A Promised Land?

by Alan Collins

  Jacob had moved away from Abe while he was speaking. He now crossed the room and stood beside Joshua. Laura discreetly left the platform. Father and son faced each other in the now silent room. After a moment, Jacob, ignoring the microphone, spoke in a sombre voice that reached every corner of the room. Uncle Siddy had unsteadily but silently rejoined Abe and Mrs Rothfield.

  ‘‘My son — and you are my son if not in flesh and blood,’’ he began.

  There was a puzzled murmur from those who did not know of the relationship. ‘‘I should ask God why did this happen to us, to you? We haven’t had enough unhappiness already? War took from us your real father and the two women who loved you most. Now this comes to put a shadow over us just as we are building a new life. I have prayed that this day would not dawn, that you would start a new generation and that one day, not too far off, there would perhaps be a child to carry the name of Pnina.’’ He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. Joshua moved closer to him but Jacob held up his hand.

  “I almost forgot.” He beckoned to Laura. “This young woman who is not shy to show her affection for you is also going to urge you to resist the call-up — despite what my old chaver Abe Lewis has already said.’’ He stood between the two of them. “Let me tell you that I agree with her, but — and I mean this very seriously — the decision must be yours alone, Joshua.’’ Jacob paused. Then, putting an arm on Joshua’s shoulder, he continued in a voice that conveyed an unmis-takeable sense of fear.

  “I know I am encouraging you to break the law. Yet I do it for different reasons than friend Laura. I do it because I love you so deeply. You are the link that binds me to Pnina.’’ He gripped Joshua with both hands. “The war or the cause does not exist that would justify you going. It solves nothing. Nineteen years since Pnina gave her life for Israel and still the fighting goes on. Joshua, I am not asking you to behave like a coward. The real cowards are those who urge young men to go to war and never hear a shot fired themselves. By resisting, you will have to show just as much courage as if you served in an army — any army.’’

  He mopped away the tears that welled in his eyes then turned and left the platform. He crossed the room in silence, stood for a moment with Mrs Rothfield, Abe Lewis and Uncle Siddy, then slipped out through a side door that led to the balcony.

  The quiet that had attended Jacob’s words was replaced by a growing chatter heightened now and then by a loud voice putting one or the other viewpoint. Laura rejoined Joshua. “I was wrong, darling,’’ she whispered. “This is not the time or the place for you to make such a decision. Bloody hell, it is supposed to be a birthday party and here’s me putting the political screws on you as though you were some right-wing fascist.’’

  Joshua’s reply was to grab the microphone and shout into it. ‘‘Those of you who expect to hear our family differences aired any more than they already have been can piss off. The rest of you please stay and get stuck into the supper.’’

  Hand in hand with Laura, Joshua joined his father, and together with Abe, Siddy and Mrs Rothfield, they moved towards the buffet table. Mrs Rothfield detached Laura from Joshua and told her to take charge of serving the hot dishes. ‘‘Like a Yiddisher wife would do, eh?’’ It was just as well that Mrs Rothfield did not sense Laura’s feminist protestations. Nevertheless, the girl served the guests with competence and charm. Later, when the birthday cake arrived, she put her hand over Joshua’s as he cut it. The gesture, as Laura had intended, did not go unnoticed.

  The little band packed up shortly after; Laura sat on the edge of the platform and picked away disconsolately at her guitar, humming softly to herself. After the initial surge of enthusiasm for Joshua’s stance, the crowd seemed anxious to quit the scene, perhaps to shrug off the depressing turn the evening had taken. Finally, in response to Abe’s pointed fiddling with the lights, she slung her guitar over her shoulder in a touching gesture of defiance and went into the kitchen where Joshua leant against the sink watching Mrs Rothfield clean up.

  Laura half-heartedly picked up a tea-towel but Mrs Roth-field snatched it away. ‘‘This is not for you darlink. Go with my Yossi now.’’ She propelled Laura toward Joshua. She whispered to her: ‘‘Look, you know where I live? Come and see me tomorrow — very important what I want to tell you.’’ She went back to the sink, singing ‘‘Eliahu’’ loudly and terribly off-key.

  Laura took Joshua’s arm and walked down the long hall to the front door. Jacob and Abe sat outside in cane veranda chairs. Laura noticed the gap between the chairs was too wide for intimate conversation. Joshua was aware of it too, even as Laura squeezed his hand with concern.

  Abe dragged on his smoke and exhaled. ‘‘You certainly dropped a bomb on us tonight, old son. Before you know it, you’ll be a bloody hero to some and a scared Yid to the rest. And that’s like backin’ a short-priced favourite at Randwick. You lay out a lot for a real small return.’’

  Jacob looked straight ahead. He did not want to argue with this good man. Theirs was a very small world where friends were few and valuable. The age difference of twenty years or so between them now had no relevance. It was more important that they could sit on the veranda of a house that had once been Jacob’s family home: that this was a bond rather than a division between them. As the thought came to him, he shifted his chair closer to Abe’s.

  ‘‘Don’t make it harder on the boy,’’ he pleaded.

  Abe growled back: ‘‘He’s not a boy in the eyes of the law and the bloody army.’’ He dragged deeply on his cigarette then flicked the butt down the grassy slope. ‘‘Don’t worry Jake, I’ll stand by him — and you too. You know that, don’t you?’’ He stood up and put his arms around Joshua and Laura. ‘‘On your way, you two, the night’s a pup. Make the most of it!’’ Joshua paused only to kiss his father. Laura impetuously kissed Jacob too, then they were gone.

  Mrs Rothfield came out, tea-towel in her hand.

  ‘‘Come on, you two,’’ she laughed. ‘‘Time for a fresh cup of tea.’’

  To sit squashed up in Mrs Rothfield’s decaying, shabby, but so terribly human little lounge room was just one of the overwhelming sensations Laura was subjected to the Sunday afternoon after Joshua’s birthday party. The room, the old woman, the smells of a hundred thousand meals cooked there were quite stifling and the girl could barely disguise her discomfort. The old lady had provided a bottle of cola for Laura. She herself drank iced lemon tea from a tall glass. On a table was last night’s cake.

  ‘‘Better not to waste, eh? Not that it cost — I got it from Mitzi Strauss — Linze torte — the Viennese favourite. In Australia it’s a fancy name for a jam tart!’’ She cut a piece and pushed it towards Laura. ‘‘But I didn’t ask you here to talk about cakes. More cola? No? Then please listen to me, little one. We are going to talk about my Yossie — your — am I right — your Joshua.’’

  Laura nodded. Despite her free-thinking attitudes, she enjoyed a tingle of pleasure at the use of the possessive pronoun that tied Joshua to her.

  Shulamit Rothfield fixed her eye on the fifty-year-old photo on the mantelpiece of her kibbutz pioneer husband Yosef, sitting astride a horse, rifle cradled in his arms to fend off marauding Arabs. ‘‘Nothing changes,’’ she murmured. Then briskly, ‘‘Now about our young man. What’s to do for the best? But first you should know some very, very private information which I wouldn’t tell you, young lady, if you wasn’t by him a special friend.’’

  Laura nursed the cake on her knee. She would make it last as long as she sat in Mrs Rothfield’s lounge room — I’ll just nibble away at it around the edges, she told herself.

  Mrs Rothfield had finished her tea. She put the glass down and placed her hand on Laura’s knee. ‘‘Bathurst,’’ she said, ‘‘a place over the Blue Mountains from here. Do you know it, Laurela?’’

  ‘‘Queen City of the Plains,’’ Laura responded without thinking, dredging up a phrase from her schooldays.

  ‘‘Of this I don’t know. But Bathurst I know
is famous for two reasons. First, well maybe not first but still … because the great Ben Chifley lived there and — and — from Bathurst also came Peggy Piper who Jacob renamed Pnina.’’ Mrs Rothfield sighed. ‘‘You know what it says in the Bible? ‘A good wife who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.’ ’’

  Laura blushed. Mrs Rothfield playfully tapped the girl’s cheek.

  ‘‘Silly, I don’t mean you. Pnina, may she rest in peace, came from Bathurst, only to die in Israel. Well, I don’t know how much Joshua tells you about himself but you should know that he is a survivor from the Holocaust — a father dead from beatings in Dachau and a mother drowned so near to a new life …’’

  Laura shifted nervously in the lumpy armchair. There were times when her parents and their friends somehow seemed to reproach her for not being a victim, for being an activist, no matter what the cause. ‘‘Don’t mix in,’’ they would tell her, ‘‘be Jewish but be quiet.’’

  Suddenly Mrs Rothfield stood up and looked down at Laura. She shouted angrily: ‘‘Joshua must not die! Do you hear me? Do you understand? Not in a furshtinkener war for a country I can’t even find on a map!’’ Laura wanted to correct the old woman’s geopolitics, but thought how futile it would be and quite irrelevant to Mrs Rothfield’s outburst. She understood her passion, her fierce desire that Joshua should not perish after all that had gone before to ensure his survival. It was a new perspective for Laura. Up to this moment she had protested in the name of bland slogans, of nameless masses and always at a banner’s length from reality.

  Now, with Joshua, she had actually held the cause close to her body, nurtured it and truly loved it. When Mrs Rothfield sat down and spoke again, she listened with fresh insight.

  ‘‘Let me tell you, little one, in Bathurst there lives still Peggy’s mother. Me, silly old Mrs Rothfield, I speak with her. We are mothers, Ethel Piper and me. Nobody knows of our talks but us. I don’t tell Yakov because when he came back from Israel in 1948 he is jealous to keep Joshua all for himself. He is so mixed up I could not talk to him, to tell him he should take little Joshua to see — well I suppose she is a sort of grandma …’’

  ‘‘As much as you are, Mrs Rothfield,’’ Laura said.

  ‘‘All right, all right, who’s arguing? But what happens is Ethel is bitter, the poor lady. No daughter, no grandchild, no nothing. So she doesn’t want to see Joshua. What can I do? From when he is little I send photos of Joshua — then, thank God, her son, Peggy’s brother, gets married and has a daughter who is now I think about seventeen and …’’ Mrs Rothfield jumped up again in triumph, ‘‘this young lady writes to me one day out of the blue, ‘tell me about Joshua and Aunty Peggy, please, please’.’’

  Mrs Rothfield paused, enjoying the telling of her story and watching its effect on Laura. She was sure there was a heightening of interest at the mention of a seventeen-year-old girl.

  Laura put her head on one side. ‘‘Do go on, Mrs Rothfield. Tell me more.’’

  The old lady murmured coyly, ‘‘What’s to tell? You shouldn’t be surprised. After all, a young man, a sort of cousin but … mmm … not quite, eh?’’ She let this sink in and then said abruptly, “Enough! Joshua is in danger and if he is determined to be, what is it they’re called, a draft dodger, then we must protect him.’’ She put her head close to Laura’s and dropped her voice. ‘‘Ethel and me, we talk on the phone long-distance to Bathurst, clear like was next door! Marvellous! Now, she knows everything and she wants to help. How, you ask?’’ Laura hadn’t said a word. ‘‘We shall send Yossie to Bathurst. Peggy’s brother has a farm machinery repair business on the edge of town. He will hide him there and Yossie will help in the business.’’ Mrs Rothfield took Laura’s face in her hands and kissed her excitedly. ‘‘Terrific, eh? From out of trouble is born a new family. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, Laura — and you should be happy too for your Joshua.’’

  Laura nodded. She did not want to dampen the old woman’s enthusiasm but the thought of Joshua away from her even if it was only across the Great Dividing Range … she saw the spiny purple mountain escarpments as an emotional divide and it saddened her. And, if that were not enough, the presence of a seventeen-year-old country girl under the same roof as Joshua … she jerked back to the present, to Mrs Rothfield and her stuffy little lounge-room.

  ‘‘Of course I’m happy for him,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll help all I can.’’ To herself, she added: ‘‘There’s more than one fight here to be fought.’’

  SEVEN

  Joshua took a last long look around the flat that Uncle Siddy had talked him into barely more than a year ago. It struck him that he had hardly made any impression on it. This morning he would leave it without any sense of attachment. The only thing that Uncle Siddy’s bounty had not provided in cash was the panoramic view of Bondi Beach and the northern headland. And yet, he mused, the old rogue could claim credit for that also.

  Laura had been at his elbow while he packed. She had shown a lot more aptitude than Joshua for what she saw as both an adventure and a political statement. She selected what clothing he should take, packing a rucksack that she had chosen when Joshua had thought a suitcase would have done just as well.

  “You could be on the run, darling,’’ she breathed conspiratorially.

  Joshua felt his heart beat a little faster. He hugged Laura fiercely, hoping that some of her bravado would remain with him. She stowed her photograph, mounted in an environmentally approved wood frame, in the folds of his jumper. It was then she found the brass compass.

  “Why on earth are you taking that?’’ she giggled. “Do you think you’ll get lost on the western plains of New South Wales?’’

  Somewhat shamefacedly Joshua explained that it had originally belonged to Abe Lewis, who carried it when he was a soldier in the Middle East back in 1943. In 1947, he had given it to Jacob who told Joshua how he had used it when the Greek ship Athene was sailing to Palestine from Marseilles. Jacob, in a solemn mood, insisted that Joshua keep the much-travelled compass with him. ‘‘I used to turn it upside down,’’ he joked, to hide his fears, ‘‘and it always pointed to Australia.’’

  There had been lengthy conferences as to how Joshua was to get to Bathurst. Jacob, Mrs Rothfield, Abe, Uncle Siddy and Laura sat around Abe’s big dining table. Abe assumed command by virtue of his military experience of avoiding the army provosts.

  Uncle Siddy was all for bribery. ‘‘Tuck a coupla quid …’’

  ‘‘It’s dollars now,’’ Laura laughed.

  ‘‘Don’t matter darlin’. When the coppers come for our Josh, ya slip the envelope inta their kick and bob’s your uncle!’’ He winked and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  Abe shook his head. ‘‘Them days are gone, Siddy. It’s not like when you used to pay off the cops to leave your SP bettin’ alone. This here is government policy — politics, mate. There’s votes involved.’’

  Laura burst out laughing. ‘‘Oh, Abe, you sounded just like me then.’’ She straightened her face and apologised. ‘‘I know it’s serious,’’ she said. ‘‘We’ve got to hide Joshua so the federal police can’t lock him up in Long Bay Gaol or wherever they send anti-Vietnam protesters.’’

  ‘‘Draft dodgers,’’ Abe corrected her.

  Joshua, who had contributed little to the discussion, said sarcastically, ‘‘Thanks for nothing, Uncle Abe.’’ He took them all in with a defeated look. ‘‘I suppose there’s no alternative to being stuck in Bathurst for God knows how long? I mean, if I’m not discovered I might have to stay there until the war is over.’’

  “Or until we can force the government to withdraw and declare an amnesty for blokes like Joshua,’’ Laura stated.

  She was about to go on with what promised to be one of her set political speeches when Jacob, who had been silent till then, said, “Shulamit has convinced me that Joshua will be protected by Ethel Piper and her family. He will be introduced as a cousin from Sydney. Don’t ask me for d
etails. I don’t know. But in a country town where everyone knows everything about everyone else …”

  Unused to hearing herself referred to by her first name, Shulamit Rothfield found herself blushing, as much from the use of her name as pride in her persuasive powers. She began to reveal to everyone, including the astonished Joshua, that she had been corresponding with Ethel Piper for years, sending regular reports to Peg’s mother about Joshua’s passage from baby days to young manhood. For the first year or two, Ethel Piper had ignored Mrs Rothfield’s highly coloured descriptions of Joshua’s progress, all of which indicated that the child was a prodigy no less. She told Mrs Rothfield she had burnt the letters but could not bring herself to get rid of the photos. She wrapped them in greaseproof paper and hid them under the lining paper in the kitchen dresser. She said she knew there could be no family resemblance between Peggy and Joshua, but in the quiet of the night she would bring out snaps of Peg and lay them down beside those of Joshua at about the same age.

  It was Ben Chifley who was responsible for the agreement between the two old women to hide Joshua from the authorities.

  Mrs Rothfield, a socialist from the old world and one of the cadres of the Polish Jewish Labor movement, worshipped Ben Chifley, if not the entire Australian Labor Party. When he died in 1951 she grieved as for family and wrote to her friend Ethel to send her a picture of Chifley’s house. When the picture came, Mrs Rothfield nodded sagely. It showed a simple double-fronted white stone house with a veranda in a street of similar buildings. ‘‘A true socialist to live in such a simple house,’’ she breathed reverently and put the picture on the mantelpiece in a place of honour beside the photo of her husband on horseback.

  Ethel Piper had actually known Ben Chifley, had spoken to him; her late husband had stoked the very engines that Chifley drove before he went to parliament. Mrs Rothfield had no doubts that such a woman from such a family would guard Joshua like one of her own.