Kindred: James Toulor: Part 12

December 31st 1999,

The entire world anticipates a new year and here I sit as paranoid as ever.  During the last decade, I have built a compound to keep out the she wolf who, as I experienced in my youth, will be just as vicious as my "mother," and none as caring.

My father killed the wolf of my childhood and now I face the wild again.  Cyrilla looks enraged that she can't go out on the town but I am convinced that the devil will show herself tonight.

"I have watched you over the centuries, darling.  You've been a bad boy and have not waited for my return."  I hear these words in my head and scream out, "NO!" but as no one else can hear them, my staff looks confused and terrified and Cyrilla simply looks obstinate.

"You fear me, little man.  I have been coming for you for years since you broke my heart."

Regaining my composure, I try answering without talking.

"You left me, Arabella.  You sent me away when you told me you would meet me again."

"YOU FOOLISH MORTAL MINDED DOG!  You think in terms of ephemeral existence when you should have known that through the bite, we were connected.  I needed my time to put together myself and you left and found yourself the harlot of ancient Greece.  Look at the bitterness in the whore's eyes."

My heart dropped in my chest.  I sensed her nearby but not so close that she could see my Cyrilla and definitely not so close that she could sense her mood.  I heard her begin to laugh hysterically in my mind.

"Foolish boy.  So powerful, DISCIPLINED and even experienced and yet you still don't know that I see through your eyes."

I immediately shut my eyes.

"Awww sweet darling, do you not wish to see me coming; to watch your aggressor take out her revenge?"

I said nothing, I thought nothing and after an hour or so of listing my centuries of mistakes, she was silent.  The silence scared me more than the volume though.  I felt her presence everywhere like the born again feels god.  I held my breath and did everything I could to stop from screaming.  Terrified by the overwhelming connection I felt to her, that it was almost romantic fear, if there is such a thing.

Confusion abounds as I look around the room and carefully analyze the faces around me for ones I may not recognize.  Just as I think I know every one, the voice speaks but this time out loud and on my neck.

"You should have waited for me, we could have had such a beautiful requiem together.  No matter, you brought me the Kallisti and she is valuable in ways you cannot even begin to understand, child."

I turn around and in her full glory dressed in war gear, there she stands.  The beautiful and haunting Arabella DeGalle.  Without warning, she grabs me and begins to drain my blood.  I fight back and a battle unlike our world has ever known ensues.

Outside, the flood waters begin to roll in as I throw Arabella into a wall that breaks like it's been hit with a sledge hammer.  Test tubes smash and the lightening can be heard hitting our building in sparse bouts of almost godlike fury.

From somewhere in the room, I hear Cyrilla crying and screaming and calling out my name.  For the first time, as a Kindred, I experience more emotion than I'm accustomed to.  I feel incredible fear.  Flash bangs erupt in the room and soldiers of unknown origin come flooding in like the waters begin to do in Yazoo.

Gunfire erupts as Kindred and Kine fight on my side and hers and the clash brings the fury that is as real as sweat and rain water that begins to flood our bodies.  The blood in the room runs thick and I feel bullets pierce my skin as the rage takes over me and I become blinded to a good fight.  Arabella is far older than I and quickly takes the upper hand in our fight.

From the ceiling she reaches down and grabs me as I begin to notice an apprentice at her side.  Just like the prissy princess to have the audience of my child during my last lament.

She picks me up off the ground and holds me by my head as my body goes limp from loss of blood.

"...And now, lover, time to die..."

I feel her fangs rip into my throat and from a TV somewhere nearby, I hear, "10... 9... 8... 7... 6... and then...

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 11

November 9th, 1989,

As I sit in my little cottage outside Yazoo City limits, I watch the television with Cyrilla and we cannot believe our eyes.  What we are watching is the wall that divided democracy and communism being torn down and I know that this marks the end of an era known as the Cold war.  I also know that the stability that this will afford the Europeans will also bring back the demons who wish to destroy me and my companion.  It is only a matter of time before they find me and I know the Spanish Harlot can probably feel me from whatever cesspool she exists in now.

Oh princess, do you come for me?  I have had time to prepare.  I have had time to build an army.  I have had time to get ready to ruin your nights.  In 1990, I feel your presence near to me. 
You're here for me.  Leave her out of this.
You know what she is?
You sense her presence too?
You will never take her from me.  Do your bidding quickly because at the end of this night, you will be dead or I will.

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 10

December 25th, 1962,

It has been a year that I have been awake and the human world here in the states has begun a change that I believe will bring turbulence to every world and awaken a new spirit of humanity on all accounts.  We are kindred but our world has become fraught with escapists and "revolution" just as theirs has.

The spirit of the 1950's brought many new kindred into being.  A surge of sexual awakening for the kind has brought a surge of wannabe humans into our midst.  There are those now, who feed on human beings infected with drugs to vicariously live off the toxins in their blood and I find it vile.  To be an immortal means to transcend mortal indulgences and to truly exist on a higher plane within reality.

I observe more going into the light to extinguish their own souls based on "spiritual awakening" as if a spirit were even possible to one that cannot die.  The Bron I met centuries ago would be beside himself with glee.

On the positive, many culture shocks are being experienced within the Portuguese colonists in Africa and Spain is going through changes that grant be peace and tranquility as well.  Who knew that the detriment of the human species would haunt my skeletons as they haunted me.  I have felt little presence from my demons as if they had seceded to their own devices and gotten distracted from the ill will they bore me.

On the other hand, my own country had also struggled the conflict in Vietnam for a decade now with no looks towards a surrender of their foreign interests.  Money had gotten tight and my assets had become invaluable to me to feed my country's war effort.  They called it civil unrest but I knew it was their idea of bleeding the rich to feed the poor.

Socialism was, after all a growing popular idea in Europe and they had no idea how to tame it yet or even that it dawned on them like a full moon on the Mediterranean Ocean. I saw the coming of the late 20th century however and managed with my savvy to stay ahead of the idiots who payed close attention to an ephemeral mortal plane.

Cyrilla wished to engage in the freedom and feral nature of the 1960's but the 1920's still loomed over her like a boogie monster under a child's bed.  She kept careful watch over the human world and told me stories, as one tells a child stories of their grand exploits.  I followed their miserable existence myself and began to occupy myself with their chemistry.

In the winter of 1965, we moved back to Yazoo and sold our homes and luxury vacation spots around the country.  I set up a fairly successful pharmaceutical company and while I amused myself with human testing (the government occupied with protesters and sexual deviants and these "hippies" had no idea) my real doctors and researchers began to study practical methods to curing mundane illnesses or rather treating them (whichever kept me in a nice home living comfortably.)

Cyrilla became fascinated with newspapers and television and watched "movies" that brought her the great joy of assumed existence.  How lax we got in our little world.  We became willing participants in routine and enjoyed the breadth of freedom we were awarded during all the chaos. 

In 1969, we even watched broadcasts of a fairly talented black man playing guitar on a stage in a mud field.  These broadcasts gave me great joy because seeing the kind drenched in mud reminded me of what animals for slaughter mankind truly was.  It brought me peace to remember my darkness and why I so relished its pleasure.  The apathy of unchained destruction on their behalf reminded me of why I so enjoyed being alive; or rather, as alive as a kindred can feel due to the fact that our living circulates around their death.  Bitterness and hatred and overwhelming emotion without logic are human traits; as a kindred, we are dead and need to feel nothing we do not choose to feel.  Cyrilla brought out feelings in me because she was Kallisti and that's what her bloodline was born to do since ancient Greece but I felt nothing from the humans; not even remorse.

The great humor in this existence was that the era was such an era for mindless human passion that it awarded those of us who felt none great advantage over these mindless drones who conformed to our whims by being predictably non-conformist.  I could see a dirty mange on the street and almost guarantee he might say something like, "Peace in 'nam, man..."  To which, I would simply smile and nod and say, "sleep," as I drained him of his life force for sheer sport and pleasure.

The powerful blood in my veins was dependent on kindred blood however, and because of this, I researched ways of keeping myself stocked as I turned many and drained them into bottles like a fine Shiraz.  My ruthlessness got much skepticism from the kindred but for the most part it was kept low key enough to not attract too much attention.  Every once and a while, I had to go Al Capone on fellow kindred to keep my "experimentation" a secret.  It was nice, however, that due to the addictive substances many were drawn to, I could find willing participants from both kindred and kind; even if I did need to clean their blood for drinkability.

Yes, What years the 1960's were and even the 70's to a degree; I'd call them chaos at best but when the world and the politicians are in chaos, the level headed opportunists seem to blossom like dandelions in spring.  Cyrilla told me a quote once during the American Civil war, that, at the time, I believe it was intended as sarcasm but its truth rang out like the clang of our manufacturing line now, "all good things must come to an end."

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 9

January 1st, 1939,

I remember the events of 1776 quite clearly: Cyrilla and I had learned of the declaration that we were free of European tyranny and how horrid it was for a government to oppress its people.  I even recall the 1800's being a period of American isolationism.  However humorous both events were because the Europeans such as myself always found a way to take advantage of American stubbornness to cooperate with the rest of the world.  A month or two ago, however, I read of one of the most horrid things the Germans had done in a while and although it did not surprise me, I remember being slightly off-put by the way Americans reacted to "The night of broken glass."  For all nations of Europe this was the catalyst towards a great world war but the Americans seemed uninterested and even apathetic to the pain and suffering going on across the great puddle.

What arrogance it was to know that the world was fighting and we simply sat in our homes listening to the large talking box that would tell us tales of my own home being appalled by the aggression of its neighbor towards its own people.  Not like we French were really the type to be sympathetic but one does get concerned when the neighbors talk of imperialism...

December 25th, 1941,

At last the Americans have joined the effort and how appropriate I should make this entry on Christmas.  For the kindred, we would take the day off from the slaughter and I wanted very badly to go home to France to see the devastation to my lands.  Luckily for me, I had nobles who I had turned to keep my wealth and lands within Germany and France but never the less, the animals must have wreaked havoc on them to keep up appearances anyway.

Animals.

It always amuses me that the kind call kindred base and vile because we mercilessly slaughter them but war is like a time of play for us.  Human beings cause such destruction on their own that our feeding off them and even small amounts of death here and there become second to the atrocity they can claim as their own.  As a young man, I would experiment on villagers in great psychological experiments and even some medical experiments but the total coverage of the Nazis was so commendable that even I in my infinite cruelty could not have shook my little villagers with such vibrato!

I am but a simple killer, I have done things as a human being that were far crueler than any kindred could imagine and that includes myself but the Nazis, although foolish, were truly awe inspiring.  I hear they have created camps based entirely on slaughter of other humans like them.  In my wildest dreams I could not think of such a waste of blood.  I think their discrimination, though was also a bit naive.  Many of whom they killed would have been of greater use under torture or even slavery but killing them for  sport?  What unimaginable stupidity.

Well, I expect nothing less from mankind.  As a child, I scorned them and as a Kindred, I do not miss my connection to them.  On the dawn of this World War for America, I only hope that my brethren in Europe get to feast unmercifully on these impulsive quacks before the cowboys shred them to pieces.

I had a feeling it would be a while, however, before we got to Europe as a triumphant push.  It is not like a dead thing to show emotion and I usually do not but the cold in my bones stemmed from a foreign fear to the war.  The presence that teased me and taunted me with its proximity.

The war was no more than a scapegoat for a deeper fear and frustration.  I knew she was close.  I new she was near.  I was now sure of it, however, fiends of the undead were not like the walking monsters from horror stories who would haunt people short term before the abrupt climax like the human timeline; No.  The damned could haunt you forever and make you uncomfortable for centuries if they chose to.  If I were a human being she could have haunted me my entire short and miserable existence but since I am undead the "hair on the back of your neck feeling," based on close proximity of a nefarious demon lasted and lasted like a leaky faucet.  The frequency increase simply made it like a barn door slamming repeatedly in the winds of change.

I sat on the veranda of our chateau in Vermont and looked out on the valley as close to sunrise as I might get.  The evening frost glistened on my skin which quietly made a dead response and uneventfully I pondered embracing the sunlight.  Cyrilla appeared behind me like a wandering spirit and showed me her bleeding wrist while I took a quick drink.

"Come, my love.  The centuries make you weary but imagine the millennium.  Perhaps in thought of how long eternity truly is, you will rest well tonight."

We took rest in the cellar and all things large and small: feigning interest in the human world to have something to complain about that was not the Spanish dirt princess, her taunting of my weary existence, and simply existence its self; all seemed to fade to black and her bosom cradled me to wake in another 20 years.

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 8

December 3rd, 1933, Upstate New York

It has been four years since the audacious romp of the 1920's came to a vicious and abrupt halt.  For Americans, it was the worst years of their country's existence but for Europeans, we had the best time of our lives because we based our lives on foreign wealth. 

For the kindred, however, it was a brutal, remorseless, slaughterfest.  Rules exist in kindred society and those rules were enforced by a foreign council, however, anarchy existed for everybody in this apocalyptic revamp of America (pun intended).  All over, you saw American millionaires who now stood selling things like apples on street corners.  Even agriculture collapsed and the poor and destitute ran the streets with very little to keep track of their whereabouts.  A meal was easy to catch but entire crowds of people could go missing in this era or die from unknown causes and they might cite the flu or exposure as the C.O.D.  The brutality didn't stop there.  Kindred got lazy.  Many of them ended up in jail due to the criminal acts that they were caught for and this would have been avoided in today's competent and conservative culture.

I once heard of a Macellarian being caught with several carcases in a room and blood all over her body and walls.  The police labeled her as insane and sent her to an institution.  The institution knew what she was.

For some kind, the era was still a time of glory.  In 1929, one human  by the name of Al Capone made such a din in their world that to the end of the century and beyond, it would be remembered as the St. Valentines day Massacre.  How macabre these creatures were.  It's been centuries since I was one so I completely forgot how delightful they could be.  What rapture it was to be alive or something like it in an era where such brutality existed.  Sometimes, the only thrill we get as kindred is from things that are perceived as a danger and to immortals, that category is slim.

Despite the intensity, amongst the chaos there is clarity.  The crazies run around so quickly that those of us who have drive and motivation (not to mention an intense paranoia that allows for one to be more perceptive) see the ripples in reality that threaten us.  Somewhere in this reality I noticed a presence I had not felt since assisting in Augusto Vidal's rise to power.  The princess of ashes, the destitute aristocrat was close and she watched me with contempt. 

I felt it as clearly as I felt my own skin.  My heart no longer beat but I had drank her blood; she had drank mine and we were bonded to each other so it was not uncommon that I would notice her presence were she near by.  However, I never saw her, nor had any reason to suspect she would come back to find me.  I had no debts to her and she had no interest in me or my world.  She was a blood reader and what would a blood reader have in me and Cyrilla who could not be read?

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 7

May 5th, 1923: Manhattan New York

The air was warm but the streets were cold.  I had been cautious and wary but, what later would come to be known as "the roaring twenties," had enchanted Cyrilla and she was the bell of the ball at every ball.  Walled up in our high rise castle in the heart of the city was not her idea of living our eternity but I knew that living only exposed us to those who knew who we were.

After many years of working my way up to advisor to Prince Vidal of New Orleans I had left my position after the debacle in Greece and become somewhat of a shut in.  Cyrilla projected visions of extravagant parties in Long Island mansions and I could only find myself scanning the faces that she saw for suspicious characters mixed in the crowd.  She never was far from hired goons who waited on her like secret service agents to the president but still, I saw the others: ever watching, waiting and these were the type of patient assailants who could wait an eternity as they had no timeline to complete some prophesied struggle for power.

Removing myself from a seat of respectability had only fueled their resolve even though I had anticipated it vindicating me from a spot light of the kindred world.  On the positive side, the world was wealthy and people were fat.  It was not the time of hiding for those not being hunted.  It had never been easier to have the luxury of not having to kill.  I could only feed on vampire blood for my level of power, but the readily available supply of any kind of blood overflowed and we were well taken care of.

I could sense the impending doom of mankind, though.  Not even through a vision of the future or anything like that but 300 years will give you somewhat of a skepticism towards good times lasting forever.  It amused me that with mankind's opiate being banned they were still as jovial as ever.  I saw a great many at, what the kind referred to as "speakeasy's," face down in a puddle of their own filth and yet they were happy.

As motor cars replaced horses, Cyrilla became enchanted with long rides to nowhere and the fast paced world of parties without me by her side.  It pushed me away from her so one night, as we stood out on the balcony, she looked at me and said, "I can't keep on doing this?"
"Doing what, my love?" I said.
"Ha! You don't even see what's going on, do you?  You're so wrapped up in some fear of the kindred that you are completely incapable of seeing the destruction of our wild lifestyle we've lived for over a hundred years."
"I've seen it Cyrilla but you have become childish in your age.  Do you forget your place in our kind?  Do you forget Greece?"
"Spare me!" She said, "What cowards hide from fear of death: I call them mortal."

The next day, I took a ride with her in a motor car that was relatively simple to go out and simply purchase.  Fear had overtaken me after such a sudden halt of so many years of frivolity but going faster than any man had gone over land save those in these metal carriages, re-invigorated me.  With such life back in my cold bones, I decided to go out to the kindred speakeasy later that night.

We got there around eight and Cyrilla had already begun snacking, in some back room, on a gorgeous, young socialite; the likes of which I never could have charmed like she did.  The difference was after feasting, many of her victims would end up wandering the street estranged from anything that remotely looked like what she wanted them to fear.  That, or they could be seen in mental hospitals.  How delightfully evil she was and in such dark times, it was my only source of solace to the problems of her would be captors.

As I had gotten a 20 something year old kindred to fall completely for me; they fall so quickly when they're young, I brought her into a back room and began to feed on her. through her blood I saw a young life of this century.  I saw poor beginnings and a drive for power; hard work and dedication to live the complete life of a human, a lengthy struggle to the top only to be turned by a covetous master who took her life, took her hard earnings and gave her a new one as a slave to him.  Fear not for merciful death has come to take you, child.  Within her last drop of blood, I got a glimpse of her master's blood mixed with hers to turn her and I saw Cyrilla.
"Who was he?" I screamed at her, removing my fangs and shaking her like a juice box, but she was already dead.

I burst in the room where Cyrilla had her dinner and found her dripping with blood and the pieces of a corpse strewn about with jagged edges.
"You're angry, darling," I said.
"Shut your mouth!" She screamed.  "That fowl was thinking of my face as if he'd been trained to think of it. He thought of hundeds of faces of people I've called friend over a thousand years.  Such insolence can only be the work of an old one."
"He was an old one and you took him apart with such ease?"
"He was a slave! No more than your trollop.  Yes I saw her.  You always pick such sleaze."

Her face was that of rage but her heart wreaked of sadness and offense.  It was as if these people were offending her personally by diving into her life; violating her past.  As I picked her up off the floor and brought her to the club showers, we bathed together and fed off each other. Our bond growing tighter as our forms literally meshed to one in every way.

The blood of infidels circled the drain and we trusted no one except the one in front of us, who had been inside of us.

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 6

March 18th, 1862, Rennet, France,

There are two reasons for my temporary vacation from the Americas: 1, they have become the seedy underbelly of revolution and all out civil war and 2, I had business to attend to at home.

Cyrilla happens to love war because she says her family started one over 1,000 years ago, however, I am not convinced that the chaos would be beneficial to either one of us.  As a member of the nobility, France is not the most safe land for us either, however, my reincarnated namesake is a French merchant with ties to the new French government.

Napoleon III of France has himself mixed in with enough foreign affairs that I was able to make it to Rennet under guise of a wealthy merchant while donating significant funds to his campaign to keep myself under the watchful eye of the people.  My castle miraculously stands and my lands are well kept by those human beings willing to help such a creature as myself.

Cyrilla enjoys the castle or so it seems as she stands by the window like a statue and beams at the town below.  Every now and then she causes a modicum of chaos with perfidy to amuse herself but we must feed so I take little notice as long as she cleans up her messes.  What power she must have to separate the good man from himself.

While here we've already been called upon to separate a minister or local powerhouse from himself enough for Napoleon III and his forces to take control.  It is no wonder they keep us around.  Rebellion is all about the money you have to rebel and Cyrilla and myself find it humorous that such a man as Napoleon III dresses himself as a man of the people only to demand help from such forces as they could never understand.

Our only true foes are gypsies that wander through now and then claiming to be slaughterers of kindred who can release people from their oppressors but the people neither know what kindred are or listen to the poisoned words of a gypsy.

The French involve themselves in a Mexican civil war while the Americans involve themselves in another civil war.  When the struggle of mankind to kill its own is at its height: what a lovely time for a kindred vacation.  The struggle and civil unrest here in France alone is enough for us to feed mercilessly on the people while no one takes notice of those disposed of.

France in Spring is gorgeous.  I see it only through darkness now but remember it in the light. I have been a kindred for 244 years but for 26 years before that, I saw this land as rich and fertile and it still produces liquid wealth from the ground.  Not liquid in the way that it's fluid in nature but rather in the way that it produces the disposable asset of great fortune.  Cyrilla and myself want for nothing and take whatever we want while this country devolves into power struggles as most of human history has.

Tomorrow night, we leave for the Mediterranean, crossing several auspicious European treasures to get to Cyrilla's home of Greece.  She loves the French countryside and northwestern France but I can see a part of her light up when she hears me talk of the sea bound islands of Greece.  How I love to please her.

Business drones on in its weary ways and has made me grow so tired of deeds and papers and documents of ownership.  It seems as though in their quest to separate themselves from Monarchical society, human beings have complicated their lives and given way to even greater kings of money and undisputed power.  It is one thing to be under a Monarch who allows you little courtesies provided you provide for him but another when a despot enslaves you to his own wealth.  I see the system changing and changing in my favor as I know what to do but I pity mankind as he has no idea the future he is building for himself.

With my highly empathic nature, I feel their sorrow but never do I pity those who make their own choices knowingly wrong.  Cyrilla sees futures and tells me how these grounds are stained with blood.  She walks the pastures and screams in her sleep when we share our daily coffin and I know we must depart this land soon.

                                                                         ...

As we cross the black waters of the Mediterranean, passengers seem to disappear each night and the sea captain cringes at the sickness that those we don't eat catch.

Sailing into Athens, I see the cliffs of an ancient society.  High cliffs with homes built into them in a  plateau style landscape.  Her eyes sparkle with the love of such a tiny land.  I tell her that the Chateau Rennet doubles the land of this small area but she simply smiles at me and uses the combination of Perfidy and her enigmatic sight to show me the magnificence of a great Greek past.

Her separation from humanity during this time makes me think she must have been as a god to these people.  She changes her elaborate French dressing to no more than an ornately draped sheet just before we depart the boat.  This is the first time I have seen her without clothes and although as a human I would have lusted after her curves winding like the cliffs of Athens and her areolas as small and erect as the tiny houses on the cliffs, my higher minded kindred brain sees an aureole over her naked form like the Venus' rival.  Her skin is as white as the statues as well; so much so that one would not have known, were she standing still, the difference between her and the marble of those statues.

"The Kallisti are said to have started the Trojan War, my love," She remarks with glee as I stand by the base wooden door staring at her donning her gown. "We are more than the goddesses ever were and twice the fluidity."

Cyrilla, unlike myself, never maintained any ties to Greece.  She explained to me that she was never a royal and never a commoner either.  She transcends the human understanding of class or existence altogether.  Whatever she is, she is like an angel in my visage and in her presence as well.

When we depart the boat, I notice we are followed through the streets by unknown assailants.  We stay at the finest hotels to remain public and our habits, although they spark the interest of local people do not threaten them in any way.  We must be far more cautious as Greece is not nearly the warring state as France is or even the nearby Turkey.

The nights roll on in magnificence and the beauty of this land grows on me until one night that I will never forget.

May 18th, 1864:  The night is crisp and clear and I watch Cyrilla from our balcony as she leaves our hotel to wander free for the night.  As she gets to the opposite side of the street, she is set upon by 4 black shadows who grab her and begin to take her off.  I leapt from the balcony and set upon feeding on two of them while she tore apart the other two with ease.  My blood potency was high at this point due to our feeding on each other from time to time and exchanging her ancient power so we were easily able to rip these assailants apart; however upon tasting their blood, we were a bit taken a back.

I noticed that this blood was that of the kindred.  More than that, the tiny bit of blood that I had managed to sample of Arabella De Gall the last time I had met up with her, during the rise to power of Augusto Vidal, had given me the ability to know that this blood was that of the Lancea Sanctum: the vicious papal monarchs of the kindred world.

It was of this instant that I realized our European fun had come to an end.  I had no idea that the workings of Cyrilla's capture had just begun.  We made haste and prepared to leave Europe.  We made our leave over land due to the wild nature of the Mediterranean and left Europe from the inconspicuous port of Newquay in the south of Great Britain in August of 1865 with all papers and lands secure in France.

My regret now, as I look back, is that it took us too long to leave that wretched continent...