by Arnold Zable
‘But danger was never far away. Violence could erupt at any time, even as we played in the basement cafe behind the broad shoulders of our Mendel. My foolish child, what do you know about danger? About fear? Here we live in a paradise!
‘Stanislaw the pimp would descend into the cafe surrounded by a gang of henchmen. He had the most beautiful women working for him. Stanislaw was the king of the pimps. His face was scarred all over from knife cuts he had received in the many street battles he fought until he emerged on top of the heap.
‘We all feared him. Martin, how can you know what is fear? In Australia we have no fear. Here we live in a gan eiden, a golden land. We make a living. We educate our children. I have one daughter, a chemist, a second daughter, a doctor; and a son-in-law, a professor of literature. A true goan. A sage. He knows all the great books of the world. And he knows nothing. I am joking, of course. He is a clever boy.’
Yossel is breathless. His heart is pumping. And this pleases him. It makes him feel he is fully alive. He reaches for his wallet and extracts two photos.
‘My grandchildren,’ he announces. ‘This is my true wealth. My legacy. My pride. Here we made a good life.’ Yossel sweeps his arm in an arc to include the old men and sprinkling of women bent over their coffees at the tables of Scheherazade.
‘Stanislaw the pimp advanced towards us, his arms hanging by his sides. My dear Martin, of course I was afraid! I was terrified. I wanted to run to the toilet. I was shaking inside and out. Even now, sixty years later, I cannot understand why I ran out in front of Stanislaw with an ashtray in my hand. How could I do such a foolish thing? I was possessed. I was moved by a meshugene impulse, a sudden rage.
‘I hurled the ashtray at Stanislaw. I can see it now, as it flew towards him. I can see the exact moment when it crashed against his forehead. I can see the skin breaking open, the blood squirting over his face. I can see his astonishment, his burning eyes, as he leapt at me, clawed at me like a wounded animal. By the time Mendel came to my aid, Stanislaw had landed enough blows to send me to hospital for a month.
‘When I returned I was the toast of the streets. This is how it was. The boys of Krochmalna put on a reception for me. The Polish and Jewish underworld joined together to welcome me back. They hired the banquet hall of the Polonia.
‘“Let bygones be bygones,” they said. Stanislaw and his henchmen gave me their hand. We recalled our battles like old soldiers at a reunion. We dined on gefilte fish and caviar. We sipped coffee and liqueurs. We toasted each other with cognac. The best quality. All stolen, of course. “Do not trifle with Yossel,” my former enemies said. I was welcomed back a hero.’
‘A hero in underpants!’ interjects Laizer Bialer as he seats himself at the table, without the merest hint of small talk, an ‘excuse me’, or a polite aside. ‘That no-good bastard is telling you about Krochmalna? That scoundrel is boasting about his great deeds? Always the same story. Always Krochmalna. Always poverty. Always Mendel and Stanislaw. We know his grandmothers' tales by heart.’
Laizer's face is gaunt, his cheeks sunken, his eyes constantly on the move, absorbed in everything about him. He radiates a desperate zest for life, as if any moment lost would be a small death in itself. He dresses plainly in slacks, an open-necked shirt, a well-worn tweed jacket. As he talks his forehead furrows in concentration. His oval-shaped face alternates between wariness and unexpected warmth. He veers between a hard clipped Yiddish and English, which he speaks with the old-fashioned correctness of someone who has mastered it late in life.
‘You no-good scribbler,’ he says, turning to me. ‘Yes, I know who you are. I have seen your columns, God help us. I have read your foolish stories, may my enemies be so clever. So, now you want to write about Vilna? And about Wolfke's? Where we did meet, Yossel, Zalman and I? I will tell you how it was, without Yossel's embellishments and lies.’
Zalman has glided into our presence. His face is somewhat softer, reflective, as if troubled, as if trying to discern a deeper truth which still awaits him, just beyond reach. He is the most reticent of the three, and thinner, more compact, more youthful-looking, even though, like Laizer, he is almost eighty. His neatly cut hair has not turned fully grey. He is dressed in a pair of jeans, a checked shirt, and sneakers. His clothes are well fitting, yet casual and loose.
‘Ah, the intellectual has finally arrived,’ says Laizer with a hint of sarcasm.
They are very different, our three friends, the refined Zalman, the streetwise Yossel, and the belligerent Laizer with his ironic smile. Yet the bond between them is palpable, an indelible friendship first forged in the Vilna of the Red interlude, a city full of foreboding.
‘I can still see it clearly,’ says Laizer. ‘Over the door there was a sign, written in Yiddish: Wolfke's. Outside, on Zydowska Street, would gather porters and peddlers, wagon drivers and chauffeurs. While their horses stood by water-troughs and drank, their masters filed into the saloon for a whisky, a snack.
‘The saloon was the outer room. The floor was covered in sawdust. A bartender poured mugs of beer, a brandy, any concoction one desired. Sometimes a fight would break out; and just as quickly it would be broken up. There was always something happening in the bar.
‘Those with more money hurried through to the restaurant. The tables were crowded with families rich enough to eat out. It was like Scheherazade will be in an hour or so, when people come for their Sunday lunch. They stuffed themselves, fought over politics, traded jokes, boasted about their business deals, spoilt their children with sweets, and gossiped until their throats creaked,’ concludes Laizer, with a triumphant smile.
‘In Wolfke's you could get the best Sabbath choient in Vilna,’ enthuses Yossel. ‘Such a mouth-watering stew! So thick with potatoes and chunks of meat. And, for a snack, you could order a beautiful chopped liver. It was a mekhaiye. A pure delight. With beaten onion and egg, floating in chicken fat.’
‘So, you no-good bastard, you Krochmalna Street know-all. Any mention of food and your mouth drools,’ retorts Laizer. ‘But, I must admit, on this subject you do know what you are talking about. And, if you wanted to fill your belly with delicacies, you could go to the banquet hall, where there did gather bohemians and dandies with their hangers-on. And no-good intellectuals like our friend Zalman, forever boasting that they knew how to change the world. Here we did come after an evening at the cinema for a vodka and an argument.’
‘And for the beautiful girls,’ interjects Yossel. ‘In Wolfke's we could dance, to the radio, a quick tango. Ah. What a mekhaiye!’
‘Nu, not only are you a hero in underpants, but a Casanova!’ says Laizer. ‘Yes, we did dance on the bare wooden floors. And we ate finely cut salami and goose feet. We snacked on gefilte fish, peppered, Vilna-style. We feasted on pickled herring and boiled beef. We partied until daybreak and stumbled out bloated into Zydowska Street.’
As Laizer holds forth, Zalman is humming. His eyes are fixed on some distant point. His humming becomes discernible, a melody, a Yiddish song. Laizer and Yossel fall silent. Around them the world is beginning to burn. And in the distance can be heard the trembling of forests, the cries of marauders, the tread of a sinister enemy approaching the city gates:
‘I searched for you all over town,
Except for the one cellar where you waited.
That is my fate, oh my fate.
I searched for you throughout the world
With your image always dancing before me,
But nowhere were you to be found.
So I sat down, heavy-hearted, on a stone,
Yet your image still hovered before me
Always in the distance, just beyond reach.
To search and never find is a terrible burden;
To search without end is a terrible fate.’
As Zalman sings I glance at the tables: on each table a rectangular beige mat, on each mat a glass ashtray, and containers of sugar, pepper and salt. A ray of late-morning sun lights up the objects, and for a brief moment t
hey seem like antidotes to ageing men, burdened with memories which will never be erased.
‘September 1939 was the month that changed our fate,’ says Zalman. ‘Blue skies were muddied by planes that spat misery into our lives. In Warsaw, I saw buildings split and craters opening before my eyes. I decided to flee the city I had lived in all my life. I hugged my loved ones and took to the roads as though pursued by rabid dogs. I leapt under bushes as though they could protect us from bombs. I ran through forests crackling with flames. I saw the bark peeling from trees ablaze. And still I ran.
‘I fled past overturned wagons, as their owners scattered for their lives. I ran in a frenzy past the injured and dead. I leapt over wounded horses shrieking in agony. I slipped in and out of barns. I hid in sewers and drains. I jumped on and off moving trains. I waded across rivers and streams. I saw town lights in the distance, and made my way through the Vilna gates. And I found temporary respite in a city bursting with refugees.
‘It would take some time before I realised that it would be the first of many cities which seemed, from a distance, to be the haven I craved. It would take years to accept I would never see my loved ones again. It would take decades before I fully understood that to search without end is a terrible fate.’
Zalman lapses back into silence. Yossel and Laizer remain still. For a moment we are disoriented, unable to move until, as abruptly as it had begun, the spell is broken, and the tumult is upon us again. Families are entering for their midday meals. Waitresses are rushing between the tables. Avram and Masha have arrived and sit at the back table, checking the mounting bills.
Zalman, Yossel and Laizer retreat. The old men are spilling out onto the street. They cannot quite let go of each other's company. They linger against lampposts and parked cars, or stand in the middle of the pavement, unaware of passers-by. Sunday is reaching out for the afternoon, but they persist with their opinions as if to argue is to know they are alive. They continue to tell their tales, as if to talk is to know they have survived.
III
In Acland Street, not so long ago, there was one cafe. Perhaps two. Now every month new cafes appear, like mushrooms sprouting after autumn rain. Each one boasts its distinctive appeal. Just stroll the length of one full block, the crucial block, from Shakespeare Grove to Barkly Street. They stand side by side, with menus pasted on plate-glass windows, proclaiming their riches like spruikers at a country fair.
The range is overwhelming: from the Cosmo to La Roche, from the Blue Danube to the Espresso Bar. Stop for a moment in Deveroli's, a supermarket of a cafe, with enough chairs to seat a battalion of coffee connoisseurs. Adjust your sunglasses and saunter into Cafe Manna or Cafe Mondo, Cicciolina or the Zenith Bar. Sit at a pavement table in the morning sun. Or join the boys outside the Pit Stop burger shop for a meal on the run.
Acland Street is raining caffeine. Of every conceivable variety and form: short black, flat white, froth-topped Viennese, raw Turkish, roughly ground. Or is it Bulgarian? Or Greek? Wars have been fought over that one.
Not to be left behind, Le Bon cake shop has concocted its very own ‘cocktail’ brew. ‘Experience something new in coffee,’ a window poster proclaims. ‘With over 40 varieties,’ from ice-cooled lattes for the midday heat to whisky-spiked Irish for a wintry night.
I stroll past this maze of cafes, and make my way to Scheherazade. It is weeks since I last entered, and spring has finally arrived. As I wait at the back table for Avram and Masha to finish their chores, I jot down notes. It is my habit, a journalist's curse. ‘Each cafe begets another,’ I write, ‘and for every coffee shop on Acland Street I imagine a precursor, a cafe of the mind. Such as Wolfke's, which once stood in the city of Vilna, on the corner of Niemecka and Zydowska streets.’
‘I knew it well,’ says Avram, after he and Masha join me. ‘My father would take me there as a special treat. We descended into a large room with wooden tables. It was always in a tumult, a chaotic mess. Everyone seemed to be shouting and smoking. It was a favourite meeting place for my father's Bundist mates.
‘There were many such places in Vilna. In the same courtyard stood Levanda's vegetarian restaurant; and around the corner the Cafe Prater, where Yiddish journalists would gather to eat. On elegant Mickiewicz Street stood Die Grinne Shtral, The Green Ray. This cafe was more refined. Here we would stroll on a Sunday afternoon, for coffee and cake.
‘And there was Dorman's on Broad Street, where a women's orchestra would perform; and nearby stood the Palais de Danse, where string bands played night after night. Vilna's dance halls were always full. Vilna was a world full of little worlds. It possessed all that the heart desired, and the stomach required. But it all came to nothing; it all came to a bitter end.’
Avram is quickly back into the momentum of history. He is not a man for the intricacies of social life. I want to know more about the streets that once flowed with caffeine and cake. But Avram was taught to see the world as a theatre of grand movements, a clash of epic forces. In one leap he moves away from Wolfke's to the defining moment:
‘In Vilna we thought we were safe. We thought the Nazi-Soviet pact, signed in August '39, would protect us. At least this is what my father believed. “The Red Army will soon arrive,” he predicted. “There will be no need to run. There is no need to be afraid of the Bolsheviks. We may have different points of view, but we belong to the same movement. After all, we are fighting a common enemy.”’
Avram inscribes circles as he speaks. He clutches his forehead. He clenches his fists. His hands are the subtext; his clenched fists are clenched emotions. His wrinkled forehead is a straining for memory. His measured words an attempt to circumscribe time.
‘To understand the fate of my father,’ he says, ‘we must return to the city of Pinsk, the birthplace of my father's father, Alter the lumberjack. Pinsk was then part of Poland. It was located near its eastern borders, still beyond reach of the invading Germans. You must understand this was an insane part of the world, a battleground of rival tribes. Countries often changed hands overnight. It had always been like this. Both Vilna and Pinsk were occupied by the Bolsheviks, for short periods, after World War I, but in 1920, they were annexed by Poland. As for the Lithuanians, they still longed for independence and regarded Vilna as their ancient capital.
‘In the early days of September '39, my father sent me to an uncle and aunt who lived in Pinsk. He wanted to be free of the family at this time. He had many things on his mind. He had urgent matters to deal with. The Third Reich was on the march.
‘I travelled with my sister Basia, and her two-year-old son, Shmulek, the first grandchild. I was fifteen. Pinsk is perhaps two hundred kilometres south of Vilna. We arrived on the eve of Rosh Hashonah, the New Year. My pious uncle told me my father would always accompany him to the recital of prayers on Rosh Hashonah, even though he was a non-believer. I was expected to follow the tradition.
‘After we entered the synagogue, I did not know what to do. I stood with a prayer book in hand, and felt like a fool. I could not even follow the service. I did not understand the Hebrew text. I was surrounded by men in prayer-shawls who glanced at me with contempt. In their eyes I was an ignoramus, a boy who had gone astray. I felt ashamed. I ran from the shul. I fled to the home of Aaron Yudel Schlakhman, the leader of the Bund in Pinsk.
‘Aaron was one of my childhood heroes. He was a close friend of my father's, and had visited our Vilna apartment. I was in awe of his battle scars. He had lost an arm in the revolution of 1905. He was an anarchist in those days. His arm was blown off by a bomb. He was assembling the parts when it exploded. Two years later he abandoned his anarchist ways and became an ardent member of the Bund.
‘I ran to his house. Here I would be among comrades. Here I would feel at home. The rooms were crowded with Bund leaders in flight from western and central Poland. They had arrived, just days earlier. I was the youngest, privileged to be among legends; such as Noiakh, a founder of the Bund. He was one of a small band of revolutionaries who sec
retly met in a house in Vilna, in 1897, to form the new movement. I could not believe I was in his company.
‘The next day I was entrusted with my first mission. I was to find my way to a village, twenty kilometres distant. I was to make contact with Henryk Erlich, a renowned Bund leader, and his wife Sofia. They had both escaped from German-occupied Warsaw. I was to escort them back to Pinsk, where it was hoped the Polish government might regroup and fight back.
‘I travelled by horse and wagon. We approached a bridge over the Pina, on the outskirts of Pinsk, the river on which Alter the lumberjack once guided logs on the first leg of his journeys to the Black Sea. Polish soldiers guarding the bridge warned that I might not get back. The bridge was mined. The Red Army was approaching.
‘I remember that moment clearly. It was the moment of my first big decision. My first independent decision. Somehow I knew it would be the first of many decisions which would be matters of life and death.
‘I decided to go ahead. We stole across the bridge to the village in which the Erlichs were hiding, about five kilometres away. And we returned just in time. Hours later the bridge was blown up and, the next day, the Red Army marched into Pinsk. They also attacked by river, with troops that had sailed all the way from the Black Sea. The city was in chaos.
‘I remained in Aaron's house with Erlich. His comrades fetched a barber to cut off his beard. They wanted him to change his appearance. He was in danger from the Bolsheviks, they claimed.
‘“From the Bolsheviks I do not hide,” Erlich replied. It wasn't that he trusted them. He was well aware of the purges, the Stalinist terror, the show trials, the Siberian camps. But now that the Red Army was advancing, now that the Nazis were destroying Poland, we would all unite against a common enemy, he reasoned. Whatever has happened in the past, we still come from the same family, the same roots.
