‘We will not talk about it any more,’ he said.
After he had gone, Kath sat on the edge of Meggsie’s bed. ‘I know about the note you sent Miss McNulty, and I’m surprised at you,’ she began, and he hung his head.
‘Look at me when I’m talking to you,’ she said. ‘First of all, you shouldn’t have sneaked out of the house at night and spied on Mr Emil. But the worst thing was writing that note. Did you stop to think what you were doing? You’ve made a lot of trouble for the poor man. I want you to remember one thing: if you write a letter, always sign your name. Only crooks and cowards send anonymous notes.’
She saw tears in his eyes and softened her tone. ‘You’re lucky that Mr Emil isn’t angry with you, but it’s time you learned that everything we do has consequences, so you’ve got to think before you do anything that might hurt someone.’
Alone in his room again, Meggsie sighed as he looked at his stiff legs. He knew more about consequences than his mother realised. It was all very well to say Mr Emil wasn’t angry, but what was much worse was that God was angry, and that’s why He’d punished him for what he’d done. He wondered what Mr Emil would think about that.
Chapter 36
On Sunday afternoons Hania’s mother usually invited her friends home for coffee and cake. In the mornings Hania would watch her bustling around the tiny kitchen as she stirred the bubbling yeast mixture in a bowl, placed it in a warm spot and covered it with a tea towel until the dough began to rise. Within an hour, their semi smelled of freshly baked yeast cake filled with poppy seeds or vanilla-scented cream cheese.
The guests were always Polish migrants like themselves. There were two widows and a married couple her mother had befriended on the voyage to Australia, her neighbour Sala, two women who worked with her at the clothing factory, and a woman who lived nearby and mended nylon stockings so that her husband could repeat his dental studies. The husbands rarely came to these Sunday afternoon gatherings. Some were poring over lecture notes in a language they barely understood, while others were taking advantage of their free time to play bridge.
Two of the women usually brought their daughters, who were about Hania’s age, and Hania supposed that this was her mother’s way of encouraging her to have Jewish friends. That was enough to put her back up even before they tried to talk her into joining their Jewish youth group. Despite their similar background, Hania felt that she had nothing in common with these girls who, according to her mother, always did as they were told and were perfect in every way. Her mother’s praise made Hania dislike them even more. Their strong accents and foreign way of dressing made her cringe, and she hated being in the street with them in case Beverley and the other girls saw them. She wished she could spend Sunday afternoons with Beverley or Tina, but her mother told her to stay home and be hospitable, which she did grudgingly.
She wasn’t very keen on her mother’s friends, either, especially Pani Niusia, an opinionated little woman with a pursed-up mouth who had a high-pitched voice and an argumentative way of talking. She often tried to talk Hania into going to Habonim with her daughter and pointed out that it was important to maintain a Jewish identity now that they were living in Australia. Her comments irritated Hania, who couldn’t resist retorting that she had lots of nice Australian friends and wasn’t interested in joining Jewish youth groups.
The only person whose company she enjoyed on those long Sunday afternoons was Sala, who alone seemed interested in Hania’s opinions and asked her what she thought about the issues they were discussing.
‘Hania has a point,’ Sala said when the topic of Jewish youth groups came up yet again one Sunday after Christmas. ‘We’ve always complained about being pushed into ghettoes in Europe, so why are we creating them for ourselves? We’re in Australia, so we should mix with Australians.’
Her words caused an uproar. ‘Are you suggesting we should stop being Jews?’ Pani Niusia demanded, pursing her mouth even more than usual.
‘No, all I’m saying is that we should mix more, and become part of the community instead of isolating ourselves. There’s enough anti-Semitism without creating more.’
‘Do you really think that if we mix with Australians they’ll forget we’re Jews and treat us as equals?’ The speaker was Pani Tosia, who was older than the others. She was a tall woman with regal bearing, and when she spoke in her slow, quiet voice, the others listened.
Her mother’s friends were nodding. ‘Before the war, my family was assimilated,’ Pani Marysia was saying, and her pale blue eyes looked more watery than usual. ‘We considered ourselves Poles first and Jews second, and my closest girlfriends were Polish. But as soon as the war started, most of them avoided me like the plague. That’s when I realised I’d been kidding myself. In their eyes I was always a Jew. I’d never been one of them.’
Pani Niusia sat forward, ready for an argument and, turning to Sala, she said, ‘How can you say we should spend more time with Australians? They have no idea what we went through, and they don’t want to know.’
‘That’s why I like being with them,’ Sala said.
Hania sighed. They all lived in the past. No matter what they were talking about, whether it was the recent Vivien Leigh film, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s recital at the Town Hall, or the latest scandal about Errol Flynn, in no time at all they were back in Poland, discussing their wartime experiences.
On the few occasions when her mother’s friends visited without their daughters, Hania would go over to Tina’s, but after a few games of jacks or countries, she usually went home because Tina had to help in her parents’ milk bar. She resented having to do this as much as Hania hated her mother’s social afternoons, and they often commiserated with each other about their old-fashioned parents and restrictive lives. Hania and Tina only had to exchange long-suffering glances to know what the other was thinking. Although she loved Beverley’s easygoing company, Tina understood her in a way that Beverley never could.
In the summertime, picnics often replaced the afternoon teas, and her mother’s group sat by the duck pond in Centennial Park, talking about old times as they cracked the shells of their hard-boiled eggs and ate rye bread sandwiches spread with liptauer, a mixture of cottage cheese, paprika and caraway seeds which Hania didn’t like. While the other girls sat beside their mothers, listening to the conversation or chatting to one another, Hania often sat a small distance away, her back against the rough trunk of a stringy-bark as she read Seven Little Australians for the third time and tried not to hear what they were saying.
From time to time she was distracted by sulphur-crested cockatoos screeching as they flew among the branches, their wings translucent in the sunlight, or by the ducks quacking in the reed-fringed pond. Sometimes she glanced up as boys playing cricket with their fathers yelled ‘Out!’ or let out a deafening cheer. Occasionally she heard a peal of laughter from her mother’s group. In between their nostalgic and tragic reminiscences, they made fun of their efforts to speak English.
Pani Tosia was telling them about her Australian neighbours, and in spite of herself Hania listened to her pleasant voice. ‘They told us they’d just dropped in for a few minutes, but they were still there at midnight, and I thought they’d never go home. Finally they got up to go, but when they were at the front door, they said, “See you later.” I was panic-stricken. I thought they were coming back!’
They all laughed and Hania turned her attention back to her book. After a while she was aware that the background noises had stopped, and in the silence she heard her mother’s voice.
‘I’ll never forgive myself as long as I live.’
Hania stiffened and became very still. What was her mother talking about? She had a sense that her mother wouldn’t want her to hear what she was saying, and without looking up, she strained to hear, but her mother had lowered her voice and she couldn’t catch a single word. When her mother stopped talking, no one spoke, and Hania heard someone blowing their nose.
As usual, Pani Niusia wa
s the first to speak. ‘That’s terrible, but it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t possibly know what would happen.’
There was a pause, and then Hania heard her mother’s low voice. ‘But it was my fault.’
‘There are things we all would have done differently if only we’d known what would happen,’ Sala said. ‘I’m sure that most of us feel guilty about something we did or didn’t do during the war. Or just for surviving when the rest of our family didn’t.’
When Hania looked up, she saw that Sala had her arm around her mother’s trembling shoulders.
The sun was going down, and the stringy-barks glowed in the late-afternoon light. Hania thought there was an air of mystery and magic in the park. They had been reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream in class, and she could imagine Puck and his elves and fairies peering through the gilded branches of the trees. The women packed up the leftover food in their string bags and headed towards Oxford Street along a path lined with fan palms and stiff-stemmed canna lilies.
‘I wish you wouldn’t argue so much with Pani Niusia,’ Eda said while they were waiting for their tram. ‘You always have to have the last word. The other girls don’t argue.’
Hania pulled a face. ‘Of course not. They’re all angels.’
Eda was preparing dinner that evening when, to her obvious surprise, Hania offered to help. In an unusually companionable mood, they began singing ‘Buttons and Bows’ and ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window’ while wrapping minced beef and rice in cabbage leaves and placing them in a large saucepan to simmer with tomatoes.
While they waited for the cabbage rolls to cook, Eda picked up her sewing, and Hania watched her, biding her time as she tried to figure out how to broach the subject that was on her mind.
Her stomach was churning as she said, ‘In the park this afternoon you said you could never forgive yourself. What was that about?’
Eda stopped sewing and gave Hania the look that normally silenced her.
‘Nothing important,’ she said, biting off the thread. ‘Can you get me that green spool of cotton from the table?’
‘It sounded important,’ Hania persisted, handing her the spool.
‘Well you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping,’ Eda snapped.
‘How was I to know you were telling secrets?’ Hania retorted. ‘And how come you can tell those women but not me?’ Then she added, ‘But of course why would you bother telling me? I don’t count.’
She waited for the usual comment about being insolent, but her mother was silent. The lamp cast a shadow over her bowed head. It looked as though she was looking down at the skirt on her lap, but Hania knew she was gazing at the invisible, inaccessible landscape of her past, and, as usual, its gate was locked.
Eda raised her head and looked at Hania searchingly. This time there was no anger in that glance, only great sadness, almost resignation. Putting aside her sewing, she took off her thimble and leaned back in her chair.
‘All right, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to interrupt until I’ve finished.’
She took a shuddering breath. ‘I’ve never told you this before, but you had a brother.’
Hania opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.
‘He was nine when the war broke out. You were two and a half. As soon as the Germans marched into Krakw, they started rounding up the Jews. One day your father went out and never came back. I was frantic and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go or who to ask, and all the time I knew I couldn’t risk arousing suspicion or they’d take me away too. My parents — your grandparents — were living in Lww, in the eastern part of Poland. It was occupied by the Russians at the time, not the Germans, so they kept writing to tell me to go there because we’d be safer, but I couldn’t think straight. And by the time I decided to join them, there was a border between the German and Russian sectors. Crossing it was illegal, so I had to find someone to smuggle us across.’
Her voice faltered and she pressed a hand over her heart as though to make sure it was still beating.
Hania was staring at her mother and seeing a stranger. Her face, whose contours were usually so well defined, with her high cheekbones and finely moulded features, had sagged, and her eyes had a faraway look.
‘I found out there was a fellow who smuggled Jews across the border if you paid him or gave him a diamond. I didn’t have much money, so I gave him a gold necklace. We arranged to meet him at the crossroads just outside town, at dawn.’
She swallowed and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, shaking her head to indicate that she couldn’t go on. Hania waited on tenterhooks, but her mother was staring into space.
Eda would never forget the terrible beauty of that morning, with the night frost still glittering on the hard ground, the birch trees powdered with snow, and the steam from her breath warming and moistening the woollen scarf she had wrapped over her mouth.
The three of them were creeping towards the shrine at the crossroads. She was carrying Hania, still warm and drowsy from sleep, with nine-year-old Rysio striding manfully beside them, carrying the big canvas rucksack and protesting that it wasn’t heavy.
She could see it all as though it was happening in front of her now, and her heart was knocking against her ribs just as it had that morning when they stood on the dark deserted road as their shadows grew longer and the cold wind blew through the bare branches of the poplars. What if a German patrol drove by? What if a farmer spotted them and reported them to the Gestapo? What if the guide didn’t show up? People had warned her that some guides took the money or jewellery and then abandoned the Jews, or denounced them to the Gestapo. She shivered, more from apprehension than from the cold, and looked desperately up and down the road. The minutes seemed like hours until she heard hooves and the clattering of cart wheels along the empty road, and recognised the man in the battered hat holding the reins. She almost collapsed with relief.
He jumped down from his seat, rubbing his big rough hands together to warm them, but he didn’t look at her. He was looking sideways and stamping his feet against the cold as he stammered that he was sorry but there was a problem near the border, and he couldn’t smuggle all three of them across. He could only take two. Eda stared at him, numb with panic. ‘But you promised, you must, you can’t do this to us, what am I going to do?’ she kept saying. Just thinking about it, she could feel the panic suffocating her all over again.
But her pleas were in vain. He couldn’t take three of them and that was that. He suggested that if Rysio stayed in town, he’d come back for him in two days’ time. ‘We haven’t got time to stand here and argue,’ he said. ‘A German patrol car will be coming past in a few minutes and we’ll all end up in a police cell.’
Eda looked around helplessly. She had to think quickly but what should she do? If they all stayed behind hoping to find another guide, they might all be caught. Jews were being rounded up and interned in a camp in Plaszw every day. Their only hope of survival was to head eastwards, away from the Germans. But how could she leave Rysio behind? Could she trust the guide to keep his promise and come back for him?
While she was trying to decide what to do, the guide climbed up onto his seat and picked up the reins. ‘Make up your mind quick, missus, because I’m not hanging around here.’
‘You go, Mama,’ Rysio said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Her teeth chattering with panic, she told him to go straight to her aunt’s place near the square, and not to move from there until he got a message from her or from the guide.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, wriggling out of her tight embrace. ‘I’m not a baby. I know what to do.’
Her hands trembled as she held them above his head and murmured a blessing in Yiddish for the Almighty to keep him safe.
Still sobbing, she turned to take one last look at him as she climbed into the cart. He was still waving as they turned off at the crossroads. She clutched Hania as they jolted over rutted village roads and already she was reproa
ching herself for leaving her son. What have I done? I must be insane, she kept telling herself. How could I have agreed to such a crazy plan?
About an hour later the cart stopped at the back of a darkened farmhouse and the guide led them into a barn. In the dim light she could see a group of silent people with worried faces huddled together on the straw.
She turned angrily to the guide. ‘If you can take them, how come you couldn’t take my son?’
But he just shrugged and spat into the straw. ‘If you don’t like it, missus, you can go back.’
She supposed that the others had given him more jewellery. Taking him aside, she undid her gold brooch, the last piece of jewellery she owned, and made him promise on his mother’s life that he’d go back for Rysio.
‘Sure thing, missus,’ he said. ‘What do you take me for?’
Eda found a clean spot on the straw for herself and Hania, and took out a piece of bread and some milk for the child. The tension in the barn was palpable. Two middle-aged couples sat in silence but a third couple argued incessantly in querulous voices until Eda felt like shouting at them to be quiet. A young man took out a penknife and started peeling an apple: seeing Hania eyeing the fruit, he sliced off a piece and gave it to her.
Soon the guide returned. ‘Time to go,’ he whispered.
Warning them not to make a sound, he led them through the back of the village into a birch forest. It was dark, and the white patches on the trunks glowed with an unearthly light. As they stumbled through the woods, they tripped on tree roots or got hooked on the bare branches. Hania whimpered that she was tired, but Eda couldn’t carry her all the way because she had the rucksack on her back. She had to stop frequently to catch her breath and give the child a rest while the others trudged on lugging their valises, bags and bundles.
Twigs snapped under their feet as they followed the icy path for almost an hour until they reached the river.
Empire Day Page 24