Scraps of Heaven (16 page)

‘Yes,' Bloomfield hums.

His quiet presence draws her back. She fastens her eyes upon the kookaburra. She is steering back to safer territory, firmer ground.

‘Zalmanowicz was an oak,' she says. ‘He walked through the streets of Kazimierz with a straight back. He believed in justice. And now he lies dead. And the corpses are piling up. They are in the dining-room cupboard. I must wash the clothes, or the world will be a
balagan,
a mess.

‘And there are dybbuks, watching. They are clever little devils. They are hiding in the cracks and pipes, they are lurking in the wires. Can you hear them? They are laughing. They are laughing at me. They are laughing at us. Can you hear them?'

‘Yes,' Bloomfield hums.

And huddles deep in his overcoat.

Bloomfield is still seated by the kitchen table when Josh returns home. It is the first time Josh has ever seen him in the house. The guest's entire being is in harness to food. He chews the chopped liver Zofia has served him. He hunches over the table and lowers his face to meet the fork, and does all he can to hasten the journey of the food to his mouth. He returns to the cold brisket on his plate, and tears strips off with his bare hands. He munches and gulps and sips and sucks. He eats like someone who seizes the chance to eat whenever it comes.

Zofia and Bloomfield are like old friends, silent, at ease. Josh detects the familiarity between them. There is something here he cannot fathom, something more powerful than ties of blood. In this moment he is an intruder.

When he is done, Bloomfield wipes the crumbs from his chin. He shuffles to his feet, mumbles a thankyou. He bows his head, glances at Zofia, says ‘a
goot Shabbes
, a good week', and is gone.

‘Who is Bloomfield?' asks Josh.

‘A ship-brother,' Zofia replies. ‘We sailed to Australia in the same boat.'

‘Why does he wander the streets?'

‘He does no one any harm.'

‘But why does he wander the streets?'

‘I knew many like him,' she says.

‘Where?'

‘Over there. In
yenner velt.
'

‘What happened to him Over There?'

Zofia glances at the kookaburra. His beak is raised, but mute. He is simply a picture on an oven door.

‘And if I tell you what happened will it bring anyone back to life?'

And Josh knows from her tightening lips, and her grim defiance, that their brief exchange has come to an end.

Yossel arrives several hours later and ushers them into his Customline. ‘My chariot,' he calls it. ‘I left Krakow in a one-horse cart, and now I drive a chariot with more horsepower than we ever dreamt of. Soon cars will have wings. Such are the wonders of contemporary science.'

The car pulls away from the northern streets.
‘Oikh mir a teikh,'
says Yossel, as is his custom when he drives Zofia, Romek and Josh, over Punt Road bridge. ‘Call this a river? It is certainly not the Wisla, eh, Zofia? That was a true river. Not like this canal they call the Yarra. Never mind.'

The contrast between north and south is obvious, a tale of two riversides. South of the bridge the parks are more spacious, the streets tree-lined. The houses are enclosed behind trimmed hedges, high walls. ‘Birds sing louder here,' says Yossel. He leaves the car idling and runs to the palatial gates. A circular drive curves around the front garden to a flight of steps. Yossel's
palatz
is an eccentric mixture of styles. The arched porch is framed by twisted columns. The walls are rendered in stucco, the slated roofs are high-pitched.

The front door is opened by the lady of the house. A string of pearls dangles over a finely cut dress. ‘Well? What do you think of Liebe's lipstick?' asks Yossel, as if commenting upon a work of art. ‘Max Factor. Magnetic pink,' he announces. ‘The latest in colour, the latest in taste. A contemporary colour. I chose it myself.'

The wail of a trumpet can be heard from Joel's room upstairs. ‘Call that music?' says Yossel. ‘It is the howling of a beast. My boy tells me Miles Davis is his God. He claims no one has played music like this in the entire history of the universe. If you ask me, such music was played millennia ago. It is jungle music. A primitive tump, tump, tump. Joel listens to it until the day grows old, and he continues to listen late into the night with his idle friends, Schneider, Aronson and Hirst. They lie on the carpet, on the bed, beside the bed, wherever their bodies fall. They remain dead to the world. Except when they want something to eat. Then they make straight for the fridge, grab fistfuls of leftover roast and, like savages, they return to their cave.'

Yossel ushers his guests into the kitchen. He is keen to show them his new vinyl floortiles laid out in a chequered pattern of black and white. ‘Designed in a contemporary style,' he says, rolling the r's. After thirty years in the land, he has not rid himself of his accent.

‘Come, sit down on my new chairs made of contemporary wrought iron. With triple chrome and foam rubber seats.' Contemporary is the newest English word to pepper his speech and Yossel uses it with the enthusiasm of a child with a new toy. He conducts his guests on a tour of his newly acquired ‘appliances'— an electric jug, electric pan, electric toaster.

‘I bought the toaster for Liebe's birthday,' he says. ‘It is a practical present. A contemporary present.' He opens the kitchen dresser and retrieves a steam and dry iron. ‘Automatic,' he announces. ‘What a world we live in. Soon we will have nothing to do but press switches and, voila, the food will be done. And a robot will serve it.'

Josh wanders from the kitchen to Yossel's office. His uncle is a man with a desk, and an address book that springs open to the touch. Each letter of the alphabet is accounted for. Beside it is a desk calendar attached by a silver ringbinder to a plastic stand. He flips the pages. The dates blur in quick succession. He lifts a pen from its gold-plated holder and feels the coolness of its grip. He places his hands upon the oak desk. Their imprint dissolves from the varnish milliseconds after he lifts his hands. Yossel is a man of substance. His office exudes solidity. The entire house is solid. The rooms are freshly painted, the walls fully intact. It is a house with many rooms.

And there is the largest room, closed except on festival days. Josh peeks in. The drawn curtains are brocaded in crimsons and golds. Josh slips inside and glides over the polished floors. He examines the framed family portraits that line the walls. The sideboards are a display of cut crystal and porcelain. The drawers are brimming with cutlery. A mahogany dinner table runs two-thirds the length of the room, and a vase of chrysanthemums casts its reflection on its lacquered surface.

Josh returns to the kitchen. Yossel is talking of exports and imports, currency exchanges, investment portfolios, foreign markets, interest rates. He refers lovingly to his ‘contemporary knitting machines' that arrived from ‘the Continent' last week.

Yossel is talking to tame his restlessness, thinks Romek. After all these years there is an uncertainty, even here, in this gleaming kitchen of silvers and whites. He is a man from the ‘Time Before'. He knows nothing about
gehennim.
It would disturb his equilibrium. He keeps his mind firmly focused on the eternal present, on his acquisitions and mounting wealth. And why shouldn't he?

Romek is judicious in his thoughts. They are generous, Yossel and Liebe, each in their own way. They ferry them to and from their house over the river. Romek and Zofia had stayed in his
palatz
in their first two months off the boat. But they do not know us, Romek reflects. They cannot comprehend what we have endured. This is how it is.

Zofia glances at Yossel. His eyes are magnified, his voice is harsh. The kitchen is too bright with chrome, stainless steel and chequerboard tiles. She feels daunted by its spaciousness, and she is wary of the brother who does not see her. Who speaks to the winds, who speaks to himself. Yossel's voice is a shrill echo. She sees the spittle fly from his mouth. She sees too much. Again, the walls are dissolving, the room is ablaze with silvers and whites. Yossel is a man with crooked eyes. His voice is multiplying, becoming many voices, and the many voices a continuous drone.

Zofia is withdrawing into herself. Romek is silent. Liebe's lips glow a magnetic pink. Yossel continues to hold forth, and the little that is left of a once large family is breaking apart. And somewhere, upstairs behind closed doors, off the carpeted passage, a trumpet is howling like a lost wolf. And somewhere, far distant, Buck is running with the wolf pack, a wild beast in a dog-eat-dog world.

Josh is lying on the carpet in the darkened living room, his ears tuned to the upright wireless. Since the arrival of the Swedish Girl, the lyrics of popular songs have taken on greater appeal. Words that seemed trite a few weeks ago now resonate with meaning. Buddy Holly sings ‘Maybe Baby' and Josh imagines the Swedish Girl in each verse. It is all there in those songs, clear and simple.

The tempo increases. The vibration of the speakers quickens. Chuck Berry sings ‘Sweet Little Sixteen'. Little Richard shouts
‘
Good Golly Miss Molly'. Jerry Lee Lewis screams ‘Great Balls of Fire', while in the kitchen Zofia is brooding, and in the front room, Romek is bent over his Yiddish books. And out in the streets, Bloomfield is forever circling, and the Swedish Girl is approaching home, with her graceful walk, her knowing smile.

The flowers are dry and fragile, falling apart. They remain poised between the pages where he had placed them. ‘They are old friends,' says Romek, ‘I picked them in 1945.' He lifts a book from the pile on the floor by the bed. ‘This is my Bible, my Torah. Written by my favourite poet, Leib Halperin. Each poem is a gem.'

Josh is becoming impatient. He has books of his own to read and radio programs to listen to. It is Sunday night, the eve before school, the end of the weekend respite. He regrets that he has allowed himself to stray into the front room. Yet he is drawn to that world Romek is immersed in, and Zofia dreams of, and that they both once talked of, late into the night. He would hear them, from his bed, gathered around endless cups of tea, Yossel and Liebe, Romek and Zofia, in the better days, before the distance between them had yawned into a rift. They spoke of
poilishe velder
, Polish forests, childhood vacations in the Tatra Mountains, boating excursions on the River Wisla, and of castles and kings and cobblestoned alleys filled with angry mobs. Always, finally, angry mobs.

‘The flowers have lost their fragrance,' says Romek, ‘but I can recall their scent just by looking at them.' He is a small man, thinks Josh, as if he has only now become aware of the fact. He observes the day's growth on Romek's cheeks. As an infant he would run his fingers over the stubble and be intrigued by its roughness. He would watch him in the bathroom guiding his razor over his lathered face, and marvel that it could produce such smoothness. Now, before him stands a fallen idol, a man deflated. And Romek wants only to restore what once was, to reach out to the son now receding from him. It is a physical sensation, this receding. Even though Josh stands close, he is beyond his grasp.

‘Is it true about the ulcer on her shins?' asks Josh.

It is not the first time he has asked this question.

Romek is silent.

‘Is it true?' Josh repeats.

‘We met in hell,' Romek replies. ‘I fell in love at first sight.'

‘Is it true about the Red Cross lists? That you saw the name of an old girlfriend?'

Romek backs away. He is a man on the ropes, fighting for his self-belief.

‘Is it true that you wanted to send her money? That you said you would hang yourself if she did not allow you? That you threw something at her?'

‘We were all mad,' replies Romek. ‘Who can understand what we felt?'

‘Is it true?' Josh insists. He is relentless in his interrogation. He sees the confusion in Romek's eyes, but he cannot help himself. He is driven to pursue him.

‘Is it true?' he repeats.

‘True. False. It is not so simple,' counters Romek.

‘Yes or no,' demands Josh.

Romek falls silent. The book lies open upon the dresser. The Hebraic script is stained by the remains of a long-dead moth.

Romek lowers his eyes, and fastens them upon the stain.

She hears voices, and conjures the face of the man she once loved.
‘Romek mit di tsedreite oign
.
'
Romek with the crooked eyes, she mutters. They all have crooked eyes, those men whose voices seep from cracks in the kitchen walls. The entire world is full of men who betray and lie even as they smile. She sits in the kitchen and hears their distant talk in the front room. They are scheming against her: Romek with the crooked eyes, and Yoshua, her father's namesake, may he rest in peace. He too is turning against her. She is lured by the muffled sounds. She latches onto the trail of voices as if drawn on the train of a bridal gown.

She steals through the dining room. The upright radio glows in the dark. The dials wink. The globes growl. She creeps over the dining room carpet. She pauses, listens, steps into the passage. The linoleum is hard. Her feet scrape. Her body is charged. The voices are becoming louder. ‘Zofia. Zofia.' They are chanting her name.

She tiptoes past Yoshua's room in a crouch. ‘Zofia. Zofia.' The chorus terrifies her, yet draws her on. She places her hand upon the wall for support. She glances at the wooden skirting boards. She sees the holes in the plaster on the lower wall, the chipped paint on the boards. She pauses to calm her breath. She is outside the front room. The door is closed, but the voices are booming.

She can make out two strands. Romek's voice is an insinuating whisper, and Yoshua's, the voice of a questioning child. Surely they are laughing at her, pointing their fingers towards the door. The laughter is oozing through the keyhole. Their mockery is cascading from the walls. The walls are curving, tumbling.