The year after my father died, I returned to Elwood High School to complete my HSC. I knew it was the only way forward. My father had instilled in me the belief that education could change the trajectory of lives. He had always wanted to go to University, but the war had intervened. By the time WWII was over, it was too late for him to realise this dream, but not for his younger brother. My father completed an apprenticeship, worked hard, and helped my uncle get his education. This was how uncle Lajos became a professor of history at Budapest University and my father a humble leather worker. I knew what I had to do to get on in life.
A kind teacher at school, who barely knew me, decided to put my name forward to the Returned and Services League for a $100 scholarship. In 1978, that was generous sum of money.
‘Your father fought in the war, didn’t he?’ she asked.
‘Yes Miss, he was shot in the knee.’ I answered enthusiastically. She ticked the ‘veteran’ box on the form.
Elwood High School only ever had assemblies for special occasions, as our hall had burnt down in 1975. It was difficult to line up over a 1000 students on the basketball courts to listen to speakers. It must have been an Anzac Day assembly as a retired major gave a speech which most of us couldn’t hear at the back. We were getting restless standing there for what seemed like a very long time.
This was when I felt a tap on my shoulder. The kind teacher, whose name I can’t remember, was signalling for me to follow. On our way up to the makeshift stage, she suddenly stopped and turned to look at me.
‘Where was your father from, again?’ she asked.
‘Hungary, Miss,’ I replied
This was followed by a long pause as she searched my face. ‘So, so he fought in the war?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘And Hungary was, Hungary was… whose side was Hungary on?’ she asked, suddenly realising she was more than a little rusty on her knowledge of history.
‘Sorry, Miss?’ I wasn’t sure what she was asking.
‘Oh, never mind. Just go up and accept the cheque. It may be best if you don’t say much while you are up there,’ she cautioned.
I went up, shook the Major’s hand and thanked him. It was a generous sum and it made a considerable difference to my ability to complete the HSC.
My first part-time job was in the deli section of Coles in Balaclava. But by 1976, I was looking for something more exciting. When I heard that the new McDonalds in St Kilda was looking for casual staff, I immediately applied. My friend Sharmaine joined me in working there, and for a while it was fun.
One Saturday night, our shift finished at seven and it was already getting dark outside. We weren’t looking forward to walking home.
‘There’s no dance on tonight, is there?’ I asked.
‘None we can get a lift to. Everyone’s already gone out. This’ll be one boring Saturday night!’ Sharmaine said.
We were just about to cross the Esplanade when we heard a couple of guys call from an ancient two-tone Holden.
‘Where ya girls off to?’ the driver hollered.
Windows wound down, elbow leaning out the window, the driver looked us up and down. It wasn’t the most original pick up line, but our feet were sore and we were bored. A lift was appealing and we felt safe enough together. We casually walked over to the car and saw two young guys, probably only about two years older than we were. They were as nervous as alley cats hanging out in the wrong neighbourhood. They clearly didn’t come from St Kilda.
‘You girls doin’ anythin’ tonight? You wanna go out somewhere?’ the driver stammered as we approached. He had shoulder length mouse-brown hair and wore a checked flannel shirt. Not my type, I thought, but what was there to lose?
’Nothing planned so far,’ Sharmaine answered.
‘Why don’t you girls jump in and we’ll go for a ride. Wherever you want,’ he added quickly.
‘My dad won’t let me go out with boys unless he’s met them,’ I said. ‘But if you drive me home and say hello to him, I’m sure I can come.’
‘Sure, jump in. I’m Steve and this here is Glen.’
‘Hi,’ we said, giggling as we scrambled into the back seat.
We drove to my place first. I opened the door and invited the boys in.
‘Papa, this is my friend Steve,’ I said.
They shook hands. I was hoping Steve’s handshake was firm because my father judged a person’s character by their handshake. It looked as if he had passed muster.
‘We ran into these boys from school coming back from work,’ I lied.
’And we’d like to go to a dance. They’ll bring us back by midnight.’
‘Won’t you Steve? Just nod will ya, I just told him we were friends from way back,’ I said turning to Steve. He nodded dutifully.
‘Sharmaine’s dad already said she could go and he is very strict about who she goes out with. Please Papa.’
‘Not a stroke after midnight,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait up for you.’
‘You’re the best!’ I said and kissed him on the cheek.
This was one of the few advantages of having a father who could not speak English. I could pull the wool over his eyes.
We had persuaded one parent, now it was Mr Keogh’s turn. To my surprise, Sharmaine talked her dad around quite easily and we were ready for a night on the town.
‘Where d’ya wanna go?’ Glen asked. They were from the outer suburbs and completely out of their depth.
‘Let’s go to the Outpost Inn,’ I suggested.
It was my favourite place to go. The Outpost Inn was a basement folk venue at the top end of Collins Street. It was a cool place to hang out and listen to various folk singers. There were three or four windowless underground rooms, painted black with a small makeshift stage at one end and couches or cushions strewn around the room. There was always more than one artist performing and you could wander from room to room to listen to whoever took your fancy. Someone was always smoking a joint and the atmosphere was quite mellow. It was the coolest place to be on a Saturday night, if you were into that scene.
The Outpost Inn was run by a crazy Russian called Stefan. He was an imposing figure with a full beard and a shock of black hair. He had a striking resemblance to photos of Rasputin. I always felt safe because I knew Stefan could sort out any problem. He wasn’t the kind of person anyone would willingly take on. It seemed like a great place to take a couple of suburban boys.
Within the first twenty minutes we realised the boys had the completely wrong impression of the venue. It was clearly the first time they had witnessed an alternative scene.
‘Check out the black walls, Glen,’ said Steve, nudging him with his elbow.
‘Smell that will ya,’ was Glen’s reply. ‘You reckon it’s what I think it is? We’ve scored us some wild chicks, man. Which one do you want?’
Sharmaine and I glanced at one another. This had been a BAD idea.
‘Just going to the bathroom,’ Sharmaine said and pulled at my sleeve. We quickly made our way to the toilets out the back.
‘I don’t think this was a good idea,’ Sharmaine said. ‘They think we’re the kind of girls who will go all the way with them. I know that’s what they think. Glen keeps staring at my boobs.’
I had the same impression. ‘You know, we could just leave them here,’ I said, ‘C’mon, I know a back way out.’
And that’s what we did. We we left them standing there waiting for us to return. We fled like spooked cats, laughing until we cried, running all the way down Collins Street, without stopping. When we reached Swanston Street, we doubled over laughing, caught our breath, and waited for a number 67 tram to take us home safely.
My father gave me a box of Easter eggs every Easter Sunday. He chose them carefully for their appeal and elegance. The boxes were usually silk lined and contained one large egg and occasionally some smaller eggs surrounding it. I loved receiving these eggs, but I never ate a single one.
‘The chocolate is there to be eaten,’ my father said each year.
‘They are too perfect, Papa. If I ate the eggs, all their beauty would be lost. This way I can look at the eggs and enjoy your gift for the longest time,’ I replied.
My father just shook his head as my eyes feasted on the eggs in the box before I finally took them to my bedroom to be placed on top of my wardrobe with all the other eggs from previous years. The eggs faced into the room and whenever I got dressed, I looked up at the row of stunning boxes and the eggs they contained.
My friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t eat them. Every time they came over, they’d look longingly at the chocolate eggs, but I never relented.
‘You wouldn’t even miss it if one wasn’t there,’ my friend Stephen chided.
‘Can’t we just share one?’ Necef chimed in.
‘No! I love looking at those beautiful eggs,’ I said firmly.
One late spring afternoon I decided to clean my room thoroughly. I tidied, swept, and dusted. I climbed onto a chair to take down the boxes of eggs. To my horror, all that was left of the eggs was the coloured foil, neatly arranged to make it look as if the eggs were still there. I cried tears of rage, frustration, and utter betrayal. I knew who the culprits were.
The following day, I approached my friends with righteous anger.
‘You ate all the chocolate. How could you!’ I cried.
‘What are you talking about?’ replied Necef and for a moment I doubted myself.
‘The Easter eggs on top of my wardrobe,’ I said. ‘It had to be you!’
Necef and Stephen looked at each other and began to laugh.
‘Oh, those eggs,’ Stephen said. ‘We ate those about six months ago and you are angry about it now?’
I was hurt that they had betrayed my trust, but I could see the funny side too. They knew I wouldn’t look too closely and that they’d get away with it.
That night, I complained about my friends to my father as I cleared away the cheerless, empty boxes.
‘So will you eat the chocolates next year?’ my father asked.
I shook my head. ‘No, Papa. You should know I need their charm to last all year.’
I was 23 when I first returned to Europe, to search of the girl I had left behind. The girl that I remembered was more like a character from a storybook than a younger version of myself. That trip, half way across the world in a Boeing 747, so many years before, had marked a complete break with the old world. I was never to write to anyone, never to speak German, never to mention Austria. As my father never did learn English, we continued to speak Hungarian at home. I desperately wanted to fit in. At the time, bilingualism was a social stigma in Australia and, armed with that knowledge, I decided that trilingualism must make me even more of a target. I pretended not to understand or speak a word of German.
When I returned to Vienna with my then husband and mother-in-law, I found that I had not forgotten my German at all. In fact, I could get by quite well. I had no addresses of school mates, I only knew where we had lived. I simply drew on my memory and found my way back.
We took the commuter train from Wien Westbahnhof to Pressbaum in Lower Austria. This was the same train line my father had travelled twelve years earlier on his way home from work. It took just over half an hour from Vienna to Pressbaum, the little township nestled in the Vienna woods. In my memory we had lived a long way from the city.
Once there, I followed my nose. I climbed up the steps from the railway station to where the small kiosk stood, midway between the station and the walking path through a forest. It was shut. As I looked about, I remembered it as a little oasis between home and school. This is where I had bought Twini ice-blocks in summer, holding the siamese twin pop-sticks until I could pull them apart so I had the illusion of two treats when I had paid for only one.
I had many happy memories of this small kiosk. My father had a tab there which he allowed me to freely use. On pay day, he settled his account after a couple of glasses of beer with weathered old locals whose dialects were unintelligible. I wondered where these old men would meet now. They had always had a Stammtisch – a regular table, and sat there from morning to night – or so it seemed to me. These locals must have felt as displaced as I did now, looking at the forlorn, boarded up wooden structure.
We turned left at the top of the path, walked through a small patch of forest and sought out the house where I had lived. The gate was shut and no-one stirred behind the curtains. I looked up to the second floor and thought of the kindly old woman who had once lived there and supplemented her pension by selling moonshine to her loyal supporters.
I have some photos taken in the last couple of months before our departure from Austria. Black and white, they show me holding the handlebars of an ancient bicycle in front of the gate at number 40 Bahnhofstrasse. Although I know that the child looking at the camera is me, she is a time traveller from a bygone era. I said goodbye to that girl in the photo and crossed the railway line.
Next stop was the old station masters’ cottage. The tiny two storey house stood frozen in time. Before I could ring the bell, an old dog came tottering up the path. It was Rigo. A very old dog now, his tail still had the piglet curl. I was sure he wouldn’t recognise me but my heart skipped a beat when I saw him. My handsome and faithful dog who had accompanied me in my adventures through the surrounding woods was still alive!
Then, an ancient, crooked woman approached the gate.
“Frau Deim?” I ventured.
Her eyes searched my face and crinkled into a smile. “You’ve come back!”
She unlocked the gate and my first reaction was to reach out for Rigo. He was happy to see visitors and who knows, maybe he did know who I was. After giving the dog a long pat out in the cold, we were invited in. Frau Deim apologised over and over for the state of her house. I was simply happy to see her.
In the past I never understood my mother’s desire to leave Europe behind. For years I was homesick for this place yet I could never tell anyone. Europe was a door slammed shut. My job was to face forward, embrace the New World and not look over my shoulder lest I turn to a pillar of salt. But for years I furtively glanced back, when no-one was watching. Now I came face to face with what we had left behind.
Frau Deim was the widow of a railway worker whose body was found strewn across the tracks one icy January. She kept to herself, worked hard and bought up her only son as a single mother, well before the term was coined. The only assistance she received was her right to live in the signal master’s cottage until death tracked her down.
In 1983 she was an elderly woman with few means and plenty of problems. She had no running water and was reliant on a hand pump in her garden. Then, one day she noticed a foul odour emanating from the well. She asked the Austrian railways to investigate. The water was deemed to be undrinkable. From that day, she had to boil her water for ten minutes before it could be used.
Entering the house was like entering a sauna. Water droplets formed brown constellations on the ceiling, gliding down the walls and fogging her windows. It was hard to breathe. Mould invaded every crevice and advanced with military precision. Frau Deim looked about apologetically. Her bedroom opened onto the kitchen and had suffered the same fate. Her clothes hung limp over doors, on nails and draped forlorn over her bed. The wardrobe doors were swollen and warped.
As I witnessed the pitiful fate this woman had to endure, I saw my parents’ choice to leave with adult eyes. Leaving Europe was like buying a lottery ticket. The outcome was uncertain but it had offered them a last chance of starting anew.
I want to go in but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. I’m standing in front of my old primary school in Pressbaum, a country town not far from Vienna. I feel foolish standing at the threshold and when someone finally comes out, I sneak in and take a few steps into the hallway. The thought of announcing myself to the office fills me with dread. What would I say? And who would care that I attended this school in the late 60’s and have traveled back to see it? I clearly hadn’t thought this through. What did I expect when I planned this pilgrimage? I take a photo and quickly leave before anyone can ask me what I am doing loitering in the corridor.
At the bus stop, I check the time table. I am the only one waiting until a boy, perhaps nine or ten, comes along and greets me. He too is waiting for the bus and without any hesitation he starts to chat. The boy tells me all about his school and how much he loves the place. I reveal that a long time ago, I too used to go to this school. I don’t go into details and he doesn’t ask. He is happy with his own chatter. ‘The music room is now a classroom,’ he tells me, ‘And the climbing wall had to be dismantled and rebuilt. Nothing stays the same,’ he says, shaking his head knowingly. I suppress my smile and encourage him to keep talking.
Clearly, he takes me for a local. At times he speaks so fast, I have to ask him to repeat what he says. This doesn’t worry him, and he continues to tell me about his life in broad strokes. He tells me that next year he will have to leave this school and he doesn’t want to go. ‘All the teachers here are nice and the school up the road is huge.’ I get the feeling he doesn’t cope well with change. Then, apropos nothing, he asks whether I’m not too hot in my leather jacket. ‘I am,’ I say and put the jacket in my lap.
The boy returns to his subject, telling me about all the changes he has seen at the school since he started there. I have an urge to tell him my story but don’t want to burden him with what happened long ago. There are so many things I could say, but I don’t. I remember visiting Sacre Coeur, the school he will attend next year. It was going to be my school too. As it turned out, a much bigger move awaited me. Australia, 16,000km away, was unfathomable and there was nothing that could prepare me for it.
As he speaks, I think about my old school I had come to visit. I can’t quite answer why I couldn’t bring myself to announce my presence. Maybe it was that I was searching for traces of that young girl I had left behind but realised that they had long been erased. So instead, I took the obligatory photograph; two dimensional and lifeless. I had made my pilgrimage and was now ready to leave. Then, a chance encounter with this boy. In him, I recognise the innocence of a bygone era. And as he speaks, I finally get a glimpse of her – that young girl of long ago, reflected in his clear, bright eyes.
I have always been a letter writer. As a child I wrote letters to my grandmother on wide-lined stationery with a scene of snow white printed on the top of each page. The seven dwarfs with coloured hats stood in a garden next to a cottage where Snow White leaned out of a window. The scene took up about a third of the page for which I was grateful, as I never really knew what to say to the old woman who lived far away and whose face I could not recall.
Later, I wrote letters to friends and found I had lots to say. Some were posted while others were passed furtively across a school desk, telling my best friend about some drama unfolding in my head. I wrote letters to boys I liked that were never posted. I spent hours agonising over the right words to use but in the end, they were scrunched into tight balls and thrown into the wastepaper basket. I was doubly frustrated when I not only missed revealing my feelings to the boy du jour but missed the bin as well.
In my twenties I began to travel and collected friends around the world. The friendships were intense, and we talked for hours about the state of the world, books we were reading and courses we took at university. Phone calls were expensive, so we wrote – sometimes daily, on light blue aerograms which were as thin as tissue paper and cheap to send. I bought aerograms by the dozen, franked and ready to send. I modified my messy script so I could fit more onto the page and once I folded and licked the three sides to seal the letter, I sometimes added a P.S. under my address on the outside.
My letters began to be more sporadic in my thirties as I worked, commuted, and eventually had a child. Phone calls became cheaper and for a while, I alternated writing letters with a call every now and again. The letters arriving in my letter box became less frequent too, as my friends took on responsibilities and our yearly trips stretched to two, five or more years. With the arrival of email, we promised we would write more often but this never eventuated. Email doesn’t have the same impact as retrieving a handwritten envelope from the letter box and tearing it open to reveal a letter to hold in both hands. A letter is to be savoured, to be read and reread, shown to a friend or two and kept safe.
After years of neglect, I have started writing letters again. Letters to my 91 year-old mother-in-law who cannot hear me on the phone, letters to friends in lock-down and the occasional letter to old friends overseas. I haven’t tried to buy an aerogram for years and don’t know whether they still exist. I have, however, tracked down an alternative on thicker paper with a prettier cover that folds and gums just like aerograms did. Maybe letter writing is making a comeback the way vinyl records have done. I feel a pang of nostalgia as I write on this paper and love that I have to keep my message brief. The recipient of my letter must carefully cut open the sides to reveal that which I have shared within.
Rereading old letters, I come to understand their real purpose. Much more than simply an exchange of information, they are a testament to the bond of friendship nurtured over the years.
From Quill to Quote 