by Alan Collins
The old man rose from behind a film-set version of an executive office. He waved his unlit cigar at Joshua, who for one dreadful moment thought Siddy was about to utter those immortal words, ‘‘Some day, son, all this will be yours!’’ But the old man was content to put his arms around Joshua and declare proudly, ‘‘You beat the bloody coppers, son, and that’s all that matters.’’
Ilan, bristling with efficiency, prised him out of the old man’s embrace. ‘‘Now, Joshua, let us get down to business. But first I am unhappy to tell you that soon you will get a visit from four people …’’
‘‘Not the police!’’
‘‘Not the police, definitely.’’
‘‘Then who, and why ‘unhappy’?’’ Joshua asked.
Ilan had the knack of changing in an instant from being boyishly enthusiastic to showing a depth of maturity that belied his age. Joshua had noticed this on many occasions and attributed it to his living in Israel, a country in a state of perpetual tension and suspicion. He repeated the question. Siddy had disappeared behind the shelving, and was traceable only by cigar smoke. Ilan sat in Siddy’s bizarre swivel chair. Joshua was forced to stand in front of him; to break up a situation that made him appear like an employee about to be lectured, he sat loosely on a corner of the huge desk.
Ilan spoke softly, almost intimately to Joshua. ‘‘I say ‘unhappily’, chaver, because the plan I am to put to you will mean that it may be some time before you see your father, Shulamit Rothfield and, I am sorry to say, our little prickly pear, Laura.’’
Joshua leaned across the vast desk and grabbed Ilan’s shirt. ‘‘You scheming bastard, you just want to get your hands on Laura, don’t you! Plans! You must think I’m really dumb, Ilan.’’
The Israeli gave Joshua’s wrist a sharp twist, breaking his grip. His expression had not changed. He continued: ‘‘Look, chaver, we both know that you are in deep shit, as they say. The police are closing in — those two you left bashing their way through the Abercrombie bush are not too impressed. They want vengeance even if they call it doing their duty.’’
Joshua interrupted, ‘‘Get to the point, Ilan.’’
‘‘The point is,’’ and Ilan sat bolt upright in the chair, ‘‘the point is: you will have to leave the country.’’
‘‘Oh yes, smart-arse, where do you suggest? Tasmania, Torres Strait Islands? How about New Zealand?’’
Ilan started to say, ‘‘How did you …?’’ then stopped; his frown changed to laughter. ‘‘Well, well, Joshua Kaiser, as they say on the racecourse, that’s the first leg of the double.’’ He got up and came around the desk to Joshua. ‘‘The second leg is for me to get you to Israel where there is no extradition agreement with Australia.’’ Joshua gasped in amazement. Ilan added slightly contemptuously: ‘‘Not that Israel wants to be a refuge for those avoiding their military responsibilities.’’
Right and wrong, duty and morality — it was a grey scale starting from an imperceptible white through to the impenetrable blackness that ended in despair. Joshua was now struggling desperately to find a pinpoint on the scale where he could live with his conscience. Men like Ilan were immune from such dilemmas. Women like Laura could flit from one end of the scale to the other with seeming indifference.
Ilan did not allow him time for philosophising. He went on, ‘‘Before the others come in, I want to tell you how we shall go about it. It’s no good discussing it in front of them. You know what it’s like trying to get Jews to agree on anything. The war would be over before we settled anything.’’
Joshua said bitterly, ‘‘Don’t I have a say in it?’’
‘‘Not if you want to stay out of gaol,’’ was the instant response. ‘‘Look, Joshua, we fly you to Wellington, New Zealand, OK? You don’t need a passport for that leg. Before you leave, you get your visa for Israel. We pick up a plane for Rome and from there you fly El Al to Tel Aviv.’’ He leaned back in the chair and grinned like a man who had just pulled off a good deal. Before Joshua could speak, he reminded him that, under the Israeli Law of Return, as a Jew he could automatically become an Israeli citizen.
Joshua’s first reaction was to refuse the citizenship offer but he thought that in view of all the aid he was getting from the ubiquitous Ilan, it might be perceived as ungrateful. Instead he readily agreed with the transport proposals. ‘‘You spoke of ‘we’ Ilan. Are you coming too?’’
Ilan smiled at him. ‘‘Joshua, you know the saying: ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’? Well, chaver, I have to tell you that we want from you something in return. Israel could be facing another war. This time, against most of the Arab countries — Egypt, Syria and Jordan to name three. In such an event, there would be total mobilisation.’’ He let this sink in.
Joshua said slowly, ‘‘Are you suggesting that having refused to fight for Australia in Vietnam, I should now fight in Israel?’’
‘‘No, that is not what I mean. Where you can help is behind the lines—well behind, Joshua. Doing a soldier’s civilian job while he is with his unit is one very important way to help and it will repay what I am doing for you.’’ So sure was he that there could not possibly be any objection to his plan that he relaxed in the big chair and stuck out his hand. Joshua rose slowly from the corner of the desk and went around it to take Ilan’s hand. It was a long journey.
Ilan pushed a bell on Uncle Siddy’s monstrosity of a desk. It sounded far off, but barely had it stopped than a small cavalcade of Joshua’s dearest family and friends came into the warehouse from a side door he had not noticed previously. They filed in led by Jacob. Shulamit Rothfield followed and then Abe Lewis and Uncle Siddy, who had his arm around Laura, the old rascal pretending to need her support. Joshua went to Jacob and hugged him. Mrs Rothfield basked in this show of filial affection and waited her turn. Joshua kissed her on the cheek. Abe slapped him on the back and Siddy, having winked conspiratorially, turned to Ilan and ordered him out of the swivel chair.
When all had welcomed him in their way, Laura kissed him so passionately that the others turned away in embarrassment.
Joshua, his face quite flushed, finally found his voice. ‘‘I presume you all know about Ilan’s plan? How I’m to be smuggled out of Australia to wind up milking cows on, on …’’
Jacob stood alongside his son. ‘‘On Kibbutz Jezreel, Joshua, where Pnina is buried. Ilan will accompany you all the way because he has been recalled to his unit. You are to take his place on the kibbutz.’’
Ilan, who had ignored Siddy’s request to get out of the chair, said: ‘‘Correction, Joshua. Your job will be in the kibbutz print shop which I can now reveal was established some years ago with funds provided by Mr Jacob Kaiser.’’
Abe Lewis, who had been silent up till now, took Joshua aside. ‘‘I’m not one for the sloppy sentimental stuff, Josh old son, but there’s something I reckon you ought to do when you’re over there. I remember my poor Irma, Ruthie’s mum, saying that before she kicked the bucket, she’d like to have known what happened to all her mob that died in the Holocaust. Well, I wasn’t able to help and so the poor girl never knew.’’ He caught Jacob’s eye and beckoned him over. ‘‘I was just tellin’ Josh what you and me talked about — you know, findin’ out about his real dad and his mum’s family.’’
To Joshua, Jacob Kaiser had always appeared older than his forty-odd years. Even when he had been a small child Jacob had not been one for joining in play with him. When other fathers rolled with their kids down the grassy slopes behind Bondi Beach, Jacob had been protective and cautious, a watcher not a doer. It had always been this way, right throughout his growing up. Old Mrs Shulamit Rothfield showed more spirit in play than Jacob.
At this moment Joshua realised that he had never had a proper childhood, never known real parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. And now they wanted him to raise the ghosts of those relatives he had never had a chance of knowing. He smiled to himself. Every one of them would be a foreigner — he wouldn’t even be
able to understand them!
‘‘You think that it’s a joke, Joshua?’’ Jacob shook his head. ‘‘It is a duty you must carry out. You are the only survivor of your family.’’
Laura joined them uninvited. They cut the discussion short and Abe, ever the romantic, took Jacob’s arm and steered him away. ‘‘I reckon the kids want to be together, Jake. You’ll see him in the morning just before the plane goes.’’ Foolishly Jacob asked where they were going. Mrs Rothfield, whose hearing was perfect, chipped in: ‘‘If you have to ask such a question, you’ll be told a lie and quite right too.’’ She turned to Joshua and Laura. ‘‘Go in good health, children. Enjoy! ’’ She said this as though it was her blessing on them. She called Ilan. ‘‘OK for them to go off now?’’
Ilan checked his watch and nodded. ‘‘I’ll collect you at 0800 hours. I don’t expect you to be alert but I do expect you to be on time.’’
As Joshua circled the room with Laura, saying farewells to them all, he felt like the many bridal couples he had seen doing much the same thing. The difference was, he told himself, it would be a very brief honeymoon and then a future nobody could predict.
FODRTeen
Hard up against a corrugated iron fence in a lane barely wide enough to get a car door open, a trim little sports car was parked. Canary yellow, with red upholstery and shining chrome-spoked wheels, it gave off an air of fun times. Laura buffed its glistening bonnet with her sleeve.
‘‘MG, 1954, fully restored and bought for little old me by my daddy who dared me to turn up at left wing rallies in it.’’ She jangled the keys in Joshua’s face. ‘‘Is this a car for a Jewish boy or is it?’’ she teased. She came around to his side and held him close. ‘‘It’s yours, Joshua — and I go with it — if you decide to stay.’’
‘‘Where? In Long Bay Gaol?’’
‘‘They’re only giving them a year …’’
‘‘Then they still force them to enlist. Laura, Laura, why make it even harder than it is? You can see what a lousy position I’m in — and yet there is something I must do and it doesn’t have anything to do with draft resisting.’’ Joshua looked up and down the lane; the car was shamefully conspicuous in its depressing setting. Apart from the reality of being so obvious to anyone looking for him, he felt a real embarrassment at its showiness. Could Laura really be ‘‘bought’’ by this and did she think she could hold him with this tawdry inducement?
‘‘Jump in, darling, and we’ll go back to my place and talk until morning.’’ She opened the silly car door. He could either get in, or walk away into the dreary night-time depths of Redfern. With a show of reluctance meant to restore his diminished manly status, Joshua flopped into the car seat. Laura smiled a private smile and revved the sports car, then took off with a jerk of the clutch and hurtled the car down the lane until it met the roadway. Neither spoke until it whined to a halt outside her Paddington house. She was halfway up the stone steps before she realised Joshua was not right behind her. He was still standing beside the car.
‘‘I’m not coming in,’’ he called to her.
‘‘Why not?’’
‘‘I’m going home to spend the night with my father. We’ve a lot to talk about.’’
‘‘And we haven’t?’’ Laura shouted angrily. ‘‘What a weak bastard you are, Joshua Kaiser. Too scared to join the army, too scared to make love to me and … and …’’
‘‘Yes Laura? Not willing to be bought for the price of an MG sports car? Is that about it? You are a real Jewish Princess underneath all that political protesting. You make sure that daddy’s chequebook is not too far from the anti-this and anti-that leaflets.’’ With a wave and a shrug, he turned his back on the yellow sports car and the anguished figure of Laura Philips frozen in shock on her own doorstep.
Joshua felt about ten feet tall as he walked along Paddington’s hilly streets until he came to Oxford Street. Even a police car cruising on the other side of the road did not alarm him. He flagged a taxi that took him to Jacob’s North Bondi flat. As it approached he could see Jacob’s silhouette in the window. The sight touched him intensely: the loneliness of the man brought tears to his eyes. He hurried up the stairs and in a moment he and his father stood locked in an unspeaking embrace.
The night passed like no other Joshua had known in nearly twenty years. Jacob told Joshua how he first met Peggy Piper at a meeting of the Communist Eureka Youth League. Joshua’s eyes lit up when Jacob, with commendable modesty spoke of the tension between Peggy and Ruti, who had struggled over him in those early days.
‘‘But Joshua, your natural parents, as you well know, were victims of the Holocaust. It was only by the merest chance that Peggy and I were able to save you from drowning off the coast near Caesaria. In 1948, the task of finding the names of those who died and those who survived the destruction of the Jewish people had only just begun. Now, in modern Israel, the horrific task is being performed in the Jerusalem Documentation Centre at the memorial, Yad Vashem.’’
Jacob had spread over the table photos of himself and Pnina and the baby Joshua, all taken at Kibbutz Jezreel. One, of more recent times, showed a lonely grave under an Aleppo pine tree on a stony hillside. Jacob singled it out. ‘‘In the Memorial Garden of Yad Vashem, they have established avenues of trees planted in honour of those non-Jews who risked their lives in order to save Jews. So far more than 7000 men and women have been honoured.’’
Joshua picked up the photo and examined it closely. ‘‘You know, Dad, these avenues concern the Holocaust only. Pnina died in the 1948 War of Independence.’’
Jacob took the picture from him. ‘‘I have written to Yad Vashem and asked if Pnina could be honoured there. In typical Jewish fashion they have not said yes or no.’’ He took Joshua’s hand and held it tightly. ‘‘I want you, Joshua, to finalise this matter for me — for us. I want you to plant a tree in her name in the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles.’’
There was no need for a reply. Both men knew it was a sacred trust which would be performed with love and gratitude for the short but joyous life of Pnina Kaiser, formerly Peggy Piper of Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. Jacob had risen silently to go to his room. He paused and said to Joshua, ‘‘Don’t wake me in the morning. Go quietly. I do not want to say goodbye to you. I will look around and see you everywhere.’’ He added the prayer in Hebrew: ‘‘May God protect you and keep you from all harm and sorrow.’’
Impetuous and excited Jewish passengers defied the cabin crew and all rushed to one side of the aircraft to get their first glimpse of Israel as the El Al Boeing 747 circled above Lod airport.
Ilan, who had slept almost the entire flight from Rome, stretched and told Joshua, ‘‘Welcome to the only democracy in the Middle East: Israel comprises one parliament and four million presidents who, in time of war, all become expert military strategists.’’ Despite the sign telling him not to, Ilan unfastened his seatbelt and began a lively and intimate conversation in Hebrew with the flight attendant. Joshua wanted to know what was going on. ‘‘Oh nothing,’’ Ilan replied lightly. ‘‘She’s in my unit as my radio operator.’’
By the time the flight attendant had all the passengers seated, the aircraft was making its final runway approach. Joshua had to remind himself that he was not a tourist after all. He was returning to a land that he might have grown up in. It gave him an unwarranted air of superiority over the plane-load of tourists.
As he went through the landing formalities he was impressed at the smoothness of his passage — until he caught sight of Ilan up ahead moving quickly from one official to the other. Soon they were outside the airport. There was a modern double-cab truck with ‘‘Kibbutz Jezreel’’ on its door, a driver ready and waiting for them. He greeted Joshua with a warm ‘‘Shalom’’ and a grin and a nod for Ilan. They travelled in silence except for the truck’s radio, which was required at all times to be tuned to the military wavelength. They stopped briefly for coffee at Netanya and Hadera, avoiding the city of Tel A
viv. The truck left the coastal road not far from where, nineteen years before, Jacob and Pnina had come ashore under threat from British guns.
Joshua was not a free agent. He could move about within limits, but Ilan had made it quite clear to him that his stay at Kibbutz Jezreel had a purpose. He was to carry out whatever duties were assigned to him. ‘‘Don’t look so worried, chaver. Look, tomorrow is Succot. We’re going to have a kibbutz party.’’ He dug Joshua in the ribs. ‘‘You haven’t lived until you’ve seen our kibbutz girls in their army uniforms. I tell you, Joshua, it will be a new experience for you to dance with a girl wearing a Uzi machine gun.’’
The truck swung into the kibbutz drive. A girl herding cows to the milking shed had a stick in one hand and a rifle in the other. Avi, who had finally married Nurit, was now the ‘‘kibbutz elder’’, his massive head still crowned with curls like steel wool. By his side to welcome Joshua, Nurit, in nearly twenty years, had hardly changed. Her hair, dyed a jet black, was pulled tightly around an olive face that showed only the minutest wrinkles.
Joshua’s knowledge of Kibbutz Jezreel was fixed in time when it was the raw settlement shown in Jacob’s photographs. Now, lawns swept down to a swimming pool, the hillside was dotted with small, neat bungalows half-hidden by groves of trees. Even the old kibbutz buildings had been replaced by new ones which no longer had that institutionalised appearance beloved of socialist movements.
What had remained unchanged was the Israeli obsession with news broadcasts. Amplifiers were scattered throughout the kibbutz settlement and switched on to Radio Israel for every half-hourly broadcast. As Joshua entered the kibbutz dining room one of these was in progress —
“It is believed that General Abdul Nasser is moving large forces through Cairo to the Sinai Desert. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 men in seven Divisions and upwards of 1000 tanks.”