Scraps of Heaven

by Arnold Zable

  Romek stands beside market-goers weighed down with their weekend spoils. Three watermelons lie on the concrete, their skins sunlit in two-tone greens. A teenage girl holds slabs of beef wrapped in butcher’s paper stained with blood. Beside her stands an elderly woman clad in widow’s black; she holds two live chickens, one under each arm.

  Romek’s eyes are fixed upon the public baths opposite the shelter. Its five domes perch on the roof like tiled skullcaps. Two overcrowded trams go by, and Romek remains while the passengers board. He stays put until there is no one in the shelter except for the woman in black. She is also waiting for a more comfortable ride, but the third tram is almost full. Romek boards it, nevertheless, and behind him trails the widow with the hapless chooks.

  ‘No live animals are allowed on the tram,’ says the conductor as the widow struggles on board.

  ‘Why no?’ she says.

  ‘That is the law,’ he replies.

  The widow takes hold of the chickens and twists their necks. Tschrk. Tschrk. The passengers flinch at the sound. One sharp movement of the wrists is all it requires. It is over before the conductor can open his mouth. ‘No live chicken now,’ she concludes with a triumphant smile.

  Romek’s suitcase rests at his feet like a faithful dog. He clings to the overhead support and leans to the left, the sunny side. The tram lurches on the rails. The widow retains her superior smile. The conductor scowls as he retrieves her fare. A young couple lean against each other. A man in overalls is engrossed in the sports pages of the Sun.

  A breeze funnels through the doors, and cools Romek’s unshaven cheeks. When a seat becomes vacant he sits down beside a woman who holds a pocket knife and a slab of cheese. The cheese perspires in the mid-afternoon light. The woman chews as she cuts herself another slice. Romek looks at the red-brick facades of Melbourne University. It is a sedate enclave, even more so on a listless Saturday afternoon, inaccessible to those on the outside. Student residents stroll in and out of the university grounds with the ease of those who belong.

  The tram swerves right from Swanston into Elgin Street. It passes a pub, a two-storey bank, and yet another pub as it curves into Lygon Street. Australia is a land of corner banks and pubs, muses Romek. They rise above the surrounding houses like neighbourhood temples constructed of stone, fashioned by master builders and expert masons, built to impress and last.

  He is on the homeward run. Between the bars of the cemetery he glimpses crucifixes and headstones. On the opposite side of the tram the black widow is dozing. Drooping from the seat, the chickens’ limp heads rock from side to side. Their combs are a startling red; their eyes are open, suspended in permanent surprise. The seats are emptying. Stop sixteen is drawing close. Romek steps off and retreats on Fenwick Street, shoulders slumped, a spent man with a tchemodan.

  Romek is too tired to stop and talk, too tired to even glance at his son. He passes Josh in the kitchen, and makes his way to the front room. His steps quicken as he enters the passage. One last effort and he is through the bedroom door. He kicks off his shoes. This final delay as he undresses is an agony. He peels back the covers with one sharp tug, and slips into bed.

  It is heaven, this moment of giving way on a Saturday afternoon. His face is cooled by the bed linen. The bedroom is a palatial suite and he, a king living it up with his harem of blankets, pillows and sheets. Within minutes he is asleep. Josh tiptoes by the closed door, and again he hurries from the house out into the streets.

  Valerio Bianchi emerges from his uncle’s house jogging. He clutches a soccer ball to his chest. He drops the ball on the verandah, opens the gate, and dribbles it onto Canning Street.

  Dressed in tight-fitting white shorts, black-sleeved skivvy, and white runners, he is a neatly packaged man, aged about twenty-five. His tight cropped hair and muscular body are offset by a refinement in movement that strikes Josh as odd. He leans his bicycle against a poplar and notes the bow in Valerio’s legs. Valerio prances rather than runs. He juggles the ball on his right boot, traps it on his toes, and sends it spiralling overhead. He pirouettes, catches it on the heel of his boot, and brings it to ground on the median strip. It is an impressive debut.

  ‘My nephew!’ exclaims old Bianchi from the verandah.

  ‘He is a campione. He play for Napoli.’

  Valerio weaves a space between the growing band of onlookers and aims a full-blooded drive at the trunk of the poplar. He regains the ball with a subtle feint on the rebound. No one has seen such movements on the block. He points at Josh’s bicycle. ‘Plis,’ he says. ‘I can have?’ He mounts the bike and cycles in widening circles.

  As the bicycle gains a momentum of its own, Valerio begins his ascent. His bottom leads the way. His bloodless fingers grip the bar. The fully bent wrists take the weight. His arms are at full stretch, his elbows locked. His feet rise skyward, in one body-length thrust. For five seconds he manages to balance until the bike begins to wobble, and he dismounts just in time.

  Valerio is not yet done. He returns to the verandah, dons a pair of boxing gloves, and jabs at imaginary rivals as he darts about. Valerio is showing off, exhibiting his skills. He is a young man fresh from Napoli, signalling his arrival, stamping his presence upon alien turf. His suitcases can still be seen in the hallway where they had been left the previous night.

  ‘Bravo artista!’ exclaims old Bianchi.

  ‘Bullshit artista,’ sniggers Big Al, who has joined the crowd.

  But Josh is impressed. He has never seen such bow-legged elegance, a body so finely tuned. Yes, Valerio is a true artista. A bit odd perhaps, but he has successfully pleaded his case. With one last flurry of punches he turns, and vanishes into the house as abruptly as he had stepped out.

  The vacant lot is a paddock of long grass dying in the sun, a mess of broken clocks, disembowelled mattresses, shredded bedsheets and dirt-encrusted cards, the remnant of games long past. Dandelions and weeds rise from mounds of rubbish. A dog sniffs through the undergrowth, a grey cat sprawls in a cardboard box, asleep under a hot sun, while Josh sits back on a discarded sofa, the sports pages of the Age newspaper in hand.

  He smokes cast-off cigarettes. A gaggle of younger children carve tunnels in the dirt. ‘Hoad Beats Gonzales in Marathon Tennis Duel’, the headline proclaims. Josh reads the sports pages to the last detail. Olympic sprint champion Dawn Fraser is ‘Out to Better World Record’, at a swimming meet next Wednesday night. Australian batsman Les Favell has ‘Starred Again in Bright Hand’, against Transvaal. World-class milers, Merv Lincoln and John Landy, are due to clash at Olympic Park. There is a straightforwardness in the sport reports: it is all numbers, records, simple forecasts and yesterday’s results. Josh checks the trotting guides, even though he has little idea of what trotting is about.

  When he has read his fill he lies back on a patch of dirt. He prefers the closeness of the ground, the solidity of the earth. The hum of a motor car can be heard on the rim of his world. The rustle of long grass is the last sound he hears until he awakes, an hour later, to the aroma of smoke rising from an incinerator in a backyard nearby. Josh runs his hand over the cooling dirt. The sun is on its descent, its touch mild. He stretches his arms and yawns. He would do anything to stretch the minutes, to elongate the hours. To stop time.

  Zofia comes home from the dentist’s by the back lane. Her jaws are clamped on blood-soaked wads of cotton wool. The blood is still fresh upon her gums. She enters the house by the kitchen door. Her face is white with a stoic tightness that Josh has come to know so well.

  Even though her mouth is swollen, an hour later, as she prepares the evening meal, she recounts her tale. It is not the first time Josh has heard it. She is proud of this tale. It is her signature story, the way she defines herself and maintains her self-belief. When she was a child, pre-war, in the city of Krakow, the dentist had removed several teeth without sedation. She had borne it in silence. The dentist had been impressed that one so young could be so brave.

  ‘I was just ten years old. I
did not utter a sound. I endured it.’ She pauses, turns to the stove, adjusts the flames beneath the cooking pots; then returns to the table for a brief rest. ‘The dentist said I was the bravest girl he had ever known.’

  Zofia sits at the table and talks of teeth and endurance, and of primitive operations conducted in a city of palaces and tombs. She has now had all her teeth removed. It is cheaper this way, the dentist had advised her. It had saved the cost of fillings, the repair of each tooth one by one. The effects of the injection are on the wane. ‘Yes, when I was a child, the dentist said I was the bravest girl he had ever known,’ she repeats, as she clamps down on the pain.

  And Josh is a little afraid of this dark-eyed woman with her stoic smile. He wonders when the eyes will move away, and when their focus will be fixed elsewhere, on that ‘other world’. And he wonders when the tempest will erupt and pour venom into the darkening rooms.

  ‘Heavenly shades of night are falling. It’s twilight time.’ Bloomfield hums the first bars of the popular song. Papou is back for his daily stroll. The hems of his trousers are again rolled. They reach the lower calf on one leg, the knee on the other. As he chases his toddler grandchild, he gasps for breath. His ample stomach bounces up and down. The three girls are also back by the Moreton Bays. They run to a park tap, and return with a bottle of water. They dip brushes into the bottle and apply the water to a lower trunk.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks Bloomfield, who sits on a park bench beneath the Moreton Bays. He is surprised at his words, at the way they have slipped out. The girls smile at the strange man in the worn flannel suit and overcoat. They are intrigued by his rasping voice and its singsong lilt. They have never heard him speak, but they know him. He is as much a part of the park as are the Moreton Bays and the possums that scoot about the elms. As much a part of it as the swing that conveys Papou’s grandchild, ‘Oppa, oppa,’ to the skies, and back to earth where the three little Gretels are at work.

  ‘What are you doing?’ repeats Bloomfield, warming to the task.

  ‘Washing the tree,’ answers one of the girls, as if to say, isn’t it obvious? What else would we be doing on a summer afternoon?

  Bloomfield withdraws. The heels of his shoes are worn to the ground. The rotting figs squelch underfoot. The cuffs of his trousers are smudged with dust. The girls return to their work and, with one brushstroke, Bloomfield is gone from their minds.

  It has been a day of searing heat. A ray of sun lights up the bald pate of a man descending the steps of a terrace house. Birdsong hangs in the air. Bloomfield can detect the approach of a storm. He sits on the bench beneath the Moreton Bays. Two teenage girls walk by, arm-in-arm. They do not see him. The breeze is lifting. A girl rides a scooter, and her father rides with her, leaning over as a guide. Everything is warm to the touch— the bench boards, the ground beneath his feet. Seagulls gather on the edge of evening picnics. They are far from the sea. Their shrieks seem out of place.

  Bloomfield distinguishes between levels of breeze. He disentangles the varying drones. Each species of tree produces a different tone; their leaves are vanes that register the rising strength of the wind. The poplar leaves are higher pitched than those of the Moreton Bays. Bloomfield listens intently to a symphony of wind-driven chords. Heavenly shades of night are falling, and a storm is about to cut loose.

  Zofia presses down upon the cotton wool and grimaces. Romek puts his arms around her. He is not confident of his movements. She holds up her arms to ward him off. He does not know how to approach her. She pushes him away. Romek pulls back, hesitates, steps forward and tries again. An awkward ballet is being performed in the kitchen, a pas de deux between two anguished souls.

  When Josh enters, he is immediately aware of the strain. He looks past them at the plates and saucers behind the dresser’s glass panes. The dresser is coated a thick beige. The brushstrokes are visible, and bristles lie trapped like severed veins swelling with paint.

  Zofia brushes against the cupboard as she pulls away. The buckled linoleum shifts beneath her. Teacups tremble upon their hooks. Josh is mesmerised by the movement of the cups, but he remains aware of the clumsy movements between husband and wife. An uncertainty keeps them apart. Romek is trying to overcome it, to comfort her, and Zofia, in her way, is trying to respond. But the awkwardness between them is too strong. And Zofia is obstinate. She shies away from intimacy. She will serve, but is fierce in her determination not to be consoled.

  Zofia moves her hand over the tablecloth and wipes away the crumbs. Romek is left standing, stranded. He does not know which way to move. He steps towards her, stops, and steps back. Zofia keeps her eyes averted. She looks, instead, at the kookaburra on the oven door.

  Josh can no longer bear to watch. His parents remind him of the boxers he had seen in the ring that morning, in their cautious approach, their hesitant retreat. He is unnerved by the palpable tension between them. He steps out of the ring, and slips away. He prefers the possibility of rain, the deepening shades of twilight time. A tempest is brewing, the north winds are charged. Night has fallen but in Curtain Square the boys are reluctant to let go. They inhale the scent of the approaching deluge. They play until the storm takes hold. It descends quickly, and even the most obstinate boys must scurry back to their homes.

  The square is empty, the streets are deserted. Except for Bloomfield. He walks under an umbrella. He rejoices at the lightning. It tears open the sky. The earth is churning beneath his feet. The storm drains are flowing over. Bloomfield’s shoes and the hems of his trousers are soaked. ‘Yes,’ he hums. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He spirals from street to street, back to the epicentre, Curtain Square. He spreads a plastic sheet on the park bench, sits back, glances up at the spitting skies, and laughs.

  Everything is swaying: the swings, the cyclone fence, the trees, their sodden leaves. And Bloomfield. He rocks back and forth. And his father is standing above him, swaying at prayer. His shawl cracks in the wind. His hair is turning white. The synagogue is burning, and his father is running from the flames. But Bloomfield is further back, in the time before the deluge. A time when the wind did not taste of ash and blood.

  The summer is drawing to an end, yet February is the hottest month. Seven weeks have flown by and Zofia’s new false teeth are finally in place. She wears her evening best, a short-sleeved black dress. Romek is wearing his one and only suit, pinstriped, creased and pressed. Josh is imprisoned in grey trousers, a grey jacket, grey cap, with a grey tie over a white shirt. And they are seated in the Empire Ballroom at tables covered in white cloths, and the main course is being served—slabs of schnitzel, potato salad, kosher chicken and liverwurst, washed down with glasses of red. After all, Cousin Naomi has just been wed.

  And the boys are standing at the mike, on the makeshift stage, in their tuxedos. Four big boys in a row, Schneider, Goodman, Aronson and Hirst, arms linked, they move as they croon, two black shoe steps left, two steps right, the boys are in full flight:

  Another bride, another groom,

  The countryside is all in bloom.

  The flow’rs ’n trees is,

  The birds and bees is,

  Making whoopee.

  And their eyes are rolling ever wider, and their shoes are glittering like mica, and the young men at the tables are laughing and winking, and Josh is thinking, what does it mean to be making whoopee?

  Another year, or maybe less,

  What’s this I hear? Or can’t you guess?

  She feels neglected,

  And he’s suspected,

  Of making whoopee.

  And the song is over, the applause dying down, and Uncle Yossel, father of the bride, is exclaiming, ‘Nu? Doesn’t anyone sing a Yiddish liddele anymore?’ And Dobke is running to the podium, a rotund woman dressed in a hip-tight red satin dress, she flounces on red pumps as she runs, a string of pearls dangles from her neck, her lips and fingernails are painted red. Yet no matter how hard she tries, she looks like a shtetl woman, even as she steps up to the mike, and excl
aims: ‘I once had what they call in English “sex appeal”.’ And Uncle Yossel, at the head of the bridal table, shakes his head and quips, ‘I never noticed.’

  But Dobke does not mind. She has a stage, a captive audience, a mike in her hand, and an army of guests at her command. ‘This is a liddele, a little song, for the groom and bride. For Naomele, whom I have known since was a little meidele, and what a beautiful girl she was, may she be protected from the evil eye. And it is for Efrem, such a handsome man, may he live long and be healthy and strong, but Naomi be warned, love is a fickle game and men are dangerous, and who should know better than I, because I once used to have what is called “sex appeal”.’

  Black cherries are chosen,

  And green ones are left on the bough.

  Beautiful girls are courted,

  And plain ones are left behind.

  And she points to herself as she sings, Dobke the Yiddish theatre extra, forever consigned to be the eccentric aunt, the professional mourner, the market woman, an ageing bubba in attendance at circumcisions, marriages and deaths:

  What is the use of dancing,

  Since I am unable to dance?

  What is the use of surrender,

  Since between us there is no romance?

  And she waltzes as she sings, and allows her hips to swing, side to side, left to right, her dress is far too tight; and with a thrust forward, a shake of the behind, she concludes with a grimace, more than a smile:

  Oh, woe unto me, and to my dwindling few years,

  A love affair did I enjoy, merely three-quarters of a year.

  And as she runs from the stage she repeats her plaintive refrain: ‘You may not believe it, but it is true, I once used to have what they call in English “sex appeal”.’ And the guests are quick to reply, ‘We never noticed.’ And before the laughter has died down, Leo Rosner and his band are playing, ‘Tea for Two’, cha-cha-cha, with Leo on accordion, backed by clarinet, piano and drums. And the tables are emptying, the dance floor is filling, and couples are gyrating, the chandeliers are glinting, perfumes are swirling, the perspiration is rising, and the dancers are singing, breathless, at the end of each verse: ‘One, two, cha-cha-cha.’