by Alan Collins
Ruti interrupted him. “Oh come on, Bill, we can’t go on forever with that old German stuff.” She laughed and said, “At University I am called Ruth. Ruth Kahn. Now Jacob, who is your friend?”
Peg chirped up. “Poor old Jack looks as though he’s lost a quid and found a tram ticket.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Peg Piper and I’m a nurse — well, I will be one day, won’t I Jack?”
Somebody called out to Bill from inside the building to come and get the meeting started. He paused a moment to see if Ruti would join him, then went inside. Ruti contrived to isolate me from Peg by asking why I had not been to see her and, she added with hasty propriety, her mother also.
Peg observed the two of us closely. She had put on her glasses and stood with folded arms as though she was about to watch a ping-pong game. While I was working out an answer to Ruti’s question, Peg said sarcastically, “Do you know him well? Is he always this chatty?”
Ruti said, “Perhaps he talks more with you. He may need a nurse more than a social worker.”
The two girls circled around pretending to inspect me. Peg said, “Mmm, we could both be wrong. Let’s ask him.”
“Will you two stop it,” I yelled. “I don’t need a nurse and if I want a social worker I can call Mrs Pearlman.” I turned to Ruti. “Look, Ruti, I have been very busy at work and although you may not think so, even apprentices have to study. It’s not just for university students.” I remembered Mrs Rothfield’s instructions. “And I have just had an exam and got three credits.”
“I am very pleased for you Jacob, perhaps now it is over, you can come to our meetings.”
Peg suddenly became interested again. “Oh yes, is that what those uniforms are for? Is it like the Eureka Youth League?’’ Before either Ruti or I could answer, she added, “That’s where Jack and me met.”
Ruti said, “That is a communist youth movement, is it not?”
“Too right,” Peg replied. “Up the bloody workers and all that, lots of marching and singing the Internationale. And we go on weekend camps and swim in the nuddy!” She giggled infectiously. “Is your club or whatever it is, like that too?”
I told her I had only been once — to either of them. Ruti looked relieved to hear it. She appeared reluctant to explain Habonim to Peg, who then asked her if it was a secret society. Oh no, Ruti said, not at all. She explained it was a youth movement meant to train people to become farmers in Palestine when the war was over.
“Now that sounds more like it,” Peg exclaimed, “It beats all that dreary Marxist theory we’re supposed to learn.” She gave me a playful push. “Are you meeting this arvo? What about Jack and me joining in too?”
Suddenly Ruti was signalling me with her eyes and an almost imperceptible shake of her head. But Peg’s quick intelligence intercepted the message as clearly as the spoken word. Ruti was reminding us that until we had met, Peg and I were on our way — anywhere but to the Habonim meeting.
Peg stood her ground defiantly. She put her glasses on again, folded her arms and said in a steely voice, “Aren’t I good enough for your bloody club? What’ve you got against me eh? Is it because I’m a Mick or a communist or maybe you don’t like pantry maids or country girls.” She pushed me toward Ruti. “Why don’t you tell her Jack — tell her how you were in my bed not so many nights ago and —” She broke off and said, “Oh, don’t worry, we were only snuggling up out of the cold.”
Ruti moved away from me so that the three of us, whether by accident or design, now seemed to be isolated from one another. In my mind, I was no longer in George Street. I was standing on the craggy promontory of the southern headland of Bondi Beach where our father had been driven to his death because he was an out-of-work, soft-handed Jew. Below, the waves parted and closed over barnacled rocks that frothed and eddied like the filthy harbour vortex that had swallowed Solly. I shivered at the memory. It would be with me forever but I would use it to protect myself from a similar fate.
Far off, I could hear Ruti giving a student-like explanation of the Habonim movement. Words like ‘heritage’ and ‘history’ and ‘ancient homeland’ circled above and about me. Now and again, Peg would throw in a phrase about ‘equality’ and ‘wanting the same things’ and once, raising her voice, demanding to know what the hell they were arguing about — it seemed to her they had more in common than what kept them apart.
I wanted to shout from the cliff tops that I knew what the difference was, that I wanted to be rid of the burden of it, and in reality, I did not belong with either of these two girls or the places in society they represented. I knew and loved them both for what they had done for me but they could do no more. Their very presence had defined my own position. Now at last, I would seek my own identity.
I moved away from the two girls, who had given up arguing and were actually talking about farming. Peg knew how to milk and pick fruit; Ruti was earnestly explaining how social work was not the same as socialism. I leaned against a lamp-post. The sound of the two voices made me very happy. After a while, their conversation started to tail off. They shook hands and Ruti called out to me.
“I’ve got to go into the meeting now, Jacob. I’m sorry we’ve been chatting such a long time but Peg has invited me to visit her uncle’s farm at Bathurst in the holidays.’’ She went to the grille door, looked back once and slipped inside.
Peg said, “You know that’s the first Jewish girl I’ve ever spoken to? She’s really quite nice.’’
“Well, you’d be the first Irish Catholic communist she’s ever met, I’ll bet.” I said. “And for that matter,” I added, “how many Jewish apprentice printers do you know?”
“Only one with a quid in his pocket,” she replied cheekily.
“I’ve got something else in my pocket too, Peg. Something I’ve never shown you.”
I took out the mezuzah, now worn and shiny. Fluff from my pocket had filled up the little opening where the Hebrew letter Shin was written on the parchment. I blew into it to clear it. “Jewish people fasten it to the doorpost of their homes,” I told Peg.
“Why?”
“I’ve forgotten,’’ I said lamely.
Peg said, “You don’t have to lie to me, Jack. If it’s something like having a crucifix, I’ll understand.”
“Well, it’s nothing really, only the Ten Commandments written on a tiny scroll inside the tube. It’s all I have left from my father’s house.”
The Town Hall clock chimed five. Peg said, “It’s a bit late for walking over the Bridge, Jack. I reckon we’d better say goodbye. I’ll take a tram home. Look me up when you’re a famous printer and I’m matron of Sydney Hospital!”
I looked at my ink-stained hands and thought of the beautiful work they had produced this day. Tomorrow I would do even better. I felt very proud.
“Give us a kiss before you go, Peg.”
“What, in the middle of George Street?” She looked quickly up and down the footpath then gave me a peck on the cheek. “That’s all you’re getting, Ikey,” she laughed. “And you’ve saved yourself a quid!”
I watched her until she disappeared around the corner. It had been a very good Sunday. Here I was, alone in George Street with a mezuzah in one pocket and a pound note in the other and not a care in the world. The sound of the Habonim kids’ singing floated down to the street. Well, Luna Park on my own wouldn’t be much fun. I pushed open the shuttered door and went up the stairs.
Bill met me at the door. “Ah, Jack, I am so glad you are here. Ruti and I — me — which is correct? It does not matter. We would like your professional advice on a leaflet we wish to have printed.”
I liked the sound of that — professional advice. The words were like ink on a paper that certified me as a valuable person, someone worth knowing, now and in the future.
PART TWO
GOinG HOME
ONE
Seen from the cliff tops, the ocean looked grey, flabby, flaccid, sloppy. Life had gone out of it. Waves did not rise up as they should,
in arabesques that poise, pirouette, curl and crash. Instead, they collapsed with tired thuds to spew sand and seaweed onto the deserted beach.
Jacob was disappointed, even angry with the sea. He stood on the sandstone rotunda his father had helped build. His father had fallen to his death from this place. Far below, the sea slapped against the rocks. Jacob had come with good news and was ready to shout it into the wind that always blew hard on to this headland. But today the wind was paltry, the sea petulant. Not at all what Jacob wanted as an audience.
He had always talked to the sea. Whispered to it, cajoled, conversed, ranted and sworn, and always from the rotunda. The wind blew his words back to him and beyond him and in passing, argued with him. ‘‘I’ve finished my apprenticeship!’’ Jacob shouted into the faltering breeze. ‘‘I’m a qualified bloody tradesman now, a printer, a printer, a printer — a bloody Jewboy printer — what do you think of that? Tell ’em all! Tell Ruti and blow all the way to Bathurst and tell Peg. Blow hard like you do when it’s bad news.’’
Without the wind, Jacob knew his voice sounded importunate; it lacked the strength of the messenger which carried it. When this happened he felt cheated of his rights. Without the ocean, he was disembodied, weak and undirected. Its mood was vital to him, like a parent whose vagaries had to be understood before a course of action could be decided.
He stood on the outermost point of the sandstone retaining wall. Looking down at the oily swell made him feel giddy and light-headed. It was not an unpleasant sensation at all — a bit like the time at Ruti’s flat after Solly’s funeral, when he’d tossed the tumbler of whisky down his throat; it was intended to block out the horror of that day, but in his suddenly heated body it succeeded only in stirring in him a hunger for Ruti that knotted his stomach and spread deliciously through his body.
There had been no graduation ceremony to mark the end of his apprenticeship. No photographer to record him in cap and gown, like the day Ruti got her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sydney University. He had gone that day to the Big Hall with its high, slotted clerestory windows through which the light streamed in shafts, as in religious pictures. He saw Ruti as the Virgin Mother, the light striking the scroll of her degree instead of a halo. He wanted to tell this to Mrs Rothfield, his landlady, who sat next to him. But she was scanning the program through her thick glasses.
‘‘Yakov, look! Look how many Jewish names are here. Even a Rothfield!’’ she exclaimed, then added reluctantly ‘‘so sad, he’s not by me a relative.’’
By that time Ruti was leaving the stage, her mortarboard slightly askew, her academic gown floating from her shoulders. She drifted up the aisle to where her mother sat and Jacob watched them kiss. He had stayed in his seat, a mess of conflicting emotions of jealousy and love.
By contrast, Jacob had received his qualification through the post — a brown envelope with a single sheet of stiff cartridge paper attesting that Jacob Kaiser had completed his apprenticeship as a compositor and had passed the examination of the Technical College.
Mrs Rothfield had not been impressed. ‘‘Such a little bit of paper for all those years, Yakov,’’ she sniffed.
Jacob agreed with her but sought to blunt their mutual disappointment. ‘‘I should have had a letter from the King, don’t you think?’’ His attempt at sarcasm was lost on Mrs Rothfield. She said such a letter would be no more than he deserved.
Now, on the cliff top, Jacob took the letter from his pocket and recited its stilted official language to the wheeling seabirds.
‘‘This is to certify that Jacob Kaiser has completed the prescribed course…’’ A silver gull scavenged at his feet for the apple core he had dropped; Jacob put the letter on the ground between his feet. He nudged the core onto the paper and watched for the gull’s reaction.
‘‘Shit on it,’’ he said angrily, ‘‘what do I care?’’ A breeze ruffled the edges of the paper, tipping off the core. The gull snatched at it, dragging it to a safer spot and leaving spidery claw marks on the certificate like another signature. Jacob picked up the letter, folded it in its original creases and slid it back into its government envelope.
He looked across the cliffs to the sprawling graves of the Bronte cemetery. Solly did not rest in that Christian enclave but in the lonely vastness of Rookwood, far from where their mother lay, but nearer to their father, Felix, whose unkempt grave was hemmed in and surrounded by the monoliths of the well-to-do. It was just one more injustice, Jacob thought, that in death the rich came between father and son. The charity of the community had buried them but it also kept them apart.
As he faced the sea, he could see to his left the white crescent of Bondi beach, with its ugly wartime garland of barbed wire finally removed. It was the spring of 1945. Japan’s soldiers, depicted on propaganda posters as misshapen little men with jaws dripping blood, would now never land at Bondi beach in the dead of night. Australia gave thanks to the aloof American general with the high peaked cap and the corncob pipe.
The rents of the flats at Bondi rose as people returned from the assumed safety of a couple of miles inland. Jacob’s Uncle Siddy now turned his nefarious talents to the rental rackets — in any case, the money had gone out of the liquor and cigarette black market since the American troops had left Australia and fought their way home via Tokyo. Even Mitzi Strauss, Siddy’s refugee lady friend, no longer needed his help in obtaining couponless tea and coffee. With the end of the war in Europe, Mitzi had big plans for her Vienna Wald cafe. Soon another wave of Jewish refugees would arrive in Australia. Maybe already they had heard of the frothing coffee and solid cheesecake of the Vienna Wald. Mitzi Strauss would put the flesh back on those skin-and-bone survivors of the Nazi death camps that she had seen on the newsreel, scarcely able to believe what she saw.
Jacob followed the cliff path down to the beach. He took off his shoes and socks and walked its length, enjoying the abrasive wet sand between his toes. He turned up the ramp to the concrete promenade, washed his feet under the tap and dried them with his socks. On the rise above him, behind the stand of Norfolk pines, a tram threw itself, screeching, around the bend in the tracks. Jacob hurried to the tramstop. Another tram came and he sat in the open end where the sea breeze battled with the odours of the hamburger and fish-and-chip shops.
Mrs Rothfield, who tried hard not to be merely a landlady to Jacob, heard him thrashing around in his room. She knew he wanted her to come in and find him. She had heard him enter the flat: to locate him she needed only to follow the fine trail of sand that spilled from his trouser cuffs. She called to him from the kitchen.
‘‘Is that you already, Yakov?’’
‘‘Who else?’’ he replied, mimicking her.
‘‘Who else would make from my speech a joke?’’ was her tart response. ‘‘Are you staying in now, Mister Beachcomber?’’
Jacob had thrown himself on his bed. His socks hung out of the window, held fast by the sash jammed down on them. Mrs Rothfield had asked him not to do this. ‘Do you want my house to look like the back streets of Cairo?’ she asked repeatedly. Why Cairo, he thought. In Bondi Junction you could see plenty of socks hanging out of windows. If Mrs Rothfield imagined she was just like the other inhabitants of Bondi, she was much mistaken. Her cooking smells! So different from the other tenants in this block of flats. Not bad, not better, only … only … foreign. What was missing, Jacob knew, was the stomach-churning smell of frequently rendered fat. Downstairs at the Ormond’s it began on Sunday with the roast pork and stayed on until almost the end of the week, the fat economically collected and used to fry breakfast and dinner. At first, the smell of bacon frying used to make him retch. After a few weeks, however, he found his gut actually twitching pleasantly enough to dissipate the picture of a pig wallowing in filth — a picture that owed its origins wholly to Mrs Rothfield’s graphic description and was only distantly related to religious relevance. One day, Jacob promised himself, he would taste bacon.
He went to the window. In the gap b
etween the flats he could see a narrow corridor of green beyond the roof tiles. In that comfortable, so different enclave across Old South Head Road, Ruti Kahn now lived in a real house with its own front garden and an Australian backyard. A house, unlike European ones, separated from its neighbours by side passages. Mrs Kahn had married a man who was the antithesis of her first husband. Jacob vividly recalled the day Mr Kahn had died on the cold tiled floor of the toilet block of the Abraham Samuel-son Memorial Home.
Ruti’s mother no longer sewed shirts for the army, as she used to do when she first arrived in Australia. Now she wandered from room to room in her new home, disinterestedly fingering its furnishings and knick-knacks. Each room was decorated with the charmless attention to detail of a furniture store showroom. The architecture of the house owed no allegiance to any identifiable period. It was of a type sometimes referred to in a scathing tone as ‘‘Bellevue Hill baroque’’. Ruti, her mother and her stepfather occupied rather than lived in the house.
Jacob knew it well. Life had begun there for him. It had once been his house — no, his home. Here he had lived with his mother, his father and his brother Solly. (He had almost erased from his memory the few mercifully short months when their stepmother Carmel lived with them there.) It was from this house that they went to live in the loveless misery of a rabbit warren of rooms in The Balconies. It seemed strange to Jacob that this house where Ruti now lived was the starting point from which he traced his life, which in four years had encompassed the deaths of his mother, father and brother.
The distance from the window of Jacob’s room in Mrs Rothfield’s flat to the top of the tree that grew in the front garden of his old home and Ruti’s new one was only a couple of miles. Yet for Jacob, it was a distance that defied estimating. Once he had walked Ruti home after a political rally in the Sydney Domain. She had been hemmed in by her university friends all the afternoon, but to his surprise and pleasure she elected to travel home with him. For his own part, he had detached himself from a Labor Zionist group comprising young Jewish tradesmen much like himself. As they neared the house, Jacob hung back.