Vera

by Wasowski, Vera; Hillman, Robert;

  I think this: You should do exactly what you are doing, Werunia. This may be an interval between one hell and another. Australia may be madness, but the worse madness is to stay. Whatever life holds in store for Marek, may it never be that impotence as you watch soldiers in black murdering your friends.

  The train huffs and puffs. Ten minutes to departure. Jan and Marek and my mother return.

  I say, ‘Let’s go.’

  13

  ON BOARD

  On the ship, there is not so much to do. But I have never before travelled on a big ship, so I’m excited each day by the breadth of the ocean. Looking at it, you can sometimes think that it is the real world and what happens on land is secondary.

  It’s a Swedish ship. The Australians must have rented the ship and the crew and the officers from the Swedes.

  All the passengers are migrants. Quite a number of Poles, and there are also Greeks and Italians, some Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians. All of them churned up in the war. Some fought for the Germans, or with the Germans, some against the Germans. Now here we are, the whole crowd of us escaping Europe. Except for the Germans, who are staying put. It is hard to avoid the stupid observation that despite our differences we are all human beings, sailing off in a big white ship to find comfort and security and wealth in Australia. Those who were great enthusiasts of the German war and those who turn in a circle and spit on the ground at the mention of Germans are all packed up together on the ocean, with a shared ambition. What was the point of the war? As I say, a stupid observation. A shared ambition is no great wonder. Whoever you are, a little more comfort than you’re used to is welcome.

  Remember: among these people sailing to Australia there are some ugly stories packed away with the luggage. I hope to God that any anti-Semites on board don’t form a political party on the high seas, ready to apply for a licence when they reach Australia. Dear God, I’m sick of it. As much as anything, I want a holiday from madmen with grotesque plans for the brutalisation of Jews. Apart from anything else, it’s tedious. Jan’s mother in Australia says there’s no anti-Semitism. I say this: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ But I hope it’s true.

  Men and women have separate quarters on the ship. Why this should be, I don’t know. We meet Jan at meal times in the restaurant – I and Marek and my mother, little Marek always delighted to see Jan again.

  The poor thing is in the care of his careless mother for hours at a time.

  He says, ‘Mama, zagraj ze mną.’

  I say, ‘I can’t play with you. Mama is reading a book.’

  He says, ‘Mama, gdzie jest mój przyjaciel Jan?’

  I say, ‘Where is Jan? In his cabin, maybe. On deck. I don’t know. Shush! Mama is reading.’

  Of course, this makes me feel guilty, and so I attempt to play with Marek for about two minutes; then I pick him up and go up on deck to look for Jan.

  The cabin I share with my mother, four other women and their children is crowded and untidy, with open suitcases, and clothing left disarranged. Outside the cabin, the passages are narrow and claustrophobic. You turn a corner and come to another passage, then stairs to an upper deck, still very cramped, and all the while people stream past you. Finally you’re on the open deck, and there’s the ocean, fresh air, a blue sky extending forever: liberty. It fills me with hope.

  I stand at the rail, holding Marek, a smile on my face. I hear the rush of the sea against the hull of the ship, the throb of the engines, the creaking of the lifeboats on the iron struts that overhang the rails.

  The stewards pass by in their clean, white jackets and their blue trousers; they are mostly young men, some of them very handsome.

  Other passengers stand at the rails like me: families, the kids mostly young, maybe a bit older than Marek. Some of them are dressed in a way we don’t dress in Poland. The Italians look more stylish than the Poles. The Italians dress their kids beautifully. They’re very proud of the way their kids look.

  When the ship’s officers pass me, they put their hand to the peak of their cap and smile. The officers dress completely in white. This is the perfect job for the officers; the male and female passengers are separated. They have the chance to sleep with the women if they can find a private place. About their seamanship, I don’t know, but they certainly know how to flirt with the ladies. They put their hands to the peaks of their hats and smile and if they think you are Italian, they say, ‘Buona sera, signora,’ and if they think you are Polish, they say, ‘Dobry wieczór pani.’

  I know nothing about Australia except the kangaroos and the man dressed in steel plates; I have no desire to learn anything. And yet, with this astonishing ocean as inspiration – sometimes blue, sometimes a pale green, sometimes black – I realise that this journey has all the features of the age-old stories of Jewish displacement, journeying, renewed hope: the woman, her child and her husband leave their homeland, cross the ocean, stand on the soil of an alien land, roll up their sleeves (well, I do and Jan does; Marek is spared) and strive to build a new life under constellations we have never seen before.

  Judea, Egypt, Babylon, Central Asia, the Far East, Africa, Iberia, Europe, America – and now Australia. We are a stubborn people. Voices whisper, ‘What’s the point? Sit down. Die.’ And the Jews respond, ‘You know what? Fuck that. You crush this temple; we build another. In Samarkand maybe, in Seville, in Fez, in the Sahara, under the Andes, by the waters of the Mississippi, in Jerusalem. We build another.’ It’s rare for me to feel as completely a part of the immemorial Jewish narrative as this. And I am not likely to build a temple in Australia. The other Jews, they want to build a temple: good.

  Yet I remember the synagogue of Lvov on Shabbat, the light within, the faint acrid smell of burning candles, my father in kippah and tallis, everyone standing when the Torah was lifted, when the Ark was opened, and my father, stooping a little with his siddur held before him, the singing of the cantor and the choir, and at aliyah, the men who strode up to bless the Torah. I remember Shabbat before Yom Kippur, and the candles were lit and the chandelier was lit before Shabbat so that when we came into the synagogue everything was bright and certainly you could smell the fumes of the burning candlewicks and of the melting wax.

  I didn’t always know how to tell the difference between good men and ordinary men, but I always thought my father was one of the good men. He wasn’t especially devout but he thought it was important to be at the synagogue before Yom Kippur. When the men took their seats I could see my father leaning sideways to talk to the man on his left then leaning the other way to talk to the man on his right.

  We are a stubborn people, and God knows – do I have to even say this? – we are an oppressed people.

  Up on deck, the ocean glittering now, I’m okay with that. Let me belong to an oppressed people. Let me know what’s it like, as I do.

  Marek, if he doesn’t know, let him never know it in this Australia, whatever it is – this Australia where Jan’s mum finds no anti-Semitism.

  In this Australia, I will need to speak English, the native language of the place. I have with me novels in English that I know well in Polish. I have Dickens, I have Dostoyevsky translated from the Russian into English, and Tolstoy. ‘Wszystkie szczęśliwe rodziny są do siebie podobne; każdy szczęśliwa rodzina jest nieszczęśliwa na swój sposób.’ This, everyone knows: ‘All unhappy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Poor Anna. What Tolstoy is about to subject her to. And on another day, a different book: ‘To były najlepsze czasy; to były najgorsze czasy.’ Or: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.’

  I am making a book of phrases in English as I go along. I write down: ‘happy family’ = szczęśliwa rodzina.

  Then Marek implores me to give him my attention.

  I say, ‘Mama is reading a book. Mama can’t play games with you now. You want to play games, good, look for Jan.’

  Each time this happens, I tell myself, ‘Vera, you are not a good mama. The boy
is just being a boy. Take some time to play with him, potwór.’

  But even as I’m saying this to myself, I’ve picked up my pen and returned to Tolstoy and Dickens and Dostoyevsky, and to my notebook of phrases.

  I say, ‘Later I will show him the ocean, also maybe sing him a song.’

  So, the phrases: ‘good morning’ = jak się masz; ‘good night’ = dzień dobry; ‘What is your profession?’ = aki jest twój zawód?; and ‘let’s dance’ = zatańczymy. Also: ‘Are you from a happy family?’ = Cze szczęśliwej rodziny? And ‘Is this the best of times?’ = Czy są to najlepsze czasy?

  Werunia on the high seas, absorbing the English language.

  We are in the Suez Canal. On deck, I point to the date palms and Marek claps his hands.

  At one point, the canal is quite narrow. A man in classical Arab attire is leading a camel over the sand. This is the world. When you have stayed alive, the time might come when you see a man leading a camel over the sand. This is the first time in my life that I have grasped that the world has breadth: not just distance, but breadth. When you are murdered, this, too, is stolen from you: your life, and the world in which your living self might have found such bounty.

  It is poetry.

  I raise my arm to wave at the Arab.

  I tell Marek, ‘Remember this.’

  And to Jan I say, ‘The best thing! A camel!’

  We are closer to Israel than I have ever been in my life. If Jan and Marek and I were to get off the ship at Cairo, we could walk to Israel. I like to imagine that – jumping off, hiking to Jerusalem – except, of course, that Jan would not be part of such an expedition.

  My appetite for Israel goes back to the handsome young men who came to Poland after the war, the young men who said, ‘Jump in the water. Walk up the sand to Israel. The Jews will be waiting for you. Grow your oranges.’

  Jan says – of course he does – ‘Zionist propaganda. Stay in Warsaw if you want to listen to such things all your life.’

  I say, ‘Are you mad? We are Jews. Israel is our homeland.’

  Jan shakes his head and sighs. ‘The Israelis are insane. I’m sorry, but it’s true.’

  Well, I was not about to leave Jan behind for the sake of oranges. I am not sentimental, but maybe I am a little when it comes to Israel. If Jan should say, ‘I’ve had a change of heart. Israel is okay,’ I would run down the gangplank at the city of Cairo and start the long journey over the sand to Jerusalem.

  In the cabin, when the lights are out, my body is covered in the sweat of panic. It is too much like the compartments of the ghetto. My lips are parted on my gritted teeth. It would be too shameful if I showed my dread to Marek. So I sing very softly to myself. When the song comes to an end, I talk myself around. I say, ‘Werunia, time to be sensible. It’s a ship. Listen, you can hear the engines. Listen, you can hear the snores of the others in the cabin. In the places of hiding, nobody snored. In such places, you did not hear the big engines of a ship.’ Then I sing another song. Then this: ‘Australia is at the end of the journey. Not a murder camp. In Australia, they love the Jews. As much as the Germans and the Poles hate the Jews, the Australians love us. Calm yourself, Werunia.’

  Sometimes I can read in bed without any dread. I enjoy that.

  But when the lights go out, I am a child again, not much older than my own son.

  Do you see what the Nazis have done? Some of them stood in the courtroom in Nuremberg and heard a judge say, ‘You must hang.’ Now they are gone. Some stood on the scaffold thinking God knows what – probably that a terrible injustice was about to be enacted by the hangman, probably that they were innocent of any crime, much less a big, big one like a crime against humanity. They are gone, except for some who have changed their names and who now eat badly prepared schnitzel and sauerkraut in the cheaper restaurants of Buenos Aires and Rio and São Paulo and Santiago. Now they are gone.

  But on this ship in the Indian Ocean, one who feared them is covered in the sweat of panic. They have gone to the hangman, gone to Rio and Santiago, but they have left behind enough fear to make me shake under my blankets like a woman with a fever.

  In the Indian Ocean, it is hotter than anywhere I have been in my life. Ice-cream is sold on the ship. I buy ice-creams from the kiosk and offer them to Marek. He loves ice-cream more than anything in the world, more than his mama, more than his toys. But not more than Jan. If he were told to choose between ice-creams and Jan, he would say, ‘I choose Jan, because he loves me.’ I love him too, but he would not choose me before ice-creams. I think to myself, ‘Werunui, one day if you try hard, you will become as important as ice-cream.’ And I laugh. I say to Jan, ‘Take Marek for a walk around the ship. Show him everything. I have to read.’

  When I read in the deckchair, with the sky above me and the sun burning down, the officers, in their white uniforms, come to flirt.

  The ones who know where I am from say sweet things in Polish with very bad pronunciation. ‘Cześć, kochanie,’ which means, ‘Hi, sweetheart.’ And, ‘Czy mogę całusa?’ or, ‘How about a kiss?’

  I smile and say, ‘Odpieprz się!’ which is to say, ‘Bugger off!’

  They don’t know what it means. They think I am flirting back at them, which is true. I am wearing a sundress and my legs are on show. The officers think I am trying to tempt them. I am not. If they want to glance at my legs, so much the better for them. I don’t care. I want to read.

  I want to read Fathers and Sons in English. Turgenev. The Russians love Turgenev more than Tolstoy, more than Dostoyevsky. Maybe not more than Chekhov. I will step off the ship in Melbourne speaking whole paragraphs from Russian literature.

  Jan’s mother says the Australians do not read anything. She says they go to the beach and lie in the sun. They don’t care about anything but the sun. In winter, she says, they become depressed, so they have invented an insane ball game to play in the winter to stop themselves becoming depressed. She says they are harmless people. We have nothing to fear.

  I don’t have Fathers and Sons with me, but I do have Anna Karenina. I read, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord; I will repay.’ I know this in Polish: ‘Zemsta jest moja, mówi Bóg; ponszczę.’

  I will have no use for a statement like this in Australia, where they do not believe in vengeance, so I hope. They have the sun and the beach and the game they play in winter when they are depressed. But I firmly believe they do not have vengeance. Good. I can do without vengeance.

  Or is that true? My uncle who wanted to rape me in Lvov, if he had not died, would I have murdered him? Possibly. But who needs to dirty her hands in that way when God is ready to repay? May He go to Rio and São Paulo and Buenos Aires and repay with great fervour. Or not.

  What do you want, Werunia, here in the blazing sun in the middle of the Indian Ocean? A world in which evil is always punished? Yes, how lovely. But it only happens sometimes.

  Read your book, your Anna Karenina. ‘Everything was in confusion in the Oblonsky household. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an affair with their former French governess, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living with him.’

  It is difficult to work out which word is which. Polish grammar and syntax is different.

  I look up from Anna and from my notebook to see the horizon tilting and straightening with the motion of the ship.

  And dear God, look! I drop my Anna and hurry to the rail. A huge bird is riding the currents of the air. At this distance it looks black, like a silhouette, but when it tilts its body I see that its wings are white while the body is grey. As I watch, it comes closer, in a huge circle, its wings stretched wide, wide … three metres, more. Its neck is bent so that it stares down at the ocean; I think it is looking for fish.

  This is an albatross, surely, with wings that wide!

  My heart is up there with this superb creature of the air. Tears stand in my eyes.

  I know Baudelaire’s poem about the albatross. In Polish, it begins:
‘“Często znudzeni marynarze łapią albatorsa, ktory szybuje nad rozległym oceanem, pełnym morskich ptaków …’ And in English (the English that I could not speak on this day of the albatross):

  Often to pass the time on board, the crew

  will catch an albatross, one of those big birds

  which nonchalantly chaperone a ship

  across the bitter fathoms of the sea.

  Tied to the deck, this sovereign of space,

  as if embarrassed by its clumsiness,

  pitiably lets its great white wings

  drag at its side like a pair of unshipped oars.

  How weak and awkward, even comical,

  this traveller, but lately so adroit –

  one deckhand slips a pipestem in its beak,

  another mocks the cripple that once flew!

  The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds,

  Riding the storm above the marksman’s range;

  exiled on the ground, hooted and jeered,

  he cannot walk because of his great wings.

  This is a different way of looking at those who can fly – those whom my friend in Warsaw praises. It is only when they are airborne that they come fully to life, and show their majesty.

  In the Australia that I will come to know, how Baudelaire’s view of the poet will be mocked, or if not the poet, then all those winged ones who stumble when they alight on a deck with their broad wings dragging.

  Look now at the creature. It is a god.

  The albatross changes direction after a time and soars away towards the sun. When he is no more than a black speck, I return to Anna.

  ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Is this true? We are a happy family, Marek and Jan and I, but we are not like any other happy family I have ever known. There is no sex; the mother is an acknowledged failure at motherhood; the child prefers an alcoholic journalist to his own Mamele. But we are happy enough.