“What’s a Newchum?”
“It’s a friendly term for any immigrant, Alan. Come on,” says Milo holding the door open for the boy to follow him.
When they are gone, Brandt pours Peggy another glass of Riesling and stokes the fire.
“Do you like living in Australia, Otto?” she asks him.
Brandt is always wary of Peggy’s curiosity. “Australia has been good to me,” he says.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“The answer is yes. I do like living in Australia and I shall stay here.”
“You surprise me. I still can’t see you as a farmer. You strike me as a modern nomad, always having to say goodbye. If you really can settle to this, then you’re fortunate, but then I suppose I am fortunate too, which is because I have Milo in my life, and, now, thanks to you, I have Alan as well. When I help him with his homework, I wonder at his future; he loves reading, you know.” She lets Brandt light her cigarette.
“I think that Alan actually lives through his books,” he says. “He’s good around the farm, loves it in fact, but I shouldn’t imagine he will ever make it his whole life.”
“Books are his refuge,” says Peggy.
“But even the best books are a pretty poor substitute for life.”
“I agree, but perhaps, through his experiences, Alan has long taken the view that life is a pretty poor substitute for books. After all, the boy was dragged over to the other side of the world, without any say in the matter. I’ve no doubt the government would argue that he has the chance to fulfil the ‘great Australian Dream’, but what exactly do people mean when they use that expression? For instance, what does it mean in a town like Tumut? Just to secure a good livelihood and gain a high position in their so-called classless society? And what of an intellectual life? It seems to me that wisdom here, especially in the country, means to blindly follow what the majority think. Remember what Milo was telling us about Aboriginal beliefs? Well, the spiritual life of most of the Australians around Tumut merely amounts to being seen at church on a Sunday morning.
“Cap all this off with domestic trappings, such as a wireless set, a vacuum cleaner, perhaps a refrigerator, a telephone and a post-war car, and that’s about it. I’m sure you want the best for Alan, but don’t let him become a yokel, please. The holidays are coming, so why not take him up to Sydney, and show him around the museums and galleries? They’ve got some good stage productions on up there as well – and the latest films.”
She stubs out her half-finished cigarette and turns to Brandt with a sigh. “Oh God, Otto, I get homesick sometimes. And do you know what? I’m not only homesick, but I’m ashamed of being homesick. I so long for the man-made elegance of England and Europe. Too much sunshine depresses me; I feel bullied by it, as if I shouldn’t be wasting the sunlight by being inside reading a book. And I always have the wireless on – it’s become my musical wallpaper. The bush is beautiful, of course it is. Yet, to be honest, I much prefer human architecture that goes back centuries, cathedral cities and cobbled streets, but pining after them makes me feel not only ashamed but also disloyal to Milo.
“I’m trying, Otto. Next time you come in to Tumut, I want to show you what I am doing in the garden. At first, I wanted to create an English cottage garden. It never worked – we weren’t allowed to use hoses in the summer and everything shrivelled up. Then, when the rain arrived, it brought out all the bugs and I was forever spraying. After that, came the weeds – thorny and as hard as ivory. I’m beginning to sound like a typical ‘whingeing Pom’, aren’t I?”
Brandt smiles. “Go on,” he says.
“But, now, I’m making a truly Australian garden. I’ve put in bottlebrushes and banksias to attract the wattle birds – and creeping succulents to choke out the weeds. Already, tiny orchids are peeping out between the big rocks and bright beetles of incandescent beauty are settling on the leaves of the waratahs. Milo has built me a bird table and Alan wants to dig a pond for native frogs.”
Brandt nods slowly and, as if sensing his empathy, Peggy goes on.
“Being in that Japanese camp made me focus on what was important in my life. God, those guards were cruel and most of them were so young – the Japanese, I mean. They killed and tortured; it was all so easy for them – they did it with the criminal abandon of youth. I wonder what they’re like now? They say most of them got away with it and returned to their families in Japan. But they didn’t really get away with it – how could they? Most of them would be approaching middle age by now; I suppose they’ll never get over what they did.”
Brandt feels a growing tension in the muscles of his neck. He waits for her to continue, but then she springs up, and rushes to hold the door for Milo and Alan as they struggle in with armfuls of wood.
“Alan, come here,” Brandt says as soon as the boy has packed the kindling box. “Would you like to go to Sydney in the holidays?” Alan glances for a second at Peggy and Milo. “No, not with our friends, just me.”
Alan’s face lights up. “On the highway again? It will be even better than when I escaped from St Edmund’s gaol? Where will we stay?” Brandt glances across at the couple. They are both smiling.
“I’d go with that all the way,” says Milo. “Sydney is a brilliant idea – particularly at this time of the year. Mind you, I have to admit, the girls are prettier in Melbourne.”
“You’re speaking from personal experience?” queries Peggy.
“No, but I happen to be a connoisseur of the human condition. Melbourne girls must be prettier. I’m using pure logic.”
“You are pulling our legs,” says Peggy. “Or I hope you are; it sounds nonsense to me.”
“What is your theory?” says Brandt. “I find it interesting, so does Alan.”
“No, I don’t.” says Alan who begins to redden.
“As I said, it’s pure logic,” continues Milo. “It rains all the time in Melbourne and rainwater makes hair thick. Pretty women have thick hair.”
“What about women in the Sahara Desert then,” asks Alan grinning now, his embarrassment forgotten, “are they all ugly?”
“Milo is just pulling our legs, Alan,” says Peggy. She turns to Milo. “So, where is the best place for Otto and Alan to stay in Sydney? Remember they’re not millionaires.”
“I’d get a hotel somewhere around Milson’s Point, if I were you,” says Milo. It’s right by the Sydney Harbour Bridge. You can go anywhere in the city from Milson’s Point. You don’t need your car either. Just take a tram to wherever you want to go. Alan would love riding on one of the toast-rack trams; they’re better than buses and trains. Mind you, trams are not as good as the harbour ferries. And, Otto, I must insist you take the Buick again – it’s about time she had another run.”
*
Milo and Peggy have gone, driving down Brandt’s freshly graded farm road, which leads through the alpine gate onto Tumbledown. It surprises Brandt how the engine noise fades away so quickly, but then he remembers it’s a Rolls. Alan, meanwhile, has gone to his room to find any book that will tell him something about Sydney. Alan’s excitement is infectious and Brandt smiles to himself.
Yes, having Alan stay in Tumut during school days and returning to the homestead at weekends is definitely working well for all of them. Even the realisation that Peggy is ‘keeping company’ with Milo is a plus. It is open knowledge that only the intransigence of Milo’s Roman Catholic wife stands in the way of his remarriage, and the consensus is that Milo is a ‘wild bugger who needs taming for his own good and that Peggy Moore is making a good job of it’. Peggy’s wartime incarceration as a prisoner of the Japanese serves her reputation well among the locals, and her decision to help look after the ‘Pommy orphan’ is as understandable as it is generous, after all she is a Pommy woman, herself.
On the veranda, the mosquitoes are voracious. Brandt tries to ward them off with more tobacco
smoke. He pours himself another whisky and, with the alcohol, come the ever-present doubts. He can understand why Peggy has been so warmly welcomed as a ‘Newchum’, but what are the locals saying about him?
‘Otto’s a German and you have to wonder.’
And what exactly will they be wondering? They’ll be wondering if Brandt is everything he says he is. They’ll wonder if he knew of, or worse, had actually taken part in the massacre of millions in the hellholes of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belsen, Sobibor, Buchenwald, Dachau and the others, dozens more, hundreds of them.
And if people are wondering about these things, they will talk to others until someone may want a secret inquiry. Fortunately, most of the Australian post-war fury is directed at the Japanese. The Germans get off lightly, thanks to a few chivalric types like Rommel and some of the naval commanders. Even Milo had told him in confidence that one of the pilots welcomed into the prestigious Canberra Aero Club had once ‘flown for the Führer’.
As for Brandt’s public reputation, according to Milo, most folk don’t know quite what to make of him, but the talk is mostly positive, especially since he became a volunteer in the Bushfire Brigade. “The German learns quickly,” they were heard to say, “and he can handle the heavy vehicles and equipment as though he’d been doing it all his life. What he’s up to at Garigo is his own business, of course, but it’s said that he’s got some pretty weird fancies about farming. He’ll learn.” Brandt finds this sort of gossip encouraging, but he must never drop his guard, not even for an instant.
When he looks in on Alan, he sees that the boy has fallen asleep, with books and maps strewn on the floor beside his bed. Alan’s room overlooks the billabong and Brandt worries that he is being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Next time he goes to Tom’s store, he’ll buy some wire gauze for Alan’s window. It is gratifying to know that Milo and all his employees have followed his example, and made ‘Gunna’ an aberration of the past.
.“That was a good thing you did for old Tom,” Milo had said at the time. “And, anyway, why should he have had that nickname all to himself? When you come to think of it, we’re all ‘Gunnas’ in one way or another, our best intentions and all that.”
Brandt had agreed.
Back on the veranda, he sits alone with a half a bottle of Bell’s Whisky in the table and a small glass. Above his head is one of those glass electric death-traps that he first saw on the veranda at the bush wedding. When Brandt switches it on, the recess is bathed in purple light like an Italian grotto. It crackles and sparks as beetles and moths, attracted to the glow, flare up as they are electrocuted. The thing disgusts him – he should have got rid of it from the start, and it doesn’t stop the mosquitoes anyway. He yanks the cord from the socket without bothering to switch it off and pours a whisky. It is very good whisky, but it cannot block the shadows He shouldn’t be drinking like this. If he is honest with himself, and he wants very much to be honest with himself, he must face the fact that, as much as he likes and respects Milo and treasures his friendship, he is ashamed to acknowledge that he envies him. To Brandt, Milo represents everything that he is not, and his wealth doesn’t come into it. He is envious that Milo has Peggy, and that Milo is virile and confident in his masculinity. He is also envious of Milo’s uncomplicated friendship with Alan.
Always at the back of his mind is an increasingly insistent voice telling Brandt that he is irredeemably unfit to be Alan’s, or indeed anyone else’s, father at all.
Brigitte’s last words to him reverberate like a curse from each year to the next.
‘Everything you touch turns to ashes.’
Whereas, Milo is precisely the opposite, and Brandt finally decides that, most of all, what he envies most in Milo is his innocence, his deep-rooted integrity within his world and his goodness; he is a man without guile.
Milo has his faults: he talks too much. He says so himself, but then he still carries on talking, like all that the nonsense about Melbourne girls and their thick hair. Yet, his talk serves a purpose; it sparks good humour and if it happens to be at Milo’s own expense, he wouldn’t have it any other way. If a man likes the sound of his own voice, Brandt has to concede, it’s better to talk nonsense like this then spew the poison of hate.
Today, what is running through Brandt’s mind is from one of the Nuremburg Rallies, and the strident voices are lapping into his brain like foaming sulphuric acid – desiccating, burning and blinding. Hearken to the febrile little adulterer.
‘We havee no colonies and why not?’
‘It’s because of the Jews, the Bolsheviks, the Freemasons.’
And now the venomous fat man.
‘Why have we no living space?’
‘Jews, Bolsheviks, Freemasons.’
And not forgetting the piggy-eyed chicken farmer with the round spectacles.
‘Jews, Bolsheviks, Freemasons.’
And, lastly, the Führer himself.
‘No Jews. No Bolsheviks. No Freemasons.’ …
‘Lebensraum.’…
‘One Volk, one Reich.’
“One Führer!” they roar back like an ocean. More shouting, more whipped-up fear, more crowds and more thick-necked slaves in helmets. More helmets: so many ranks and ranks of thick necks and grey helmets. More fear: that sulky, thrilling fear.
And the crisp uniforms with the zigzag lines of the SS collar flash. Afterwards, in the streets and the beer halls, and on the wireless, there is more, more and more talking – endless talking, noise eternal. And the batons come out and then the broken glass, and the kicks and the punches.
18
He thinks the train will be crowded, but when he boards the carriage he finds it empty. He retches from the sharp odours. No wonder the train is empty. He is not in a carriage at all. This is a cattle truck – a stinking cattle truck. But not for cattle, cattle don’t stink like this. It’s human ordure and vomit and stale urine and squalid rags in little bundles. He’s dreaming; no, no, you can’t smell dreams. Oh, but it’s real all right and he’s got to get out. He’s definitely on the wrong train. This one’s returning from Auschwitz-Birkenau and hasn’t been cleaned and fumigated.
Why is it still in this state? Someone hasn’t done his job properly. He’ll write to Eichmann, who’ll be livid. Himmler will get to hear of it; he’ll puke, can’t stand filth our Heinrich. If only the Führer knew; ah, but the Führer must never be told about trains like this – his heart is too pure.
It’s all so familiar; he knows this train, as he saw it when it first set off. The mothers and their children at the railway terminal would have recognised him in his splendid Sturmbannführer’s uniform. He was there to watch them depart. As soon as they saw him, their hearts would have sunk. The very name of Frick was enough; they would not look for mercy anymore.
Must find something to smash this swaying wooden wall. It’s only slats, so it can’t be that hard. Where’s an enemy air raid when you need one? Dear God, what’s this on the floor? A woollen doll and here’s a dummy, and, look, tin motorcars and a little toy boat.
Can’t slide this damn door. Must be latched from the outside. Didn’t anyone come to see him off? From Auschwitz? You’ve got to be joking. Oh, but there were some young women. The SS Feldmädel were all waving him off. He can see them quite clearly. How fat they are; so much fat, rolling fat. They eat too much; they eat all the time. Their victims are starving to death, but the Mädel eat. Our brave soldiers in Russia have no proper rations, but the Mädel eat.
So, who is the Queen of the Mädel? Why there she is, with her whip, and she’s only nineteen. They call her the blonde beauty; she is not beautiful – why do they say she is beautiful? She’s grotesque. Are they blind when they look at her, like those drunken mariners who saw a dugong and thought it was a mermaid? No, she’s ugly all right, diabolically ugly – and voluptuous too, insatiable. The officers and non-commissioned officers like to gossip ab
out her couplings with the Kommandant. What a distasteful sight that would be. But, anyway, they transferred the bitch and her whip to Belsen. Do you know Belsen? No? Yes, you do; that’s the place where skeletons wrapped in paper skins run naked, crammed together and driven with whips.
He must be mistaken, the blonde bitch couldn’t possibly have seen his train leave Auschwitz. She was hanged in Hanover along with the Kommandant. Proper British hangman too and done so quickly. “Schnell,” she said to him, “Schnell, schnell.” And then it was over. Well, not quite. She was pronounced dead all right and they buried her, but then a Tommy guard in the prison saw her ghost in the small hours, then another Tommy saw her and another.
“She walks,” they said, and their officer transferred them because it was reported that these tough British fighting troops were avoiding certain parts of the prison on their night watches, and, because he was a decent officer, he didn’t want his men to be charged with dereliction of duty.
He tears at the walls with his nails. His manicured nails – until they are all split and breaking. Splinters in his soft flesh; blood between his fingers. He throws his shoulders against the door, but it is as rigid as a cask and the roof is nailed tight like a coffin lid.
There’s a movement in the corner. He knows it’s the wraith from the pit; she’s sought him out, but he dares not turn to confront her. He pummels and kicks in vain against the wall of this lurching hell-train as it roars into endless night.
Brandt wakes sobbing and dripping with sweat. He slides off the bed, then creeps along the hall corridor to look in on Alan once more, but the boy is asleep. Brandt showers, then returns to his room and the presence of the shotgun. If Alan were not here, would he be tempted? No, but still he withdraws the live cartridge and puts it in a drawer. He lays back on top of the bed and looks at his small, green travelling clock with the luminous dial. It is three o’clock in the morning and he is alone with eternity. And what is his eternity? It is a state of unsleeping observation, like the watchers in the trees, but his true enemy skulks within himself and he cannot vanquish it. Only grace can do that, but if grace ever comes for him, it must be retributive, like a typhoon at sea, raging and boiling. Its severity will be unspeakable, but he might, just might, be scoured clean.
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