The Potato Factory (53 page)

Ikey had made several speculative purchases of land in New York, most of these on the island of Manhattan and in the Bronx. He now set about feverishly turning these back into liquid assets, accepting far less for a quick sale than the true worth of the property.

Ikey managed finally to sell all his interests with the exception of one half-acre corner block in Manhattan which in a moment of weakness he had leased to the Council of American Jews for the Land of Ararat. This was in order that they might build a hostel and reception centre for Jews fleeing from persecution in Europe and the Orient. The buildings were to be of impressive proportions and would be known as the Mordecai Manuel Noah, Ararat Foundation.

Mordecai Noah was a prominent American Jew who had been the consul to Tunis. During his travels he had discovered the plight of the homeless Jews in the Orient and Europe. He dreamed of seeing Palestine returned as a homeland for the Jews, but as a diplomat he was conscious of the impossibility of achieving this mission among the Arab rulers. His thoughts then turned to the great open spaces of America and upon his return from Algiers in 1825 he purchased a tract of seventeen thousand acres on Grand Island on the Niagara River near the city of Buffalo. This he nominated as the site for the temporary Land of Israel and declared himself Governor and Judge of Israel, issuing a manifesto to Jews all over the world to come and settle in the new land which would guarantee them freedom under the protection of the constitution and laws of the United States of America.

Whether the Jews of New York saw this new and temporary Israel as a holy mission worthy of their support, or simply regarded it as an effective way to keep the immigration of undesirable European and Oriental Jews out of their city is not known, but they determined to build an impressive reception centre for the 'New Israelites' so that they could be expedited as speedily as possible to the Land of Ararat. It was the real estate for this centre which Ikey had agreed to lease to the council for a period of fifty years.

This was the most generous gesture Ikey had made in his entire life but it gained him no favour in the eyes of his American co-religionists. They felt that it showed his true criminal rapacity, for they maintained that a good Jew would have donated the land to them free of all encumbrances and conditions.

However, for a man of Ikey's background and temperament this was simply not possible. He could not bring himself to give away something he owned, despite the fact that he did not give a fig for his heirs and was quite aware that he would be long dead before the land reverted to them. Perhaps, had they agreed to call it The Isaac Solomon Welcoming Centre for the Land of Ararat, or some such fancy name to honour his donation, he might well have relented. Men do strange things to perpetuate their importance. However, this too is unlikely given Ikey's nature and the fact that his instincts told him the great Mordecai Noah was a dreamer of dreams and not a creator of schemes. In this he proved to be entirely correct for not a sod was ever turned in the Land of Ararat, nor a brick placed upon its welcoming gate.

Ikey was well supplied with funds, despite having lost considerably on the resale of his land, and he spent a short time stocking up on goods to sell in Hobart Town. He also purchased a large quantity of tobacco from Virginia and cigars from the Cuban Islands. He planned to sell the hard goods as quickly as possible upon his arrival on the island and thereafter to open a tobacconist shop so that he might pose as a legitimate merchant.

Ikey reasoned that tobacco, like grog, was a commodity which would always be in demand in a society where men greatly outnumbered women. For this reason he did not venture to take with him a quantity of jewellery. He quickly surmised that trinkets and rings and bright shining things would not be so much sought after on an island consisting largely of convicts, emancipists and troopers. Furthermore, those free settlers who had made Van Diemen's Land their home had done so because their limited resources precluded the purchase of land and influence in the more civilised climes of the West Indies, Canada, America or the Cape of Good Hope.

Ikey took a ship in New York bound for Rio, where he hoped to join a vessel from England bound for New South Wales. In later years he would talk of this voyage as a moment when he thought the end was nigh. The ship had no sooner passed the island of Trinidad, in the temperate latitudes of the Caribbean, than the mercury in the barometer dropped alarmingly and the vessel became becalmed. Ikey would recall how there was a complete stillness as though the silence impregnated and thickened the air. There was no breath of wind and the sea grew flat as a sheet of rolled metal until not even the single slap of a wave upon the prow of the ship could be heard.

The captain, no stranger to conditions in these parts, ordered the portholes to be shut, hatches battened down and new rope was brought to secure what cargo remained on deck. Then he furled canvas and waited for the tropical cyclone to hit.

Slowly a sound, as though the sea itself had given off a soft sigh, grew into an ear-splitting whistle and soon became a ferocious howling. It was as though the forces of chaos had gathered above the ship to plan its total destruction.

The flat sea rose suddenly to mountainous proportions. An aft stay snapped like a twig though no responding crack was heard to penetrate the wail of the wind. The ship, a cork upon the sea, plunged deep into each troughed wave and then rode towards its crest seventy feet above the prow.

Huge seas smashed over the vessel so that below decks the wash came up to the waist and all felt they must surely perish, though sickness forbade them contemplating their lives. Besides, they knew with desperate certainty that no God existed with power sufficient to hear their repentant cries above the raging gale.

On the morning of the third day the cyclone left them and, once again, a benign sun twinkled on the calm blue waters of the South Atlantic. While no single pieces of cargo lashed to the deck remained, the damage to the vessel was surprisingly slight. The repair of several broken stays and rigging was all that was necessary to allow them to continue the voyage. Ikey arrived in Rio much shaken by the experience though none the worse for wear.

Of Rio we have spoken before and Ikey, ever active in 'turning a penny', spent his time selling the trinkets he had been unable to dispose of before closing his Broadway shop.

He thought little of the Latinos and even less of the mosquitoes which swarmed in from the surrounding mangrove swamps at night. Ikey had no eye for the watery plumes of splashing fountains, and even the dirt and squalor to be found in the wide avenues was not to his familiar taste. It was therefore with alacrity that he accepted passage, despite some inconvenience of arrangement, on the
Coronet,
an English ship bound most fortuitously for Van Diemen's Land.

Ikey boarded the ship under the name of Sloman, and it must be assumed that he crossed the palm of the captain most generously, for no berth remained on board. Dr William Henry Browne, LL.D., soon to be Hobart's colonial chaplain, was on deck taking morning prayers when his tiny cabin was forced open on the captain's orders and a berth added to accommodate the generous Mr Sloman.

Dr Browne arrived back to find his books and baggage piled in a most haphazard manner to one side of the tiny cabin, and a Hebrew personage ensconced where they had once lain in a well-ordered convenience. The clergyman, who was of a naturally choleric disposition, demanded that Ikey be removed, though without success, whereupon he took great umbrage and showed no grace or charity whatsoever towards his fellow passenger, who meanwhile remained quietly seated with his arms folded and said not a syllable to offend during the cleric's entire conniption.

However, Ikey's mute tolerance was not to last. While he was well accustomed to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, a long and tedious voyage is best peppered with an ongoing debate, whether this be an acrimonious or a pleasant one. Therefore Ikey, unable to win his cabin partner with affable conversation, amused himself by baiting the learned Dr Browne with matters of the Anglican religion, of which Ikey knew a surprising amount. This vexatious debate, in which Ikey did not fail to score some telling points on the resurrection and the Holy Trinity, did nothing to improve the temper of God's representative on board. No sooner had the clergyman landed in Hobart than he hastened to Colonel George Arthur with a burden of bitter complaint against the vile Mr Sloman.

This proved an altogether disastrous beginning for Ikey, as it brought the full attention of the governor to his presence on the island. Colonel Arthur, himself a devout believer, accepted Dr Browne's version of the voyage without question and promised that the blasphemous newcomer would be watched with an eagle eye.

Nor did it take long for Ikey to be discovered for his true self. He foolishly moved in with the Newmans as a lodger, where his very presence with Hannah in the tiny cottage caused jocular speculation about the nature of the bed he occupied. As soon as he walked the streets there were people who were quick to recognise him, Hobart Town being the enforced home of many of his old colleagues and not a few of his former customers.

'Oh, Ikey me boy, me boy! How are ya? Blow me down, but I'm glad to see ya! What a cursed lucky fellow yerv been, escapin' the rope and thereafter the boat. How are ya, m'boy?'

Other remarks were not as well intended. 'I say, there goes Ikey Solomon - he used to fence me swag, the cursed rogue! Were it not for him I should not be here now!'

Ikey, though his intelligence must have warned him otherwise, chose to ignore these remarks, walking on without appearing to recognise his verbal assailant or, if forced to respond, he would look upon the speaker with incurious eyes.

'You're quite mistaken, my dear, very much and entirely mistaken. I am not him whom you suppose I am, though I am pleased enough to make your acquaintance.' He would extend a long, thin hand. 'Sloman, recently off the
Coronet,
tobacconist by way of trade. A fine display of Cuban cigars and other inhalatory delights await your pleasure in my Liverpool Street establishment.'

Ikey had lost no time opening up as a tobacconist and all at once he became the best of his kind in town, his American stock being far superior to the leaf grown on the mainland of Australia, or imported from Dutch Batavia or the Cape of Good Hope. When complimented over his cigars he'd roll his eyes and grin knowingly. 'Ah, the secret be they roll 'em on the sweat of a nigger girl's thighs!'

However much Arthur might fume, his solicitor-general advised him that there were no grounds available for Ikey's arrest unless he committed a felony on the island. Until Colonel Arthur had written to England and acquainted the under-secretary of the colonial office of Ikey's whereabouts so that a warrant could be issued for his arrest in the colony, his iniquitous quarry was as free as a lark.

Ikey, most eager to show Hannah that he had turned over a new leaf and was determined to become a devoted family man, bid his two elder sons leave New South Wales and join their mother in Hobart Town. He then set up John, the eldest, as a general merchant, with Moses his brother as his junior partner. Their establishment was stocked mostly with the hard goods Ikey had transported from America.

John and Moses Solomon would soon prosper, though gratitude would not be Ikey's reward for so swiftly reuniting his family and increasing their material well-being. Their indifference to their father is not impossible to understand, as they had no opportunity in their childhood to know Ikey, nor were they ever given a single reason to love him. They had, however, been instructed in every possible vilification of their father by their much beloved mother.

Almost from Ikey's arrival, Hannah commenced to quarrel with her husband, drawing her family into the arguments on her side. She had become convinced, and soon convinced them, that she had been made a scapegoat and was carrying Ikey's sentence.

With that peculiar logic of which women are sometimes capable, Hannah had also convinced herself that Ikey had somehow bribed Bob Marley to plant the stolen watch in the biscuit tin. Though no possible logic could explain such a bizarre scheme, Hannah was nevertheless quite blind to reason on this issue, and saw it as part of Ikey's grand plan to get her to part with her half of the combination to the safe. Thereafter, she knew with certainty, he would abscond with the contents, leaving her, whether free or convict, as a destitute prisoner on this God-forsaken island.

Affairs in the Newman household soon reached a point where Hannah's disagreeable manner even overcame the patience of the mild-mannered Mrs Newman, who demanded of her husband that he ask Ikey to leave and that he send Hannah back to the Female Factory. Richard Newman was, it must be supposed, either a weak or an honest man, the latter being so unusual in a police officer as to make it reasonable to suggest that the first quality formed a large part of his nature. If he returned Hannah to the authorities he would be obliged to return an amount of twenty pounds in lieu of the remaining three months of the accommodation agreement he had struck with John Solomon. If he should return Hannah, he found himself open to blackmail as he had been foolish enough to issue Ikey's eldest son with a receipt which would now prove his complicity.

Newman begged his wife to allow the Solomon family to remain for the three months. He pointed out that he had already spent the whole amount of the year's stipend on extensions to their cottage, and had no way of paying back the twenty pounds. In addition, he observed that Ikey's contribution of rent was paying for furnishings which they could otherwise not contemplate owning. Mrs Newman, a good and faithful woman, agreed that they should honour the agreement until it expired, whereupon, she made her husband promise, Hannah and her children would be returned to the authorities and Ikey asked to leave.