Letter from my Father

by Dasia Black

  The facilitator mishandled the hostile reaction that my feelings aroused in the group and allowed the session to end without resolution. The bell summoning us for the evening meal was rung and everybody rushed out. I retreated to my room.

  I wanted to hide from everyone. I sat on my bed in semidarkness and felt I was falling, falling into a deep, dark hole. There was nothing to grasp, no one within reach. Nobody knew that I existed. I felt totally alone. Sheer terror. I broke out in a sweat, my heart beating faster and faster. What could I do? I looked at the photos that I had arranged by the bed showing my sons and my grandson, Henry and me, all my loved ones. I found a piece of paper and made an attempt to start writing a letter, making a connection. But I could not finish it.

  This was my reality. I could not bear it. I stayed in that state for some time. Eventually I dragged myself downstairs to make tea in the communal kitchen. One of the others saw me and dragged me into the room where my colleagues were all talking and drinking. They immediately embraced and hugged me, telling me how angry they were at what had happened in the session. They felt that we had all been victims of an engineered situation, in which forces bigger than ourselves had taken control. Out of the abyss of my aloneness, I responded and reached out to them. And I connected. I survived. The terror of the four-year-old child subsided.

  Following my time at the course, I spent a few days recuperating in a resort with thermal baths in the Austrian Alps. I wallowed in the hot springs and walked among the alpine meadows. I scribbled notes and drew diagrams as I tried to understand what had happened in the workshop and to pinpoint my vulnerability. I concluded that I never ever wanted to expose myself to such emotional violence. I also speculated on why and how it was that I continued to find myself in the marginal, odd-person-out position, the first of my cohort to marry and to divorce, the first to have children and grandchildren, the first to experience living without a male protector. Why was my life so full of drama? Why couldn’t I be content like most of my girlfriends, in stable marriages with their first husbands?

  The next stop on this encountering-the-past odyssey was Moscow, where I met up with Jonathan. We spent eight enthralling days there and then moved on to shabby, neglected yet captivating Leningrad. I remembered a little Russian and could read the Cyrillic alphabet, so that helped us to navigate the city on our own. The summer circus in Gorky Park was a delight. The band played the Russian folk tunes I remembered and people started dancing. I pointed out to my son the little girls dressed up with big bows in their hair, looking just like my eight-old-year self in a photo taken on the balcony of our flat in Bytom.

  In Leningrad, we immersed ourselves in the riches of the Hermitage, especially the treasures of its Gold Room. With his usual enthusiasm and curiosity, Jonathan was taking in everything. We watched Gorbachev making speech after speech on television. In the streets, we observed the long queues to buy bread and cakes and sugar (for brewing one’s own vodka), the poor quality of vegetables and fruit in the street markets, the empty shelves in the GUM department store and the tired faces on the subway.

  When we arrived in London, Jonathan took off for a photographic trip to Winchester and Wales, while I awaited Henry’s arrival. It was wonderful to see him open the door to our room in Overseas House, relaxed and thrilled to be with me. Over the next few days we walked around London arm in arm, with Henry showing me his old haunts. We went to museums, ate in pubs and restaurants, strolled through Chelsea and, of course, visited Hamleys to buy toys for grandson Zak. Then we went on to Paris, where we had arranged to reconnect with Jonathan.

  On our first evening in our little Left Bank hotel, Henry and I decided to dine at Raspoutine, the Russian cabaret restaurant. Since it was getting late and Jonathan had not yet arrived, we decided to set out on our own, leaving a note for him. Raspoutine was the epitome of old world seduction. The Kremlin onion dome-shaped red lamps; the plump upholstered chairs; the Cossack-costumed waiters moving swiftly around the room waving flaming shashlik sticks; the caviar and vodka; and the elegant French women in their little black dresses created a sensuous experience. But it was the music that penetrated one’s very soul. Group after group of fiddlers and balalaika players, male singers with their formidable deep voices and women with imposing chests performed Gypsy tunes and familiar Russian songs.

  I was in my element, primed by my inroads into the ¾-litre bottle of vodka that was the price of entry. By 10pm Jonathan had still not arrived. I had foolishly offered ‘an evening on me’ and was now vaguely aware that this was going to be a very expensive night. In a moment of clarity, I turned to Henry, and said: I’m glad Jonathan hasn’t come. This is for us oldies. He’ll have his fun in his own way. At that very moment he turned up. He was wearing khaki pants and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and carrying a backpack filled with camera equipment and a tripod. He was literally glowing with pleasure at his exploits, the very picture of a young Aussie at his casual best. He explained that his late arrival was due to having spent several hours photographing Sacre Coeur in the changing light from dusk to dark.

  We quickly sat him down and I proceeded to teach him how to drink vodka the proper way: neat and straight down the hatch. It took him a while to catch on to this part of our Polish-Russian heritage, but he finally succeeded. A couple of hours later, after paying the astronomic bill, we staggered back to the hotel and spent the night feeling very much the worse for wear. Next morning, I was delighted to step out with Henry and Jonathan into the Paris streets, and although all three of us were suffering bad hangovers, we agreed it had been a great night together.

  Jonathan left us to return to Sydney, while Henry and I continued our grand tour. We took a train to Madrid. At the Prado I learned to look at the work of Velasquez with greater understanding while Henry gazed at every Murillo as if he had fallen into it. This was so different from me, who looked, appreciated and moved on, always feeling that there were so many other things that needed to be done, seen, and accomplished.

  One of Henry’s numerous cousins, Francis, the son of an uncle who had moved to France before World War I, was the French Ambassador to Spain. Francis and his charming wife, Chantal de Gaulle, a niece of Charles de Gaulle, invited us for supper at the French Embassy, an impressive baronial mansion in a leafy garden. The walls of the room in which we were received were covered with Gobelin tapestries depicting the life of Louis XIV. Although initially overwhelmed at finding myself in this setting, my awe was overcome by Henry’s sense of ease and our hosts’ relaxed and modest manner.

  We moved on to Zurich, hired a car and set out on a journey into Henry’s childhood in the city of his birth, Munich. He talked of how his governess would wheel him in a pram along the paths of the English Gardens; how, as a twelve-year-old, he would go and look at the Rembrandts in the museum; and how, after Hitler came to power, he was relentlessly bullied and then expelled from his high school. We struggled to relate the happiness and normality of a stable childhood within a well-to-do family in this sophisticated, art-filled city with the bestial behaviour of its inhabitants a few years later. Henry also talked of his father, a German Jew, steeped in German culture and with only a vague awareness of his Jewishness. I was acutely aware of the gulf between Henry’s and my relationship to Judaism. While it was built into my very fibre, for Henry it was something for which he had sympathy, but which he could choose to ignore.

  Henry and I returned home at the end of October to our half-together, half-apart married life, which I had actually come to appreciate. Our arrangement allowed me to concentrate on my academic life and, most importantly allowed time to maintain my female friendships. Though the arrangement suited us, it had inherent tensions. The first few hours of transition from single woman making her own decisions – even the most trivial, such as when and what to have for dinner – to being part of a couple, led to arguments. We often found it hard to slip from one mode to the other. Each of us sometimes thought the other bossy and inconsiderate. But when we par
ted, I felt lonely. I was encouraged when my full-time married women friends assured me that I had achieved an enviable balance with my Canberra-Sydney life.

  XIV

  A Birth and a Wedding

  Two momentous family events happened in the second year of Henry’s and my marriage. On 22nd May 1990 Ruth gave birth to grandson number two, Nathan. He was a most beautiful baby, the image of Simon. I fell in love again. Every Monday I would go over to Simon and Ruth’s home in Wollstonecraft, to help with feeding and bathing and putting to bed my little grandsons Zak and now Nathan, a habit that continued for years. My role developed over the years from bathing babies and changing nappies to reading favourite stories, helping with Lego and running behind tricycles, to being homework assistant and resource person for projects on Gold, Early Explorers and Reptiles. Those Monday evenings, though at times physically quite demanding, were a time for bonding and loving and educating. They were deeply nourishing.

  Early that year, following his attendance at a cardiology conference in New Orleans, Jonathan took time out for a trip to the Galapagos Islands. He came back refreshed and ready to move on. After all the years of study, he was ready to find a marriage partner and have babies, just like big brother Simon. One of his criteria for a partner was that she must be prepared to accompany him for at least three years to the United States, where he had been invited to be a Research Fellow at a leading cardiac treatment and research institution. He was also keen to have American-born babies, giving his future children the opportunities of American citizenship.

  That August, a few months after meeting her, Jonathan became engaged to Paula, an intelligent, well-spoken woman from an English Jewish family from Brisbane. Jonathan was attracted to her sophistication and sparkle. She was four years older than my son, which had its advantages. Here was a woman who, unlike others he had dated, had finished her studies and travelled the world. She was now prepared to venture with Jonathan to the United States.

  In the months leading up to the wedding, I was sensitive to signs that would give me the confidence that my deepest need for family togetherness, my dream of a healthy tree with many individual interconnected branches, would be realised. My friends told me that this anxiety was normal for a parent whose son or daughter, especially the youngest, was about to marry. I understood that Paula and I came from vastly different family backgrounds. Her parents had been comfortably established in England during the Holocaust and had no direct experience of it. For them, the hunger for family cohesiveness, so characteristic of those of us who survived the Nazi slaughter, was much less intense.

  At our first meeting after the engagement, we sat in a coffee lounge in North Sydney. I hope that we shall become friends, I said to Paula. But how can that be? she replied. You will be my mother-in-law. I took this to mean that she envisioned a more formal relationship. This was definitely unfamiliar territory for me.

  Since I had a minimal role in the preparations for the wedding, Henry and I set out for what proved to be a remarkable trip to Chitwan National Park in Nepal, followed by three weeks in India. Neither of us felt totally healthy during this time, since we suffered a series of minor bowel irritations. That did not deter us from fully appreciating the diversity of people, arts, crafts and food of the rich Indian tradition. Henry was the ideal companion, having spent a number of years working in Karachi and speaking some Urdu.

  We enjoyed so many magical moments together. In Kathmandu, after much haggling, we purchased what we were assured was a genuine old Tibetan bronze statue of the goddess Tara and a delightful little silver votive vessel used for splashing water during sacrifices. Amusingly, it looked just like a teapot.

  In Chitwan National Park, a vast reserve which had previously been hunting grounds for princes, we stayed at the Tiger Tops hotel, straight out of my romantic visions of the Raj. Early one morning we were taken on an elephant ride, my first. We climbed a few steps to a platform, and then mounted our elephant, four of us comfortably accommodated in a howdah on its back. The elephant moved daintily along a narrow track through sub-tropical forest, crossed a river and continued through twelve-foot-high grass. With my full being I absorbed the sensations of the moment: the early morning mist, the fresh smell of the grass, the swaying movement of the elephant, the occasional sighting of the rare unicorned rhinoceros and the accompanying expressions of delight on Henry’s face.

  In Varanasi, we made our way past the tiniest of unpaved lanes, dimly lit by oil lamps highlighting the white of the dhotis and longhis worn by the men, towards the Ghats on the Ganges. People emerged like shadows from the low door-ways of huts and dilapidated buildings. Artisans laid out their tools and market stalls were filled with all kinds of goods, among which goats and cows wandered undisturbed. We saw neatly groomed children having their hair combed before being sent off to school. We made our way on foot past the milling crowds and cycle rickshaws to the holy river, the majestic Ganges, where we hired an eight-year-old boatman, from whom we purchased a tiny candle and some flowers.

  As we pulled out into the great wide waters, the warm pink light of the rising sun revealed the heavily weathered steps of the Ghats descending towards the river. All along the shore, people of all ages, wearing the scantiest of garments, stood up to their knees in the healing waters. Washerwomen flung their laundry against the steps.

  From the middle of the river, we could see all around us a parade of boats, each with its candle and flowers, rowing silently and reverently around a predetermined circuit. The light on the water changed from light pink to rose and then to shimmering gold. I could feel the spirit of the great river with all these others who had come from every part of India to pray, to be healed or to bury their dead.

  When we stepped off our tiny, fragile boat, we found ourselves amidst the smoke of funeral pyres where bodies of loved ones were being burned. We asked if we could observe one such cremation and were told we could. A young woman’s body, lovingly wrapped in glowing golden silk material, was gently placed on a prepared pyre. Then her family stood quietly as the flames caught the material and we watched it slowly burn until only the ashes, which would be scattered across the river, remained.

  I was overwhelmed. How much more honest this ceremony seemed compared with Western cremations, where the coffin disappears and it is only later that you are presented with a closed casket of ashes. In our culture, we avoid witnessing the process of the destruction of the body. Henry and I made our way back to the hotel, deeply moved.

  Varanasi is renowned for its magnificent weaving, so we went along with our cab driver to see the place he recommended. The shop was like a hole in the wall, but we were courteously given a couple of stools and served jasmine tea in tiny cups. In front of us was a metre-high pile of fabu-lously-coloured woven and printed silk and brocade. The merchant, with a virtuoso flick of his wrist, unrolled scroll after scroll of brilliant material. There was no stopping him. We were mesmerised by the imagination and superb crafts-manship of each piece. After what seemed hours, we chose one big swath of the most glorious crimson silk. I could see it as a wall hanging over our bed. I also bought two metres of the most delicate silver and pearl grey brocade with a few threads of pink and green woven into the ikat pattern, which I intended to make into cushions.

  Of course, we would have liked to buy more, but how would all this brilliance look in our suburban townhouse? When I returned to Sydney, I sadly gave up the idea of the exquisite cushions. The sheer brilliance and luxury of the fabric outshone our other furnishings and transformed what had appeared a pleasant and a tastefully furnished room into something drab and worn.

  Henry was so moved and inspired by our experience with the fabrics that the next morning he wrote in his diary:

  I even dreamt about it at night, feeling how a whole lifetime (indeed the whole of history) could be unrolled before one’s eyes in this manner, with a scroll showing lighter and darker patches, brilliant colours and greyer areas. It seemed to contrast in my mind with the ide
a of memory in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and Proust’s quote from Shakespeare’s sonnet ‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past’, where the past appears as a dark deep well from which one draws laboriously and deliberately pitcher after pitcher of memories.

  What he wrote resonated with me. I was deeply conscious that this time together in ancient India was one of the light patches of my life.

  In Jaipur, we stayed in a former hunting lodge of the Maharajah. December was wedding month because of the fine weather, and the spectacular palace was a popular place for these festivities. Anticipating our own family celebration, we watched several and were even invited to one. They were occasions of great pomp, with the bridegroom arriving on the back of a gorgeously-decorated horse, camel or elephant to the sound of pipes and drums. The bride was brought in by her family, a little more modestly. The wide lawns of the hotel were adorned with superb flower arrangements in the form of arches, amid flower beds, splendid bougainvilleas and trees garlanded with electric bulbs. I had fantasies of Jonathan arriving on a sumptuously-bedecked elephant at the gate of the Great Synagogue, in the heart of the city of Sydney.

  The day came for that great event, but there were no elephants. Rabbi Apple officiated at the Great Synagogue, as he had done at Jonathan’s Bar Mitzvah. We met Paula’s parents, Betty and Stan, and her siblings, and felt quite comfortable with one another. In our smart new clothes we received congratulations from friends waiting outside. Though Richard had rarely seen his sons since his remarriage, Jonathan had invited his Dad to be part of the ceremony. But neither Richard nor his wife turned up. It was a blow for Jonathan, but one to which he never referred. There was nevertheless all the excitement and goodwill that weddings generate, symbols of hope and joy and faith in the future.