Scraps of Heaven (13 page)

In the gutter, Shanahan's overall-clad legs protrude from beneath his truck. Beside them rests a clutch of tools. Occasionally he extends a grease-covered hand to grab a spanner or wrench. Josh bends down to help. Then he sees them, beyond the median strip, on the opposite footpath, the mysterious trio. They have always lived here, it seems, in a single-fronted cottage over the road, three-quarters of a block away. Even now, Josh does not know their names. They live just seventy metres distant, but they inhabit another realm.

The teenage boy's father is grey-haired and stooped. He wears a cardigan over a pale blue shirt. The boy's mother is also old before her time. Her attention is focused on her son. He is so twisted in body he cannot walk without his mother's aid. His parents wait on him day and night. They walk him along Canning Street each afternoon. The boy shuffles and his arms wave about. His legs are awry, his head rolls from side to side. He drools from his mouth and emits an occasional cry.

It frightens Josh to see this solemn procession, especially on weekends. The parents bear their tragedy with sad grace. Their eyes speak of surrender and an enduring sorrow faintly edged with the question: Why? The trio moves at a snail's pace, and those who watch them keep their distance, out of relief that they have been spared a similar fate.

From the opposite direction comes a second procession. It emerges from the back lane behind Mrs Boucher's corner store. Boucher is dressed in black. At her heels trails her horde of adopted mongrels and pups. They lope in a tight-knit pack, a dozen mutts fuelled by shrill yelps and yowls. The two processions almost collide. Josh withdraws to the verandah and watches them as they pass. From next door can be heard the frenzied climax of a race call. Boucher's dogs are enraged bucks, thinks Josh, fangs bared, running with the wolf pack. He can still hear their yelps as he settles back for the second half of the match.

It flies in through the kitchen door, flutters into the dining room, and descends onto the mantelpiece to perch beside the mahogany clock. The bird flits from room to room, bangs against the windows, circles and swoops. Josh, lying on the carpet, is so immersed in the game he barely registers the pigeon's panic as it seeks a way back out.

Zofia is anxious to help. She opens the windows and places bread on the sills. The white pigeon dives on the bread and grasps it by the beak as it flies out. Half an hour later the bird returns. It perches on the verandah, coos and waits.

The baying of the crowds rises as closely fought matches are nearing their end. Zofia steps out with a bowl of water and the pigeon drinks its fill. It lifts its head and struts the length of the verandah. It gazes at Zofia, appraising her with a cool eye, and she knows it will return regularly now, drawn by its new source of support.

After the match it is victors and losers, the teasers and the taunted. The victors parade with a swagger. Drunken youths mock the defeated. Families hurry past those who have drunk too much. The game is over, the results are known. The scorecard is set. There is no going back. It will be another week before the teams can rise again.

And the cleaners are moving in. They know the deeper truth. They know the temporary nature of things. They deal with the mess that has been left behind. They remove the rinds of sandwiches and fruit peel. They pick up the scoresheets with goals pencilled in, and the remains of placards that have been torn to shreds in bursts of elation or gloom.

The scavengers, neighbourhood boys, follow in their wake. Josh is among them. He makes his way against the departing crowd. He takes care not to glance at those who lurch by. He knows it is better to remain discreet. He knows the dangers of meeting their bloodshot eyes. He enters through the Brunswick Street gates, scans the grandstand, and clambers over the seats. He fills a hessian sack with empty bottles that can be sold for a penny apiece.

The scavengers are joined by flocks of seagulls that peck at discarded scraps. And when the work is done, they make their way home, the cleaners, the boys with their booty, by foot or tram, bus and train, to the well-earned rest of those who clean up the mess. Old Vienna lurks in every corner. It can be felt in the softness of the carpets. It can be seen in the black-and-white photos that line the hallway, muted in the half light. There are images of string quartets, musicians in tuxedos and bow ties, instruments in hand or poised by their sides.

‘We have not seen you since Naomi's wedding,' says Mrs Spielvogel as she ushers Romek, Zofia and Josh into the music room. She wears a light-green cardigan over a white blouse, and a black skirt which stops at the calf. Her seamed stockings are tucked into low-heeled black shoes.

Two photos hold pride of place above the piano, portraits of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg within oval-shaped frames. In the centre of the room there is a suite of three sofas. Each sofa has been placed with enough space for legroom, yet close enough for a sense of intimacy. All that is missing are sounds of life, of voices in conversation. Something is amiss here, a lack of living, even though four people dwell in this house.

Mr Spielvogel summons his two children, a teenage sister and brother, into the room. They tread carefully. In each footfall there is a holding back. The children are polite, and restrained. They are on show. Spielvogel removes the violin from its case. His son stands behind him, poised to turn the page of the music book on the stand. His daughter is seated by the piano. She wears a grey pullover and grey dress, neatly pressed. Mr Spielvogel lifts the violin to his shoulder, taps the bow on the stand, and their performance begins. When they conclude the children leave the room as quietly as they had padded in.

Zofia and Romek feel out of place. There is too much order here. They hear subdued footfalls on the carpet outside. This is a house that belongs to people of a different sensibility. Yet for Josh, there is something familiar. It wavers on the periphery. It skitters beneath the surface, the same uncertainty, that sense of resignation he knows so well, the miasma of defeat.

By the time they depart it has been arranged. Josh will begin his weekly lessons next Thursday after school. Mr Spielvogel farewells them with a polite smile. Josh sees it as a grimace. He has sensed the music teacher's anger. It is a relief to step back onto Amess Street.

From a back lane there emerges a group of men dressed in black coats and fur hats. They flit by like spectres, prayerbooks in hand. They are making their way from the
shtiebl
, the back lane house of worship where the orthodox Jews pray. The
Shabbes
is over. They have farewelled the Sabbath bride and are returning home to their evening meals.

Josh is both drawn to, and suspicious of, their otherworldliness. They remind him of the Spielvogels. They belong to the time before. Then he notices the rare harmony between Romek and Zofia. They are strolling, side by side, almost touching.

‘There was once a great
tzaddik
, a Hasidic master,' says Romek, ‘who wanted
Shabbes
to never end.' Josh is surprised by the tone of Romek's voice, its rare authority. ‘The
tzaddik
refused to accept that it was over. He refused to say the prayers that signify that
Shabbes
is at an end. He went out on strike. He celebrated each weekday as if it were still the day of rest. “I will not allow the
Shabbes
bride to leave,” he declared. All work in the village came to a halt. The garbage mounted. The workshops lay idle, the food supplies dwindled, yet they refused to end their strike.'

‘But Hitler, may his name be wiped out, finished them off,' Zofia snaps. ‘So, will your beautiful stories bring the dead back to life?' And with that, she brings Romek's tale to an abrupt end.

She bathes quietly, as if the sound of her ablutions will betray her. The bathroom is cordoned off by a curtain from the narrow passage between the kitchen and back room. The bath's claw feet are coated in rust, the gas heater often breaks down. When Zofia lights it, the heater shudders. Its flames flicker, almost go out, then rear back to life. She prefers to bathe in the subdued light that seeps beneath the curtain; she protects her privacy with the tenacity of one who spent years exposed.

She observes her body, its whiteness. Her breasts remain firm. She can still bear children, though the end of fertility looms. Yet the sight of her nakedness unnerves her. She has seen too much nakedness, too much whiteness. She had seen her own body reduced to sinew and bone, had seen it shrivel from its fullness to its blue-veined core. In the camps she reached the point where, for lack of food, the body begins to feed on itself, to turn upon its own cells. She had almost arrived at the point of starvation, the last efforts of her body to endure.

Now she looks at her body's firmness and recalls its regrowth, the restoration of tendons and muscle, the slow return of flesh. She washes her hair, runs her fingers through it and combs it out to its full length. Her hair was her identifiable link to her youth, the one part of her that forged a continuity between her pre- and post-war self. In her hair lay the last vestiges of her childhood naivety, the remnants of her fullness. She would never dare cut it now that it has been restored. She will always apply creams that promise to retain its lustre, and shampoos that promise to maintain its blackness.

She guards her body fiercely. She will make sure that it remains scented and clean. She will always wash it without being seen. As long as she lives, she will never allow another person to see her exposed. Violated. Open to the gaze of men with crooked eyes, and crooked smiles that betray and lie.

Josh and Romek are in the kitchen, just metres away, while she bathes. They are aware of her presence, each in their own way. Josh nurtures a desire to breach the curtain, to enter the bathroom alcove and have revealed what he has imagined. He has never seen her naked. And Romek is steeped in regret. He knows he can never win her back, or retrieve her trust. Not even with incantations of ‘I love you, I love you', nor promises of future wealth.

Zofia leans back, sponges her body, but does not allow herself to feel at ease. She works the sponge under her arms, between her toes. She must cleanse herself of each stain. She recalls the stark contrast between her emaciated body and, in pregnancy, her womb expanding with growth.

When the boat was finally clear of Marseilles, she was overcome by panic. The ocean was too vast. The brilliance of the sun overpowered her. It bounced off the water and its reflections harassed her. It turned all it touched to a glaring white, and in this whiteness there was no place to run. Each time she stood at the rails she was seized by a desire to jump. Then she looked down at her swelling body and drew back.

Or fled below deck. But even there the phantoms pursued her, as too did her guilt. She had cast off. She had abandoned her loved ones. She had survived, and was the bearer of new life. Yet she could not wrench her thoughts beyond the past; she could not conceive of a future. She could not conceive of a life that lay beyond infinite space. She was in awe of her changing body shape. The baby was within her, bathed in fluids, and she, in turn, was surrounded by the sea's vastness, unnerved by its boundless white.

It was better at night. The sea was confined, the horizon black. The domed sky was a finite shroud, and she would return to the deck and stroll with Romek. Place her hand upon her belly. Rejoice in its fullness. She would lean on the rails and hum a song that eased her through her days and nights.

I have forgotten my loved ones,
I have left my only home.
I have given myself to the sea.
Take me sea, to my mother's lap.

It was not the first time a song became her talisman. It possessed her as she walked the deck. It occupied her as she fell asleep. She hums it now as she bathes. It takes her away from her body and thoughts. It takes her away from the voices that have pursued her to the ends of the earth.

They are here now, intruding upon her tiny space. They rise like the vapour that evaporates from the bath. She runs a hand over the droplets of water that have moistened the walls; she grasps the sponge and runs it over her body yet again. She lifts her voice as she sponges, and sings: ‘Take me sea, to my mother's lap.'

Zofia emerges from the bathroom fully clothed. She does not wear a dressing gown or slippers. They are the affectations of a higher class. She sets the table and serves dinner. Josh and Romek chew the food she has made them. She sits at the same table and eats with them, yet she is not present. She has faithfully remained at her post, but she is beyond reach.

She observes her husband and son with the eye of a curious bystander. She notes her hands, observes their hardness, their premature wear. She looks at her fingers, wrinkled from their immersion in the bath. The contrast between her fingers and her hardened palms is stark. Even as she cooks, her hands are not quite hers. They move in their well-practised way. They obey her command. Yet they are separate. The wrinkles are comical; they belong to someone else. She continues to perform her duty, but she is elsewhere. And Josh and Romek know it. They know how to read the beginnings of her movement out, the first stage.

Sometimes it does not go beyond that. This is what they hope for, that she will be diverted by a radio serial, or a familiar aria. By an impulse to sing. But the fluctuations are becoming more frequent. The months of calm between her episodes have been reduced to weeks and, lately, days. Now she is shaking, losing control. She presses her thumb against her wrinkled fingers and squeezes them tight. She barely notices Josh's absence when he slips out. Valerio strolls along Canning Street to Curtain Square. The sun has not fully set. He has time on his hands. He wears flannel trousers, tailormade, thigh-gripping tight. His shirt is a chequered pattern of blues and whites. His brown pullover, of merino wool, was conceived in Australia, woven in Italy and exported back to the ‘land of the golden fleece'. His overcoat is
fumo di Londra
, ‘smoke from London', a variation on grey. It remains fully open, so that the shirt and pullover can be seen.