Jane

Jane. She was something else. This is gonna take a couple of posts. She was a fleck on my map, a fly in the ointment, so to speak. And inimitable.

She's been on my mind lately....

Jane was the most scurrile woman I have ever encountered. She grew up in Slovenia when it was still a part of southern Austria. Her family was very well-to-do. She studied to be a teacher, passed, and on her first day at school, teaching... she decided she hated children, and quit. She was always consequent, must say that for her. I just don't know why she never decided that BEFORE, you know?

She met a young teacher, and fell in love, but he wasn't who she thought he was. And just at the beginning of WWII.... she had to bail him out. He'd been in Trieste. And got caught doing something he shouldn't have in a place he shouldn't have. Namely, with a young man in a 'grotto' in intimate circumstances, so she told it.

And at that time.... he might have even gotten the death penalty. But she went down, and boxed him out of there... and over the years, she made him PAY, big time.

I knew another couple, same story, same decades and they are long gone now. But the woman saved him, he was incorrigible, but they had a daughter, just for appearances' sake, and somehow, it was a sort of love, but toxic for them both. So yes, love, but at a huge price.

Jane never seemed to get over that. Peter and I were in Trieste once, and tried to find 'the grottos'... but if there were any then, there aren't any now.....

Her imagination was immense.

When I came in on the scene, she lived full-time at the ho-tel. Omnipresent. I was a gnat, sort of, which bugged her.

She was a huge source of hilarity to me. She'd 'check' me out... and was immediatly 'evil'. Her husband was still alive, and had to come over and beg her for money to get something to eat, and something must have happened, because she'd throw money on the floor, and say, 'GO! Get a hot-dog on the main square, you're not getting more.' I've seen hate, but that was really crass.

He was a dapper lithe little schoolteacher... math. And would walk away crushed, and I was embarassed to have to witness that.

Jane didn't care. She liked to terrorise everyone. The restaurant was in the courtyard, and was open till 2 a.m. And her room faced it, and if they got rowdy.... well, sometimes a huge pot of scalding hot water got thrown out of an upper story from a hall window, and the party was OVER. Of course no one could trace it to her...

She would run around in winter opening windows.... one night we had such a chase through the building. Finally caught her after an hour, and she said, 'I NEED AIR!' 'THEN fucking open the window in your own ROOM!' 'I CAN'T, the bus fumes in the morning!'

Gawd, were we a pair.

Peter thought she was great, which I never understood.... at first.

And Jane... well... she didn't much like me.