by Arnold Zable
Zofia moves back to the stove. She lifts the boiling kettle from the enflamed ring, and refills his cup. Her anger is rising. In his presence she feels inferior. He does not see her, despite all his talk. She is the younger sister and cannot break the mould. She was ten when her brother left Krakow. He descended the stairs, suitcases in hand, with his four sisters trailing behind. ‘Take it slowly,’ he had instructed the driver. ‘We are early. I wish to see Krakow for the final time.’
The alleys of Kazimierz spiralled into the broad avenues of The Royal Way. The horse-drawn carriage traversed Rynek Glowny, Market Square. For an hour they trundled over the cobblestones, past baroque arcades through a city of palazzos and churches, castles and Gothic spires; and with a flamboyant gesture Yossel had lifted his cap in mock farewell to every passing landmark, each renowned square.
There are moments that are indelible and remain engraved upon the mind. The Krakow–Berlin express is poised by the platform. Passengers are embracing loved ones before clambering on board. They lean out of windows as the train eases out. The crowds on the station are waving their hands like stranded bathers crying for help. Zofia’s brother is an apparition, a shrinking face. And, abruptly, he is gone. This is how it is with farewells. No matter how leisurely the detour, the final separation is always abrupt and a loved one vanishes, just like that.
Yossel lifts another poppy-seed biscuit. ‘To gehennim with my teeth,’ he says, in his habitual mix of English and Yiddish. ‘Live for the day. And tomorrow will take care of itself. That is how it is. And that is how it should be. And this is the secret of my success. I arrived here with nothing. Gornisht. I walked the streets with just one address. I made my way through empty streets to Lipski’s Cafe.’
Many times Josh has heard the monologue. The key phrases remain the same, but each telling is slightly different. He is aware of the changes in detail, the embroidery. And he has begun to sense the uncertainty that lies at the heart of Yossel’s compulsive boasts. Yet he is drawn to his grand gestures, his grandiose presence. When he visits he brings life to the house.
‘Khaver Lipski was a true mensch, a learned man, well informed on worldly affairs. A man of many roles: cook, waiter, proprietor and cleaner, boss and confidant. His cafe stood on the corner of Faraday and Drummond. I think of him whenever I drive by, and I think of my first night, upstairs, above the cafe. I could not sleep. My mind was on fire. I could not wait to get started. I slept as if on a bed of needles; and in the morning I drew the curtains and saw that the streets were deserted. There was not a soul about. I had arrived in a city of the dead.’
Yossel dips a third poppy-seed biscuit into the tea. He talks to Zofia, to Josh. Perhaps to the walls. He does not care. ‘I wandered the streets like an automaton. It was Sunday. Everything was closed. The blinds were down, the curtains drawn, the world slept and I wandered around. There were more dogs than people, sniffing the pavements, squatting to relieve themselves, smelling each other’s bums, skulking in back lanes.
‘In the evening I returned to the cafe. It was crowded with guests. And I knew no one. Not one ship-brother was there. They had disappeared at the wharf. They all had family, a relative who met them at the boat. But I have never been shy. I joined a game of cards here, a game of chess there, entered an argument, expressed an opinion, ordered a cup of coffee, a glass of borscht, a little bite.
‘And I kept my ears open. I moved from table to table. There were single men, and married men who had preceded their children and wives. I listened to those who had been here longer, even if only a few months. I asked where I could get a dzjob. That is the first word of English I learnt. Isn’t this why we all came here from the black alleys of Krakow and Warsaw, from the godforsaken streets of Minsk, Pinsk and Chelnabinsk? Even the fools of Chelm were wise enough to leave their town in search of a dzjob. But a dzjob at that time was not so easy to find. The country was sinking into a depression, a swamp. The whole country was in search of a dzjob.
‘If you want to do well take whatever comes your way, I was told. Don’t be proud. And if nothing comes your way take a suitcase, fill it up with trinkets, reels of cotton, underwear, pins and needles, a bit of this, a bit of that. Then put one foot in front of the other, and make your way out. Don’t be shy! Take the first tram that comes by. Stay on board till the end of the line. Get out, walk to the nearest house, knock on the door. And when it is opened put your foot in, quick. Then keep it glued to the floor. Make sure you are in, before the woman of the house knows what is what. Unlock your suitcase, spread out your goods. And voila, you are ready to haggle and trade. Just point at the goods. Use your fingers to indicate the price and you are on your way.’
Yes, Zofia knows his tales well, and has known them for some time. She had first read them in instalments in the letters that had arrived in Krakow with dutiful precision, four times a year. The stamps bore photos of English monarchs. Perhaps Melbourne too was a city of palaces containing the tombs of bishops and kings.
For one decade his letters had flowed and each letter seemed more extravagant in its claims than the last. Within a decade Yossel had risen from hawker to factory worker, to manager, and factory boss with his own workers at his command. He had married the daughter of immigrant Jews from Warsaw. ‘A true lady,’ he had written. ‘An aristocrat. Liebe eats with her mouth closed. She chews food like an angel. Marry above your station. It helps if you want to get out of the swamp. So I married a true lady, a dama, no less. Who would have believed it possible, eh? Look what has become of your Yossel.’
In the tenth year there appeared photos of his newly acquired house. Yossel, his wife and first-born child, stand by the porch. ‘My palatz!’ declares the caption. ‘Can you believe it? I arrived here with nothing, a nebekh, with just one address in my hand. I spent my first night, alone in a room, as if smitten by a black plague. And ten years later, to the day, I live in South Yarra, with the well-to-do, in a palatz with enough rooms for a prince, and with one baby born and another on the way. Who would have believed it possible?’
He would bring the family over, he wrote. ‘You have not long to wait.’ He would shower them with his benevolence. ‘I have more rooms than I know what to do with. I stroll around them and want to butt my head against the walls, and they are big rooms, with high ceilings, not cramped booths. Just now, however, it is difficult. The gates are closing. It is almost impossible to obtain a visa. But never fear, I can fix it. I know people in high places. I am a makher, a doer. I have the ear of ministers. Look at the photo.’ He stands, Yossel, in a pinstriped suit, beside an important man of state. ‘A Government Minister’, the caption claims. ‘Nu? See what has become of your Yossel?’
In the final months of 1939, the letters ceased. Perhaps they were stranded upon the high seas as nations fought battles in a world that seemed to be coming to an end. And when the smoke lifted, six years later, of a once-extended family just one sister remained.
Zofia pours her brother a second whisky, a third cup of tea. The cup is shaking as she places it on the table, but he is unaware of her simmering rage. He sips it with the uninhibited slurp, slurp, slurp of a man who knows he is among peasants again. Zofia watches as he slurps, as if trying to fathom when her adulation began to sour. She had sensed it as soon as she stepped from the boat, her belly rounded in advanced pregnancy, to an embrace from the brother whom she had not seen for over two decades.
It was not the reunion she had expected. Not the welcome anticipated from the sentiments of his letters. Nor the brother she had dreamt of since he vanished on the Krakow–Berlin express. He was acting out of duty. She was an intruder, a stranger. She belonged to the time before. She was a bearer of unimaginable horrors, a messenger from an alien world.
They drove from Station Pier in an uneasy silence. They detoured to the heart of the city, to the garment district in Flinders Lane. Yossel guided them up a flight of stairs and conducted them on a tour of the factory floor. He spoke lovingly of his knitting machines line
d up row upon row. He had ushered them into the showroom and shown them samples of his fabrics, and dummies draped in next season’s fashions. He outlined his future plans. He spoke fast, as if trying to paper the gulf between them, and as he spoke, he avoided Zofia’s eyes.
They descended to a restaurant at the base of the building, and for a moment Romek and Zofia felt at home in the bustle of cafes crowded with factory workers, salesmen and shoppers. For a moment they were back in the alleys of Kazimierz amidst a babble of fast talk sprinkled with Yiddish and a smattering of many tongues.
It was dusk when they drove back over Princes Bridge. ‘Call this a river?’ Yossel had said. ‘Compared to the Wisla the Yarra is nothing. But it is not the river that matters, but what it means to move across it, to live on its south side. Perhaps this is the Sambatyon, the river the ten lost tribes of Judah have been in search of for millennia. Perhaps if they retraced their steps back from exile, over this river, they would have arrived in a gan eiden, a paradise!’
Yossel is dunking yet another poppy-seed biscuit. He glances at his watch. ‘I must be going,’ he says. ‘A businessman must work. I have to deliver a new knitting machine. It is the most up-to-date. Imported from Paris. Or was it Milan? The stars are out, the Friday night candles have burnt down, and my family waits, but I have one more dzjob to do, such is my fate. I am a busy man, and Mrs F. in Amess Street is my best seamstress. She has worked for me many years. She will put it to good use.’ After one last dunk, one last slurp, Yossel stands, and Zofia helps him on with his overcoat.
Josh accompanies him to the front door. Yossel descends the steps weighed down by his bulk. ‘Oil the gate,’ he instructs, as he lets himself out. ‘Better still, buy a new one. Or build a brick wall.’ He turns to wave before he steps into his car, and all that remains of his brief presence is a tablecloth sprinkled with poppy seeds, and the residue of his final biscuit swimming in the base of a teacup.
Even here, on the verandahs, the thrill can be felt. Shanahan and the Bianchis have their portable radios out. The preliminary bouts are over, the boxers are making their way to the ring, and boxing compere Merv Williams is introducing the main bout. Williams is in full flight. Friday evening at ‘the Stadium’ is fight night. ‘Welcome to the house of stoush,’ he exclaims. ‘In the red corner, weighing in at nine stone, seven and three-quarter pounds, is George Bracken, Australian lightweight champion. And in the white, at nine stone five and three-quarters, the Italian import, Giordano Campari.’
They sit, two groups of supporters, three verandahs removed, in support of opposite camps. Josh and Miles are for the Aborigine in the red. Old Bianchi and his nephew back their fellow countryman in the white, and Williams, feigning neutrality, is previewing the fight.
Williams is a man of adjectives. He cannot resist stringing them out. ‘Campari is fast, cagey, elusive. And clever,’ he says, leaving the listener in no doubt. ‘He has ring brains, speed of punch, a left hook that hurts, and a tricky chopping right. He knows how to take control of a fight. That’s why he’s the bookies’ choice. A five-to-two-on favourite after his impressive showing three weeks ago, in his first Australian fight. He was more than a match for Maxie Carlos. He’s not as hard a hitter as Bracken, but he has an advantage in reach and height.’
‘Don’t worry,’ says Shanahan, as if addressing Williams. ‘Bracken is a heavier puncher. He just needs to tighten his defence.’ He mixes Josh a shandy, refills his own glass and sits back on the sofa. There is a conversation going on, an intimacy between the verandah audience and disembodied voices crackling from a radio on an autumn night.
Three verandahs away the Bianchis are getting nervous. Their radio sits on a card table beside a bowl of olives soaked in brine. Their glasses are full to the brim with red wine. ‘Giordano! Giordano! Giordano!’ the Bianchis join the pre-fight chant.
The bell for the first round interrupts their shouts. Bracken quickly takes charge. He pins Campari to the ropes with a two-fisted attack. The Italian counters with a flurry of defensive rights. The Bianchis ride each punch. ‘Mena, Mena,’ says Valerio. Hit him. Hit him. Valerio jabs his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Buttalo giú . Knock him down.’ Each punch landed by their man incites a cheer, each counter-punch, a groan.
Bracken is on fire. He jolts his opponent in the third round with a right to the head. Campari fends off Bracken’s two-fisted rushes with short rights. ‘Dai! Dai!’ urges Valerio. Come on! Come on! ‘Buttalo giú .’
In the sixth the pace quickens. Bracken delivers fierce rips to the body and head. Even here, on the verandah, Josh detects the hunger of the crowd. He knows about eyes that sting with sweat, and the charge of adrenaline, the excitement that builds with each round. He has felt it in Logan’s gym. And he knows the sensation of arms tiring, legs stumbling, knows the fury that propels each punch.
In the eighth Bracken opens up a cut over Campari’s left eye. The Italian is buckling. Bleeding. The Bianchis have gone quiet. Shanahan is on his feet. He is urging Bracken on. Josh has never seen him so animated. Shanahan stalks the verandah, his eyes fixed on the wireless. The dial is alight. Its innards are babbling. Its graduated plastic bumps bulge in grotesque shapes.
In the ninth Bracken moves in for the kill. He compounds the Italian’s injury with a flurry of hard rights. Blood is streaming from beneath Campari’s eye. ‘Finiscilo,’ mutters Valerio. ‘Finish him off.’ He does not want the humiliation to go on. Referee Reilly separates the boxers, and signals the end of the fight.
‘Bracken wins on a TKO,’ screams Williams.
‘What’s a TKO?’ asks Josh.
‘A technical knockout,’ says Shanahan. ‘In plain English it means Campari’s getting mauled.’
The despondent Bianchis return inside, but Shanahan listens to the round-by-round analyses, the post-fight reviews. Williams is letting the adjectives fly like beads of sweat off a boxer’s face. ‘It is hard to believe that this flashing, resourceful, methodical, fast-punching tradesman was the same, plodding, KO-crazy Bracken who lost to Cavalieri, Campari’s fellow Italian import, just two months ago,’ he says. ‘The tough Aborigine has turned in the greatest performance of his career. He was far too fast and aggressive for the cunning Italian.’
Williams has got Bracken’s trainer, Kid Young, at the mike. ‘I’ve met him,’ Shanahan tells Josh. ‘Logan introduced us. He’s been down to the gym. He’s a former featherweight champ, and a great trainer. He saw Bracken’s talent when he was still a sideshow pug.’
‘I’ve waited four years for this,’ says Young. ‘And I’d almost given up hope of ever seeing that kind of Bracken.’
‘Why the sudden change?’ asks Williams.
‘We watched Campari fight Carlos, and adjusted George’s training. We concentrated on speed and body punches to slow Campari down. We matched George with speedy sparring partners, and we didn’t work him too hard. And it all paid off. He’s never been fitter, and he has never had so much zip.’
‘We all could do with a bit of zip,’ says Shanahan. ‘And another sip.’ He pours Josh a second shandy, and himself yet another glass. ‘Bracken’s done it,’ he tells him. ‘He’s moved from being a fighter to a boxer, from a brawler to a practitioner of the pugilistic arts.’ Shanahan pauses, rolls a cigarette, and puts a hand on Josh’s shoulder. ‘And you can do it too, if you apply yourself. Even though you’re a skinny runt,’ he laughs.
‘Young’s a great trainer,’ Shanahan adds. ‘He knows that you’ve got to be both aggressive and clever, especially if you’re black. I’ve seen it on the road. They live on the fringes of country towns. They’re fair game. They have to grab the crumbs, take whatever comes. That’s how Bracken got started. He was once a station hand who used to spar with towels wrapped around his fists. Then he met Jimmy Sharman and joined his boxing troupe. He toured the country, fought in tents. Took on all comers. That’s the way it is. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.’
Shanahan is agitated. He pauses, puckers his lips, and exhales a
smoke ring. It floats over Josh’s head. ‘Bracken says he hates boxing and has never liked it, not for a moment. He says he fights because it’s his only chance to drag himself out of the muck. That’s what Kid Young told me. He knows him well. After all, he got him off the road, and took him into his own house.’
Shanahan draws on the remains of the cigarette. He flicks the dregs off the verandah into the front garden and rolls another. He turns off the radio. Quiet descends on Canning Street and, with it, a late night fog. Inside, Shanahan’s wife can be heard pottering around. In the months that Josh has known him, Shanahan has never introduced her, never mentioned her obvious pregnancy. And there have been nights when Josh has awoken to the sounds of argument, voices bickering. Doors slamming. Glass breaking. Perhaps every night is fight night on Canning Street. Perhaps this is the festering secret, the barely concealed fury that seethes behind closed doors.
‘See ya,’ says Josh, when he gets up to leave. As he climbs the steps to his front door, Shanahan ambles by.
‘I need air,’ he says. ‘I have to take a walk before I turn in. Got a lot to think about. Got to find peace of mind.’
They are both unwilling to re-enter their homes. Josh remains standing by the front door. He recalls Zofia’s sullen silence during Yossel’s visit, two hours earlier, just before the fight. He does not wish to let go of the night. He conjures the thwack, thwack of fist upon flesh, the odour of fear in Logan’s gym. He hooks and uppercuts imaginary foes until, reluctantly, he steps into the passage and vanishes into the dark.
Bloomfield’s nights in Curtain Square are numbered. The cold is beginning to bite. He must return almost every evening now to his room in the welfare house. Tonight he detours to the espresso bar on Rathdowne Street. He is enticed by the warmth of its lights. They know him well, these men sitting at tables, bent over their coffees and snacks. They know him well, this shadow of a man who darts in and out of the bar. Who does no one any harm. They glance up when Bloomfield enters, acknowledge his presence with a nod.