by Judy Nunn
‘We don’t bring him up in the shop, Mum.’ Kitty had mellowed of late, she refused to feel even slightly irritated.
‘No, no, dear, I’m aware of that. But no doubt he occasionally mingles downstairs …’
If only you knew how much …
‘… and they really are a rather motley crowd.’… and that’s exactly what’s good for him.
‘I don’t for one minute suggest that you sell the shop …’
You’re praying for me to do just that. Kitty wanted to laugh out loud.
‘… heavens above no, dear, I’m so proud of you, really I am. But do you not think that … well, perhaps you should consider leasing upstairs and moving to another house?’
‘Nope. We’re perfectly happy where we are.’
‘But Roberto …’
‘And Rob’s perfectly happy too. Have to go now, Mum, bye.’
Roberto Farinelli did indeed have a happy childhood. Kitty taught him to swim in the shallow rockpool at the north end of the beach almost before he could walk, and by the time he was six he was body surfing the smaller waves. Kitty would sit on the beach and watch. He was like a dolphin in the water, she thought with pride.
He was a happy little boy, feted by the customers in the shop. Bilingual, he chatted to the Italians who gathered there; when he was little, the writers in the back room read him stories; and when he was a bit older, the Hungarians at the corner table taught him to play chess; then when he was eight years old, thrill of all thrills, two young Aussies who regularly came up from the beach for a bowl of minestrone taught him to ride a surfboard.
But once he started his first year at Bondi State Primary School things started to go wrong. He’d had no trouble in Infants School, but this was different.
‘You’re the dago kid from that crazy place in Campbell Parade, aren’t you?’
There were three of them. Tough little locals, and they backed Roberto into a corner of the schoolyard.
‘My dad reckons they ought to clear that place out. It’s a breeding ground for foreign scum, he says. Dagos just like you.’
‘I’m not a dago, I’m Australian.’
‘Oh yeah? You don’t look like one.’
‘Well, I am. I was born here, I’m as Australian as you.’
Secure in their strength of numbers, the boys didn’t like the dago kid talking back, he was supposed to be frightened.
‘Show him, Max,’ one of them said, and the ringleader, a ginger haired boy quite big for his age, stepped up to Roberto.
‘Dago,’ he said, ‘dago wop scum.’ It sounded good, just like the way his dad said it. Good and tough. And he shoved Roberto in the chest.
Roberto staggered back a little, caught off balance. Then, maddened, he threw himself at the boy, taking him completely by surprise, and they fell to the ground, Roberto on top.
The other two boys watched on in stunned amazement, they hadn’t expected the kid to fight. Roberto hadn’t expected to either. He’d never been in a fight in his life, but then he’d never felt such anger. And, despite the fact that he was smaller than the ginger haired boy, his anger gave him the upper edge as the two of them rolled in the dirt.
The scuffle didn’t last long. A minute or so later, two strong hands grabbed each of the boys by the scruff of the neck and hauled them to their feet.
‘You causing trouble again, Max?’ Bob ‘Barker’ Shaw, PT instructor and star rugby league player, was every boy’s hero. Max could have told him the dago had started it, which was sort of true, but he knew that he wouldn’t score any points with Barker if he dobbed the kid in, so he stood his ground.
‘All right, who started it?’
Max waited for the kid to say, ‘He called me a dago’. But he didn’t. He stood silent, along with the others.
Barker turned to Max’s mates. ‘You boys see who started it?’ Both boys shook their head, they knew the rules.
‘Right,’ Barker was pleased, he didn’t like dobbers, ‘you can both spend your lunchtimedoing lines. Now, shake hands.’
Roberto and Max shook hands and Barker dispersed the group and left.
At lunchtime they sat together in the empty classroom writing ‘I will not fight in the playground’ over and over on their pads, and, after ten minutes or so, Max turned to Roberto. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Robert.’ Roberto shrugged. ‘Or Rob. Whatever.’ Anything but Roberto, he decided then and there.
‘I’m Max. Want to go for a swim after school?’
‘Can you ride a surfboard?’
‘Nup.’
‘I can.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Max had admired the surfboard riders who occasionally gathered at the southern end of the beach, but kids didn’t ride surfboards.
‘I’ve got a board.’ It was true, his proud grandfather had given him one for Christmas. Tim had had it specially made, about half the size of an adult board. Rob had no trouble catching waves on the huge boards the men rode, but he was not strong enough to swim them back out through the surf. He handled his own custom-made board with ease. ‘I’ll show you if you like.’
Max Brown and Rob Farinelli became good mates after that, though Max never quite mastered the surfboard, strong swimmer as he was. They swam together daily, explored the rockpools for crabs and, on still days, fished off the reef. But neither boy asked the other to his home.
Max would have liked to. But what would his dad say? He’d probably call Rob a dago or a wop. And if he found out that Rob lived above the crazy place in Campbell Parade, his dad’d go on about the foreign scum invading Bondi.
And Rob didn’t ask Max to his home because, for the first time in his life, he was ashamed of it. Why couldn’t his parents live in a normal house? And why did they have to speak Italian, why couldn’t they speak English? His mum wasn’t even Italian in the first place. And why did they have to have all those foreigners around?
Rob would sneak in the front door of their home, hoping that none of his schoolmates would see him, embarrassed that he lived above the place where the foreigners gathered.
Kitty and Artie noticed the change in their son. He was often sullen these days. And he insisted they stop calling him Roberto.
‘What’s wrong, Rob?’ Kitty asked. ‘Is it school?’
Rob shrugged. How could he tell them? ‘I got called a dago,’ he said, ‘but that was ages ago, I’m good mates with the kid now.’ Let them think it was school, it was easier that way.
‘Why do you not ask this mate of yours home?’ Artie suggested. ‘We would like to meet him.’
‘Yeah, maybe I will.’
But Artie had seen the look in his son’s eyes. ‘And we will meet his family when we come to the Parents and Citizens meeting next month,’ he said.
‘You’re not going to come, are you?’ The boy’s horror confirmed Artie’s suspicions.
‘Not if you do not wish me to.’ Artie felt hurt, but he understood.
‘Of course you’ll come,’ Kitty said. ‘We’re going together, we agreed, I want us to meet the teachers, why on earth wouldn’t you come?’
Kitty was missing the point. ‘Perhaps your mother will go on her own,’ Artie said to his son.
‘Yeah.’ Rob hated seeing the hurt in his father’s eyes. But much as he loved his dad, the thought of him meeting his friends’ parents made Rob cringe with embarrassment.
‘Yeah, it’d be good if Mum came.’ He couldn’t look at his father as he said it.
Artie knew that Kitty was about to argue. ‘Go and do your homework,’ he said. And Rob gratefully went to his room.
‘He’s ashamed of us!’ Kitty wasn’t in the least bit hurt, she was angry.
‘Of me, yes.’
‘Well, we’ll soon put a stop to that, why did you let him get away with it?’
‘You will go to the meeting on your own, Kitty.’
‘Like hell I will. You’re his father, for God’s sake. So he’s half Italian, so what? He should be proud of the fact.’
Artie smiled. Kitty would never change. ‘He is Australian, Kitty, and it is difficult to be different when you are nine.’
Kitty went to the meeting alone. But she was deliberately provocative when she got there. She made it known that she ran ‘that place on Campbell Parade’ and she noted the reactions of several parents. Particularly the father of Rob’s friend Max.
Max had girded his loins and taken the plunge. ‘This is my mate, Rob,’ he’d said to his dad.
What was his son doing being mates with a dago? Mick Brown thought. Then he met the mother. Good looker, and an Aussie, that wasn’t so bad. And the kid spoke like an Aussie, so Mick was prepared to forgive. Then the mother said, ‘You must bring Max around one Saturday afternoon, we run the cafe down in Campbell Parade, the one with the chessboard in the front.’ Just like that! So she was the one.
‘You’re not to see that kid again,’ Mick told his son when they got home. ‘Bad blood there. You can’t mix the races like that, it’s not natural. And that place of hers, should be cleared out, it should, too many foreigners. You keep away from that kid.’
‘My dad said I’m not allowed to be mates with you any more,’ Max told Rob the following day.
‘Fair enough,’ Rob replied coldly, as if he didn’t care. He didn’t blame Max, he’d expected as much. He’d been present during the exchange between his mum and Max’s dad, and he’d hated his mother for saying what she had, knowing that she’d done it deliberately. He’d said nothing to her, but he’d sworn to himself that he would never forgive her. Never. And now, because of her, he’d lost his best friend. Rob hated his mother.
‘But I don’t care what Dad says.’ Max was a gutsy little bloke. ‘I want us to be mates.’
Rob couldn’t disguise his pleasure. ‘Me too,’ he said.
‘Can I come to your place after school?’ His father’s dire warnings had intrigued Max, he wanted to have a closer look at this place in Campbell Parade. ‘Come on, Rob, be a sport, we’re best mates.’
Rob agreed, with reluctance, hoping that it wouldn’t be the end of their friendship.
There was an autumn nip in the air but it was a fine day, and outside the cafe people had lifted their chairs onto the pavement. Rob led Max through the shop.
One of the men hunched over the chessboard in the corner gave a nod and said, ‘Roberto, jo napot,’ and Rob said ‘hello’ back. He could have said it in Hungarian, he usually did to old Franz who’d been coming to Kitty’s for years, but he was self-conscious in front of Max. He gave a wave to Jean-Claude who was behind the counter and walked through to the kitchen.
‘G’day, Guiseppe, this is my mate Max.’
‘Hello, Max,’ said old Guiseppe the chef, then in Italian to Rob, ‘You want some ravioli for you and your friend?’ Kitty was always more than happy for Guiseppe to prepare a snack for Rob when he got home from school. It filled in the gap untildinner. Lately, however, Rob had been dodging upstairs for a glass of milk and some biscuits, avoiding the cafe altogether. Guiseppe was pleased to see him. And with a friend too.
‘Thanks, Guiseppe, ravioli would be good.’ Rob had answered in Italian before he knew it. He was conscious of Max’s look of astonishment and cursed himself. ‘We’ll be out the back,’ he said in English, ‘give us a yell when it’s ready,’ and he led the way past the reading room and into the courtyard. It was four o’clock on a weekday afternoon and business was slow, so they had the place to themselves.
‘Was that Italian,’ Max asked, ‘what you said?’ Rob nodded, and Max waited for an explanation but none was forthcoming. ‘So what did you say?’ he queried impatiently.
‘Guiseppe asked if we wanted something to eat and I said yes.’
‘Gee, I didn’t know you spoke Italian.’
‘Well, of course I do, my dad’s Italian.’
‘Yeah, I knew that.’ Max had tended to forget that fact lately.
‘So that makes me half Italian.’
‘Yeah.’ Max had forgotten that too. He’d completely forgotten that Rob was different.
Guiseppe brought their meals out himself. ‘You will enjoy this,’ he said in Italian, ceremoniously placing a bowl and a spoon before each of the boys. ‘It is very good, the sauce isof mushroom and peppers.’
‘Thanks, Guiseppe.’
‘What did he say?’ Max asked.
‘He said it’s very good.’
Max studied the food in the bowl, it looked pretty dodgy to him. Lumps of dough with gooey stuff over the top, not like the real meals he got at home. He tentatively lifted the spoon to his mouth. It didn’t taste like the real meals he got at home either. In fact he’d never tasted anything like it. He spooned in another mouthful, and then another.
‘Do you like it?’ Rob asked.
He nodded vigorously, his mouth full. ‘Beaut,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘Ravioli. Pasta with meat inside and sauce on top.’
When they’d finished, they took their empty bowls back into the kitchen.
‘How do you say beaut in Italian?’ Max muttered.
‘Eh?’
‘I want to tell Guiseppe it was beaut, how do I say it in Italian?’
‘Molto buono.’
Max whispered it to himself a few times. ‘Hey Guiseppe,’ he said, as they put their bowls in the sink, ‘that was mollto borno.’
‘Gracie, Max,’ Guiseppe replied; then, in his heavily accented English, ‘you come back any time, I give you more “mollto borno” Italian food.’ He grinned at Rob and said in Italian, ‘It is good you bring your friend.’
Max became a regular after that, and gradually other schoolmates trooped along, until there was a tribe of half a dozen or so nine-year-olds regularly scoffing bowls of pasta in Kitty’s courtyard after school.
They came for the food at first, it was as good as Max had told them, but, like Max, they ended up loving the place.
‘You should come on Saturdays,’ Rob said proudly. He’d forgotten that he was ashamed of his home. He’d forgotten that he hated his mother and that he’d never forgive her. ‘On Saturdays there’s music.’
The boys told lies to their parents, most of whom would have been horrified to discover their young sons were mingling with foreigners, eating their strange food, even learning their strange languages.
They conferred, the boys. On Saturday arvo they’d be late home from footie, they told their parents, because the gang was going to Steve’s. Or to Tom’s, or to Benny’s. They varied it. And their parents never knew that from four untilsix each Saturday, their sons were in Kitty’s back courtyard eating bowls of spaghetti and listening to two Russian fiddlers. And when they queried why the boys weren’t hungry after an afternoon’s footie, the reply ‘Steve’s mum cooked us tea,’ seemed acceptable.
No-one knew where the Russian fiddlers had come from, they’d just drifted in one day, as many did. The couple didn’t speak a word of English, or appeared not to. Indeed, the woman never spoke at all, and the man just muttered to her every now and then in Russian.
Jean-Claude did not pay for their services, they played their fiddles for free food and wine. Jean-Claude sold illicit wine in cheap porcelain coffee mugs, even though Kitty had told him not to. They didn’t have a liquor licence and it wasn’t worth the risk, but he sold it nonetheless. Kitty decided to turn a blind eye. Jean-Claude was a good manager, and she had little to do with the shop these days, busy as she was with the regular feature articles she wrote for one of the major syndicates. She certainly had no time to find and train another manager.
The Russians played, sometimes for an hour, sometimes until the shop closed, depending upon their mood, but they always gathered a crowd. And the half dozen or so little boys, squatted on the ground in front of them, watched mesmerised.
A little unkempt and always dressed in black, the man and the woman looked like each other. Lank, shoulder-length brown hair, expressionless faces, they sat at the corner table in the courtyard and wordlessly ate their p
asta, as if unaware that everyone was waiting for them to play. And then, when they had finished eating, Jean-Claude would move the table away. The man would mutter to the woman, and they would turn their chairs to face each other, take theirfiddles from their cases, and everything would change.
Their faces were no longer lacklustre. Their eyes locked together with such intensity that they could have been looking into each other’s soul. And they played. Theirs was the music of the Russian peasants, now hauntingly sentimental, now rising wildly to a crescendo of gypsy madness. The woman might lead one moment, the man the next; then they might play a duet which could have been a duel as their frenzied bows cut the air and their fingers darted upon the strings and the sweat poured from their brows. And never once did either player’s eyes leave the other’s; they seemed barely to blink.
Max and his mates had never seen or heard anything like it.
‘Can I come on Saturday?’ was the constant request. Word had got around. And Max, as the boss, had to lay down some rules. They’d have to take it in turns, he said, only six at a time, and they had to swear to keep it a secret.
‘Cross your heart,’ he’d say. ‘Spit.’ And another boy would be accepted into the gang.
The change in Rob was incredible Artie and Kitty agreed.
‘He’s made friends,’ Kitty said, ‘I’m so glad.’
‘And his friends accept us,’ Artie added, ‘that is important to him.’
It was true. Young Rob Farinelli now introduced his dad with pride, and Artie was deeply relieved. He had understood his son’s dilemma but, even to Kitty, he had not admitted the hurt he had felt.
‘Given time,’ Artie recalled Rube had said, ‘given time they will accept us.’ Perhaps that was what Rube had meant, he thought. The next generation.
Artie said as much to his wife. ‘Perhaps it is the next generation which will have the answers, Kitty,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we do not need to push so hard.’
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, ‘but I for one certainly intend to give a good shove whenever I can.’ Kitty wasn’t one to sit around and wait.
Then the inevitable happened. ‘Cross your heart and spit’ wasn’t enough. Excited young boys eventually had to talk, and the word somehow got out.