Scraps of Heaven

by Arnold Zable

  This is a tale of two houses, side by side, and in both there are ghosts, and the shadows of battles long fought. Zofia too dreams of corpses, and of villages alight. Josh has often been awoken by her cries. Now, as he returns from Sommers’, she is embarking upon a trek. She slips out of the front bedroom, carrying blankets and sheets. She trudges via the passage, into the dining room and kitchen, past the bathroom to the back room. She has chosen to sleep at the opposite end of the house.

  Hours later, Josh is woken by Shanahan singing. For the third time this week he is weaving his way home drunk. He stumbles from the footpath to the verandah, and pounds the door. ‘Open up you fuck’n bitch.’

  Is it thick enough, our front door, wonders Josh? Do our neighbours hear us? Does silent Sommers, next door, know our secret? Do the Bianchis hear her shouting? Do they know that all is not well in their neighbour’s house? Do they hear Zofia’s chant ‘I love life. I want to live.’ ‘I love life,’ increasing in pitch. ‘I want to live,’ held on her top note.

  Josh wonders what wood the door is made of. He has heard that oak makes a strong door. There are oaks in Curtain Square and they seem solid, fully earthed. Perhaps oak doors and the brick walls that separate them from their neighbours’ homes are soundproof. He has rarely heard sounds from the other side. At least, not through the walls. It is only on the streets that he hears it, in Shanahan’s public displays, Shanahan drained of his philosophising as he stumbles homewards from the sly-grog shop. Shanahan pounding on the door. Cursing. ‘Open up you fuck’n bitch.’ Then singing: ‘I know an old lady who swallowed a horse. She’s dead, of course.’

  Shanahan laughs as if at his own joke. Josh can hear the door opening, followed by silence. Shanahan’s front door seems thick enough. Josh has passed by neighbourhood doors and observed their variety. Some are painted or elaborately panelled, well looked after or neglected. There are doors freshly sanded, doors blistered by relentless suns.

  Shanahan re-opens the front door and slams it behind him. He carries an overnight bag in each hand. He curses the night. He curses the day he was born. He descends the steps to the gate, and prises it open with his foot. He stumbles over the footpath, rounds the truck to the driver’s door, and throws in his bags.

  The truck is a dragon that has been aroused from its sleep. Shanahan steers it onto the road. It grunts into second gear, firing exhaust from its backside. It lumbers by the median strip, past poplars and palms inert in the dark. Shanahan guides it into Macpherson Street, past the RSL hall. He marks off the streets: Amess. Rathdowne. Drummond and Lygon. The trams have stopped running. The cemetery is shrouded in darkness. ‘The dead centre of Melbourne,’ he jokes to himself. He is surprised to hear his own voice. He makes out the black shapes of a cypress beside the cemetery fence.

  The dragon is fully revved as it approaches the Carlton football ground. The stadium is dead. The houses are dead. Shanahan curves around Bowen Crescent and follows the rim of Princes Park. He looks down at his knuckles. They are drained of blood. He grasps the floor shift with a tight fist and labours into top gear.

  Sydney Road is the final gauntlet, a strip of tram-tracked road flanked by factories, bluestone churches, single-fronted cottages, double-storey shops. Shanahan glances up at the Brunswick town hall clock. The steering wheel is moist in his palms. He is seeking a way forward, a way out. His breathing is easier with each succeeding mile. He has the dragon under control. He is a king, a medieval knight. He is a character in a Jack London novel. The highway is his Call of the Wild. The streets of Carlton are well behind him, locked within the night.

  And Zofia is awakening in the back room. ‘Mama, mama,’ she shouts. Josh is awoken by her cries. He can hear her moving in the kitchen. He wonders if Sommers has also awoken from his dreams. Perhaps he is shuffling about next door, on the night of the annual march. Perhaps they are twin sleepwalkers stumbling around identical kitchens in the dark.

  He recalls the tales Zofia begins, but never completes. Tales of Red Cross lists, burning ulcers, and the tombs of bishops and kings. Tirades directed at Romek’s former girlfriends, at phantoms, and at men with crooked eyes. Tales from ‘Over There’ and ‘The Time Before’, and tales that remain unspoken, stillborn. Tales that recede into defiant silences broken only by snatches of song.

  She sits, now, in the kitchen and hears voices. ‘Don’t speak so loud,’ she says. She scans the walls; taps her forehead. ‘They are always there, always waiting. Always plotting.’ She sings: ‘Where is that village, where is that street?’ And she sees faces grimacing, and men with distorted eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ Bloomfield hums. His face is a comfort, an apparition from that ‘other world’. And she sings, ‘I have forgotten my loved ones, I have left my only home.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bloomfield hums. And she glimpses dark energies gathering in the corners. She raises her voice to fend them off, and sings, ‘Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bloomfield hums. And she sees walls crumbling, waves tumbling, and ships sinking within sight of land.

  ‘Yes,’ Bloomfield hums, and she raises her voice in defiance, and sings:

  Enjoy yourself

  Enjoy yourself

  It’s later than you think.

  July 1958

  Winter

  Some call him the walking windmill. He walks the streets with his arms waving about, yet does not care for the looks of passersby. The streets about him are a blur. They could be the thoroughfares of Warsaw or London, Paris or Prague, Durban, New York, Havana or Rio, or any one of the many cities he has walked, across the six continents, the seven oceans and a scattering of islets in between.

  There are times when it seems he has walked them all, reciting his lines, grimacing, posing, breaking into a laugh, doing whatever a role calls for as he moves to and from his temporary lodgings, the house of an ardent admirer, or a sumptuous suite in a grand hotel, perhaps a single room in a godforsaken town, or a rundown inn on the borders between here and there, en route to the next performance, before moving on by horse-drawn cart or train, automobile or rust-bucket freighter creaking its way over stormy seas towards the next welcome. Who knows, perhaps this time he will be greeted with a red carpet, a klezmer band, and the town’s dignitaries spouting grand speeches, and hordes of children pursuing the droshke bearing him through the streets in triumph, the townsfolk proclaiming: ‘A Yiddish actor is in town! A member of the Vilna troupe, no less! The legendary Yankev Waislitz himself, in the flesh, may he live to be one hundred and twenty and remain healthy and blessed!’

  Now Waislitz walks the streets of a city where his journeys have come to an end. After all, he is getting old and there is room enough here to breathe and move about. Besides, in this city, of all places, there was a Yiddish theatre with a building that housed a modern stage, a prompter’s box, ample wings for nervous actors to pace in, heavy curtains hauled by ropes, dressing rooms with full-length mirrors and enough creaky seats, arranged row upon row, to hold an audience of four hundred. Perhaps more.

  It was in this city that Waislitz landed, on 26 January 1938, on the eve of war, mid-world tour, his suitcases burdened with manuscripts, his satchel bloated with notebooks, his mind teeming with schemes for future ventures, his legs unsteady after months spent upon heaving seas. And they were there to welcome him, the leading lights of the Yiddish theatre, happy to fuss over him, to haul his luggage, and drive him back in a black Buick, from the pier to a private house where he was feted and fed and given yet another temporary roof over his head.

  And within weeks he was back on the stage, in the Kadimah, the two-storey building on Lygon Street, opposite the cemetery, in the heart of Carlton, built by the community with their hard-earned cash, reciting poems, monologues, excerpts from the Yiddish classics, Shylock’s impassioned speech in The Merchant of Venice, translated extracts from the works of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ibsen and Brecht. And within months he had trained a band of semi-amateurs, harnessed their talents and ski
lls to perform the most renowned of Yiddish plays, The Dybbuk, in the Princess Theatre, the biggest venue in the city, in front of an audience of fifteen hundred, no less.

  Yet little did Waislitz know, how could he know?, that within a year, the gates to the past would be closing and there would be no going back, and he would get stuck, in this southernmost city, in the southernmost continent, shielded by a natural moat, and his life would be forever divided between post- and pre-war, the Time After and the Time Before.

  Now he makes his way on Rathdowne Street with a greeting from a friend here, a nod from an ardent fan there, which he barely registers, for he is still immersed in his scripts. He comes to a halt at the blue-and-white spiral, painted on the wall beside Posner the barber’s, instead of the traditional red-and-white, since Posner is an avid Carlton Football Club supporter, a navy blue through and through.

  Waislitz steps in for a haircut, a shave, and a chat with his circle of friends; and they are there, as usual, the chalustre, the whole gang. Posner’s is a haunt for Yiddish actors and for those with time on their hands, and those desperate for a Yiddish word, and those just desperate not to be alone. Potashinski the cabaret specialist is there, and Dobke the bit-player, who once had, so she claims, sex appeal, do you remember? And Gershov the theatre props manager, hiding behind a copy of the Jewish News, and Podem the Kadimah caretaker-cum-librarian, they too are basking in the company of friends. And Weintraub the grocer has dropped in from his shop across the road, for a diversion, a chat, and Zlaterinski the Yiddish schoolteacher is also present, holding forth, amid the aroma of fresh lathers and shampoos, tobacco and soaps, mid-afternoon, 4 July, in the winter of 1958.

  And moving among them is Posner, the master of ceremonies, the genial host. He wears an open-necked shirt, a white apron, grey slacks; his thinning hair is combed back, neat, as one would expect of a barber. He sharpens his scissors on a leather strop, as Waislitz eases himself onto the black leather seat of the porcelain chair.

  ‘Lean back. Make yourself comfortable,’ instructs Posner, and he lays out his scissors and razors and sundry props. And over Waislitz’s shoulders he places a white cloth; but before he applies the first cut, he trots to the back room, the woman’s parlour, cordoned off behind blue curtains, to his record box. He rummages about and hesitates before deciding, yes, this is the appropriate song for the occasion, a recent import on the Capitol label, a performance his distinguished guests have not yet heard, a song to provoke laughter even at this early hour.

  And Mickey Katz and his Kosher Jammers are singing ‘Borscht Riders in the Sky’, while Posner is working with a clip, clip, clip, and his scissors are squeaking, and Zlaterinski is asserting that ‘Yiddish is the greatest language on God’s earth and the proof is in its curses. Take for instance, “may an umbrella enter your stomach and open up”. Now tell me, what miseries must have afflicted us to be able to spit venom like that? Tell me, where will you find a more bitter imagination, such a potent curse?’ And Posner replies mid-clip: ‘May you lose all your teeth but one tooth should remain so that you will have a toothache.”’

  ‘Bravo,’ says Dobke, who once had, we should all remember, what is called sex appeal. Now she is cursing her fading looks with: ‘“May an entire orchestra enter your stomach and I’ll be the conductor.” Well?’ she concludes with a triumphant smile. ‘Who can better that?’

  ‘That is not a problem,’ retorts Potashinski, who is never at a loss for a word, a proverb, a song, and certainly not for a curse. ‘This is a good one, the best one, a curse for your worst enemies. “May your feet be made of wood, and your stomach contain water, and your head be made of glass, so that when your feet catch fire, your stomach will boil, and your head will explode!”’

  ‘Enough,’ says Posner. ‘One more curse and I’ll make a mistake.’ And he stops, mid-clip, returns to the back room, replaces the record, and Mickey Katz and his Kosher Jammers are now singing ‘The Cry of the Wild Chook’.

  And half a block north, two blocks east, Zofia is setting out. She clutches a pair of string bags as she turns from the back lane into Fenwick Street, yet no matter how hard she tries to keep them at bay, within minutes the voices are beginning to stir: from behind closed doors and back gates, from the gas pipes and gutters, and the stormwater drains that convey subterranean whispers via burrows buried deep within the earth. But other voices are intruding, with a lighter tone, benign voices that rise from the pavement beside the horse trough, outside the pub:

  Charlie over the water,

  Charlie over the sea,

  Charlie broke the teapot

  And blamed it onto me….

  A gaggle of girls are chanting and skipping, and two of the girls stand apart, twirling a rope, and the other four are lined up on the footpath, as each, in turn, runs to the rope, steps in, skips, and steps out, in time to the chant. Zofia catches the eyes of one of the girls turning the rope. The girl is elated, her eyes are radiant with the promise of youth and long life. They possess a primitive power, those emerald eyes. They bring the world back into focus, they return the day to the present. They wipe out all thoughts of the past, wild speculations about the future, and they draw Zofia out. She observes the girls’ expertise as they dart in and out. Their hair bobs up and down as they jump, yet remains untouched by the rope, twirling ever faster to the beat of voices chanting ever quicker, ‘Charlie over the water, Charlie over the sea, Charlie broke the teapot and…’

  Zofia is crossing the street to the police station with the neon sign and three houses on, two women are locked in conversation. One stands in the front garden. Her hand rests upon the cast-iron fence while the other stands on the pavement. They have taken a break from their morning tasks. They are immersed in their talk, two village women gossiping about this and that. Zofia approaches the corner of Fenwick and Rathdowne streets, where Doukakaris the white-haired keeper of the milk bar, an emigre from the isle of Lesbos, sweeps the footpath, and he waves as she walks by. And, despite herself, she waves back. After all, the shopkeepers are folks-menschen, men of the people, men she can trust, like Patterson the newsagent who is lugging the afternoon papers into his store; and Kalman the baker, who now greets her with a ‘vi geit es’, how’s it going, and a ‘goot Shabbes’, several hours in advance, as she steps through his doors.

  His shelves are laden with khallahs, bloated loaves, crusty bagels and poppy-seed rolls. Kalman is a Chelmer khokhem, a ‘wise man of Chelm’, born and raised in the legendary city of fools; and as a bonus he passes on a Chelmer anecdote, a sliver of wisdom cloaked in a foolish joke. ‘Mrs Swerdlow, I have for you the Chelmer version of Einstein’s theory of relativity,’ he says. ‘Moshe and Zelda are sitting in their cottage, mid-winter. Those winters were far more severe than they are here, do you remember? And do you remember how the snow blanketed our windows, froze our rivers, and our bottoms, and even the sweat on our brows? So it stands to reason that Zelda is saying, “Moshe, Moshe, put down the window. It’s cold outside.” And Moshe, our Chelmer Einstein is replying, “Zelda. Zelda, and if I put down the window, will it become warm outside?”’

  And Zofia is stepping out into the winter cold, one string bag now filled with khallahs and sliced loaves; and she continues her walk beneath the tin-roof verandahs, past Posner’s parlour where Mickey Katz is singing ‘I’m meshuggah for my sugar’, while Zlaterinski can be heard asserting that Sholem Aleikhem’s very first book, written when he was a little mamzer, a mere teenager, was a lexicon of his stepmother’s curses, arranged in alphabetical order, secretly, for he feared her wrath. So he had assembled it at night, and had rewritten it several times, polished it like a seasoned author until his father, suspicious of his rascal’s unusual industry, had crept up behind him and confiscated the manuscript titled: A Stepmother’s Invective. But, miracle of miracles, instead of being thrashed and caned, his stepmother had laughed to the point of tears as she read the curses that the ‘pipsqueak’ had compiled.

  And Posner looks up and
catches sight of Zofia as she crosses Rathdowne Street to the grocer’s, where Mrs Weintraub is standing behind the counter amid the smell of salted sardines, pickled onions, freshly sliced salami and barrels of herring soaked in brine. There are enough aromas to make the most resistant of appetites blossom, and the tightest of purses open, and the air is more bracing, the wind more biting, and her second string bag is almost full when Zofia steps out.

  She walks on past Gibson’s bicycle repairs; he is a man with beize oign, angry eyes, but she does not mind. She intuits what others do not, that despite his ill temper he is not a man who betrays or lies. She slows to a stroll opposite Curtain Square and sees Mrs Shanahan approaching, wheeling a pram bearing her newborn child. Her face is pale, her eyes vacant, and she does not register Zofia’s smile. So Zofia continues on by the two-storey terraces, the library, over Newry Street, past the espresso bar, where Valerio and his friends are gathered on the footpath in stylish jackets, fashionable shirts, conversing in foreign tongues, or just standing, hands in pockets, eyes roaming, stamping their feet to stave off the cold.

  And inside Dean Martin sings ‘Memories are made of this’— the jukebox can be heard from the street. And Zofia is alert to the glances of the men, their masculine vigour, the smell of their cologne, and her mistrust is returning, as too are the voices, and she hurries on to Mick Tallon’s.

  When she enters, Tallon looks up from his work with a quizzical smile, and a quick, ‘Hello, Mrs Swerdlow.’ And Zofia is becalmed, by the quiet drone of the machines that cut and sand and shape and polish the newly tacked soles. She is soothed by the rhythm of work, by Tallon’s deliberate movements, and the occasional lift of his eyebrows to greet an acquaintance walking by. He seems to sense when someone is passing. He is a fakhman, and she too is a fakhman, a sewer of garments, a dress designer, a person with a trade.