Empire Day

by Diane Armstrong

  Then he looked up and there she was, running towards him, out of breath, with her fair hair streaming behind her, shining in the streetlights.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ he blurted before he could stop himself.

  ‘Matron was angry. She doesn’t — didn’t allow us to go,’ Lilija said, taking his arm.

  As they walked towards the entrance, he noticed that people turned to look at her as they passed, and he held her hand more tightly. Looking at her, he had the peculiar feeling that his heart had suddenly grown too large for his chest.

  They passed the liveried commissionaire and entered the cinema, which advertised itself as Sydney’s Theatre Beautiful, and he smiled as he watched her gazing at the marble walls, plush royal-blue and gold carpet, and the massive fountain with its concealed lights at the base of the curved marble staircases leading to the dress circle.

  ‘It’s like a palace,’ Lilija said in a hushed voice.

  As a Chinese gong struck five times to indicate that the show was about to begin, they moved towards the gilded doors of the stalls, and a tall usherette in a crisp burgundy uniform showed them to their seats. Lilija looked up at the crystal chandelier suspended from the dome, the marble statues decorating the sides of the auditorium, and the two tiers of seats in the gilded dress circle. The lights dimmed and she caught Ted’s arm and pointed. Something was emerging from under the floor, and as they watched, an organ appeared, with a blonde woman in a satin evening gown seated at the keyboard.

  ‘That’s Noreen Hennessy,’ Ted whispered. ‘She plays every night before the film starts.’

  Noreen Hennessy flashed a megawatt smile at the audience, bent forward and, in a voice that always made Ted think of treacle, announced, ‘My song for you this session is a medley from the new Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate by Mr Cole Porter.’

  As the theatre filled with the rippling sound of the Wurlitzer organ, and the patrons tapped their feet in time to the catchy tunes, Ted glanced at Lilija. She looked like Alice in Wonderland and, unable to wipe the delighted grin off his face, he supposed he looked like the Cheshire Cat. As soon as the medley was over, Noreen Hennessy inclined her blonde head to acknowledge the applause, and the organ slid slowly beneath the floor.

  A moment later a shiver of anticipation ran through the audience when a fanfare introduced the Movietone newsreel. As usual, most of the items concerned the growing menace of Communism and, in his urgent tone and plum-in-the-mouth accent, the narrator announced that a state of emergency had been proclaimed in Malaya as a result of the murder of some rubber planters by Communist guerrillas. In Czechoslovakia the Communist Party had tightened its grip on the country, and in Germany the Berlin Blockade had just begun. There were two other items as well. Footage from London showed the King and Queen gazing adoringly at Princess Elizabeth’s newborn baby boy. This was followed by a report about the Middle East. Arab armies of six nations had declared war on the newly established State of Israel.

  During the interval between the newsreel and the main feature, Ted started to ask Lilija something, but the film credits were already rolling so he opened the box of Fantales he’d bought before the show and they settled into their wide plush seats to watch The Red Shoes.

  Ted thought the story might prove too difficult for Lilija to follow, with its complicated plot-within-a-plot about a ballerina forced to choose between her love of dancing and her love for a man, a situation which paralleled her role in the ballet, but whenever he stole a glance at her, she seemed absorbed in the movie. During the love scene, he reached over to take her hand, and brushed against something small and hard under her woollen skirt.

  He realised it was part of the suspender that fastened her stocking, and when he visualised what the suspender belt covered, and thought how close he’d come to touching her warm thigh, he felt a rush of excitement and hurriedly placed the packet of Fantales across his lap so that she wouldn’t see the embarrassing bulge.

  When the film came to its tragic end and the ballerina lay dead on the railway tracks, Lilija sobbed so much that he had to wait for her to calm down before they could leave the theatre.

  As they made their way through the throng towards the tram stop, Ted remembered what he’d meant to ask her. ‘How come your father changed his mind about letting you go on a date?’

  She looked down and fiddled with her gloves. ‘He doesn’t know. I tell him I stay in hospital for evening shift.’

  He put his arm around her shoulders and pressed her against him. ‘You little fibber!’

  ‘I don’t want him to be angry, but also, I want to go with you.’

  As the tram clattered in the dark, Lilija pressed her face to the window, looking out at the empty streets. ‘In Riga,’ she said, ‘peoples go out at night. They walk, meet friends in clubs and cafés. Here, no. Why?’

  It had never occurred to Ted to question this before. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the pubs closed at six. Or because Australians were homebodies who lacked the spark that the French described as joie de vivre.

  ‘It’s the English temperament, yes?’ she said.

  ‘We’re not English, we’re Australians.’

  ‘Not same?’ she asked.

  ‘Not same,’ he laughed, and helped her off the tram. Above them a crescent moon cast its pale light over her hair which was the colour of starlight.

  Stopping under a street lamp, he bent down to kiss her lips, brushing them lightly at first, and he felt her smooth cheek against his, cool as marble in the evening air. But when he kissed her more passionately, she pulled away and looked around.

  ‘Don’t people kiss in Riga?’ he teased. ‘Or are you afraid your father will find out?’

  She didn’t reply straightaway and he saw that she was struggling for words. ‘My father is good man, clever man,’ she said after a while, and he realised that she resented his implied criticism. ‘In our country he is hero, but here he is nothing. So much bad things in his life. I don’t want to make more.’

  As they walked slowly towards Wattle Street, she told him that their life in Riga had changed when the Russians invaded in 1939 and deported hundreds of thousands of Latvians to Siberia. She and her mother had fled to the countryside, where her grandparents had an orchard. She swam in the stream that flowed through their land and picked peaches and apricots from the trees. But when the Germans came, her father went into the army. She rarely saw him until the war was almost over, and the Red Army was about to enter Latvia. That’s when they escaped to Germany to avoid being deported and killed.

  History had never been Ted’s strong point, and recent Baltic history was totally beyond him, but the stories he’d heard from the Baltic migrants on the SS Napoli aroused his curiosity. ‘Why did they deport all those people? What for?’

  She sounded exasperated at his ignorance and naivety. ‘For nothing. For having a business or a farm. For not wanting Communism. Communists are thieves and murderers.’

  As she spat the words out, her features hardened and her eyes blazed with anger, and he felt he was looking at a stranger. More questions were gnawing at him, but he didn’t want to make her more agitated and he wished he hadn’t started this conversation — it had ruined his hopes for a romantic end to the evening.

  He took her hand. ‘Did you like The Red Shoes?’

  ‘I like, but too sad. In my life, things good, then bad. Now, with you, is very good, so I am afraid.’

  He looked at her face and knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life making her happy. The feeling was so intense that it felt like an electric current shooting through his body.

  She said goodbye at his front gate and insisted on walking to her place alone. He crept forward and waited until he heard the front door close behind her, then tiptoed into his house so as not to wake his mother.

  That night he dreamed that he was back in the Kings Cross flat again, but this time the dead girl had been shot through the heart, and he recognised her face.
It was Lilija.

  Chapter 12

  Sala got off the tram in Bayswater Road, looked around and checked the address she’d jotted down on a slip of paper. She crossed William Street, and when she saw two fire trucks parked outside the old brick fire station, she knew she was heading in the right direction.

  As she walked down Victoria Street towards the Maccabean Hall, she passed narrow terrace houses that seemed to be stuck together, connected by a continuous row of black wrought-iron balconies. Too small to sit on, they were decorative, but as useless as a lace collar on a dress.

  She thought back to the balcony of her parents’ home in Łód, where she used to stand and watch the people in the street below, hoping to catch a glimpse of the boy she liked. On autumn evenings a light breeze would swirl beech and chestnut leaves around the pavement. The entrance to their home was flanked by massive statues that supported the balcony. As a small girl she had often wondered what would happen if those statues got tired of holding up the building and suddenly let go. Now she knew. She sighed. Nostalgia was like water, and you had to keep your mind watertight or memories would seep into the smallest crevice and flood it with helpless longing.

  Past the big hospital she checked the address again and found the Maccabean Hall a block away, in a tired-looking building of liver-coloured brick, slightly recessed from the road. Pushing the brass handle on the door, she entered the foyer and waited until the caretaker directed her to the door marked Jewish Welfare Society.

  Inside a dimly lit room, several women sat tapping away at typewriters. When she asked for the social worker, someone pointed to a desk in the far corner where a middle-aged woman with glasses stretched out her hand with a welcoming smile and introduced herself as Franka Feldman. To Sala’s relief, she was Polish.

  ‘I’ve been in Sydney for eighteen months now and I know how hard it is when you first get here,’ Franka said, pulling up a chair for Sala. She leaned forward with an encouraging smile. ‘Now, how can I help you?’

  Reassured by her kind expression and straightforward manner, Sala said, ‘I need a job but I don’t know what work I could do. I haven’t got any qualifications or experience. Unless you call surviving the war “experience”.’

  Franka nodded. ‘That’s the kind of experience we often come across in here. Pity it’s not marketable,’ she said. ‘Tell me, what kind of work would you like to do?’

  ‘In Poland I wanted to study medicine, but the war put an end to that idea.’

  ‘There are various courses that would enable you to study and work part-time. Would you like to be a medical technician, for instance?’

  Sala shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. Besides, how will I understand what the lecturers are saying?’

  ‘My husband is much older than you and he’s studying medicine again. I can assure you that when he started a year ago, his English was probably no better than yours,’ Franka said. ‘It depends how determined you are.’

  ‘And what kind of work could I do while I was doing the course?’

  Franka studied her for a few moments. ‘Can you clean?’ she asked.

  Sala frowned, and Franka added, ‘I mean, can you wash floors, polish furniture, that kind of thing?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘As it happens, one of our cleaners has just left, and we need someone in the mornings from six till eight. If you’re interested, I can arrange for you to start tomorrow. You won’t earn very much, but you’ll have most of the day to yourself.’

  She was already flicking the pages of a thick prospectus that listed courses being offered at Sydney University and at various technical institutions. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘There’s a course in medical pathology that you could do part-time. But you’ll have to wait until next year to start.’

  Sala walked away from the Maccabean Hall with a light step. It was the personal connection with Franka Feldman that buoyed her spirits even more than the relief of having a plan of action. She was comforted by Franka’s motherly manner, and for the first time since coming to Sydney she felt she’d met someone whose advice she could trust.

  She didn’t have long to wait for the Bondi tram, which she recognised by the red circle inside a white square in the front. When she slid into her seat, she wondered what her job would be like, and what Szymon would think about it.

  Back in Wattle Street, she passed the postman who shrilled his whistle each time he pushed mail into the letterboxes.

  Verna Browning was standing at her front gate. ‘Hello, love. Have a good day?’ she asked, but before Sala could get the words together to reply, her neighbour had disappeared inside. A few doors further on, a tall thin man with a stern face took a letter from his box. He bowed stiffly when she passed, and turned away.

  As soon as she heard Szymon’s key turn in the door that evening, she ran to greet him.

  ‘You look happy tonight, Salcia,’ he said. ‘What did you do today?’

  ‘I’ve decided to enroll in a course and become a medical technician. And I’ve got a job.’

  He hugged her. ‘That’s my Salcia. No wonder you’re pleased with yourself.’

  But when she explained what she’d be doing, he scowled. ‘My wife a cleaner? For this we came to a new country? I don’t earn enough for you, so you have to clean other people’s dirt?’

  She felt crushed. ‘It’s not dirty work. I went to the Jewish Welfare Society this morning to see about work and —’

  Szymon broke in. ‘You went there, after the reception I got?’

  A few days after they’d arrived in Sydney, Szymon had taken his cousin’s advice and gone to the Jewish Welfare Society to find out about conditions in Sydney.

  ‘They treated me like an ignorant peasant, as if I didn’t know how to behave in civilised society,’ he fumed. ‘Remember that sheet of instructions I got? You should, you translated it for me.’

  She did remember. It advised newcomers not to speak foreign languages in the street or on the trams, to keep their voices down, not to congregate around Kings Cross and Bondi, and not to wear long overcoats or carry flat leather portfolios.

  ‘Szymon, calm down,’ she said. ‘The social worker I saw was very helpful, and the cleaning job will give me time to study. Now come and sit down. I’ve made schnitzel for dinner.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said. He sat down heavily on the bed with his back to her and unrolled a copy of the Daily Standard, which he bought every evening. Even though he couldn’t understand much of it, he usually figured out what the articles were about from the headlines and the photographs.

  She could see that his pride was hurt but she wasn’t going to give in. ‘Szymon, this is the first time since we left Poland that I’ve made a decision about my life. It’s the first time I’ve felt hopeful about the future. Don’t spoil it.’

  ‘Hopeful because you’re going to wash floors for a few shillings a day? That makes you happy?’

  ‘Don’t you understand that I need to earn some money and study something I’m interested in?’ she retorted. ‘Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Do what you like! I don’t know why you got married if you’re going to do whatever you like. You should have stayed with your bloody Volksdeutsch.’

  ‘I wish I had!’ she retorted.

  ‘Well it’s not too late,’ he shouted, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  Sala flung herself on the bed and sobbed. Their arguments always ended this way. There were things she hadn’t told him about Ernst Hauptmann, and never would, but at times like this she wished she’d never mentioned him at all.

  It was a cold night and she had pulled the blankets and bedspread over herself in bed when she heard the door open. By the way Szymon tiptoed across the room and placed his shoes gently on the floor so as not to wake her, she knew the fight was over.

  ‘Salcia,’ he whispered, putting his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry. You know me, I shoot my mouth off.’

  Before she ha
d turned towards him, his hot hands were already moving underneath her flannel nightdress, searching for the secret places that made her arch her back and raise her hips towards him. But, for her, making love was a source of solace rather than ecstasy. She kept her eyes closed and tried to block out the memory of footsteps treading on the wooden floor and the squeak of the hinge that opened the trapdoor.

  While Szymon was spreading plum jam over his rye bread the next morning, he said, ‘Salcia, this is a wonderful country. Did you know there was a Jewish governor-general here in the 1930s? And I’ll tell you another thing. The Prime Minister, Mr Chifley, used to be an engine driver. It’s unbelievable. An engine driver who becomes a prime minister. This is the real socialist utopia.’

  Sala couldn’t help smiling. Szymon was as thrilled as a schoolboy who has just found out that his sporting idol has moved in next door.

  ‘No one here cares whether you’re educated, rich or famous, as long as you’re a good bloke,’ he said.

  ‘As long as you’re not a bloody foreigner,’ Sala said. She’d been reading the letters column in the newspapers, with their frequent complaints about migrants. And there was that old woman who lived next door to Mrs Browning. Whenever Sala walked past her, she could feel the hostility. Sometimes the old woman glared and muttered under her breath while her black cat rubbed against her stick-like legs. All the old witch needed was a broom.

  But, as usual, Szymon saw things differently. ‘You can’t expect them to like us. We are different. They’re not used to us yet, but they will be.’

  ‘It’s strange, isn’t it,’ she mused. ‘A huge country with hardly any people, an empty centre, and no history.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I love it,’ Szymon said. ‘A country without a past but with a big future.’ He put his arm around her. ‘Listen, Salcia, we’re going to have a good life here, better than we’ve ever had.’

  ‘Especially when you buy me that block of flats you promised.’ She was teasing, but he didn’t smile.