems to me i have always been most affected by the natural environment @th expense of being able to recall much else. you cannot be long in this kind of task of annotating old photos without gaining some insight into how memory in general, but in particular one's own, works. my sister Rasa has told me how she can remember us competing for the privilege of pushing Saulutis' pram so it may be, though two years younger than me, her recall of him is fuller than mine. i recall nothing of my little brother other than the single memory described. evidently i have blocked everything else out - a propensity for doing which i have retained into adulthood. so this entry is as much a reflection on how memory works as a provision of information for my descendants. i was so taken by my 5 month stay in italy (c.12th april - c.3rd sept. '49) that i still treasure a small, very cheap & ordinary, foldout booklet of Napoli scenes i brought with me on the ship to Oz. the yanks used to take us kids in a truck for excursions to the beach and other places but the two shots @th top were taken by my father so he must have also taken us there @ least once. when i returned to Napoli with Helen late in life i was amazed by the accurate clarity of my recall for the detail of the city foreshore. the photo @ bottom left is in the Bagnoli camp & i recall i spent a lot of time on an oval inside an ancient amphitheater just behind & to the left of the church in the photo. nonetheless my positive recall of italy, consisting as it does of such brilliant imagery, retains a sombre & dark emotional underlay which is sure to have been a result of my awareness of the trauma my mum was going through @th time. i was particularly close to her from my earliest childhood right into my teens. as i write i begin to recall her groaning from the pains she was subject to from a defective gall-bladder even before Saulutis had fallen ill. once he fell ill i wasn't to know th@ besides the anguish any mother suffers when her child is slowly dying before her eyes th@ in this case mum's pain had the added dimension of her recent separation from the man whom she considered to be the love of her life & who was the child's father. as an elderly woman mum has explained to my wife Helen that her relationship with my father had become empty from the time she had found him living with another woman in East Prussia when he was an officer in the wehrmacht in the last year of the war (edited out, in consultation with Amy Witting, from her book "Elena's Journey"). mum told Helen th@ she had resumed the relationship with him only "for the sake of the children" (though my own reading is th@ the man she was in love with had not been prepared to take on longterm the responsibility of a woman with two kids in tow). so the decline & death of Saulutis also represented the 'final' sundering of her connection to his father. she wasn't to know th@ she would be visiting him one last time late in life to give him a copy of her book "Elena's Journey" in which he plays such a significant cameo part: he had ended up in america where he had resumed his original profession of researcher in agricultural science, was married with grandchildren, & had once again taken on significant roles in the litho expat community but this time in the US
Žižis family at Bagnoli DP camp & beach below.
baby Saulius died of preventable (apparently the required antibiotics were not available to us as DPs) dysentery in the camp and is buried in Napoli (see @ flic.kr/p/8Nb2sr). with only one exception my memories of Napoli are a bejewelled kaleidoscope of vivid imagery: islands in the Bay of Naples; azure skies; bubbling bright yellow sulphur springs in the core of an extinct volcano; coloured fish in the stunning world famous Napoli aquarium (later burnt down i think). i have no memory of the burial accessed by the above link. the exception is of me, & Rasa, with my father wheeling the pram with Saulutis in it crying & crying in a dry irritable voice when my father suddenly snaps & reaching down into the pram does an action over the face of Saulutis as might be done when ruffling someone's hair. no damage was done and the baby continued crying as before - he must have been seriously ill by then. my memories of italy begin on our protracted 4 day train journey from Fellbach in Stuttgart Bavaria during which we were frequently delayed & stationary on sidings. i was entranced by glimpses of lizards with vivid green heads scuttling on stone walls i could spot from the train window. it seems to me i have always been most affected by the natural environment @th expense of being able to recall much else. you cannot be long in this kind of task of annotating old photos without gaining some insight into how memory in general, but in particular one's own, works. my sister Rasa has told me how she can remember us competing for the privilege of pushing Saulutis' pram so it may be, though two years younger than me, her recall of him is fuller than mine. i recall nothing of my little brother other than the single memory described. evidently i have blocked everything else out - a propensity for doing which i have retained into adulthood. so this entry is as much a reflection on how memory works as a provision of information for my descendants. i was so taken by my 5 month stay in italy (c.12th april - c.3rd sept. '49) that i still treasure a small, very cheap & ordinary, foldout booklet of Napoli scenes i brought with me on the ship to Oz. the yanks used to take us kids in a truck for excursions to the beach and other places but the two shots @th top were taken by my father so he must have also taken us there @ least once. when i returned to Napoli with Helen late in life i was amazed by the accurate clarity of my recall for the detail of the city foreshore. the photo @ bottom left is in the Bagnoli camp & i recall i spent a lot of time on an oval inside an ancient amphitheater just behind & to the left of the church in the photo. nonetheless my positive recall of italy, consisting as it does of such brilliant imagery, retains a sombre & dark emotional underlay which is sure to have been a result of my awareness of the trauma my mum was going through @th time. i was particularly close to her from my earliest childhood right into my teens. as i write i begin to recall her groaning from the pains she was subject to from a defective gall-bladder even before Saulutis had fallen ill. once he fell ill i wasn't to know th@ besides the anguish any mother suffers when her child is slowly dying before her eyes th@ in this case mum's pain had the added dimension of her recent separation from the man whom she considered to be the love of her life & who was the child's father. as an elderly woman mum has explained to my wife Helen that her relationship with my father had become empty from the time she had found him living with another woman in East Prussia when he was an officer in the wehrmacht in the last year of the war (edited out, in consultation with Amy Witting, from her book "Elena's Journey"). mum told Helen th@ she had resumed the relationship with him only "for the sake of the children" (though my own reading is th@ the man she was in love with had not been prepared to take on longterm the responsibility of a woman with two kids in tow). so the decline & death of Saulutis also represented the 'final' sundering of her connection to his father. she wasn't to know th@ she would be visiting him one last time late in life to give him a copy of her book "Elena's Journey" in which he plays such a significant cameo part: he had ended up in america where he had resumed his original profession of researcher in agricultural science, was married with grandchildren, & had once again taken on significant roles in the litho expat community but this time in the US