Beneath the Southern Cross

by Judy Nunn

  So, tonight, as Arturo sat with Hermann Rubenstein and Nick Steriakos on the benches outside the camp theatre, watching the Italians throw bocce balls, he asked Rube. ‘Why? Why are the Australians frightened of us?’

  ‘Human nature,’ Rube said, sipping the black, treacly coffee he always drank from the tin mug with his initials on the side. ‘We are different. People fear that which isdifferent.’

  ‘But we are all different here at Bonegilla,’ Nick argued, ‘and there is no friction between us.’

  ‘Europe is our bond.’

  Artie wasn’t buying that one. ‘How can you say that, you of all people? Europe has been at war for centuries. We have been torn apart by our differences.’

  ‘Exactly. That is our bond.’ He drained his coffee and dabbed at the grey-bearded corners of his mouth with his pocket handkerchief. ‘This country has never known war upon its own soil, God forbid that it ever should. But we have, and it draws us together. Perhaps Australia does not wish to shelter the war-wounded like us, perhaps we are reminders of the fact that hatred and persecution exist, who can tell,’ he shrugged, ‘but we are most certainly different.’

  ‘Australians have been as isolated from us,’ Rube continued, ‘as we here at Bonegilla are isolated from them.’ He gave a cynical shake of his head. ‘You think that you feel animosity out here in the country? Just you wait until you get to the city, my friends. They will insult you in the streets, they will not want you as their neighbours, they will not welcome your children in their schools.’

  Nick cast a dubious glance in Artie’s direction. The perennial optimist, Nick did not choose to believe Rube’s dour predictions.

  ‘I am right, you will see.’ Rube eased himself up from the bench, it would soon be dark and he always went to bed early so that he would be asleep, or could at least pretend to be, before his room-mate retired. A young Finn, his room-mate was a pleasant enough fellow, Rube didn’t dislike him, but he always wanted to practise his fractured English. Of course Rube could have told the young man that he himself spoke Finnish but, selfishly, he had neglected to do so, having little time for conversation which did not interest him.

  ‘It will change however,’ he said. ‘In time.’ He smiled his lugubrious smile, he hadn’t really intended to be so depressing. ‘And it is my advice to young men like you to bring about the change. You are strong and resilient. You must embrace the Australians, and one day they will embrace you. One day. You’ll see. Goodnight, my friends.’

  Rube left for Melbourne shortly after that, and several months later, Nick went to Sydney. Artie stayed on for a while at Bonegilla, but it wasn’t long before he too was off. To the Snowy Mountains.

  Conditions for the vast numbers of unskilled labourers employed to work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme were not much better than at Bonegilla and much more dangerous—a man died for each mile of the tunnel’s completion. But, a year later, Artie’s decision to leave was not prompted by fear, he enjoyed the physical labour and the camaraderie. He would miss the many friends he’d made, but if he were to pursue his ambitions he knew he must leave.

  Artie had forgotten neither Rube’s predictions nor his advice and, in the Snowy, he had found himself surrounded by fellow migrant workers. If he was to embrace Australians and have them embrace him back, he decided, then he must risk the big cities. He decided upon Sydney.

  A friend, a Calabrian from Terranova called Franco, gave him the address of his brother-in-law.

  ‘Luigi has been in Sydney for fifteen years,’ Franco said. ‘He is very successful, he has a pastry shop in Leichhardt. He will show you about.’

  Luigi was indeed successful. His was more than a pastry shop, it was a miniature factory. He employed three chefs in his kitchen out the back and sold not only from his shopfront but also delivered regular supplies to a number of Italian restaurants and clubs, of which there were many in the inner-city areas.

  A stocky man in his late thirties, Luigi was boisterous and likeable, and his greeting was most effusive.

  ‘Arturo,’ he said, embracing Artie, ‘Franco wrote to me that you were coming, welcome to Sydney.’

  He gave Artie a job as a kitchen hand and rented him one of the rooms above the shop. Luigi and his family didn’t live on the premises, they had a four-bedroom house several blocks away.

  Artie was grateful and the two men became good friends, Luigi enjoying their lively conversations and regularly inviting Artie to his home. ‘For some good Italian home cooking,’ he insisted, ‘Australians know nothing of food.’ A fact with which Artie readily agreed.

  On his first visit to Luigi’s home, Artie was astonished to discover that Luigi had never met his brother-in-law, Franco. He had married Maria only eighteen months previously. An arranged marriage, he had paid for her passage from Italy, having met neither her nor her family. He had, however, received a photograph.

  ‘And she is even prettier than her photograph.’ He draped his arm proudly around the shoulder of his young pregnant wife, ‘I am not disappointed. She is beautiful, yes? Maria, embrace Arturo, he is a friend of your brother Franco.’

  Maria shyly embraced Artie.

  ‘Hello, Maria,’ he said. She looked so young.

  ‘Any friend of Maria’s family is a friend of mine,’ Luigi said giving Artie a slap on the shoulder. ‘We look after our family, don’t we, Maria? Now you be a good girl and bring me my son.’

  Maria obediently left the room to fetch one-year-old Alfio.

  ‘She is a good wife,’ Luigi confided in Artie as soon as she’d gone. ‘A man needs a good wife and a family. We have been married only eighteen months,’ he winked, ‘and already she has given me a son, and is halfway through carrying a second child.’ He laughed boisterously. ‘I work so hard for so many years to make a success that I nearly leave it too late, but she is twenty-three years old, there will be many more sons. Iam a lucky man, do you not agree?’

  Artie agreed, and dutifully admired young Alfio when he arrived, and later he ate a huge bowl of ravioli, the best meal he’d had in two years he truthfully told Maria.

  Over the ensuing months, Artie befriended the young Italian woman. He felt sorry for her, he could tell she was desperately lonely. Luigi was a good man who worked hard and was an excellent provider, but he was an Italian of the old school. He never took his wife out with him when he socialised, he drank with his male friends at the Italian clubs and restaurants, and Maria was expected to fraternise with her own circle of female friends. But she had none. She spoke not a word of English, and Luigi, whose English was fluent, never bothered to teach her.

  Artie did. ‘You need to speak English, Maria,’ he urged. He’d been out to the shops with her—to help her carry home the groceries, he’d said, but he’d really wanted to see how she coped. She’d been fine at the fruiterer and the grocery store, she’d chosen the two that were run by Italians, but her embarrassment at the butcher’s shop had been painful. The butcher was an Australian. She’d pointed at the tray of mince in the display counter, and when he’d picked up a fistful of the meat and said ‘a pound?’ she’d flushed and nodded, and then accepted without question the change he offered from the note she gave him.

  That was when Artie had interrupted. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘you’ve given the lady the wrong change.’

  The shop was fairly crowded and Artie had stood at the back, the man had not even seen him.

  Another dago, the butcher thought, and he gave a dismissive shrug to the Australian customers, most of whom were thinking the same thing. They all looked at Maria and Artie. ‘Wog.’ It was written on their faces. ‘Dago.’ ‘Go home to your own country,’ their eyes were saying.

  Without a word of apology, the butcher handed over the correct change, and Maria, flushed with embarrassment, fled from the shop.

  She wished Artie hadn’t done that. She’d always hated going to the butcher’s shop, and for a long time now she had suspected him of giving her the wrong change.
She never counted her money in public, it took too long and people would know that she had trouble with Australian money. But when she got home, she meticulously counted every penny of her housekeeping allowance, and always she found less than she had expected. She was sure it wouldn’t be the Italian shopkeepers, it had to be the butcher who was robbing her, but she would rather die than draw attention to herself by pointing out any error. Now Artie had done so, and she could never go back to the butcher’s shop again. What would she do? Where would she buy their meat? What would she tell Luigi? She eventually solved the problem by finding another butcher’s shop, seven blocks away.

  ‘You must learn English,’ Artie continued to urge. ‘I will teach you.’

  She tried. As hard as she could. But the lessons were stressful, she did not have a natural ear, and English was such a difficult language.

  Although her progress was slow, one major benefit resulted from Maria’s weekly English lessons with Artie. She talked to him. Finally, she had a confidant.

  It had been so bad at one time, she said, that she’d contemplated ending it all. ‘An accident,’ she told him, ‘just an accident, God couldn’t blame me for that. I could trip in the street, and I could fall under a tram, it could happen to anyone. I knew deep down that of course God would know, but my husband would not. Nor his friends. He could hold his head high at my funeral, he could grieve with dignity if it was an accident.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do it?’

  ‘I thought I might be with child,’ she said. ‘They examine you when you are dead and, even if it was an accident, Luigi would hate me for killing his child. And he would be right to do so. He brings me to this country to be his wife and to give him children, and I do something terrible like that. Oh no,’ she shuddered, ‘Luigi would never forgive me. And neither would God.’

  Artie tried to broach the subject with Luigi. He knew he was interfering, but he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘I think Maria is lonely,’ he said one night at the Cafe Francatelli over a glass of wine. He rarely accepted Luigi’s invitations to join him at the Cafe Francatelli, one of the older, more well-established Italian haunts where an illicitdrink could always be bought. A favourite meeting place for bachelors, young men gathered outside the cafe doors to ogle and make gestures at the women passing in the street. They meant no harm, Artie knew, but it was the sort of behaviour which gave Italians a bad name. And the cafe itself he found claustrophobic. Too many Italians trying to create their own little Italy, he thought. But tonight he wanted to talk about Maria’s problem and Luigi’s home was not the right place, there he was too much a king in his castle. For a subject as delicate as Maria’s loneliness, Artie needed surroundings which were a little more impersonal.

  ‘Lonely?’ Luigi scoffed. ‘No, no, she enjoys her own company, she tells me so.’

  ‘She’s saying what she thinks you want to hear, Luigi.’ Artie knew he was treading on dangerous ground. ‘She needs help.’

  Artie was right. It was dangerous ground.

  ‘She needs help? Hah!’ Luigi scoffed. ‘Maria has it easy, believe me my friend. And if she does not wish to help herself, so be it. She can stay at home and be a good wife and mother.’

  Luigi tossed back the remnants of his red wine and picked up the bottle to pour himself another glass. The flash of irritation he’d felt at Artie’s interference had passed in an instant. Arturo knew no better, he told himself. Arturo was ignorant. He had been in Sydney for how many months?

  ‘Arturo,’ he said, filling his glass and topping up Artie’s. ‘I have been in this city for more than fifteen years. I have nothing when I come here. No family, no friends, no home, I speak no English. Maria, she has everything. Ahome, a husband, a family, more money than she would ever have known back in her village.’

  Artie knew that he’d overstepped the mark. Luigi had taken his comments as a criticism upon his marriage and such a criticism to a man like Luigi was inexcusable. Fortunately, however, the man’s basic good nature had won over. Artie was being forgiven on the grounds of his youth and ignorance, he realised. Wisely, he kept quiet and listened.

  ‘I will tell you a story, Arturo,’ Luigi said. He took a large swig of his wine and settled back in his chair. ‘I was interned during the war. They were hard times for Italians in Sydney, the Government, they think we are all Fascists. Or Nazis. Or Communists. Or all of these things together. I appeal against this imprisonment. Me and many of my friends appeal, and at the Aliens Tribunal hearings we are all cross-examined by lawyers. Smart men, you know?

  ‘One of my friends, Gaetano, a shopkeeper, he have some pamphlets from the Fascist Club. He is not a Fascist himself, but his brother-in-law is, and he keeps sending Gaetano these pamphlets. They are addressed to him “Caro Camarata”. Gaetano is not interested, he throws them away or they lie around in his shop, who cares? And when his brother-in-law visits and they have coffee in his shop, Gaetano tells him “we don’t talk about politics, I am not interested”. So they don’t.

  ‘But the smart men, the lawyers, they don’t believe this. “You are a member of the Fascist Party,” they tell him, “you are a ‘comrade’. ‘Caro Camarata’, this mean ‘Dear Comrade’,” they say. Gaetano, he tells them that it means “Dear Brother”.

  “‘He address the pamphlets to me ‘Dear Brother’,” Gaetano says. “He is my brother-in-law. My family”.

  “‘If you do not agree with his politics,” the smart lawyers say, “why do you have coffee with him in your shop?”

  “‘Because he is my brother-in-law,” Gaetano says. “He is my family.”

  ‘The Australians do not understand, you see?’ Luigi gave an expressive shrug. ‘They do not understand about family. They do not understand our tradition, that family is important above all else. So Gaetano goes back to the camp for the rest of the war. It is not fair.’

  Artie agreed.

  ‘Maria, she has the most important thing in the world, right here in Sydney, Arturo,’ Luigi said. ‘She has family. She has tradition.’

  Artie couldn’t disagree with that. They toasted to ‘famiglia’ and finished the bottle, and Artie never broached the subject again.

  But he thought a great deal about it over the ensuing months. The unarguable values of family and tradition aside, the Italians were going about things the wrong way. As were the Australians. Both sides must make allowances. Luigi and his ilk were deceiving themselves by adhering so strictly to tradition, by trying to recreate their village lifestyle in a country so foreign. And the Australians were being unrealistic in expecting the Italians to cast aside their customs and attitudes, their language and culture, indeed their very heritage in order to ‘assimilate’.

  Artie left his job at Luigi’s pastry shop in early 1952 to work for La Fiamma, the Italian newspaper whose headquarters were in Leichhardt, and he shifted into a small inner-city bachelor flat, catching the tram to work each morning. His parting with Luigi was most amicable and he promised to visit them often.

  ‘You must keep up your English lessons, Maria,’ he said as he embraced her. She nodded, but he knew it was unlikely that she would.

  After several of his articles on Italian integration were published by La Fiamma, Artie’s typesetting and editing duties soon included regular reportage, and in July he was sent to Bonegilla for two days to cover the riot there.

  Two thousand Italians had rioted against the camp conditions, the lack of work, and most importantly, the lack of assistance in finding it. Artie was proud of his fellow countrymen for standing up for their rights in this new country, but he feared that such an approach would not find much favour with the Australians.

  Whilst he worked hard to enlighten migrants about their rights, in his private life Artiedistanced himself from the closed community of Italians. He enrolled in an advanced English course at night school and, during his free hours, frequented Australian pubs and cafes.

  At first he sat quietly, not wishing to be noticed, just absorbing t
he atmosphere. Sometimes he was aware of animosity, and could even hear the odd mutterings. ‘What’s he doing here? Why doesn’t he go to one of the dago hangouts?’ Occasionally, however, he found the Australians surprisingly welcoming. One night he was at the Hero of Waterloo, a tough pub in the Rocks where they were accustomed to foreigners. Many sailors drank at the Hero of Waterloo. Four Aussies were clustered at the end of the bar. ‘Come and have a beer, mate,’ one of them said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Artie joined them.

  ‘Bob’s the name,’ his new friend said, offering his hand.

  ‘Artie.’

  ‘Work on the site, do you, Artie?’ Bob asked. The bloke didn’t look like a labourer, but there were a lot of dagos working on the nearby building site, maybe he was one of the bosses.

  ‘No, I work for La Fiamma.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It is an Italian newspaper.’

  ‘Right.’ It didn’t create much interest, and the four Australians talked amongst themselves, Artie trying to follow the conversation without success. It was mainly about horse racing and football.

  Another beer was placed in front of him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Then, ten minutes later, another. When a fourth arrived, Artie shook his head.

  ‘Come on, mate, drink up,’ the man insisted. Apparently it was impolite not to, so Artie did, sipping slowly, the taste now sour on his tongue.

  Fifteen minutes went by. There was a lull in the conversation it seemed, although Artie had given up trying to follow it.

  Then, ‘Your shout, mate,’ one of the Aussies said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Another beer, mate,’ the man tapped his empty glass on the bar. ‘It’s your shout.’ All four empty glasses sat tellingly on the bar, but Artie didn’t get the point.

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said. He had to go home, he wasn’t feeling very well.

  ‘It’s your bloody shout, you dago bludger,’ the man said belligerently, squaring up to Artie.

  Artie stared at him blankly. Something was expected of him, but what?