The Sparrow Garden

by Peter Skrzynecki

  Allan held out a wrapped present for me from behind his back. Even before I struggled to mumble “Thank you” and unwrap it there were tears in my eyes. Tears of joy, of embarrassment, of shame. I wanted to run away and hide from yesterday. I could see how surprised my mother was and she kept thanking the Barbers over and over. Allan took my hand and off we went into the backyard, bubbling with excitement, our minds full of ideas about all the things we were going to build. My last memory of Allan’s grandparents was the expression of kindness in their faces. They seemed to understand what being a small child was all about.

  My parents had said they would never return to Parkes once they left it, that they’d had enough of food queues and waiting at railway stations. Parkes lay at the end of a sea voyage, and their time there was coming to an end. After leaving, they had no desire to return.

  But not me.

  Living those two years in Parkes meant different things to them and to me. Whereas my parents remembered Europe vividly, I had only broken images of it: rabbits kept for food, snow falling outside a window, travelling by train through dark pine and birch forests that filtered sunlight and hid the scattered remains of bombers painted in camouflage colours that’d been shot down, boarding the General R. M. Blatchford at Naples, staring up at the huge gangplank for the start of the journey to Australia.

  After a sea voyage of four weeks, Parkes meant open spaces, paddocks, sheep, cattle, gum trees, magpies stalking the ground on frosty mornings and throwing back their heads to sing. Parkes meant hot, dry weather, a bushland that I loved walking through, picking at branches of scrub wattle or encountering the scent of eucalypts for the first time. Parkes was where I saw a wedge-tailed eagle strung on a gate at Bartley’s Creek — a property where my mother worked as a washerwoman and cleaning lady — and where I found a flock of sheep huddled under trees in the heat, rubbing their woolly rumps against the trunks, leaving fleecy threads in the bark and their droppings covering the ground; it was where I stood inside a split-slab hut, lost in the maze of harnesses that hung on its walls, under its cobwebbed rafters, brushing flies off my face; where I was thrown by a horse called Dodger that had been nicknamed Pig because he was so fat. Parkes is the origin of all these memories, as well as being the name of the township that gave its name to our first “home” in Australia.

  Just as my parents remember what happened to them in Germany during the war, so I can remember, at least in part, what happened to me in Parkes, and I know that one day I will return.

  Just as I remember coming home from school one afternoon several years later, after we settled into Regents Park in Sydney, and sitting on the back steps, waiting for my parents to return from work. I was watching sparrows hop around the garden, along rows of potatoes. Peewits were calling to each other behind the fence, in the bushes that grew around Duck Creek.

  An unearthly feeling came over me, like I was about to fall asleep or become airborne into the afternoon light; I sat there, my knees drawn up under my chin, lost in a daydream. When I looked up I could see houses and factories on the hill that rises beyond Duck Creek and Jensen Oval, where Sefton ends and Chester Hill begins, where Virgil Avenue cuts the suburbs in half and dips over the horizon. A small boy ran across the scene and disappeared among the frames of buildings. He was fair-haired and freckled. Another small boy ran following him, dark-haired and olive-skinned. Both were carrying toy hammers and saws, laughing happily as they ran off, disappearing among the unbuilt houses and into the khaki bushland shadows. For a moment the sun blazed with a burst of brilliance as if it was morning, not late afternoon. I blinked, rubbing my eyes, staring in disbelief.

  Billycart Days

  He rode the red dust roads as a kid

  in a billycart built from afruitbox

  along with other kids like himself

  who lived on hope and laughter —

  pointing their capguns at galahs and crows

  that circled peppercorn trees

  in a sky as blue as an exotic bird’s eggshell.

  Time was a never-ending road that ran

  between Parkes and the rest of the world:

  Orange, Bathurst, Lithgow —

  the beautiful Blue Mountains

  he remembered crossing once

  in a train that blew smoke from its funnel.

  Beyond them lay Sydney and its harbour.

  Barefoot, head-down, pushing along

  one of his playmates from the migrant camp

  he’d laugh to see the billycart

  go freewheeling down a path or hill

  as others tried to pile in — squealing

  as the wheels wobbled and they couldn’t stop

  because it didn’t have a brake.

  Dust in the eyes, dust in the mouth,

  none of it mattered to them —

  just as long as they were all together

  at the end of those long hot days

  and there was a drink of cold cordial for them.

  It didn’t matter who took the billycart home

  because they’d all be back for it tomorrow.

  Fifty years later none of it’s vanished

  because the red dust roads of Parkes

  run like blood in his veins:

  past the remains of the migrant camp

  fenced off with steel posts and barbed wire —

  whose concrete foundation slabs

  lie broken and bleaching in the sun;

  where thistles have been poisoned

  so the site resembles a wasteland,

  where there’s no trace of the billycart

  or the lives it carried around —

  but where the surrounding hills echo

  with the cries of crows, galahs, children’s laughter

  as fragile as an exotic bird’s eggshell.

  Strays

  A pack of dogs lived around the hostel at Parkes; they wandered in from town or surrounding farms, roamed the empty paddocks around the airport that was once part of the Air Force Training Camp. They were strays, though some people wrongly called them “wild dogs”. They were harmless and mostly went in search of food. Children befriended them. Whenever the chance presented itself, we played with them and fed them. Individually, they were fun, but when they hung around the mess hall as a pack, they posed a threat. There were big dogs, small dogs, mongrels, kelpies, cross-bred terriers, old blue cattle dogs, brown dogs, white dogs, black dogs, short-haired dogs, long-haired dogs.

  I always wanted a dog, a playmate that was mine and would be there when my mother and father weren’t. Dad was working in Sydney. Mum would be in town, cleaning someone’s house, washing and ironing clothes, or she’d be out at Bartley’s Creek doing the same for the Tom family. I’d be minded by one of the other mothers, Mrs Baran or Mrs Budzinski, after kindergarten in the camp, until the bus brought Mum from town. I reasoned that if I had my own dog to play with I wouldn’t feel lonely.

  Not all the men travelled out of the camp for work. Some with tradesmen’s skills found employment on the site as carpenters, mechanics or general maintenance men. Others worked as translators.

  One of these, Adam, became my friend. He wasn’t married and was a quiet man. There were stories about his “real life” and who he’d lost during the war. He played cards with other men and smoked. He drank heavily.

  Adam was a tall man and he was very strong. I used to call him Superman because I’d seen him bend a steel pipe with his hands. Sometimes I’d watch him as he sat and smoked by himself and just stared at the ground or up into the sky. I thought he looked lonely, sad. One of the dogs would come over and lick his hands, as I’d arrive on the way from school, and we’d pat the dog together and give it water from a tap that we’d collect in our scooped hands. Or I’d get up on the swings and he’d push me until I thought I was going to fall, even though I shouted Higher! Higher! Then I’d get the hiccups and we’d have to stop.

  Adam worked as a carpenter but he was also an “odd jobs” man,
a general assistant who was sent for when jobs needed doing. He could read, and I’d seen him translating letters from Poland for people who’d received them but couldn’t read them. He was reliable, quiet, friendly, except when he got drunk. Then he’d become abusive, yell and curse, kick the dogs, cry.

  On one occasion a child was bitten by one of the strays. Parents complained; they said they would deal with the animals themselves if the authorities didn’t do something about the problem. Where was the particular dog that did this damage? Had the child provoked the animal? It didn’t matter which dog, was the reply. The child only wanted to pat the animal. Remove the dogs, the men threatened, or we will kill them ourselves. If we cannot have guns we will beat them to death with sticks!

  At that point the authorities decided that some course of action must be taken. But what? These were strays. Round them up, shoot them — that’s what! Those that escape will taste blood in the wind. They will leave. And we have just the man for it — our general assistant, dependable, hardworking Adam.

  Had he been in the room, the implied sarcasm in the reference to him would have been lost on Adam. Had he understood it, perhaps he might have even shrugged it off. What did it matter what they thought of him? Looking at the big picture, the total scheme of things in which he figured, the destruction of the dogs was of far less importance than the lives of men, women and children who had perished as a consequence of the tyrannical rule of Adolf Hitler.

  You know how to go about rounding them up, Adam?

  Yes, Mr Director.

  Good. We’ll provide a rifle when you’re ready … Just let us know.

  Yes, Mr Director.

  Jolly good. See you soon.

  It took Adam only a day to convert the back of the truck so that it would hold the dogs. A cage had to be fixed, constructed of steel and wire, sufficiently strong to hold the dozen or so animals.

  There was no way of predicting how the dogs would react once they were caged. There was also the problem of making sure that as many as possible were rounded up in one attempt. The best thing to do, he reasoned, would be to let them collect around the mess hall, park the truck nearby beforehand and entice them into it. Use scraps of food, bone. Get them into the cage. Drive into the bush. Kill them. No need to bury them. Crows and flies and ants would live off the corpses. Rain and wind and sun would do the rest. He’d already chosen the spot where he would take them.

  Steel pipes, chicken wire and fencing wire were all that was needed to construct a cage on the back of the old army truck. Once that was finished, Adam began the job of rounding the dogs up. He walked, he whistled, he called and patted them, tricked them, one by one, into jumping into the cage. They growled and fought over the bones he threw in to keep them occupied. When he was satisfied there were no more, he raised the tailboard and locked it into place.

  Strangely, he allowed me to help him. When I asked him why we were doing all this he explained that the dogs were being taken back to their owners. Some were on farms, some were in town. Some were even going to Forbes, some to Orange and even to Dubbo. These places meant nothing to me and I believed him. Finally, he sent me home, told me to go indoors and wait for my mother or return to whoever was minding me. He was on his way and would return next day — but as he got into the cabin of the truck I saw a rifle on the seat and asked him what it was for. His face changed, became red, and he screamed at me. Go inside! Do as you’re told!

  He slammed the door and started up the truck. The engine spluttered, coughed and turned over, and the truck moved forward with a jolt. It turned left, away from the mess hall where people had stopped to watch, then it turned right, towards the main road that ran to Sydney.

  As if on cue, one after another the frightened dogs started to wail — long, hollow, pathetic sounds, out of trembling lungs and heaving stomachs. Barks, growls, yelps, all of these would be understandable, but those howls, those cries of pain, of abandonment, were so disquieting. They sounded chilling, almost human.

  Children were asking questions.

  Why are the dogs crying, Mummy?

  Why’s Adam taking the dogs away?

  Why is there a cage on the truck?

  My friend Superman had told me to go away but I was curious to see in what direction he would drive. Standing at the end of the main road, watching the truck drive off, I saw it turn left, and then a little way down the road, it turned right. There was a track that went deep into the forest. Adam had taken me for walks along it — to a creek where ducks bred and yellow wattles and white paperbarks grew. We used to throw flat stones along the creek and try to make them skim the surface. The soil was very sandy and red. When the wind rustled the trees it would also blow the soil.

  I knew where the truck was heading and immediately ran diagonally across the camp, avoiding the road and the main entrance with its boom gate. Getting through the fence that ran around the camp’s perimeter was no trouble, in fact it was fun. All the children knew where there were holes — or where it was bent because it’d been lifted so many times. Even an adult could crawl through.

  Because the truck was going the longer way, and it was so slow, by the time I reached the main road it was only just ahead of me. Let him turn, I thought. Let him go down the road for a short distance. I kept to the side of the track, nearly in the bushes, otherwise I might be seen in the rear vision mirror. Half walking, half running, I managed to keep up with the truck. The dogs continued their barking. They snapped at each other. Some hurled themselves against the roof of the cage — as if the open sky represented a freedom they would never have again. The truck zigzagged. Was Adam playing with the steering wheel? Why didn’t he drive in a straight line?

  The truck came to a stop in a clearing, the same place that I remembered we’d visited before. The creek was further down, deeper in the bushes, but Adam was getting out of the truck and that meant he wasn’t going any further.

  The dogs became excited but in a different kind of way. Now they were wagging their tails and yapping happily. They were going to be released, let loose. Some were standing on their hind legs, pawing at the wire. They sniffed the air, licked it.

  Birds that were singing fell silent. One. Two. Three … I counted the seconds between the last magpie’s song and its fading echo. Smaller birds, too, stopped their whistling and twittering. Even though the dogs were making a commotion, there was an eerie feeling in the air.

  Suddenly I saw Adam lift a bottle over his head and throw it on to a rock. The sound of breaking glass was loud. The dogs became silent. You couldn’t hear a single bird. Sunlight glinted off the clear glass. I realised it was the sort of bottle that the men in the camp drank vodka from. At the same time he began to swear, to curse, to kick at the truck, to menace and threaten the dogs with his fists.

  One by one he took the dogs from the back of the truck and tied them to its side. Some of them came willingly, leaped down and licked his hand, wagged their tails. Others whimpered, refused to leave the cage; they were dragged out. The cage had been their prison; now it represented safety.

  Let them go, I whispered. Please, let them go.

  When I was leaving the camp to run after the truck I hadn’t paid attention to what the children were saying to their mothers. Now I started to remember. Now I was feeling frightened.

  What would Adam do if I ran out? Would he pay any attention to me and stop what he was going to do? He had taken his orders from the boss of the camp. He must carry them out. No, I couldn’t run out.

  There was nothing I could do except disappear, run back.

  What would my mother tell me to do if she were here? She’d probably smack me for following a drunk man in a truck who was driving a pack of strays into the bush. Friend or no friend, that didn’t matter. My mother loved me but she was also very strict. Rules were rules. Break them and you pay the price. Rule Number One After School was: don’t wander away from the camp. Wait until I return from work.

  Before I could decide, Adam reached i
nto the truck and pulled out the rifle. He steadied himself, took out what must have been a bullet from his pocket, put it into the rifle and took aim. There was a sharp bang, a small puff of blue smoke and a dog leaped into the air as if it’d been prodded with an electric wire. It dropped dead beside the truck, its tongue hanging out in the dirt.

  The rest of the strays began to whine, cry, tug at the ropes that held them. Some looked like they were spinning madly, doing a dance. Adam reloaded the gun, took aim and another dog yelped, jerked at the end of its rope, dropped into the dust, twitching as it fell. My heart was pounding like a hammer. I found it hard to breathe. There was a clawing in my throat. My jaws moved involuntarily. I thought I would vomit. My body shook with spasms but only saliva and hot air came up. I began to panic. I wanted to scream, to run, but my legs wouldn’t move. They were frozen. I couldn’t even close my eyes as Adam shot one dog after another — even when he finished and they lay there, a mass of fur and blood, dogs with their brains blown out and the pungent smell of gunpowder drifting in the air, killing the scent of the bush, staining the blue afternoon sky. Tears filled my eyes and I started to cry softly, like an animal myself, to whimper, burying my face in my arm.

  Why did the man I called Superman have to do such a terrible thing?

  He held the rifle up to the sky and started cursing; they were horrible words, Polish swear words. He flung his arms about, shook his hands and head as if he was arguing with somebody who wasn’t there; and in between the words there was silence, hanging over the bush, waiting for his next outburst.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks, onto my lips, my tongue. I tasted salt and saw the world through watery eyes; it was a liquid world. Everything was dissolving, merging. Trees became sky. Sky became trees. There was no distance between the truck and myself. The dogs were part of the red soil and the grass was part of the dogs. Sky. Trees. Grass. Dogs. Soil. A man with a rifle in his hands. The truck. The surrounding bush. Me. Everything was becoming something else.