Things Could Be Worse

by Lily Brett

  Mrs Serbin brought in a large jar of Nescafe on an enormous Georgian silver platter. She put six spoonfuls of the coffee powder into each person’s cup. Lola asked if she could have tea. The other guests drank their coffee with relish.

  The next morning Lola met Mrs Potoki-Okolska at the railway station at eight-thirty. At eleven o’clock there was an announcement that the nine o’clock train to Lodz had been cancelled. Mrs Potoki-Okolska rushed Lola to the taxi stand.

  Lola looked at the miserable faces in the taxi queue. She felt buoyed by their hardship.

  ‘You’ve got what you deserve,’ she whispered to the man standing on her left.

  Lola sat in the back of the taxi. Mrs Potoki-Okolska sat in the front seat. She ordered the taxi driver to turn the heater on high, and settled down with a bag of boiled sweets.

  Lola had packed her own provisions. She had packets of Life Savers, Minties and Steam Rollers. Steam Rollers, Lola felt, were particularly good for combating nausea.

  After an hour in the car Lola felt sick. Her skin burned and itched. She unbuttoned her coat and jacket. Her chest was covered with angry red blotches. She thought that she was probably the only person in Poland suffering from a heat rash.

  She opened the car window a little.

  ‘What is that?’ bellowed Mrs Potoki-Okolska. ‘Shut it, shut it, shut it. You will catch a disease of the lungs. It is very dangerous. Very, very dangerous.’ Lola closed the window.

  They arrived at Zelazowa-Wola, Chopin’s birthplace. Lola was glad to be able to get out of the car. An hour and a half later, Lola had seen Chopin’s piano, Chopin’s mother’s piano, Chopin’s bedroom, Chopin’s mother’s bedroom, Chopin’s garden and Chopin’s bathroom.

  Lola thought that maybe she would never get to Lodz. She thought, once again, that maybe Lodz didn’t exist. Maybe Mr and Mrs Bensky’s past would always be inaccessible to her. Mrs Potoki-Okolska left Zelazowa-Wola reluctantly, humming ‘La Polonaise’.

  They passed kilometre after kilometre of flat, snow-covered countryside. This soft, white stillness was punctuated occasionally by small forests of spindly, black fir trees.

  They were now ten kilometres from Lodz. Lola was already weeping.

  Friday Is A Good Day For Fish

  Lola lay facing away from Garth. She was almost asleep. Garth had been rubbing her shoulders. He had patted her and rubbed her and stroked her. She felt suspended in a state of bliss.

  Garth lowered his head and kissed her in a line across her back. He pressed himself against her. His rubbing became more intense. He was no longer soothing her into sleep. He was waking her.

  Lola, at forty, could still sometimes feel nervous and shy about sex. She turned towards Garth. She buried her head in his chest. She loved his smell. They hadn’t made love for over a week. She stroked him and smoothed him. She stroked his penis. She rocked it from side to side between her thumb and her forefinger. She felt good.

  ‘My mother really loved the dress we bought her,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I didn’t buy a book or that kettle. I felt so happy seeing my mother’s pleasure.’

  Garth started laughing. ‘You’re playing with me in the same absent-minded way you twist your hair. My dick is flying backwards and forwards and you’re talking about your mother’s birthday present.’

  Garth pulled her on top of him.

  ‘Can we change positions before we come? Can you lie on top of me then?’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘Do you have to orchestrate everything? Do you have any more instructions?’

  They made love. Lola gripped the sheet. She used it to lever herself. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘We don’t have to change positions.’

  Lola had a long orgasm. She felt as though she’d been away. In another dimension. In another time. She fell asleep.

  Lola was in Lodz. She was in the lounge-room of the apartment. Everything was exactly as her father had described it. The rounded couch and chairs, the white-tiled heater. All that was missing was the family. Her father’s parents, his three brothers and sister.

  They had known the end was coming. Jengelef Boleswaf, the family’s Polish caretaker, who was eighty-three when Lola visited him in Poland, had told Lola this.

  ‘Your grandfather came to me before he left for the ghetto. He said to me, “I may not be here in a few years’ time, but my building will still be here in one hundred years,” ’ Jengelef had said.

  Nobody had ever said ‘your grandfather’ to Lola.

  Jengelef still lived on the ground floor of the apartments that Lola’s grandfather had built. Jengelef lived in one small room. Everything in the room was spotless. A small table next to the window was covered with a starched white linen tablecloth. The corners of the tablecloth were embroidered with red roses. In the middle of the room was a plain brass bed.

  Jengelef’s wife was lying in the bed. She was dying. She was lying perfectly still. She seemed to be barely breathing. Her skin was pale and clear, and her hair was brushed and fluffed. She was wearing a white pin-tucked nightie. Jengelef’s devotion to his wife had made Lola cry. But then, Lola had cried all the time that she was in Lodz.

  When Lola had arrived in Lodz, she had gone straight to 23 Zakatna Street. The taxi driver had pulled up across the road from the apartments. From the car window she could see the first-floor balcony her father had told her about so many times. His father used to sit on the balcony and watch his children come home from school. Lola’s father always made sure that he had his school cap on before he came into his father’s line of vision.

  Lola got out of the taxi and stood on the footpath. She was too frightened to cross the empty street. Her heart was pounding and she was trembling. She crossed the street. The main entrance of the building was open. Lola stepped inside.

  She stood in the deserted hallway. Her chest tightened and her throat constricted. She found it hard to breathe. She stood in the deserted hallway. The air felt thick with people. She could feel their presence. She could hear their voices. The voices of people going about their daily business. Going to work, to school, to market. She could feel the movement. She could feel the life. She stood in the hallway and wept and wept.

  Lola cried every time she went to the building. She went there every day. Often she stood in the hallway for hours. She would touch the tiled wall with her cheek. She would stroke the balustrade. She wanted to sink into the marble staircase. To mesh herself with the air. To be part of the past.

  Jengelef had told the tenants in the building who Lola was. Some of them had looked at Lola as though she was a ghost. ‘I thought they had killed all the Jews from Lodz,’ Mr Krupnik from the second floor had said to Lola.

  Lola was washing her hair when the phone rang. She had never been able to ignore a ringing telephone. She answered the phone. Shampoo dripped down her.

  ‘It’s me, Morris,’ said Lola’s friend, Morris Lubofsky.

  ‘Hi, Morris,’ said Lola. Morris sounded a bit flat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve just found out my brother is coming to Melbourne for two months,’ said Morris. ‘My folks are putting pressure on me to invite him to stay at my place. I’m not happy about having him back in the country, let alone in my house.’

  Morris and his brother Boris were twins. Fraternal, not identical twins. Boris, a banker, had lived in New York since he was twenty. Lola thought that Boris was OK. She couldn’t see that Morris had all that much to complain about in Boris. He hardly saw him.

  ‘Maybe you and Boris will patch things up this visit? We’re a bit old to be quibbling with our siblings,’ said Lola. Quibbling with our siblings. Lola liked the sound of that line. Quibbling with our siblings. She repeated it to herself a few times while Morris complained about Boris.

  Morris was calling from Sydney. He’d been there for a week. ‘Sydney’s depressing me,’ he said. ‘Everybody looks slightly seedy. On the make. I must be getting old. And the drug scene here is depressing. Everyone’s on coca
ine or ecstasy. Really, fifty per cent of my friends are on cocaine.’

  Lola thought that she and Morris were both getting old. This was the same Morris Lubofsky who used to slip her joints and speed and phials of LSD when they were twenty. These drugs, Morris used to tell her, would expand her mind and her horizons. Lola was having enough trouble with her mind at the time. Her grip on things already seemed marginal and skew-whiff, and Lola didn’t want it tilted any further. The contortions that LSD produced were too chaotic for Lola. As a fellow seeker of purity, enlightenment and truth, Lola had been a great disappointment to Morris.

  Lola had pulled on a dressing gown while Morris was talking. Her hair was still dripping. She felt uncomfortable. She felt fat this morning. She’d eaten too much poppy-seed cake last night. Lola allowed herself a slice of poppy-seed cake every Thursday. Last night’s slice had been just short of half the cake.

  ‘Yeah, fifty per cent of my friends have got a coke problem,’ said Morris.

  ‘Fifty per cent of my friends have got a cake problem, Morris,’ said Lola. ‘I better go,’ she said. ‘I was in the shower when you rang and I’ve probably already caught pneumonia.’

  ‘See you in Melbourne next week,’ said Morris.

  Lola hopped back into the shower. She rinsed out the shampoo, towel-dried and moussed her hair, and got dressed. She looked around. Her two desks were clear. Her poems were filed. Her pencils were sharpened. Everything was ready for her to begin work.

  Lola looked at the poem that she was currently struggling with. What was she trying to say? She was trying to say that she was getting better. That she was changing. That she could see that she could no longer occupy the role of the victim.

  Spotting the fault had been her speciality. Lola always knew whose fault it was. It was always someone else’s. She was also an expert on what was wrong. Lola could find the flaw in anything. You could tell Lola the most elevating news, and in less than ten seconds she could tell you what was worrying about it.

  Just before lunchtime, Lola’s mother rang. ‘Lola darling, Genia Pekelman is giving me a lift to the Georges sale. They have got a sale of all their imported underwear. Darling, would you like to come with us?’ said Renia.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mum,’ said Lola. ‘I’ve got such a lot to do.’

  ‘They have got silk petticoats and beautiful strapless bras and backless bras and Swiss cotton underpants. Lola darling, they have got Lily of France bras,’ said Renia.

  Renia always wore beautiful underwear. She had drawers and drawers of bras and girdles and suspender belts and petticoats.

  For years, Lola had refused to wear any underwear. Then she went through a phase of wearing ragged and discoloured underwear. She would wear torn and stained underwear underneath beautifully beaded and embroidered dresses.

  ‘We won’t be long in the city, darling,’ said Renia. ‘Genia doesn’t feel so good today, so we will just go straight in and straight home. I just want to buy some bras and Genia just wants to buy some underpants.’

  Lola was beginning to get a headache. She didn’t want to go shopping for underpants with Genia Pekelman.

  When Lola was thirteen, Genia Pekelman had told her a story that had horrified her. ‘When I was your age,’ Genia had said to Lola, ‘the Germans invaded Poland. I was walking down the street, and a whole car of German soldiers stopped me. They made me take off my underpants and clean the windscreen of their car with my underpants. All five of them stood outside the car while I was cleaning. One of them kept lifting my skirt so everyone in the street could see.’

  ‘Mum, I really don’t think I can come with you,’ said Lola. ‘Maybe you could buy me a white Lily of France bra in size 14C, and a black half-slip in a 16?’

  ‘You don’t need a 16,’ said Renia. ‘You’ve lost so much weight.’

  ‘Yes I do,’ said Lola. ‘My hips are enormous.’

  ‘No, you have lost enough weight. You don’t need to lose any more. You look very nice. You shouldn’t be too thin,’ said Renia.

  Lola was still not used to this turn of events. After being harangued all her life to lose weight, she now had to worry about being too thin. Too thin. If only she was too thin. If she was too thin she could have some more poppy-seed cake.

  ‘Lola darling, give Lina a ring,’ said Renia. ‘She is your sister. Sisters should be sisters. And after all, you are the older one.’ Lola wondered how old she would have to be before she was no longer considered the older one.

  Last week Renia and Josl had had a large dinner party to celebrate their forty-seventh wedding anniversary. Everyone was eating and talking except for Lina. Lina was picking at a plate of lettuce and cucumber.

  Lina asked Renia if there were any chicken bones.

  ‘Yes, of course, darling,’ said Renia. She brought out a platter of chicken bones. Lina picked up a thigh bone and chewed it. Lola leaned across the table.

  ‘If you’re on a diet you shouldn’t be chewing chicken bones,’ she said.

  ‘Chicken bones can’t have any calories,’ said Lina.

  ‘Well, they do,’ said Lola. ‘The marrow is very fatty, and there’s fat wedged in behind the gristle.’ Lina put the bone down and returned to her lettuce.

  ‘Are chicken bones really calorific?’ Garth asked later.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lola.

  ‘Oy, darling, I have to go,’ said Renia. ‘Genia and Izak are here to pick me up. Bye bye, darling.’

  So, Izak Pekelman was taking the women shopping. Jewish men were amazing, thought Lola. They did everything for their wives. They shopped, chauffeured, accompanied. Even on underwear excursions.

  Lola liked Izak Pekelman. He always seemed to be in good spirits. Izak was respected and admired by all of his friends for his gardening skills. Not too many Jews were good in the garden. In his garden in Caulfield, Izak had almond trees, walnut trees, chestnut trees, apricot, pear, peach and plum trees, and orange, lemon and lime trees. Izak grew his own vegetables, too. He grew zucchinis, cauliflowers, cabbage, carrots, beans, peas, potatoes and spring onions.

  When he was a child in Lowicz, Izak was in charge of the family’s vegetable plot. He grew carrots, beetroots, onions, potatoes and radishes. Before and after school, every day, Izak had looked after his vegetables.

  In the ghetto, where people were dying of starvation every day, Izak kept his mother and father alive with his vegetables. Izak grew onions and radishes and potatoes in an old pram. He had bought the pram from his cousin for a loaf of bread and his mother’s wedding ring. Izak had kept the pram by his side all the time. He slept with the pram next to his mattress, and during the day, while he worked, he parked the pram outside the window where he sat sewing uniforms for the Germans.

  ‘People did laugh at me,’ he had told Lola. ‘If there was some sunshine I would rush outside to move the pram. I had a chain to lock the wheels of the pram, and some wires over the vegetables so no-one could steal them quickly. One day I was at the pictures in Melbourne when a man came up to me and said: “You are the boy who grew vegetables in that old pram. My mother used to say to me that you looked after those vegetables like they were the most precious children in the world.” To tell you the truth, Lola, I started to cry in the middle of the picture theatre when he was talking about my pram.’

  Izak Pekelman always wore sandals. Sandals and socks. He wore sandals and socks in summer and in winter. To the beach and to barmitzvahs. When he was poor he was laughed at, in his socks and sandals. Now that he was wealthy, business associates admired his eccentricity.

  Izak couldn’t wear shoes. His toes were twisted and bent. His toenails were black, layered and chalky. They sat, raised and rounded, on top of his toes.

  Lola had once asked Izak Pekelman why he always wore sandals. ‘My feet don’t look so nice,’ he had said.

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’ Lola had asked. For a moment Izak had looked as though he wasn’t going to answer Lola’s question, and then he spoke.

&
nbsp; ‘In the concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, where I was in,’ he said, ‘they had an area for testing shoes. One of the local manufacturers wanted to test their merchandise on a variety of surfaces. So they did some research, and they built tracks with nine different surfaces. Every day some of us prisoners had to put on new shoes and walk for about forty kilometres over tracks of different sorts of cement, cinders, broken stones, sand, gravel. To make life more interesting for themselves, the SS guards made us wear shoes that were one or two sizes too small, and we had to carry sacks filled with twenty kilos of sand. So you can see, Lola, that I am lucky that I have still got toes.’

  Lola couldn’t speak. She felt terrible for asking Izak about his sandals. Izak didn’t look upset. He looked calm.

  ‘I always knew I was a lucky man,’ he said. ‘I was lucky even when I arrived in Sachsenhausen. When we got off the train there was a big crowd of people to greet us at the station. The spectacle of watching the prisoners arrive was an exciting pastime for the townspeople of Oranienburg. There were men and women and mothers with their children all watching us. When we got off the train they sang and shouted and screamed terrible things about the Jews, and they threw stones at us, and pieces of wood, and dirt from the street. We had to walk two miles from the station to the concentration camp, and the SS guards kicked us and beat us all the way. If somebody fell, they shot him. We had a whole trail of dead and injured. A few patrol cars drove along the road behind us to pick up the victims. It didn’t matter whether they were dead or alive, they were all picked up because the SS had to deliver the correct total number of prisoners that had been consigned to the camp. This was German efficiency.

  ‘One of the first things I saw when I arrived in Sachsenhausen was a sign which said: “There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are obedience, industry, honesty, order, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, spirit of sacrifice and love for the Fatherland.”