by Mark Dapin
‘“I might’ve known the fella,” I said. “Can you remember his name?”
‘“It was a common one,” said Bargo, “Macgregor, or something Scottish like that.”
‘“I think I knew him,” I said. “Lovely bloke. They used to call him ‘Jock’.”
‘“Just think about Jock’s widow,” said Bargo. “She lost a good man and her children lost a father, but they also lost their future. And the tragedy is, that final misfortune need never have happened if only Jock had shown some foresight and made sensible provision for them in the form of life insurance.
‘“Do you have children, Jimmy?” he asked. “Do you have a wife? Or a brother or sister who relies on you? Do you look after an old friend from the camps? Somebody like Jock, who might’ve lost his way? Because a lot of us don’t do it easy, eh, and you’ve got to have been through it to understand it.
‘“Men are often reluctant to provide themselves with life insurance,” said Bargo, “unless it is provided by somebody they trust. I’m sure you wouldn’t buy life insurance from somebody you don’t trust, Jimmy Rubens, not after all we’ve been through. But there’s one company former prisoners can trust, and that’s the Former Prisoners’ Trust. It’s made up of former prisoners like you and me, which is why I personally provide myself with insurance from the Former Prisoners’ Trust.”
‘The cunt,’ said Jimmy, and spat.
‘Then Bargo said to me, “May I ask you, Jimmy, have you yet provided yourself and your dependants with life insurance?”
‘He hadn’t even bothered the head on his beer.
‘“Yes,” I said, “I have.”
‘“Well,” said Bargo, “that’s probably a step in the right direction. But have you provided yourself with enough life insurance?”
‘“I hope so,” I said.
‘“I hope so too,” said Bargo, “particularly after everything we’ve been through. It would be a catastrophe to leave our dependants – whoever they may be – short; we who realise we owe our lives to mateship, and to other people providing for us. I know somebody who can help you calculate your real life insurance needs, old friend, and give you the peace of mind you need to walk across George Street, or any other street, at any time of the day or night.”
‘He gave me a card and whispered, “He’s one of us.”
‘“I went to put the card in my wallet, but I couldn’t find it in my jacket. I patted myself down, quickly and hard, like I was being searched by a guard.
‘“Jesus, Bargo,” I said. “I’ve been robbed. In the services club! What sort of a bloke would pull a low stunt like that?”
‘“Are you sure?” asked Bargo.
‘“As sure as the gunso calls tenko after the bugle,” I said. “As sure as the chuis get the best parts of the yak. The fella I bumped into at the door must’ve been a dipper.”
‘So Bargo bought me a beer and a whisky.
‘“Old mate,” I said, “I lost track of the time. I’ve got to get home to my wife and three kids.” (Your Auntie Stella hadn’t been born yet.) “Is there any chance you could sub me the cab fare?”
‘Bargo gave me ten bob and I crossed the road and drank myself slit-eyed in a hotel full of Chinese. When Bargo’s ten bob was finished, I pulled my wallet out of my pants and spent ten bob more.
‘Bargo’d found me through Callaghan, who was trying to pressure the government to pay us our subsistence allowance. Callaghan ran a charity called the Society of Soldiers, because to him the important thing’d always been that we were soldiers, not prisoners, and as soldiers we should’ve been entitled to three-shillings-a-day allowance to feed ourselves off base. A lot of the blokes really needed the money by then, because they’d bought worthless insurance policies that only paid out if they died in an accident, and paid annual contributions to the Ex-POWs’ Benefit Fund, which turned to out to benefit only one ex-POW, a low bastard coward of a captain.
‘The last time I ever wore my uniform was for the coach trip to Canberra, where we stood to attention outside Parliament House while a bugler played Reveille, and Callaghan presented our petition to the deputy assistant junior undersecretary for lost causes.
‘The government didn’t want to hear our case. They weren’t interested in an old man’s war. They were already fighting young men’s wars in Malaya and the East Indies, and gearing up for Korea. After he’d handed over a list of our names, Callaghan marched down the ranks, inspecting us.
‘He bloody loves this, I thought, and that’s when I got out for good.
‘After that final little tenko we went around Canberra having a bit of a drink, and I was stuck talking to Snowy White, who was a shrunken old man by then, but he could see the government’s point.
‘“I mean, we weren’t actually helping the war effort,” said Snowy White. “If anything, we were helping the Japanese war effort.”
‘So I picked him up and threw him through a shop window.’
BONDI
SATURDAY 12 MAY 1990
We worked all week on the spirit house, before and after school. We didn’t stop for a smoko or go to the Club. Jimmy called it our speedo period.
The work was difficult and delicate. We put in a chimney, although we didn’t bother to run a flue down to the fireplace. We built a coal bunker out the back. From the skeletons of pipecleaners I made coathangers and an antenna. With a jeweller’s loupe held to his eye, Jimmy cut fine detail into the furniture. The biggest problem was making the washing machine – which meant we had to extend the plumbing – and the oven. The television grew out of a matchbox, with a screen made from plastic left over from the windowpanes.
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Grandma, ‘is why there needs to be an empty room.’
‘It’s for Elijah,’ said Jimmy.
‘I know who it’s for,’ said Grandma.
Jimmy dropped his eyes as Solomon’s Volvo screeched around the corner and into the street.
‘You’re still alive!’ the tailor shouted, hugging Jimmy and letting ash from his cigar fall on his shoulders. ‘Thank God!’
‘We thought you’d had a stroke at least!’ said Myer.
‘I was going to organise a memorial service,’ said Katz, ‘with Arnold Zwaybil on the organ.’
‘Haven’t you got anything else to think about?’ asked Jimmy, but I could see he was pleased.
‘I’ve brought these,’ said the tailor, handing him a parcel as wide as a cigarette packet and as long as a domino box.
‘Cigars?’ asked Jimmy.
Jimmy opened the box with difficulty. His fingers, so steady when he worked with wood, trembled at the simple challenge.
‘Schmatta,’ he said, pulling out a tiny brown jacket and pants.
‘Don’t you recognise them?’ asked Solomon. ‘It’s what Moishe used to wear. I cut it for him myself. And this,’ he showed him, ‘a shirt for Bathurst Billy.’
It was white and collarless, and detailed down to the buttons.
‘And what, lieber Gott, is this?’ asked Jimmy, shaking a white leather capsule out of the carton.
‘It’s a tote bag,’ said Solomon, ‘for Townsville Jack.’
The suit was the right size for the wardrobe I had made, and the shirt would fold up and rest in the drawer of the dresser.
‘I was up all night,’ said Solomon.
‘You shouldn’t drink so much,’ said Grandma.
‘Those are the first clothes I’ve made in ten years.’
‘Rags and cabbage,’ said Katz. ‘But this is art.’
Into Jimmy’s hand he dropped two tiny pictures.
‘I painted them myself,’ he said.
The first was a sepia miniature of a young man in military uniform. ‘Moishe,’ said Katz.
The other was a portrait of a jockey on horseback.
‘It’s Phar Lap with Jim Pike,’ said Katz. ‘After Stuart Reid. I thought Townsville Jack would like it.’
Jimmy put on his loupe and examined the picture. A rigid m
an in red silks rode a chestnut gelding under a pale blue sky.
‘How did you get it so small?’ asked Jimmy.
‘Well,’ said Katz, ‘first I painted it ordinary sized, then I zapped it with a shrinking ray from the planet Zog.’
Myer hovered around uselessly.
‘And what have you brought, Pink-tush?’ Jimmy asked him.
‘Good sense and good wishes,’ said Myer.
‘Well then,’ said Jimmy, ‘goodbye.’
The old men trouped back into the Volvo. Solomon blew the Reveille on his car horn as he pulled away. Barry Dick drew back his curtain and stared.
‘What the hell did they mean by all that?’ Jimmy asked me.
I looked at the brown suit Solomon had made for Grandma’s brother, Moishe known as Mick.
‘Uncle Mick died after the war, didn’t he?’ I asked.
‘That’s the end of the story,’ said Jimmy. ‘The last chapter. When I first got back to Australia I used to find it hard to be in company. I couldn’t talk to people and, when I did, I’d suddenly go into Japanese or Malay. It was hardest to be around women, because I still felt ugly and deformed, but the worst thing was I wasn’t comfortable with Moishe, and we’d grown up together, been best mates. We should’ve grown old together.
‘We used to have a little party every Saturday night: me, Katz and Myer and Moishe. I had to ask Moishe, but I knew it hurt him to be with us, because Moishe thought he should’ve gone to Singapore. He’d only got out of it because he’d walked out of training. He reckoned he should’ve been captured and thrown into the camps. He felt he’d deserted his mates, even though he’d fought the Japs all through the war. He got it into his head that Billy had died instead of him.
‘There was a huge gap between us. Moishe came back a hero, I was . . . I don’t know . . . People thought about it differently then. They were glad we’d returned, but everyone knew we’d surrendered, and most people didn’t believe we’d been starved and tortured and made into slaves. They thought it was an excuse for not escaping. First we hadn’t fought, then we hadn’t escaped. But Moishe, he had a chest full of medals, and a rank he never even mentioned. He thought the medals weren’t rightly his. When he was in his cups, he used to try to give them to me.
‘Moishe grew darker and darker. When he first came back he got a job at a bank, but he left one morning without saying a word, and came home to stare at the walls. He stared and stared, and then he started to talk to them. One night, when we’d been drinking in Bondi, he went swimming in the ocean. He left his clothes folded on the beach and he didn’t swim back. They never found a body and we never gave him a funeral. He’s listed missing, and God knows there were enough missing men in our generation.
‘I know why Frida married me,’ said Jimmy, ‘even though she knew I was a drunk. She wanted to keep something of Moishe, and the last piece of Moishe she had left was me.’
*
I was told to put on my smart pants, because we were going out. We walked to the Club, where two men were unloading amplifiers from the back of a truck. The stacks were marked AZ.
‘Do you know what that stands for?’ asked Jimmy.
‘It’s the chemical symbol for nitrogen,’ I said.
‘It stands for “Absolute Zero”,’ said Jimmy, ‘which is English for “Arnold Zwaybil”.’
Myer was sitting with his Arnold Zwaybil tickets in front of him on the table, but Sollykatzanjimmy were united in their determination not to go to the concert with him.
‘He’s setting up upstairs,’ Myer told them.
‘I’ve never been upstairs in my life,’ said Solomon.
‘No sheila would let you in,’ said Myer.
‘They wouldn’t let him in downstairs either,’ said Katz.
At five o’clock the Ladies’ Auxiliary held a chook lotto. Myer won a size-sixteen frozen chicken but donated it back to the Club.
‘They’ve got chickens in the bar and a turkey in the concert hall,’ said Jimmy.
Katz pointed to a small thin man directing the road crew at the bottom of the stairs.
‘It’s Izzy Berger!’ he said.
The man turned around. Katz waved. Izzy Berger looked at his spats, as if he’d been recognised by his shoes. He was wearing a pork-pie hat, even though hats were prohibited by one of the six hundred and thirteen bylaws and regulations of the Club, along with stubbies, thongs, singlets, work boots and motorcycle gang colours.
Berger stared warily at Sollykatzanmyer, who shouted and waved like schoolboys at the back of a bus.
‘Izzy Berger!’ cried Katz. ‘The Jewish Brian Epstein! The kosher Allen Klein!’
Berger walked towards him, frowning.
‘G’day, Ernie,’ said Berger, nodding gravely. ‘G’day, Jimmy.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re looking after Arnold Zwaybil, the singing table,’ said Katz.
Berger sighed.
‘I am an artists’ manager,’ said Berger. ‘I have a roster of clients.’
‘I have clients too,’ said Katz. ‘Meet Solomon Solomons, the fattest man alive, and Pincus Myer, the world’s worst liar. Maybe you could work them into a double act.’
‘I don’t do freaks,’ said Berger.
He seemed to want to walk away.
‘I heard you don’t do anything,’ said Jimmy. ‘I heard Mendoza broke a guitar over your head and made you eat an LP.’
‘That’s ancient history,’ said Berger. ‘They don’t even make LPs any more.’
Izzy Berger held his big, heavy mobile phone in his hand, willing it to ring.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Katz. ‘I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket, then double the price, add a bit extra for service, and take it out of your advance.’
Berger shook his head.
‘You’ve been talking to Lucky Jack Gold,’ he said. ‘What can I say? “Lucky” by name, putz by nature. If it wasn’t for me, nobody would’ve heard of that bloke.’
‘So whose fault is it that nobody’s heard of Arnold Zwaybil?’ asked Jimmy.
‘He’s one of the most popular entertainers in the Jewish community,’ said Berger.
‘I wouldn’t walk up one flight of stairs to see him,’ said Solomon.
‘He couldn’t walk up one flight of stairs,’ said Myer.
‘It would be too much for the stairs,’ said Katz.
‘Very funny,’ said Izzy Berger. ‘I’d hire you all as clowns if you weren’t so fucking ugly. Now, are you going to let me get on with my job, or do I have to pay a bloke to knock you?’
Izzy Berger went to tell someone where to put the lights, while Sollykatzanmyer sang ‘Strangers in the Night’ like dogs howling at the moon.
The old men drank steadily, pausing occasionally to think of something that was better before the war, such as the taste of tomatoes, the cut of a man’s cloth, the tramline to Bondi and the behaviour of the younger generation. They were particularly unimpressed with skateboarding.
‘Why are you wearing that shirt?’ Jimmy asked Solomon suddenly.
‘To cover my chest,’ said Solomon.
‘It’s your best shirt,’ said Jimmy.
It was purple and silk, like the lining of a coffin.
‘Mrs Solomons put it out for me,’ said Solomon.
‘Are you sure she didn’t put it out for the garbos?’ asked Myer.
‘This is a lovely piece of cloth,’ said Solomon, stroking his sleeve with his thumb.
‘A man’d be proud to be buried in it,’ said Myer.
‘Dracula, for instance,’ said Katz.
Solomon bared his fangs.
‘What I wonder,’ said Jimmy, ‘is why Mrs Solomons of Dover Heights, formerly Rita Heller of Newtown, chose such a marvellous blouse . . .’
‘A chemise . . .’ said Katz.
‘. . . such a wonderful chemise,’ said Jimmy, ‘for her beloved husband to wear on a bog-standard night out at the club with his three best mates and a thirteen-year-old boy?’
&nb
sp; ‘Knowing Mrs Solomons as I do,’ said Myer, ‘and, believe me, I do know her – she was like a sister to me during the long nights in 1940 when Solomon was away on military training – I would guess that particular chemise goes with one of the evening dresses in her own extensive wardrobe, which was furnished with no expense expended by her husband’s contacts at the haute couture end of the rag trade, such as Kippax Street Bernie and Knock-Off Norman Schama.’
Solomon sighed.
‘Mrs Solomons will be joining us this evening,’ he announced, ‘for drinks and dinner.’
‘As will Mrs Myer,’ said Myer. ‘I will send a car for her presently.’
‘Mrs Rubens,’ said Jimmy in an odd voice, ‘is also disposed to honour us with her presence.’
I was confused. As the old men laughed, their wives walked into the bar.
Grandma was wearing her best purple dress and a silver tiara. Mrs Solomons had dyed her hair blue and painted her lips purple, and Mrs Myer, who I had never seen before, wore a purple sash and looked a bit like the Queen.
‘Oh my,’ said Solomon. ‘It’s Diana Rosenberg and the Chicken Supremes.’
‘Sit down, love,’ said Jimmy to Grandma.
‘I’m not one of your two-pot floozies,’ she told him.
The women insisted on going straight upstairs, where they perched on a line of foldaway chairs that Jimmy had made in 1967. Their husbands squeezed between them, leaving me next to Katz. A comedian came on stage to warm up the crowd, but I was the only one who laughed, since most of the audience hadn’t turned on their hearing aids.
There was an interval for Sollykatzanmyer to rush to the bar, then the house lights dimmed and a beam like a searchlight found a figure even smaller than Izzy Berger, with a stoop that might’ve been a hunch, wearing a white suit and fedora.
A dumpy woman with a light beard clapped furiously as the light led the man to his piano stool.
‘It’s Zelda Zwaybil,’ hissed Myer, ‘the Eastern Suburbs’ Ava Gardner.’
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Arnold Zwaybil nasally, ‘and welcome to an evening of laughter and tears.’
He bashed his thick fingers on the keyboard.
‘Fly me to the moon . . .’ he sang.