A BOOK FROM AUSTRALIA / Ervin Molnár-Tarján
In 1956 my family was in an uproar. Let us emigrate! But the plan was carried out only in part. The brother of my uncle’s wife emigrated to Australia, and he took my uncle’s thirteen-year-old son with him, saying that my uncle and his wife could follow later with their younger son of four and our family. But in the end, we stayed behind. According to the family legend, the lorry was already parked in front of the house when my mother announced that she would not go because she did not want to leave the piano, to which my uncle replied that he would stay as well, because their parents had entrusted my mother to him. And so, it happened that my aunt and her son from her first marriage were separated for years.
My aunt was reunited with her son on her deathbed. She suffered from Parkinson’s disease, her arms and legs were trembling, but she was in full possession of her mental faculties. For weeks she told stories about her life to her son, and he turned them into a biographical novel in English, which won a literary prize in Australia and in New Zealand. Thanks to one of our cousins (Ervin Molnár-Tarján), the book was later published in private edition in Hungary, as well.
