One for the Road

by Tony Horwitz

  At the moment, though, he’s about as straight as a plumber’s snake. And things aren’t going to get any clearer. Mark has just caught the eyes of “The Man”; it seems some dope deal may transpire after all. Mark follows him out of the bar.

  Gavin perks up; maybe his own chances will improve. He spots a slim Asian woman in a short skirt who is bent over the jukebox, studying the list of songs. Gavin finishes off his beer and tucks in his singlet. “Wish me luck, mate.” Then, just as he slides off his stool, a man comes up to the jukebox and wraps his arms around the woman’s waist. The man begins nibbling at her neck. She flings her head over one shoulder and sticks her tongue out. He takes it in his mouth and they begin kissing, slowly and passionately.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, will ya look at that?” Gavin cries. “Jesus fucking Christ. He’s licking her tonsils.” We watch the couple smooch for a minute, then Gavin shouts across the bar.

  “For Chrissake’s, mate! Haven’t you ever heard of the privacy of your own fucking home?” No one at the bar even turns a head. The couple keeps kissing. Gavin buries his face in his arms again.

  A few minutes later Mark returns. He hasn’t had any luck either. “That dickhead’s been jerking me off all night.” He checks his watch. “Two hours and counting, mate. This is looking serious.”

  I leave Mark and Gavin at the Roebuck, looking serious, and head out into the tropical night. Now that the stifling heat is gone there is something very agreeable about Broome. Maybe it’s all the beer. Maybe I’ll lay up for a few days, like the pearl boats. Patch a sail or two, fix a leak, untangle my halyards.

  23 … Pearls Before Matzo Balls

  Overnight the heat breaks and the great “king” tide of Broome washes in. Boats that appeared stranded on the mudflats last night are floating now by a wooden jetty a few blocks from the Roebuck Bay Hotel. An island of mangrove a little way offshore is swamped altogether.

  It is this remarkable shifting water—up to thirty feet change in depth between high and low tide—that allowed William Dampier’s ship, the Cygnet, to drift ashore near here in 1688. “We hal’d our Ship into a small sandy Cove, at a Spring-tide, as far as she would float; and at low Water she was left dry and the Sand dry without us near half a Mile,” the English sailor wrote. “We had therefore time enough to clean our Ships bottom, which we did very well.” The sailors also hunted turtle and dugong in Broome, though it seems Dampier had little success in encouraging his crew to do other labor. “While we lay here, I did endeavour to persuade our Men to go to some English Factory; but was threatened to be turned ashore and left here for it.” Even then, men went troppo as soon as they hit the sun and sand of Broome.

  Three centuries later, sailors still use these tides to bring their pearling luggers close to shore. And in the morning when I wander down to the docks, there is much Factory going on. Half a dozen men are off-loading crates of pearl shell and on-loading gas and food before the ebbing tide leaves them high and dry again.

  I recognize some of the faces from last night. By daylight, stripped to the waist, they form a rainbow of races stretching down the pier. The crates pass from Chinese hands to Koepanger to black to Japanese to Malay and then to Chinese again. And then to a pair of Caucasian hands—my own. Stepping onto the narrow pier to chat with one of the men, I have a crate thrust into my arms, and so join the human chain. Turn right, receive crate, turn left, hand crate on, turn right, receive crate, and so on down the line. When the crates are off, we change direction to load on food. After so many mornings on the road it feels good to be part of some useful labor.

  The boats are as colorful as their crews: two-masted wooden schooners, resembling Chinese junks, with buoys and nets and clothing draped from the halyards. If the boats were not so worn, they would seem almost too quaint, like museum pieces. As it is, tied up at the shaky wooden pier, they give our labor the air of another time and place: colonial Singapore, say, or a whaling port in Massachusetts.

  “Pearling’s still an eighteenth-century operation,” the man to my left says, pausing as the dead weight of another crate hits him in the chest. “Great for the tourists. Tough on us.”

  He is Malaysian, I think: a big, bronzed oak of a man with thighs like tree trunks and arms as strong as low-lying limbs. I ask him all the questions I’d wanted answers to last night, and in between crates he fills me in.

  On “the bends,” for one. The paralysis is caused by the pressure change of rising too fast from the ocean floor. In the old days, before modern equipment and modern medicine, divers died by the dozens—if not from the bends, then from shark attacks or cyclones. A big blow in the 1880s swept away more than 20 boats and 140 men; another cyclone killed the same number in 1935. Some of the men are buried in group graves at a Japanese cemetery outside town. For many years after, descendants filled small bottles with rice wine and set them beside the gravestones for the spirits to drink.

  In the 1920s, Broome had 4,000 divers and the town produced something like 80 percent of the world’s mother-of-pearl. But plastic buttons undermined the pearl market. And when World War II broke out, many of the luggers were requisitioned and their Japanese divers interned. Only the development of cultured pearls saved the Broome fleet from extinction, though no more than half a dozen boats survive. “At least no one gets the bends anymore,” the pearler tells me. “Unless they come up too fast from the bottom of a beer glass at the Roebuck.”

  When the crates are loaded on, I wander off through “China Town,” a few wide streets bordered by makeshift shanties of tin and wood. At the beginning of the century this was the heart of Broome’s pearling community and the meeting point for its curious mix of races. “Satay men” worked the footpath with poles slung over their shoulders, balanced like seesaws with strips of beef at one end and charcoal braziers at the other. China Town also had brothels and gaming houses, as well as a movie house, the Sun Picture Cinema, which still operates in a corrugated iron building.

  It was during a silent movie at the Sun, in a 1920 heatwave, that the so-called Broome riots began. Several hundred Koepangers took knife and club against the Japanese, who were then the lords of the pearling fleet. Two hundred whites were hastily deputized to control the rioting, but four Japanese and Koepangers died before the fighting was done. It is the only recorded instance of public violence between the many races of Broome.

  Today, most of the buildings in China Town have been taken over by tourist shops, or by “mung beans,” as the hippies of Broome are called. It is now the sort of place where people can duck into a shady café, munch on vegetarian snacks, and read an alternative paper called the Broome News, which has a columnist named “Fettuccine Ferret.”

  I am halfway through a whole-meal enchilada and a poem called “Ode to Troppo” when Mark, my drinking companion from last night, wanders in.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you and Gavin were headed out bush.”

  “We were.” He slumps into the seat across from me and wipes his forehead with the bandanna he wore last night. The wire-rimmed glasses are gone.

  “Where’s Gavin?”

  “Dunno. He disappeared with the barmaid not long after you left.” Mark smiles. “Then I got lucky too.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small plastic bag of marijuana. “Forgot all about the boss at midnight. Anyway, Gavin wasn’t around. No bloody way I was going back out there alone.” He looks up as a waitress in a loose cotton frock swishes by. “I’ve seen worse places to go AWOL for a while.”

  Two more pieces of driftwood for the beaches of Broome.

  After lunch I decide to resume my own small quest. I rent a bicycle—from the same place that sells the Mexican food—and pedal to the shire offices at the other side of town. There isn’t too much happening on a Thursday afternoon in Broome, so the shire clerk is only too happy to show me inside. We chat about Broome and then I explain Passover to him.

  Australians often seem uncomfortable when the subject of Judaism is raised. It’s
not prejudice, just ignorance about all things Semitic; knowing nothing of Judaism, they’re frightened of saying the wrong thing. But the shire clerk in Broome is perfectly at ease; he has obviously had some practice at dealing with other people’s customs.

  Unfortunately, my people’s customs are among the few species he’s never encountered.

  “Mr. Horwitz, we’ve got all types in Broome—and I mean all types.” He starts counting them on his fingers: white men, black men, yellow men, Malay men, Manila men. “There’s even a whole cemetery full of Japs at the end of town. But I’ve lived here my whole life and you’re the first Jew I’ve ever come across. I’m sorry.”

  He gives me an armful of tourist brochures and shows me to the door. Then he has a parting thought.

  “See that house over there, the one on stilts? Go in there and ask for a chap named Father Mack. He might be able to help.”

  I thank him. It is a common sort of misconception, particularly in secular Australia. If there’s no rabbi about, well, try a priest. One religious ratbag is as good as another.

  Then again, I’ve got nowhere else to go (except the Japanese cemetery), so I wander across to the stilt house. Inside a screen door is a small room where a man is waiting to see Father Mack. He is of such unusual beauty—coppery brown skin, wide lips, straight black hair falling almost to his shoulders—that I find myself blurting out the same awkward question I tossed at the Koepanger last night.

  “Where are you from? Your family, I mean.”

  He shows no offense at the question. “Malay, and Filipino on my father’s side, Maori on my mother’s.” He smiles, a white flash of a smile, and takes off his sunglasses to reveal hazel-colored eyes. “With a dash of Irish in there. I didn’t have much say in the matter.” He studies my face for a moment. “How about you?”

  “I’m from Sydney. Well, not really. America, originally. My family went there from Russia, except that they were Jewish, so they weren’t really from Russia at all. Kind of in transit.”

  “All mixed up,” he says. “Like me.”

  Father Mack—actually, Father Michael McMahon—is a different sort of jumble. He is a Catholic priest, but also manages a trucking company, an undertaking service, and a few other businesses, all of them associated with Broome’s Aboriginal community. Father Mack is the sort of one-person social-service agency that you only find in small, isolated towns. Just the sort who would know if there are any stray Semites in Broome, which is why the shire clerk pointed me his way.

  “There’s a doctor named Wronski who works at the Aboriginal Health Centre,” he says. “I’m pretty sure he’s Jewish, but then again, I have no idea if he observes anything.” Father Mack pauses. “If he doesn’t, stop by here tonight. We can patch something together, or talk about it at least.” Religion, like everything else in Broome, is open house.

  Pedaling slowly to the Aboriginal clinic, it dawns on me that I have no idea what I’ll say to Dr. Wronski; up to now, just finding a Jew seemed improbable enough. But the randomness of it all excites me, like hitchhiking. There’s a part in the Passover service that honors the wandering prophet, Elijah. A big glass of wine is poured—Elijah’s cup, it’s called—and midway through the seder the door is opened, just in case Elijah or some other homeless seeker happens to be wandering about. As a child, I always raced to the open door, hoping that a stranger would actually appear and tramp across my mother’s oriental rug to claim his glass of wine and bowl of matzo ball soup. He never did, of course, and my brother and I would end up splitting Elijah’s cup on the sly.

  Now I may have a chance to change roles and wander in to surprise some child in the Wronski household.

  I leave my bike leaning against the porch of the clinic, wipe the sweat off my face, and walk inside. There’s no one at the desk so I wander down the hallway to an open door. Inside, a small man with thick dark hair is scribbling notes at his desk. He is the image of the bush doctor: tanned and bearded, dressed in khaki shorts and a khaki shirt.

  “Dr. Wronski?” I feel like adding “I presume,” but don’t.

  “Uh huh.” He doesn’t look up from his notes. “Just a minute.” He keeps scribbling, then closes his notebook and extends a hand. “Ian Wronski. What can I do for you?”

  Firm grip. Purposeful. This man is not on Nor’west time. “I’m Tony Horwitz. This is kind of odd, but I’m traveling through Broome, and, well, it’s Passover—”

  “And somebody told you that Wronski was the only Jew in town.”

  “Well, yeah. And I was wondering—”

  “If we celebrate Passover.”

  I nod. Wronski’s gaze travels from my thongs to my slouch hat, as if in preparation for a physical exam. Then he breaks into a toothy smile. “So you want to come to seder already?” he says, parodying the accent of a Jewish clothes merchant on the Lower East Side of New York. He scratches his beard. “I think maybe we can find room for a wandering Jew.”

  Then Ian escorts me out of the clinic and to his home a few blocks away where his wife, Maggie, is preparing Passover dinner. As we walk into the kitchen, I’m hit with a familiar, though long-forgotten, smell—chicken broth and matzo balls. Maggie is at the table, making gefilte fish. She puts a spoonful in Ian’s mouth.

  “Whaddya think?” she says. “Is it the real thing or what?”

  Ian smiles. “My grandmother would be proud.” He moves to the stove and ladles a matzo ball into his mouth. “Did you get the menorah out of the bank?”

  It is not a conversation I had imagined overhearing in Broome, Western Australia.

  The Wronskis are as lapsed in their Judaism as myself—so lapsed, in fact, that they didn’t realize it was seder night until Ian’s mother called from Melbourne. “We got the dates mixed up,” Ian tells me at sunset, when I return for dinner. Everything about the evening is improvised: the odd collection at the dinner table (Ian, Maggie, their four-year-old son Zip, myself, and a visiting Jewish doctor from Melbourne named Theresa), the sunhat I am offered as a ceremonial skullcap, and the gefilte fish, which has been fashioned from the catch available that day at a local market—a mix of salmon and bluebone and barramundi.

  In my own home, we make a rather cursory tour of the high points of Passover—lighting candles, blessing the symbolic foods on the seder plate, retelling the story of Exodus—before getting down to the serious business of eating and drinking. The Wronskis’ Passover is considerably more truncated than that. Family, after all, is what Passover is about, and in this family there’s a noisy, hungry child who has little patience for symbolic stories and Hebrew blessings.

  “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Ian asks, translating the first of the “four questions” about the meaning of the celebration.

  “On all other nights,” we answer in unison, “we can eat bread or matzo, but on this night only unleavened bread.”

  “When?” Zip asks.

  Ian raises a wineglass and continues: “Blessed is He our Lord, King of the Universe, who createth the fruit of the vine.”

  “I don’t like that stuff!” Zip pipes in. “Where’s my juice?”

  And so it goes for half an hour, before we abandon the prayer book and hoe into the food.

  This is the Wronskis’ first Passover in Broome: in previous years they’ve celebrated with Ian’s family in Melbourne. Not that Melbourne had been home for long; Ian’s parents made their way to Australia via Poland, Iran, and Israel. Theresa’s family migrated across Russia and spent some years in Siberian labor camps before coming to Australia after the war. Listening to them, my own path to Broome doesn’t seem quite so circuitous. But they are as intrigued by my travels as I am by theirs, and as the wine flows, so does the tale of my trip across the continent. I listen to myself replay the journey for the first time: stumbling on an Aboriginal circumcision at Tennant Creek, running off the road near Alice, hopping a freighter in Elleker, “calling Earl” aboard the Geraldton lobster boat. The journey seems suddenly rather remarkable
to me, and this dinner is yet another remarkable moment in it.

  We are well into the second or third bottle of sweet Israeli wine when an Aboriginal neighbor pokes her head inside the door. She sees the candles and seems to understand that some ceremonial business is in progress. Ian asks her to join us but she declines. “I’ll let you do your thing,” she says respectfully, “and maybe stop by later.”

  Ian says he has spent more time discussing Judaism with Aborigines than he ever did with non-Jewish friends in Melbourne. “Blacks see parallels with the Holocaust, and disenfranchisement,” he says. “Plus the whole bit about people wandering in the desert.”

  I think back to my conversation at Ayers Rock with the Pitjantjatjara man named Tjamiwa. At the time I was struck by the rootedness of his heritage, which is etched in a giant rock. Now I’m reminded how portable my own culture is. Aboriginal belief has endured forty thousand years through its close tie to a sacred patch of ground. Judaism has survived—albeit a much shorter time than that—because its adherents have been able to break bivouac at a moment’s notice and set up shop in alien lands.

  “When we lived in Melbourne, I felt like that was the center of the world,” Ian says. His skullcap fell away hours ago and Zip sleeps soundlessly in his lap. “Now I feel that way about Broome. I’m not sure what’s home anymore.”

  It is after midnight. The warm tropical air wafts in through the open door, reminding me of the sultry summer nights in Sydney when the idea of hitching across the continent first took form. I set off more out of compulsion than desire, feeling my restlessness nagging at me like an adolescent virus for which a hitchhiking adventure would be the final cure.

  Now I see it differently. Rootlessness is too deep in my blood to ever be so easily washed away. Perhaps a belief system suffers from constant movement; our fleeting attention to the seder ritual is evidence of that. But I’m not sure it matters. It is the being together of five people, some of us strangers to one another and to Broome, that makes this night different from all other nights.