A Promised Land?

by Alan Collins

  “But,” I demurred, “but my brother, why can’t we …

  “It cannot be so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” and his voice hardened, “ziss is how it must be.”

  I caught the faintest signal from Bill to desist from further objection and Solly was propelled at the end of Mr Goetz’s finger to his bed, now the farthest away from mine. And there he slept in pyjamas with the trouser legs rolled up and his arm completely enveloped in a striped sleeve. I sensed he really didn’t care that much where he slept. Perhaps this was the first of many nights that would follow in which he would slip further and further away from me.

  “Bloody German bastard,” I swore as Mr Goetz clomped his way out of the dormitory.

  Wolfgang propped himself up on one elbow. “I too am German.”

  “Go on, you’re havin’ me on, Bill.”

  “True Jack, believe me. From Köln — ach, how do you say it here? Cologne.”

  “Cologne — like the perfume we nicked from Woolies?”

  “Nick — what is nick?”

  “Ah, nothing, Bill, forget it.” I slid further down between the stiff white sheets, trying to extract some warmth from their impersonal, harsh weave. Bill was singing softly to himself “Ich hab ein kameraden … Slowly the sheets accepted my body warmth and I began to drift off with Mr Goetz’s ‘‘Ziss is how it must be’’ running through my head to the same tune as Bill’s song. Then I found I couldn’t stop that darn tune. It kept me awake long after Bill’s snoring took over. Much later, when I got to know him better and when he had stopped humming the tune (on orders from Mr Goetz) he told me he had learned it from his uncle, who sang across the trenches to the British in the first world war. Then the Hitler Youth sang it in the streets of Cologne. “They beat us Jew boys up if they caught us,” Bill said, and added wistfully, “but gee, it was a beaut song.”

  I woke next morning to a very strange sight. Bill was standing by his bed. On his forehead was a small black box held in place by leather straps; around his left arm and fingers, leather straps were wound tightly and held in place another black box which was fixed to his forearm. A white shawl with striped ends and fringes was around his shoulders and on his head a dark velvet skull cap. A prayer-book was in his hand and he swayed in time to a tuneless murmuring. From time to time he would raise his eyes and look beyond me, through time and space to something I was not privy to. Then it was over. He snapped back to the present, turned to me and asked: “You didn’t lay tefillin, Jack?”

  I shook my head. He could interpret that how he liked. It could mean that I did not do whatever he said or that I simply didn’t know what he was asking me.

  As he packed the tefillin back in a lovely embroidered velvet bag, he asked me how old I was. Thirteen and a half, I told him. “And you haven’t been barmitzvah? Well, wait till old Klapper gets hold of you.”

  “Who’s old Klapper?” I was about to ask him, when the thought struck him. “Why were you not barmitzvah, Jack?”

  What could I tell him? That Father had spoken often about it but feared Carmel’s tongue lashing. “Those old Yid habits,” she labelled any feeble effort of Father’s to introduce us to his limited knowledge of Judaism. The mezuzah, my last link with The Balconies which now nestled safely in my most secret place, had been the cause of terrible rows. Carmel actually feared it and Father did nothing to assuage that fear — it was perhaps the only hold he ever had over Carmel. As my thirteenth birthday approached I should have been packed off to the little room behind the Bondi Road synagogue for instruction. There, in company with other boys, some from ‘good homes’, others in sandshoes and thin shorts and jumpers, I would have received lessons in Hebrew, been taught to read a short portion from the Torah scrolls and ultimately to recite from the pulpit in front of an adoring family. Instead, Solly and I were running messages for the SP bookie and watching the disintegration of our father.

  Wolfgang Schlesinger, late of Cologne, Germany and now the eldest resident of the Abraham Samuelson Memorial Home, took a comb from his locker and ran it through his thick red hair. “I shall help you Jack,” he said. “It is better you should know something — even a little before Klapper starts on you.”

  All I could think of was the absurd juxtaposition of names that were sent to rule over me. I said out loud, “Out of the Carmel into the Klapper!” I felt a great need then to establish my credentials with Bill. Our ages must have been within months of each other yet he seemed so much more assured. Even without his clothes, he was much more of a physical presence than I was. I contrasted his stocky, freckled body with my own lightly tanned skinny frame. Yes, I thought, the boys of Cologne were certainly different to the boys of Bondi. As he dressed, I dug deep into the pocket of my pants in my locker. My fingers curled around the tissue-paper the mezuzah was wrapped in. It was still there, about the thickness of a fountain-pen and half as long. My finger found the place where the ‘eye’ was, the place where the Hebrew letter ‘Shin’ showed through. This was the full extent of Jewish folklore, ritual, call it what you will that Father had bequeathed me. I withdrew it slowly from my pocket, let it nestle in the palm of my hand for a moment, then carefully unwrapped it.

  “Know what this is, Bill?”

  His grey-green eyes flickered across my open hand. “Did you nick it, Jack? How else would you have such a thing?”

  “It came from our home — first from the real home we had in Bellevue Hill and then … then from the dump we lived in before Father …” There was going to be plenty of time to explain all that to Bill.

  He made no attempt to touch the mezuzah; instead he said with cold intensity, “Ours got thrown on the fire — with all my family’s books.”

  ‘‘You burnt it?’’ I asked, aghast.

  “Don’t you know anything in Australia?” he said, exasperated at my appalling ignorance of life in Cologne in 1939. “The Brownshirts — Nazis — came in broad daylight —”

  “Okay, okay,” I interrupted him, “so you lost yours but,” I said triumphantly, “Solly and me, we still have ours!” My hand closed around it. “Look after it,” was all Bill said.

  The dormitory was now flooded with crisp morning light. Humps became boys who stretched, farted to much laughter, tried to hide erect penises and then turned it into a competition. I looked down the room to Solly’s bed. His slight figure made only the barest impression, the tight sheets imprisoning him. I was halfway down the room when the double doors swung open and Mr Goetz, giving a fair imitation of an army sergeant, called out, “Goot morning, younger men, und how are ve all dis fine day?” There was a deal of shuffling and a ragged chorus of answers. He turned to me and made a mock bow. “Und how iss our new fraund, Jacob? Und where iss his little brother?” He lifted up his hand to shade his eyes as if gazing into a distance. “Ach so-o, der little one is still asleep!”

  “I was just going to call him, Mr Goetz.”

  But his creaky shoes were already taking strides down the room. I followed close behind, ever ready to protect Solly. German kids I was beginning to understand, but German adults were a different matter. We reached Solly’s bedside almost together. Mr Goetz extended a hairy arm but I pushed him aside. The last thing Solly needed to wake up to was the moon face and steel-rimmed spectacles of Mr Goats. I’ll say this for old Goats — he stood aside while I ran my fingers through Solly’s fine hair and whispered, “Coming for a swim, Solly?” which was the only sure way I knew of getting the little bugger out of bed. At home, he’d spring up, grab his togs and towel and be halfway down the street before I could catch up with him.

  “Too right Jack,” he mumbled now and his legs were over the bedside in a flash.

  “Wunderbar!” said Mr Goetz, “Sehr gut, younger man.” Whatever it was he said, at least he was smiling.

  Solly looked around foolishly, realising he had been tricked and conscious of his ridiculous appearance in pyjamas far too big for him. “We’re still in the bad boys’ home, aren
’t we, Jack?”

  Mr Goetz now displayed his authority. “Here we have no bad boys or girls, Solly, here we only have kinder — children — like you to care for. Now, we will all please dress and comm to breakfast.” He turned to leave then paused. “But,” he waved his finger, “first we shall wash, nicht vahr?”

  There was a rush for the basins; seven boys, three basins, Solly and I hanging back. A boy called Manfred, tubby and already with enough English to make dirty jokes, said: “Ssh, you can hear the girls on the other side pissing.” A mad scramble ensued by all except Solly, Bill and me. Bill bowed with exaggerated courtesy in imitation of Mr Goetz, and said, “After you, younger men.” Solly headed for the wall but I hauled him back. “The basins, Bill means, you little twerp!”

  Bill smiled non-committally.

  The breakfast tables held nothing but the little vases of artificial flowers I had seen the day before. Mrs Goetz stood sentry by the kitchen door, shepherding boys to one table and girls to another. When we were all seated, she clapped her hands and one child from each table rose and went to a sideboard to select cutlery and plates.

  Manfred nudged me. “Ruti has big tits eh?” I didn’t have to ask which one was Ruti. It was obvious from his crude description that the pleasant, smiling girl who leaned over me and put plate, cutlery and a glass in front of me could only be Ruti. She wore a school sweater, dark skirt and knee stockings. As she returned to her place at the table, all I could think of was whether she was wearing a dead girl’s clothes. Bill and another girl then rose and went into the kitchen to reappear with trays holding steaming plates of porridge and shiny chrome racks of toast. When all this had been done, Mrs Goetz sat at the head of the girls’ table and her husband took his place with the boys. Solly ate with noise and enthusiasm; Manfred finished his porridge first and burped. Mr Goetz waggled a finger at him, yet I thought they shared the same robust sense of humour. If Solly was going to find an ally in this company, I feared, somewhat priggishly, it would be Manfred.

  A feeling of loneliness swept over me. Solly was gutsing himself, having, it seemed, found a new star to follow in Manfred. Bill ate each mouthful with careful deliberation while the porridge in my own mouth grew lumpy and distasteful. I had an unreasoning yearning for plain bread with plum jam, for not wearing shoes and above all, to feel the sun on my face. It was out there, the lovely sun, beyond the walls and windows, down the rutted driveway, rising over the Bondi surf. I half-rose in my place, my chair scraping noisily on the polished boards.

  “You would like something, Jacob?” Mrs Goetz called out to the kitchen. “Minnie, please to bring some more porridge for der boy.”

  “Oh shit,” I screamed, “I don’t want to stay here — with Germans — with dead boys’ clothes — with, with …” I floundered for something else to hate, “with Solly making a pig of himself!”

  I tore at my shirt. A button flew off and hit the empty milk jug. The tiny ping it made sounded in that deafening silence like a rifle shot. Bill picked it up and with excessive courtesy, placed it on my plate. “It is yours, Jacob, I believe?” Solly’s high-pitched voice, with a deliberately added whine, called out, “He said I was a pig!” Only later, did it sink in that Solly had referred to me as ‘he’ and not Jacob, his brother. Manfred compounded the hurt by allying himself with Solly. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” he said unctuously. Mr Goetz, with a wisdom I had not credited him with, leaned forward and said in a conciliatory tone, “Is it all finished now, Jacob?” I heard footsteps behind me then felt Mrs Goetz’s large firm hands on my shoulders. She propelled the chair under me and forced me down into it. ‘Das were goot, younger man, it clears der head and der heart, nicht vahr?’’ She addressed the room, “Now we shall all finish breakfast and get ready for school.”

  There was a straggly exit from the dining-room with Bill assuming the lead as if by right. Ruti led the girls in similar fashion. Since Manfred’s gratuitous but nevertheless accurate observation about Ruti, I watched her with a newly awakened interest. As our paths converged and our shoulders nearly touched, she whispered, “I’ll sew your button on, Jacob.” My heart raced, the back of my neck felt hot; I fingered the front of my shirt where the button was missing. Things were happening in my pants that right then I could well have done without.

  Solly came up to me. “What’s this about school, Jack?”

  I said to him roughly, “No buggering about, Solly, we’ve got to go and that’s that. And what’s more I’ve got to be barmitzvah.” I caught up with Bill, who already had his satchel slung over his shoulder.

  It turned out that Bill and I were going to the nearest technical school, Ruti attended a girls’ high school, and, to my dismay, Solly was to go with Manfred and the remaining children to the neighbouring state school. We parted at the end of the winding dirt track where it met the bitumen. Bill and I and Ruti waited for a bus; the others walked to the tiny school about a mile from the Abraham Samuelson Memorial Home. I looked out of the bus window; Solly was swaggering along with Manfred, swinging his bag around his head. Any thought I had of calling out to him now seemed quite futile and even unnecessary.

  Ruti leaned over the bus seat and remarked on how blond and ‘un-Jewish’ Solly looked. “In Germany, in my home city of Hamburg, he could have walked the streets quite safely — he might even have passed for an Aryan German.”

  I nodded uncomprehendingly; it had taken me most of my young lifetime to come to grips with the Jew-hating of out-of-work Australian labourers, of a step-mother tied to an unemployable Jew nearly twice her age, of well-meaning policemen who called me ‘‘Ikey’’. What in the name of God was an Aryan, I wanted to ask Ruti. Was it a good thing for Solly to be? And what about Bill with his flaming red hair? Could he pass for an Aryan also? Was the colour of your hair a passport to freedom from name-calling?

  There was such a lot I would have liked to ask Ruti, but not on a school bus and, I suspected, not in front of Bill.

  The bus was now labouring up a hill that ran alongside the forbidding wall of the Gladesville Lunatic Asylum. “I’ve got a barmy aunty in there,” I said brightly. Bill and Ruti pointedly avoided looking at the high sandstone wall. “Dad wouldn’t take Solly and me to visit her in case they kept us there.” I waited for the laugh that should have followed. The pair of them were sitting with arms folded and eyes straight ahead. Ruti turned her head slightly and said, “I do not think you will ever see your aunt again, Jacob.” The bus slid into the stop to let Ruti off. As she gathered up her bag to alight, she leaned over to me, her hair brushing my face. “My uncle was taken in the middle of the night to such a place by the SS; we never saw him again, either.”

  I watched her mingle with the other girls on the street; she was different, already with the deportment of an older person, not graceful, not gauche — just older than her fifteen years. There were tangents in my life that seemed to touch hers. I took a school atlas from my bag; just looking at the map of Germany seemed to bring us closer together. I nudged Bill to show me where Hamburg was. “Later,” he said, “we’re nearly at the Tech, Jack. You’ll be in first year and I’m in second year. Give them the letter from Mr Goetz and don’t worry. I’ll meet you in the shelter shed at lunchtime.

  My first few months in the Home was a mixture of pain and pleasure, of resentment and acquiescence, of loneliness and jealousy, of acceptance and rejection. The routine of the place had removed from my shoulders the responsibility for day-to-day survival and with it, the care of Solly. He became Mrs Goetz’s ‘little mannikin’, a term that filled me with loathing. I had visions of Solly forever being someone’s little mannikin, a fox-terrier puppy that could tear the clothes from the line and receive nothing more than a playful slap. He put on weight, he got first pick at the secondhand clothes cupboard so that he always looked so much more ‘at home’ in the cast-offs than the rest of us. He was given the easier tasks on the job roster and even then managed to get Manfred to do the ones he liked least. Those two were inse
parable, Solly having persuaded Mr Goetz to change Manfred’s bed so the two of them were now side by side. He taught Manfred the vernacular of the Bondi streets which Manfred, a year older than he, coupled with the ribald humour of his former Vienna suburb.

  Bill still rose every week morning and put on his tefillin and said his prayers. On Saturday, or the Sabbath, as he patiently explained to me, one doesn’t put on the tefillin, as it could be interpreted as doing a form of work. Saturday, one went to the synagogue, heard the reading of the Law and, if one had been barmitzvah, actually participated by being invited to read from the scrolls — the first five books of the Bible set out in Hebrew and handwritten on parchment. I watched him one Sabbath as he mounted the steps of the reading desk, his prayer shawl around his shoulders, an embroidered skull cap on his red hair. In a clear voice, he read from the scrolls, then with a dramatic gesture lifted them up by their handles high above his head and turned them around for all the congregation to see. The old men at the desk then took the scrolls from him and warmly shook his hand. Bill returned to his seat beside me. “You see, Jack, this is an honour. You are reckoned to be a man when you are called up to the Torah like that.”

  Mr Klapper, my Hebrew teacher, charged with preparing me for my barmitzvah, sat next to me. He patted me on the knee, ‘‘Nu, my boy, it won’t be long before your turn will come.”

  He came to the Home twice a week to instruct me, took a glass of schnapps ‘to clear der troat’ then rehearsed me in the musical notes of the portion I would have to recite before the congregation. He used a beautifully fashioned silver pointer shaped like a forefinger, no bigger than a pen-nib, to point out the place to me. “In Poland,” he said, “I was a Chazan — ach, how do you say it here? A reader in the synagogue. It is a profession.” He shook his head. “Ah well, in Australia I am just a teacher of boys — also an honourable profession,” he added hastily. He was a decent man who smelt of musty books and pungent alcohol subjugated by peppermints. Once, he cut our lesson short. “I have a mitzvah to perform, Jacob,” he confided. “Do you know what is a mitzvah?” I shook my head. “A mitzvah is a good deed. This afternoon I am going to perform a ‘brith’ — circumcision.” He reached into his long coat and withdrew a silver case. Inside, on the velvet lining lay small surgical instruments. “As Abraham circumcised Isaac, I shall bring a newborn baby boy into the covenant of Abraham.” Poor, unsuspecting Mr Klapper! He left me with a nightmare that went on for months.