Scraps of Heaven (4 page)

Romek marvels at what they once had, or rather, had stumbled upon. He sees her again through the eyes of a lover in the first bloom of love, sees her without blemish, as she had, for a time, seen him; sees her hair beginning to descend to her shoulders. He had revelled in her hair, in the fact that he had been there to see it restored. And he had revelled in his glimpses of her whiteness pulsing with renewed life.

They stayed on in the camp for months. They remained Displaced Persons. DPs. The label clung to former inmates like a tattoo. Yet Romek was drawn to the term, and to the state of mind it implied. There was a certain freedom in being displaced. It opened up the possibility of forging new identities, of breaking from the past. He had wanted to remain in that state. Perhaps we should have become gypsies, Romek muses. Perhaps we should never have fully returned to the living. In movement there was hope; in movement there was a suspension of time.

They paced together for hours on end, like sleepwalkers reawakening to a forgotten sun. In those weightless times it was easy to promise, to make grandiose claims: ‘Zofia. Zofia. I will build you palaces. Zofia. Zofia. We will begin anew. Zofia. Zofia. We will journey to the ends of the earth.'

He wanted his reverie never to end. He wanted to extend his sensation of lightness, to stave off the burden of their past, the demands of the future. He did not allow himself to see that it was Zofia who, instead of dreaming, made the practical moves. It was Zofia who, on one of their walks, had said, ‘I have a brother in Australia. In Melbourne. He is the only one left. He will sponsor us.' Yossel, the brother who had survived, the brother who had set off, pre-war, to try his luck in distant worlds. Yossel was their passport to a new life.

They journeyed from Germany to Poland, from Czechoslovakia to Paris and Marseilles. They gathered the necessary papers as they went. Queued at embassies. Obtained passports. Visas. Permits. Tickets. Received money from sponsors and agencies that had sprung up to ease their way.

Marseilles was Romek's ideal city, a city of sojourners, suspended between future and past. He recalls the shabby hotel, and Zofia's hair, now fully grown, falling over her back, luminous black against white skin. He recalls her hair unleashed on white pillows as they made love. In that hotel Josh was conceived and, for the first time, she had allowed herself to hope.

Perhaps this is where the troubles began. Perhaps this is when the seed of future discord was sown, but Romek does not wish to speculate further. He wishes only to savour this moment. He listens to the pre-dawn sounds: the crowing of Bianchi's rooster, the chatter of awakening birds. He hears the clip-clop of the milkman's horse and the thud of the morning newspaper as it lands upon the porch. He heaves himself out of bed and lifts up the blind. He peers through the window at the greying light, glances back at Zofia, and knows that their unexpected intimacy will vanish with the lifting dark.

Bloomfield knows the gaps between night and day. He knows as one who awakens on a park bench. The families who had fallen asleep in the square during the night are long gone. He runs his hand over his chin, feels the stubble of his infant beard. He touches the timber, feels its texture. It matches the sandpaper texture of his chin.

Tints of grey give way to crimsons that radiate upon an eastern sky. A pale red shadow scales the roofs. It spreads a pool of light across tile and slate, sheets of tin and galvanisediron. He glances up at the elms and oaks, the crimson leaves of the Moreton Bays. His gaze follows the upper trunks until they vanish into awakening skies. The veil is lifting. Bloomfield breathes in deeply, and slumps back.

Romek is a man attached to a suitcase, his
tchemodan
. Josh lies in bed and hears him in the kitchen, pottering around. Romek beats two eggs. The white-yellow liquid swirls in the bowl like spiralling galaxies in space. He lights the gas stove, and observes the flames leaping beneath the pan in a blizzard of ambers and blues. He pours in the beaten eggs, adds slices of onion, a sprinkling of cheese, and watches the liquid swell into an oval shape.

He places the food on the table, pours the tea, unravels the morning paper and, when all is finally arranged, settles down to his dawn spread. Romek reads as he eats, occasionally pausing over a bite to relish the nuances of the ingredients garnished by parsley and bread. He glances at his suitcase, the
tchemodan
. It stands ready, by the back door. He had prepared it the night before, filled it with socks, stockings, underwear and string bags. Leather bruised and scraped, it has known better times.

Romek returns his attention to the paper. He scrawls two lines in the margins, above the morning headlines: Saturday, 11 January, 1958. ‘Two Die in Fierce Storms in Sydney', reads one. ‘Lightning Kills Schoolgirl', announces another. ‘Two Men Drowned in Corio Bay'. ‘Two Brothers Lost in the Murray'. The calamities never cease. ‘Wind Saves Town'. At last, some relief. But the disasters win out: ‘Bush Fire Beats Fighters', reads the final bold point. Below it is a photo of trees ablaze beside a forest track. The trees are charcoal towers buckling over in inflamed winds, and in the margins there is a new caption, a verse in Hebraic script:

Tchemodan, my ageing friend.
Loyal companion to the end.

Romek dishes the eggshell and onion rinds into a bin, washes the fork, the spoon, the pan and plate, and returns them to the cupboard. He does not like to leave any sign of his presence. He grasps the
tchemodan
in his right hand, notes the cracks in the linoleum, the flaking paint on the walls, and adds them to a mental list of intended repairs. He is alert to the sound of each footfall as he leaves by the back door.

The back gate sighs open. Bianchi's rooster crows triumphantly in the thawing dark. As Romek sets out, Josh imagines him growing smaller. A quiet presence has departed, leaving a brooding house in its wake.

A man who walks through empty streets just after dawn possesses powerful antennae. This is Romek's time. His senses are acute at this hour. It is the time of awakenings and speculations, a poet's pastime. It is the hour of the muse who writes his verse upon transparent skies.

Black-eyed Susans wink gold petals from a timber fence. A limp condom straddles a rib of the stormwater drain. Romek glances at the solitary palm that rises from a backyard in the block beyond the lane, the mute witness of his morning walk. Early morning rays illumine the pipes that extend over the lower rim of a brick wall; in a poet's eyes the pipes are crimson veins swelling with blood.

Romek turns right from the lane into Fenwick Street; he registers familiar markers upon the way: the neon POLICE sign, the whitewashed wall of a friend's house, the horse trough on the corner of Amess Street. The shops in the Rathdowne Street strip are yawning into the light. The roofs of their verandahs funnel the length of the block, from Doukakaris' milk bar to Chris the Cypriot's all-purpose grocery shop.

A light is on in Doukakaris' back room. A man over fifty, he has recently moved in with his wife and three sons. Perhaps he too is crouched over a newspaper, stirring a Greek coffee. Romek is bemused that so much pleasure can be drawn from such tiny cups. Patterson, lord of the paperboys, has long been up. The boys are cycling back to his newsagency from their dawn rounds. A taciturn man, Patterson stands in the doorway of the shop, print-stained apron wrapped around his waist.

The aroma of yeast from Kalman the baker's blends with the exhaust of the Rathdowne Street bus. Romek pictures Kalman as he has seen him, shovelling the kneaded dough into the ovens. The ample flesh beneath his arms is shaking. The braided khallahs are lined up on the shelves, awaiting their Sabbath hosts; while several doors along, Posner is enjoying his final minutes of sleep in his bedroom above the barbershop. Perhaps he dreams of biblical beards and thickets of hair fluttering down upon linoleum floors. Or he lies awake in anticipation of the mid-morning gathering of the
khalustre
, the regular ‘gang'.

Romek has seen them, trading opinions and quips like wagoners snapping whips, lounging on laminex seats as Posner lathers and snips. There is Potashinski, the cabaret specialist, with his rapid-fire jokes and barbed wit; Dobke, the Yiddish theatre bit-player, wiggling her ample hips; Zlaterinski, the Yiddish teacher, spouting opinions and spit from his fast-moving lips; and Waislitz, the Yiddish theatre legend, waving his arms as he rehearses his lines. Completing the circle are Gershov, the props man, and Podem, the Yiddish theatre caretaker, accompanied by an array of hangers-on, passing time.

Across the road Weintraub the grocer is surely in the backyard harnessing his mare. Perhaps he serenades her with verses of ‘The Internationale'
.
Fanny's mouth is busy in her nosebag, the yard smells of horse dung and piss. Gibson, the bicycle repairer, is unlocking his shop nearby. A perpetual frown adorns his forehead, his hair flares a fiery white. He is, reflects Romek, a frustrated shopkeeper spoiling for a fight. His lean, muscular body suggests he was once an athlete who now bends his back to fit tyres, grease chains and adjust dynamo-powered lights.

Romek extends his musings beyond Posner's, to Stellios the fishmonger's, O'Rourke's hardware, and Bassos' workshop. Where is it they come from? Yes. Carmignano de Brenta. Posner had spelt it out. Posner knows the details as hairdressers do, knows that Giacomo had arrived in Melbourne in 1951, and Gina in '53. Knows that Gina had voyaged halfway round the globe as a proxy bride to marry a boy from the same town, the same street. Skilled artisans, determined workers, they had landed on their feet; like fellow countryman Mick Tallon, the shoe repairer's one block removed, who tends the soles of numerous shoes that pound Carlton's streets.

Romek casts one last glance at the shopping strip as he passes the corner bank. He walks these four blocks to the tram stop in all seasons, and many dawns: via Fenwick, from Amess to Rathdowne, across Drummond to Lygon Street. One day he intends to research the origin of these names; he suspects they are the titles of English lords, statesmen and governors, the grim masters of yesterday.

It is a walk that verges on a plod, weighed down by the
tchemodan
. Romek does not mind. It slows him to a dreamer's pace. He has not quite let go of the night. The smell of lovemaking still clings to his body. He thinks of the voyage that had finally led to these streets and his daily walk into the burgeoning light. Romek walks his confined byways and recalls the enormity of the ocean as one who had grown up in land-locked valleys: the startling glimpses of infinite blues, the first sight of billowing space. He walks from the hotel through the streets of Marseilles with Zofia, suitcase in hand. They step into the ship's gaping hold.

His sea journey is a reverie of new lands approaching, ports receding. He conjures images of a silver seaway called the Suez Canal, and of King Neptune on the equator, trident in hand, heralding their move to the south. The ship is cruising between low-slung cliffs through the entrance of Port Phillip Bay. He is nearing the timber customs sheds and, again he is moving, suitcase in hand, disembarking upon the splintered wharf.

He looks down at his shoes now treading upon bitumen paths. Over a decade has gone by yet a
tchemodan
remains in his hands; and he cannot contain the fragments of verse that spring up, unbidden, only to vanish, as if never heard. One recurring couplet persists, two lines of Yiddish verse:

Mir hobn vun ergetz farblondzhet,
Un mir zukhen dem veg oif tzurick.
We have lost our bearings from somewhere,
And we are searching for the path that leads back.

Romek approaches the number sixteen tram stop on the corner of Lygon and Fenwick streets. The iron bars of the cemetery opposite shield a canopy of cypress and pine. Their needle-leaves are a sun-tinted jade. Between Fenwick and MacPherson, one hundred metres north, stands the Kadimah, the Yiddish theatre-cum-community-hall. Its arched windows, columned foyer and second-floor balcony form an oriental citadel framed by single-fronted cottages on either side.

One cottage hosts a library of many tongues: Yiddish, Slavonic, Hebrew, English, ancient Aramaic—the dialects of a wandering tribe. Romek has trekked the narrow passage to the reading room many times. Its shelves exude the aroma of vanished days. At this hour the books and journals lie mute. They too have gained temporary sanctuary after many journeys over circuitous routes.

Romek turns his thoughts to the cemetery. Beneath the cypress branches he sees a vista of tombstones illumined by the rising light. At night, tradition has it, shrouded corpses stir from their tombs, and make their way to midnight prayers. They are lost souls, the sages have said, condemned to drift between heaven and earth. Romek dismisses this as superstition, but he imagines the shrouded corpses bent over in silent prayer; his atheism is tempered by a love of folklore and contending interpretations of biblical texts.

The tram glides to a halt. The passengers are inert, fatigue plays upon their eyes. They peer ghostlike through the windows, on their way to Saturday morning work. Romek steps on board, places the
tchemodan
beside his seat, and observes his fellow travellers. He does not know their names, but he has accompanied them on many dawn rides. He wonders how many had made love on the previous night, and how many will never make love again. He wonders how many are lost in reveries upon former homelands and journeys long past.

Perhaps they too are lost souls, long diverted from their aspirations and hopes. We share the same fate, he reflects. We are moving on parallel tracks. We are, after all, merely slaves. We have lost our bearings, and we are still searching for the path that leads back.

The sun lights up a dirt track that cuts through long grass in the vacant lot between Sutton Street and a block of flats
.
Miles Shanahan and Joshua Swerdlow brush away the stems as they walk past. The backs of their shirts are littered with flies. In front of them rises the lone palm. Josh has never seen it so close. He is surprised to realise that the palm is contained within the confines of a backyard. He has never thought of it as having roots. He has only seen it as a disembodied presence in flight above the neighbouring block.