Sweet Bitter Cane

by G S Johnston

  ‘This is no place for children,’ she said to the welcoming official who processed her documents.

  He stared at her, his face a mix of ennui and contempt. She shouldn’t have spoken.

  ‘There are many children here,’ he said, and waved her through.

  The camp was isolated, inland, dry and dusty, like the other camps. The women were to be housed in long rectangular huts, iron in construction, fitted close together, regular stamps across the field. Camp 3 contained whole families – men, women and children. The newly arrived women were walked the paths stretching between the buildings like the rows of the cane fields. Along the paths, there were small flowerbeds. The sprays of colour calmed Amelia’s heart – somewhere in this place, someone cared for beauty.

  The other women were shown to one hut, but Amelia and Ilaria were taken to another, across the other side of the path. She didn’t want to be removed from the others, but Maria pointed out the distance wasn’t so great. To her surprise, the long rectangular building had been divided with flimsy partition walls, so she and Ilaria had their own, small room. Ilaria sat on the bed and watched Amelia survey the room: a rough cupboard made from wooden packing cases stuck to the wall, covered with thin fabric.

  There were two small tables, one she could work at in front of a rectangular window and one with a washbowl and jug. It was small, sparse but clean, and she hoped this was their home, that they wouldn’t be moved again.

  ‘Do you like it?’ she said to Ilaria, injecting as much positivity as she could. Amelia opened the window, hinged from the top, and secured it with a pole between the sill and the window frame. The child wouldn’t look at the room, only at her.

  ‘Relax,’ Amelia said. She hugged her, this limp doll, kissed her brow. ‘It’s quite comfortable. We’ll make it our home.’

  She would keep busy and impress order by unpacking their few clothes and placing the two empty cases on the shelves above the packing-case wardrobe. Still, Ilaria sat on the bed, her eyes never leaving her. There was a knock at the door. A woman came, blonde nearly overrun with grey, and in her mid-fifties, tall and a strong build. She carried a small plant, the pot fashioned from a jam tin.

  ‘Welcome,’ the woman said, handing her the plant. ‘I am Gertrude.’

  Never had yellow daisies looked so homely. Amelia thanked her and introduced herself and Ilaria, who stared at the woman with no reaction. Gertrude was part of a German religious group, the Temple Society, who’d lived in Palestine. At the start of the war, the British had interned them and transported some to the concentration camps in Australia.

  ‘Did you plant all the flowers?’ Amelia said.

  Gertrude nodded. ‘I refuse to let them beat me.’

  ‘They’re very welcoming.’

  ‘The flowers are civility,’ Gertrude said. ‘These dummkopf men, they have no idea. We women must create life.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not so bad. There are many interesting people here. And we run a little school.’ She looked at Ilaria, who frowned and turned away. ‘If you would like to attend.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Amelia said. ‘But she’s only five and she doesn’t speak English.’

  ‘That’s not a problem. The classes are in German.’

  Gertrude began to laugh, hard and from the belly. Amelia froze. It was the first time she’d heard someone laugh in days. Ilaria’s eyes bolted wide. And then Amelia was taken over by the utter carelessness of Gertrude’s mirth and began to laugh, but Ilaria remained stern-faced.

  ‘We live in the Babel Tower,’ Gertrude said. ‘Communists and fascists of all creeds, cheek to cheek.’ She smiled. ‘There are Italian children too.’

  Amelia placed the plant on the windowsill. Gertrude asked if they would like to see the camp’s facilities. Amelia liked this woman and agreed, but Ilaria whinged and didn’t want to go.

  ‘Come and see all the flowers,’ Amelia said.

  Ilaria may not have wanted to go, but she didn’t want to be separated from Amelia for a second and shuffled off the bed with great reluctance.

  Oddly, the camp was built on a mild slope, which gave something of a view and provided a walk to relieve the flat monotony of the rest of the day. Some of the other women had come into the air. The camp consisted of two main roads that met at right angles, dividing the camp into four compounds, A through to D. They were housed in A. But the perimeter fences formed a diamond. Each compound had its own set of amenities: a large kitchen and store, two large mess halls, a small triage room and separate toilet blocks for men and women, with only cold water. Gertrude took them to the communal buildings: a small library and schoolroom, a canteen that supplied an array of goods at fairly cheap prices.

  ‘It’s no paradise,’ Gertrude said.

  ‘We’ll make do.’

  ‘Boredom’s the devil.’

  Gertrude was right. Amelia was used to being active, engaged in the business, always stressed for time. Here the lack of any purpose would bring another type of stress.

  That evening, the food was bland but plentiful, although Ilaria refused to eat. Despite all coaxing, she drank only a small amount of milk and ate a plain biscuit. Once they’d finished, they went to the toilet block and then returned to their room. The thin metal walls would be hot in the day and cold at night. Ilaria had been put to bed but lay watching Amelia.

  ‘I’ll not leave you,’ Amelia cooed.

  But there was no reasoning with her, so Amelia went about her chores under Ilaria’s unerring watch. She unpacked the paper and pens, the dictionary, the envelopes and stamps. In the morning, she would start writing letters. This would fill her time – to write herself and Ilaria out of this detention, use their language against them. But to whom would she write? And what was she to say?

  She would have a right of appeal, but even this, as she knew from Italo, was only a show trial. The emergency laws under which the country operated in war gelded the judiciary. A judge couldn’t free anyone, no matter how unjust the internment. They could only advise a prisoner be freed. The accusations were stacked against her. No good would come of an appeal. She picked up a pen to write this. It would guide her in expressing her defence.

  She was plunged into darkness. She gasped. It was nine o’clock – lights out.

  In the dark hush, Ilaria began to cry. She pulled the child from the bed and looked out the window. The floodlights along the perimeter wire fences glowed cold, the light hung like sheets. Ilaria glared at them, whimpering.

  ‘Hush, hush, hush,’ Amelia said, sotto voce.

  Armed guards patrolled the fence. They were there, roaming with intent, every time she checked through the first sleepless night.

  The morning began with rollcall, the process not so much about making sure everyone was still present (How could a woman with a small child escape this barbed wire?) but to remind them there was no escape from what they were – prisoners, with all its connotations of criminality. They would eat when they were told, not when they wanted, and not what they wanted but what they were given. And they would answer a rollcall each day. They would shower and toilet when they were told. Their lights would be shut off at nine at night.

  ‘But that’s where it stops,’ Gertrude said. ‘Don’t accept what they say you are. You’re no more a prisoner than Mussolini or Hitler.’

  What had they come to? Ilaria shouldn’t bear such a stain, an innocent child paying for Amelia’s support of fascism, her alliances, her decisions, which now seemed remote. Had all this been groundless? Flippant? Wrong?

  After breakfast – plenty of eggs, bread and tea and coffee – they returned to their room. Ilaria lay on the bed, listless and withdrawn. She had hardly slept, so Amelia left her there and hoped she might now drift off. Amelia wrote to the boys, telling them they were safe and giving them the address through which she could receive mail. She wrote to Italo, telling him what had happened, although she suspected he’d already know. She wrote a small note to Clara.

  Gertrude had told her there were whole
families in Camp 3. Could Italo be transferred to Tatura? What harm would that bring? They could be reunited and temper some of the anxiety. She would make enquiries. And she wrote to Mr White, the solicitor in Babinda, although the boys had already contacted him, giving a detailed account of the accusations against her. She was sure the letters would be read before they left the camp, but she added it was inhumane for Ilaria to be held there. She considered this a statement of fact.

  Apart from the morning and evening rollcall, there were some small cleaning duties, but the rest of the day was hers. Boredom was the devil. She wrote letters of injustice, pleas to be released, to businesses and important people in Babinda for character references. She read what she could find, although there were no newspapers and the library was limited. And she tried to improve Ilaria’s mood, but she would weep without reason, clutched by a halo of sorrow.

  ‘She must miss her brothers and Lucia,’ Maria said.

  ‘She misses everything about the farm,’ Amelia said, ‘except her father, whom she no longer remembers.’

  At night Amelia could hear men shouting, laughing and carousing around the camp as if they were drunk. The noise kept Ilaria awake.

  ‘They’ve made a still,’ Gertrude said, ‘out of jam tins and whatever they could lay their hands on. It’s whiskey they’ve made.’

  The men howled like dogs.

  ‘Don’t the authorities know about it?’

  ‘They must. But I guess it’s not causing them any harm.’

  It may not be causing them harm, but the noise was frightening. Amelia could stand the camp no longer and the following day made an appointment to speak with an official. She enquired if Italo could be transferred from Loveday to Tatura.

  ‘It isn’t possible,’ he said, without much delay. ‘Too much bureaucratic red tape.’

  She bit her lip, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘And it would bring happiness?’

  His face drained to ashen. She shouldn’t have been so tart. She apologised and left the man to his work.

  One afternoon a child of about seven or eight, who spoke German and a little English, came to their room. Amelia thought it was unwise to allow her and Ilaria to play. This little girl was the enemy. Would Amelia be misjudged, again, if she left them together? And then it occurred to her: Amelia and Ilaria were both the enemy. She smiled. And the little girl smiled and came in. On the bed, Ilaria and she sat together. She gave them some of her precious paper and some pencils, and the little girl drew beautiful pictures of the room, details beyond her years, the common daisies, the objects on Amelia’s desk. But Ilaria remained at a distance, unengaged, looking at the girl as if she wished she would just go away.

  Clara wrote. She’d been interviewed by the police, questioned about her involvement in the school, but had managed to avoid arrest thus far. Amelia understood; the interrogation would have been filled with wild accusations and have frightened Clara. Amelia had embroiled Clara in the school, and Clara resented these ramifications. She knew her hand well enough to see her anger in the writing. Any apology she could give would be incomplete. And given all the mail was most likely screened, it would probably further fuel the case against Clara. And herself.

  One morning Ilaria said she would take herself to the toilet block. Greatly encouraged by this act of independence, Amelia said she could go on her own. With no great accord, Ilaria set off. But when she was perhaps sixty feet away, Amelia was seized with anxiety and decided to follow, at a distance. To get to the females’ amenities block, the women had to pass the males’. Ahead of them there was a great commotion, men yelling and some running up to the building and then away.

  Ilaria stopped a few feet from the men’s building. Amelia ran to her. A man had been brought outside. He was bleeding. Cuts at his wrists. Another man called for help, over and over. Someone strapped a white shirt around the wound, but the blood was profuse, pooling, darkening, congealing on the ground. The man’s face was cold and white as marble. Amelia covered the child’s eyes with her hand and tried to pull her away. But she resisted, rooted to the spot, slipped her head from Amelia’s hand and looked again on this dreadful sight.

  ‘Come away,’ Amelia said.

  She carried her off, pressing the child’s face into her breast. Ilaria made no noise, no sound at all. Amelia felt the warm wet on her hands, felt it splash down onto her bare lower legs. Ilaria had wet herself.

  ‘He was German,’ Gertrude said, standing in the door of their room. ‘He just found out the SS shot his brother in Dresden.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Amelia sat Ilaria on the bed.

  ‘He was helping Jews.’

  She pulled off Ilaria’s wet smock and her underclothes.

  ‘So he was held as an enemy internee,’ Amelia said, ‘and his brother shot for opposing the Nazis. No-one can win.’

  Gertrude looked at her for some moments and then nodded.

  ‘The British can’t see there are Germans who love Hitler and those who hate him.’ Gertrude continued to observe her. She met her gaze, which narrowed to some accusation. ‘As there are Italians who hate Mussolini.’

  Gertrude continued to stare. She knew something of Amelia, had spoken with someone, somehow knew of the willing support she’d offered Mussolini. She wished Gertrude would leave. Ilaria made no sound, just sat still, her eyes transfixed on the middle distance, as Amelia poured water into the washbasin and began to clean her. She wished the child would cry and thought to pinch her. She wished she could cry.

  Finally, she looked at Gertrude, who then turned in the doorframe to leave. Something in her coat, a small tear in the side, reminded her of something, someone long forgotten. Signor Gregorio. He would be long dead, and she’d never thought to ask her mother of him, never thought of him when she’d walked across his piazza. How far she’d strayed from … what? Some ideal; herself. She rushed to the doorframe, called out to Gertrude. ‘Is there anything I can do, for the man?’

  Gertrude turned, her face perplexed. ‘He’s dead.’

  Once a week, a priest, Father Owens, and a group of Brigidine Sisters came from the nearby town of Echuca to hold Latin mass, one of the dining rooms pressed to impersonate a church. The Latin linked those in the camp of the Roman faith. Amelia and Ilaria attended, and as the weeks passed Amelia came to enjoy the small ritual. And it drew Ilaria from her shell, her eyes wide with wonder. She loved the smell of the incense, the candles, the rich purple and cream in the priest’s gowns. These were some of the few moments in a week when Ilaria would let Amelia move more than a few feet from her, still within sight, and walk to the makeshift altar to take communion. One of the nuns, Sister Helen, would encourage Ilaria to sit with her. While she took the bread and wine, Amelia would hear Ilaria laugh.

  ‘This is no place for children,’ Sister Helen said to Amelia.

  Sister Helen was Irish, in her mid-forties, and spoke with a strong brogue. Amelia looked at the Sister.

  ‘I can’t seem to reach her,’ Amelia said.

  ‘Does she play with the other children?’

  ‘I’ve tried, but most are German. She doesn’t speak English.’

  ‘Then you must change that.’

  ‘I speak to her more in English, but she withdraws and responds in Italian. She says she doesn’t want to speak the other way. And her Italian is deteriorating.’

  ‘I can speak no Italian,’ Sister Helen said. ‘Leave her with me for an hour after mass. But you must speak to her only in English.’

  Amelia smiled – that in such a harsh place there were acts of kindness. But no matter how hard or softly they tried, each word of English seemed to conjure quiet in Ilaria. She would refuse to leave Amelia’s side, sobbing softly if she tried. She refused to eat, or at best ate very little and had lost a considerable amount of weight. She repeated over and over that she wanted to go home. She missed her brothers.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ she said.

  And how could Amelia argue with her? Amel
ia tried to get her to help with Gertrude’s flowerbeds, but when Amelia wasn’t looking, Ilaria scuffed the coloured flowers into the earth. If only Lucia were there. Amelia wasn’t blind – Ilaria loved her. She’d left her with Lucia when they’d travelled to Italy. Ilaria spent her days in the kitchen around Lucia’s feet and called her ‘Nonna’. But Lucia wasn’t there. And neither was Lucia in Babinda, having stayed on in Brisbane to help her son and his family. Amelia couldn’t blame her for wanting to be near her kin, but it had left the boys to fend for themselves. And there was no possibility of trying to return Ilaria to Babinda. Only Sister Helen could bring Ilaria from herself, and only for the shortest time.

  One afternoon, while Amelia was writing letters, Ilaria lay in her listless state on the bed. She said something that Amelia didn’t quite catch. She asked her to repeat it.

  ‘I want to go to Marta.’

  The words sent chills through Amelia. The child wanted to die. She had no answer except to pick her up and carry her to the sunshine, surrounded by Gertrude’s flowers. Ilaria stared at them. She had no colour in her face, grey heaviness under her eyes, her dress hanging from her shoulders.

  ‘This place is bad for her,’ Amelia said to Sister Helen.

  ‘I can’t see it’s good for anyone. How does she know of death?’

  Amelia told her of Marta. ‘At the time, Ilaria seemed … unaffected by it. I didn’t think she understood what had happened. Marta had been away at school – Ilaria just thought she was still there.’

  ‘Even a child’s mind works to defend itself.’

  ‘She’s so unhappy, and as brutal as it sounds, I do nothing to lift her spirits. I’ve failed her.’

  For some moments they sat in silence.

  ‘I was misled,’ Amelia said. Sister Helen said nothing. ‘The letters from Italy, they spoke of the great good the fascists had achieved. Who was I to doubt that? And here, the Italian consulate offered support to the Italian workers when all we’d received from the British Australians was condemnation. They invited us to work. but when we were a success … They didn’t like that.’