Sunrise West (25 page)

‘What do you mean,
militarizing
?' I was finding it increasingly hard to contain myself.

‘Ah, of course, it's difficult for you to grasp. Well, this rabbi was a clandestine Bundist. To put it simply, he taught his theories of truth and social justice mainly in Yiddish, same as all your mob here in Melbourne — they must be stopped, at any price! Only a Ben Gurion is capable of understanding the danger of this Teutonic plague. No, it's not their
ideas
that aggravate the prime minister of Israel: after all, he is a socialist himself, and like them, an iconoclast to boot. What worries him is their ghetto mentality and their language of exile, which if permitted could spell an
end
to our new beginning.'

He paused for breath before continuing his verbal hurricane. ‘You see, Jews are a restless nation, we spend our lives inside and outside a promise. When we're outside this promise we dream of being inside; when we're inside we want to run for our lives!'

We were approaching my street, but I certainly didn't want to show him where I lived. ‘Just let me off on the next corner, would you?'

‘Sure, sure, but before you go I must explain my point about the danger that this exilic tongue poses for our holy nation at our present historical crossroads.'

‘No, Ralph,' I replied as calmly as I could. ‘You'll have to save the rest of your wisdom for another day.'

I might as well not have spoken. ‘Yiddish,' he cried, ‘especially its songs and poetry, these are the fleshpots of
our latter-day Exodus! They have the potential to drag our people back to the Egypt of Europe!'

‘Please, Ralph, just pull up here. Thanks for the lift, and for the enlightenment.'

‘Wouldn't you like to have a beer before you get home?'

‘No thanks.' I quickly climbed out of the car. Then, on an impulse, I leaned in through the open passenger window and said: ‘You've given me a headache. Enough is enough.'

‘That's the thanks I get!' he shouted back, and sped off into the humidity of the dying day.

 
Bitter Shoes
 

The grey face of a late-August day peeped into our window through the slats of our venetian blinds. Esther, still halfasleep, asked: ‘How does it look outside?'

‘It's autumn,' I replied, ‘with laden skies, empty beaches, seagull cries, and rain, rain, rain.'

‘Stop it, with all your rhymes. We have some urgent shopping to do.' She reached over the edge of the bed and held up one of my leaky shoes.

‘Yes, but it will be hard to part with them. They were my first postwar shoes, I bought them with my own money.'

After breakfast we boarded a tram for the city. ‘I must tell you a ghetto story about shoes,' I said to Esther when we had sat down together.

‘Again?' she complained. ‘Haven't we had enough? You turned off the radio yourself this morning when someone mentioned Dachau.'

‘That wasn't because of the topic,' I protested. ‘If we're listening to the radio all day, how can we listen to each other?... Anyway, on 28 August 1942, the day I turned twenty, as I came into our room in my old wooden clogs, mother thrust a pair of leather boots into my hands. “What are those?” I said. “Educated boots,” my father responded. “The bootlegs are made from your former schoolbag!” “How did you pay for them?” I asked excitedly. “Don't worry, son. The bootmaker owed us a favour.”

A restrained commercial energy hovered over the shoe department of the large Bourke Street store. We were welcomed by a honey-blond saleslady in a cream blouse beneath a navy-blue jacket. ‘And what can I do for you today,' she enquired melodiously.

‘I would like to buy a pair of shoes for my husband,' said Esther.

The saleslady smiled in approval. ‘You've come to the right place,' she observed, and directed us discreetly to a plush chair upholstered in burgundy velvet. She knelt down to measure my foot, then vanished into a forest of storage shelves, re-emerging triumphantly after a minute with a stack of boxes. ‘Let's try some of these on for size,' she said, opening the first box.

‘They feel good,' I said, seeing no reason to try another pair.

‘And they look marvellous on you,' Esther chipped in.

‘You'd better have a little walk,' said the saleslady. ‘Make sure they're comfortable.'

Suddenly everything around me seemed to go dark. I tried to stand up but some unknown force pushed me back into the chair. I was shivering and felt a cold sweat travel through my body.

‘What's wrong?' Esther cried, frightened. ‘Someone please help, my husband is fainting.'

‘I'm not — don't call for help. I just need a glass of water.'

‘Good idea,' said the saleslady. ‘Let me show you the way to the cafeteria.'

The cafeteria was enveloped in a respectful muteness. The few customers dotted about the room were conversing under their breath, but as we walked in they all turned curiously towards us. A girl in a black dress and white apron showed us to a table.

Esther could hardly wait. ‘What happened to you back there?' she asked the moment we sat down. ‘You have to tell me.'

I sighed. ‘In 1944, in Auschwitz, I met a former neighbour of ours, a cobbler named Yankel. The first thing he asked me was what had become of my boots. I asked him why he wanted to know. “Because,” he answered, “your mother paid for them with her weekly ration of sugar — one teaspoon!”'

‘All right,' said Esther, ‘but that was then. I still don't understand.'

‘It was something my mother said to me after she gave me the boots. It came back to me after all these years, like a thunderbolt.'

‘Something your mother said? What?'

‘She said,
You'd better have a little walk — make sure they're comfortable
.'

 

 
Fever
 

Perhaps it was my perforated old shoes, or the rainy season, or my refusal to wear the outlandish ankle-length coat I had brought from Italy. Whatever the cause, I was laid up in bed with the flu. After midday my temperature jumped to an unbelievable high, the mercury threatening to burst through the thermometer. Esther quickly called our doctor, Herbert Silver, a serious man who peered with his liquid brown eyes into the depths of my throat, made me say
aaah
, fingered my pulse, murmured something to my frightened wife, and left. By twilight my condition had worsened. As had happened in the past whenever I ran a temperature, the vision I had experienced as a four-year-old with scarlet fever returned...

I am back in the room of my birth. No one is at home but my silent father, who sits at the table with his head in his hands, perturbed, his eyes riveted on an empty glass. There is a knock on our white door. In comes father's old German friend, the tall bald-headed Arbeiter, who lives in our street. I don't know why this usually jovial fellow is wearing a sinister smile, why his enormous shapeless shadow is bouncing up and down like a marionette, why he is disappearing and then reappearing from our wall, which is painted green with silver acacia leaves.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he raises a fist over my father's head. I fear the worst, I scream out, but no one can hear me. Father sweeps me up out of the bed and darts outside. Arbeiter gives chase but slips on the stone staircase. He pleads for help but father will not stop. All at once we're in a forest. With one hand my father presses his little boy to his chest, with the other defends himself against the blazing trees that jump at him from all sides...

I spent the night in a pool of sweat. Early next morning, a Friday, Dr Silver was back. He checked my forehead, measured my temperature, let his cold stethoscope journey over my hot chest, and after a minute of tense silence said to Esther: ‘His temperature might rise again, but the danger seems to be over.'

‘So can I go back to work?' I asked eagerly.

The doctor gave me a disapproving look. ‘Don't you dare!' he shot back. ‘You'll have to stay indoors for at least a week. To go out now would be a grave mistake.'

Worn out from the fever and my sweat-soaked night, I fell back onto the pillow. At least a week! If I couldn't return to work everything would fall apart. We had rent to pay, furniture to pay off, I could even lose my position at the factory! What a cruel comedy life could be. My mind started to wander. After every destruction we think of restoration; after every broken promise we crave to believe again; after every death we wish each other
long life
. Only yesterday, a devil in the disguise of a doctor threw my sick, ephemeral body out of the barrack into a freezing winter morning. And today, in the warmth and safety of my own home, I was resenting the advice of the truest, most benevolent of doctors.

Evening fell asleep on our windowpane. In the stillness I listened to the black footsteps of night approaching, while Esther resolutely lit the Sabbath candles. I looked at the twin flames. How marvellously they had outlived the bonfires of the inquisitors. Or had they?

And just as the doctor had predicted, my temperature once again got the better of me. Now Arbeiter is back. Shoving the thermometer into my burning mouth, he squints at the mercury.
How much?
I ask.

Five past midnight
, he answers, smiling gravely.
Have no fear, young fellow. The day of fools has been reinstated.

 

 
Democracy at Work