The Fig Tree

PRAISE FOR ARNOLD ZABLE AND
THE FIG TREE

‘A deeply reassuring book, all the more so for Zable's firmly held but quietly expressed belief in the craft he shares.'

Age

‘Halfway through I realised this book was something special; by the end I thought it was something extraordinary, a blending of old and new, Odysseus's epic of exile and return revived in telling the stories of multicultural society.'

Sydney Morning Herald

‘Zable can find stories in the most unexpected places.
The Fig Tree
is about family, home and sharing a common humanity through story.'

West Australian

‘This is a beautiful book in every respect. Arnold Zable is a true storyteller: you hear his stories, not only in your head, but also in your soul…these journeys and stories will fill you with strength. Buy the book today.'

Good Reading

‘Arnold Zable's stories, both fiction and non-fiction, appear to be telling us that it is stories that define us as human, stories that tell us who we are. Finally, thankfully, with
The Fig Tree
, we are treated to an anthology of Zable's own stories, so we can savour a full measure of his true-life tales at a single sitting.'
Australian Bookseller & Publisher

Arnold Zable is a widely published writer, storyteller and educator. Formerly a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, he has worked in a variety of jobs in the US, India, Papua New Guinea, Europe, South-East Asia and China. His books include
Wanderers and Dreamers
, the award-winning
Jewels and Ashes
and the 2001 bestseller
Cafe
Scheherazade
.
The Fig Tree
CD, produced in 2003 as a companion to the book, recently won the National Folk Recording Award. Arnold Zable lives in Melbourne with his wife and son.

the Fig Tree
arnold zable

The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
www.textpublishing.com.au

Copyright © Arnold Zable 2002

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published 2002
This edition published 2004, reprinted 2006, 2008 (twice), 2010, 2011

Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Designed by Chong Weng-Ho
Typeset in Garamond 3 by J & M Typesetting

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Zable, Arnold.
The fig tree
ISBN 978 1 920885 40 3.
1. Immigrants – Australia – Biography. 2. Storytelling.
I. Title.
304.8940495

The author has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

I have a child called Alexander. I heard his first cry, cut the umbilical cord and washed the aftermath of the placenta from his body. Hours later, as I walked in the park outside the hospital, I was elated. I experienced the curious sensation that everything around me—the flowerbeds, the budding trees, the people strolling by—was both ancient and new. And since he was born, it has become more urgent for me to know the births that came before him, the missing links in the ancestral chain, the three grandparents he was fated never to know, and the fourth who would die before he turned one.

It is this sense of loss, and wonder, that fuels
The Fig Tree
. Because of this, I dedicate the book to Alexander, and my wife, Dora, to the four grandparents: Lily, Athanassios, Hadassah and Meier. And to the woman who gave birth on 19 October 2001, on a sinking boat off the coast off Java. Her dream was to find refuge, a place for a new home. The boat was headed for Australia. Along with 350 fellow asylum seekers, she, and her newborn child, did not make it.

Contents

Telling Tales

Singing Eternity

The Record

The Fig Tree

Dancing towards the End

Ancestral Roads

Ballad of Mauthausen

Walking Thessaloniki

The Treasure

Between Sky and Sea

Author's Note

Telling Tales

I awake to an autumn sun streaming in through the lace curtains. Alexander, my infant son, is already up. His eyes are animated, gazing about the room and through the window. ‘Come on, lazy bones!' he seems to be saying. ‘Get out of bed! Take the morning off work. Take me to the park.'

I carry him on my shoulders. He loves this elevated view of the world. A dog trots by, and he laughs. A magpie sings, and he engages in conversation. A leaf tumbles from a tree, and he follows its slow-motion flight. A sparrow sits on an electric wire, and he points to it. Cars move past on their Monday-morning procession to work, and he is absorbed in the miracle of their motion.

When we reach the park I lower him down and, immediately, he is running, exploring, drinking in the morning. He picks up a stone and examines it. He comes across a red leaf and a gumnut, and brings them to me. He is a teacher, showing me how to look at things anew. From one angle, the gumnut seems like a vase, perfect in its symmetry. Turn it over, and it is shaped like a bell.

Meanwhile Alexander is off and running again, for the sheer joy of it, over the dew-laden grass. He is a gumnut toddler in tubby motion, speaking a private language in which he seems to be proclaiming: ‘It is wonderful to be alive on this perfect day.'

The world is new and ‘magical'. It is not a word we embrace readily. It is a word that seems to disappear from our vocabulary as we leave our childhood years behind. But this is no time for reflection. Alexander is almost out of sight. His legs have propelled him to the playground. He is climbing onto a swing, making his way towards the unknown. I am anxious, watching his every move as he clambers onto a plastic slide that is painted bright yellow. He is mesmerised by the colour, by its brilliance and clarity.

And as he gazes at it, the faint traces of my own childhood begin to return. I recall a box of coloured pencils, lying side by side, in a tin container. They are slim strands of a rainbow. Each pencil is pure, freshly sharpened, and miraculous in its effect as I run it over white paper. There is a sensation of power in all this; the first intimations of being able to transform, to create something out of nothing, of being a magician.

I tell Alexander the tale of the pencils. I am not sure how much he has understood, but he motions with his hands. He imitates my gestures. He repeats my naming of colours. He describes circles in the air. His imagination has been set on fire.

And it seems obvious, there are few things so alluring for a child as a story, told face to face.

The storyteller was once the most powerful of communicators, and the tales he or she told were far more than mere stories. They confronted the mysteries of creation. They detailed in parable form codes of ethics, guides to behaviour. Storytelling was a means of conveying tales from one generation to the next. And a story could be flexible: it could change to adapt to the times, or be retold with a different slant.

We come into the world surrounded by stories. I grew up in a single-fronted terrace in Canning Street, in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. My earliest memories are of lying in bed, with the sound of my parents and their guests talking in the kitchen. Their voices seemed distant. I heard the clatter of endless cups of tea. I heard the melodic flow of that other language, Yiddish, in which they spoke of worlds far removed. I strained my ears to catch fragments of tales that depicted the lives they had left behind as refugees from war-ravaged Europe. I sensed their nostalgia, and the comfort they found in recalling the past.

On summer evenings my parents sat on the verandah while their children played on the median strip that runs the length of Canning Street. The house was bound by a wrought-iron fence. In the tiny front garden plot, an unkempt rose bush leant against geraniums interspersed with weeds. A flight of four steps ascended from the gate to the verandah.

I stood in the shadows as my father talked to old-world friends who had dropped by for a chat. The red tips of their cigarettes described lazy circles in the dark. My father was dressed in a white singlet, leather sandals and khaki shorts. His calves were hard, smooth and ivory white. His biceps were firm. The lower-arm veins were blue tributaries that petered out into the palms. From a distance he looked like a white skeleton dangling in the dark.

Father was animated in a way I rarely observed in his day-to-day life. Again he talked of a city on the Russian–Polish border where he had spent his youth. I do not know if he noticed how intently I was listening. Perhaps this is why, years later, I set out on a journey to the source of these tales, and returned to write a book that tried to restore his family's fragmented past.