For the last few days, the camp had reunited the families in preparation for the journey elsewhere, and it was now that Henry freely walked in, his energy abrupt, opening the door and surveying the room before approaching Julia. He had yellowed papers in his hand, and he was fluttering them with excitement and apprehension. In his excitement, he failed to notice that his wife was on the floor.
He dropped down to his knees and placed his hands underneath her, lifting her up, reading her face. ‘OH bozshe, what’s going on with you?’
‘I fainted.’
He looked more intently at her. The blood had drained from her cheeks.
‘Oh, are you alright?’
Julia pinched her cheeks to bring back the color. ‘I think so. Yes. Fine.’ She clasped her hands in front of her stomach and suddenly a new thought entered her mind as she looked at him, but it quickly vanished.
‘Right. So, tomorrow. We’re ready?’ He looked over at Slava, and back at Julia. ‘Well?’
‘Yes, but...’ Julia started, wanting the questions in her head to tumble out like coins onto the ground. She wanted him to pick them up and answer them and give them to her and make her feel certain again. She wanted him to make her feel safe.
‘What?’
‘No, nothing. Yes, we’re ready.’
He picked up Slava and brought her to his chest triumphantly: a father feeling like a man, having a conversation with his family about the life they would have. He cooed at her and his answers came rapidly as if shutting out the doubt that they all felt creeping forward: ‘It’ll be fine. Australia is warm. They have plans for us, we’ll have a house. You’ll be able to find work when Slava starts school.’
Henry turned to walk away, but then turned back to Julia. ‘We will be fine, Julia.’ And then walked towards the door and out into the light with their daughter, leaving Julia standing there, their life quite literally at her feet.
‘Fine, yes. Fine.’ she whispered again, to no one in particular.
‘Mama! Papa! Lotka!’ Slava pointed. The ship that loomed at the harbor was bigger than anything Julia had ever seen in her entire life. The sound of hollow, creaking, cavernous metal settling in the dock rang in her ears and reverberated around her.
She looked up at it, tenting her hand over her eyes. The ship was bold and dark, in contrast to the bright sky behind it, the blue water sitting below it, the bulk of metal splitting the surface of the water like a knife. She looked around at everyone else, wondering if they’d had the same thoughts, and were also in awe of what was before them, and they seemed to be: groups of people standing and waiting with bags, with children, all looking up, hopeful.
Big white block letters branded the boat’s flank: GENERAL STUART HEINTZELMAN 159. Julia wondered who it was, this German, that had been so important, to have had something this big named after him. What had he done, and how many had sacrificed their lives, possibly, for this man? And yet, the irony of the fact that this ship would bring them away from war, was not lost on her— a German ship that would take them to freedom. And she was finally ready to give over to it.
There were passengers already walking onto the boat; from where, she had no idea. Some looked to be dressed nicely, looking like they had money to spare. Julia held onto Slava’s hand tightly. The ramp started lowering.
‘Hey!’ the family turned and saw Angelo, loping across to them, his hands behind his back, his shirt with stains and sweat marking it. ‘I thought I would say arrivederci, eh?’ Slava stood by him. She had now grown comfortable around the ‘nice man with smoky face’. ‘Can you say it, little Slava? The word for good-bye?’
Slava shook her head.
‘Well, in that case, I cannot give you the present. Ah well.’ He pretended to turn away.
‘Aree-dechee.’ Henry chuckled, watching the scene. Julia’s face creased, grateful that a kind man would make Slava smile. Perhaps creating a memory for her amongst the chaos.
‘Perfetto!’ Angelo bellowed, and moved his hand from behind his back, revealing a bright, round orange, as bright as anything Slava had ever seen.
Slava gasped and looked up at Julia. ‘Mama can I have it?’
Angelo straightened up to face Julia and Henry. ‘My nonna has an orchard, and the most beautiful orange tree that I remember as a child. It was a happy memory, having my first orange. I think it will be her first one, yes?’
Julia nodded.
‘Well, then.’ He stuck out his hand and Henry shook it. ‘Good luck.’
Before Henry could say anything, Angelo walked off with a smile and a wave, Slava clutching the orange like a jewel, holding it to her face and smelling it with utter joy.
‘Cargo! Cargo section!’ Directions in the chaos, shouting to create mass order.
Would have been nice to be in a little cabin with linens and a dresser, and a seat by a window, Julia thought, as she passed by tables set with linens and lamps and china plates.
Walking through into the lower section of the ship, it was as if they were all being hidden away. The family were ushered into a small storage room with a tiny port hole and a mattress on the floor for all of them to share. The ship creaked and moaned as more people loaded into its spaces. Henry sat on the floor, his back against the metal of the ship, looking at Julia, and placed a hand around her waist.
‘You feel strange?’ He knew her face so well now.
She nodded. ‘Feel a bit tired.’
‘Aren’t we all.’ He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The smell of the orange was filling the room, Slava’s hands sticky with it.
The door, ramp, gangplank, whatever it was called for she’d heard too many words today and couldn’t remember, was being pulled up. The small hatch was closing. Julia watched through the small, red-painted porthole, her tiny circle of a window like a changing portrait of a strange world and watched as the sandy coast became smaller and smaller until the harbor slowly became smaller and the blue of the sea overtook it. She thought was almost more beautiful, in this way, as blue of the sea met the pale horizon of the sky, and this was a salve to mend her broken story and make it whole again.
Julia prodded Henry.
‘I need some air; can you keep an eye on Slava?’
‘You just need some rest.’ He placed an arm around her shoulders, and she was grateful for the safety of his embrace.
She was restless. ‘Sure. Maybe I’m just hungry.’ She felt her stomach contract, and then a warmth between her legs. She stood up, her cheeks flushing suddenly.
Henry cocked his head to the side. ‘There’s food: black bread, some soup made out of potatoes. Maybe even sausage.’
The thought made her want to wretch.
She shook her head. ‘No, no. I just need air.’ She started walking away, impatiently. It was starting again. She winced at the pain.
‘Okay, I’ll be here.’
Julia made sure she remembered exactly where he was as she left, trying to push her way around and through groups of people as her stomach began to cramp again, this time in quick succession. When she finally, slowly, climbed the last flight of stairs and found the doorway to the long flat walkway above, she walked out and carefully gripped the railing that traveled the perimeter of the ship. It was extraordinary, how the world looked here, and it was the first time she’d ever seen the sea, and it was not at all as she imagined it. She breathed deeply and gratefully and then prepared for another fresh burst of pain and looked out onto the vast emptiness of sea in front of her as blood from the failing pregnancy slowly traveled down her thighs, staining her legs underneath her skirts.
Afterwards, when she had found a toilet room and silently mourned what could not be, she used salt water from a filthy basin to dry the marks on her legs and tore a piece of the inside of her skirt to finish the process, and then a bit more to soak the tears off her cheeks—though they kept falling faster than she could catch them— and erase the story that had been, and was now no longer. And then, aching still, she carefully
walked back to her husband and daughter. He placed his arm around her, and she pressed her face against his chest, hearing Slava’s breath become even as she fell asleep on the mattress, the orange peel in her slack hand.
They were once again a family of three.
The next six weeks they were all moving: the ship, the people on the ship, the sky and sea surrounding them. And yet, they were standing in one space, in one place, and given time to unfurl themselves for a time.
The first-class cabins were on the upper deck, the wide wood circling the entirety of the ship and secured with heavy steel poles and railings. There were lifeboats piled up and tied close to the bow of the ship, a German flag snapping its colors at the stern. People were segregated by class— first, second, third and cargo—, there was a hall in the center of the ship that served food to everyone but first class (first class had linens and fine crystal and silk-backed mahogany chairs), and there was also a small pool of fresh water where everyone was allowed to swim at marked times (first-class always went before everyone else). Julia and Henry occasionally walked the length of the ship, arm and arm and holding Slava’s hand as other families would, talking as the sea air blew across their faces, people-watching, having polite conversations with other immigrants that were emigrating to Australia. They shared food with other families, and watched each other’s children play games on the wooden decks. Some evenings there would be glasses filled with rum and card-games in the lower-class cabins, which helped pass the time and made them feel as if they were on an adventure to discover new lands and live in long-awaited freedom.
Occasionally, Henry and Julia sat and looked at the stars, Henry teaching her the constellations that he had learned about in school, pointing his finger to the sky and outlining the shapes of Aries, or Orion, and Julia would ask him how he had remembered all of these strange names and figures. He was a wonder, to her, in those moments and revealed much of the quiet man he had always been.
The ship worked its way peacefully along the length of the Suez, around the corners of India, on the edge of Singapore, and then down towards the southern coast of Australia, stopping at various ports. A few days before it arrived in Melbourne, where the Bonegilla detention center would be to receive them all, Henry and Julia sat one evening on the middle deck, after a dinner of boiled potatoes, ham and vegetable broth. Slava was sleeping in their cabin already. They were imagining what their life would be like; the newness of the idea was exhilarating.
‘I think the house will be small, but sweet. Like a little version of my childhood home.’ She paused, confirming that detail. ‘With a garden. And an apple tree, for Slava to climb.’ Suddenly, Julia was young. Younger than her twenty-four years, and her memories flooded her head. But they didn’t make her mourn her past— they made her want to recreate it, somehow. Indulge in the celebration of it.
She continued. ‘Also, tsvity. Wildflowers. I love them. Or anything pink and white.’
‘Orchids.’ Henry had read that orchids were a relatively easy import, the seeds arriving from farms in Fiji that spanned acres; they were a rarity, and only afforded by the wealthy, in Europe. It reminded him of his childhood, and his mother; it was one of the only things that remained in her room after she had died.
‘Why orchids?’ Julia had never heard of Henry having any bit of nostalgia about something so delicate. Or anything much, really.
The warm air moved strands of his hair across his forehead as he spoke. ‘My mother loved orchids. She would have them in her room, and I remember they were the darkest, blackest purple color… Maybe we can have orchids, somehow.’
‘Oh, a greenhouse, you mean.’ Julia nodded. ‘That’s a lovely idea.’
Henry stood at up and leaned on the railing. ‘Listen, I think it’ll be small, but we will make it as we want it to be, this new life.’
‘Yes, probably. I think you’re right.’
Henry turned slowly to her in comical shock. ‘Yulia Rudnick.’ Julia smiled as the Ukrainian sounds rolled off his lips and he said her full name. ‘Did I hear that right?’ He heard the contentment in her voice, and he saw the way her arms rested on the arms of the wooden chair, as if she had opened herself up to the night air. ‘I never thought I would hear you say that.’
Julia laughed. ‘Don’t get used to it.’ She slipped her feet out of her shoes and sighed at how good it felt. ‘I think we will have chickens. And cows.’
‘My little farm girl.’ Henry turned back to the black of the sea, the moonlight in small shards on the surface of the water. He smiled at the thought of Julia on a farm, Slava growing taller, stronger, under the gaze of a sibling or two. He thought of stability, and security, and not once did he long for where he had come from.
Julia interrupted his thoughts with another question. ‘What do you think cane cutting will be like?’
Henry gritted his teeth. ‘Hard labor.’ He reached into his pocket and felt for a cigarette. ‘I’ve spoken to some of the men on the ship. They’ve told me it will be hard; I really don’t know.’ The flame burned the edge and the red glow added to the starlight. ‘Hard work doesn’t scare me.’ He squinted as the smoke curled by his eyes.
‘Nothing scares you.’ Julia’s face shone in the moonlight as she tapped his leg gently with her bare foot. ‘You seem to be made of granite.’
He turned to face her and leaned back against the railing. ‘Ahh, and maybe you are made of dreams. Always dreaming. Imagining. Believing.’
‘That’s very true. But dreams vanish. Granite stays.’
Henry smiled and shook his head. ‘Both are strong.’ He inhaled on his cigarette and let the smoke fade and curl out of his mouth lazily. ‘But both have a breaking point.’ He walked over and sat down next to her.
Julia leaned over and kissed his cheek and sat back in her chair, looking up at the stars. ‘I don’t think I could imagine us breaking.’
Henry reached for her hand. ‘I don’t think I would want to.’
Julia remembered her mother telling her once that ‘secrets are like promises; both are thin, both fragile.’ Julia and Henry’s promises to each other felt quiet, and understood, and felt heavy on their shoulders. There was an unknown that they would be stepping into, and their promises took valuable space in their hearts. They held onto it dearly.
But sometimes, through even the most generous of efforts, it can all be broken.
What is true, belongs only to me.
– Seneca
Part II
Australia
1947-1955
7
Stratford, 1947
They had arrived, the vastness of the land before them, houses littered across the dust like lifeless animals, or statues. Their faces were wide and open, like children taking in a new world. They had no idea what they were about to do, or see, clutching their possessions to their bodies.
‘Oh, Henry. My God. We’re in the middle of nowhere.’
Twenty miles outside of Stratford, Julia stood, wide-eyed, staring at the small white house with the pitched roof and shingled sides sat serenely on thirty acres of alternately green and arid land; mostly flat and nondescript save for rows of farmhouses dotted in a line on uneven grassy parcels, bundles of tall trees and thrusts of grass decorating their sides. They all had screened windows and two wooden steps leading up to the front doors, and they seemed friendly and small, if a bit lonely in the vastness of the landscape.
When the family first arrived in Australia, they, like most immigrants that had filtered out from war-torn countries, were one of thousands of on Australia’s teeming, wide open shores, looking for work to make a better life for themselves and their families. It was at least a two-year indentured service, which culminated with a small parcel of land and automatic Australian citizenship. This was the new life that awaited them, 2,758 kilometers from the detention center in Bonegilla and a world away from the countries they had once called home.
POPULATE OR PERISH! The slogan had greeted them everywhere, on
propaganda posters plastering shop windows and street lamps, painted on wagons and printed on milk cartons, and it shouted out at them as they drove past in the truck that would transport them from the train station to the house that would begin their life here. It seemed to be a noble act almost— come here and cultivate our land, and we will offer you the world. Try your hardest, and you shall be rewarded. It was a sermon of hope. It took them an entire solid day and a bit more, to get to Stratford, pitched neatly into the north-eastern most part of Australia, tucked away amongst barren plains and borderless outskirts, it was quaint, and had quaint people.
There was sheen to the landscape, most likely because of recent rains at the end of the wet season. In the distance, the cane fields dominated the bottom half of the property, standing twice as tall as the tallest man Julia had ever seen. It was more land than she could imagine having, and yet she immediately thought of her father standing next to her, his strong arms crossed over his chest and a capable glint in his eye. You can do this, he’d say, and she would smile and lean her head on his shoulder and smell the tobacco on his clothes and the sweat on his brow.
After being in the detention center for a few months, they had learned that the Avon River bordered Stratford, which in turn fed into the Barron river, which snaked around and nestled on the outskirts of the suburb of Cairns. There were the things that afforded them the convenience of a structured life: a post office, an airport, food stores, quaint little cafes, a hospital, a school, and a reliable bus service. But from where Julia stood, she may as well have been on the moon. Not much was visible, most things farther than a 10-minute walk, westward, which would require taking the bus from the stop that lay at the end of the long path to the farmhouses on the outskirts.
Motherland Page 7