by Arnold Zable
‘Now you understand?’ exclaims a triumphant Avram. ‘My mother was a legend! A maker of history! A revolutionary! As too was my father Yankel, the son of Alter Zeleznikow the lumberjack.’
Avram speaks with obvious pride. The son recalls the father, who begets the grandfather, and Alter Zeleznikow is reborn.
In the early years of this century, Alter would stand astride a flotilla of logs, which he guided along the River Pina from the city of Pinsk to the confluence of the River Dnieper. Hundreds of kilometres south he floated, upon the Dnieper's fast-flowing currents. On the banks hovered cathedrals with onion-shaped domes. In nearby fields huddled villages graced with that chroofed homes. In the distance loomed solitary farmhouses hewn out of stone, as the flotilla drifted downstream towards the Black Sea coast.
‘Avramel,’ interjects Masha. ‘You are straying again. We will never reach the end of it!’
Masha moves from language to language with ease. She speaks Yiddish to Avram, addresses the waiters in Polish, consults the cafe-manager in Russian, greets her new guests in English, and converses with her friends in a fluid mixture of all four. As for the cabbage soup steaming in front of me, it is based on a recipe Masha gleaned from her mother.
‘In Poland I would never have believed that one day I would be recreating my mother's dishes in a restaurant called Scheherazade,’ she muses. ‘I never imagined that one day I would cook for a living. Or that I would become a restaurateur. I always thought I would be a doctor. A professional. I studied medicine for three years. I studied medicine until the day I was forced to flee.’
Avram ignores Masha's comments. His mind is fixed upon the distant past like a man obsessed. He takes up the narrative where he left off, in 1905, the year of the first revolution, the year in which fifteen-year-old Yankel, Alter the lumberjack's son, was drawn into the secret cells of the Bund in Pinsk.
Yankel joined his elder brother, Shlomo, the commander of a band of vigilantes whose task it was to defend the Jewish quarters from anti-Semitic attacks. The year of rebellion was drawing to an end. The revolutionaries were a spent force. Tsarist troops crushed the lingering resistance with ruthless ease. Jews were singled out as ‘enemies of Christ’ and fomenters of civil unrest. Another wave of pogroms engulfed the townlets of White Russia and the Ukraine.
Uncle Shlomo fled for his life across a succession of borders to the port of Marseilles and, weeks later, sailed into New York harbour. He gazed with longing at the Statue of Liberty, stared in awe at the city's skyline, negotiated his way through the turnstiles of Ellis Island, and emerged into the crowded streets of the Lower East Side, where a job in a run-down sweatshop set him on the road to wealth and pride.
As for Yankel, he could flee only as far as the outskirts of Pinsk, where he took refuge in a hideout, a forest retreat. And waited, marking time, as he prepared for the next swelling of the revolutionary tide.
I glance round the cafe. A waitress tends the late-night guests. She is middle-aged, dressed in a black mini-skirt, black stockings, and a white blouse. Her perfume hovers in the air as she hurries by. A couple, bound within an aura of intimacy, gaze into each other's eyes. Several old men are ebbing towards sleep. A young man sits alone, and reads A Treatise on Boredom. He bites into a slice of cheesecake, washes it down with coffee, and all the while he is engrossed in his treatise on boredom.
I glance back at the ever-present Masha. On the table stand our stale teas, and half-eaten pastries.
‘It is a miracle how couples meet,’ Avram says, as if awakening from a trance. ‘We are the children of accidents. Of random encounters. Take Yankel and Etta. It is a marvel how they met.’
Avram pours another glass of red. Pauses. And resumes his chronicle in 1908, the year in which Etta Stock journeyed on a mission, 250 kilometres north, from her native Tulchin to Berdichev: a city celebrated for its cantors and scribes, Hasidic dynasties and spiritual guides. A city where biblical Hebrew flowed from eighty prayer houses, the enduring language of a wandering tribe. A city where Yiddish coursed through the courtyards and market places, and emerged as the language of daily life. A city of trade workers and hired labour, where the Bund was able to regroup after the debacle of 1905.
Etta approached the seasoned leaders of the Berdichev Bund. She required their support in her efforts to kindle the flame of revolution back home in Tulchin. In response to Etta's request the party sent Yankel Zeleznikow. A good ten years younger than Etta, at eighteen Yankel was already a seasoned cadre and union organiser. In Tulchin Yankel boarded with Etta's family. In time, they became lovers. And by 1910 Etta was expecting a child.
Avram tells the tale matter-of-factly. And he is moving fast. I would like to know more about the romance. But Avram is concerned with data, with documenting his parents' heroic deeds in the erratic ebb and flow of history; and he is well prepared for the task. He reaches into his satchel. He covers the table with pamphlets and letters, journals and books, and photocopies of the Yiddish Folkszeitung, the Bund newspaper, announcing the marriage of party comrades Yankel Zeleznikow and Etta Stock.
Neither marriage nor pregnancy slowed the pace of the couple's work for a revolution they believed was pre-ordained. Yankel resumed his activity in the factories of the Ukraine. He urged workers to strike for better conditions, higher pay. One strike veered out of control; a gendarme was killed. The factory owner accused Yankel of the crime. Yankel was arrested and imprisoned in Pinsk. Etta was imprisoned in the nearby city of Kobrin; and it was in prison that their first child, a daughter named Basia, was born.
Avram points to the letters. He extracts a yellowing page. The Hebraic script, penned by Yankel in a prison cell, within days of his arrest, is all but impossible to comprehend.
The letter is addressed to his brother Shlomo in New York. Avram knows the contents well. Yankel agonises over his predicament. Should a revolutionary rear a family? he asks. When would I have time for a child? For the care and love she needs? And how will the family survive now that I have been sentenced to fifteen years labour so far removed from home?
Etta was released from prison after serving six months; but Yankel was exiled to a Siberian work camp near the city of Irkutsk, on the shores of Lake Baikal. In winter it glistened white, a boundless sheet of compressed ice. In spring it melted into an inland sea of billowing snow. In summer the horizon linked lake and sky in one seamless vista of bleached blues. In the autumn, cold winds heralded another season of stagnant twilights and gale-swept nights.
Yankel laboured and longed for the day when he would return to his grand obsession. Etta journeyed in his wake, thousands of kilometres east, with her new-born daughter, to Irkutsk. She obtained work as a nurse, looked after her infant child, and visited Yankel on the shores of Lake Baikal.
‘She always carried the family on her shoulders,’ says Avram. ‘She was always both a breadwinner and revolutionary. She tended her husband, her children, her patients, and her comrades. She made time for everyone.’
‘And Yankel?’
‘He was a professional revolutionary. The party always carne first. When I was a child I rarely saw him. He was often absent at night, at a meeting, a conference, a Bund gathering. Sometimes he was away for weeks on end, on missions throughout Poland. He was always on the move, always organising and scheming. When he was in town he would visit me at school, in the mornings, and treat me to breakfast. This was our allotted time together. Of him it was said: “Where he stands he talks, where he sits, he sleeps.”’
‘You are jumping ahead now,’ Masha warns. ‘One minute we are in Siberia, in Irkutsk, on Lake Baikal, ten years before you were born, and now we are in Vilna, twenty years later. Martin will be confused.’
But I do not mind. I enjoy the asides. The hours flow through the winter night. Trams glide by, like whispers on wheels. Lights wink from restaurants lining the Street. A gentle rain slants down in transparent sheets. And Avram's lilting voice draws me back through the early years of a passing century.
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In 1914, Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. The tribes of Europe converged upon the battlefields. In the millions they fell, foot soldiers in the service of emperors whose dominions were about to be swept aside. In muddy trenches, amid the stench of decaying flesh, their bodies numb with fatigue, they battled over mere metres of ground. And wherever they fought, they sowed the unmarked graves of countless wasted lives, until those who still remained screamed: ‘Enough! Let the empire crumble! Let the old order die. We want bread! We want peace!’
In March 1917, Tsar Nicholas was swept aside; and thousands of kilometres to the east, on the shores of Lake Baikal, Yankel Zeleznikow was pardoned and released from his Siberian exile.
Towards the west they journeyed, Etta and Yankel, anxious to rekindle their life's work. They chose Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, as the city in which to resume their lives. They entered a city draped in red banners and flags. It was the alluring springtime of revolution. A time of soap-box orators, fiery speeches, messianic visions. Fatigued villagers streamed in from the provinces lured by the promise of better days.
But it was short-lived, this interlude of utopian fantasies. The White Armies were on the march throughout the Ukraine. In August 1919, the Red Army retreated from Kiev. Battles raged on the banks of the River Dnieper. Thugs and bandits gained control of the streets.
Events seemed to be careering out of control. The Red Army regained the city in December. Typhus and famine engulfed the land. Revolution gave way to repression. The Red dictatorship took hold, the all-powerful party seized total control; and in 1922 the Bund was banned. Avram's father became a wanted man.
Yankel farewelled his wife and daughter, and fled Kiev in a horse-drawn wagon crowded with books. Russian novelists, French philosophers, Yiddish poets and socialist pamphleteers kept him company as he travelled west, through Poland, in search of yet another home. Wherever he went he was feted by Bund comrades and put up in the homes of fellow cadres. Wherever he journeyed he was assigned urgent missions.
Yankel's life became one extended detour that did not end until he arrived in Vilna. It was in the Jerusalem of Lithuania that Etta and Yankel were reunited, and finally set up a permanent home. And it was in this fabled city where, in 1924, their second child, Avram, was born.
II
Like a magnet Scheherazade draws them, cynics and idealists, ageing schemers and dreamers. One by one they enter on a Sunday morning. A typical Sunday. Each newcomer is greeted with a wave of the hand, a raised eyebrow, a familiar routine.
‘Sholem Aleichem!’
‘Aleichem Sholem!’
‘Well? How is it going?’
‘As you can see, I am still alive.’
‘And how are the children?’
‘They are so busy I have to make an appointment to see them.’
‘And the business?’
‘The business? It's deep in the ground.’
‘So? That is where we will all be soon enough.’
Rapid-fire conversations echo from all corners of the cafe. Caffeine courses through the veins. The talk becomes louder, more animated. The chairs extend outwards as the circles expand.
Listen, and you will hear four, five, six voices at a time. Perhaps you think this impolite, lacking in manners, in style. But for those who participate this is a weekly simkhe, a celebration, a communal gathering. The babble of voices is an aria to their ears. A full-blown opera, first heard in the towns of their youth, in shtetl cottages, in crowded apartments with whole families packed together in one room.
To be heard was to learn to leap into a discussion, to dart in and out of an argument, to know when to deliver a punchline, an aphorism, a retort, while at the same time keeping an ear upon two, three, four simultaneous conversations, lest a crucial piece of gossip should pass one by.
They are like a chorus in a Greek drama, those who frequent Scheherazade on this winter morning. They fill in the gaps. They echo the central text. Each one has a story aching to be told: tales of townlets and cities now vanished from the earth, of journeys in search of refuge, a shelter from a curse.
Yossel Bartnowski enters the cafe with slow, measured steps. A man in his late eighties, he is well dressed for his Sunday promenade. He wears a pin-striped suit, double-breasted. A green umbrella dangles on his left arm. The umbrella matches his green shirt studs and emerald bow tie. His body is short and stocky, and suggests a tenacious will. His ample face falls away into a succession of chins. A red pullover highlights his red complexion; his braised cheeks are on fire with age. Yet, as he seats himself beside me, I am startled when I see that his eyes are an unblemished blue.
‘My foolish child, age does not matter. Willpower can defeat it,’ he tells me. ‘I can still lift fifty kilos. I walk fifteen kilometres a day. I do not take short cuts. I do not waste time. I climb the stairs to my apartment. I set my heart to work. I pump the blood through my varicose veins. I leave the car rotting in the garage, and I walk until I burst.
‘You are the writer, Martin Davis, no? I have read your articles in the press. I have read your stories about the old world, der alter velt. My foolish child, what do you understand about the past? You did not live there, may my enemies have such luck. What do you know of such things? You are still a young man. You were born here, in Australia, in a fortunate hour. If you wish to know der alter velt, I will tell you. If you wish to write about Vilna, you have hit the mark.
‘My dear Martin, no one knows this city as well as I do: the central market place, the Sage of Vilna's house, the synagogue courtyard, the boulevards and lanes. I can still see them in front of my eyes. And I can see the hill, by the banks of the river, with the three crosses burning at night. And the rise on the opposite banks, with Count Gedimin's castle ruins; of course I knew that too. It was the perfect place to take a girl at night. Such a beautiful view. Such a beautiful girl. What a mekhaiye, a pure delight.
‘And I know the history. You think I am an ignoramus? Vilna was founded by Count Gedimin; six, maybe seven hundred years ago, give or take a century or two. What does it matter? It was a long time ago. I know the poem, ‘Pan Tadeusz’ by Mickiewicz. I learnt it as a child. I can still recite it by heart. In the original Polish, of course!’
And Yossel declaims with a flourish:
‘Gedimin, by meandering Wilja's and Wilenka's streams,
Lay, bewitched, while he dreamed of the iron wolf;
And awakened by the gods' command,
Built Vilna like a wild wolf that breeds
In the forest among bears, boars and bison.
‘You see, my dear Martin? I am not an ignoramus. But a poem is just a poem. If you wish to know a city, you must sit in its cafes. This is the most important thing to do when you arrive in a new place. This is where you sniff the air, and know what is what.
‘In Vilna, if you wanted to know what was happening, you went to Wolfke's. If you wanted to make contacts, do business, where else would you go but Wolfke's? If you wanted to forget your worries, to hear a story, a joke, the best place was Wolfke's.
‘It stood on the corner of Niemecka and Zydowska. Just one hop and a spring from the synagogue courtyard. First I would pray, and then I would run to Wolfke's for a bite, a quick drink! My foolish child, Wolfke's was the Scheherazade of Vilna.’
Yossel orders a coffee. It remains untouched as his eyes scan the cafe. He is expecting his regular companions, Laizer Bialer and Zalman Grintraum. They share the same miracle, Yossel tells me. They first met in Wolfke's, in the final months of 1939. The city was inflated with refugees. They clogged community buildings, the synagogue foyers, private apartments, and single rooms. From every corner of Nazi-controlled Poland they had fled, from Lublin and Lodz, from Siedlce, Krakow and Belz, from Chelm and Czestochova, from every village and town, from every alley and avenue on which their families had once lived.
Yossel too had fled to Vilna, from his native Warsaw, where he was raised. Krochmalna Street was his cradle. Its crumbling
courtyards were his playgrounds. A ground-floor apartment was the family home. In the apartment next door lived a family of thieves, and on an upper floor there was a school for thieves, where thirteen-year-old boys would gather to learn how to pick pockets. Their teachers were professional crooks.
‘My foolish child, do you think they had a choice?’ says Yossel. ‘It was a family enterprise. The mother looked after the stolen goods. She kept an inventory. She was the boss; a big woman who could hardly squeeze through a narrow door. Freidl die fresserin, she was called. Freda the guts. She could eat a whole goose at one sitting. She dealt in geese. She would stride through the streets of Warsaw with a goose tucked firmly under each arm while bands of children followed her chanting: “Freidl die fresserin. Freidl die fresserin.”’
Yossel tells this story often, to anyone who is willing to listen, who allows him the slightest chance. Yossel still stalks the streets of Warsaw. He still hovers in its shadows. He remains obsessed by a world of hoodlums and fear.
‘We roamed the neighbourhood in gangs: the Polacks versus the Yids. Each gang had its territory, its exclusive beat. Our leader was Mendel Mandelbaum. He was the strongest Yid in Krochmalna Street. He was a porter. An ox. He could carry a safe on his shoulders. He led a gang of porters and wagon drivers. They fought many battles until Mendel Mandelbaum and the Yids prevailed and, for a few months, peace descended upon Krochmalna Street.
‘Mendel was my protector. I followed him wherever I could. I followed him to the Polonia, the biggest and best hotel in Warsaw. We would go down to the basement cafe, where the boys from Krochmalna played billiards and pool.
‘Mendel played for high stakes. He would bet one hundred zlotys on a single game. He played against a highly ranked government official. A crowd of onlookers watched them compete. The boys from Krochmalna placed their hard-earned zlotys on Mendel. Others put their money on his opponent. There was always an even chance of winning or losing, so closely were they matched.