It bemuses me now how asexual my parents appeared to me while growing up. Even in later recollection, I never imagined them as actually fucking.
I was born in 1939 as my parents' second child, following my one-year older sister. That our births resulted from a sexual relationship between our parents was cloaked in a silence that also included how they met and if there was anything sexual in what attracted them to each other.
Sharing this with others offended not their sense of privacy but what they considered their decency. In their feeling, everything connected with sex was 'indecent', and as such a threat to their respectability.
Although Kate and I were only one year apart, we did not share a childhood. We did not have the same friends or shared interests.
But, more importantly, Kate was always my better. She was a bright, always decent and well-behaved child who, in our parents' eyes, could do no wrong. She was in everything, in her obedience, her schoolwork, her neatness and manners -- but especially in never having an indecent thought or saying an indecent word - a model who I, as a flawed boy, could not match, even had I wanted to.
The tensions between us eased when I, at fourteen -- the then school-leaving-age in Austria - left home for five years at a Technical College in Styria. My studies in Agricultural Science and Forestry prescribed supervised work experience during the holidays. Therefore, I was home for only brief visits.
Nevertheless, there was some resentment of my perfect sister left by the time we moved into adulthood. Plagued by my own 'indecent' thoughts and desires as an eighteen-year-old, I looked for a likely sinfulness in Kate.
Kate, I had to admit, had grown into a beautiful young woman. She was tall with a well-proportioned figure, and a fine-boned face with expressive eyes and dark, shoulder-length hair. For a while, she was beleaguered by young suitors whose indecent intentions she dismissed unrewarded.
Praised for her virtue by our parents, Kate appeared to be a demonstrably 'decent' young woman, uninterested in sex and promiscuous adventures.
I, however, found out that Kate was as sinful as I. Only much more interestingly so.
About her initial seduction -- I was away at College -- I learned by hearsay.
One day, a photographer who plied his trade in our town park near a beer garden, approached Kate. Smiling, he said she was so pretty that he would photograph her for free.
He was not a local but a Hungarian refugee making a living by photographing, in suitable locations, foremost US soldiers from the garrison in our town, usually with local girls in their arms. He provided them with lasting mementoes of their time as liberators in occupied Austria.
So, Kate, at first reluctant, posed for him in her Sunday dirndl and he took several shots on his Leica. Kate must have gradually relaxed in her posing. He told her he would have the best photo ready for her next Sunday.
When Kate went to pick up the promised photo, she returned all excited. Instead of the usual pocket-size photo she had expected, the photographer gave Kate a glossy 8x12 print that displayed her in a very flattering, dirndl-clad pose.
On returning home all excited, she told her parents that Laszlo had been a fashion photographer in Budapest and that he wanted her to model for him in other dresses. If she agreed, he promised her a copy of the folio he needed to further his professional career in Austria. He had begged her, Kate said, to help him.
I do not know if our parents raised any objection or if, as always, they blindly trusted Kate.
She agreed to model for him and over the next weeks, spent many hours with Laszlo, often until late into the night.
Her collection of glossy prints steadily grew. They showed her in many poses, the later ones in unfamiliar make-up and in glamorous dresses that Laszlo must have borrowed. She showed them to us with pride.
Some years later, Kate gave me one of Laszlo's photos which showed her wistfully serious, with barely a suggestion of her shapely breasts under a beautifully Norwegian-patterned jumper.