Freedom

Freedom

I didn’t know my mother. I only have this image of her sitting on the back of a motorbike behind a rugged, muscular man, with strong knocked-about features, someone who was perhaps no stranger to a fight. His fair hair was long, untrimmed. At least, this is how I imagine him.

She had walked out on me when I was a baby. I was brought up by relatives in America who talked about my mother the freedom fighter, the hero of the Hungarian revolution. They did not talk about the feckless, immature, irresponsible girl who had abandoned her husband, her baby to ride off with a total stranger on a motorbike.

The devil-may care look of the man on the bike sitting in front of her, might have appealed to her. My father was different. He was a planner, a thinker, though don’t get me wrong, not a deep, profound thinker, not a philosopher, just someone who played with ideas, picked up random thoughts, turned them this way and that, chucked them away if they were of no use to him and tried others. He as a boy with just a little daring, someone who gave the impression that there was more to him than there really was.

The man on the bike was something else. What you saw was what you got. That wasn’t much, but there was an air of adventure about him. My mother’s life was all about adventure. She was little, call it petite, with dark hair and dark eyes, very pretty in a cheeky, provocative flirtatious way, undaunted by danger. She, sitting on the back of the motorbike would have focused on the road, holding on to the man in front, and the rest followed.

She had accepted a drink from a stranger, she laughed at his lewd jokes, she felt that her life was in the doldrums, its excitement gone and she had to kick start it. People who knew her from way back remembered her as a wild child. Her parents never knew what she was up to day or night. If they locked the door she would climb out the window. Her sad parents, worn down by fear and worry, had a daughter who was not like other children. She was daring, fearless, insolent, and quite inconsiderate. They didn’t know what to do with her. Not that they didn’t get plenty of advice. Everybody knew how to bring up children, but what made good sense in previous happier, more stable times no longer applied.

Maybe she was on the back of that bike, riding with a man she hardly knew, a stranger, someone quite unlike her, because she had never quite grown up. Growing up meant assuming responsibilities, it meant that you couldn’t just shrug your shoulders and walk away. It involved commitment. No way could she see herself committed to the plain, rugged speechless man on the bike.

No by your leave, no goodbyes, no shouting, name calling, door slamming or even a good angry fight. My mother had just walked out, left the baby, me, asleep. My father could look after me, as far as she was concerned, it was his baby too. She wasn’t going to be trapped. Motherhood was a trap. A baby was not part of the deal. Perhaps for a few days, while she was carrying, when people oohed and aahed, the idea of having a baby, a live doll, had some appeal, but really she wasn’t the motherly kind. She had never played with dolls. Dolls looked dead, broken. She had seen enough of the broken and the dead growing up during the war, during the siege of Budapest. Dolls repulsed her. It was adventure she sought. She had disappeared for hours on end when she was a little girl, exploring the ruins, seeing what she could find. It was dangerous, a wall could topple, a piece of masonry could drop, not to mention the danger of unexploded shells. There were rats, feral cats, and hooligans, scavengers, desperate fugitives hiding among the ruins. These didn’t scare her. She had survived in the city, she had seen street-to-street fighting from her hiding place, dead bodies on the road, bombs dropping, machine gun fire that had strafed people sheltering in doorways. She had watched aerial combats, planes exploding and falling from the sky. Nothing could touch her. She had no fear, not like her parents who were frightened by their own shadow.

She was always in trouble. She argued, questioned everything, she had no respect, not for her parents, not for her teachers, not for authority. In her final year at school she would have been suspended, the ultimate disgrace, had it not been for her father pleading, grovelling, a word from an influential friend, as well as a suitable gift to the principal. She was old enough to know better when she got involved with some students who thought that they could change the world. They talked, they discussed the thinkers, the philosophers of the time, existentialism, socialism, pacifism, this ‘-ism’, that ‘-ism. But what was the use of all that talk? My mother wanted action not talking. These young people were too smart for their own good. The students went on demonstrations, made a nuisance of themselves, talked of overthrowing the government, and where the demonstrators assembled in the heart of the city, there was a girl on the pedestal of a monument, whom I recognised as the girl who was to be my mother. Everyone could see her, photograph her, and use the picture as evidence against her. Her parents were worried, they were frantic, but couldn’t stop her, knock sense into her.

They had hoped that the nice boy she went out with, my father, would be a good influence. She picked him up, a boy with the faun-like look of a dancer, almost fragile, with tussled black hair and a far away dreamy look. He was a little younger than she was. To the girl he seemed restless, interesting, with an imagination filled with brave, daredevil heroes. He should have been at home quietly reading, mulling over his fantasies, but she found him, took him over, made him want to be like his imaginary characters. Wherever she went, he followed. Having the more vivid imagination, he scripted their adventures. Together they stuck posters on hoardings, acted as runners with secret messages, helped build barricades, and when the uprising broke out, made Molotov cocktails and hurled these at the tanks. These caused no damage, but it was not the damage inflicted that mattered, but being part of the battle, staying alive amidst the bullets whistling past. Then without a word to their parents the two young people, my mother and father took off, she eighteen, he seventeen, and joined the throngs heading towards the border. Minefields, barbed wire fences, border guards with guns trained on the fugitives did not intimidate them. They found their way to a refugee camp.

They came to New Zealand from that camp with a group of men, women, families with children. The colourful beautiful harbour, surrounded by steep, lush green hills, the brightly painted wooden houses, promised something different to each. Some saw opportunities, prosperity as the reward for their daring, others saw peace, undisturbed by the troubled past. My mother and father saw emptiness. They were met by people who spoke their language, people who had come before. People who knew the local customs and the way things were done. They understood what being a stranger was like, they too had been strangers here.

‘You will have to learn to stand on your two feet’ someone said to my mother and father. ‘Perhaps after a year or two, you could study, go to university. In this country you can go a long way, be anything you want to be.’

People found them jobs in the hospital. My father worked as an orderly, my mother in the laundry. ‘You are lucky to have come to a place where people are friendly and helpful’, they said, ‘lucky that you can earn a living. Elsewhere it is tough for new immigrants.’ Both of them had walked into jobs the week after they had arrived, and found a home, a flat on the hill up a steep track. The floors sloped, tilting towards the harbour, the house seeming to be ready to slide into the sea. There was mildew on the wall and in the cupboards, the floor was rotting under the gaudy worn carpet. There was an all-pervading smell of decay.

‘You could get stuck in, roll your sleeves up, clean the place up’ people said. The immigrants who had arrived a little earlier had all the answers. ‘You could have a lovely place here, a great home for a young couple. If only we could have had something like this when we arrived! We couldn’t even dream of a flat of our own. Perhaps in a while, when you have saved up a little money, you will be able to afford something better.’

Hope was a concept my father and mother could not comprehend. They hated those rooms, hated their jobs. Disappointed, resentful, they fought. Every little thing was a cause for a fight: whose turn it was to wash up, whose fault was it that the sausages got burned, who forgot to pay the electricity bill, where was the money to come from, and why was there never enough money anyway.

‘They will learn’ people said. ‘They are only children.’

But my parents didn’t want to learn. They wanted to escape. My mother had a relative in Buenos Aires, her mother’s second cousin, who had got into some sort of trouble back home, caught the first train out of the country, and fled to South America. My father had an uncle in California, a charming, slim, good-looking man with a thin moustache to outline his winning smile. He was an actor, who went to Hollywood before the war to try his luck, but Hollywood had enough heartthrobs with moustaches and winning smiles, and the sweet European accent didn’t help. He got by modestly, working in an exclusive menswear store.

My mother wrote to the relative in Buenos Aires, but received no reply. She wrote again. The third time she wrote the letter was returned, Gone. no address. My father wrote to his uncle in California. He replied by return mail. He was delighted to hear from his brother’s son. How pleased his brother must be that his son was living in such a beautiful country. He hoped that his lovely, talented nephew with his charming young friend would find happiness in these islands in the South Pacific. Life in California was tough, he wrote. He worked long hours, but he shouldn’t complain. He was not a millionaire, but he earned enough to get by.

It seemed that there was no escape. My mother worked in the laundry among older, hard, battle-scarred women. One of them said, he is cute, that man of yours. My mother’s English was not good. She learned it, with reluctance, from a textbook. The word ‘cute’ troubled her. What did this women mean? Was there more to it than the meaning in the dictionary? Perhaps other women were drawn to him while she was wasting away, drained by the drudgery of the work in the laundry.

My father had by then moved on, fled from the hospital. Someone had put in a good word for him and he found a job in an office, working for an accountant who liked his long lunch breaks and the time to lift his spirits with a quiet drink. My father, a quick learner, helped him to stay on top of his paper work.

He worked at a desk, while my mother was on her feet all day. She was not used to hard physical labour. Throwing stones, Molotov cocktails, building barricades, marching in demonstrations was one thing, being on her feet, working eight hours a day, sometimes more, day after day, was something else. ‘Cute?’ What did that woman mean by that? My mother felt that her youth was getting sucked out of her. Her muscles ached, the humid air of the laundry dried her skin.

My father and mother quarrelled, then made up, rekindling the bonds between them. They sought solace in their desperation. That solace turned out to be me. At last my mother could give up her job, stay home, look after the baby. My father had decided to study, improve himself. He came home after a day in the office and ploughed his way through assignment after assignment from the correspondence course that would give him qualifications to get a better job. My mother was lonely, moody. Housekeeping, looking after a baby had no appeal for her. She had never learned to cook, never had a baby in her arms before or changed a nappy. Her parents wanting a better life for her, sent her to a good school for smart children who never expected to do any menial work. There was my father sitting at the table in the dim light, doing elaborate calculations that the exercises in his assignment called for, referring to the dictionary at hand to make sure that he had understood the words, and I, the baby, hollerred, cried my head off, probably my nappy unchanged all afternoon and evening. My father, running out of patience, said ‘Get that kid to shut up’, and my mother, already rattled, feeling inadequate and angry, replied ‘Get him to shut up yourself’ and with that she got up and left, went out into the night to come back hours later.

She went out more and more, found friends, men and women, who understood her loneliness, invited her to parties, plied her with drinks, gave her a good time. At times she came home the worse for wear. She didn’t talk to my father about her nights out. He didn’t know how to ask. He felt let down, but also felt remorseful, guilty. Once or twice my mother didn’t come home at all, not at night, not next day. My father had to turn in shame to one of the women who had befriended them, and ask her to mind the baby. He had to go to work, couldn’t take the day off. How could he explain why he couldn’t come in? He was sick? His girlfriend was sick? His baby was sick?

Neighbours dropped in. They invited my parents to dinner, tried to talk to them. They understood that having a new baby put a great strain on both of them. My father was doing the right thing. He had to study to get ahead. My mother had to support him. But why was it always him, she thought. Why was it he who had to be supported? How about her? Could she not go and study? Why was it just her who had to change nappies, wash them, scrub, cook, shop? The baby was his too, he ate too, he had dirty washing too.

The world was full of people who lived for the moment, had a good time, people who had money to throw around, drive fancy sports cars and dine in expensive restaurants. It was up to her to grab her chances, live before it was too late. She went out at nights and was ready to enjoy whatever life had to offer her.

The man on the bike she had met in the bar was probably not her sort. Who knew what was her sort, who was anyone’s sort. There was something crude about him, the way he made a pass at her, his coarse laughter. There was also a hesitance behind his in-your-face manners, something that warned him to be careful, that he might be taking on something beyond him to handle, a chick out of his league, someone who may be trouble. Having made a pass at her, he tried to ignore her. Women listened, but did not join in the blokes’ conversation. The talk was about pigs, pig hunting in the ranges. The fair haired man was a natural storyteller. Every detail, every turn of the track, the murmur of the river, the setting of the sun, the flutter of the fern leaves, the sudden appearance of a huge boar, had all been built into a riveting narrative. The men sitting around fed him some lines, pieces of observation to enhance the narrative. Suddenly my mother interrupted the story, said that she had never been on a pig hunt, as if pig hunting would be the most natural thing for a city girl, an experience that she had somehow, inadvertently, missed out on.

‘Take you with me tomorrow’, the fair-haired man said. Perhaps as soon as he uttered the words he regretted them, but there was no way of taking them back. ‘Get some boots. I might have some warm gear you could have. I will pick you up.’

Next day my mother told my father that she would be gone for a little while. ‘You look after the kid’. Off to where, how long the little while might be was left unsaid. Words were scarce between my parents by then. Theirs was a modern marriage, based on independence and freedom. He could do whatever he wanted to do, study, make something of his life. She could do whatever she wanted to, experience the thrills of every moment. She was off, speeding towards the dark, forbidding mountain range, on the back of a stranger’s motorbike.

When she didn’t come back that night, not next morning, nor any time that day, my father had to phone the office to tell them that he wouldn’t be coming in. Distraught, helpless, he rang one of the women who had been kind to them.

‘She hasn’t come home’ he said.

The woman heard the desperation in his voice and came over. She was sensible, practical. She took charge, looked after the baby, me, and she was there when the police arrived and told my father that there had been a fatal accident.

Everybody tried to help. The small community of immigrants was shocked, scandalised. ‘That girl was trouble all along’ someone said. ‘I knew that she would come to a bad end.’

There was a lot to attend to, many decisions to be made. What to do about the child was number one. My father couldn’t stay home, bring up the child on his own. He had to go to work, make a living and study. A roster was organised for the time being. The women took turns to look after me, but this couldn’t go on for long. The welfare agencies got involved. Adoption was an option. Someone would give the child a good home. But the immigrants who discussed this with my father advised against it. ‘Our child, our problem’ they felt. ‘It would reflect on all of us if we gave him away.’ The grandparents were the obvious answer, ship the child back to the grandparents. It was up to them to look after the child of their children. But who would take the child back to the other side of the world? Forget the cost, a philanthropic organisation would find the money. But if my father went back with the child he would be jailed for leaving the country illegally. He couldn’t go. The grandparents were not allowed to leave and collect the baby. Perhaps a nurse from here who had nothing to fear could go, all her expense paid. A nice little trip for a young woman, all she had to do was to look after the child on the voyage. It could be done if someone would pay for it.

Ignoring the staggering cost of international phone calls at the time, they talked at length to my grandparents, the parents of both my mother and father. They were all devastated. What could they do? How could they help? My mother’s parents were in need of help themselves. Their small business, a tobacconist shop that also sold a few items of stationery and confectionery had been confiscated, nationalised. They had been exiled to the countryside, to a remote village with no electricity, no running water. They had just managed to get permission to return to the city. They lived in one room of an apartment which they shared with strangers. Theirs was not a home for a small child. My father’s parents were out all day. My grandfather, the secretary of a state run cooperative, carried great responsibilities. He went to work early, and after a full tiring day, had to attend long party meetings. He didn’t get home till late at night. My grandmother was fortunate to have a job with the municipality. She couldn’t give that up to look after a child. But this was not a problem. There were excellent orphanages. There was no shortage of orphans. The state provided for them. They were better cared for than children living with their own parents. It was agreed that it would be the best option if I was to be returned to my grandparents, my father’s parents, and be put into the very best of orphanages.

Then the Cold War intervened. My great-uncle, the actor in Hollywood, could not abide communists. He had seen too many people he knew, fellow travellers, out to undermine the American way of life that he held so dear. He had seen the communists take over his homeland, the magical place of his youth, and turn it into a sombre grey, joyless place. He believed that the little chap, me, born into freedom should be brought up in freedom.

When the news of the accident reached my great-uncle, he considered it his duty to do whatever was in his power to save his small nephew from the evils of communism. He had to do this for his brother, who had lived through terrible times while he himself enjoyed a carefree life in peaceful California. He had to do this in recognition of all the good things America had offered him.

He would bring up his brother’s grandchild. He and his wife, Kitty, would look after the child, give him a home. The child’s father could join them in California once his affairs were settled and his immigration could be arranged. This seemed like an eminently sensible solution. My great-uncle andwife, Kitty got on a plane, flew to New Zealand, picked up the child, me, and flew back to California.

My great-uncle and Kitty were both in their forties, their dreams and ambitions unrealised. Kitty, who like my great-uncle, had gone to California to seek her fortune in the movies, came from New Jersey. When she was young she was a beautiful vivacious girl, but neither this, nor even a modicum of talent was enough for her to make it in Hollywood. As she grew older she put on some weight, became rounder, softer, but her spontaneous smile radiated an inner sweetness. She was a natural mother, a warm-hearted, kind woman. My great-uncle, his wife, and I formed a happy Californian family.

Like many immigrants, my great- uncle was a fiercely patriotic American. I was brought up on stories of people who fled Europe, found refuge in America and became fabulously wealthy or famous, and on the stories of their escape from atrocities, cruelty and hatred. I heard over and over again how tanks rolled along the beautiful boulevards of the city of my great-uncle’s youth, and how young people, students, patriots, fought them with stones, Molotov cocktails and whatever weapons they could improvise. My mother and father were themselves heroes of this resistance. I shared in the reflected glory of my parents.

I knew little about them. My father and my great-uncle had kept in touch. My father had hoped to join us, get his immigration papers, come to America and make a new life for himself. Then he met Sally, who was to become his wife, someone quite unlike my mother. She came from a large family; cousins, second cousins, uncles, aunts. My father, by joining her, became immediately part of this large, extended family.

At first my father’s letters were quite frequent, but once he had got married, they petered out. There were just occasional cards, birthday greetings. He had moved north, managed the drapery store that was his wife’s family business. They, my father and his wife, had children, a boy and a girl. I was a reminder of a past best forgotten. Among his papers there was an obituary notice describing my father as a prominent businessman who died tragically of cancer at an untimely young age. My mother was never mentioned.

There are no graves of my parents for me to visit. Buried, cremated, I didn’t know what happened to them. There was a long letter from my father, touching, like someone letting go, opening his heart, putting words on paper in which he tried to say how grateful he was to my great-uncle and Kitty, for giving me a home, bringing me up with so much kindness, putting me through school, so that now, as a graduate of an Ivy League business school, all doors were open to me. He didn’t mention my mother, how proud she would have been of her son had she lived. My mother was never talked about except as a heroic, larger-than-life figure, too young, undaunted by danger, bravely fought for the cause of freedom