George and Mud had worked on Mud’s family’s farm when her brothers were in the army and her father in the air force. They looked so brown, so tall, impossibly strong. They laughed so easily, and strode along the streets as if there could never be anything around a corner to be afraid of.
Johannes liked them both. They were older, but didn’t condescend. They were kind, an understanding kindness, the kindness of people who had known pain and fear too. George didn’t even seem to mind a stranger sharing his bedroom, a strange family sharing his home, a family who knew his mother from a time he hadn’t shared, and who loved her.
He shared his books too, a whole bookcase of them in the bedroom, another bookcase in the hall, and a bookcase in the living room mostly filled with second-hand paperbacks that Frau Marks had bought. Many of George’s books were textbooks, and every book in the house was in English. None had leather covers. But to be in a house where books were loved, where ideas were shared around the table at dinner . . . to be in a house, not a barracks. A house . . .
The houses all around were shabbier still. ‘It is a slum,’ said Frau Marks cheerfully. ‘There are much better houses in Australia. But this is near the university and it was cheap.’ She had made a tiny front garden of bright flowers that bloomed even in the winter, and painted more in a frieze on the fresh white walls of the hall.
The house also had a big dining room, a dim kitchen with old linoleum and a gas stove that spluttered. It had a backyard that was mostly clothes line and baked concrete, with an outdoor toilet and a laundry that smelled of mould and mice, a living room with a bed that was used as a sofa during the day. The elderly couple, whom George called Auntie Thel and Uncle Ron, slept on the sofa when they visited from the country, always bringing two big baskets of jam and fruit and vegetables, butter in glass jars, and a big hunk of sheep meat wrapped in white paper and then brown, as if there was no food to buy in the city.
There was a lot. Australian food had been rationed too, in the war, though there had always been plenty to eat, even if some things were in short supply as so much had to be sent to feed the armies. But now even butter rationing had ended. Roast rabbits even at the railway station, sold by a shabby man in a grey coat and costing only pennies; ham and beef shops where you could buy tasteless sausages and corned beef; butchers with whole windows displaying different cuts of meat, mostly sheep, but some beef and even, sometimes, pork.
Frau Marks served them roast pork with apple sauce on their first night, and they cried together, even George, with Mud hugging Frau Marks fiercely. Mud did many kind things fiercely. She reminded Johannes a little of Helga, though he was not sure why, for Mud was tall and brown and Helga short and fair-skinned, except for her birthmark, and she limped. Helga was quiet and Mud was loud, singing even on the bus, so some passengers frowned but others joined in. ‘Click go the shears, boys, click, click, click . . .’
Mud explained the words to him, how shearing sheds worked and Australian elections, and how Australians were the best tennis players in the world and had won almost every sport at the Empire Games, and why Mr Menzies the Prime Minister and everyone else who thought there were reds under the beds were two bob short of a quid, and what ‘reds under the beds’ and ‘two bob short of a quid’ meant, and which was the best shop to buy ice cream.
School. A second-hand uniform. A classroom, sitting at ink-stained desks with sludge at the bottom of the ink wells, instead of lessons on the grass or slouching on bunks. One teacher who taught the class everything, instead of many: a teacher who knew less than any of those who had taught him back in the camp, who didn’t like a boy who knew about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, when clearly he did not. Boys who called him ‘Weedy Weeny’ instead of his real name, and ‘Swatty Pants’ for doing too well in class.
He bore it all, till one day he forgot his lunch and Mud delivered it.
‘Hey, Weedy!’ yelled one of the tormentors, a boy with green snot in one nostril and scabby knees. ‘What have you got for lunch? Reffo cat sausages? Want me to spit in it to make it taste better?’
Mud walked calmly over to the boy who had yelled. Her fist shot out. The boy screamed, holding his bleeding nose.
Mud grabbed Johannes’s hand. ‘Come on,’ she said.
She took him to a milk bar and shouted him a banana split, which was a sliced banana covered with ice cream and then with chocolate sauce and then with nuts and a cherry on top. They discussed Freud and his theories of the subconscious mind as they spooned up ice cream and sauce, and how people who felt insecure were more likely to be the ones who subconsciously feared the stranger, or anyone whom they thought had more than they did, money or intelligence.
‘I shouldn’t have biffed the kid,’ admitted Mud.
‘Biffed?’
‘Clonked him on the nose like that. It’s bad enough that he has to be himself, without me plonking him one.’
It was almost like sitting under the beech trees, talking with Helga. Or rather it was nothing like talking with Helga, who never biffed anyone, but who loved to understand the world as much as he did, and Mud and George.
Would Helga ever have the chance to eat a banana split?
He missed her with an ache that was part fear. She was the only part of the life-within-the-ogre he wished to be reunited with. He had changed. Australia had changed him, as well as the changes that came anyway as you grew and matured.
Helga must be changing too. Could the old Helga-and-Johannes ever exist again?
The next week Johannes went to a smaller school, run by nuns. The nuns didn’t know about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle either, but they looked interested when he explained it. If kids misbehaved, they lashed them with a cane, on the fingers, but that was right and proper for a teacher when students did not do what they were supposed to do.
Johannes did, and he was happy. Almost happy. And no one called him ‘reffo’ in the school grounds.
He could not play games, not even cricket — his chest was bad, from being so ill during the war, said Vati, which meant he got out of breath easily. On sports afternoons he stayed in the tiny library, reading. Books were his friends. His only friends, for even if no one called him ‘reffo’, no one asked him to join their group either.
Weekends were the worst. George and Mud studied, or went to the pictures with their ‘mates’, which was Australian for ‘friend’. Once they asked him to come too, but he felt so out of place, so much younger, and obviously there only because of their kindness, that he refused their later invitations.
Vati worked at a hospital now, not just during the week but on weekends, and Mutti at another hospital for women. Their long days and too-full weeks were partly because Australia did not have enough doctors, so the ones they had needed to work more. But mostly it was because of a thing called ‘overtime’, which meant that the longer you worked, the more money you received.
‘Soon we can rent our own house,’ said Vati to Johannes at their early breakfast one Saturday before he and Mutti went to work. He smiled. ‘And we have a surprise for you.’ He reached under the table, then held out a case to Johannes. A violin case.
Johannes opened it. It was a violin, not, say, an unusual container for chocolates or books.
‘We have arranged for you to have violin lessons again,’ said Mutti, smiling. ‘Just like at home.’
Home was not just another land, but another world, a world too frightening to think back to. And, besides, he had never enjoyed playing the violin. He had just been too young to say, ‘I’m never going to be good at this.’ But the gift of both violin and lessons obviously meant so much to his parents. He almost smiled. Now he was too old to say, ‘No. I don’t want to.’
Vati handed him a piece of paper with an address written on it. ‘Here, at two o’clock this afternoon. The teacher’s name is Mr Mittelfeld.’ He grinned, as if he was giving Johannes a lifetime ticket to all the banana splits he wanted to eat. ‘You must have every advantage. That is why we
work so hard.’
‘Tennis lessons too, perhaps,’ said Mutti blithely.
‘No, not tennis,’ said Johannes firmly. But he accepted the violin. Perhaps by the end of the year he could find an excuse to give up the lessons.
Mr Mittelfeld’s home was part of a bigger house, half an hour’s walk from Frau Marks’s. A coconut with No. 5, the apartment number, written on it sat outside the peeling green door where Johannes knocked.
An old man opened the door. He peered at Johannes through thick glasses.
‘Johannes Wolcheki, sir,’ said Johannes.
‘Ah. Come in. Come in. So, you are a musician.’
‘No,’ said Johannes. ‘I just learned a little, years ago. I haven’t played since.’
‘But you love music?’ The words were strangely intense.
‘I don’t know,’ said Johannes. Something about this crooked man, with his bulging crooked hands, brought forth honesty. He hadn’t enjoyed the dances at the camp much, but sometimes he enjoyed listening to the music on Frau Marks’s radio.
The old man coughed. ‘So. Play.’
Johannes took out the violin, tightened the strings and rubbed resin on the bow as the old man watched. ‘You have a good ear,’ he said. ‘You know how to tune a violin without a tuning whistle. Now play.’
Johannes played. One minute. Two.
‘Enough!’ The old man held up his deformed hand. ‘No, you are no musician.’ He looked at Johannes sternly. ‘I do not teach for money only. I was once the principal violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic.’ His sleeve slid up his arm as he gestured, and Johannes saw the tattoo.
So this is why Mutti and Vati sent me here, he thought. Not just so their son would be properly cultured, but to help a fellow refugee who needed students and fees.
‘If I can no longer play for an orchestra, I can teach those who will be great one day. You will not be great. You will not even be good,’ the old man said matter-of-factly.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Johannes. He began to put the violin back in its case, loosening the bow to nestle it in its holder.
‘Stop,’ said Mr Mittelfeld. He crossed to a frayed floral sofa, a bit like a carpet on legs, and picked up a violin, older than Johannes’s, dark wood with a giant scratch in the base. The old man lifted his bow.
It was not music. Or not just music. It was the land beyond the ogre, a place where ogres had no power. Eagles soared and trees sang and wolves forgot to savage, but lifted their noses to the moon to join the song.
At last the old man put down his bow. He looked at Johannes. ‘You will never play well,’ he said. ‘I cannot teach you to play well. But I can teach you music. I will see you next Saturday, at two o’clock.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Johannes. He shook Mr Mittelfeld’s hand, waited for him to stop coughing, then said, ‘May I bring you some cherry strudel? Frau Marks, who we live with, makes good strudel.’
‘I would love cherry strudel,’ said Mr Mittelfeld. He smiled and, once again, Johannes felt the ogre did not matter. ‘A student brought me a coconut last week. A coconut! And it is warm enough to wear shorts and sandals even in winter. Who could do that in Berlin?’ The shabby room with its smell of old cats faded as Mr Mittelfeld added, ‘Life is very good.’
Chapter 36
JOHANNES
AUSTRALIA, DECEMBER 1950
How could life be good?
Because the ogre hadn’t vanished, even though they had come across the world. Nor had they even reached ‘home’ yet. They were still travelling, still perched in Frau Marks’s house, even if it was a kind house, an ordered house, filled with the scent of apple cake or peach dumplings or veal chops stewed with tomatoes and onion (but no garlic, which Frau Marks said was impossible to buy).
But Helga and Frau Schmidt were still across the ocean, in the land where soldiers of two foreign armies stopped trains, and food was stew with shreds of turnip, and coffee made of acorns, and no milk to make Helga’s bones grow big and strong . . .
He opened the door of Frau Marks’s house with his key. ‘Hello?’ he called, because that was what Mud had said Australians did when they entered a house, though sometimes they called, ‘Cooee.’
No answer. Mutti and Vati would still be at work, George and Mud studying or with their friends, Frau Marks at the library, perhaps. It would be St Nicholas’s Eve soon, but at the camps few of them had celebrated it. How could St Nicholas come to a DP camp? Even their first Christmas in Australia had just been a church service and handmade presents, his family too bewildered to change such a big custom as Christmas. And did Christmas trees even grow in Australia?
The sun glared onto the concrete gardens, the bitumen road, the roofs that squatted side by side. Christmas did not feel right here, in summer heat . . .
He drifted into the kitchen, cut a big hunk of white bread with its cracking black top crust, smeared it with half-melted butter, for the iceman only came once a week to leave a block of ice in the cool safe and it had melted by now, then rummaged for a pot of plum jam. At least Australia had good jam . . .
Rat-a-tat-tat! He looked up at the sound of the door knocker. One of George’s or Mud’s friends, probably — maybe the one who had the record player. He wondered if Mr Mittelfeld had a record player. But perhaps Mr Mittelfeld had symphonies enough in his memory.
He opened the door. ‘George isn’t —’ he began, and stopped.
Helga stood there, with Frau and Herr Schmidt.
Chapter 37
JOHANNES
AUSTRALIA, DECEMBER 1950
‘How? When?’ He had somehow ushered them into the living room, had even made coffee, real coffee, with Helga’s help, and found the apple cake that had been made fresh that morning.
‘But I wrote!’ said Helga. ‘I wrote three times a week!’ She looked the same. She looked so different! Taller, her hair cut short and curling, her birthmark faded so it was just the faintest shadow, beautiful in a blue and white dress that looked like it had never been part of another dress, or curtains or a sheet.
‘I didn’t get any letters!’ But they both knew how unreliable mail still was in Germany.
‘You wouldn’t have got the one saying we were on our way,’ said Frau Schmidt. ‘It would have travelled on the same ship as us, or even a later one.’
‘I wanted to be at the station to meet you!’
‘We arrived last night. And slept and slept. And then came here.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘A friend rented two rooms for us in his sister’s house,’ began Herr Schmidt. ‘I only reached Sydney yesterday myself . . .’
‘The rooms are only fifteen minutes’ walk from here,’ said Frau Schmidt. ‘So we can all meet and talk German.’
They had been talking in German, Johannes realised. He hadn’t noticed.
‘And . . . Vati . . .’ Helga still hesitated before the word, ‘has been given a job on a big new building.’
‘Not as an engineer yet,’ said Herr Schmidt. ‘But as an engineer’s assistant. A friend and I have begun our own construction company.’
The front door opened. And Frau Schmidt and Frau Marks were in each other’s arms, and crying, and Helga and Johannes were somehow in the huddle. And two cups of coffee and the rest of the apple cake later George and Mud arrived, then Mutti and Vati, more hugs and tears and exclamations, and silences that ended with everyone laughing because there was so much that could never be put into words.
‘And after all this no homecoming feast,’ mourned Frau Marks. ‘Only chops for dinner! But I will make pancakes. Pancakes with sour cream — I must use lemons and fresh cream as they have no sour cream here — and plum jam from Mud’s mother.’
‘My mum makes bonzer plum jam,’ said Mud.
‘And potato cakes . . .’
Johannes expected Helga to go to the kitchen with the women. But she sat on the sofa, so lovely in her blue and white dress, as Vati and Herr Schmidt talked about blocks of land for sa
le at a place, Killara, where new houses were being built, where they might each build a house; about Johannes’s school and how Helga should go there too; about rent prices and what exams in English involved and how many tonnes their ships had been . . .
. . . and Helga watched him and he watched Helga, and they smiled.
And it was almost — almost — like they had come home.
Chapter 38
FRAU MARKS
AUSTRALIA, DECEMBER 1950
‘But the real question is, what would the reasonable man say?’ pronounced George, sitting with his elbows on the kitchen table with Mud and Johannes and Helga, sounding so like the lawyer he would one day be that Frau Marks wished, desperately, his father could see him. ‘That’s the foundation of common law. Is it reasonable to ban the Communist Party?’
‘Reasonable people may not all agree,’ argued Johannes earnestly.
‘Ha. Where are you going to find a reasonable man?’ said Mud. ‘Blokes aren’t reasonable. Ask any woman.’
Helga laughed. It was so good to hear that solemn girl laugh, thought Frau Marks. Sometimes she wondered what Helga had been through. Not a concentration camp, but . . . something . . . Frau Marks felt Helga kept hidden, perhaps even from her parents. Frau Marks was experienced with secrets. She knew enough to see when others had them too.
Most of her own life was a kind of secret now. She would not burden George with what she had endured in the concentration camp, or had been forced to do there to survive. Neither her son nor his children should ever have to carry memories like that.
Even her life as a happy child and joyous young mother must be cut away. Because in those days she had been German, an enemy, and the enemy had killed the Peaslakes’ son, the young man George regarded as an older brother, even though they had never met in person.
The Australians she knew excused her from being German because of her time in the concentration camp, as if the tattoo on her arm divorced her from her country. And yes, perhaps that tattoo meant that for a time her country had renounced her. But she had been happily German, was still German, even if she was becoming Australian too, hummed German songs and had to stop herself, longed to recite the German poems that George’s father had loved so much, that the child who was now George had once loved too.
Goodbye, Mr Hitler Page 12
