White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘It’s the change in weather and the journey,’ I said. ‘We expected Australia to be warm.’

  The woman laughed and folded her arms across her ample chest. ‘My word, the weather can change, love. But I suspect it will be hot where you are going. Dry as a bone in the Central West this month, I hear.’

  ‘We came from an island where it was always hot,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you’re on a big island now,’ she smiled, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. ‘Not that you will believe it once you’re inland.’

  The bird with the call like a raindrop sounded again.

  ‘What is that whistling sound?’ I asked the woman.

  ‘It’s a whipbird,’ she said, ‘and that sound is a duet between the male and the female. He whistles and she adds “choo-ee” at the end of it.’ Her mouth twitched and I sensed that she was flattered by the question, that she was keen for me to find Australia new and interesting.

  I thanked her for the soup and carried it to Irina. She tried a mouthful and shook her head. ‘My nose is blocked but I can still smell the fat. What is it?’

  ‘Sheep meat, I think.’

  Irina pushed the bowl towards me. ‘You’d better eat it, if you can. It tastes like lanolin to me.’

  After eating, we were instructed to board the train again. I offered the Czechoslovakian men my seat, if they wanted to take turns to sit down, but they declined. The one with the faded star on his coat could speak a little English and said, ‘No. You take care of your friend. We will sit on our suitcases when we get tired.’

  The sun lowered and we entered a world of raw granite and grassland. White-barked trees stood like ghostly sentries in the endless fields staked out with barbed-wire fences. Flocks of sheep dotted the hills. Every so often a farmhouse with smoke rising from the chimney came into view. Each one had a corrugated water tank perched on stilts next to it. The old Polish lady and Irina were asleep, lulled by the motion of the train and the length of the journey. But the rest of us couldn’t take our eyes off the strange world outside.

  The woman opposite me began to cry and her husband scolded her. But I could see in the nervous twitch of his mouth that he was trying to quell his own fear. My stomach churned. I felt calmer if I looked above the land, to the sun spinning gold and violet threads across the sky.

  Just before dusk the train slowed and came to a stop. Irina and the old woman woke up and glanced about them. There were voices, then the sounds of the doors rattling open. Fresh air rolled over us. Men and women in brown army uniforms and broad-rimmed hats hurried by the windows. I could see a convoy of buses and a couple of trucks parked in the coppercoloured dirt. The buses weren’t like the ones we had on Tubabao. They were pristine and new. An ambulance pulled up alongside them and waited with its motor running.

  There was no station and the soldiers were dragging ramps up to the doors so that people could get out. We started to collect our things but when the old woman looked out the window she screamed. The Polish man and woman tried to calm her, but the old woman squatted and wedged herself behind her seat, panting like a frightened animal. A soldier, a boy with a sunburned neck and freckles on his cheeks, rushed to the compartment.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

  The young Polish woman took one look at his uniform and backed into the corner with her mother, throwing her arms protectively around her. It was then I noticed the tattooed number on her arm poking through her sleeve.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ the soldier asked, looking around at us. He was shuffling his hands in his pockets, searching for something, and trembling as if he himself were on the verge of a fit. ‘Does anyone speak their language?’

  ‘They are Jews,’ said the Czechoslovakian who could speak English. ‘Think what this must look like to them.’

  The soldier frowned, puzzled. But receiving some sort of explanation for the hysterical behaviour, even if he didn’t understand it, seemed to calm him. He straightened his spine and puffed out his chest, and began taking control of the situation. ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked me. I nodded and he told me and Irina to make our way to the buses, explaining that perhaps if the women saw us go willingly they would be more confident about following us. I helped Irina out of her seat, but she almost swooned and we stumbled over a suitcase. ‘Is she sick?’ the soldier asked. The veins in his forehead were starting to show and his chin was tucked into his neck, but he still managed to sound compassionate. ‘You can take her to the ambulance. They’ll take her to the hospital if she needs it.’

  I considered translating what he said for Irina, but decided against it. She might be better off at the hospital, but she would not agree to being separated from me.

  Outside the train we were told by the soldiers to take our luggage to the trucks and then to board the buses. A flock of pink and grey parrots had settled on a bare patch of dirt and seemed to be watching us. They were pretty birds and looked out of place in this environment. They seemed more suited to a tropical island than the grassy hills that surrounded us. I turned back to the train door to see what was happening with the Polish family. The soldier and the Czechoslovakian were helping the women down the ramp. The Polish man was following with their suitcases. The young woman seemed calmer and even smiled at me, but the old woman’s eyes were darting about like a madwoman’s and she was almost doubled over with her fear. I squeezed my hands into fists, digging the nails into my skin and trying to stop myself from crying. What hope did that woman have? The situation was hard enough for myself and Irina. I glanced down at my sandals. My toes were covered in dust.

  It was dark when the convoy of buses came to a stop outside a barricade. The camp guard stepped out of his box and lifted the post for us to go through. Our bus jerked forward, followed by the others, into the campsite. I pressed my face against the glass and saw the Australian flag flapping from a pole in the centre of the driveway. Radiating out from this point were rows of army barracks, most of them wooden but some made from corrugated iron. The ground between the huts was hardened dirt with tufts of grass and weeds poking through the cracks. Rabbits scampered around the campsite as freely as chickens in a farmyard.

  The driver told us to disembark and make our way to the dining hall directly ahead of us. Irina and I followed the others to something that looked like a small aircraft hangar with windows. Inside we found rows of tables covered with brown paper and spread with sandwiches, sponge cakes and cups for tea and coffee. The agitated voices of the passengers echoed off the unlined walls and the bare light bulbs gave their tired complexions an even more sickly tinge. Irina sank down onto one of the seats and rested her face in her palms. A man with woolly black hair noticed her as he passed. He was carrying a clipboard and wore some sort of badge on his coat. ‘Red Cross. Top of the hill,’ he said, tapping her shoulder. ‘Go there or we’ll all be ill.’

  I was excited to hear that there was a Red Cross office in the camp and slid into the seat next to Irina. I told her what the man had said, only I phrased it more politely. ‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ she said, pressing her hand into mine. ‘I’m not up to it tonight.’

  The man with the clipboard stepped onto a podium and announced in heavily accented English that shortly we would be sorted into groups for accommodation. Men and women would be accommodated separately. Children would be accommodated with either parent according to their age and sex. The news was quickly translated around the hall and voices began to cry out in protest.

  ‘You can’t separate us!’ one man said, standing up. He pointed to the woman and two small children with him. ‘This is my family. We were separated all through the war.’

  I told Irina what was happening. ‘How can they do such a thing?’ she said, still speaking into her palms. ‘People need their families at times like these.’

  A tear dripped down her face and onto the brown paper. I put my arm around her and rested my head against her shoulder. We were each other’s family. Our roles had become re
versed. Irina was older and of a more sanguine disposition than I was and it was usually she who gave me encouragement. But Ruselina was ill and far away, and Irina was in a new country whose people spoke a language she didn’t understand. On top of all that, she was sick. I realised that it was up to me to be strong, and I was terrified. It was taking all my strength to keep my own spirits up. How would I ever be able to lift Irina’s as well?

  Our block supervisor was a Hungarian woman named Aimka Berczi. She had a bland face but long, delicate hands. She issued us with cards on which were printed our names, countries of birth, vessels of arrival and room numbers. She told us to go to our barracks and get some sleep. The camp director, Colonel Brighton, would address us in the morning.

  My eyes were watering with exhaustion and Irina could barely stand, but as soon as I opened the door to our wooden shack I wished I had been more forceful about making her go to the hospital. The first thing I saw was a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling and a bug flittering around it. There were twenty camp beds crammed side by side on the wooden floor. Washing was strung over fold-up chairs and suitcases and the air was dank and musty. Most of the beds were already occupied by sleeping women, so Irina and I headed for the two spare ones at the end of the room. One of the women, an old lady with bobby pins in her hair, looked up when we passed her bed. She propped herself on her elbow and whispered, ‘Sind Sie Deutsche?’

  I shook my head because I couldn’t understand her.

  ‘No, not German,’ she said in English. ‘Russian. I can tell by your cheekbones.’ The woman had grooves like scars around her mouth. She was probably only sixty years old, but the lines made her look eighty.

  ‘Yes, Russian,’ I said.

  The woman seemed disappointed but smiled just the same. ‘Tell me when you are ready and I will turn out the light.’

  ‘I am Anya Kozlova and my friend is Irina Levitskya,’ I told her. I helped Irina down onto one of the rickety cots and put our suitcases at the foot of the beds, where I noticed everyone else kept theirs. ‘We are Russians from China.’

  The woman relaxed a little. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘My name is Elsa Lehmann. And tomorrow you will learn that everyone in this room hates me.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  The woman shook her head. ‘Because they are Poles and Hungarians and I am German.’

  I didn’t know how to continue the conversation after she said that, so I turned my attention to making our beds. We had been issued with four army blankets and a pillow each. The breeze outside had been cool, but there was no air circulation in the hut and it was hard to breathe. Irina asked what the woman had said, so I explained Elsa’s situation to her.

  ‘Is she here alone?’ Irina asked.

  I translated the question for Elsa who said, ‘I came with my husband, a doctor, and the one son who survived the war. They sent them to Queensland to cut cane.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. I wondered what the Australian government had in mind when it encouraged families from around the world to come to its shores and then separated them.

  I helped Irina tuck in her sheets and one blanket then fixed my own. I was self-conscious about the fusty odour that rose from our feet and underwear when we changed into our nightclothes, but Elsa was already asleep. I tiptoed over to her bed and pulled the light switch.

  ‘I guess we will find out tomorrow if they like or hate Russians,’ Irina said, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.

  I climbed into the bed and pulled the sheets over me. It was too hot for blankets. I turned from my back to my side and onto my back again, exhausted but unable to sleep. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, listening to Irina’s breathing. If the Australians could separate Elsa from her husband and son, how much more likely were they to separate us? And if they could send a doctor to cut cane, what kind of work would they give us? I squeezed my palms against the side of my head and pushed the thoughts from my mind. I focused instead on the idea of finding my mother. Whatever lay ahead, I must be strong.

  There was a thud on the roof, then the scampering of an animal over the tin. Between the wall and the ceiling was a gap of a few inches, covered with chicken wire. I was sure that the wire had been put there to stop whatever was on the roof getting inside, and I clutched the sides of the bed, waiting for more sounds. Irina’s bed creaked.

  ‘Irina, are you awake?’ I whispered.

  But she only sighed and rolled over. There were two more ‘thuds’, then more claws scratching. I pulled the sheet up to my throat and tried to catch a glimpse of the world through the gap in the wall, but all I could see were the silhouettes of the hills in the distance and a few stars. Finally my fatigue got the better of my fear and I fell asleep.

  The morning light flickered over the flaking paint on the floorboards. A rooster greeted the day with a cry. From somewhere nearby a horse snorted and sheep were bleating. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. Irina’s eyes were squeezed shut, as if she was resisting the idea of waking up. Everyone else was fast asleep too and the air in the hut was stale and hot. There was a gap between two of the planks in the wall next to my bed and I could see golden light sparkling off the tin roofs and fences. A truck was parked outside and a dusty sheepdog crouched under it. The dog pricked up his ears when he spotted me spying on him. He wagged his tail and yelped. I quickly lay down, not wanting his bark to wake the others.

  As the light increased, the other women began to stir, kicking their bedsheets aside like caterpillars emerging from cocoons. I said good morning to Elsa but she averted her eyes, gathered a brunch coat and towel and scurried out the door. The other women, who looked to be in their twenties and thirties, blinked at me, wondering when Irina and I had appeared. I said hello and tried to introduce myself. A few of them smiled back and one girl, whose English was not as fluent as mine, commented that it was awkward that we didn’t have a common language between us.

  Irina pushed herself up onto her pillow and combed her hair with her fingers. She had flakes of sleep in her eyelashes and her lips looked dry.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked her.

  ‘Not good,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I’ll stay in bed.’

  ‘I’ll bring you some food. You must eat something.’

  Irina shook her head. ‘Just water, please. Don’t bring back any of that soup.’

  ‘How about beef stroganoff with vodka, then?’

  Irina grinned and lay back down, covering her eyes with her arm. ‘Go and discover Australia, Anya Kozlova,’ she said. ‘And tell me all about it when you get back.’

  I didn’t have a robe or brunch coat. Not even a towel. But I couldn’t stand the musky smell of my hair and skin any longer. I took the cleanest-looking blanket from the ones we had been issued and a bar of soap I had brought from Tubabao. I held them up to the girl who could speak some English, hoping she would understand what I wanted. She pointed to a map on the back of the door. The ablutions block was marked with a red X. I thanked her and picked out the last fresh dress from my suitcase before heading out into the sunshine.

  The barracks in our area were almost identical. Here and there people had taken time to put curtains up or create flowerbeds with pieces of rock, but there was none of the pride and solidarity of Tubabao. But then we had all been Russians. I had only been in Australia a day and already I had seen racial tensions. I wondered why they didn’t organise all the migrants and refugees into our national groups, it would have been easier for us to communicate and for them to administer, but then I recalled the phrase they used on our identity cards—‘New Australians’—and I remembered that they wanted us to assimilate. I thought about the term ‘New Australian’ and decided I liked it. I wanted to be new again.

  My jovial mood left me when I stepped into the toilet block. I would have put my foot straight into an overflowing pan if the stench hadn’t stopped me first. I clasped the blanket to my nose and looked around the hut in horror. There were no d
oors on the cubicles, just leaking pans set low on the ground with blowflies buzzing around them. The seats were caked with excreta and dirty paper was clumped on the wet floor. There had been two chain toilets in the dining hall but that would not be sufficient for the whole camp. ‘Do they think we are animals?’ I screamed, hurrying back out into the air.

  I had never seen conditions so foul for white people, not even in Shanghai. After seeing Sydney I thought that Australia was going to be an advanced country. Surely the camp organisers knew about disease? We had eaten at the army base in Darwin, and I began to wonder if Irina had something worse than influenza, perhaps hepatitis or even cholera.

  I heard voices from the shower block and glanced inside. It was clean but the shower stalls were nothing more than rusty tin sheets with gaps. Two women were showering with their children. I was so upset that I forgot all about privacy and tore off my nightdress, huddled under the pathetic dribble of the shower rose and cried.

  At breakfast my fears grew worse. We were served sausages, ham and eggs. Some people discovered maggots in their meat and one woman rushed out of the hall to be sick. I didn’t eat the meat, I only drank the acidic-tasting tea with three teaspoons of sugar and a piece of bread. A Polish group near me complained about the bread. They told one of the Australian kitchen hands that it was too doughy. He shrugged and told them that was how it was delivered. The Chinese bread I ate in Harbin was steamed and much more sticky, so I was used to it. I was more concerned about how clean the kitchen was and whether the cooks understood anything about hygiene. My hair hung in limp strands around my ears and my skin smelled like wool from the blanket. I couldn’t believe how far I had fallen. A year ago I had been a new bride with an elegant apartment, married to the manager of the most famous nightclub in Shanghai. Now I was a refugee. I felt the degradation of it more keenly than I had on Tubabao.