B To Be Or Not to be in Vienna Wind #2

Vienna: A World Apart #2
Wind from the East

My life was not based on reality. It was based on an ideal. It was
based on fantasy that swam out of watery darkness. Somehow in this cell
my life ended and I was being born out of the currents I left behind. I
tried to draw strength from my memories of childhood, as I had done
after Aga's death and during my time in the army. However visions of
communists, fascists, the high ranking powerful men who had transformed
this part of the world into chain-ridden cells for millions of people
dominated the scenes in my head.
In particular, my mind could not help draw the parallels between Hitler
and the Slovakian communists. How could Austrians and German bear the
ease with which they had been manipulated, the same ease with which the
communists manipulated us? I dwelled on the events of 1938 when we were
sold out by France and Britain. I felt rage for events not even
belonging to my own lifetime that had led me to this dark and
threatening cell. A single tear travelled down my unshaven cheek. I
missed my comfortable chair, my bed and the familiar mark on the
ceiling, my own bathroom. I sat still the entire time whilst my
thoughts were whirling around at lightning speed.

I remembered emerging from the river, the feeling of joy when I
realised that I had made it then a gripping numbness when I realised
that I could not see Ondrej and Milan.

'Oh, Mamka, oh Ondrej, Milan, I am alone.' I cried into Bessie's fur,
or the wall or the mirror or whatever. That night my debilitated, but
inexhaustible inner voice taught me that the basest of all things is to
be afraid. My loneliness was exaggerated in this state. My thoughts
were in flood, moving in any directions and finding their own level of
drowning. The water blasted out. It sipped slowly into my
consciousness. The water was like a metaphor for a loss of the sense
who I was and what was to become of me. My old sense of humour had
drowned for ever. But my communist reflexes were the same. 'You don't
have to whisper,' people kept reminding me.

If a country can cry, it cries in its escapes. The escape was mine, but
the cries were my Mamka's. 'Why, why did you leave us? Aga left us at
22 and now you ,' she told me on the telephone. Those words crushed
every breath out of me. The feeling that I would not be at the centre
of Mamka's world. Escape is a journey of trespass that is not an
escape. I knew then that ahead of me was a lifetime of dealing with the
crossing. Getting past the physical journey was easy. Getting family
and me past the mental journey, was the hardest thing. I almost went
mad thinking about 'if onlys.' As the world was moving from summer to
autumn, my eyes had no other expectation but to drift through icebergs
of my tortured interior. My stare could freeze. I was unsure how to
encourage the watch to tick with meaning again. Unsure why keeping
correct facial expressions was beyond my abilities. How many times have
my parents forgiven me? Surely, more than seventy times seven!

It is so ironic, but only when we lose something or are about to lose
something do we realise how much we value it. When you catch a glimpse
of death, it's amazing how so many things you think vitally important
aren't even in the picture; and the things that you have been taking
for granted, the things that you can't buy, those are suddenly the
things of matchless value.Mamka always left the lights on for me. Here
I was in darkness, I did not even know where the switch was if there
was any.

Whenever the 7 July comes around, I become a different person. I am
moved by memories in a resentful way. I have no inclinations to go to
work, nor to walk along Bondi Beach, as is my usual custom.
The most vivid recurring image in the nightmare is watching Ondrej and
Milan drowning. I try to reach them with my hands. Then the
unidentified officer in a Nazi uniform throws me into the river.
Despite repeated efforts, I too am drowning. I slip deeper and deeper
into the Morava River. Every morning after such nightmares, I awake
sweaty and in a mood as dark as a mad man's depression. Our escape was
timed to be symbolic in its reverence for the day that Charter 77 was
signed. It was meant to say to the world, hey look at us, what the
young are having to do in Czechoslovakia.

Aga, who died so tragically young from leukemia, had no hope in this
system. The hospitals and medical supplies were inadequate to help her
and so quickly she slipped out of my life, with no time to fight. Maybe
she would have died similarly in another part of the world, maybe
medical care might not have been able to do anything for her. However,
the fact remains that no-one could assist her in her dying hours. There
was also the suspicious nature of the onset of the leukemia. If Aga
hadn't been working at that plant, would she have suffered a similar
fate? In my youth, I blamed it all on Communism, the uncaring system
that was supposed to be a caring one. I still can feel that disbelief
that it happened, and that insatiable sense of loss.

I held other memories of the communist putsch time. Most vivid were of
my Auntie Otta, who daringly escaped across the marshlands of Sudaten
land. Then there was the land confiscation, when my grandfather lost
everything he owned. Not that he was alone in this as everyone had to
'make do', living each day as it comes and never knowing where the next
meal was coming from or whether it would be the last.

*The Literary Athorsden provides in few hours what it took years to
experience
Jozef Imrich: the Richest Author of All

Can you ever think too much about freedom?
Not in my book