The speed with which he’d summed up her dilemma was unnerving, and Sala was relieved when Lutek played an imaginary fanfare with a rolled-up serviette and asked everyone to sit down for dinner. When Fela came in carrying a large platter, all conversation stopped. As Lutek carved the crisp skin of the roast ducks stuffed with apples, a mouth-watering aroma filled the room and evoked a flood of nostalgia.
‘I haven’t seen ducks like that since Friday nights at my mother’s house,’ Franka sighed.
The others began reminiscing about festive meals they remembered from home, and the women exchanged recipes for roast goose, chicken soup, chopped liver, and honey cake.
‘When I was in the camp,’ Franka mused, ‘all we talked about was food. We exchanged recipes as though talking about food would fill our stomachs. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the wonderful food I used to leave on my plate at home. I thought God had punished me for wasting so much food.’
‘Ah, the free-floating guilt that hovers above us all, ready to weigh us down,’ Zenek Feldman said, and the corners of his mouth turned up mischievously as he spread his small pink hands. ‘Where does it come from?’
He intended it as a rhetorical question, but it provoked a heated discussion about the relative roles of religion, society and upbringing in the creation of guilt.
Alex turned away from the brunette, who was laughing at something he said. ‘And what about Jewish mothers?’ he exclaimed. ‘Aren’t they the ones who filled us all with guilt?’
He was smiling, and from his light-hearted tone Sala wondered whether guilt ever intruded on his pleasures.
In the midst of the discussion, someone called out, ‘Hey, listen, everyone, it’s midnight!’
While the other couples embraced, Sala hung back, aware of Szymon’s eyes on her, but neither of them moved. Franka was the first to step towards Sala and wish her a happy new year. ‘You’ll be starting your course soon, won’t you?’ she asked, and clinked glasses. ‘Here’s to your success.’
Sala looked around for Alex and felt a jealous twinge as he put his arm around his pregnant wife and whispered something in her ear.
She turned away but a moment later she felt an arm squeezing her waist. ‘Happy New Year!’ Alex whispered. ‘I hope all your wishes come true. And I hope at least one of them is the same as mine.’
She leaned towards him, aware that his hungry eyes were on her cleavage. Blushing, she stepped back. She didn’t want to be undressed twice in the same evening.
That night she fell asleep thinking about Alex, but she dreamed about the cellar again. She’d had the dream so often that even while she slept she knew it was a dream. Again she was wandering through her empty house when she saw the trapdoor; she knew straightaway that it led to the cellar. Her fingers trembling with anticipation, she opened it, but when she looked inside, it was Alex in there, waiting for her, and she woke up with a start and a strangled cry.
She threw off the damp sheet and staggered to her feet, still dazed by the dream. Her eyes, puffy after a restless night, strayed to the calendar. She tore it off the wall and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. It was the first day of the new year. She had come to a country that was a blank slate on which she could rewrite her life, but so far the slate was full of errors. By day she dreamed about a man who was married, and by night she was haunted by a man accused of war crimes.
She heard children shouting and realised it was a public holiday, and she was alone. Szymon had left early, probably to avoid being with her. She pulled the cord of the brown Holland blind with a jerk and the cord came away in her hand. It was a brilliant summer’s day, the kind of day she and Szymon had dreamed of when they’d thought of Australia, and as she breathed in the scent of frangipanis from the tree next door, she sank onto the bed again and wondered what Dr Feldman would make of her dream.
Chapter 40
The small brass plaque screwed onto the façade of the office building was so tarnished that Ted could hardly make out the words. Few passers-by would have noticed that this building housed the headquarters of the Anti-Fascist Society, but perhaps that was the idea. The building was behind the Hotel Australia, in a narrow street where arty coffee shops and quaint tearooms attracted painters, students and intellectuals, while boutiques with Paris hats and American costume jewellery catered for women willing to pay for imported accessories.
To the left of the building a tiny shop sold gramophone records and sheet music, while to the right a boutique called Couture displayed a chic black dress in the window, hinting at the exclusive nature of its merchandise.
The music shop was playing ‘Because’ and Ted paused to listen to the mellow voice of Perry Como crooning the song which was on the hit parade. Once, he would have cringed at the sentimental lyrics, but now he marvelled at how well they expressed his own feelings. Mesmerised by the romantic mood of the song, he was looking through the shop window at photos of Peggy Lee, Doris Day and Bing Crosby when he saw reflected in the glass a man standing in front of the Edna May tearoom across the road, reading a newspaper which covered his face.
The last chords of the love song faded away and Ted watched the sales assistant take the seventy-eight off the turntable and replace it in its brown paper sleeve. When he turned around, the man had gone, swallowed up in the lunchtime crowd of office girls in their summer dresses, sales assistants in their black skirts, and bookkeepers in grey suits, all rushing to pay off their lay-bys, meet their boyfriends or to eat their sandwiches on the lawns of Hyde Park in the brilliant January sunshine.
Ted had rushed from the newsroom to keep his appointment with the President of the Anti-Fascist Society. For the past ten days Gus had kept him busy chasing up stories for his series on juvenile crime, and this was his first opportunity to find out about the group whose name he’d seen on the file in Sir Lachlan’s Canberra office.
The society’s office was on the third floor. Ted took one look at the antiquated lift with its brass buttons and concertina-style wrought-iron door and decided to use the stairs. Ever since his reunion with Lilija he’d felt like an elastic band stretched to snapping point, too restless to keep still. He glanced at his watch for the tenth time. They’d arranged to meet outside Cahill’s in Castlereagh Street at six o’clock, and time was moving very slowly.
He stopped on the first landing to catch his breath and look around. Most of the offices on the first floor were tenanted by jewellers, whose showroom doors were secured by iron bars. There was A Finkelstein and Sons, Diamonds; Thomas Crawford, Estate Jewellery; and Joseph Berry, Antique Jewellery. Perhaps one day he’d bring Lilija here to choose an engagement ring. That thought gave him such a boost of energy that he sprinted up the next two flights without stopping for breath.
There were only two tenants on the third floor. Facing the lift was a glass door whose assertive black letters proclaimed Frank Daley, Private Investigator Extraordinaire. Divorce Cases a Speciality.
A small round hole in the centre of the door indicated that someone had taken exception to his investigating style. Ted wasn’t surprised. Frank Daley was frequently mentioned in salacious divorce cases, and a stock photograph of his pugnacious face often accompanied the newspaper reports.
Only a few days before, the Daily Standard had reported on a divorce case in which Frank had provided the crucial piece of evidence. He had testified that he’d caught the couple in question in flagrante delicto. ‘In the act,’ he’d explained with a smirk, in case the presiding judge wasn’t familiar with Latin. Pressing his face against the car window, Frank had asked the woman, ‘Girlie, have you got your panties on?’ whereupon her companion had punched him in the nose.
When Ted’s mother had read this article, she’d thrown the newspaper into the wastepaper basket in disgust. ‘Do we really need all those details in our daily papers?’ she’d said with a reproachful look at Ted, as though he was responsible for his paper’s contents.
Perhaps the fellow he’d noticed outside the buildin
g had a grievance against Frank Daley and was waiting to give the private eye another punch in the nose. Ted chuckled at his own suspicious nature. That was the trouble with being a reporter: you were always snooping around, ferreting out information and looking for sinister motives. The bloke might simply be waiting for his wife.
Past Frank Daley’s rooms, Ted came to the office of the Anti-Fascist Society. The wooden architrave had once been painted cream, but much of the paint had peeled and was hanging off in strips, showing mottled patches of timber underneath. A Venetian blind the colour of stale tea hung crookedly over the glass. The name of the organisation was printed in small letters on the right-hand side of the door, and again Ted had the feeling that this group didn’t want to attract attention.
He pressed the buzzer and waited. Through the grimy slats of the blind he could make out people moving around, and he could hear voices, but no one came. He pressed the buzzer again, and the door was opened by a flustered young woman with frizzy hair, which stood out from her head like a halo, and a blouse that needed tucking into her dowdy skirt.
‘I’ve got an appointment with Mr Klein,’ Ted told her.
Gesturing towards an unravelling cane chair in the corner, she said, ‘I’ll let him know you’re here,’ and walked away.
He looked around the office. Six or seven people, mostly men, were sitting around a long table behind piles of newspapers and magazines. Every so often someone picked up a pair of scissors and cut out an item which they passed to the only other girl in the room, who slathered it with glue and pasted it into a bulging scrapbook.
‘Not another Communist threat to democracy!’ she groaned in mock dismay when the fellow on her left leaned over to pass her a clipping.
‘Listen to this,’ someone called out in a foreign accent. ‘Is letter from man in camp in Bathurst. He say Nazis in his hut want kill him.’
Chairs scraped on the wooden floor and within a few moments the others were leaning over his shoulder as he read out the letter.
‘Bloody mongrels,’ someone drawled in a broad Australian accent. ‘They keep harping on about Commies, but they don’t give a bugger about the fucking fascists they’ve let into the country.’
The girl who had opened the door gave the speaker a disapproving look. Someone gestured towards Ted and, glancing uneasily in his direction, they lowered their voices. As he strained to hear what they were saying, he had the feeling he’d infiltrated a clandestine society.
They were still whispering when a tall man in shirtsleeves strode towards him, hand outstretched, and apologised for keeping him waiting.
The moment Harold Klein appeared, the energy in the office changed. His grey-speckled hair curled tightly around his head as though about to spring out; his blue eyes burned with intensity; and when he spoke, his London-accented words tumbled out so fast that he was continually interrupting himself.
Placing his hand on Ted’s shoulder, he ushered him into the recess in the far corner of the room which served as his office. It consisted of a small pine desk, a black bakelite telephone, a few books stacked on a shelf, and one chair.
‘Wait, wait, I’ll be back in a minute,’ he called, and returned a moment later dragging a chair for Ted.
‘Coffee’s coming,’ he said. ‘Instant, is that okay? We’re not very flush here, you understand. We’re all volunteers. The donations only cover the rent. Thank goodness we have enough for that, otherwise … Oh, and by the way, we did appreciate the article you wrote about Bonegilla.’
‘But it didn’t change anything,’ Ted said.
‘It told the bleeding truth, didn’t it?’ Harold said. ‘That was a change.’
Leaning towards Ted, he asked, ‘Tell me, how did you hear about us? Wait, wait,’ he waved his hand as Ted began to explain. ‘I just wanted to say, as you can probably tell, we don’t go out of our way to attract publicity.’
The young woman with the frizzy hair brought their coffee in thick mugs.
‘So how did you find out about us?’ Harold asked again.
When Ted explained that he’d seen their name on the desk of the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Harold’s laughter boomed across the entire office. ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess — it was a very thick file, right? We’re a thorn in Sir Lachlan’s side, you understand. By the way, it’s poetic justice, isn’t it? I mean, you finding out about us from the very person who wishes we didn’t exist!’
‘What do you actually do?’ Ted asked.
Harold explained that they compiled survivors’ stories, collected information about the Nazis and collaborators who had emigrated to Australia, and wrote letters to the newspapers and members of parliament about their findings.
‘The trouble is, they either ignore our letters or thank us for our concern and assure us about their careful screening methods.’
‘But if the immigration department is keeping a file on you, they must be taking your letters seriously,’ Ted said.
Instead of replying, Harold sprang up from his chair, strode to the window and glanced down. ‘Did you see a middle-aged man reading a newspaper outside our building?’ he asked.
Ted nodded.
‘He comes here every day and watches everyone who comes in and out of our office, and reports on them to his boss. So I’m sorry to tell you this, but now they’ll have a dossier on you as well.’
‘And who is his boss?’ Ted asked.
‘The Commonwealth Investigation Service.’
‘Why on earth would they be spying on you?’
‘Because they reckon we’re a bunch of Communists.’
‘And are you?’
Harold paused. ‘I can’t speak for all of our members, of course, but some of them are. As for me, I’m against “isms” of every kind. Don’t get me wrong, I like ideas, but when an idea becomes an ideology, it always leads to violence. Give someone a uniform, a stick and permission to bash people, and you’d be surprised how many will do it. And I’m not just talking about Germans either, or people in backward countries. Look, I lived in London, right? I saw Oswald Mosley and his Nazi supporters with their swastikas on their sleeves marching in the streets. They threw him in jail, thank goodness, but if Hitler had invaded England, believe me, he would have found lots of willing collaborators.’
Ted looked up from his notebook. ‘So why doesn’t our government want to do anything about these fascists you keep telling them about?’
‘Every government needs an enemy. Us and them. And today in the west the enemy is Communism, so because some of our members belong to the Communist Party, it’s us. But that’s only one side of the story. The other part is that the government has found a good use for the fascists, and we’re getting in the way.’
Ted was looking perplexed. ‘How on earth would the government use fascists?’
Harold leaned across the table. ‘Think about it. In Europe, all those Nazis hated the Communists, just like our government does, right? So they’re using them to spy on the Communists, and report to the CIS on their activities. Forget the war, the death camps, and all the rest of it. Today’s all that matters, and today they need the fascists to help them spy on Communists. The enemy of my enemy, that kind of thing. Get it?’
He looked at Ted’s face and laughed. ‘You look shocked, my friend. You obviously have a lot to learn about politics.’
Again Ted had the sense that he was being sucked into a cynical, shadowy world of espionage, counter-espionage and political intrigue. It sounded like the creation of a writer with a vivid imagination, but he had to admit that the basic premise — fear of Communism — was very sound.
Ted gestured towards the people in the office. ‘If what you’ve said is true, you’re all wasting your time in here. What’s the point? It must be pretty dispiriting.’
Harold shrugged. ‘It would be much more dispiriting to do nothing. Anyway, I believe that sooner or later the time will come when the government will want to do something about these war criminals and
then they’ll be glad to have our files. I just hope it won’t be too late.’
He jumped up. ‘But wait, you wanted to know what we do in here. Come, I’ll show you.’
Ted had intended to have a quick look through the files and leave, but once he sat down and started reading, he couldn’t tear himself away. As he read, he had to loosen his tie, undo the top button of his shirt and ask for a glass of water. It wasn’t just the sun blazing through the window that dried his throat. It was the feeling that he was being suffocated by the weight of what he was reading.
Since he’d met Redvers Morrison and visited Bonegilla, he’d learned more about the collaborationist militias in various European countries, and about the activities that had turned the cool pine forests of Europe into blood-soaked killing fields. But reading these eyewitness accounts, he could feel the terror and the panic inside his own skin. He could hear children screaming and women pleading for their children’s lives as they were being stripped naked; he could hear the sputtering of machine-gun fire, and then the black silence, louder and more frightening than any rifle shot.
Sickened by these descriptions, Ted looked up at the shafts of light slanting through the window. His head swam, and he felt he was immured in a chamber whose windows and doors had been bricked in. There was no escape.
Among the accounts of the mass killings, he came across descriptions of the killers, apparently unremarkable-looking men who joked among themselves, took swigs of vodka and swore as they wiped off their victims’ blood which occasionally spattered on their faces.
He thought about the men who’d machine-gunned tens of thousands of men, women and children without compunction, cold and mechanical as the barrels of their weapons. And yet before becoming mass executioners they had probably been normal men leading normal lives, buying their wives flowers and playing with their kids. Despite the heat in the room, which had made him perspire so much that his shirt clung to his back, Ted shivered.
Empire Day Page 27
