by Arnold Zable
Valerio removes his overcoat in the foyer and hands it to the cloak attendant before entering the hall. The Orchestra Mokambo is playing ‘La Cucaracha’, the cockroach cha-cha-cha. Maestro Ugo Ceresoli, the bandleader, fisarmonica virtuoso extraordinaire, stands centre-stage, button accordion at full stretch. He wears black trousers, a white jacket and black bow tie. His pocket kerchief is black, as too, almost, is his accordion. Its 120 black bass buttons range in diagonal rows upon a background of white. The name Ceresoli is embossed in mother-of-pearl, and the body of the accordion is an enamelled red. It gleams under the chandelier lights. Red, white and black: raw colours, redolent of blood, communion dresses and volcanic earth.
Behind Ceresoli, i ragazzi del Mokambo are lined up, six abreast. They stand behind the speakers, instruments in hand, saxophone, trombone, violin, Spanish guitar, percussion and double bass. The boys of the Mokambo are hard at work. The women are seated on wooden benches beside their chaperones. The men are hesitant in their approach. Only the le australiane are unattended. Valerio circles the hall and approaches the benches. He is about to ask another stranger to dance, but hesitates. He does not wish to be turned down.
The lights are lowered. The tempo slows. A spotlight shines on the band. Ceresoli croons ‘Terra Straniera’, In a Foreign Land; and ‘Vola Colomba Bianca, Vola’. He is singing to his compaesani, compatriots who long for their childhood homes:
Fly my white dove,
Fly across the seas.
Spread your white wings,
Fly my loved one back to me.
Just as the nostalgia threatens to take hold, Ceresoli switches to the opening chords of a tarantella. The tempo lifts, the chandeliers blaze back to life. The guests are returning to the dance floor, and before long the boys of the Mokambo have reverted to their beloved mambos and rumbas, cha-chas and sambas, the Latin favourites of the day.
Outside, Bloomfield stamps his feet to ward off the chill. He prefers waltzes. Tangos. Dances in a minor key, melodies that contain within them the promise of romance. But it can never last. Somewhere, sometime, the promise will be tainted. Yet by listening to this music, out here, in the streets of a new world, Bloomfield feels warmed.
In the lane behind Posner the barber’s the boys are playing two-up: Schneider, Goodman, Aronson and Hirst. One name is all they use. They are on the cusp of adulthood, young men on the move. At weddings and bar mitzvahs they don tuxedos and sing for their supper, but in the streets they wear T-shirts, stovepipe trousers and pointy shoes.
Josh knows where to find them. Joel Goodman is his cousin, Uncle Yossel’s son, and his passport to an adult game. Joel prefers the lanes of Carlton to the family palatz near the Yarra banks. Josh leans against a timber fence. He is a spectator. That is all they allow him to be. He follows the toss of the coins and cranes his neck to observe their flight. Posner watches them from an upper room. ‘Leidikgeyers,’ he mutters. ‘Good-for-nothings. Lazy boys who have learnt only to flick a coin. Heads. Tails. Win. Lose. Yes, Lose. That is where it will all end, deep in the ground.’
The boys are crowding around fallen coins and Aronson is whistling. The police are coming. The boys are running. Their socks are a flash of lurid oranges and greens. No one knows the lanes like they do—the drains, the alcoves, the cul-de-sacs, or the four-leafed clover they had discovered the day before where the coin had rolled and fallen, stuck indecisively between heads and tails.
A corrugated fence is their goal. Aronson’s backyard lies within reach. Just one foot in the latch-hole and, one by one, they are over. They laugh as they hit the ground. Hirst emits a triumphant belch, Goodman a defiant fart. They dust off their trousers and adjust their belts. Their mirth increases as they approach the back door. Aronson fumbles with his key. The coast is clear. Aronson’s parents are at the regular Saturday night card game with their circle of friends. He is host for the night. He pours the drinks: red wine for Schneider, vodka for Hirst, a brandy ‘on the rocks, if you don’t mind’, for Goodman, and a plain beer for himself.
A hi-fi player presides over the loungeroom. Its speakers peer from each corner in readiness for the deluge. Aronson sets the turntable in motion. He lowers the needle, guides it into the groove, and Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker bursts into the room.
‘Listen carefully, Josh,’ advises his cousin, ‘your life will never be the same.’
‘He’s too young to understand such music,’ says Schneider.
‘Young. Shmung,’ responds Aronson ‘You don’t have to be a genius to understand.’
‘Listen to the bass! Just listen to the bass!’ exclaims Goodman. ‘Jazz is nothing without a bass.’
‘Rubbish,’ retorts Schneider, ‘Parker’s saxophone can stand alone.’
‘Why don’t you all shut up,’ cries Hirst.
They lie on the carpet, four limp bodies, a head here, a leg there, an arm under a table, a hand supporting a neck, a band of exhausted two-up players taking their well-earned rest. Parker hands the baton to Dizzy Gillespie who gives way to Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
The boys return to the kitchen, each in their own time, and head for the fridge. Aronson’s mother’s brisket is a quick bite made in heaven. They tear off strips, dip them in tomato sauce, and return to the lounge chewing in time to the music, feet jiggling, heads nodding, fingers clicking. They are drawn to the bent rhythms of contemporary jazz. It mirrors their anarchic desires. They want to break out, roam the streets, find a way through their byways and lanes. They imagine themselves in the speakeasies of New York, in its smoke-filled cellars and bars. They conjure images of a city where the avenues are broad and neon-lit, the mythical metropolis of bebop and jazz.
The hours are passing, the fridge is emptying. Billie Holiday sings ‘Strange Fruit’. They dream of convertibles and white-lined roads curving into the night. Holiday lures them into a reverie. Her voice is sultry, serene. Yet her words are frightening: ‘Blood on the leaves. Blood at the root.’ Josh observes the scattering of ashtrays and their gathering dregs. He is drawn to the company, to their easy ways. He senses the longing in the music, the way it unites them, yet drives them apart into separate thoughts, private worlds.
Aronson changes the vinyl at a rapid rate. The boys are equally attracted to the ballads of Holiday, the scatting of Ella Fitzgerald, to doo-wop and bebop, and the mathematical precision of modern jazz. The Big Bopper is now growling, ‘Chantilly lace and a pretty face’. And the boys are back on their feet, Schneider, Goodman, Aronson and Hirst, arm-in-arm, they mimic the Big Bopper, four boys in a row, ‘With a wiggle in their walk, and a giggle in their talk’, they harmonise as they experiment with new steps.
And they are still there, practising, after Josh has left. Not even the thought of Zofia and her prospective anger at his absence can undermine his exhilaration. He has sensed other rhythms, other worlds. He runs to the imagined beat of the music he has just heard. As he cuts across Curtain Square, he hears people shouting in the distance, several blocks to the south. He runs past the darkened classrooms of the state school and weaves between the traffic on Princes Street. He pauses to catch his breath by Dan O’Connell’s, and jogs the final stretch past the bluestone cottages to the scene of the fight. The men are spilling out of the ballroom. It is a dispute over a girl, of course.
Bloomfield has withdrawn to the opposite side of the street. He knows the nuances, the perennial rivalry between Italy’s north and south, knows that the terrone are the southerners, people of the earth, and that terrone is a term of abuse. He knows that the southerners, Sicilians and Calabrians, hurl insults of their own, and mock the northerners as polentoni, those who feed on polenta, a common food.
Josh sees Valerio in the crowd circling the fighters. Before Josh can greet him he has turned his face back to the action. It is a one-on-one contest between seemingly mismatched boys. ‘Ehi Terroni! Ehi vieni qua!’ Miro, the Venetian, goads his Calabrian adversary on. ‘Eh, peasant. Come here. Ti faccio vedere io. I’ll show you something.’
/>
Miro’s fists are raised. He is prancing around. His opponent is a head shorter. One of the spectators steps in and tries to prise them apart. ‘Keep it quiet. We’re all poveri cristi, poor bastards,’ he says. ‘It’s hard enough for us without the police seeing us fight.’ The combatants stalk each other, trade light punches, until abruptly, with one sharp right, Miro is knocked out.
‘Come, Josh,’ says Valerio as the crowd disperses. ‘We walk home together, eh? Tomorrow I play for Juventus. Real football,’ he says with a wink. ‘I need good sleep. And I do not find a girl tonight. Mannaggia la miseria,’ he laughs. ‘What misery. Maybe next week I have more luck. One day we will both find beautiful woman. Aah, le belle ragazze. This, my good friend, is what we live for.’
Zofia is in the passage. Josh can hear her undress. He lies in bed, and listens as she discards her clothes upon the linoleum floor.
Josh diverts his thoughts to the Swedish Girl; he imagines her undressing, each item dropping, one by one. He does not know her name. She is still a new presence on the block. She walks through the streets, aloof. Her remoteness heightens her allure. Josh is not the only boy whose adolescent desire has been stirred. She inspires talk of conquests, is the object of idle boasts. Josh embraces his pillow, and pretends it is her.
He drifts off to sleep to the echoes of Bird Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the Big Bopper, John Coltrane. He dreams of Aronson, Schneider, Goodman and Hirst. They are lying on the floor in a tangle of legs and arms, ears pressed against the speakers, slabs of brisket in hand. And the Swedish Girl is moving towards them ‘with a wiggle in her walk’, discarding her clothes, beckoning and smiling with the promise of mysterious pleasures.
Bloomfield dresses quickly and steps into the passage. The raw floorboards creak beneath his feet. He takes care over each step. It is Sunday morning, and his co-tenants are still asleep. He does not wish to offend. He wants to retain his fragile place in the scheme of things: his single room in the welfare house, his daily walks, his sojourns in the neighbourhood park.
The house is located on the northern end of Drummond Street, in sight of the railway tracks. The line marks the divide between Carlton and Brunswick, residential and industrial zones. In the other rooms off the passage live the Feinbergs from Warsaw, the Pareiras from Cairo, the Einhorns from Lodz, and in the back room, behind the communal kitchen, the Schillers from Budapest.
The Drummond Street house is one of six Jewish welfare homes scattered about the city, sustained by donations. They are clearing houses for the dispossessed. As soon as one family moves on, newer arrivals take their place. Of the first wave of immigrants only Bloomfield has remained. He had been allowed to stay on even as the numbers of Displaced Persons declined. And he was still there when the house refilled, post-1956, after the Polish repression, the Hungarian revolution, the Suez crisis. Each calamity spawns its displaced offspring.
Like many of the previous occupants he had been welcomed, straight off the boat, on Station Pier, by representatives of the welfare society, and driven in a motorcade to a banquet in the Kadimah hall on Lygon Street. They sat at tables covered in white cloths scattered with plates of sandwiches and honey cake, bottles of soda water and wine. They had arrived in ‘a land of opportunity’, ‘a true democracy’, a succession of speakers assured them. They had made it to a utopia!
After the meal they were escorted to the welfare house, and the following morning Bloomfield had stepped out onto Drummond Street for the first time. The streets were too wide, the asphalt too hard underfoot. He feared the open space, he feared himself. All he could do was keep his eyes focused upon his feet and take the first steps.
And years later he embarks, yet again, on the familiar route. He glances at the two-storey terrace opposite. Its date of birth, 1888 AD, is embossed upon the nameplate. Fifty metres on cars are drawing up at the Yiddish Sunday school. Children are arriving, parents gossiping. Bloomfield hears snatches of Yiddish, accented English, an array of Slavonic tongues. Josh is playing down-ball against the whitewashed wall.
When Bloomfield is well beyond the school the streets regain their Sunday quiet. He follows the trajectory of leaves in flight. Some land in the gutters and merge with clusters of leaves that form a continuous line. He takes off his overcoat as he walks. Beneath the feet all cities are alike, he reasons. He wonders what came before, what lies beneath the surface, where the lava had cooled into a basalt plain. He sees the bitumen as a layer of skin, brittle and thin. Easily impressed upon.
He looks at his lower arms. The veins and arteries are like the cracks in the pavement. He glances at his hands, his bare knuckles, the creases in his fingers, his sinewy bones; and deflects his thoughts to the ornamented facades. There are stucco trims, brickwork patterns, parapets embellished with urns and scrolls. A lion’s head sprouts from an angled pediment above a front door. Bloomfield turns from Drummond into Macpherson Street. On the corner of a lane rises a brick wall.
The aroma of bread is in the bricks. The shop behind it was once a bakery, and ten years after it closed down, the smell of yeast endures. For the most part it remains dormant. It requires the sun to release it. Bloomfield inhales and touches his cheeks. He feels the stubble, his new growth. He allows the rays to open his pores.
On the corner of Amess and Macpherson stands the Returned Servicemen’s Hall. A meeting is about to begin. Ex-soldiers are filing in. Bloomfield recognises Sommers. He has often seen him seated on the verandah of his Canning Street home. Sommers leans against a streetpole, pipe in hand. His former comrades have gathered to discuss the annual Anzac Day march in six days’ time. Their regimental banner is propped against the wall, unfurled in the morning sun.
Bloomfield veers from Macpherson into Canning Street. He notes ‘the quintuplets’ over the road, five two-storey terraces with identical balconies and cast-iron balustrades. Each possesses arched windows and six stone steps that ascend from street level to the doors. In one block alone there are bay windows, sash windows, rectangular windows, and windows with wrought-iron guards.
As he walks, Bloomfield mouths the names of the houses with embossed nameplates: Waverley, Swansea, Carnarvon Cottage and Illingworth. He crosses Fenwick Street and pauses at the quartet of cottages beside Boucher’s corner store: Millcare, Southwick, Harrow and Meadow Vale. Many houses in nearby streets have been labelled with place names: Rochester, Derwent, Surrey, Kent, names that evoke ancient longings for distant hearths.
Bloomfield makes his way through Curtain Square to a park bench facing Rathdowne Street. The sun has moved north, beyond the equinox. At this time of year it is the only side of the square that receives the morning sun. Each day, and each time of day, has its peculiar sound. On Sundays, mid-morning, the city remains hushed. Individual sounds resonate: the far-off whisper of a tram, the notes of a piano tinkling through the open door of a nearby house.
The playing is hesitant. Perhaps it is a child practising her scales. The scales and arpeggios give way to a tentative song. The fingers are still finding their way, and with the melody comes a voice that sings: ‘Speed bonny boat like a bird on the wing, Over the sea to Skye.’ Perhaps it is the pianist who is singing, or a woman standing by her side. The voice is not well trained, and more poignant because of that. Bloomfield sinks back, closes his eyes, and allows the sun to warm his face.
Zlaterinski paces up and down, clutching a thick volume in his hands. Its covers are grey, the spine torn. As he strides in front of the class, the spine flaps. ‘Sholem Aleikhem was a giant,’ he asserts. His eyes are bulging. They are the eyes of a true believer, a man on a mission. Sunday morning is his time, and the Yiddish school his stage. He seeks the eyes of each student with his gaze. He returns to his pacing and resumes his harangue. ‘Yes, he was a giant, the Yiddish equivalent of Mark Twain, and this is his most important story. Mottel, the cantor’s son, is fleeing Russia. He crosses the border. Ganvenen di grenetz, to steal across the border, is the key phrase. Only a genius like Sholem Aleikhem can
conjure such golden words.’
‘Ganvenen di grenetz,’ repeats Zlaterinski, emphasising each word. ‘We all stole across borders, but Sholem Aleikhem’s characters joked as they ran for their lives. Sholem Aleikhem was able to poke fun in the darkest of times. This is why one hundred thousand immigrants attended his funeral, in 1915, in New York, on the Lower East Side.’
Zlaterinski clasps fistfuls of pages, flips through the book, and settles upon a story. ‘Mir iz goot, ikh bin a yossem,’ he reads. ‘I am blessed, because I am an orphan. Can you imagine? Mottel rejoices at being an orphan? But tell me, what choice did he have?’
Josh glances at his textbook. He admires the elegance of the Hebraic script. It embodies the allure of archaic worlds. He can decipher its surface meanings; he is mastering the code. And he is beguiled by Zlaterinski’s words, the melodic flow of the mother tongue.
Yet Josh is suspicious. Zlaterinski is a preacher. He dictates. He thunders. He lectures and struts. He flits from story to story and raises his voice to a shout. And Josh is wary of the script. It is redolent of stained blotting paper and bearded men clad in black.
His thoughts drift elsewhere. He gazes through the second-floor window. She is surely out there, the Swedish Girl. He imagines her strolling by, breasts tight against her sweater. The thought adds lustre to the streets. He pictures her as he had seen her, in his dreams the previous night. She is advancing towards him, skirt swaying, head held high. And that knowing smile. This is how he sees her, always at ease and in control of her charms.
Zofia dips a mop into a bucket and scrubs the pigeon droppings from the verandah. The pigeon watches her from its perch on the electricity meter beside the front door. Zofia hauls the bucket to the backyard. She returns with a bowl of water in one hand, a plate of wheat in the other, and lowers them beside the doormat. The pigeon swoops from the meter to its morning meal just as Bloomfield walks by.
On an impulse Zofia invites him in. He hesitates and glances around as if someone is watching. He is acutely aware of his movements, anxious not to offend. He opens the gate and climbs the stairs to the verandah with measured steps. The pigeon eyes him warily, then, as if deciding he is no threat, returns its attention to the wheat.
