---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Old Valley Road Hotel.
By Wombat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Any constructive comments are appreciated. I'm at 'bungala_wombat@yahoo.com.au'. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Nifty Readers, If you enjoy this story or others on Nifty, please send a generous donation to Nifty.org at 'http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html' to help support and maintain this free service full of wonderful stories so it may continue to remain available to everyone.
Thank you all, Wombat ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 7 - 'A Rainy Day' Part 28.
------------------------------------ Part 88: Plunj ------------------------------------
Doctor James Truman was keen to keep up with Bryn. They had rekindled the friendship at Leon's birthday party. James had gone through medical school with Bryn. Debbie, his wife, was an old school friend of Ellis's sister Virginia.
They had regular dinners together. James was a good host. He and Bryn had been close friends despite the age difference. James had great respect for Bryn's great wide-ranging intellect and had benefitted very much from Bryn tutoring him. James was quite open with Ellis that he could not have passed anatomy, immunology and biochemistry for instance without Bryn's help.
Debbie was friendly with Bryn but Ellis thought he could detect a coolness in Debbie towards him. At first Ellis put it down to Debbie's friendship with Virginia and the mutual dislike between Ellis and his sister.
Ellis was doing well studying German and French at the university. He thought he would extend himself by learning Croatian. He asked Marica who promptly got him enrolled in the Croatian language classes at the Croatian club. Ellis discovered that the Croatian language was quite dissimilar to French, German and English. Nonetheless, he made reasonable progress.
Sabine commented that because Croatian was a Slavic language like Russian, then perhaps Ellis might like to learn Russian as well. Ellis was not keen on the idea. Bryn thought that Sabine's idea was quite funny but a typical example of Germanic humour.
Ellis became a regular attendee at the Croatian club. He developed a close friendship with Zoran and his friends Branko and Ante. It was not long before Ellis found himself tutoring people in English language skills at the Croatian club, particular as his fluency in Croatian improved rapidly. His English language group grew quite large. It consisted mainly of young people at first but as time went on, quite a lot of older people joined as well, grandmothers and grandfathers too.
Ellis kept up his correspondence with Theodora Ferguson writing her letters that were filled with the sanitised accounts of his activities.
Ellis was expected to wear his Captain Marvel costume not only to Roman's and Bill's New Years' Eve parties but to the Gay (and later Gay and Lesbian) Mardi Gras parades. The costume continued to fit him well. To many people Ellis was Captain Marvel, particularly given the death toll that AIDS was still exacting.
Claire Duncan gave birth to a baby daughter whom she named Catherine. Soon afterwards Alana gave birth to twin boys whom she named Ellis and Bryn. Rosemary and Caitlin gave birth to a son each. As time went on, Ellis became the father of another twelve children.
Ellis modelled for Bruce Wyndham for several more paintings. However, none attracted the interest that the painting of Ellis stoking the 'Mountain' class locomotive did.
Every now and again Ellis and Bryn hosted parties in the penthouse. The parties became known for being comfortable and enjoyable affairs. Ellis and Bryn deliberately kept them from growing into the enormous parties that Roman and Bill hosted but then their place did not have the room that Roman's and Bill's big house had. Marica and her relations provided the staff and catering. Ellis was glad to have the Brcic clan come afterwards and clean up afterwards as well.
Ellis often invited his friends from university. It was interesting for him to watch the younger students be amazed by how relaxed and friendly their stern tutor Doctor Bill Gould became at the parties. More than one student remarked that they had not realised that Doctor Gould was a human being after all.
As the years passed, Ellis completed his studies and gained an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree. He was fluent in German and French. Through the Croatian club he became fluent in Croatian as well.
Emily Chi gained her Ph.D. in Philosophy and she was appointed as a lecturer in Philosophy at Sydney University. When Ellis asked Bill why he had not applied for the position, Bill replied that he could not be bothered. He did not want the extra workload of a lecturer and, living with Roman, he did not need the extra money. He was much freer to pursue his own interests and publish papers in the philosophical journals arising from those interests.
Bryn increased in size to a massive 160 kilograms (350 lb.) of hard solid muscle. His biceps grew to 24 inches (61 cm.). His shoulders were as big as basketballs. His arms, thighs and chest became even more muscular as did his magnificent buttocks. He decided that he had become big enough.
Ellis's weight increased a little to 128 kilograms (282 lb.) but he lost body fat. The result was he became ripped with bigger muscles. His arms were spectacularly muscular. His skin seemed to be like cling-wrap with nothing but muscles, veins, tendons and sinews underneath. There appeared to be no fat at all under the skin. He was shredded. Every muscle and sinew showed. His veins were like electric cables. His abdominal eight-pack was truly spectacular. The abdominals were like cobblestones. When he wore his Captain Marvel costume, people commented that he looked every inch the real superhero. He had developed a magnificent chiselled physique.
Bryn decided to learn the piano. Sabine took him on as a student and taught him at Ellis's grand piano. Bryn rarely practised but Sabine was tolerant of Bryn's slow progress.
The relationship between Sue and Tom broke up acrimoniously. Sue demanded that Tom move out of her house. He did so. Soon afterwards he disappeared. Leonie tried to track him down for some more modelling work but met with no success at all. Tom had just vanished. He was nowhere to be found. Leonie became worried. She contacted Tom's parents who reported Tom missing to the police.
Roman had quite a lot to say about Tom's disappearance. He was quite concerned about Tom. He made darkling comments about the number of young men and women who had disappeared off the streets of Sydney over the past years. However, he took pains to reassure Sue that he did not blame her for Tom's disappearance. Sue still worried. She felt guilty despite Roman's and Leonie's reassurances.
A few months after Tom's disappearance, Leonie received a handwritten letter from Tom stating that he was not interested in pursuing a modelling career anymore and that he was resigning from her agency. He was alive and in excellent health. He had joined the Roadknights Motor Cycle Club and had embarked on a new chapter in his life. He asked Leonie to pass his regards on to Sue and to tell her that he had got over the breakup of their relationship. He had moved on. He also asked Leonie to let his parents know all was well with him and that the police should close the missing person report.
Leonie passed the news on to Roman, Bill, Ellis, Bryn and the other friends as well. She told them that Tom had become a bikie. She was intrigued by the letter in that although the handwriting was recognisably Tom's, it was much less of an illegible scrawl than before. It was relatively neat and quite easily readable.
Sue's mood turned from worry to anger. She was furious that Tom had not written to her. She declared to Ellis that Tom was a coward and she hoped that next time Ellis and Tom met that Ellis would make a real mess of Tom. She wanted Ellis to 'mess up Tom's pretty face good and proper'.
Bryn finally solved the mystery of how Ellis's immune system was able to repel any infection by HIV. He also clarified the mechanism by which HIV disabled the human immune system and caused AIDS.
Over the years the level of HIV antibodies in Ellis's blood had dropped so low as to be undetectable. He was HIV negative in every sense.
When Bryn published a paper documenting the results of his research in a well-known American medical research journal, it caused a sensation world-wide. The hope was ignited that a cure for AIDS could be found now that Bryn had elucidated the mechanism by which Ellis's immune system was able to defeat any invasion by HIV. The challenge was now to find some means to enable the immune system of a normal person to defeat HIV, that is, to make ordinary people immune to AIDS. Given the highly complex molecular biochemical processes that Bryn found at play in Ellis's white blood cells, finding a way to get normal immune cells to behave in a similar way was an enormous challenge.
Following the publication of his results, Bryn was invited to present a paper to a medical conference in West Berlin and as well to a conference of immunologists in Vienna. These conferences were to be held during the Northern Hemisphere summer. Bryn felt flattered and he accepted the invitations.
Around this time Marica announced that she was going with her family to visit her extended family in Croatia which at that time was still part of Yugoslavia. She would also be away during the Northern Hemisphere summer.
She introduced her temporary replacement to Ellis and Bryn.
"I present to you Miss Titsiana Buberova," announced Marica. "She is from Czechoslovakia but she is okay."
Titsiana was a pleasant-looking well-built blonde woman aged in her early thirties.
Bryn found it difficult to suppress a grin.
After the two women had left the penthouse, Bryn announced, "From henceforth she shall now be known as 'Miss Tits'."
"Don't!" giggled Ellis. "That's not fair!"
Bryn laughed. He put his arm around Ellis and kissed him.
"Nah, I wouldn't do it to her, not to her face anyway."
"That's good."
When Marica found out that Ellis and Bryn would be in Berlin and Vienna at around the same time that she would be visiting her extended family in her home village Plunj in Croatia, she insisted that the two men should come and stay with them in her brother's house in between the two conferences.
Marica had emigrated on her own from Yugoslavia and arrived in Sydney in the late 1950s as a twenty-one-year-old. She had held a variety of jobs in both Sydney and Canberra, Australia's capital. She had met and married Zoran in Canberra and went on to have eight children with him.
Zoran was still a boy when he came to Australia with his parents and eleven brother and sisters from war-torn Yugoslavia shortly after the end of World War 2. His father's brother and his wife came as well with their young children. Zoran's father was a concrete engineer and went to work building dams for the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme in the mountains in the south of New South Wales near Canberra. He had gained experience working for the Germans building dams, bunkers and fortifications during World War 2 in German-occupied France, the Netherlands and Central Europe.
Zoran was working as a labourer and concrete pourer on the dams of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme when he met Marica. At the time she was working as a chef in a restaurant frequented by politicians in Canberra. Zoran was immediately attracted to the buxom, fiery, strong-willed and lively young red-head and wooed her energetically.
When Marica went to Yugoslavia on her holiday with her family, it was the first time she been back to her home village since her departure for Australia more than thirty years before. Titsiana took her place as housekeeper while she was away. Titsiana proved competent and efficient. Bryn said she did her work in a thoroughly Central European fashion. He could not explain what he meant to Ellis.
Titsiana was not married and had no children. She lived with her parents in Punchbowl, one of Sydney's southwestern suburbs.
One relaxed Saturday morning, Bryn decided not to go to work but instead to stay in bed having sex with Ellis. He wrapped his legs around Ellis's waist while Ellis powered into his arsehole and drove Bryn to the heights of orgasmic ecstasy. Bryn wrapped his huge arms and legs around the hard muscular body of his lover and was enraptured to feel Ellis's big thick hard cock thrusting powerfully up his anus, pounding his prostate and stirring his innards.
Afterwards Ellis lay on top of Bryn with his semi-stiff cock still up Bryn's anus and Bryn's arms and legs around his body. They had kissed and were both enjoying the golden afterglow of an energetic session of sex. Bryn was gently running his fingers through Ellis's hair and massaging his scalp. Ellis rested his head on Bryn's soft relaxed pectoral muscles. He was in a state of utter bliss.
Ellis heard the bedroom door open and then a gasp. The bedroom door quickly closed again.
Bryn started laughing. His whole body shook massaging Ellis's cock still up his arse. Ellis's cock stiffened again.
"What's going on?" asked Ellis.
In between laughs, Bryn replied, "That was Miss Tits. She poked her head in the door, saw us in flagrante delicto and got the fright of her life. The look on her face was absolutely fucking priceless! God, it was funny!"
"Sure," said Ellis and rammed his rampant stiff cock once more up Bryn's anus.
"O-o-h! Yes, please!" groaned Bryn.
They had one more round of sex with Bryn giggling and laughing all the way through until he had one more almighty orgasm while Ellis filled his arse with cum. Afterwards they showered together, dressed and went downstairs.
Titsiana was so full of apologies that Ellis felt embarrassed. He and Bryn both reassured her that all was well and they would not hold it against her. She apologised for not getting them breakfast. Again Ellis and Bryn reassured her that it was all right and told her that they were going to have breakfast anyway downstairs at Cafe Juliana's where Doctor Geoffrey Bland was waiting for them.
Ellis and Bryn flew to West Berlin for Bryn's conference. As their jet was coming in to land at Tegel Airport in West Berlin, the isolation of the city from the surrounding East Germany was apparent. The two men could even see the Berlin Wall surrounding the city dividing it from the Communist state of East Germany. At that time Germany was a divided country and had been since its surrender at the end of World War 2.
Bryn's conference was spread out over a week during the northern hemisphere summer. His presentation of his research results in the middle of that week attracted much interest and world-wide media coverage. Even though he was nervous speaking before such a large and august assembly, he acquitted himself well and was well received.
For several afternoons after the conclusion of the day's proceedings, Bryn had to spend time speaking to reporters and in front of television cameras. He found himself becoming a celebrity.
Ellis meanwhile busied himself savouring the artistic delights of West Berlin. He quickly became aware of the hothouse atmosphere of the city enforced as it was by the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall dividing it from the surrounding Communist East Germany. The Wall was never far from anywhere in West Berlin. It dominated the city.
Because Ellis was able to speak German fluently, he got on well with those involved with the artistic scene. Some locals picked his accent as Australian and Ellis was regarded as an exotic creature. Only the adventurous Australians journeyed to West Berlin.
Ellis took in exhibitions, cabarets, performances and theatre. Bryn was too keyed up before his presentation to the conference to be cajoled into accompanying Ellis to any of these events.
What Ellis loved about West Berlin was the openness, energy and sheer joy of the gay subculture of the city. There was nothing hidden or shameful about being gay. In comparison Sydney was just coming out of the Dark Ages. Ellis quickly found himself making friends and going to parties.
He was interested to read in the West Berlin newspapers about the anti-communist rumblings in next-door Poland and the activities of Solidarity, the Polish trade union led by Lech Walesa. There recently had been elections held in Poland, the first free elections since the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe at the end of World War 2 and the Nazi invasion of Poland fifty years before. These elections had been won convincingly by Solidarity.
The West Berlin newspapers gave glowing reports of these happenings in Poland. Maybe, just maybe, the hated Communist regime ruling East Germany would be overthrown and Germany once again would be reunited and made whole again. As West Berliners often pointed out to Ellis, the East Germans had gone straight from the Gestapo to the Stasi. The East Germans had gone straight from National Socialism under Adolf Hitler to Soviet Socialism under Josef Stalin and from one secret police to another.
There was a poster mounted high on a billboard on the Communist side of the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate so that it could be seen by people in West Berlin. It depicted the General Secretary of the Communist Party in East Germany, Erich Honecker locked in a passionate lip-locked embrace with Leonid Brezhnev, the president of the Soviet Union. There were slogans in both Russian and German. The German slogan translated as 'Brotherly Love; Together Forever'. Ellis knew enough of the Cyrillic alphabet and there was enough similarity of the Croatian language to Russian for him to work out that the Russian slogan meant more or less the same.
Ellis made several jokes about the poster and wondered why they all fell flat with his West Berliner friends. Erich Weber, one of Ellis's friends explained to Ellis that the poster made them sick at heart. He said to Ellis that Ellis would find it hard to understand the situation because Ellis was a very strong and muscular Australian gay man noticeably taller than the average German man. Ellis was from a faraway country on the other side of the world. The East Germans were Germans after all. The Wall was erected to stop them abandoning the 'workers' paradise' of East Germany and flooding over into the West. With a bitter irony it was named by the Communists as the 'Anti- Fascist Protective Wall'. The poster showed that the East Germans were the Russians' bitches. Anyone on the eastern side caught attempting to deface the poster was likely to be shot or be disappeared into the East German punishment system.
"That's exactly how the Communists want you to feel, despairing and sick at heart," Ellis declared in German to his Berliner friends. "It's just propaganda. That's all it is! It is a steaming pile of shit. You cannot take it seriously. No! Never! What you do is make fun of it, make jokes about it. Don't let those Communist bastards wear you down. Stick it up their collective arse with barbed wire wrapped around it and laugh while you do it!"
"You say brave words, my friend," said Reinhard Lehmann, another of Ellis's Berliner friends. "But you do not live here. You live in Australia that is very far away."
"Yes, I know for you it takes courage. I well understand it is easy for me to say because I do not live here. But it takes courage to make the changes. The Lord God knows that changes are desperately needed, not just in East Germany and the Communist World but also in the Western, so-called Free World. If we want to make changes, we have to have the courage to stand up and make the changes happen."
Around the room people clapped. Reinhard put his arm around Ellis's shoulders and said, "You are a brave man. I wish you could stay here in Berlin and lead us all to freedom and to a Germany that is unified once more. We need your courage."
Ellis gave a twisted smile and said, "I wish somewhat I could stay here too but my home is in Australia. I should not stay here."
"I understand you," replied Reinhard.
Bryn did not relax sufficiently to go out with Ellis until at least a day after his presentation. Then there were parties a-plenty. Bryn did not find his inability to speak German much of a handicap because most West Berliners could speak English well. The two powerfully built Australians attracted a lot of attention, particularly from the news media. In the German newspapers they were getting headlines that could be translated as 'The AIDS Doctor and his Noble Knight', 'The AIDS Doctor and His Lover the (Fearsome) Champion AIDS-Slayer' and so on. The story attracted world-wide attention, particularly in Australia because two Australians were the stars.
Ellis enjoyed himself immensely. When the time came to leave West Berlin to stay with Marica and her extended family in Croatia, it was a wrench for him to leave the city and his newfound friends.
They flew from West Berlin to Vienna via Frankfurt and caught a train to Zagreb from Vienna. From Zagreb they took a modern electric express train of the Yugoslav Railways southwest into the Dinaric Alps to some little town surrounded by thick forest.
In that town they took a little train hauled by a little 0-6-2 steam tank locomotive on a narrow-gauge railway through the forest to Marica's home village of Plunj. Bryn wondered if they would ever make it to their journey's end as the little steam locomotive wheezed and clanked its way down the line emitting steam like a demented samovar. The locomotive had an ear-piercing high-pitched whistle that sounded like a toy tin-whistle given to a small child by a malicious person to torment the child's parents. Ellis said to Bryn that the little steamer was certainly no 'Mountain' class locomotive. Bryn was not impressed.
Ellis tried speaking in Croatian with some of his fellow passengers. They were delighted that he could speak their language so he struck up a conversation with them.
None of them could speak English so Bryn found himself left out. Ellis tried translating for him but that make conversation awkward. Bryn soon tired of that so Ellis left him alone. Bryn sat at the window watching the seemingly endless forest go past while Ellis conversed with his fellow passengers.
Suddenly Bryn exclaimed excitedly that he saw a deer. His excitement attracted the interest of the Croats. When Ellis translated, they all laughed. One man held up both hands with all fingers raised and declared that if Ellis's friend kept on counting the deer, he would soon run out of fingers. Ellis translated that back to Bryn who rolled his eyes and looked sourly at him.
"Yeah, sure," replied Bryn.
"I love you," said Ellis.
He told his fellow passengers that Bryn thought that they were making fun of him. That occasioned loud laughter.
As Bryn looked at them wondering what was going on, Ellis put a comforting arm around his shoulders. Then one of the men got up, kissed Bryn full on the lips and told him he was beautiful. When Ellis translated, Bryn blushed and looked down.
When the train reached Plunj, Ellis and Bryn were met at the station by Marica and her eldest brother, Bogdan Jovanovic. Marica showered both Ellis and Bryn with hugs and kisses.
Bogdan drove them in his car to his house in the village. Bogdan's house was a big rambling structure where the main floor was built of stone and the upper three floors were built of wood. Below the main floor was a lower floor built of stone built into the side of the hill. It contained the enormous kitchen and the utility rooms. Bogdan proudly told them the house was built three hundred years ago and had remained in the family ever since. Marica translated for Bryn's benefit. She said with a laugh that she had warned her relatives that Ellis could speak Croatian fluently, so they all would have to be careful what they said in front of him.
On the outskirts of the town was a copper mine that had been in use since Roman times. Historically it had been owned by the Jovanovic family but it had been taken over by the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia during World War 2. Then after the end of the war it was nationalised by the Yugoslav government. Bogdan was now the mine manager.
When they arrived at the house, they were greeted by Darija, Bogdan's wife and all his children, grandchildren and Marica's other relations. The big house was full of people, Marica's brothers and sisters and their spouses and children, all who had come to see their relations from Australia.
Ellis and Bryn were formally introduced to Bogdan's and Marica's parents, Branimir and Karolina Jovanovic. They were grand old patricians, hale and hearty aged in their nineties.
Darija put Ellis and Bryn in the 'Lord's Bedroom', so-called because a nobleman and his wife had once stayed in it in the days of the Austro- Hungarian Empire. The two men were the honoured guests who had come all the way from the far distant land of Australia.
The bedroom was grand. It had a high ceiling that extended up to the second floor. Ellis noted that some of the plaster had fallen off the higher walls exposing the wooden planks underneath. He could see the gaps between the planks. The plaster over the stonework on the main floor was still in good condition.
Ellis and Bryn unpacked. They made use of the bathroom nearby to wash off the travel grime they had accumulated in their journey from West Berlin. There was no shower but there was a bath that was just big enough to accommodate one man at a time. The hot water was tepid and came from a hot water heater that sounded as if it had a serious intestinal disorder. It was summertime so the water was warm enough.
The men found it difficult to navigate their way around the house with its meandering passageways and crooked stairways. It was to take them several days to become familiar with the layout. In the meantime they kept getting lost, much to the amusement of the Jovanovic clan.
Dinner that evening was held in the dining room on the ground floor. It was huge with a high ceiling and redolent of faded Central European baronial splendour. It was more a dining hall. The long wide table had enough room to accommodate all the people staying in the house.
The dinner was a noisy affair. Ellis was frequently asked about what like was like in Australia and he gave descriptions of life in Sydney on the harbour. Marica pointed out that Ellis was well-off financially. Jolanda, one of Marica's sisters, asked Ellis what he thought of Marica. Unhesitating he replied that he loved Marica. She looked after both him and his stalwart partner very well indeed. In fact she looked after them better that his own mother.
That aroused a loud cheer and much clapping from the members of the family assembled around the table. Zoran immediately leapt to his feet and praised Ellis to the skies. He said that Ellis had defended him and Marica from a nasty German who treated them as 'untermenschen'. He had corrected the German in no uncertain terms. The German was a bully whom Zoran described as having narrow-set eyes in a Herrenvolk head. He said Ellis was a champion against bullies. Zoran recounted how sixteen bullies had attacked Ellis one dark night and Ellis had put them all in hospital with serious injuries.
The dinner reminded Ellis of the noisy dinners he had had at Findhorn. Bryn felt left out because he could not understand a word of Croatian even though Ellis and Marica, who sat on the other side of Bryn from Ellis, both translated as best they could.
The next day Marica suggested that Ellis and Bryn go for a walk around the village with her two eldest sons, Joe and Peter who were both in early twenties. Both sons had the flaming red hair of their mother. Joe was the son who had expressed his concern about Zoran trying to provoke Bryn to punch him in the abdomen with all his strength.
With them came Danilo, Darko and Mirko, three of Bogdan's and Darija's sons. They were aged in their late teens.
Ellis was interested to see all the houses apparently built in a traditional style. He asked Marica's nephews. They just shrugged their shoulders. To him the houses appeared quaint. He forbore from making any comment because such a remark may seem offensive to his hosts. Then he remarked that the houses were built in an interesting style that made the average suburban house in Sydney look boring by comparison. The Jovanovic boys laughed. Darko clapped Ellis on the shoulder.
They walked to the centre of the village. They saw the local Catholic church built in a Romanesque style. The building had a colourfully tiled roof and a bell tower added later. It dominated the village. Nearby was the gothic town hall. A number of shops made up the village centre. The village looked as if it had escaped the turbulence of history.
Danilo had been given a shopping list by his mother. The men went into the grocery and waited at the counter to be served by one of the shop assistants.
An old woman looked at Ellis and shrieked. She backed away, sat down hard on the floor and shrieked in Croatian, "The monster has come back. He has come back to do his evil."
Ellis looked at her dumbfounded. Bryn thought she had suffered some kind of fit but he felt handicapped being unable to speak Croatian. He asked Peter to tell the old woman that he was a doctor and he could help her. Peter asked Darko to pass the message to the old woman. She looked at Bryn with horror. She refused to let him near her.
She recognised the three Jovanovic boys and demanded to know what they were doing in the company of the evil creature. Danilo squatted down next to her and spoke to her. He asked her what was wrong.
She pointed a skinny finger at Ellis and declared that he has the eyes of the devil. He was the Gestapo man who came in the middle of the night with the German soldiers during the Second World War and took her husband away. She never saw her husband again and she never knew what happened to him or why they took him away. She was left with five young children to bring up on her own. She was certain that the Germans had killed her husband and it was the evil Gestapo man who had done the deed.
Ellis bent down to talk to her but she shrieked and held up at him the golden cross on a chain around her neck to ward off the evil being. She screamed at him to stay away from her. Ellis asked Danilo in Croatian to tell the old woman that he had not been born at the time and that he had been born on the day the Americans had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan, right at the very end of the war well after Nazi Germany had been crushed by the combined might of the British Empire, the United States of America and the Soviet Union.
Danilo relayed the information to the old woman but she crossed herself and declared that Ellis was the reincarnation of the Gestapo man. With a wry smile Ellis said to Peter in English that he was taught that the Catholic Church did not believe in reincarnation.
The Jovanovic boys could not speak English so Peter translated Ellis's remark into Croatian. Danilo was about to tell the old woman but she said sharply that she heard what Peter said. She went on to say that good Catholics were not reincarnated but evil men were beyond the goodness and comfort of the Holy Church.
Bryn asked Joe to find out if the woman required medical assistance. She refused. Darko and Mirko helped her to her feet and she scurried out of the shop as fast as she could go.
Mirko joked that Ellis does have green eyes, the eyes of the devil.
Ellis told him angrily to shut up.
Bryn heard the anger in Ellis's voice and saw Mirko cringe back in fear but he could not understand what was said. Ellis told him in English. He mentioned the story that he had told Bryn about Elizabeth reciting the French nursery rhyme about green eyes going straight to hell when Ellis was in London. Bryn put his arm around Ellis and hugged him.
Joe was worried. He asked Ellis in Croatian why Ellis was angry. Ellis replied that he did not like people assuming he was evil merely because he had green eyes. He told the Brcic and Jovanovic men the story of his transvestite friend in London, Elizabeth, reciting the French nursery rhyme in front of all the people who had come to the entertainment and how she had pointed out to everyone what green eyes Ellis had. She had strongly implied that Ellis was evil but back then, Ellis had played along with the joke, even though the nursery rhyme was stupid and totally wrong. This time, given the obvious distress the old woman was suffering, it was not a joke. He was worried that people in the village would believe that he was the reincarnation of the evil Gestapo agent who had terrorised the villagers all those years before during the Nazi occupation. The young men understood Ellis's concern, having come from the same background themselves.
Once Danilo had made his purchases, the men made their way back to the Jovanovic house. Ellis was conscious of the villagers looking at him and pointing at him. He felt very uncomfortable and very exposed despite being with Bryn, Joe, Peter, Danilo, Darko and Mirko.
That evening dinner was lively as usual. After desert the slivovitz was brought out and filled glasses passed around to all of sufficient age.
The drinking had progressed well when the fourteen-year-old Dinko asked, "Uncle Ljubo, how many Jews did you kill during the War when the Nazis were here?"
"Lots of them. Dozens," replied Uncle Ljubo.
"Why?" asked Dinko.
Some of the women coughed nervously.
"I killed the Jews because they were nasty dirty stinking rats who were polluting the purity of our noble race."
"Listen, you demented old fool," Branimir scolded his younger brother, "You killed no Jews. You just told your German friends and they came and took the Jews away to the extermination camps in Poland. Yes, I know you joined the Ustasha and you were keen to impress your German friends, especially the Gestapo agent whom people say our guest Ellis resembles. You choose to forget that the Germans considered us Croats as 'Untermenschen'. They were the 'Herrenrasse', the Master Race. To me that was most insulting but I could not say anything because the Germans would have taken me away and killed me too. You were too busy ingratiating yourself with them to care. You were so young and silly and easily led. But the number of Jews you killed yourself was nought. You exaggerate, my brother. Your memories are false. You must never tell untruths to our young."
Branimir drew breath and continued, "Yes. I know people in the village say that Ellis resembles the Gestapo agent but to me there is no resemblance. I knew the man. I treated him very carefully because he was so dangerous and my little brother Ljubo was his good friend. I know he had a very slight resemblance to Ellis. Perhaps it is sufficient to mislead the gullible and the fools. Yes, both men had green eyes, blond hair and you could say they both had Aryan good looks but to me there is only a very slight resemblance. Ellis is a very good kind person whom I am happy to have stay in my house."
Everyone turned and looked at Ellis who felt put on the spot.
Ellis started, "Um, thank you, my noble host, for your kind words. I am very grateful."
"Nonsense, my young friend," retorted Branimir. "It is the truth. One must stop this silly nonsense going around. You had not even been born when that man was in this village."
"That is true. I was not born until the very end of the war when the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan."
That caused a buzz of conversation around the table.
Then Darko said, "You said in the shop you were born on the very day the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan."
"That is true," replied Ellis.
More conversation.
"You are the man of the Big Bang," laughed Darko.
Ellis reddened as people laughed. He looked at Bryn who had not understood a word of the conversation because nobody had translated for him. Bryn was pushing a piece of peach around his desert bowl. Ellis realised with relief that Darko's unintended double entendre was lost on the Croats.
Rozalija, one of Marica's sisters, asked Bryn if he was Jewish and she hoped that he was not offended by her uncle's remarks.
With a smirk Marica translated into English for Bryn's benefit and Bryn threw back his head and laughed. When he had settled down, he asked Marica to tell her sister that he was born in Wales and his parents were both Welsh. He knew of no Jewish ancestors in his family tree. And, he was not offended by her uncle's remarks because he did not understand a word the old man had said.
Ratko, one of Marica's teenage nephews, asked where Wales was in halting English. He was keen to show off the English language skill he had learned at school. Marica pointed to Bryn who had managed to understand Ratko. Bryn explained in simple English that Wales was part of the British Isles and it was next to England. Marica translated the conversation into Croatian.
The bed in the lord's bedroom allocated to Ellis and Bryn was large and soft but with a real bounce in the mattress. It seemed made for energetic sex and the two lovers made good use of it.
Ellis told Bryn of Darko's remark about Ellis being the man of the Big Bang.
Bryn laughed and said, "Well, then, let's have some more of the 'Big Bang'."
They left all the bedroom lights switched on. They stripped off naked and jumped onto the bed together.
Bryn lay face down on the bed with his mighty arms spread out across the bed and with a pillow under his groin. Ellis smeared lubricant all over his big thick, rampantly stiff cock and then applied a liberal dollop to Bryn's anus.
Then, astride Bryn's tree-trunk like thighs, he placed the head of his big ramrod stiff cock between the big hard mounds of Bryn's muscular buttocks up against the pucker of Bryn's anus. He pushed it in. Bryn gasped at the sudden intrusion as Ellis's cock head entered his anus through his tight anal sphincters.
"Oh fuck! Oh fuck! That feels so good!" he moaned.
"Geez mate," replied Ellis. "You got such a tight arse-hole. Hell, it feels good."
"Just keep fucking me! God! It feels so fucking good inside me!"
"Yeah. Sure."
Ellis thrust the rest of his cock right up inside Bryn's arsehole. He kept on thrusting into Bryn who moaned loudly with pleasure with each thrust. While Ellis kept on thrusting, he was sure he heard whispers and low voices coming through the cracks in the exposed wooden planking of the upper wall. Suddenly a chunk of plaster fell off the upper wall showing more of the wooden planking with gaps in between the planks. Ellis did not care.
When he felt Bryn's anal sphincters relax, he sped up his thrusts and powered deep into Bryn's bowels. Bryn was moaning and groaning with ecstatic pleasure with each energetic thrust. The springiness of the mattress seemed to amplify each thrust. Bryn seemed be in Heaven as Ellis rammed his cock into him.
"Oh Fuck! That feels good! Come in me! Come inside me! I love it! Please! Come inside me! Fill my arse with your cum!" cried Bryn with mounting passion.
With Bryn's ardent encouragement, Ellis could hold it no longer. He howled like a wolf as he thrust his cock as far into Bryn's bowels as he possibly could go while he squirted his semen in a torrent deep inside Bryn's massively muscled torso.
Bryn moaned deliriously. Suddenly he gave a loud guttural cry. The huge muscles of his massive arms tensed up and bulged. His head reared up. Ellis kept his cock thrust as far as possible up Bryn's arse. Bryn's face reddened. The thick hard muscles of his back bulged up into hard mounds. He screamed in the height of his orgasmic ecstasy. It seemed to continue on forever.
When the last vestiges of their orgasms passed, Ellis lay quietly on Bryn's wide, heavily muscled back with his almost fully stiff cock still inserted up inside Bryn's anal canal. As he lay there, he was sure he heard the muffled cries and groans of young men and boys having orgasms.
About a minute later, Bryn muttered, "You know, mate. I get the feeling that we're being watched."
"I reckon you're right. I do too," giggled Ellis. "I reckon those young guys are up there having a bloody good old perve on us. It sounds like they're really getting off on us having a screw."
"Yeah. Good luck to them," laughed Bryn.
"Golly, it feels like we're on stage. It's the first time we've performed in public like this."
"Second time. What about Miss Tits?"
Ellis laughed, "Dunno if that counts. She certainly wasn't there for the entire performance like those guys up there are. I thought she got the fright of her life and vamoosed quick smart, blessed Tits ever virgin."
Bryn laughed.
He said, "You know, mate, that big thick dick of yours up my arse is a real invite to continue the performance and give those guys up there a real thrill. The thought of those guys up there watching us and perving on us shooting their cum all over the shop is giving me one hell of a buzz. You OK with that?"
"Sure thing," replied Ellis and thrust his cock deeper up Bryn's anus.
He kept on ramming his cock deep up inside Bryn's bowels. Bryn groaned and moaned in his utmost pleasure. Ellis thought he heard moans coming from behind the upstairs panelling.
He kept on powering into Bryn while Bryn continued moaning and groaning as Ellis stirred his guts with his cock. It was not long before Bryn screamed into another mighty orgasm. It took Ellis somewhat longer to achieve his climax and pump his seed deep inside Bryn's bowels. While he was coming down off his high, he heard the unmistakable sounds of young males having orgasms. The thought gave him a real buzz but he realised he did not have enough go to fuck Bryn once more just yet. He would have to wait a little while before another round of sex.
"I'm fucked, well and bloody truly," announced Bryn. "Bedtime for me. OK?"
"Yeah, OK," Ellis replied.
Bryn reached a mighty arm up towards the panel of switches over the bedhead. Ellis kissed that mighty arm. He loved the bulge of those huge muscles. Bryn switched off all the lights in the bedroom, grabbed Ellis around the back of his head and kissed him hard on the lips. Ellis responded eagerly.
After a minute or two Bryn announced, "I'm well and truly fucked. It's sleepy time for me."
"Yeah, me too," replied Ellis.
He remained lying on Bryn's back. He felt great comfort in Bryn's huge body.
The next morning at breakfast, Ellis noticed that the boys and young men were subdued and looked tired. Dinko, Jerko, Zlatko, Ratko and Radovan were walking stiffly. They looked like they had sore arseholes. Marica looked meaningfully at Ellis and Bryn. She caught Ellis's eye and smirked. She knew but she said nothing.
Most evenings Ellis and Bryn had sex before an appreciative audience who seemed to get noisier with each successive night. The boys were looking tired and the younger boys were looking well-used.
Some nights later a dance was held in the town hall. A local band provided the music. The Jovanovic clan turned out in force. Many of the local ladies were keen to dance with Ellis who found himself dancing energetically most of the night once he learnt the local dance moves.
Bryn found it difficult to pick up the local dance moves. The big man danced trying to match the moves of the others but he felt awkward. He tired of the proceedings. He saw that Ellis was popular with the ladies who clustered around him having animated conversations with him when he was not dancing. Bryn could not speak a word of Croatian. He was in a completely alien environment. He did not know what he was supposed to do. He felt maladroit and out of place. His partner Ellis was surrounded by the local ladies and was obviously enjoying himself. But then, Ellis could speak the language. Bryn felt a twinge of jealousy. He felt left out. He informed Marica, Zoran, Bogdan and Darija that he was going to walk home. Marica tried hard to persuade Bryn to stay but he was adamant. Darija told him with Marica translating that the house was not locked so he could let himself in.
The village was dark. There were no streetlights. However, the night was bright with stars that seemed brighter and more numerous than they were in Sydney. He could not find any of the familiar constellations. He reminded himself that he was now on the other side of the world. The black forest-covered mountains surrounded the village and hid the horizon. He was quite happy walking around the village. He delighted in the star-lit darkness of the warm still summer night.
Ellis, the Australian employer of the former village girl Marica Jovanovic now Marica Brcic, was much in demand. He was a very good- looking and powerfully built blond hunk of muscle who happened to be a good dancer. He was a rare exotic bird. His bright emerald green eyes gave him a devilish foreign look. Some of the ladies thought he looked German but Ellis did not take offence. And he could dance. The ladies clustered around him clamouring for his attention. The band played on. And he danced.
Bryn managed to find his way through the village to the Jovanovic house and let himself in through the front door. As he ascended the grand staircase, he heard noises from the ground floor. He went back downstairs and investigated. In the kitchen he found Ljubo drinking his way through a bottle of French brandy on his own and talking to himself. When Ljubo saw Bryn, he staggered over to a cupboard and got out a glass and offered it to Bryn. When Bryn refused, Ljubo flew into a rage and threw the glass at him. The glass whizzed past Bryn's head and smashed against the wall. Then Ljubo threw a whole lot of other glasses at Bryn who hurriedly left the kitchen and went upstairs to the lord's bedroom.
In the quiet of his bedroom Bryn undressed and got into bed. He was soon asleep.
He was woken well after midnight by Ellis, Zoran and Bogdan. The men told him that they found Ljubo lying drunk on the floor in the kitchen in a pile of broken glass. Ljubo was covered in blood coming from many cuts. Zoran asked Bryn if he could stitch up Ljubo's cuts.
Bryn pulled on a shirt, shorts and shoes and accompanied the other men downstairs. He was horrified to see the mess that Ljubo was in. Ljubo had drunk himself into a stupor and was covered in bleeding cuts from all the broken glass he had fallen onto. Marica, Darija, Branimir, Karolina, Jolanda and Rozalija were trying to clean up the mess. Branimir was angrily telling everybody that his brother was a drunken sot. Darija offered Bryn the household sewing kit with which to sew up Ljubo's cuts.
Bryn told the others with Ellis translating that he could not stitch up Ljubo's cuts with household needles and cotton. He would need specialised sterilised surgical needles and thread from a hospital to do the job. Before he did that, he would have to wash out any broken glass from the wounds with sterile saline solution. Another problem was that he was not authorised to practise medicine in Yugoslavia.
Bogdan decided he would take his uncle in his car to the local hospital where the nurses would stitch him up. Zoran and Ellis wrapped the solidly built bleeding old drunk up in a sheet and carried him to Bogdan's car. They went with Bogdan to carry Ljubo into the hospital.
Bryn returned to bed.
At the hospital, Ljubo was cleaned up and stitched up by some of the nurses and the cute young Serbian doctor who kept throwing glances in the direction of the two muscular men Ellis and Zoran. The head nurse scolded Ljubo for being a silly old drunkard and falling into a pile of broken glass. When they all had finished, Ljubo looked like a cartoon character who had been savaged by a cageful of lions. The doctor insisted that Ljubo spend what was left of the night at the hospital and the nurses backed him up strongly. They wanted to keep him under observation.
"Thank God that we do not have to take him home again," remarked Zoran in Croatian.
Ellis laughed, "You say that about your beloved uncle-in-law?"
Zoran aimed a swipe at Ellis's head but Ellis ducked. Bogdan, the nurses and the doctor laughed.
The time came for Ellis and Bryn to return to Vienna so that Bryn could present his paper to the immunology conference. The two men received a rousing send-off and departed the village on the little narrow gauge steam train. That took them through the forest to the railway junction where they caught a modern electric train to Zagreb and then on to Vienna.
In Vienna, they had booked a hotel suite in the Innere Stadt or Inner City close to Saint Stephen's Cathedral or Stephansdom. The hotel was a short walk from the conference centre.
Bryn wanted to spend a day before the conference started making final revisions of his paper that he was going to present.
It was a warm summer's day so Ellis wore a short-sleeved shirt with slacks. He wandered around the Inner City looking at the shops and having a coffee and torte at one of the coffee shops near the cathedral. Afterwards he went into the cathedral and sat in a pew. He felt overwhelmed by the awe-inspiring and richly ornamented Gothic interior. He thought of the years that had passed since he left London. He thought of Findhorn and Hilda and Theodora. He thought about the people in the house in Earls Court, if BJ had come down with AIDS and if he was still alive. He thought of Saint Paul's Anglican Cathedral and the picture 'The Light of the World' in London. He thought of the happy years he had spent back in Australia with Bryn as well as all his other friends in Australia including Roman and Bill, Geoffrey, Marica, Zoran, Sabine, Alison and Clint. He reflected that he was in a Catholic church for the first time since before Bryn came into his life. He wondered what his life had in store for him, what his future held.
His reverie was interrupted by a woman saying in a classic Kensington Voice, "This place is so Roman Catholic!"
He looked at the well-dressed woman and her husband with a wry smirk thinking "Of course it is. This is a Catholic cathedral."
The woman's husband looked straight at Ellis who held his eye for a couple of seconds until the man looked away.
"Darling, be careful," said the husband quietly. "People can understand English here. That German muscle man in the pew with the fair hair heard you and I must say, his face was a picture. He must've understood you and he probably thought you were being a complete dill."
Ellis's smirk became even wrier. So that man thought he was a German. Well! And yes, the woman was a complete dill.
The woman turned and looked at Ellis who had one eyebrow raised. He held her eye until she reddened and looked away.
"Hmph!" she said.
The couple walked away down the aisle.
The cathedral was filling with tourists. Camera flashguns were going off frequently. It was not just the Japanese with the cameras but the British and American tourists were just as bad.
Ellis left the cathedral and strolled along Graben and Kohlmarkt. He looked at the shops selling the exclusive brands. He stopped and had a coffee in a little coffee shop in one of the Gassen or little side streets.
Bryn's presentation of his paper occurred fairly early in the conference. It was well received. The reception was more restrained because as far as the media were concerned, it was old news and it was at a conference of immunologists. However, his audience appreciated the significant of his research.
Some of Bryn's colleagues including Geoffrey Bland and Professor Pszczolinski had flown from Sydney to attend the conference and hear Bryn's presentation. The hospital was willing to pay for the Vienna conference. Ellis, however, was willing to pay for Bryn's attendance at the Berlin conference as well.
Bryn had also made friends with some of the attendees, particularly those who had been at the conference in Berlin. To celebrate the successful presentation of his paper, his friends invited him to dinner at the old restaurant Die Gastwirtshaft zu den drei Hacken in the inner city not far from their hotel. The composer Franz Schubert used to dine there with his friends in the early nineteenth century.
Over dessert Doctor Michael Lynch, an immunologist from San Francisco in the United States, commented that Bryn showed a lot of courage in being so open about the nature of his same-sex relationship with Ellis. He commended Bryn for his courage and he hoped that Bryn's example would encourage others to do the same. He had treated a lot of AIDS patients and so many had left it until the last minute to seek treatment when it was already too late to ease their suffering.
The others echoed Dr Lynch's sentiments. Doctor David Rubenstein, a physician from New York, remarked that Bryn must consider himself very lucky to be in a relationship with a super elite suppressor who was such a fine strong healthy and muscular specimen of manhood, a man who was immune to just about everything and who was willing to undergo a bone marrow extraction to provide the cells to kick-start Bryn's research.
Bryn agreed wholeheartedly. He was clearly very happy in his relationship with Ellis and demonstrated it to the restaurant by putting his arm around Ellis's shoulders and kissing him. The other doctors and their spouses clapped and cheered. They were joined in their applause by most of the other diners in the restaurant.
Ellis told of his encounter in the cathedral with the English couple which caused much mirth from his fellow diners. He asked why the Englishman would think he was a German.
Frau Doktor Elisabeth Hoellerer, a Viennese physician, replied, "You look like a German."
"What's the difference between a German and an Austrian?" asked Ellis.
Doktor Hoellerer replied with a wry smirk, "The difference between a German and an Austrian is the difference between a body-builder and a dancer."
Herr Doktor Bernhard Heine, an immunologist from Bonn, the capital of West Germany, declared loudly in German, "To me is that remark offensive."
An argument in German ensued between the Germans and the Austrians at the table. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film star bodybuilder who was born in Austria, was mentioned several times.
Then Doctor Lynch intervened and said, "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but many of us here can't speak German."
"Would you like me to translate for you?" asked Ellis mildly.
Frau Doktor Hildegard von Brockenbach, a physician from Koblenz in West Germany looked at Ellis with a smile and remarked in English, "Of course, you understood every word we said."
"Yes. I was expecting to see a duel being fought in the street outside any minute."
Doktor von Brockenbach's laugh tinkled. "You are a man with a lively sense of humour," she remarked.
She turned to Bryn and said, "You must find your partner very amusing."
"Ooh, yes I do," replied Bryn with enthusiasm. "I find him amusing and interesting and most entertaining in all sorts of ways."
That raised a laugh from the rest of the table.
Vienna had the reputation for being the music capital of Europe. Ellis made the most of it and Bryn readily accompanied him to the evening performances. The Vienna Staatsoper was just around the corner in Kaerntner Strasse so Ellis and Bryn saw the Mozart opera 'Die Zauberfloete' or 'The Magic Flute' and the Wagner opera 'Lohengrin'. In between they went to a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony held at Das Theater an der Wien. All the performances were in the original German. However, the programs had good translations into English which satisfied Bryn. Ellis helped out when necessary.
Bryn had invited Ellis to come along to the conference but Ellis was not at all interested in listening to immunologists talking shop in great technical detail. Ellis toured around Vienna instead.
There were many art galleries, museums and palaces for Ellis to visit, too many for him to fit in during his stay in Vienna. He spent a day in the Hofburg looking around the former imperial palace and in the Schatzkammer, the treasure house of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in which were kept all the treasures of the Habsburg dynasty. Other days he spent at Schoenbrunn palace and the Belvedere palaces.
Arriving back home in Sydney they were met with a tumultuous welcome from the news media. The AIDS doctor and his partner, Captain Marvel, were the heroes of the moment. They featured heavily on television and in the newspapers. Suddenly they had become celebrities.
One Saturday not long after their return, they had breakfast with Geoffrey as usual in Cafe Juliana's. They had finished their breakfast and were chatting with Geoffrey when Vivien Wong, the proprietress of the cafe and a redoubtable Chinese matron came to their table. She said quietly that she had something confidential to discuss with the doctors. Bryn invited her to sit down and Ellis got her a chair.
Speaking very quietly, Vivien pointed out a middle-aged man sitting at a nearby table quietly looking out the window. Ellis had a good look at him. The man had a corpulent build and thinning whitish grey hair. Ellis noted his watery pale blue eyes.
Vivien leaned forward speaking very quietly. "I would like you two doctors' opinion about that man over there, Mr Potter he's called. He is quite strange. He sits there on his own talking and smiling away to himself. My staff are quite worried about him and I would like to know if you think he's dangerous."
"I haven't seen him here before," remarked Ellis. "How long has he been here?"
"He arrived here soon after you two went away to Europe," replied Vivien. "He moved into one of the apartments in this building and I hear he's divorced, rather unhappily, I hear. His wife went off with another man."
"What seems to be the problem?" asked Geoffrey putting on his professional manner.
"Well, my youngest daughter Natalie was speaking with him and he told her that he likes talking with all his telepathic friends. He said that they are very amusing and they keep him going. They give him hope. Natalie is quite afraid of him. He sounds quite mad."
"Has he given you and your family any reason to be afraid of him?"
"Well, he sits there by himself laughing and talking to himself. I am wondering if I should call the police."
"How does he treat the members of your family? Has he shown any signs of agitation or aggression to your family or the other people here in the cafe?"
"No. He doesn't talk much with the other patrons but he's very sweet with my family. He certainly appears be quite gentle."
"Why are you concerned about him?"
"The way he sits there by himself talking and chatting away to himself. Him and all his telepathic friends! Who knows what he might do next? I'm worried that he might put people off coming here."
"He sounds sweetly mad," put in Bryn with a smile. "Quite harmless though."
"How beautifully put, Bryn," declared Geoffrey. "I agree with Bryn. He certainly seems quite harmless. A little odd but quite harmless. Have you noticed any drop-off in the number of people coming here since he started coming here, Vivien?"
"This place seems just as full as it usually is," observed Ellis. "That's my two cents worth."
"Well, no. I think you're right, Mr De la Mare," said Vivien. "The numbers haven't been dropping off and our takings haven't decreased."
"Frankly, Vivien, I really don't think you have any cause to be alarmed about Mr Potter," stated Bryn. "He certainly appears quite harmless and I really don't think that his condition is going to change for the worse."
"Thank you both, Doctor Powys and Doctor Bland. You have eased my mind," said Vivien.
She appeared visibly relieved.
Marica was away in Croatia for another four weeks. Titsiana looked after the two men well but she seemed to lack that extra something that Marica had. Ellis spent quite a lot of time at the Croatian Club.
When Marica arrived back home again, both Ellis and Bryn were very glad to have her back again. The first day Marica arrived at the penthouse, Bryn took the day off work and the three of them sat in the kitchen talking about their time in Croatia over many cups of coffee.
In the November of that year, the Berlin Wall was breached and the East German Communist Government fell. That paved the way for a wave of liberalisation of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Poland had already replaced her Communist government with a more liberal government backed by the Solidarity Trade Union. Around Christmastime, the Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and killed during the revolution in Romania. Communism disappeared utterly from that country.
At both the Christmas and New Year's Eve parties held by Roman and Bill, Roman celebrated the liberation of his beloved Poland from the Communists even though he had been born in Australia. Both his parents had been born in Poland. Ellis, Bryn and the rest of the party guests enthusiastically participated in the celebration of Polish freedom.
In the following year, Ellis gained a temporary appointment as a tutor in Eastern European studies at the University of Sydney. His knowledge of the Croatian language and culture were the main reasons he received the appointment while the person he replaced was away on maternity leave. His knowledge of German and understanding of Polish culture were also factors.
The reunification of West and East Germany into one whole country was set in train. It was achieved in the October of that year.
Ellis's correspondence with Theodora Ferguson continued. Not long after the news of the successful reunification of Germany, Ellis received a letter from Theodora telling him that BJ had been diagnosed with AIDS. BJ had lost a lot of weight and had become a shadow of his former magnificent self.
Theodora already knew that Ellis was immune to AIDS and that Bryn was Ellis's current partner. She said that she thanked God for Ellis's good fortune. Hilda had been proved right about Ellis being totally free of the AIDS virus.
Ellis was surprised to receive one day a long letter from Will, who owned the house in which Ellis had lived with BJ in Earls Court. Will had obtained Ellis's address from Terry who was still living in Australia and who had moved in with Bertie. Terry continued to help Roman to set up art exhibitions at Roman's art gallery.
In the letter, Will chronicled the changes that had taken place in the house in Earls Court during the years since Ellis had gone home to Australia. He had successfully completed a Ph.D. in archaeology and he had been appointed a lecturer at the University of London. He and Haakon had split. Haakon had gone back to Norway to look after his bed-ridden elderly widowed mother. Will was still without a partner. Many of the people had stayed on in the house. Trey and Ray had become like a long-married couple. They were devoted to one another. Juliana had undergone a sex-change operation to become a real woman. She remained with Julian. They had tried to get married but British law at that time would not allow a man to marry a transsexual who had been a man. Elizabeth had descended into alcoholism. She had reverted to a he with only a bottle as a partner. Will's description matched Terry's description.
Will mentioned that Terry has met Ellis at Roman's and Bill's Christmas party some years previously. Terry had written he was delighted to meet the Wild Colonial Boy again and he had a good time at the Christmas party where he had met his current partner Bertie Redfield. He had remarked that Ellis had made significant changes to his lifestyle. In particular Ellis had become the stud of choice for lesbian couples wanting to have children. Not only that but Ellis had acquired a big, gorgeous looking, powerfully built mountain of muscle whom Ellis fucked frequently. Terry liked Australia so much that he decided to stay in Sydney with Bertie. He also loved working with Roman. He thought that Australian artists were doing most interesting work.
Will also wrote about BJ and his AIDS diagnosis. BJ had lost much of the muscle mass he had and his health was failing. Will described BJ as becoming like a skeleton in comparison to what he was before. He was deeply moved by the unfolding tragedy and he apologised to Ellis for being the bearer of bad news.
Every so often Ellis and Bryn would go and have dinner with Doctor James Truman and his wife Debbie. Occasionally the Trumans would hold a party to which Ellis and Bryn would go. Ellis found it difficult to get on with Debbie, who was an old school friend of Ellis's sister Virginia. Often Debbie would not refrain from making a snide remark about Ellis within his hearing. His relationship with her became more difficult.
Ellis's appointment as a tutor at the School of Eastern European Studies at Sydney University became long term. In addition, his commitment increased at the Croatian Club where his English language tutorials were in much demand.
As time went on, Ellis's relationship with Debbie Truman became acrid. She frequently made deliberately offensive remarks to Ellis who sometimes broke his resolve not to answer back. Then a nasty argument would ensue to the embarrassment of the other dinner or party guests.
Things deteriorated to the point where Ellis refused to accompany Bryn to dinners or parties at the Truman house. In answer to Bryn's pleading, he used the excuse of his commitments at the Croatian Club. In fact when Bryn went to the Trumans alone, Ellis would make his way to the Croatian Club where often he would drink with Zoran and all his friends after the tutorial groups. He was well liked at the Croatian Club. The Croats were open in their affection for him.
He always took a taxi to the Croatian Club because he was not willing to drive one of his cars home after drinking at the club.
Ellis continued corresponding with both Will and Theodora. He took to writing his letters on Bryn's recently upgraded PC and printing the letters out on their newly acquired and expensive laser printer that replaced the faithful but worn-out old dot-matrix printer. He found it much easier to compose his letters using the PC word-processor because he could change words and their order as well as correcting spelling errors easily with the computer. He did not have to resort to crossing out errors and squeezing in insertions and corrections. He could just delete the errors and add the corrections and insertions. Both Theodora and Will continued writing their letters by hand.
One dull winter's day some years later, he received a short airmail letter from Will with the news that BJ had succumbed to AIDS. Will gave a terse description of BJ's death and apologised for the brevity of the letter.
Will's letter affected Ellis deeply. He was surprised by the depth of feeling he still had for BJ, even though he was very happy with Bryn. He sat in the living room on the couch with the letter in his lap and stared out over the sullen heaving waters of Sydney Harbour. Silent tears trickled down his face.
Bryn was at work at the hospital. Marica had just finished in the kitchen when she saw Ellis weeping. She sat down next to him, put her arm around him like a mother and asked him what the matter was. Without a word he handed her Will's letter.
She put her glasses on and read the letter holding it in one hand while she kept her other arm around Ellis.
"That is so sad," she commented after she had read the letter. "I am so sorry to hear of the death of your previous lover."
"Thank you," Ellis managed to get out.
He continued staring out over the grey waters of the harbour. Busy ferries criss-crossed the water.
After a while when he had regained control of his emotions, he said, "It was more of a shock than I thought it would be. I thought I'd got over BJ but I guess I hadn't really. Thank you, Marica, for being so understanding."
"It is always a pleasure," replied Marica.
Some weeks later after Ellis managed to compose and post a reply back to Will, he received a much longer letter from Theodora. She had stayed with BJ through the last weeks of his life. She had supported him in the hospice as he journeyed towards his death. In her letter she gave an unsparingly frank account of BJ's suffering from the AIDS- related diseases that he was afflicted with right up to his death. It was a hard death he died. Ellis found it difficult to read her account.
When Ellis gave the letter to Bryn to read, Bryn commented after reading it, "She's angry. She's really angry. She does not spare you one bit."
"Do you think she blames me?" asked Ellis.
"No," declared Bryn. "She's angry because BJ's life was cut short, because he brought it on himself through his own stupid actions. Oh, you know, she might be a little bit cross with you for shooting through to the other side of the world back home to Australia far away from it all but I don't reckon she blames you for doing that."
Then Bryn hugged Ellis, who found himself weeping into Bryn's chest. They stayed like that with Bryn's powerful arms wrapped around Ellis who took much comfort in feeling them around him. He took great comfort in feeling the warm thick hard solid muscular mass of Bryn's body hard against him with Bryn's huge arms holding him tight. He understood that his relationship with Bryn was on a firmer footing than it ever was with BJ. He knew that Bryn loved him absolutely without any reservation. With BJ there was often that little niggling doubt that Ellis quickly pushed away. He had loved being fucked by BJ and he loved BJ for it. The letdown at the end was extremely painful but deep down inside, Ellis knew that it was going to come one day. Ellis had no such doubts about Bryn. He had complete faith in Bryn.
Bryn continued searching for a cure for AIDS but he had set himself the herculean task of finding a way of getting the white blood cells of the normal human immune system to repel an invasion of HIV like Ellis's immune system. The biochemical mechanisms involved were horrendously complex.
Ellis and Bryn always managed to make the time to have sex together. Bryn was not often the top. He much preferred Ellis to fuck him.
Ellis loved pleasuring his big muscular lover with his cock up Bryn's anus. He loved thrusting his cock into Bryn's robustly muscled torso, emptying his balls into the depths of Bryn's bowels, and driving his lover to the climactic peaks of bliss. He loved making deep intimate contact with Bryn's spectacularly muscular abdomen, Bryn's wide deep chest fronted by the huge bulging thick mounds of pectoral muscle and topped by Bryn's massive, broad, powerfully muscled shoulders and huge thick arms bulging with muscle. He loved fucking Bryn with Bryn's mighty, massively muscled thighs wrapped around him. He loved Bryn's enormous 160-kilogram (350-pound) body bulky with muscle. He loved Bryn's enormous wide V-shaped back bulging with huge thick mounds of muscle, especially the massive thick bulk of trapezius muscle that went down Bryn's back like a monk's hood. He loved Bryn's big round muscular buttocks between which was concealed that most glorious of glory holes, Bryn's anus. He loved the way Bryn's arsehole was tight around his stiff cock like a fist or a tight glove. He loved the way they both just melted into one another after a round of sex.
He loved Bryn's soaring intellect, his quick wit, his sparkling sense of humour, his ready laugh and above all his unstinting love.
Ellis loved driving Bryn to the high peaks of orgasm. He loved Bryn and he knew without any doubt at all that Bryn loved him. Bryn had matured into a truly beautiful man, a big, handsome, virile, sexy, vigorous, strong, massively muscular and beautiful man. He was a very warm loving man whom everyone thought was a delight to be with.
As time went by, Ellis's and Bryn's love ripened into a cosy warm long-term relationship. It was like a marriage. They had complete faith and trust in one another.
Every Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Ellis marched at the front of the parade resplendent in his Captain Marvel costume in company with Bryn in his hospital scrubs. To many people Ellis was still Captain Marvel. He and Bryn were celebrities. They represented the hope that a cure for AIDS could be found.
The Reverend Jeremiah Jordan led prayer meetings before every Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade praying for rain upon the parade. Only once, however, was there rain on the parade. The Reverend Jeremiah Jordan's prayer meetings became a standing joke amongst the gay community and the generally supportive news media.
Ellis was also expected to wear his Captain Marvel costume to Roman's and Bill's New Year's Eve parties. Some people marvelled that Ellis could still fit into his costume and it still fitted him perfectly. Ellis, however, took care to keep himself as perfectly fit, strong and muscular as he always had been after his return to Australia from Britain.
-------------------------------------- Continued in Part 89. --------------------------------------