Month: August 2023

Atzgersdorf, Vienna

I have returned to Vienna several times since I left it as a child. One of the most memorable visits was in 2010 when I took my husband Peter and our daughter Ella, then 14. We made our way by public transport to the place where I used to live. It is an outer suburb bordering the state of Lower Austria called Atzgersdorf.

When we arrived at the station, I still knew exactly which way to go. It had been 42 years since I had lived there but I could find my way home. To my surprise, the suburb hadn’t changed much at all. It was still a working-class suburb, down at heel and drab. When we arrived at my old address, Endresstrasse 5, I took an obligatory photo and was ready to keep walking. 

‘Don’t you want to go in?’ Peter asked. 

‘You can’t just go into a block of flats,’ I replied, ‘the front doors are always locked.’

‘Ring a bell to one of the flats and explain that you have come all the way from Australia,’ he said.

I shook my head. It was such an antipodean response. No one would do such a thing here, I thought. You don’t just barge in. Seeing that I was about to walk away, my husband went over to the large wooden door, pushed down on the handle, and found it open.

‘We’re going in,’ he announced.

As we entered the building, we saw how dilapidated it had become. Patches of mortar were missing, and curled layers of peeling paint drooped from the walls. I could just make out the year 1908 above the entrance. Nothing had been repaired in over forty years.

We made our way up the staircase to the first floor. The central toilet block servicing all the flats was still there.  So were the two antiquated taps on either side with marble sinks below them. I wondered whether people were still filling up buckets for cooking or whether there was at least running water in the apartments.

Then, as we rounded the corner, I saw the door to our old flat. It looked as if no-one had lived there for quite a while. Dozens of official envelopes as well as yellowed catalogues spilled out from under the door. It was as if the tenant had left one morning and forgot to return. I looked away. 

            Ella was the first to speak.

‘You lived here?’she asked in disbelief. 

I wish I could have answered her with more than a single syllable. Yes, I lived here and yes it was shabby even back then. But it was also home. It was where I discovered worlds within worlds through reading, where I began to write, where I made friends and lost some. It was where my mother tried to make the best of a broken marriage and where my father gave up on life.  I couldn’t understand these things as a child and maybe I will never fully understand them. But this place was so much more than a shabby building in need of renovation. Archived within its walls are the many years of memories. As a mark of respect, I reached for the smooth, wooden banister and imagined all those who had gone before.

We continued our walk through Atzgersdorf. We walked to the church where I had my first communion, but it was locked. I tried not to let my disappointment show. I love going into churches in Europe where even the small parish churches are richly ornate. I love the smell of frankincense and the candles with the honesty box next to them. I always light a candle for someone in need, for someone who could use positive intervention in their life. It felt wrong to have come all this way and not have a brief chat with God, considering that this was where I had first encountered him through the many rules and rituals that I internalised at Sunday mass.

Next to the parish church buildings we found a small bookshop. As no one in my family can resist an interesting looking bookshop, we found ourselves browsing through the shelves. A young man came to see if we needed assistance. I was interested in buying a book by a local author and he suggested a couple of names. As we began to chat, I confided that I had spent a part of my childhood just around the corner and that I had attended the local school. 

‘You really should go and see someone at the school. I am sure they would be very interested to meet you,’ he said.

I wasn’t so sure but thanked him for his book suggestion and bought a novel set in Vienna. 

When we left, Peter suggested we go across to the schoolhouse. I stood in front of the large wooden entrance and had my photo taken. 

‘Why don’t you go in and say hello?’

‘It would just be an awkward moment. I’d tell them that I used to be a student here and they would be obliged to feign interest.’ 

‘No, you need to tell them that you grew up here, went to Australia and have become a teacher yourself. They would love that story. The prodigal daughter so to speak.’  

I shook my head and wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t explain my reluctance to him or to myself for that matter. 

‘A photo in front of the building is good enough for me,’ I said. 

Peter took out the camera and suspended the moment in time. I wish I could adequately explain why I couldn’t go into the school that day. Or why I couldn’t bring myself ten years later to go into another school I had attended. When faced with the past, it feels as if I am in front of a window looking at a scene that no longer belongs to me. I am the outsider, the intruder, the one looking in and I can’t jump over my own shadow to claim the right to enter. The boundary is invisible to everyone but me. I stand on the threshold, usually on stairs, which can lead me in or out. I’m on the verge and then a strange paralysis takes hold. When my feet finally move, they go in the wrong direction.

Very superstitious

 My mother believed that there were stronger forces operating than what you saw with your naked eye. She was always getting messages about what was about to happen, good or bad but mainly bad. As a young child, I often had a sense of foreboding when my mother made these pronouncements.

’There’ll be a fight tonight, you just watch. The knife has been left with its cutting edge up. There’ll be a fight for sure.’ She would solemnly shake her head and sure enough, that night when my father came home, a fight would ensue.

’The knife is never wrong. I knew there’d be a fight,’ she’d mutter as she poured herself another drink.

‘Now look at what you’ve done. You’ve spilt the salt. That’s a bad omen. Quick get a pinch of the salt and throw it over your left shoulder,’ and I quickly ran for the salt, worried about more bad luck coming our way.

There were other things too, like heating lead and dropping it into water to see what shape it made. My mother could divine how the next few months would play out just from the shape of the lead. Or lighting a candle on a dark night and asking questions of the dead who would answer by the flicker of the flame. I hated these nights when the candle would be brought out and all the lights turned off. We often sat at a window with the light of the candle reflected in the glass, a ghosted image of the candle beckoning spirits of the past. My mother started with some incantations before calling upon a deceased member of her family for advice.

I felt a cold shudder go down my back whenever my mother leaned into the dark, talking to the candle flame. It was creepy and unsettling, and it always felt wrong. I wondered where this other side was that her mother kept talking about and feared that it may be somewhere just on the other side of that eerie glass pane in the dead of night.

Then, there were the odd sayings that I never quite understood. So much of the adult world seemed strange.

’Never sweep the dirt from your house into the yard or you’ll be poor for the rest of your life,’ and

’You can’t sew on a button while you are wearing the shirt or you’ll sew on poverty,’ which made me wonder how many buttons my parents had sewn on and how much dirt they’d swept into the yard, to be as poor as they were.

‘Now look what you have done! You broke a mirror. Seven years of bad luck,’ which especially frightened me as I was barely eight at the time.

The strangest comment of all was muttered every time my mother ironed. We didn’t have an electric iron, only an ancient, heavy black one that had to be heated on their wood stove. The temperature of the iron had to be closely monitored and my mother sprayed all the clothes with water to create steam when she pressed the iron down. This helped to get the creases out.  She would heat the iron and begin to iron carefully, making sure she didn’t burn the cloth. It was hard work and required concentration on her part, especially when ironing shirts and trousers. Inevitably, my mother ironed creases into the fabric where none were required.

‘I’ve just ironed another Jew into the shirt. Damn. Now I’ll have to reheat the iron and smooth it over. That’s better, can’t even see that the Jew was there!’

It was strange to hear her mother speak like this, but I didn’t understand what any of it meant. I didn’t even know what a Jew was, except that my mother hated them and called my father a bastard son of a Jew whenever she was angry. I thought if my father was a Jew then it couldn’t be all that bad, but I never dared to say this to my mother. It was always Jews and Gypsies that my mother cursed, yet she loved to hear the Hungarian csardás played by a Gypsy violin. It was all very confusing.

On one of those nights when my mother spoke to the dead, she brought out a small jewellery box that I had never seen before. Inside it was a tiny, weathered lapel pin with a red ring on the outside and a white centre piece. On the white enamelled centre was a strange looking bent cross on its side. The cross was black, and it stood out from the white and the red.

‘I have kept this for a very long time,’ my mother said.

‘How long, Mama?’

‘About 25 years,’ she replied. I have kept it hidden because it could cause a lot of trouble for me now, but I still have it.

‘I’ve never seen you wear it,’ I ventured.

‘No, I can’t wear it now. Not now, but I wore it with pride during the war when I was young.’

‘Why did you wear it then and why can’t you wear it now?’ I asked.

‘You wouldn’t understand. Maybe one day you will.  But for now, you can never tell anyone that I still have it. Especially not your father.’

There were many secrets my mother expected me to keep. This was just one more to add. It was only much later, when I was a teenager in Australia that I understood the significance of that German lapel pin with the black swastika. By then, my mother had finally summed up the courage to leave my father.

Ch ch changes

I plan for changes for a long time before they happen. I just have a gut feeling that I will do something in a few years’ time and then the idea bounces around in my head without taking much shape. Sure, I daydream and imagine what it will be like, but generally I don’t take steps towards it until it leaps up with an urgency I would not have predicted the week before. Suddenly, things seem to fall into place, and I must play catch up to turn the vague idea into reality.

I was like that when I decided to go to university. I talked about it, had a nebulous dream and did nothing for five years. Then I made up my mind from one day to the next and plunged headfirst without testing the waters. While I am not a strong swimmer, I know I can always dogpaddle my way to the side of the pool. I have lived my life by this metaphor and I always make a bigger splash than I ever thought I could.

When I began my teaching career in my early 40s, I walked into my principal’s office on the very first day and announced I would be applying for a teacher exchange the moment I became eligible. I did nothing towards it until that time arrived and then applied on what seemed like a whim. The moment I was accepted, I went into her office and reminded her of the conversation we had five years earlier. She remembered it well and approved my application. That’s how in 2008 we moved to Switzerland.

I have done the same thing when I accepted the principal’s position at Lyndhurst and then bought my house after a cursory glance. It just felt right. I love that quirky house in which I live, and I have enjoyed some very happy years there. I can’t believe that I moved in seven years ago this month! But change is in the air.

That big pool is beckoning once more. Do I dare jump? Of course! For the past three years I have been mulling over where to next. Canberra seemed the logical spot. My daughter lives there and the place has grown on me. The first few times I visited, it seemed cold and sterile, too many apartments and too many roads that go in circles. The CBD felt soulless. It took me quite a while to find the hidden gems, mainly in the inner north but some also on the south side. I have grown to love the dog parks, the lake, the cafés and of course all the culture that only a capital city can to offer.

Without any hope of a successful outcome, I sent an email to the Director in charge of my work unit. I asked whether I could move to Canberra and keep my job at Orange as much of what we do can be done from home. To my amazement and delight she has come up with an even better plan. She has been able to transfer my job to Queanbeyan, less than half an hour’s drive from the ACT. All of the sudden, that nebulous future plan has come into sharp focus. The job starts in January. I will have to get my cottage ready for sale and move within six months.

I have started the clearing out process. I’m filling Otto bins with accumulated papers while some useful items to go to Charity. On the 19th of August, I will hold a garage sale and slowly but surely, I will whittle down excess baggage. After that, I will have to fix all those pesky things I have left for another day.

I have a place to go to, so I don’t have to worry about the Canberra end. After being somewhat inert for a couple of years, I will face plenty of upheaval in the next few months. There is nothing like a deadline to get me going.