By Anna Porter (page 2 of 6)

After he had served his time at hard labour, the government allowed him to leave his beloved Hungary. He had agreed to go because he knew he could not remain silent about the regime of terror that ruled the country, and the price one paid for speaking up was to be jailed. He died in exile in New Zealand.

I grew up in New Zealand. It's one of the world's most beautiful countries, with mountains and pastures, endless vistas of the ocean, colourful birds, hot springs and ice fields. I think of it as verdant and terrifying in a way Hungary wasn't. In New Zealand, I was scared of being alone. I was alone most of the time. I didn't adapt well to the change. Nor did I ever feel welcome or wanted. New Zealand, though it may be the most beautiful place in the world, is not a welcoming home for exiles.

She's had a hard life, my aunt. Her sons were raised in state-run institutions while she tried to appeal her fate. Her younger son, who is my age, spends most of his time training peregrine falcons. I think he must have watched the birds from his grated window at the orphanage. He is still unsure whether to forgive his mother for missing his childhood. My mother believed I would have been in that jail, had we stayed in Budapest after the revolution was lost. A childhood acquaintance was kept there until he was 18. Then he was executed. Communists prefer not to execute children.

When I go back now, I do not meet myself swinging down the street in Christchurch, but I do think about the person I might have been, had I stayed and kept trying to fit in. I would most certainly have owned a good bicycle. When I was at Canterbury University, I used to ride an old, paint-peeling, bent-handlebarred bike from Ainsley Terrace on the River Avon, all the way downtown.

Early mornings, I used to pedal to the Princess Margaret Hospital and clean toilets and walls. I had become rather fond of one of the old ladies on the "mental ward." Most days, she would take my face between her dry-fingered hands and tell me what she could see. "There is a scar that starts just here, under your hairline, and it runs across your nose and down to your mouth. Catches the corner. It's hard for you to smile, isn't it, dear? Such an angry red scar."

"It doesn't hurt," I would tell her, but she knew better. She smiled her sad, lopsided smile; she knew how it felt. She had a scar too, and she didn't think there was time for it to heal any more. She was too old. Her skin had lost its resilience. "You have time, though," she reassured me. I was 18. I was studying English literature, and had discovered Milton, Shakespeare, Auden, T. S. Eliot, Shelley, Keats and Blake. That may have been what took me to England.

When I arrived, broke and anxious for work, I thought London put Budapest to shame: a great city. I fed pigeons in Trafalgar Square, checked all the stores along King's Road, walked both sides of the Thames, stood in line for student tickets at the galleries, climbed up to the Tower, read history, ate Wimpy burgers, drank G & Ts and warm beer in pubs. I read Dickens, Smollett, George Eliot, Trollope, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce. I saw my first Shakespeare play.

I was determined not to wash toilets any more and lied my way into a job at Cassell, the publishers. There was just enough pay for a fifth of a basement flat, but at least I was in publishing, and I knew my grandfather would approve. The flat was shared by Kiwis and Aussies. We took turns in the bathtub, each person's water becoming progressively colder; we couldn't afford more than one bathful of hot water each day.

London was an adventure, but not a home. When I read George Mikes's How to be an Alien, I recognized myself as an alien, not belonging, perhaps just passing through. When I lived in London, I was always travelling, coming back ready for the next trip. I think, even then, I was looking for a place where I could stay. I saw most of Scotland, every university town in England, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. I talked with the ghostly friar in Trondheim Cathedral, fed the goldfish in the Grand Hotel's pond in Stockholm, fished off a houseboat along the coast from Lund, and got drunk on Polish vodka at the Majestic in Helsinki.