Johnno had stolen the turtle. He’d gone down to the Pet Palace in his pyjamas and banged on the door until the girl let him in and had sat down as usual to sketch. When she went out the back for a minute Johnno took the turtle out of its tank and ran. The girl heard him lumbering out of the shop and rang the police straightaway. They were only a block away, and actually saw Johnno flapping by in his striped pyjamas with the turtle. They brought him in, made him a cup of tea, rang the shop and had the owner collect the turtle, all by the time I got there to take delivery of my son. He took no notice of me when I arrived. He was sitting on the floor beside the counter, cradling a huge German shepherd police dog in his lap. It seemed hypnotised by his attentions.
‘The proprietor is pressing charges, unfortunately. Theft. We’ve had a word but he insists. Wants to make an example of it. You might like to go round. See if you can change his mind.’ I went. I could not. Boil it nonstop.
By the day of the hearing six weeks had passed and I had not seen my son in that time. He had left the police station with me but ran away into the bus interchange at the Junction while we were stopped at the lights. I had been able to keep vague tabs on him from my usual contacts. He had been spotted praying on street corners, blessing cowering commuters on the Edgecliff to Town Hall underground, stuffing the pockets of a greatcoat with garbage from street bins, picking over foodscraps behind cafes in Devonshire Street.
The corridors of the courthouse were the usual jam of unhappy, confused, frightened people. Tired women leaned against walls while their children climbed chaotically over and under seats, or whined for drinks. Blokes coming off benders, swollen-eyed, bloody and bruised about the forehead, stumbled aggressively about. Court officials and legal aid workers tried to find a corner for privacy and conference with their clients.
One of the workers from the Talbot had picked up Johnno, taken him for a shower and given him fresh clothes before delivering him to court. I was sitting in the public gallery when he came in and his physical appearance shocked even me. My beautiful boy, not yet twenty years old, was skeletally thin, his pants hung so that the crack of his buttocks showed, he trembled, his eyes skittered back and forth and he mumbled incessantly.
The magistrate entered briskly from a side door, nodded to the court, ran his eyes over the papers on his desk then pushed his glasses to the top of his head. He listened attentively as the charge was read.
‘So we meet again, young man,’ he said. ‘How are you?’ Johnno did not reply except to stand, raise his hand and bless the court. ‘You don’t look as if you’ve been taking very good care of yourself, John. I have here the reports from the police, your welfare officer and Caritas. This is the fourth time you’ve been before me. I simply don’t know how to help you. I wish I did.’ His voice, reaching me in the gallery, was compassionate but heavy with helplessness. Join the club, I thought. ‘Are you taking your tablets?’
‘No,’ said Johnno.
‘Will you agree to?’
‘No,’ said Johnno. There was no bravado in his voice. He was not impolite.
‘Dear, dear.’ The magistrate patted his pockets for his glasses, found them on his head and settled them back on his nose. He read silently for a few minutes. I could see him shaking his head. ‘Tell me, John, where have you been sleeping since you left your mother’s house?’
‘In the park. At the beach sometimes.’
‘But it’s mid-winter. You must get very cold.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why not stay at home? It says here your mother is happy to have you. Or in one of the boarding houses your welfare worker organised for you?’ Johnno did not reply. He was immersed in some ritual with his eyes, rolling them round and round. I watched the magistrate. He pushed his glasses up again and spoke, trying to find a path through.
‘Why did you steal the turtle?’
Johnno had remained standing. Though disfigured by illness, he was unbesmirched by guile.
‘To set the slaves free and give them a chance for a better life.’ He spoke clearly and deliberately. The magistrate straightened his already tidy papers. He was an aging, stout man, overworked, under-resourced and I knew he cared. He cleared his throat.
‘I would like it to be placed on record that I believe this matter could have been dealt with quite adequately outside the court.’ The Bondi Pet Palace proprietor who was sitting along the row from me hawked in disgust. ‘Now, young man, I am going to put you on a six-month good behaviour bond with no record of conviction.’ Johnno raised his hand and blessed him. ‘Thank you,’ said the magistrate seriously. ‘One moment, though, before we all part. John, in years to come you will be able to tell your grandchildren that you had done what you could to help turtles. I don’t know if you are familiar with Byron’s ‘Bride of Abydos’. Let me tell you:
‘Know ye the land where the cypress and
myrtle
Are emblems of the deeds that are done in
their clime?
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the
turtle
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to
crime!’
There was a slight stir in the courtroom. Surprise? Tittering? Embarrassment? I don’t know. I don’t care. For me this beacon of compassion arced over and coiled itself around my shoulders like a feathery cloak of comfort. I pulled it close. I wanted to scoop up my son and place him under the cloak where he could hear my heartbeat, curl up in the warmth and be enfolded in my care forever.
The magistrate rose. The court rose. The magistrate made ready to leave, but then he stopped.
‘Just one more moment,’ he called. ‘Tell me, John, how do you eat?’
My beloved child took a moment to collect himself. He stood straighter, his shoulders proudly squared.
‘With as much dignity as I can muster,’ he said.
kazinczy utca, budapest
I feel peculiar standing here in Grandma Hartmann’s sitting room talking to you about my mother. It’s her home and she wouldn’t have dreamed of letting me make her the centre of attention. She’d frown at me and shake her head if she could hear me. She’d scold me for keeping you from the feast, but just this once, I’ll ignore that.
I am not her only child. My children are her children, my friends’ children are her children, your grandchildren are hers. Remember how there was always a little one on her lap and as she got older and frailer we cautioned the more boisterous ones to be careful of Grandma and how they always responded, they did, at least they got gentler for a moment or two, so eager were they to be the centre of her gaze and feel that gnarled little hand of hers stroke their heads and tell them they were wonderful and precious? You all called her just ‘Grandma’, didn’t you, so I think you have a right to hear the wonderful, terrible secrets of the bravest, most beloved woman I have ever known.
You know who she was. She was the little Hungarian lady with the heavy accent, always dressed in black, whose hair, as long as any of you have known her, was snowy white—it went white over the coldest winter of our lives—but I’ll come to that. You knew that soft shuffling footfall of hers in those ugly soft black lace-ups she wore, you remember her composure, her quiet presence, always in the corner of any room she was in, always. Remember how always she must be facing the doorway? You knew her fierceness, too, in the way she championed the children, all of us children. She lived for us. Remember her joy when a new baby arrived. ‘The little one is beautiful, more precious even than bread,’ she would say, and you heard it and smiled at her quaintness.
You all know how proudly Jewish Grandma was, but it never stopped her looking out and drawing in everyone. She was interested, wanted to know what it was like to be Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist or whatever. It only riled her when anyone told her they were nothing. You young ones must remember how her hands would fly up in alarm and she would respond so vigorously: ‘No-one is nothing. Never must you say that about yourself, or let anyone tell you so. Everyone is
someone.’
That was the who of her that you knew. Today I have to tell you the why of her. The why has always been my privilege to know, but she was Grandma to you all, and I want you to share my privilege.
I’m sorry I’m taking so long when the table is ready, the wine is cold and you littlies are itching to eat and swim, but there are things I have to tell you today, so you will understand, and maybe love even more my dear little quiet strong mother.
So. The why of her. She was my only stability for so long, both before, in Budapest, and after we came here in ’51. Only later did I realise that it nearly broke her spirit to leave Papa behind. We tried, but never found out where his life was taken from him. We only know he died, somewhere in Europe, somewhere terrible. Leaving Hungarian soil to cross the world to this far place called Sydney was, she felt, the great betrayal of her life. I think she might have wished sometimes that she had vanished with him but she forced herself, for me, the little one. I must have a new life, a life free of fear and disappearance and despair. Me and all the little ones to come.
I was four when the war started and we began the long hiding in that room in the courtyard block on Kazinczy utca, just a little way along from the synagogue. For a long time we were safer than the Jews in the countryside. We kept quiet and tried to make ourselves invisible and waited. We did feel safer. Until Papa went. Just like that, off the streets one day—for a ‘work detail’, we were told later by others who had witnessed, and escaped, the aktion.
We never saw or heard of him again and I only really remember him through Grandma. She never let me forget because she never did. She loved him all her life with a young wife’s passion, undiluted by the staleness of custom or the creeping illness of indifference that comes over so many of us. She loved him forever but it changed her utterly from that day forth. First, she miscarried my brother, six months gone and perfectly formed, but the need for invisibility was so profound then that the pain and mess, the disposal had to be furtive, solitary, under cover of night, a burial in a patch of soil in the corner of the courtyard. Unworthy and inhumane, her little one without ritual or burial marker. Leaving that little body under the soil and coming here she considered her second betrayal. She railed at God, and cursed Him sometimes and swore there would never be another betrayal. I went back to that courtyard last year. It’s as bleak and grief-riddled as ever it was. It smells of desolation.
Something implacable had been formed in her. She would not lose me. For me my mother became a thief, a deliberate, cunning, ruthless thief. For me she stole food, because there were rules about what we, as Jews, were permitted to purchase and many foods were forbidden. For me, my mother dared to venture from the ghetto through the pre-dawn streets, evade guards and lurk about the marketplace, trying to be invisible, wearing now, always, forever, anonymous black. Later she told me how she was terrified about going out, not so much for herself, but because if she was picked up in an aktion, who would care for me? But I must have food, proper food, be strong, survive, so she risked it. Before she left on her forays she whispered to me to stay under the coverlet and sleep on, but the minute she slipped out the door I leapt from the bed and pulled on my clothes and stood, waiting, catatonic with terror I was, and all that long last freezing winter I was cloaked in fear and, like her, in silence and watchfulness, too.
I can only imagine how she did it. Perhaps she slid like a ghost through the fog and sleet and snow of morning, sleight of hand, slipping this and that under her coat, or perhaps more cunningly, moving purposefully, pretending confidence and permission and authority. I don’t know, but when I heard the ever-so-careful snip of the latch I wet my pants. Every time. And she never said a thing, just knelt down and hugged me. I clung to her freezing body, pounding heart to pounding heart. I felt her shuddering breaths, her shivering limbs, understood her fear and relief, and gradually we warmed each other, conquered our terrors and undid ourselves. She found me dry underthings, wiped the puddle on the floor and beckoned me, eyes gleaming now, to delve in her pockets and discover her booty. But gentle, gentle I had to be, because whatever food she brought home was sacred, to be treated as a lifeline, an affirmation of existence. She made me, how shall I say, reverent, in my gropings.
Eggs were her triumph. Eggs, the utterly forbidden eggs. Eggs that could take us to prison or worse. Eggs were for me. ‘Eat, get strong,’ she commanded. I hated eggs! I loathed eggs with a passionate, childish hatred. I tried some of her cunning, begging her to eat her share. ‘You must be strong too, Mama. Eat some.’ No, she set her lips, you know the way she did, and handed me the pot and a spoon. ‘Eat.’ And she stood over me, arms folded across her chest, watching me force down those disgusting eggs, urging me to scrape the pot, scrape the pot, get all the goodness.
Eggs nearly destroyed us.
One morning she stole three. Three! Such a coup, such a victory; she actually whistled as she made them into a scrambled mess for me. ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘All at once now. We must not leave them around.’ I ate and gagged and she smiled with satisfaction. ‘Good, that will make you strong,’ and she scrubbed the pot.
Just as she wiped it and bent to stow it under the cloth beside the water pail we heard the crash. It was the massive sledgehammers on the outer courtyard doors. Then the shouts, the barking dogs, the thud of booted feet across the snow-covered flags. Thank goodness our room was on the second floor, at the back. It gave her time. ‘Quickly,’ she said aloud, urgent but utterly possessed. ‘Quickly. The eggshells.’ In one smooth movement she swept them into a pile. Then toe to heel, toe to heel she forced off her old black lace-ups, thrust the eggshells into them and crammed her feet back in, the shells crackling and disintegrating under her feet, just before a monstrous blow blew open our door. I opened my mouth to scream. ‘Be quiet,’ she ordered. ‘Hold my hand. Keep your eyes on my face. Don’t move an inch.’
The police asked for our papers. She took them with steady fingers, from the cloth bag strung around her neck and handed them over, never moving her feet. While one man examined them, four others tore our room apart, ripping our mattress, tearing and shaking books by the spines, emptying boxes. One man upended the food box and ground the coarse bread under his heel. I felt my mother’s hand tighten on mine in anguish, bread most precious. I wet the floor once more. A policeman glanced at me, clicked in disgust, called me a dirty little Jewess and then, miraculously, they were gone. All that day my mother held me, trembling, on the torn mattress, speechless.
We knew then that our days, the remaining days for the last of the Budapest Jews, were running out. From the market my mother gleaned that it was a race for time between the Hungarian Arrow Cross, so mercilessly bent on obliterating the remaining Budapest Jews, and the Red Army approaching from the east to liberate us. Then she stole a most miraculous thing.
‘Look, little one, what I have found today,’ she said. ‘It is a sign of hope. We are going to be saved.’ From her pocket she took a strawberry, a freakish thing in winter, a sport of nature because it was the exact colour of the Red Star and perfectly star-shaped, our own red star. ‘This we must not eat,’ she said. ‘We must keep it so we remember to hope. Help me now.’ What we did was this. We had not been bombed, our window glass was intact, and my mother placed our red star between the inner and outer panes where the cold preserved it for those last weeks. Every night she stood me before it and said, ‘There is no need to be afraid now. The Russians will get here first. It is the sign. We will be saved.’
And, so, as you see, she was right.
But I have taken too long, the feast is waiting! The day Grandma died she reminded me again that I must feed you well on this day.
So, let’s go into … Oh, look, the little ones have beaten us to it already. But … Oh dear. No. NO! Excuse me, I must …
No, darling, no. Pick that up off the floor. It’s precious. Pick it up now. Remember what Grandma always told you, ‘You can throw away the cake but you must never, ever, waste the bread.’<
br />
pillow talk
There was Sue in the flat and the two kiddies. She had to stop the infernal screaming. She threw the baby at his cot but she threw too hard and too far and instead of landing on the mattress he thumped right into the wall and fell down to the floor and the screaming stopped.
Sue had plenty of time now to relive that scene and she did so over and over. She remembered the thud, then the blessed silence, then the ringing in her ears and how all the oxygen seemed to have been sucked from the air and time had stopped. She remembered how she had suddenly noticed Scotty’s white staring face and the smell of his dirty little body, and how that had enraged her and she had hurled foul words at him and dragged him from behind the fridge where he was crouching and stamped in fury on his bare feet, raging at him how he stank and was a filthy shit and then she had pulled him into the slimy shower recess where the grout was black and mould grew up from the floor and she had turned on the cold tap and forced him under it, clothes and all, making him stay there until his lips were blue while she tried to block out of her mind the knowledge of the still, dead baby against the wall in the corner.
She didn’t hate her kids. She loved them. It was just that things were so hard and she seemed to have no patience anymore. She had been up to the Welfare and begged them to take the kids for a spell so she could pull herself together, and they had said they’d do their best but placements were harder and harder to come by and she should stop smoking, it wasn’t good for her and she couldn’t afford it and why not buy some milk and eggs instead? She had tried to tell them how she was afraid she might do something silly but her case worker wasn’t actually in the office that day and she didn’t want to tell everything to a stranger, so she had left and gone back to the flat where the two little ones were crying, hungry, sitting in shit and with great red urine scald rashes over their bums and between their legs.
Disreputable People Page 3