A Promised Land?

by Alan Collins

  A Saturday in September, three months or so from now, had been fixed as the date for my barmitzvah. Mrs Pearlman arrived one afternoon and commanded me to appear before her. She pinched and prodded me and declared that I had grown up since she had brought us here. “Almost a man, eh Jacob? And that’s what I want to talk to you about. Who would you like to ask to your barmitzvah — from your family, I mean?”

  Who indeed! When father had married Carmel his family had thenceforth ignored him. Our mother’s family, storekeepers in a western New South Wales town, had not forgiven Carmel for marrying their former son-in-law and thereafter maintained only the most tenuous of contacts. That left Uncle Siddy. Mrs Pearlman was droning on about having all the children in the home present and, of course, Mr and Mrs Goetz. She herself would also be there. She might even be able to persuade some of the Committee to come, she said — although, you know Jacob, they are such busy people.

  “I want our Uncle Siddy to come, more than anyone else.”

  Mrs Pearlman was prepared for this. She put a hand over mine. “I suppose, Jacob, you’ve been wondering why Mr Kaiser hasn’t been to visit you?”

  ‘‘Not really. I know he’s in the country buying scrap gold like he used to do with father.’’

  “He hasn’t written to you, has he?”

  “Too busy, I suppose,” I said defensively. I withdrew my hand from hers.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that your Uncle Siddy is in gaol. She stood up and smoothed her dress. ” It would be better if you did not see him again.’’

  “But that’s not forever, is it, Mrs Pearlman? I mean, people do get out of gaol. There’s ages to go before I’m barmitzvah. Maybe Uncle Siddy will get out by then.” Belatedly I thought to ask, “What has he done?”

  “Well I suppose you might as well have the truth, Jacob. Mr Kaiser found the man who was your stepmother’s, ah, friend — the time payment man — and er, he, well, he assaulted him so badly he put him in hospital.”

  Good on Uncle Siddy! Bloody wonderful! At last there was some justice in the world. I could just picture that sleek mongrel in a hospital bed swathed in bandages and plaster.

  “Mmm, that’s not good is it, Mrs Pearlman?” Let her figure out which I meant — the assault or that Uncle Siddy was in gaol. Out of the window I could see Solly hanging upside-down from a parallel bar. He and Manfred were egging a girl on to do the same. While it was all right for me to feel proud about Uncle Siddy beating up that swine and even being in gaol for it, it was quite a different matter to tell Solly, who would trumpet it far and wide. I would pitch him a yarn that Uncle Siddy was way up north on business.

  Mrs Pearlman was rabbiting on about getting me a new suit for the barmitzvah. “Well, maybe not quite new, Jacob. I happen to know that Eric, our Treasurer’s son, has outgrown his barmitzvah suit and he’s just about your size.”

  I gritted through clenched teeth, “Don’t forget to ask if he’s finished with his shoes too, Mrs Pearlman.” As a final thrust at her, I called her to the window. The girl was now hanging upside-down from the bars, her skirt over her head. Solly and Manfred were doubled up with laughter. Mrs Pearlman glanced briefly at them and to my surprise made no comment. She linked her arm in mine and asked me to escort her to her car. As she settled behind the wheel and pulled on her gloves she said, “Being barmitzvah gives you responsibilities of manhood and that includes seeing your young brother stays out of trouble. Do you understand me, Jacob?” She let the clutch in savagely and the car shot off, shaving the trees overhanging the drive.

  Bill was aimlessly dribbling a soccer ball over the rough ground. After the dust of Mrs Pearlman’s departure had settled he maneouvred the ball to my feet to stop dead in front of me and stood with one foot on it as though it was a trophy he had won. “I played centre-forward for our team at the Gymnasium,” he said. I looked blankly at him. He explained that in Germany, a Gymnasium was the high school. He nodded his head down the driveway. “What did she want, Jack?” He rolled the ball on to the toe of his shoe and kicked it into his arms.

  I said, “Has any one in your family ever been in gaol, Bill?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Have they?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong like stealing or things like that.”

  “Who?”

  Bill dropped the ball and sat on it. With his finger he drew in the dust a square with bars. “My uncle — my mother’s brother. They said he was a communist.”

  “Is that bad — like beating somebody up?” I asked hopefully.

  Bill shrugged. “I don’t really know. Uncle Joachim used to go around sticking up posters. My father warned him about that and once he gave me a hiding for helping him.” He kicked the ball high in the air and headed it. “Come on Jack, you can be goalie and I’ve got to get it past you.”

  I positioned myself between two struggling saplings while Bill dribbled the ball to within a few yards of me, then shot with great accuracy. Mr Goetz came out and joined us. Bill passed the ball to him, he shot it back and before I knew it they were shouting ‘goal!’ Solly and Manfred, attracted by the shouting, joined in. Solly picked up the ball and ran with it. There were cries of ‘‘Foul!’’ from Bill and Mr Goetz. “Tackle him!” I yelled. Manfred lumbered after Solly but had no hope of catching him. Solly, in true Rugby style, veered round behind the goal-posts and triumphantly deposited the ball on the ground. “How’s that for a try!” he told the dumb-founded Goetz and Bill. Manfred rolled on the ground in near hysterics. “Oh, will we ever teach these two how to play soccer,” he gasped.

  The game broke up as the stooped, black-coated figure of Mr Klapper limped up the driveway. I was about to have my last barmitzvah lesson before the great day.

  FIVE

  Haazinu is the Hebrew word opening the first verse of Deuteronomy XXXII: ‘Give ear, ye heavens, and I will speak.’

  The portion of the Torah that I had learned was designated by this opening word. At nearly fourteen years of age, nine months later than was usual, I would have the effrontery to stand before a congregation and recite the final admonitory words of Moses as he castigated his errant people. Mr Klapper had constant recourse to his bottle of schnapps as he tutored me in harmonics and reading. The thick and thin Hebrew lettering blurred before my eyes, my voice refused to emulate his reedy example. Some of his teaching I retained. I loved the dietary laws, with their references to aromatic spices and ingredients like something out of the Arabian Nights. I could now recite the morning prayer as perfectly as Bill and I loved the all-enveloping safety of the prayer shawl. Never mind that it was not new, that it was redolent of mothballs, that the gold embroidery now hung in ragged slivers.

  Wonder of wonders! The suit obtained by Mrs Pearlman fitted me well. On the breast pocket I could still see the stitch marks where a school badge had been removed. It reeked of dry-cleaning fluid and as I was about to put the mezuzah in the pants pocket, I discovered a fair-sized hole. Mrs Goetz, who rarely entered the boys’ dormitory, came to inspect me. “Ve are zo proud of you, younger man, are ve not, Bertold? She reached into her overall pocket and produced a white handkerchief still in a cellophane wrap. It was the only thing new that I had on me for this great day.

  It was the last Saturday in August. All the children of the Abraham Samuelson Memorial Home were decked out in their (or somebody’s) best clothes. The girls, like spring flowers, appeared in pretty floral print dresses with precautionary cardigans thrown insouciantly over their shoulders. The Goetzs wore the last of their former Berlin finery, heavy dark woven suits. Mrs Goetz’s was so severe in style that it could easily have been interchangeable with the one her husband wore. Solly had caught a cold during the week. Ruti had been delegated to look after him, a task she performed with just enough affection to make me quite jealous. Mr Goetz consulted his pocket-watch, gave a signal to his wife who set her piston-like legs in motion and the entir
e menage fell in behind her, maintaining this formation on and off bus and tram until it reached the entrance to the Great Synagogue of Sydney.

  Mrs Goetz shepherded the girls upstairs to the ladies’ gallery. Downstairs, in the main hall of the synagogue, three seats in the front pew had been left especially for Mr Goetz, Solly and me. It was a beautiful building with a high vaulted ceiling painted sky-blue, with thousands of stars. Directly in front of me was the massive, elevated reading-desk and behind that, in a proscenium arch like a theatre and covered with embroidered plum-red curtains, stood the Holy Ark. Later in the Sabbath morning service, the curtains would part to reveal a number of Torah scrolls clothed in embroidered mantles and bearing silver breastplates. Hanging from the handles of the scrolls were the same delicate silver ‘pointers’ that Mr Klapper used.

  The office-holders of the synagogue sat in splendid isolation in boxes on either side of the reading-desk. They wore top hats and morning suits and over them their prayer shawls. From the viewpoint of a thirteen-and-a-half-year-old, they looked like severe bloodless men without pity. Yet I recognised one of them as a benefactor of the Abraham Samuelson Memorial Home, a jovial enough man who came once a month in a big car, accompanied by his son, and toured the Home distributing boiled lollies, much to the annoyance of Mrs Goetz. He nodded his shiny topper ever so slightly in acknowledgment of my presence. A long way off, in a side-pew, I saw Bill, and despite a warning elbow from Mr Goetz, I turned around and caught sight of Ruti, up there among the stars.

  Suddenly Mr Goetz was hoisting me to my feet. “You are next, Jacob,” he hissed. The beadle was at the end of the pew beckoning me to follow him. Solly whispered, “Good on yer, Jack!” I squeezed passed the knees, came to the end of the pew and found myself in the aisle, facing the flight of steps that led to the reading-desk. The flowing black gown of the beadle preceded me until, suddenly, there I was, in front of the great desk, the scrolls before me. I was flanked by two rabbis. One bent down and produced a footstool for me to stand on. Just as well; without it my chin rested on the desk! One rabbi passed the other a note. Re read it, tucked it up the sleeve of his black gown, then with a sonorous voice, called out my Hebrew name — Yakov ben Pinchas Ha-Levi.

  For one glorious moment in my life I was not merely Jack Kaiser, son of Felix Kaiser. No! I was a descendant, through a history I barely understood, of the tribe of the Levites and I was the son of Pinchas who was the son of Gideon who was the son of … I was truly somebody with a past, even with a prospect of a future. But now the scrolls were unrolled in front of me and the silver pointer was poised for me to commence my portion.

  ‘‘Zocher,’’ I began and from there on, the melody flowed out of me for what seemed like eternity but was in fact only a few minutes. Six verses and my moment of glory was over. The scrolls were rolled up, I read one further blessing and it was all over. There were polite murmurs of approval and I was being shepherded down the other side of the reading-desk and back to my seat in the pew.

  The service continued but from there on I took no part in it. I sat between Solly and Mr Goetz in a miasma of contentment. I forgave the rabbi who sermonised about the unbounded charity of the benefactors of the Abraham Samuelson Memorial Home who had ‘rescued so many of our brethren from the death camps of Europe’. Perhaps he was not familiar with the sons of fathers who had been pushed off the cliffs of Bondi.

  Solly was sniffling with his cold. The last hymn of the service had been sung, men were removing their prayer shawls, shaking hands with acquaintances and wishing everyone in sight a good Sabbath. Mr Goetz stood up and signalled to his wife in the gallery. Once more we were an orderly assembled group on the pavement outside the synagogue, isolated from outsiders and insulated from contact by the shepherding skills of the Goetz’s.

  I found myself alongside Ruti. In the brilliant spring sunshine she looked lovelier than anything I could imagine. “Such a fine name you have, Jack,” she said.

  ‘‘Yakov ben Pinchas — and of the tribe of Levi.” She took my face in her hands and kissed me on the lips.

  In that instant I felt dizzy, shaken, cold, hot, embarrassed and proud. Manfred’s sniggering went unnoticed. The people surrounding us seemed to melt away and Ruti and I were alone in the middle of that jostling throng. I felt for her hand and it closed gently around mine. Solly was tugging at her sleeve, his nose streaming. I pulled out the new handkerchief that Mrs Goetz had given me. The mezuzah came out with it and made a tinny ringing sound as it hit the pavement. As I picked it up, Ruti said, “What a strange thing to be carrying around with you, Jack.” I pressed it into her hand. “Would you like it?”

  Solly snatched it away from her. ‘‘You can’t have it because it belongs to Jack and me!’’

  Ruti was unperturbed by this. She laughed and said, “Well, perhaps some day Jack, we’ll all share it.” The moment was over; she busied herself organising our departure for the Home. Watching her, I thought, barmitzvah, manhood, call it what you like, I would never be as grown-up as Ruti.

  On the 3rd of September, 1939, a week or so after my barmitzvah, Australia joined England in declaring war on Germany. A few days after that, two Australian military policeman arrived at the Home and took Mr Goetz away. It was a time of bewildering excitement and constant change. Poor, benign Bertold Goetz, displaced defender of German culture, former Berlin accountant and for a brief time, in charge of a Jewish children’s home, was now an enemy alien. He languished for a while in a detention camp in the wheatbelt of New South Wales only to reappear as a sergeant in an Australian army unit loading military supplies for Darwin.

  A tramp steamer left Trieste in early 1940 and after a ten-week voyage that took it to Sydney via the Panama Canal, arrived at Circular Quay with 400 Jewish refugees on board. They had found their way here from the falling cities of Europe from that last free port of embarkation. Many of them had not seen their children for over a year. An international child welfare agency had garnered the children, like a failing but valuable crop, and dispersed them to Canada, England and Australia.

  Among the Trieste steamer’s passengers were the parents of Wolfgang, Ruti and Manfred. Their common plight had united them on the voyage in the face of the crew’s disinterest in their well-being as effectively as the Nazis who had confiscated their property. The women stood at the head of the gangplank drawing their tatty fur coats about them despite the warmth of the morning. The husbands, looking incongruous in velour hats and long dark coats, daringly loosened their ties only to be chided by their wives for failing to observe the correct standards of dress, as befitted European sophisticates arriving in such a gauche country as Australia.

  Down below, the wharf labourers in blue singlets and battered felt hats pushed well back on their heads, mistook them for Italians and called out to the women, “Dona sqeeza da tomato!”

  A sling went over the ship’s side. The refugees watched apprehensively as their last remaining possessions hit the wharf with a thud. Self-important Jewish officials went on board, voices were raised, hands flew in the air and finally the tall, red-haired figure of Mr Willi Schlesinger led the bewildered group ashore.

  For reasons which I could not then fathom, I had shut out any interest in the parents of Bill, Ruti and Manfred. Childish jealousy it may have been but I could not bear their repetitive stories of parental indulgence, their isolation from what I considered the real world. There were even moments when I found myself pleased when, through Nazi actions, their pleasures were restricted. I found myself taking a perverse pleasure in telling exaggerated tales of our life in Bondi, of the Carmel era. Solly backed me up to the hilt, strutting around boasting about his familiarity with police-cars and how we robbed the milko of his milk. We built Uncle Siddy up into a figure of Robin Hood status. We did not have any photographs to show of our father and mother, unlike the others who all had little wallets of pictures that opened out concertina-fashion to show entire families, including grandparents.

  And now they we
re about to be reunited if not with entire families, at least with their parents. A letter on official Abraham Samuelson Memorial Home letter-head, signed by Mrs Pearlman, was posted on the notice board.

  The Committee is pleased to announce the safe arrival

  in Sydney of the parents of the following children

  who are resident in the Home:

  Willi and Clara Schlesinger, parents of Wolfgang.

  Henry and Irma Kahn, parents of Ruti.

  Mitzi Strauss, mother of Manfred.

  They will be permitted to visit the children in the

  Home this Sunday afternoon at 2 pm.

  By order of the Board, Mrs R. Pearlman, Secretary.

  Bill read it with his usual measured calm. He announced, “My father will arrive precisely on time. He will be wearing his Homburg hat and he will carry his briefcase. He will shake my hand and say, ‘How goes it, Wolfgang, is all in order with you?’ My mother will kiss me on the cheek and probably tell me that I have grown.”

  I had no reason to disbelieve him. Bill being Bill — or momentarily reverting to his alter ego, Wolfgang — was right on most matters.

  Ruti’s eyes were swimming in tears. She read the notice over and over, pulling up her socks, pulling down her jumper, combing her hair with her fingers. Nicest of all, she took my arm and squeezed my hand. “Is it not wonderful, Jack?” I felt myself getting warm all over. It certainly was wonderful to have her hand locked in mine, to feel her breast against my arm. ‘Tomorrow they come. We will be together again and …