‘The past,’ said Motl.
‘Forget the past,’ came the instant reply. ‘We are facing a new reality. All the noble “isms” perished in the gas chambers. Most of the immigrants to these shores — workers who once walked with socialism — dream of becoming shopkeepers, milkbar owners, fruiterers. To a people who spend their lives in holes, a two-bedroom flat with a private bathroom is socialism. The same passion, dear friends, that once carried a worker to the barricades now compels him to buy an automobile.’ He took a large sip from his newly-arrived coffee.
‘So do you mean,’ I interrupted, ‘that what we once believed in is gone forever?’
Berish inclined his head towards me. ‘To explain in one breath our dream of a just world after what we went through is a philosophical dilemma. I don’t want to be a Cassandra, but I suspect that in a community where middle-classness is not just a material but an aesthetic ideal, there is no room for red flags.’ He leaned back in his chair, lingered with us for a while. Then he downed what remained of his coffee, inhaled deeply from his cigarette, got up and walked out, leaving behind his hovering nicotine ghost.
‘What a character,’ I said to Motl.
‘Yes. A fine human being, with a good pen and a sharp tongue, but always lonely in any crowd. The murder of his first wife and child has never stopped tormenting him.’ And Motl went on to relate a recent incident. During one of their regular Saturday-morning strolls through Elwood, the two men had stopped to rest on a park bench not far from the local synagogue when, out of the blue, who should come past but the rabbi, in his black suit, black hat and prayer-shawl. Berish at once artfully obscured his glowing cigarette between his fingers.
‘From me,’ said the rabbi, pausing at the bench, ‘you don’t have to hide your transgression. And from Him there are no concealments.’
‘Certainly not, rabbi,’ Berish replied. ‘I was only hiding it so as not to offend you. As for Him, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. If He really is our Almighty, then people like myself have grave doubts about His justice.’
‘I can see you’re experiencing some serious perplexities, young man.’
‘Yes, rabbi. Six million perplexities.’
The rabbi seemed to grow pale, and little pearls of sweat appeared on his high forehead. Berish lost his nerve and began to apologize, but the rabbi waved it aside. ‘Please, no need,’ he said. Then, regaining his composure, he bent to peer directly into Berish’s greyness. His voice was soft, almost faint. ‘There are people of many words, who understand none; and there are people who have travelled from east to west, from north to south, and still remain on square one.’
He straightened up and placed his hand on Berish’s shoulder. ‘It won’t make any difference to Him whether or not you believe. But I can tell you, it will make a world of difference to you.’
A Song of Milk
Esther was plagued by formidable headaches — headaches that defeated all sorts of painkillers. ‘The roots of my hair prickle my scalp like pins and needles,’ she would say. ‘I feel like I’m wearing a barbed-wire wig.’
The Collins Street doctor’s nurse, a thin woman in a blue dress-shirt, gave Esther a long questionnaire to fill out. ‘If you have any trouble,’ she whispered, ‘please ask.’
Although there were no other patients in the waiting-room, it took quite a while before we were admitted into the doctor’s room. He greeted us with warm handshakes. We relaxed. At last a real doctor, not like some of those white-shirted villains in camp who were ready to break the Hippocratic oath for an extra ladle of soup every time they were confronted by a fellow inmate.
The doctor examined Esther. Then, clearing his throat and turning towards me, he enquired about certain personal matters that we preferred not to discuss. How could I explain to this stranger that our intimacy had been severely constricted because we had decided, at the start of our life together, that our child would not be begotten until we felt completely secure, and fully free of that sense of the displaced that we still carried about with us? How could this doctor understand that there were people whose culture precluded wives undressing in front of their husbands, let alone any familiarity with sexual methods — including alternatives to abstinence?
‘I’ll give you a series of injections,’ the doctor told Esther after some deliberation. ‘And don’t forget to drink a glass of warm milk every morning.’ Then, as we were leaving, he asked me softly: ‘So, how is life in your new country?’
‘Like a new blossom on an old twig of irony,’ I wanted to say, but didn’t.
We came home close to sunset, and had hardly entered our little front room of the Brunswick Road cottage when there was a knock on the door. Through the window we could see two uniformed policemen. Esther grabbed my hand. ‘Don’t move!’ she whispered.
‘Don’t be foolish, Esther, we haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Did I do anything wrong before Dachau?’
We stood there for a while, paralysed. Finally I brought myself to open the door. But the two police officers did not barge in, or even cross the threshold. They looked at us; they looked at each other. Then, to our amazement, they apologized. They had come to the wrong house!
That night Esther awoke from one of her nightmares. ‘They’ve come back!’ she screamed. ‘Help! They have swastikas on their arms!’ We didn’t get much sleep until we heard the clatter of the milkman’s horse. At that point Esther, exhausted and drained, finally fell into a slumber. A faint shred of light that slipped through the blinds played across her shapely form as I tiptoed out to collect our bottle of milk.
‘What’s going on?’ Esther called, awake again.
An empty bottle stood near the doorstep. In the bottom of the bottle were some coins, and in its mouth a rolled-up piece of paper containing a scrawled note: Sorry good people, we were on our way home from a dance and we were thirsty.
‘What a beautiful message,’ Esther said languidly. ‘Like a song.’
The Waltz
A happy sensuousness hovered over the dance floor at Maison de Luxe as Esther and I stepped through the door into the castle of pleasure. The seductive murmur and eager searching glances mingled with the smell of nicotine and the band’s pulsing music. The hall, situated in Glenhuntly Road, Elwood, was packed with many survivors seeking their lost youth. As soon as we were seated at our table, covered with a starched white cloth, I quickly learnt which man danced with his own and which with someone else’s wife.
I had never been much of a dancer before meeting Esther, and although she told me I was quite proficient in the art of pressing my body against a woman’s breasts, I always felt more secure dancing with my own wife. I knew that some people believed dancing to be the ultimate fore-play, that there was more drama in dance than in the whole of Shakespeare. I observed the room, fascinated.
A young man, his face a picture of absolute reverence, came over to our table, bowed gravely to Esther without any show of feeling, then over-politely enquired if it was all right for Esther to join him for the next waltz.
I was pleased to be left alone. I had come here only because of Esther; she needed this, I knew it would be good for her. But for me there was little appeal in the swinging firmament of Maison de Luxe, and since this was not yet the time when a woman invited a man to a frolic on the dance floor, my solitude was pretty secure. For a while at least, I was free to let my mind embark — as it often did in such situations — on an excursion into my inner self, the realm of visions, imaginings and other forbidden realities.
That morning I had met a man with whom I had travelled in the same wagon to Auschwitz. I didn’t know his name: in the wagon’s darkness we all just called each other you. ‘I have no right to be alive,’ this man had announced abruptly, and walked off. Yes, I reflected now. If self-accusation were a criminal offence, most survivors would be spending their lives behind bars.
All at once I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. I turned my head but there was no one
there, just an eerie emptiness. Then I heard a voice.
‘It’s me, your sister Ida. Will you waltz with me?’
I stood up. She placed her ashen head on my shoulder; I slipped my arm round her ethereal waist. ‘Remember,’ she whispered, ‘the green plant in our dark basement, where I used to hide my little Chayale? Remember? Chayale’s life was like that little plant. It was desperately climbing the wall but couldn’t find its way to the light. You have told this story often. And I know of the waltz you will write one day and dedicate to your wife. I am not jealous, my brother. I know that dancing belongs to the living.’
She leaned back to look into my eyes. ‘Do you recall how proud our mother was when you took my arm and we strolled along, I in my black seal coat, you in your grey three-quarter jacket trimmed with fur? Our parents paid for them with their own sweat. My coat was supposed to attract a wealthy match, to be part of my dowry.’
‘I know, I know,’ I heard myself reply. ‘Sadly it wasn’t to be, fate had other plans for you and your black seal coat. When mother told me to run back to pick up some things from our home, for we had left in such a hurry, I saw your coat lying abandoned on the floor. I didn’t tarry, I knew we had an appointment with death.’
‘Enough of that, my brother, enough. You know how short our time is. So please, while we waltz, while I can hold on to you like this, sing into my ear and I’ll follow in step.’
One two three, one two three,
Step away, away, then come back to me;
How the trumpet weeps, hear the fiddle cry,
Are they sad like us, can you tell me why?
The waltz ended. As Esther and her escort walked back towards our table, Ida began to dissolve in my arms. ‘Don’t ever forget us, my brother,’ she murmured. ‘Ever... ever... ever.’
My wife’s young dancing partner — guiding her by the elbow, still a picture of absolute reverence — must have been bewildered by my response when he delivered Esther back to my domain with a bow:
‘If I ever forget you, may the day of my birth and my very name be erased for ever...’
The Third Season
And autumn came
With sombre trees,
Leaden skies
And rain, and rain,
And windy sighs.
Mendl Blicblau and I sat by a kerosene stove staring at the windowpane, engrossed in our thoughts. At last my companion spoke up.
‘I worked in the coalmines,’ he began, ‘thanks to my five-foot height. Only small men were chosen — it enabled the engineers to accommodate more drills, such was the diabolical thinking that governed Germany’s economy. The work was hard and there was no food. The death rate was enormous, but the corpses were quickly replaced.’
He told of how the death march had finally landed him in Dora, where the V-2 had been produced. They were housed in a disused theatre. The stage was occupied by an antisemitic hierarchy, slavishly obeying every whim of a man in a black cassock with a huge silver cross on his chest. He spoke an excellent, educated Polish. It may have been something about Mendl’s appearance (he was tiny and emaciated), or maybe his ability to sew, but the man with the silver cross on his chest invited him to join the group up on the stage, much to the displeasure of the hierarchy. He was to enjoy many privileges from this man, and although the others kept muttering against Mendl’s presence, they did not dare to challenge their spiritual mentor.
‘However,’ Mendl went on, ‘the moment the war came to a close, this feared man with the silver cross freed himself from his cassock and, to my delight, and to the shocked dismay of his disciples, revealed — just like in a theatrical melodrama — that he was Jewish! They all screamed at him, and plotted revenge, and sang Judas! Judas! into his face.’
‘Ah,’ I cut in. ‘How the noblest intentions of men can be misconceived.’ And I told Mendl about my friendship with Raymond, the French Jew and biblical scholar who had once explained with such gusto about Judas. ‘According to Raymond, Judas was the greatest Christian ever.’
‘How did he figure that?’
‘Judas believed in his rabbi with every fibre of his tormented being — so much so that nothing could deter him from his resolve to bring about a confrontation between the Son of God and evil Rome. You see, this was what his so-called betrayal was intended to achieve. Judas was in no doubt that Jesus could destroy Rome with a wave of his hand.’
‘I wonder if Christians will ever see Judas in that light...’
‘Maybe one day. And when they do, perhaps we’ll stop being locked up in concentration camps, and murdered, and turned into soap. Only then will Raymond’s vision become reality.’
Mendl’s black eyes glistened; he didn’t reply. It was not that Raymond’s philosophy was outside his domain. I could tell that at this moment Mendl the Melburnian was suddenly back in the coalmines, where day after day a flickering lamp had lit his descent into a world of mist and darkness; where life dangled from a cobweb suspended over a fathomless abyss.
To bring him back to a happier landscape, I remarked: ‘You know, friend, I can recall to the smallest detail your home on Lagiewnicka 13: the unlit corridor leading to your one-room flat, the little botanic garden your father planted on a windowsill with so much love, your walls adorned with musical instruments...’
Mendl’s face cleared up like a freshly washed sky after a storm. He smiled his wistful smile and picked up the thread I had offered him. ‘Before the war,’ he said, ‘I studied the art of tailoring. My mentor was a fine man called Fingerhut — an appropriate name for a tailor, don’t you think?’ (The word meant thimble.) ‘He used to say that all Jews should pack up and leave Babylon for Palestine before it was too late. And here we are, a Diaspora people once again.’
‘I discussed this with Raymond as well. After Auschwitz I was of the same opinion as your Fingerhut. But Raymond, although he believed Jews are entitled to their own country, argued that we should never dwell in one spot, not until the whole wide world becomes one great Jerusalem.’
Raymond’s position appealed to us both. Nevertheless, Mendl’s camp experience — not just his own sufferings but the murder of his parents, siblings and friends, and the betrayal by the land of his birth — would not release my companion from his bondage. Not that he wanted to be released.
‘What became of Raymond?’ he asked me.
‘He did away with himself.’
I had learnt years earlier that my dear friend, who had watched over my sanity in camp, had died by his own hand. He lived through the war, but could not become again the person he had once been.
We stared into the windowpane.
‘It hasn’t stopped raining,’ Mendl sighed. ‘Our past walks ahead of us.’
Immigrants
With hope on their lips and doubt in their hearts, they came, came to restore the irrestorable, to repair the irreparable, to mend, to patch up their torn-up lives with bleeding yarn. Without language, money, profession, they walked about in their long woollen coats, with their leather satchels and funny hats, to an ambiguous welcome from the general populace, and from their own co-religionists as well.
It was a tragedy of biblical proportions for a seasoned newcomer who had arrived in 1938, and already knew how to say ‘good on you!’ and ‘you’ll be right!’, to see his highschool-educated sweet Bettina wed a rough-edged Yosl, or for mummy’s Aussie little Monty to marry a Raisl from God knew where. And indeed this outlandish, volatile generation, hardened in Germany’s concentration camps, had scant time for niceties, etiquette or the formalities of acceptance. But driven by a collective want, they who had spent time in the shadows of the gas chambers, and had slept for years in the same bed as death, knew the meaning of their new-found freedom and quickly set about rebuilding their ruined lives.
The Australian immigration ministers’ encouragements to populate or perish enthused millions of displaced people in Europe who were seeking a peaceful new life. Shiploads of men, women and children kept arriving week a
fter week. Poles, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and others — among them numerous Jews — found shelter in this fortunate land.
It is true that many among these immigrants came with little or no formal schooling: most of them had been just fifteen or sixteen at the outbreak of war. Yet the majority were multilingual and brought with them a legacy of two or three cultural traditions. It didn’t take them long to draw level with, or even surpass, their older-established counterparts, not only in economic terms but more significantly — impelled by the age-old dictum that knowledge is strength — in having their children university-educated.
Thanks in large part to their language skills, the Jewish newcomers assumed a pivotal place in the emerging multi-cultural mosaic, notably the restless Yiddish-speaking entrepreneurial individuals among them, who in all their lives had never experienced such freedom as Australia offered them. They breathed fresh meaning into the existing Jewish communities, a new purpose of achievement. Although in 1948 there were only some 14,000 Jews in Melbourne, a Jewish cultural life had already existed. There were two small Yiddish schools, two Yiddish newspapers, and a thriving theatre. In 1950 the Kadimah community centre and library in Carlton boasted about a thousand members. It was within this expanding cultural hive that the Holocaust survivors established their Republic of Memory.
At our various regular gatherings, some of my friends dreamt of transplanting our Eastern European way of life into Australia. To the Yiddish-speaking community these dreams were like a protective shield against the brutality of history, and they brought about a rich crop of Yiddish poetry, prose and art.
I recall one commemorative evening at the Kadimah, its stage draped in black and someone reading poetry. He finishes, and another man walks quietly towards the lectern, wipes his glasses clean, clears his throat, and begins his speech with a passage from Isaiah:
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