Cafe Scheherazade

by Arnold Zable

  ‘In Hongkew lovers grappled in each other's arms in dark corners and lanes. I saw them with my own eyes. My foolish child! What can you know of such things? Even in a slum, the spirit thrives.

  ‘And compared with those who stayed behind we were in paradise. Ah, now that was a true tragedia. What happened to us was nothing in comparison. Gornisht. At least we had a tiny bit of room in which to move. At least we could have affairs, bear children, and bury our dead, the way they should be buried, with a tombstone to mark their names. At least we could drink coffee as the rest of the world burned. Perhaps that is why I loved it. Perhaps that is why I still dream of Shanghai. In Shanghai I survived!’

  As I leave the cafe I feel disoriented. The footpath seems malleable under foot. Nothing feels certain. Yet everything appears vibrant, ablaze. The Europa cake shop glistens with sugar-coated dreams of a distant past: sacher rum and cherry kougelhupf. Vanilla knipfel and almond horseshoe. Baked cheesecake, Vienna rings, hazelnut meringues and honey sponge.

  I catch a tram and find relief in the breeze that flows through its open doors. The Upper Esplanade is lined with luxury apartments and dishevelled hotels. The sea is a scorching silver that scalds the eyes. A haze sinks from low-hung skies. A solitary ship crawls across the bay. The green-domed clocktower marks the passing of a summer day.

  The tram curves into Fitzroy Street. Ageing elm trees line the way. Tables sprawl at kerbside cafes. Pimps and prostitutes survey their domain. Backpackers finger their copies of The World on Twenty Dollars a Day. It is shabby, yet somehow it seems new. A world of sojourners and itinerants, unhinged and unearthed.

  I too have become a walker, a cafe dweller. I too have become unhinged, so taken by Laizer, Zalman and Yossel's stories that all I see about me seems like a parade, a play of chance.

  ‘We are luftmenschen,’ is how Yossel put it, with a laugh. ‘People of air. We do not belong to any one place. The whole world is ours. Yet, despite all our running about, nothing is truly ours. My foolish child, this is how it is.’

  VII

  Walk the familiar route. The inner city is coated in dew. St Kilda pier is lined with lamps that glow like miniature moons. A woman leans across the rails. A couple embrace on the deserted beach, a middle-aged man slumps back on a wooden seat. The Palais Theatre rears like a Gothic castle in the mist.

  Walk the streets of Shanghai; walk the lanes of Krochmalna; walk the crumbling courtyards of Vilna; the foothills of Kobe; walk the ancient trading route. Walk the pier. Walk the pavement. Walk the shoreline of the bay. Walk and come to know that others have walked here for millennia. Walk the contours, the flatlands, the hills, the rivers and creeks coursing like arteries to the bay. Walk and come to know that this land abounds in tales, both ancient and new.

  Retrace your steps along the familiar route. Observe the neon sign coming into view, Scheherazade blinking lilac, pink and blue. Proceed through the glass doors. Make your way past the front alcove where the boys are playing cards. Move past the men immersed in journals and racing guides. Sidestep the tables where families are gulping down their meals; and make your way to the back room.

  They are there, as usual, Mr and Mrs Zeleznikow, Avram and Masha, the proprietors, in their directors' chairs, issuing orders, poring over bills, shuffling papers, reading the news.

  So join us, dear reader. Don't be shy. Here, have a slice of Black Forest cake. On the house. And a glass of red. Savour it. Feel the glow spreading over your cheeks. Allow the taste to linger in the mouth. It is a pleasant feeling, no? Are you comfortable? Sit back. Settle into your chair; and listen to bobbe mayses, grandma tales:

  Listen to this story children,

  Listen with nose and eyes.

  Over grandma's house

  A cow I saw did fly.

  This is true, this is true,

  This is true, it all took place.

  This is true, this is true,

  This indeed, I saw myself.

  The war is over. Empires lie in ruins. A weariness has descended upon the world. Travellers trudge across the horizon clad in rags. They sleep in barns, abandoned cottages, burnt-out buildings. They emerge from temporary refuges, remote hamlets. They disperse from disbanding armies and the labour camps of the east. It is time to seek out the loved ones they have left behind. It is time to journey home.

  Masha's family were among the first to return to Poland. In September 1945, the Frydmans boarded a train in Dzhambul. Cold winds penetrated the wagons. The early snows were falling. Tall grasses bent to a bitter breeze. Forests vanished into the shadows. Villages receded in huddles of light.

  They travelled in silence. All about them they saw others on the move; on the backs of trucks, in bare feet, on bicycles and horse-drawn carts; they moved like weary battalions in quiet retreat. They travelled towards a land shrouded in rumours. They prayed that their loved ones had survived. They were afraid of what they would find.

  Yet nothing could have prepared them for the devastation that had been wrought in their absence: the piles of rubble, twisted girders, the razed hamlets, the wastelands of defeat. Nothing could have readied them for the scorched earth, the ruined cities, the desecrated temples and shattered homes.

  This is when their stories began to be suppressed. This is when the Frydmans, and so many others who had survived in the east, were overwhelmed by the demands of others in far greater distress; and by an urgent need to forget, to bury the past and to rebuild their aborted lives.

  ‘When we first met,’ says Masha, ‘Avram told me that all those years in gehennim he had dreamt of a white room. A brightly lit room. With a desk at which he could sit and write. That is all he wanted, a room with an electric light.’

  ‘I dreamt about it all the time,’ says Avram, ‘in all those years of crawling through swamps and shit, I dreamt of a white room. With a desk at which I could sit and record my days in the Kingdom of Night.’

  ‘When we first met, I fell in love with his stories. He made me feel I had led a sheltered life. He made me feel I had nothing to complain about. Avram's stories made me feel that my suffering had been trivial.’

  ‘We met at a Bund gathering. In the Polish countryside, near Wroclaw. In the summer of 1946. I was twenty-two, and Masha was nineteen. For me it was love at first sight.’

  ‘I was not so sure. I could see he was not ambitious. I could see he was a dreamer. All he wanted was a white room, with a desk, and a light. Can you believe it? That I fell in love with his stories?’

  ‘I thought we could rebuild our lives in Poland,’ says Avram. ‘I travelled the countryside on Bund missions. I collected children from hiding, from convents and nunneries, from cellars, attics and warrens dug deep in the ground. I retrieved them from peasants who had concealed them behind false walls. And I collected documents for our archives. I was driven by a need to record, to pick up the pieces, to reconnect. But inside I felt empty. I had a craving for human touch, a welcoming face.’

  ‘I sensed it in him from the beginning,’ says Masha, ‘his need to be heard; and it frightened me. Yet it drew me to him. At the same time I was anxious to get on with my own life. I was nineteen and full of hopes. I did not want to be like my mother, a servant of the family. I wanted to study, to fend for myself.’

  ‘I wanted to remake my life,’ says Avram. ‘I wanted to restore the Jewish communities of Poland. I settled in Lodz. I became active in the Bund. We tried to help those who survived. We welcomed refugees, found them a place to stay, and tried to determine the fate of their loved ones. And I loved Lodz. Compared to my devastated Vilna, it was beautiful.’

  ‘I wanted to study medicine. I moved from Katowice, where my parents had resettled, to Lodz. I enrolled in the university. From all over Poland they were returning. From camps, from forests and hiding places. Each one had a story to tell. We were overwhelmed by their tales. I was overwhelmed by Avram. I had a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, all of whom were alive. We had all survived, but Avram was completely alone.’


  ‘At that time,’ says Avram, ‘I read a book that seemed to reflect my situation. We all read this book. Arc de Triomphe, it was called. Written by Erich Maria Remarque, a German writer, the very same author who wrote All Quiet on the Western Front. It was a book about stateless people. A book about lovers. A book about us. And it was in this book that we first heard of a nightclub called Scheherazade.’

  ‘Avramel, you should explain that Scheherazade was in Paris. A cabaret where Russian emigres would meet, where they felt at home. This was where they heard the music of their past, played on Gypsy violins. Where they talked and reminisced, and imagined the day of their return. And this was where Remarque's lovers met, the doctor and the cabaret singer. Whenever they met, they would drink an apple brandy called Calvados.’

  ‘When I read this book,’ says Avram, ‘I began, for the first time, to dream of Paris, of other cities, other worlds. When I read this book I began to imagine a different way of living, a new life.’

  ‘Avramel, you are jumping ahead again. You have not told Martin the full story—the stories that so overwhelmed me, and made mine seem so mild, the stories that I could hardly believe when I first heard them, and that still fill me with wonder and disbelief. You have not told him about the Kingdom of Night.’

  It was twilight in the Jerusalem of eastern Europe, a lull before the final storm. It broke on a sunlit Sunday morning, 22 June 1941. They came from the west, in waves. They darkened the Vilna skies. They heralded a reign of terror. They unleashed a hail of bombs that pounded the heart of the city.

  The Red Army scattered towards the east. Within two days the Nazis entered the city gates. Mobs rampaged through the streets. Homes were looted and plundered. Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five were rounded up and thrown onto trucks that conveyed them to the forests of Ponary, a village eight kilometres from the city. They were ordered to strip naked, lined up side by side, and shot into mass graves. Body piled upon body. The freshly dug earth was tossed onto the bodies, both dead and alive.

  As the assault raged with increasing ferocity, Avram remained hidden within the walls of the family home. He stayed put in the beloved city. He hid in the darkness. He had entered the Kingdom of Night.

  Avram has told the tale many times. He is an avid guardian of the past. He tells it as a sacred duty. He tells it with restraint. Yet with each telling it retains its power to astonish.

  He remained hidden for days. He finally stole out of Vilna at night. He walked forest paths to the village of Resze, twenty-five kilometres distant. On the outskirts of the village there stood a peat works. By day Avram would trudge to the swamps to extract peat from the rotting earth. In the evenings he returned to the factory barracks, where he would hear the most recent rumours, the latest report.

  With each passing night, the news was more frightening. His loved ones were forbidden to walk on the Vilna footpaths. They were forced to crawl in the gutters. They were ordered to wear yellow stars on their shirts. Menfolk were seized at night, and driven out of their homes. They left carrying towels and soap, and vanished into the forests of Ponary. For six weeks the assault continued. Peasants who had witnessed the mass shootings confirmed the rumours. Ponary had become a killing field.

  In the final days of August, the Lithuanian manager of the peat works returned to Resze from Vilna and warned his workers that the Nazis were planning a massive pogrom. He had reliable contacts. It would take place in early September. Avram sent a message to Vilna, via a Polish peasant. He delivered the letter to the family home, urging his loved ones to escape.

  The peasant returned with Avram's sister Basia, her husband Uri, and their six-year-old son Shmulek. But his mother, Etta, refused to leave. She was done with furtive journeys. After so many years on the run she had made a life in Vilna, and created the stable home she always craved.

  On 6 September 1941 the foundation she had built was torn from beneath her feet. The Jews of Vilna were driven from their dwellings. They were herded into two ghettos. Those with trades, skills, those deemed useful, ripe for slavery, were assembled in the first ghetto. The weak, the old, the expendable were herded into the second.

  When Avram heard the news he persuaded his boss to provide him with a horse and wagon. Disguised as a peasant he drove to Vilna with a load of peat. He delivered the peat and drove to the family home. When he saw Avram at the door, the Polish janitor was terrified. He crossed himself repeatedly. Etta had been taken to the second ghetto, which was located in the old Jewish quarter of Vilna.

  He had lost all fear, Avram tells me, as if still in awe at the fact. He had entered another state of being where all calculation ceased. He drove openly through Vilna's streets. He urged his horse through the ghetto gates under the noses of armed guards. He located his mother and two elderly friends in the attic of a three-storey tenement. They had not eaten for a week.

  Again Etta refused to leave for Resze. She preferred to move to the first ghetto, where she could join her friends and comrades. Avram guided her down the stairs, lifted her onto the wagon and, with the same audacity with which he had entered, he escorted her out into the open streets, and back through the gates of the first ghetto.

  Avram returned to Resze by nightfall. He brought back letters and news to fellow workers who still had family in the city. Reports of mass killings continued to reach them day after day. Within weeks Avram embarked on a second peat run. As he drove towards the ghetto entrance he saw a crowd of inmates being led out. Among them walked his mother.

  Avram drove the horse into the crowd. He beat back the guards, and dragged his mother onto the wagon. Passers-by could not believe what was happening in front of their eyes. It was his audacity that enabled him to get away with it. He drove through the city in a trance. His life had become a trance. And it is in a trance that he continues the story, at a table in the back room of Scheherazade.

  Avram returned to Resze. Etta was reunited with her daughter and grandchild. It did not last long, this sojourn in the forests. The factory manager had received news of an impending raid. The Nazis had learnt that Jews were hiding in the peat works.

  The Zeleznikows made their way back to the city. They stole into the first ghetto. Only those who possessed a yellow work pass could remain. The others hid. If discovered they would be rounded up and led to their deaths. Only slaves were permitted to exist.

  Uri obtained work in the ghetto kitchen. This entitled him to register Basia and Shmulek. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, 1941, those who did not possess yellow passes were ordered to assemble in the streets. Etta was smuggled into the kitchen where her son-in-law worked. Avram clambered onto the roof and hid in an attic chimney. An elderly Jew tried to follow him. He was spotted by a Lithuanian policeman. Both Avram and the elderly Jew were dragged from the chimney, and driven down several flights of stairs to the street.

  Avram was now covered in blood and soot. He tried to disappear into a crowd of workers who had yellow passes. The chief of the Jewish ghetto police, Jacob Gens, dragged him out and handed him over to German officers. Avram was among the thousands who were herded into the second ghetto.

  The centuries-old Jewish quarters of Vilna were in ruins. The renowned synagogue had been reduced to rubble. The second ghetto had been liquidated. Shredded bedding and clothes, photo albums and dismembered dolls, charred shards of glass, lay scattered in smouldering homes. The building which had housed Wolfke's was one of the many that were gutted. The courtyard of the Sage of Vilna was no more. And those assembled in its ruins knew, with helpless certainty, that before them lay one final journey, to the killing fields of Ponary.

  Avram seized his last chance. A pre-war friend, Dr Anatolski, and a group of nurses, had been allowed into the second ghetto to tend to the wounded. Avram appealed to him for help. Anatolski allowed Avram to crouch beneath a stretcher. Barely concealed, Avram walked, like a dog, back into the first ghetto, while those who were left behind perished, just hours later, in what was
to become known as the ‘Yellow Pass Aktions’.

  Again I observe Avram's hands. They possess a language of their own. He inscribes ever-widening circles. The circles indicate a vastness, an incomprehension. His clenched fists are clenched emotions. They precede the most searing of memories. A story almost impossible to tell. A story we wish to avoid, both teller and listener.

  There was something else about that night of the Yellow Pass Aktions, on Yom Kippur, 1941. The inmates had been driven to the ghetto gates. Alsatians howled and tore at their feet. SS men and camp guards wielded rifle butts and bayonets. Gestapo officers sat at wooden tables where they processed every man, woman and child.

  Each adult with work passes was to be allowed three names on their yellow pass: one member of the opposite sex, and two children. Any children in excess would be taken. The decision had to be made within seconds. Those with more than two children had to choose who they would keep, who they would abandon. If no choice were made, they would all perish in the forests of Ponary.

  Avram heard the screams from his place of hiding. Tears come to his eyes in the telling. Tears come to my eyes in the listening. We are descending, Avram and I, in the back room of the cafe. We are moving together. Step by step. Each step is another realm. A step closer to an unfathomable darkness.

  Avram clenches his fists tighter. The chairs seem to career across the polished floors. The cafe walls close in around us. Those seated at nearby tables evaporate into ghosts. Neon-lit Acland Street recedes. The city we inhabit whirls about us. And again we are elsewhere, by the gates of the ghetto, in the Jerusalem of eastern Europe. Children are being wrenched from their mothers. From their trusted fathers.