Sometime in April, there was an older couple in the camp living in one of the separate rooms in the single story buildings. I was visiting them and they told me about a girl about my age named Alice Pelcova. They explained that she was in a difficult situation — she had been married to some Czech guy working at the Czech Embassy in Paris, and her old boyfriend from before the marriage had found out she was there and went to Paris to see her. She left her husband and came with her boyfriend to live in Vienna. The boyfriend had been her boss at a ski resort near Karlovy Vary and was 20 years older than she was. After she moved in with him he became very possessive and started beating her. She planned to leave him by emigrating to Australia and had already filled out an emigration application at the AFCR. Since I was also emigrating to Australia, the older couple wanted to introduce us so she would have some known company. They invited us both over to their room to meet. She was beautiful and I fell for her immediately.

We started seeing each other. I had by then moved out of the camp and into an apartment in Vienna, using the money from selling an old Volkswagen I had bought for a security deposit — more about the Volkswagen later. Alice escaped from her boyfriend with her suitcase to come live with me. After about a month I found out, and she admitted, that while I was at work she had been visiting her old boyfriend. He was working nights at a hotel front desk so he had his days free. I ended the relationship and found a cheaper apartment near the Prater in Vienna, which I shared with Emil.

After Alice went back to live with her boyfriend, she came to the gas station and wanted to see me again. So she kept living with him and once in a while we would meet. It was sometimes funny — they lived in an apartment close to “Badenka,” the end tram and train station on the line going to Traiskirchen. I would wait on my moped at a nearby street corner and watch for her to exit the apartment building. She would run towards me, and behind her the boyfriend would come running after her. She would hop sideways onto the back of the moped and I would take off. She was a person who needed to have one man and one side affair — I guess she could not help it.

The night before I left Vienna for the USA, I wanted to see her one last time. Her boyfriend somehow knew it and would not allow it. So I called him on the phone — the only time I ever spoke with him directly. I told him I was leaving for the USA and would never see Alice again, and that he could come with her to a specific restaurant for dinner with me, since it would be completely safe, because that would be it forever. He agreed. When I arrived at the restaurant he was there but sitting at a separate table — he would not sit with us. We had dinner, we said goodbye, and parted ways. The next morning Alice showed up at my apartment to say goodbye and rode with me on the tram part of the way to the airport. That was the last time I talked to her. I later tried to find out what had happened to her but could find nothing.