The Fighter (17 page)

She knows every nuance of silence: silence's curses, silence's blessings, the perils of silence, and its reveries. But there is crystal, and crystal breaks the silence. It speaks of the past, and it also
hints at a way forward: crystal is tough. It is what she aspires to be, and how she sees herself, even when others see her as broken. Crystal is an old world expression of beauty, solid and functional, a reflector of light and memory—a prism through which hope can still reach her. It is much prized in the lands she comes from, where it is passed from mother to daughter.

So she collects crystal. And there comes a time when she has a daughter, a female to restore the lineage.

Sandra sends me photos of mother and daughter: one, a black and white taken in the living room. Sonia holds the baby. Her cheek touches Alexandra's head. She is content and grounded, a mature woman, a veteran of motherhood. Pensive. Through the open doorway is the tiny kitchen and a chair at the table.

In another photo Sonia sits on the sofa with Simche. They hold the baby between them, wrapped in a white blanket, only the tiny head visible. And on Sonia's face, there is a look of joy and a smile of utter abandon. It is the only photo Sandra knows of in which her happiness is so apparent.

It will be Sandra who will see her most clearly, who will talk of her mother's love of crystal. Who will go shopping with her in the city, and wander the vast floors of the Myer emporium; who will walk with her and observe her taste for European fashion, and her love of coats.

A coat is the most important item of clothing. It is a constant, a shield from the memories of far harsher winters in the frozen steppes of Siberia. Sonia's wardrobe is full of coats.

One is checked, blue and green, distinguished by its colour. Another is old, with large grey lapels, tough and enduring,
brought with her on the sea voyage. Yet another is black merino wool, soft to the touch, with ample sleeves, a sharply cut hem, a spacious cape, and black buttons—stylish. Coats are a form of expression.

Sonia acquired beautiful things: a pair of silver shoes, pearls, a tailored jacket for a son's wedding, black stilettos. She goes shopping on her own, or with her daughter, in search of stylish coats and well-tailored dresses. She runs her hands over fabric. She is self-possessed. Absorbed in the moment. Another person, says Sandra. A mystery.

It will be Sandra who pursues the mystery. Who will do all she can to resurrect her. Who will recall the lipsticks, and the dressing table scattered with rouge and perfumes, the scent of spring and watermelon.

Sandra receives two rings from her mother, when Sonia is on her deathbed. One a present from Simche to his wife, after a journey he had taken to Russia. It's made of gold, elegant in design, finely crafted, and set with a diamond. And the other, a gold band, a gift to Sonia from her aunt Rivka, inscribed with the name of her maternal grandmother. Two rings that Sandra wears to this day.

It is Sandra who tracks down and opens her mother's medical records, a decade after her passing. Hundreds of pages arranged in dated sections, a chronicle of Sonia's breakdowns. Notes scrawled and typed in hospital wards, psychiatric units, and during home visits: the observations of psychiatrists and psychologists, nurses, caseworkers—battalions of professionals. All in their own way caring. Seeking to ease the suffering.

The records span Sonia's final decade, but they also make reference to earlier breakdowns: the first one, in 1950, a year after the Nissens moved into Amess Street. Solly was three years old, Henry and Leon barely walking.

The observations and Sonia's quoted comments are harrowing. A thread weaves through them: the threat of men, and their assaults. Sonia speaks of abortions, and unborn children, a swollen womb. Defilement. The files record her ebb and flow between wariness and warmth, catatonia and alertness.

At times she is ‘giggly' and ‘childlike', ‘softly spoken'. ‘Well groomed' and ‘in good spirits'. But soon the terror returns and she is cowering, a slight, enraged woman pacing hospital wards and corridors. Hitting out. Accusing all that come near her of betrayal. Fighting.

Yet again it turns, and she is lighter. Cheerful. Co-operative. Talking to fellow patients in Yiddish and Russian. Polish. English. Chatting to nurses about her family, taking care of her appearance and showing pride in her children. Applying lipstick. Surrendering to care, allowing her hair to be washed and set, and her hands to be manicured. Apologising for her anger. Singing.

Her imaginings are benign, the blinds are up and the curtains are wide open. She is the sun, the queen of the skies. She dispenses light. She reigns over day, and is extinguished at night.

And again, abruptly, it is dark.

The oscillations quicken. Sonia wants to live. She wants to die. She wants companionship, she wants solitude. She pines for her daughter when Sandra is away on her travels, and is overjoyed when she returns. She speaks lovingly of her adult children. She
cannot wait for their next visit. But within an hour she cannot bear even to make eye contact.

The demands on the family are relentless. It is a bruising, brutal drama, but they do not abandon her. Sandra. Solly. Paul. Leon and Henry. Simche too, in his stoic and bewildered way, though there are times when he can't take it. Towards the end they sleep at opposite ends of the house, and, eventually, he moves out alone, into a retirement home.

But he returns and sits by her bed. Converses. Small talk. He remains present, and there are times Sandra sees them as she approaches the ward for a visit: Simche bedside, and the couple quietly talking, then falling silent. She stops, for a moment, outside the ward entrance, a witness to the stillness between them.

The family bonds remain. The children visit their mother often. They attend consultations with doctors. They hire hospital sitters so that Sonia can be safely unrestrained. At her lowest ebbs, her sons take it in turns to stay overnight in the hospital ward, to keep watch over her.

Sandra does all she can to keep Sonia at home. She hires handymen. They draw up plans for grab-rails in the showers and toilet, and mark out locations for smoke detectors and gas alarms. She ferries her mother to and from appointments and respite centres. She is present when Sonia is discharged. She takes her home, and helps her settle.

But despite the reams of documentation, Sonia cannot be found there. The notes are, for the most part, clinical. They rarely go beyond basic comments, records of prescriptions and dosages.
Treatments. Referrals—the letterheads of specialists.

There is no colour, but for one instance when her dress is described: a brown blouse and black skirt, a dark red cardigan, a pair of brown shoes and a brown handbag. This is the closest the notes get to her. Sonia remains elusive. A patient. She cannot be found here.

25

The clues are elsewhere. In a colour photo, Sonia sits on the edge of a sofa. She wears a blue-and-white striped skirt, black high heels and a white cardigan. Her back is partly turned to the camera. Her dyed brunette hair falls over the nape of her neck to her shoulders. A pearl earring can be made out on her right earlobe. Beside her lies a newspaper and, at the end of the sofa, a pillow. Toys are scattered over the carpet.

Sonia is bending forward, and her face is turned to a crawling toddler. The child's back is arched, and his hands are planted firmly in front of him. His head is tilted up to her. The two have clear eye contact, each fully focused on the other.

The energy between them is palpable. There is trust and
intimacy. The toddler is at ease. He is safe and protected. Sonia's arms are outstretched, her hands turned upwards. Her fingers are spread wide, and her palms are open. Her entire being is a forward gesture. There is no past. There is no future. Just this moment: a grandmother reaching out for her grandchild. Nothing else exists, nothing else matters.

And there are two black-and-white photos of Sonia and Simche, taken in Bergen-Belsen. One is a family portrait of the couple and their first-born son, Zalman, named after Sonia's father—Solly in English. He is a few months old.

Simche wears a dark shirt and a well-cut jacket of light flannel. He is a snappy dresser. He has a tailor's eye for fashion. Sonia wears a vest over a dark blouse with floral patterns. The fabric looks like silk. The shoulders are lightly padded, and the sleeves just above elbow length. Elegant. After all, she too is a tailor. Little Solly sits between them, in a white woollen jacket. He clasps a furry animal. He is smiling.

Simche too is smiling; a toothy grin, but there is something else, something unexpected. He wears his fatherhood lightly. Father and mother are at ease with themselves, and at ease in each other's company. There is clarity. There is love between them.

And love too in the third photo. Sonia and Simche are younger. It must have been taken soon after the couple's arrival in the displaced persons camp. They are in a hospital ward. Most likely Sonia is pregnant with Solly.

The ward is identifiable, even though only Sonia's bed and part of a neighbouring bed are visible. They are two among the many iron-framed army cots that stood side by side in the
spacious rooms of the Glyn Hughes Hospital. A medical chart is attached to wooden staves behind them.

Sonia is sitting up in bed. Her head rests upon Simche's left shoulder. She leans into him. Her bearing emanates trust. His left arm is draped round her back. He wears a crew-necked shirt and dark trousers. His hair is short and black. He looks very young, barely older than a teenager.

Sunlight streams in through an unseen window, shaped, it seems, by gaps in the curtain. One stream illuminates the white sheet wrapped round Sonia's shoulders; and another, her left cheek and forehead. It extends to Simche's left hand and highlights his face in profile. It accentuates Sonia's beauty.

For a time the fight is over. Simche and Sonia have ceased running. Other battles are yet to come, ferocious, unrelenting. Terrifying. But in this blessed interlude, the two are as one. At peace. Together.

26

It's friday. Late afternoon. The weight of the working week is lifting. A manic energy is descending on the city. Henry backs the Hyundai out of the Seafarers' Mission car park. He turns left onto Wurundjeri Way, and heads towards South Melbourne.

The traffic is frenetic. The weekend is beckoning. Henry works his way in and out of lanes seeking openings. He finds gaps with ease; his instinct has been honed by a lifetime of moving about the city. He is staving off fatigue, willing himself onwards.

West-facing skyscrapers catch the dying light in bursts of gold tinged with rose and silver. He turns left off the main road, and makes his way through the South Melbourne streets. He pulls up by the parklands opposite the warehouse, a low-rise
brick building, hard up against a railway embankment.

A van is backed in the loading bay; the roller door is open. On the garage floor there are piles of donated clothing, and by the walls, ladders and trolleys, and canvas canopies for wet weather. The walls are lined with shelves stacked with foodstuffs. The inner rooms house floor-to-ceiling fridges, a well-equipped kitchen and office spaces. The food for tonight's meals is packed in crates and eskies. Some of it is still cooking, or on the kitchen benches in various stages of preparation.

The warehouse is the engine room of the Father Bob Maguire Foundation. Over the years, they have worked together, Father Bob and Henry, larrikin priest and ex-fighter, united by a common vision. When he has an evening off Henry heads here, like a homing pigeon returning to its point of departure. He moves with the crew to and from the van carrying bollards, fold-up chairs, trestle tables, a portable barbecue and gas cylinders.

A picture of the St Kilda pier is painted on the side of the van: the kiosk at the end of the pier can be made out in the distance, and beyond it the sea, extending to the horizon. The sun is a white ball and its reflection a white circle in the water. People stroll along the pier. The rails and lampposts cast shadows. Two gulls are caught in flight in the upper reaches. Sky and sea are suffused with light. The scene blazes with infinite possibilities.

The van sets off for one of a number of regular destinations. Over the years the crews have travelled to each point of the compass, drawing up in the city's liminal spaces—parks and squares, vacant lots, side streets and laneways, and around the corner from the clocks lined up above the station's arched entrance.

Father Bob is in his eighties. He has handed over the physical stuff to younger workers, former street kids. At the wheel sits Mem, head of warehouse operations. He has known Henry since he wandered the streets as an errant teenager, a street fighter prone to outbursts of anger.

‘You always felt safe with Henry,' he says. ‘He doesn't judge you. He is an older brother. You can vent on him, and he'd take it and lead you somewhere else.' Mem returned to school after years of absence, and regained a sense of purpose. He now offers others what Henry had offered him. You always feel safe with Mem, they say.

In each sortie out into the streets, it's the same trajectory: from nothing to nothing, from empty space to empty space, and in between, the creation of a temporary haven.

This evening it's a postage stamp of a space off Bay Street, in Port Melbourne. Two palm trees, their fronds dark against reddening skies, can be made out as the van approaches. They stand on the foreshore, two hundred metres away.

When the van arrives, the space is dimly lit by the Coles supermarket opposite and all but deserted. Dusk is giving way to night. It is mid-winter, and dark by five-thirty. The benches are vacant, and the side streets are empty. All is still, in a kind of stasis.

The crew sets to work, Henry among them. They work quickly, with precision. They string up fairy lights on a wooden fence to add a festive touch. They unload the van and arrange the bollards, tighten the ropes, and cordon off the cooking and serving areas. They place lights in the tree branches, unfold the
chairs, set up the tables, and hook up the barbecue to the gas cylinders.