Letter from my Father

by Dasia Black

  On a sunny January day in 1954 we were on holidays in the Blue Mountains. My group of friends, with our parents, gathered at the Blackheath newsagency to get the Sydney Morning Herald. Feverishly we searched for our names on the list of Leaving Certificate results. I found mine and was delighted with my excellent results, quite beyond expectations. My parents were full of pride and my friends respectful.

  My heart was set on studying Medicine. I wanted to serve humanity and study interesting things. But my father intervened. Medicine was not, he declared, an appropriate profession for a woman. There were too many years of study for a girl and then the nuisance of being called out at night, especially once I had children. I should study Pharmacy to gain a profession that was practical, portable to another country and suitable for a girl. His foremost concern was that I should have a secure, rather than a personally fulfilling job. Fulfilment was not even in the vocabulary of a Holocaust survivor migrant.

  My friend Elizabeth, the same age as I, commented how little six years of study were in a lifetime of work, and opted for Medicine herself. But here again I was a good and obedient daughter following the advice of my father, even though dull was what came to mind at the very thought of Pharmacy.

  Along with my Betar friends, I had also set my heart on spending a year in Israel before starting my studies. But my parents would not hear of it. We had survived the Holocaust and now I intended to leave them for a year, exposing myself to possible dangers? Out of the question. I wrote in my diary: I really want to go to Israel, but I cannot see how this is possible, taking my parents’ loneliness and their need to keep me safe into consideration.

  Fortunately, I could not get a position that year as an apprentice in a pharmacy, a prerequisite at the time for a degree in the subject, so I started instead on a Bachelor of Arts degree. I loved my first year at the University of Sydney. I made friends with fellow students, many of similar background, though most earlier arrivals than me – which meant without an accent. During our cups of coffee at Manning House, in its comfortable Margaret Telfer room reserved for female students, we talked of boys and ideas and shared our dreams. Lunchtimes were spent on benches in the Quad-rangle near the old Fisher Library. There Arts I girls met Medicine II boys. My confidence grew.

  I made friends with an eccentric and flamboyant girl of Hungarian background called Aggie. She was studying Medicine and went on to specialise in Psychiatry. Unlike me, she wore low-cut dresses in vivid colours, oranges mixed with reds, and knew female tricks for enticing boys. This was helped by her not wearing a bra. She told me this sometimes made things awkward during petting sessions.

  Aggie invited me to her home to teach me about make-up. Her room was a gorgeously untidy treasure-trove of eyebrow pencils, lipsticks, creams and powders, and eye-shadows in brilliant colours which she used generously. She demonstrated how to apply lipstick artfully and mascara to full advantage. In the midst of her engrossing instructions, her mother walked in, completely naked, to ask whether we wanted a drink. My jaw fell open, though I tried hard to act cool.

  I never developed into more than a novice in the game of femininity. I loved Aggie’s colourful presence and her imaginative dreams such as buying an orchard in the South of France. I suspect she appreciated my rooted reliability, as well as my loyalty.

  I majored in History and Psychology, History because I loved it and Psychology because it was vocationally useful. I learned from my cousin in Israel that my father Szulem had also majored in History, at the Institute of Jewish Studies in Warsaw. Along with my friend Julie, I attended lectures and tutorials in French, enjoying reading French Symbolist poets such as Rimbaud and Mallarmé, and the novels of Emile Zola. Unfortunately, my tutor pointed out that my poor ear for languages meant that my French accent was that of a Mediaeval Provencal peasant. At the end of that first university year, I did well in most subjects. I felt hopeful about my future.

  My discomfort and timidity in what I thought of as centrestage situations were, however, still evident. One incident stands out. I studied Ancient History under an eccentric professor, an Egyptologist. After a lecture, a group of us crowded around him asking questions. He invited us all back to his room for further discussion and coffee. An invitation to an intellectual salon! It was something of which I had only previously dreamed. But I immediately shrank inside, overcome by my unworthiness to be included in such a group. What would I say? What if what I did say was not good nor clever enough? I declined and melted away to the safety of the margin.

  It was the same with many of the other activities offered by the University. I enviously observed but judged them as being beyond me. So I missed becoming active in political groups such as the Labour Party in which my friend Julia starred, the civil rights campaigns, the debating clubs and the activities of those who preached free love. I was neither willing nor able to press forward with the others.

  After my first year at the University, following the plan devised by my father, I became an apprentice at a small quiet pharmacy owned and run by an elderly Hungarian lady with a clientele of people of her own background. Its only advantage from my point of view was that it was close to lovely Rushcutters Bay Park, beside the Harbour. While friends continued their studies as full-time students, participating in the life of the University and able to meet boys, I spent my days dealing with elderly customers, attending to the owners’ spoiled dachshund and making suppositories prescribed by ancient Hungarian doctors. I was bored. After my wonderful first year at the University, I felt sidelined.

  Something in me stirred, however, and I now took my first tentative step towards fulfilling my own destiny. I determined that I would study Pharmacy during the day to satisfy my parents and take Arts as an evening student, for myself. I did that for a year, but continuing to be sensible I took as part of my course Chemistry and Botany, subjects that I did not really care about but which counted towards the degree in Pharmacy.

  I relished the study of History. One lunch time, as I sat on the grass in Rushcutters Bay Park reading for a paper on the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton, called the first monotheist, I became so fired up that I decided if I ever had a son I would call him Akhenaton.

  Though I was now nearly eighteen years old, my parents continued to be protective of the child. I felt stifled. I had gone with my Betar group to a camp in Melbourne, where we were received by local Betarniks, including an older man, David, who was twenty-three and attracted to me. I sensed that he was experienced with women but was not right for me. But I was flattered and allowed him to kiss my arm from wrist to shoulder, having told him firmly that kissing on the lips was forbidden. On my return home, word reached my parents about my illicit friendship. My father was enraged. Didn’t I know that David was a womaniser? He insisted that I had behaved like a whore and brought shame on the family. Clearly I could not be trusted. I found out afterwards that David had come to visit while I was out. He had been met by my angry father who had pushed him down the stairs ordering him never again to approach me. I had been feeling hurt and disappointed that David had not kept his promise to make contact on his next trip to Sydney. Before I found out about his visit, I was convinced that I was not as attractive as he had made me feel at the camp.

  I knew that it was time to leave my protective but restrictive parental home. Marriage became my escape route. I went out with a few young men my own age, none of whom excited me enough to pursue a serious relationship. In any case, none at that stage was interested in marriage. Because I was not attending the University full-time, I was not mixing with other Jewish students, and had little opportunity to socialise with the future professionals who were beginning to pair off. I was too immature to weigh up the type of man I would like to marry and define how I wanted to live my adult life, beyond knowing that he had to satisfy certain minimum requirements, drummed into me by my parents and their friends. He had to be Jewish, of course, have a profession, and be a man of good character and, above all, a protector. I was ready to fall i
n love with any qualified man who would show interest in me.

  Within a year I found such a man, gave up Pharmacy and married. My husband Richard, born in Vienna, had come to Australia as a child. He had studied Dentistry but was at the time we met running his widowed father’s clothing shop while his father was enjoying himself in Europe. Richard was more of a businessman than a professional, to my parents’ disappointment. But on the whole my father approved of the match. His health and strength were failing and he was keen to hand over the child to a mature, reliable man. Richard seemed to embody both these qualities.

  What I liked about Richard was his sensitivity, his appreciation of art and culture and, most of all, his devotion to me. I also liked his face. He led me to an appreciation of contemporary Australian art. We visited galleries, read reviews and slowly started buying our own paintings. Richard would queue up all night for the occasional all paintings under ten pounds exhibitions held in the 1960s by the Macquarie Galleries. So we acquired works by rising Australian artists, including one of the interior of Australia by Sidney Nolan and a larger canvas by Ian Fairweather in his idiosyncratic calligraphic style.

  An example of my steep learning curve is shown by an episode early in our courtship. Richard and I were with a group of friends in one of the new and fashionable coffee bars, and discussing Art. Someone mentioned Michael Kmit, an Australian artist from a Ukrainian background, who painted in rich, deep, sombre colours. I had no idea who Michael Kmit was, but noticed that the others seemed to be looking into the corner of the atmospheric little café, at a lamp. Ah, I thought as I joined the conversation, he may be involved with lamp design. Richard later gave me a small portrait of a student by the artist for my nineteenth birthday, a few months before we married. Such gifts became a tradition. Later, for our tenth wedding anniversary, Richard presented me with a painting by Godfrey Miller, another notable Australian artist. He had bought it at an exhibition held after Miller’s death and kept it hidden for two years, waiting for this special occasion. It was an abstraction of a simple house, painted with geometric precision and given a jewel-like surface. It was a gentle reminder that the spirit hovers very near the objects of everyday life. I loved it passionately.

  My friends were surprised by my choice of husband. Richard was twelve years older than me, and was balding, with poor posture. He had few close male friends and seemed a bit of a loner. I remember meeting my friend Ezekiel at the Mitchell Library one day, where we were both doing research for our respective courses and his asking me to have dinner with him. I declined, since I was meeting Richard who was coming to pick me up at the library. When he arrived and we observed him at a distance, Ezekiel exclaimed: You’re not seeing this old man? But I was. I am not sure whether I was in love with Richard or in love with being in love.

  My parents borrowed money for the wedding and I had some beautiful clothes made for the occasion. I looked very young. My parents had last-minute qualms about how I was going to manage without their protective umbrella and whether Richard would be able to support me properly. I was still so naïve that I expected everyone to treat me well, to be kind and considerate the way I had been taught. I expected strawberries and roses, happiness forever, as my father put it. My mother and father had never talked about money in front of me, and now I needed to understand all about it. And there was more. Suddenly they started repeating that life was prosaic, full of obstacles and often disappointing. It was not all poetry. I took little notice, being more concerned with my wedding dress, my going-away suit in lovely beige linen and the forthcoming honeymoon at Lord Howe Island. I just wanted to be happy.

  In the early years of our marriage, Richard and I were both dominated by our parents. Richard’s father lent him a deposit, half of the cost, of our house in Ocean Heights, which remained our home for the next twenty years. It was not a gift, rather a loan with no expectation of repayment, but with an unwritten expectation that we would stay obedient, dutiful children. I certainly felt the weight of the obligation to our parents. Our house was exactly midway between them. There was little space for us to develop our own life as an independent young couple but a sense that we were constantly ‘supervised’ and controlled from both sides. This was uncomfortable but accepted by both of us. Neither of us was capable of rebellion at that stage.

  Our house was certainly not one we would have chosen for ourselves. We had seen another at picturesque Harbourside Parsley Bay, a sunlit place close to the Harbour with many corners both inside and out for sitting and dreaming and reading poetry under shady trees. I wanted it so much but my parents’ friend, a practical builder concerned with strictly prosaic values said: This house is out of the question. It has a shingle roof which would need to be replaced. So we did not buy it. The house we did buy was large, with five bedrooms of which we used only four, the other becoming a rumpus room. There was a long imposing living room facing south-east. Neither that room nor our bedroom ever saw the sun. I liked the big kitchen and old-fashioned orange-tiled bathroom. The rumpus room, on to which we eventually built an extension, basked in the northerly sun, like the garden, but their use was limited by the strong north-easterly sea winds.

  Ours was the third house from a cliff overlooking the ocean. The winds and the salt air meant that the garden was rather bare. My numerous attempts at growing flowering shrubs and trees failed over and over again. We had to be satisfied with the ubiquitous oleander shrubs and a glossy-leafed salt-resistant coastal bush. The house worked in that it provided ample space to rear children, study, entertain and occasionally relax in relative comfort, but it remained a heavy house, a hard-to-warm house. Nevertheless, lots of good things happened in that first home of ours.

  I blossomed as a young married woman. I loved the security of a man loving me, the social status of being part of a couple, the freedom to build my own life and above all, the possibility of having a family of my own. A year after our marriage I noted in my diary:

  I have had a wonderful year being married to my Richard. He has made me happier than I thought possible. Sometimes I am afraid of this wonderful happiness, afraid that it may not last.

  I continued my university studies part time, one subject a year, so that it took six years before I graduated at the age of twenty-six. I set very high standards for myself. I rarely said no to any demand. Although older than me, I found that Richard was not the father-figure, the protector, I thought I had married. I became the family organiser, the initiator, the mover, perceived by our friends as the strong one. We allowed little time in our marriage for frivolity, for leisure, for lightness. We did, however, share many good times.

  I learned to run an efficient home, entertained our friends and exchanged recipes with my girlfriends. We had some fantastic parties with a group of friends of mainly Russian and Polish background. I was known for my liveliness at parties, events which satisfied my urge for excitement and romance.

  We went to a great deal of trouble to decorate the living room and provide food according to a theme, such as oranges and lemons, organising suitable music and seating arrangements. At the end of a feast accompanied by wine with vodka, we would push aside the furniture, put on records of Russian and Hungarian music, some poignant, some loud and jolly, and would dance all night. I loved Cossack dancing to the point of exhaustion.

  After nine-and-a-half months of our marriage, our son Simon was born. We named him after my father Szulem, his Hebrew name. My adopted parents who now became Nena Gita and Grandpa Welo adored him. But this was cruelly cut short. Father died suddenly of complications from a weak heart and kidney. He was fifty-three years old and had been in Australia for only seven years.

  Just a few days before his death, I spent a few hours with him which were typical of the way we related. He lay in bed with his legs swollen, breathing with difficulty. I had arranged a small table by his side at which I worked on an assignment for a course in Educational Philosophy. We were at peace with one another. While I read my notes and wrote, he dozed
. He would then wake and watch me approvingly. I told him what I was learning about Plato’s and Erasmus’ theories and he commented: Darling Ester, very good that you are studying some philosophy. It is valuable.

  The death of my father devastated me. He had been my rock, my nurturer, my wonderful second father. He had loved me unreservedly. The night after his death and for many nights to come, I howled in pain so loudly that our neighbours complained of the noise. His death left a huge hole in my life although in many ways his love, his way of looking at the world and his values have lived on in me. In my busy life I did not take time for grieving and the hole remained.

  VII

  Our Two Sons

  I knew absolutely nothing about babies, but was delighted with my first-born. To crown my married happiness I have a baby – a lovely, gorgeous, bright little darling. I am enjoying the bliss of maternal love. Sometimes when I gaze at the lovely face of that little creature, who is at the moment so dependent on me, I become quite overwhelmed with emotions of love and protection, I wrote in my diary.

  Richard, an equally enthusiastic father, talked to Simon while changing his nappies, ‘men’s talk’, such as issues relating to the dimensions of Marilyn Monroe.

  I had no siblings and had lost my cousins in the Holocaust. I had never even held a baby in my arms. Like other young mothers of my generation, I relied on Dr Spock for all advice and his book became my baby bible. Accordingly I fed Simon every four hours, even though he started crying for his feed after three-and-a-half. I walked him up and down for that dreadful half-hour of utter misery, waiting for the correct time.