Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  But, for crissake — this time there was a special train for the military, aboard it a titled British General who’d be running a horse for the Cup; and Nazi Germans, representatives of Fokker or Junkers or someone who made war-planes, and also of Krupp who made what everybody knew, staying at the Big House — and, believe it or not, the first of the Sheenies here, camped on the river!

  This Munich business. You didn’t hear anything else but that now. Everybody arguing about it, not simply Prime Ministers and Presidents, but men in the street, and not merely arguing, but fighting over it, and not away off in the streets of cities, but right here in the one street of Beatrice River, and on the night when everybody should be getting together to whack each other on the back, whether they were really mates or not, to booze and talk horses and the droll things that had been happening round the stations and the sidings and up in Town during the past year; violence in Finnucane’s bar, with bottle throwing and yells of Commo Bastards and Fascist Shit-heads, blows exchanged with similar and still choicer expressions out under the coloured lights and bunting on the verandah, wild brawling out on the gravel; and the Johns, who should have been boozing with the rest, having to run to the Police Station for batons and call on the military to help ’em! Strike me lucky, what was the country coming to?

  That’s how it began this year. Fortunately, enough good sense prevailed to keep the like in check until the festival was pretty well over.

  The Communists were blamed for it, and no doubt rightly, since what caused the provocation was their gathering in force at a function hitherto banned by them as a Boss’s Beanfeast, and if attended at all only in the way of public duty, as in the case of Engine Driver Pat Hannaford. Still, they could claim that they were provoked into intruding by the political atmosphere in which this meeting was conducted. Those fiery leaders of theirs, Scotty McClaggity and Geordie Jenks, would not have travelled all this way at the Party’s expense just to start a row, when they could start one any time in Port Palmeston, down at the waterfront, the railway yards, the oil tanks, or out on the new road, without leaving that little old office of theirs. Besides, it was the act of one of their political opponents that precipitated the violence.

  The political provocation was, of course, the presence of those Germans, members of Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist Party, as they had quite proudly declared themselves in press interviews in Port Palmeston. The Krupp’s men, one a Von, the other a Herr Doktor, were here to see about increasing the supply of Tantalium ore they had been buying in small quantity from this region for some time; those representing Junkers Aircraft to demonstrate the efficacy of their machines and to hand one over for use by him who would be their local representative, Fergus Ferris. Such important people were naturally received by His Honour the Administrator, who, unless he had shared the politics of Messrs McClaggity and Jinks, could hardly be expected not to mention the impending carnival in the very region the Von and Herr Doktor wished to visit and to arrange for their inclusion in it, if only with intent to get a free and comfortable flight there for himself. As a matter of fact, the two big aircraft, one of them quite large, brought down all the Government Heads, excepting those of the Aborigines Department and the men of the Garrison. Dr Cobbity, of course, never attended the Races on principle; and his assistant, Mr McCusky, had been ordered to travel by train, for the reason that included amongst the flying Heads was Professor St Clair, famous Anthropologist, who along with Dr Fabian Cootes, was come to make an official survey of the condition of Aborigines, with a view to establishing a better system of dealing with the people; or as Dr Cobbity put it, to boot him out. The Military Heads travelled as they did under orders from General Sir Mark Esk, as a military exercise. McClaggity and Co. had held a meeting in Town to tell the world that the visitors were here to get means to destroy the Workers’ Fatherland and therefore should be declared black, but without attracting much more interest than that given by half a dozen policemen under the leadership of Sergeant Cahoon. Hence again it was a natural thing that these also should include themselves in this most popular gathering in the land.

  The initial violence might be said to be only semi-political. It was done by Engine Driver Jack Tinball on his colleague Pat Hannaford, in consequence of the latter’s having remarked derisively on a matter of such significance to the former that even with tears in his eyes as he got a few beers in he had been describing as the Second Most Wonderful Day in His Life. Old Jack it was who had driven the military rain down. He had done much more than that. Having made it known to the General that he was an old military man himself and most likely had hauled him about the Western Front in military trains, he had the great man on the foot-plate, and for a considerable distance gave him the controls. That First Most Wonderful Day in Jack’s life was when he’d had Field Marshal Lord Haig as his pupil one day while they were pushin’ Jerry back in 1918. ‘Them were the days, General!’ as he had said, and been overheard by his fireman. Also, in parting with his pupil, after shaking grimy hands, he had saluted. It was the report on the saluting that evidently had inspired Hannaford to make the remarks he did across the bar. Everybody knew that Jack had really lived those years in the Railway Corps in France and since had only existed on reminiscence of them, Pat more than most, who’d often tried to shut him up. It may have been that on this occasion Pat was inclined to be more forthright than usual by reason of having his Party Chieftains round him where he stood at the bar. Anyway, in making the sneering remarks about his colleague’s boots being the only part of him that could be seen while he was in the presence of the General, he referred to the latter as an Imperialist Pommy Bastard. That was too much for Jack, who giving his opinion of Communists, which condensed into ‘Commo shit!’, grabbed a beer bottle and let Pat have it with such force as to have brained a lesser man.

  Such a job, indeed, did Lefty do on Pat that Dr Fox had to be called from the Big House. Maybe Foxy wouldn’t have come, seeing who it was and who the company he was having the Inaugural Dinner with, had the call not also included a request for his services to the mounting list of casualties consequent on the first. And maybe the doctor was lucky he didn’t himself cop a bottle while attending to the bleeding, moaning first martyr to the class struggle lying on the floor where he had been felled, judging by the way Con Cullity, behind the bar, looked at him while handling a bottle. For it happened that the Flying Fox was really in bad with Con, in fact with the entire Finnucane clan, by reason of his behaviour in the matter of the delivery of the latest edition to it, young Cornelius, at the moment yelling somewhere out the back, roused by the shenanigans out in front.

  Nor was Fox’s unpopularity just then confined to the House of Finnucane, but widespread amongst the common herd, who while hitherto liking him as a man though not much as a doctor, were now against the man because of the professional arrogance he had shown in respect to the Cullity Baby business. Most vocal of the common herd were those confessedly commonest of them, the Commos, in their case primarily as always for political reasons, because Fox’s arrogance was directed against a refugee Jewish doctor, who it was generally believed had saved the life of both child and mother by taking them out of Fox’s hands. To be a Communist just then meant also to be an ardent Judaeophile as opposed to the Judenhass, or Jew Hating, of their Nazi enemies. The Jewish doctor, along with a handsome young Jewish woman about whose relation to him there was some doubt, were here too, brought along to the Races by Con and Bridie. They were the Jews, who to the wonder of so many locals who knew Jews only as something the Bible was largely concerned with or as Sheenies they’d glimpsed for a moment in the doorways of pop-shops while on visits to the cities of the South, were camped on the river — hardly to be regarded as evidence that the three hundred thousand Jews of Germany were, as often stated in the world’s news, either fleeing for their lives or had already forfeited them or soon would do; but it was being said that they were come into these scarcely civilised parts to make a survey of likely sites for th
at mooted settlement for Jewish refugees.

  This was the tale of the Cullity Baby, talked up and down the land wherever the gossips’ blessing of telephonic communication reached. Bridie, probably owing to the masculine prowess she had predicted in her spouse as the result of finding himself somehow the father of the child called Jemima, had conceived again rather early, and perhaps from that reason had been prematurely brought to bed. The Flying Fox had been called, but had diagnosed her sudden and severe onset of labour as mere bellyache, and had refused to come again when called upon by frantic Con in the Name o’ God.

  Dr Kurt Hoff, and his lady, had been out at Pisgah Ridge, either attracted by its Biblical name in their purpose or having contacts there. He had practised as a gynaecologist in Germany, but like all refugee doctors was prevented from legal medical practice of any kind in Australia, owing to what was generally considered the arrogance, arising out of fearful jealousy, of local medical talent. As people generally fear and hate doctors, they are mostly attracted to what the faculty call a quack, as Fox had called Dr Hoff. Hence the popularity of Dr Hoff in contrariety to the feeling for Dr Fox, when it was learnt that, having been called to the Prospectors’ Arms or Alms by the frantic Con, Hoff had made contact with Fox and declared that the case was urgent, only to be told to keep his long Jew-nose out of it or he would be prosecuted, he had set to and by some special method effected the delivery safely. Evidently Fox would have had him prosecuted, too, only that the clever little Jew had countered by saying he had merely acted as adviser to his redheaded lady friend, who had stood in as midwife to the bedded woman, as any member of the sex was entitled to do in an emergency.

  Fox had made matters worse by declaring to all and sundry, ‘No wonder Hitler kicked the bastards out of Germany. Well, if this tricky little quack tries anything like that again, I’ll see he’s kicked right back!’ This on top of the latest news that Hitler, having seized Austria, was also persecuting the Jews there. There was also this mad Munich business, which nobody could make out clearly unless they had only one eye to see things with, like Hannaford, or Herbert Stunke, or Col Collings and the like. But most important of all was Bridie’s own statement, that she was beginning to see The Virgin and Angels and things, and was certain that but for Dr Hoff she would have died. Then there was old Shame-on-us to tell the Wurruld, all the louder for having Constable Stunke hint to him that Jews were notorious for doing ill to Christian babies, and therefore he shouldn’t be so sure of his grandson Cornelius’s future.

  Another time Foxy, having finished his bloody job on Pat Hannaford and others, would surely have been treated to a dram or two of Tullamore Dew. Instead all he got this time was the presentation of Shamus’s broad back.

  There was also trouble for Fergus Ferris through his involvement with the Herrenvolk. That happened amongst the respectable ones not involved in the brawling, who tried afterwards to make something like the traditional whoopee out in the concert square at the back. The trouble-maker was Fay McFee, down for the Races for the first time in years, following her nose for news other than the social stuff she despised and disparaged. With a few drinks in, and before everybody, she told Fergus that he must be a Nazi agent to be taken up by these cold-eyed and bespectacled bastards; for sure he must, since also being involved with that renegade bitch Alfie Candlemas and the Fascist Felixers, as she called Alfie’s new associates of the Free Australia Movement.

  Fergus, more than a little drunk, replied, ‘Fay, shweetheart . . . haven’ I tol’ you before you got ’o take your pants right off, not half off, ’cause like that they’ll only hobble you and you’ll fall, and get hurt a lot more that away than you would by takin’ ’em right off and fallin’ the way God made you for and you’re so scared of.’

  She didn’t get a chance to deal with him further, because Eddy McCusky, although anything but a friend of hers, leapt in to champion her, snapping, ‘That’s no way to talk to a lady . . . you ’pologise, mate!’

  Eddy also had had his share, and was probably fired with what had been going on out the front, although not a participant. Fergus turned to him, saying, ‘Ah . . . the bull’s arse speaketh!’

  Eddy had no hat on, but seemed to tip one over an eye the way he cocked his head, demanding, ‘You lookin’ for lash, mug?’

  Fergus giggled. ‘There’s an answer to that, o’ course . . . but not fit for ladies’ presence . . . and you reckon one’s preshent. Nevertheless, Bull’s Arse, you’re at liberty to use your tongue in the manner of that unclean shuggestion . . . Ow!’

  Eddy was into him. How it would have gone was anybody’s guess, seeing that both were only fist-flailers. They got as far as filling an eye for each other and bloodying noses. Then Dinny Cahoon, just cooling off from the grand fracas, leapt on them, dragged them apart, and little men that they were compared with him, held them so by the scruffs of their necks, grating, ‘We’ve had enough o’ this sorto’ thing . . . now piss off to bloody bed, both of you, or I’ll deal with you meself . . . and you too, you trouble-maker!’ The last remark was addressed to Fay, as the belligerents slunk away. She answered with the protrusion of about a foot of tongue, but nevertheless obeyed.

  In fact everybody retired early, a fact remarked on with expression of great relief by Jeremy Delacy down in his camp by the crossing: ‘Thank heavens for that. We’ll get at least one good night’s sleep without having to dope ourselves. Might be a good idea to start a brawl every night to use up that alcoholic energy they mostly let off like engines blowing off steam.’

  He was sitting up in his lounge tent talking to his next-door neighbours, the Jewish couple. The woman, or rather girl, because she looked so young, asked, ‘Broil . . . vot isht?’

  The doctor translated with a chuckle, ‘Schlimozzel.’

  She giggled. She was a lovely thing, as everybody was saying; a redhead, as some of her race occasionally are, but with typical Jewish features: large hazel eyes that shone like jewels, full lips rose-tinted with natural colour, nose a little big perhaps, but perfect in shape, the planes of her face perfect. As she turned with a sweet smile to Nan who had echoed her giggle, the profile view revealed the secret of her beauty. It was the almost perfect semi-circle her features filled from hair-line to throat, without perceptible protrusion or inflexion of brows, nose, chin, as with most other types of face, in which the nose points outward or upward or is flat, the eyes sunken to give prominence to brow ridges, the chin jutting or receding. This was the perfect Semitic face. Also, despite the colour of her hair and a climate to which she would be quite unaccustomed, conditions that would have made a woman of so-called Nordic type coarse-skinned, her skin was as perfect as her features: a dark satin, natural, of course, in a race with desert origins. Nan was watching her with frank delight — and Jeremy surely with more than ordinary interest, the way he avoided the bright eyes when they turned on him. Her name was Rifkah, as called by the doctor.

  The man, Kurt Hoff, aged about forty, was also typically Jewish of features, but with the perfection of the curve spoilt by too long and sharp a nose and compensating recession of chin. A somewhat foxy face, but pleasantly smiling. He was dark.

  The pair had been more or less dumped on the Delacy household by Con Cullity and Bridie when they arrived. They had a car of their own, a huge old red thing, packed with camping-gear, and had put up a tent of their own, but could scarcely be treated as anything but guests. They were not husband and wife, and only laughed when it was suggested, the significance of their intimate association as it would be considered by local standards evidently being quite lost on them. The way they spoke, they had been thrown together simply by suffering at the hands of the Nazis; the SA, as they called them, or Sturmabteilung, a special force whose purpose was to seek out and persecute opponents to the regime, not necessarily Jews, although all Jews were taken, since declared anathema by the so-called Nuremburg Laws of 1935. You were classified as a Jew even if so slightly of Jewish blood as to have had one Jewish grandparent. Rifkah he
rself was only half-Jewish by blood, she claimed, her mother being Christian, but was brought up in true Jewish tradition by her father’s parents, her Bubbeh and Zaydeh, as she called them in her quaint almost childish way. Both spoke English well, Kurt very well and with little accent, Rifkah with a heavy accent and much use of German or Yiddish and the help of Kurt in interpreting. Both had been in German prisons and had lost all known relatives and friends, either through murder, at which the SA were specially adept, or renunciation through fear. For instance, Rifkah’s mother, who had been a prominent actress, through fear had betrayed her husband, a theatrical producer, hiding with his parents and daughter. The SA had shot him in front of her and the old people, Rifkah said quite calmly, after threatening to shoot her in front of him to make him give them information. Then they had taken her away. She learnt later that her Bubbeh and Zaydeh had committed suicide. When asked by Jeremy what had happened to her, she merely shrugged. Appalled, Jeremy asked how old she was then, she answered, with that sweet smile, ‘I vos seventeen . . . shaineh maidele!’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Jeremy.

  ‘I vos young Jewish virgin, vaitingk to be marry.’

  ‘How old are you now?’

  She shrugged again. ‘Vot matter countingk year? Sometimes I feel old voman. But now I feel young and so ’appy . . . because I am free and in loffly country mit loffly pipple. Please not to talk about it now. Ziss ist fest, yes? Sometime I tell you, ven I am old bubbeh and sad . . . yes?’

  The girl Rifkah, naturally as it were, became one of the strappers in the Lily Lagoons stable, even though the animal she referred to as a Ross was evidently as strange to her as the Schwartze of the household, particularly the children, who by their continual peeping and seeking her smiles, appeared to be more delighted in her loveliness than anyone. The rossen also took to her, nuzzling her like an old friend. Jeremy remarked that it was a pity they hadn’t kept Red Rory, since she might have been able to talk him into winning the Cup. The stable had no likely winner this time, except Golden Bobby for the Blackboys’ Race on Saturday. Bobby, in meeting her, was not so well behaved as the others, but perhaps being jealous of the wealth of the colouring of her hair, a deep copper against his mere shining gold, tried to eat it.