Replacement Girl

by Ann Beaglehole

  ‘Sorry,’ says Joe, treading on my feet again. ‘Do you blame me for trying? Look at stupid Tomi, worn down by violin lessons, extra maths coaching and on top of that having to study with the rabbi.’

  ‘Ouch, that really hurt.’

  ‘Sorry. Do you know what’s the only thing I actually like about being Jewish?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gefilte fish.’

  ‘Let’s go and get some. I don’t want to dance any more.’

  Rabbi Rosenblum is already hovering by the supper table.

  ‘I’m not a young man. I don’t like waste,’ he says, taking the last piece of fish. ‘Would you children like to hear a story about gefilte fish?’ He has scarcely finished swallowing before he begins.

  ‘A waiter brought the smoked fish to a customer, who studied it, sniffed at it, then leaned down and began to talk to the fish in a whisper.

  ‘“What are you doing?” asked the startled waiter.

  ‘“I’m talking to this fish.”

  ‘“Talking to a fish!”

  ‘“Certainly. I happen to know seven fish languages.”

  ‘“But what did you tell him?”

  ‘“I asked him where he was from and he answered, ‘From Oriental Bay’. So I asked him how things are in Oriental Bay and he answered, ‘How should I know; it’s years since I was there.”’

  ‘Let’s see if there are any blintzes left,’ I suggest to Joe, as the rabbi moves away.

  ‘Would you ladies like to hear a story about gefilte fish?’ we hear him asking the next group.

  ‘Jews, they’re always on the make, always hustling.’ Joe is looking with disgust at Stephen Lucas, who has been building a reputation for being good at turning nothing into something. Stephen is jiggling around the floor to the tune of ‘If I were a rich man’ with the daughter of the richest Jew in Wellington.

  ‘If you start with nothing, you have to try all the harder, don’t you think?’ he says.

  ‘I’ve got six fountain pens and four copies of Exodus,’ says Tomi, joining us.

  ‘Lucky you. Did you get any decent presents?’

  ‘I know what I’m going to do,’ says Joe, when Tomi goes away to thank someone else. Joe is looking pleased with himself. ‘My parents can choose between the bar mitzvah and the piano. If they let me give up the piano, I’ll agree to the bar mitzvah.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s find the blintzes before the rabbi gets them,’ I say to Joe, looking at him with new respect.

  ‘I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and her successors, according to law. Repeat those words after me,’ says Mr Kitts, the mayor. He is dressed like a peacock in fine red cloak and hat.

  After we have done as he asked, my mother’s tears start to flow in earnest. Before, she was sniffling quietly and not disrupting the ceremony too much. Now her emotions have built up to noisy sobbing. I look straight ahead at Mr Kitts and pretend I do not belong with her or with my father, who is gathering up all the hats, coats, scarves and gloves that were in his lap, clambering to his feet, squeezing past me and my grandmother, and sitting down again beside my mother.

  Mr Kitts stops in mid sentence and first raises one eyebrow, then the other, as my father settles in his new seat and puts an arm around Kati.

  ‘I declare you – Gyuri, Kati and Eva Fáber and Judit Meyer – to be British subjects and New Zealand citizens by choice,’ says Mr Kitts.

  My grandmother has a bath once a week on Fridays because she needs to be clean for the Sabbath. When I arrive home from school, she calls out, ‘Is that you, Eva? I’m in the bath. Please, darling, come and wash my back.’

  There is no escape. I have to go into the steamy bathroom. There she is, red blotchy flesh, scrawny stomach, dangling breasts, still-firm thighs, holding the soapy face cloth. Dutifully, I start to move the cloth around her back.

  ‘Eva,’ she says, grabbing my arm, ‘the yellow star had to be sewn on; if it was only clipped, you could be shot straightaway. The Hungarian army had to retreat. The German tanks were already in the city.’

  I pause for a second in my massaging and she says, ‘Harder, harder, put some effort into it.’

  I do what she tells me and she continues:

  ‘First they took the Jews in the provinces. In Budapest, they closed off an area and herded the trapped people. Not into trucks – they had to walk. They were supposed to walk to Germany. If they could not walk, they were shot. If you were on the street, you might be trapped. Imre got picked up like that.’

  When I stop to put more soap on the cloth, she says, ‘A bit longer, darling, it feels so good.’ My hand stays firmly on the cloth as I massage her. Most of the time, I can avoid touching the flabby skin.

  ‘When the Arrow Cross in their black shirts took over, they were keener than the Germans. They commanded Kati’s age group to report in the morning; they had to assemble by the big field – it used to be the favourite place for lovers to meet. That morning there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was Wednesday – my gin rummy day in happier times. Kati went to the field with thousands of others, wearing her good green dress and jacket. She also had with her a big, heavy pack. It was so heavy that she had to put it down. She waited in the field. Because her pack was too heavy to lift, she could not move forward with the others. She stood in the one place with her pack till seven o’clock at night. Then she came home, but I told her she must not stay in the apartment. She went to the hospital and slept in the corridor. It was crammed with people trying to escape; also with people who had tried to kill themselves. She left the hospital and moved somewhere else. She came back finally to our apartment and found me, and we left together. “Jew scum!” the concierge screamed at us as we left the building. After that Kati and I moved all the time, from place to place; we had to keep moving.’

  The ordeal is over, I hope, for another week. Fleeing from the bathroom, I look for the cinnamon and raisin buns she bakes every Friday. There they are. Delicious. I take three (my reward for washing her and listening to her) and escape with them to my room, out of earshot. If I stay in the kitchen she may call out for me to dry her back; or worse, ask me to stay and listen to another story while she attends to the corns and bunions on her feet, another of her regular Friday chores.

  But she follows me to my room.

  ‘Eva I want to tell you how they…’

  ‘No. Tell me about what you did when you were a girl in Debrecen.’ Why does she only remember the worst parts of her life? As far as I know she had a happy childhood with parents, grandparents, three brothers, three sisters and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins. There was a big house and garden with apple trees and beehives. But she has never told me any details.

  ‘Yes. They killed them, those butchers. Only my sister was left and she…she was destroyed later. And Imre too. They…did all this. You must never forget it, Eva. Never forget it.’

  If only I could.

  WELLINGTON 1969

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Douglas asked anxiously.

  ‘Mind, why would I mind?’

  I looked admiringly at the engagement ring on my finger, made by Douglas himself. Creating jewellery had turned out to be yet another skill of my multi-talented future husband. What a challenge, he had explained, to forge a new object of beauty from two old rings and a necklace that no one any longer had a use for. Yes, making the ring, and in the process learning about making jewellery, had been fun. As I was learning, Douglas was never happier than when engrossed in a new project, especially one that required him to make something.

  ‘Most girls, I think, would prefer a new ring bought from a shop,’ he said, still seeking reassurance about the ring.

  ‘Not me, I love it,’ I said. Douglas’s vulnerable moments – when he revealed a touch of modesty or lack of confidence – made me feel closer to him. They no doubt came from the put-downs and periods of abandonment he had had to take from his
mother.

  His enthusiasm for making something new from what would otherwise be wasted came from her too. ‘Waste not want not,’ she used to say. She was a thrifty woman all her life, despite being the wife of a reasonably well-paid professor. But she took thriftiness too far, Douglas said. Some of his mother’s economies were irritating, very irritating. Not buying new clothes for her children, for example. How Douglas had hated going to school dances in ill-fitting hand-me-down trousers. She was also niggardly with what a young child most needed: attention, approval, affection, even a cuddle or two. Daphne gave little but expected a lot. She had been a pain in the neck with her incessant demands and expectations: for an immaculate room at home, for high marks at school and for polished manners in public. There were raised eyebrows from her when he got third in the class in sixth form French: ‘You can do better, Douglas.’ When he got second, it was still, ‘You can do better, Douglas.’ Always that: ‘You can do better, Douglas.’

  The defeated slump of his shoulders as he spoke about his mother pierced me in the stomach.

  ‘No, I most certainly wouldn’t have preferred a ring from a shop,’ I told Douglas again, and meant it. The one Douglas had made was the only ring I wanted. Everything about Douglas was just what I wanted.

  A few days before the wedding, my mother took me aside.

  ‘This is for you from your father and me,’ she said. She put in my hand a small wooden mezuzah with the Torah carved on one side. ‘For good luck. Without the help of the mezuzah, Eva,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure your father would have even asked me to marry him. I was carrying it in my handbag the day we met. He had just stepped out of the line outside the Swedish legation. At that time, you know, whole neighbourhoods were scurrying back and forth trying to get Swedish protection. The strap of my handbag broke suddenly and the bag burst open on the pavement, revealing its contents, including the mezuzah, which I always had with me, believing it would bring good luck. Gyuri, who happened to be walking by, helped me gather up my belongings and saw the mezuzah. He always said later that it was the sight of it on the pavement, not far from Police Headquarters, that made him know for certain that he wanted to marry me.’

  ‘Why, what do you mean?’

  ‘He knew deep down that a person who carried a mezuzah for good luck in 1944 Budapest was the right girl for him.’

  My mother told me that she continued to believe in the power of the mezuzah even during the darkest times. She kept it in her bag or in her pocket. She always had it with her, even when she no longer wore the yellow star. She did this knowing that she risked everything if she was searched and her real identity discovered.

  ‘And the mezuzah did bring me good luck, the best possible luck,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have been luckier in the man I married. For thirty years I’ve had a husband who adores me and supports me, no matter what. I hope, Eva, that you will have such luck with the man you are going to marry.’

  We arranged that I would meet the last plane from Hamilton because there was a talk he had to go to after the conference. But when I arrived just a few minutes late at five past nine, the arrivals area of the airport foyer was already deserted. I was just wondering what to do next when I saw him, standing with two bags on the pavement by the taxi rank across the road. I waved but he didn’t see me. Running towards him, I called out, ‘Douglas, Douglas, sorry, I got the time wrong.’

  When I reached him, I again said sorry. His mouth was a thin, tight line. He found the pipe in his pocket and shoved it in his mouth. I took it out carefully and kissed the cold, set lips. He relaxed and started to kiss me back.

  ‘I thought you must’ve decided not to come.’

  The pipe dropped to the ground and he did not reach down to pick it up but stood there looking at me. I knew he had minded. He had thought I wasn’t coming and he had minded a lot.

  Afterwards, snuggled up against one another in his bed, my back and bottom fitting neatly against his groin and belly, I was just drifting off to sleep when he said ‘Picike.’ Picike. The first Hungarian word I had taught him came out sounding wrong. But, I thought then, he cared about me. Would he be willing to try to learn the hardest language in the world if he didn’t care about me?

  ‘Do I look all right?’ asked Douglas.

  Based on my reading about English etiquette, I wasn’t sure if his corduroy trousers and linen jacket were entirely suitable, even for a registry office wedding. I wanted to say, ‘Stand up straight, Douglas, shoulders back,’ but I did not. When he turned, I noticed with a pang his shoes, equally down at heel on each side.

  ‘I know Douglas will make Eva a splendid husband,’ the ex-professor of chemistry, and old friend of the Simpson family, told the forty or so friends and family gathered in the reception room for lunch after the ceremony.

  His speech had got off to a reasonably good start, despite the fact that he had broken the rule my etiquette book said must always be observed that alcohol and speech making don’t go together. ‘New Zealand red wine is so very good now,’ he had said to me several times over drinks before lunch, each time with a freshly refilled glass raised to his lips.

  ‘Not too perfect though, I hope,’ the ex-professor’s speech continued. ‘That would be a little dull. Married life ought to be exciting, a sort of adventure. I know mine was.’

  Douglas had told me about the ex-professor’s wife – a dental nurse from Waipukurau, who had died a few years earlier. I tried, and failed, to imagine the sort of adventures she and the ex-professor might have had together.

  ‘When’s he gonna stop talking?’ Douglas poured himself a large glass of wine and drank it straight off, probably as an alternative to throwing it at the ex-professor.

  ‘I suppose it was your idea asking him to speak,’ Douglas said to his mother, after several more minutes of listening to the ex-professor’s speech. He helped himself to another drink.

  ‘I hesitate to comment, Douglas,’ Daphne said, ‘but are you perhaps needing that drink a little too much?’

  Douglas looked outraged and downed every drop.

  I too was wondering how long the ex-professor intended to continue. I had read in the etiquette book that three minutes is considered adequate, five plenty and more than five too long. He had now been speaking for about five minutes and did not seem about to finish.

  I noticed that my grandmother was laughing at his every remark. Was her English better than she let on? She was seated with my parents at the other end of the table. My parents wore fixed smiles.

  ‘On behalf of Daphne, I welcome Eva to the family…’

  Douglas finished another glass of wine. I checked my watch. The ex-professor had now been speaking for more than seven minutes. He quoted Groucho Marx, who had apparently once said, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?’ This received a buzz of laughter and a very loud chuckle from my grandmother.

  Mazel tov, mazel tov, mazel tov was all you heard at Zsuzsi’s wedding. Not here. I looked round with relief at the sea of English faces. But my feeling gradually gave way to dismay. The reception room at the Majestic was crowded with mahogany, tapestries, gilt-framed mirrors and enormous firescreens in front of struggling fires. Queen Elizabeth and her husband hung on the far wall.

  The bloated guests had finished eating out of willow pattern plates and were holding up their drinks. In rising panic, I gazed at the maze of people, the men exactly the same in neat dark suits. Among the blur of faces, I noticed one – a used-up-looking woman with hunched shoulders. She had a pretty face, hair with a dark red rinse. She looked sad and tired. When had the gladness gone out of her life?

  I looked again at my parents. My father’s arm was around my mother. I recalled seeing them last week, holding hands in Lambton Quay. They had not noticed me and I had not called out to attract their attention but watched them go about their business. My father, formally dressed as usual in dark overcoat and hat, had in one hand the weekly coffee, Fagg’s Royal Espresso, gro
und one before powder. My mother said something to him and he smiled. He said something in reply to her and she laughed. They walked slowly past on the opposite side of the road, odd and foreign looking, but graceful and dignified.

  The etiquette book insisted that one quotation per speech was ample. The ex-professor, who had clearly not read the book, had several quotations prepared on bits of paper, which he referred to from time to time.

  ‘I have always thought that every woman should marry and no man.’ He informed us that Benjamin Disraeli had expressed that bit of wisdom.

  Enough now, please enough. Yes, at last he was making concluding remarks. Douglas’s brother Hamish was on his feet, asking everyone to raise their glasses to the bride and groom.

  I turned towards Douglas. He looked calm and peaceful now. We put our arms around each other and kissed. I felt happy, so happy.

  ‘To Eva and Douglas,’ toasted Hamish.

  4 December 1958

  It makes me feel dead tired to listen to her. I’m so fed up with her complaints about New Zealand and about my father. He runs between his day job and his night job and sometimes has a weekend job too. He is trying so hard to give us a good life, but my grandmother hankers for her Persian rugs; she misses the cafés where she used to meet her friends; she cannot stomach the soft white stuff they call bread in this country.

  The exercise book I was using to teach my grandmother English becomes volume two of the new diary. All I had to do was rip out the few used pages. Writing in English is easy and I’m the best speller in the class. The diary is for recording my real thoughts and feelings. When I tell Mary about it, she starts one too. We take our diaries to school and show each other what we have written. Exchanging diaries is a way of sharing secrets.