Alva's Boy

by Alan Collins

  I don't think he listened. He was happy enough to have me on his side in an alliance against Shirley. They no longer quarrelled, perhaps due to their not really meeting. Like ships that pass in the night, as I'd read somewhere. Sam, for all practical purposes, was a free if much reduced man; he left money on the sideboard to run the house, he no longer slept with Shirley and our bond became, by default, that much closer. These were times when I wished I had read more of Havelock Ellis instead of homing in on the 'dirty' bits. Did he love me? Did he need me more than Shirley? Did he expect me to reciprocate? Well, I did not. I saw things clearly with the unclouded, ruthless judgement of my age.

  My father now had Saturday nights off. He decided that this would be our regular fatherandson togetherness evening. The Bondi Road Hoyts cinema was chosen, regardless of what was showing. With something of his old boulevardier charm, he chatted up the ticket girl to hold two seats every Saturday night. Same row, same seats, on the aisle, 'so I can stick me foot out, the one with the bunion.'

  Sampson Collins, emasculated in his fourth marriage, seemed to live vicariously through the films. He was both bigoted and loyal, and if that were not enough, he was a film misogynist. He had nothing but contempt for the wet-eyed innocence of Deanna Durbin and the bob-haired brassiness of the blonde screen sirens. Conversely, he was no misanthrope. The male perpetrators of evil were the victims of scheming women. I sat quietly, sunk down in my seat, not wanting to be seen with this 'old' man whose behaviour was . . .

  Let me explain, if I can, his malevolent reaction to the foreigners. It was 1941 and the foreigners on Bondi's streets could hardly be missed, but with a quick shuffle he could avoid their proximity. His xenophobia was even more puzzling for me; after all, were they/we not Jews? He carried this hatred through to our Saturday nights at the Bondi Road cinema, seats 11 and 12, row H. Our attendance was as ritualistic as a Catholic's to Mass. The cinema became my schoolroom. My father used the films to educate me in the ways of the world. I was to beware of women and stay away from foreigners.

  He stuck his bunioned foot out into the aisle. The epauletted usherette waved her weak torch at him to no avail. The velvet curtains parted. Labor Funerals -did I feel him flinch at this advertisement? Solly Goldstein Men's Emporium -Solly clothed him. Manly: Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care - he took me on the Manly ferry once in a while, and brought a bag of sticky buns from - The Gumnut Cafe. The velvet curtains closed with a sigh . . . Years and years later, I saw the whole scene again in miniature at a crematorium. I'd swear I saw the crinkly letters, 'The End', on the curtain!

  'Watch me bunion,' said Sam to nobody in particular as the latecomers pushed past him. The velvet curtains opened once more to show a plan of the exits in case of fire or, for me, to escape my father's fruity flatulence. The curtains closed, then drew apart again as a kangaroo hopped lethargically over the Cinesound logo, grinned and dissolved into a ship nudging its way into Circular Quay. A gangplank rattled out; frightened men, women and children swayed down it with suitcases roped around their necks. The stern of the ship had a sign which read Pas op de Schroeven that for years I thought was its name. I was 35 before I found out that it meant beware of the propellers. I used to ask the refugee kids at school if they arrived on the Pas op de Schroeven. 'Orange!' they would yell at me, exasperated. If I happened to have an orange, I'd give it to them in a burst of reconciliation. How was I to know about the Dutch ship Oranje?

  Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe seek shelter and a new life in Australia's sunshine, said the voiceover, and so on. Now here's the part where I got utterly confused. It took a bit of working out when I was only thirteen or so.

  'Stone the crows,' Sam grunted, 'how many bloody more of 'em are they going to send here?' '

  The man on the newsreel said they were Jews . . .' I whispered.

  'I know that but Gawd, look at 'em gibbering away in . . .'

  'German,' I said knowledgeably, 'one of the kids sat next to me at school.'

  'Well, you don't bloody well mix with 'em, that's my instruction to you, son.'

  He farted malevolently and we got feet in the back of our seats.

  The kangaroo, bored with the subject of Jewish refugees, hopped back into its Cinesound enclosure. Its place was taken by the wholesome, pure and, for me, mother image of - the Columbia Lady. Her flaming torch burned for me. Instantly I formed a loving attachment to the Columbia Lady. She was not a bit like the cold statuary of Mary that lined the path of the convent a few doors down from Scarba. I think I loved the Columbia Lady, a flickering once-a-week love that faded from the screen but glowed for me all through the week; I had to make do with this mother image until the following Saturday night at the pictures.

  Once, I timorously mentioned my feelings to my father but the master of misogyny said, 'She ain't and that's bloody well that.'

  'How do you know she isn't - you know - Jewish?'

  I had to shout 'Jewish' above the roar of dive bombers. There was a silence as the screen went black and the credits zoomed in from a tiny spot high up on the screen, got bigger and bigger, then flattened out to roll off the screen. I shouted 'Jewish' again. An angry voice behind us told my father, 'Keep the nipper quiet can't you, you old fart?'

  The 'old fart' took not a blind bit of notice because now he was reading the credits out loud as they zoomed in, and every single one who had a foreignsounding name, my father said was a Yiddisher. Belatedly he had taken over my education as a Jew. His xenophobia was superseded by a peculiar loyalty to Jews. Was he purging himself of the Shirley years? As he persisted in reading out the names on the credits he gripped my elbow. He did not refer to them as Jews. No, that was how the antiSemites talked. His recital went something like this:

  Screenplay by Samuel Scheinwald (Father: He's a Yiddisher.)

  From a book by Ernest Hemingway (Father: Used to be Hornstein.)

  Music by Irving Baumgarten (Father: Only the Yiddishers can write good songs. Look at George M. Cohan.)

  Directed by Charles Brown (Father: Changed from something else for sure.)

  Starring Basil Rathbone (Father, excitedly: A Yiddisher, just look at that nose!)

  .... ....

  Look ahead . . . I am still single. I have what the knowalls call an identity crisis. I sit in front of a headdoctor.

  'Well, Doctor, I've come to you because in my childhood I spent maybe a thousand nights at the Hoyts picture show. I had, what do you call it? A mother fixation on the Columbia Lady. My father taught me that all film actresses were harlots and all the technicians, except the best boy, and most of the male actors were Jewish except . . .'

  'Those that played anti-social roles?'

  'Oh no, he reckoned they were Jewish too, only they were very clever in being able to act bad when they were really very smart.'

  'Your father appears to have been a man of appalling ignorance.'

  'I don't know, Doctor. At the time, it probably made sense to him. It was a time when the so-called 'reffos' were flooding the country, and what with them being Jews and us being Jews too, well, he didn't want to be lumped together with them. It sort of stands to reason, doesn't it?'

  'My father, who arrived here in 1945, might not have thought so.'

  'Sorry, Doctor, I'm only telling you how he behaved.'

  'Of course, do go on.'

  .... .....

  Once a week the Columbia Lady's incandescent torch lit up my childhood. Before I knew the Columbia Lady, I had never given much thought to mothers. None of the four Mrs Collinses who had worn this title would have held so much as a weak candle to the Columbia Lady. One thing I am certain of: to the Columbia Lady I would never be 'poor Alva's boy'.

  The summer came to an end. I had recourse to the memories of other women to call up when I felt miserable: Gertie, June and the Columbia Lady - all beyond physical reach and, perhaps, just as well. I was very good at imagining. Despite meagre, tasteless food and no affection, I grew like a weed between t
he pavement cracks at 48 Francis Street. Tread on me and I would spring back.

  ...12...

  If there was a benefit, a good side, a plus from life at 48 Francis Street, it would have to be the freedom that went with it. To Shirley, it was 'out of sight, out of mind'; she didn't give a damn where I was or what I was up to. I could roam my unbounded Bondi suburban beat, restricted only by my own untutored but rubbery sense of right and wrong. There was no fear of punishment held over me by my father, who saw me only in the brief intervals between his waking and working. Did he buy his way out of parental duty with his shilling a week pocket money and the weekly Saturday film night? The ride to Manly by tram and by ferry?

  The other bond between father and son came about because of Shirley's loathing for both of us: she would not allow his clothes or mine to be washed with hers and those of my two halfbrothers. We did our own or, most times, I did the washing. The fire under the copper was stoked with the fruit boxes I nicked from the shops. Shirley stoked her own fires of hatred, using these little boys as tools in the hatred game; they were chastised if they called me Alan instead of 'the brat'. Under their mother's tutelage, they treated their father with the same contempt, which also spilled over to encompass the increasing presence on the streets of the Jewish refugees.

  There were other signs that we were at war but the reffos brought it nearer and by the most inoffensive means. The men carried briefcases, Australian men a Gladstone bag. I got on a tram and watched the men take the fare money, not out of the fob pocket of their trousers but from a purse which had a lid. They slid the coins down onto the lid and proffered them to the conductor, usually a World War I returned soldier who did not hide his disdain for this unmanly way of carrying money about.

  The refugee women stowed their shopping in string bags, counted the coins out carefully to the shopkeeper, at the same time naming each coin: 'Two shillings, yes, mit a sixpence, yes, und vun halfpenny.' The rings on their fingers represented their entire capital, all they could salvage from the wreckage of their former European lives. The shopkeepers did not always understand this ostentation; they were branded as rich Jews. Did the shopkeepers know that they kept their suitcases at the ready on the tops of their wardrobes, prepared for flight?

  A fruit shop on Bondi Road needed a boy to sweep up the cabbage leaves, stack the boxes out the back, 'maka y'self usa-ful'. I got the after-school job, hoping that Angelo would not recognise me as the little 'bastarda who steala da taters'. The pay was good, a regular five bob and as much 'spec' fruit as I could take. I was not allowed to stack the produce on the shelves; Angelo did that, making beautiful, colourful mountains. My job was to burnish the apples to an unnatural brightness by polishing each piece before handing it up to him. Give him one that had a worm hole in it and 'Idiota!' and he pretended to give me 'a clippa around da ear 'ole'.

  The shop had many Jewish customers. What followed was bound to happen. While handing the fruit up to Angelo, I heard quite clearly, 'I'm sure that's poor Alva's boy,' and caught a hard stare that had me so churned up, I did the wrong thing and copped the threatened clip around the earhole. The word must have flown around the gossip-hungry Jewish housewives but it was some time before one of them came up to me. Angelo had gone out the back leaving me alone for a few minutes. A woman who had bought up big for the weekend now rested her parcels at my feet.

  She sighed, 'I think they get heavier every week. I shall ask Angelo if you could help me. I usually ask one of his sons but they must be out of the shop at the moment.' She bent down slightly so I could look into her deep brown eyes. I looked at Angelo, who had just returned, for permission. His mouth shaped a 'no'. She picked up her bags and struggled with noticeable anger for the door.

  The next customer was a woman whom I knew by name. By her accent I knew she was not Australian or at least Australianborn. She put down her two full string bags and we looked into each other's eyes. I waited for her to come out with the 'You're poor . . .' and so on. I took my eyes from her face and focused on the rings on both her hands. Even in the badly lit shop interior some glowed and others sparkled. The furrows from the handles of the two string bags she had been carrying had left their marks on her hands, forcing the rings deeper into her flesh.

  'You're Alan Collins, from Alva Davis, olev hasholem, Alva Davis's child.'

  Angelo came up to me. He lowered his voice. 'Mrs Gelman, is everything OK? He not bother you? He's a Jewish kid, you know. Sometimes he has 'whatcha call it? ' chutzpah.' He preened himself on knowing this Yiddish word. Mrs Gelman said, 'I know - knew of the mother. Now to tachles, Angelo. You know what that word means? You should learn it, it means business. Can you let the boy help me with the bags?'

  Angelo's assent was to practise saying tachles while he took the bags as far as the shop's front door. She went ahead. Once outside the shop, we bent down and shared the load. Together we crossed Bondi Road and headed down Flood Street, Mrs Gelman ahead of me enough to be waiting at the entrance to a block of flats. I pretended to be unfazed by the heavy bags but the sight of the flight of stairs that led to Mrs Gelman's flat really knocked whatever chutzpah I might have had right out of me. Readying myself for this last assault, I climbed the stairs behind her, my eyes fixed on her sturdy stockinged legs.

  Mrs Gelman rested her load and flexed her fingers before fishing out her door key. She opened the door, beckoning me to follow.

  'Bring the parcels into my kitchen, bitte, young man. Through here.' It took two trips down the short hallway. The load slowed me up enough to let me look at the pictures on the walls. People in a snowy street, small boys dressed in clothing that would have had them humiliated in a Bondi school. I knew because I had seen them years back, wearing little leather pants and shirts that were embroidered!

  'Danke, young man. Oh, I am sorry, I should call you Alan,' which however came out as 'Eln'. Never mind, I was happy with it; just hearing my name was enough.

  Was it a small flat? I could not tell. How many flats had I seen in all my thirteen years? Only Aunt Enid's actually, oh, and Uncle Harry'es tiny one. Perhaps this was a large flat. While Mrs Gelman unpacked her fruit and vegetables and some other bits that smelt strangely to me, I sidled off to the other rooms. She did not call me back. Every room was lined to the ceiling with glassfronted bookcases; in some there were no books - china and sparkling glassware took up the shelves. I put my nose up to the glass doors where the books stood in awesome order, their spines lined up in soldierly rank. Impossible for me to read: the backs were in a language which I cleverly deduced was German, a language I had heard often enough in the school playground from the reffo kids.

  'Come here in der kitchen, Eln,' Mrs Gelman called. 'You want maybe a glass milk or maybe a lemonade?'

  I came. I was also sharp enough to detect that, while she was in the shop, her spoken English was pedantically correct; here in the safety (was it?) of her home, she lapsed into a kind of patois, clear enough for me to understand her wishes. I took the glass of lemonade, flat from being in her fridge from an earlier opening. She sat opposite me while a coffee percolator bubbled on the stove.

  Then began a gentle, probing interrogation. Mrs Gelman poured her coffee into a huge cup, dropped three lumps of sugar into it, stirred in with a monogrammed silver spoon and never paused.

  'You livewhere, Eln? With your papa? You have a new mama, yes? You are very tin, Eln. Ah . . . how old are you? When is your birthday?' I remembered my past birthdays - some had been and gone without recognition; Grandma Davis remembered (sometimes weeks after the actual date) and left behind a bag of musktainted boiled lollies. Sam made a whirlwind visit to whoever's care I was in at the time. Called me (among other sobriquets) 'young shaver' or 'me lad'or 'cheeky little bugger' ' this when I lunged for the Nestle's chocolate and backed well away from him and his pungent after-shave. From Uncle Harry it was always a book: Bible Stories for Children comes to mind. David, Joseph, Samson, shown as swarthy kids like those of the greengrocer and fish-shop fam
ilies; very much so in summer when they came to school barefoot or in sandals and khaki shorts. The book heroes certainly bore no resemblance to me and certainly not a bit to the scrubbed-up Jewish children I saw weekly at the School of Arts shul.

  Thankfully Mrs Gelman did not ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I would have replied, 'Not a potato farmer.' I answered all her questions truthfully, pausing only to work out that I was not tin but thin and, running my hands down my sides, had to agree with her. Oddly enough, I felt no resentment - rather, a warm feeling, a sense of being safe with her, the more so when she rose from her chair and stood behind me with both her hands on my shoulders.

  She reached over and opened her handbag which lay on the table and took out a small folder, putting it in front of me. She remained standing behind my chair, her fingers curled into the hollows of my shoulderblades. When she spoke again there was a tremor in her voice.

  'Open it, Eln, look please at the picture, the first one, the one of the boy.' Mrs Gelman paused. 'What do you see, Eln?' She reached over my shoulder again, picked up the little album and held it closer to my face.

  'Nu? What do you see?'

  What I saw in the cracked sepia photo was discernibly a kid, younger than me and wearing what looked like a sort of navy uniform, complete with a sailor's beribboned cap. I thought it was pretty silly unless he was a real sailor which he could not have been.

  She repeated the question. 'Tell me, Eln, what do you see?'

  'A kid in a sailor's uniform?'

  Her fingers dug a bit deeper into my shoulderblades. There was a catch in her voice. 'Das - that is my grandson, Louis.' She added the Hebrew phrase: 'Olev hasholem.' To my own surprise, I knew what it meant; I had heard Uncle Harry say it and when I questioned him he had told me: rest in peace. It is said about someone who has died, he explained. I looked again at the photo of the boy intently and could not suppress a shudder of fear. Why, how, could a kid smaller than me be dead, I wondered. And she had said 'is' and not 'was'. Her English was good enough to know the difference.