The Fighter (11 page)

‘She was a fighter,' says Henry. ‘It's amazing that she could still fight.'

And there is the lullaby:

Sleep my child, my treasure; my dear one

Ai-le-lu-le-lu

Blessed is he who has a mother, and a cradle too

Ai-le-lu-le-lu

17

The lullaby unlocks another Sonia. She is retrieving a chocolate sponge from the oven. The buckled linoleum crackles beneath her feet. She has baked the cake for one of her children's birthdays. She has squirrelled away the money over weeks to give as a present.

The memory will lie dormant, obscured by the darkness. Only years later will it make its way to the surface. It is Paul who recalls it first, and then Sandra who remembers the aroma, and the sight of Sonia mixing the batter, her fingers dusty with flour and cocoa.

The table is scattered with eggshells, a jar of sugar, whisks, a bowl of sultanas. Sonia is opening the door of the oven. This is
no faded black-and-white memory. There is colour in the picture. She takes out the two halves of the cake and places them on the table. The sponges are warm and the surfaces nicely rounded. She allows them to cool. Then she places one on top of the other, with an ample layer of chocolate-cream between them.

She has not skimped on the sultanas, but she has forgotten to dust them with flour and they have sunk to the bottom. Never mind, this aberration has its advantages. It's Sandra's favourite part of the cake; she cuts the slices in half, and eats the bottom portions.

There were times, in between periods of illness, when Sonia walked Sandra to school, and she was there by the school gate to pick her up six hours later. ‘How fortunate I was to have a mother waiting for me,' Sandra says.

Mother and daughter are making their way home, side by side, falling into step, in harness to each other's rhythm. Sandra is elated. They stop at the bakery and Sonia buys cream buns, a treat for her daughter. They continue homeward. Sandra greets friends with pride, and smiles at neighbours. Look, her demeanour says, I have a mother too, and she cares for me.

‘In this there was love,' Sandra says. ‘And courage.'

With Sandra's birth, there are seven people in the family. The house sings with the voices of five children returning from school, from work, and from their daily forays. The outside world enters with them. They are cutting through the living room, trailing the day's chatter into the kitchen. Their voices overpower the silence.

Sonia is standing at the kitchen table. Her apron is stained
burgundy. She is chopping vegetables, sliding them into the pot, and stirring the mixture: chopped carrots, thinly sliced beetroots, potatoes and peppers.

She is immersed in her task. There is purpose in her movements. She adjusts the pot on the stove. The element whooshes to life. The flames are a transparent blue and violet, shot through with yellow. The kitchen is filled with warmth.

The borscht simmers. The lid rattles.

When the soup is done, Sonia brings the pot to the table. She ladles the steaming mixture into white bowls and adds a dollop of cream: burgundy in white, and white upon burgundy.

She stands in the kitchen, spoon in hand, the task completed. A small woman. Slightly hunched. Feet firmly planted. Her fingers stained with beetroot. And on her pale face, a faint smile, edged with defiance.

Henry has found a new photo, a black and white, taken soon after he was born. He had overlooked its existence. Or forgotten it. He is eager to show it to me. He pulls up at the Port Diner.

The day shift is over and evening is falling. He walks across the gravel against the din of peak-hour traffic. The ground vibrates to the rumble of road trains. The ferris wheel, returned to life, rotates slowly. On the rail crossing at the back of the lot, a locomotive shunts coils of steel cables from wharf-side storage sheds. Truckies and dock workers stroll to and from their parked vehicles.

Henry pauses on the way and glances at the weed-flowers and thistles on the embankment above a ribbon of water. A
cormorant alights on a wooden pylon. Mosses and shrubs and swathes of long grass disappear in the falling darkness. A patch of daisies glows beneath the creek bridge, beside a row of lights switching on at nightfall.

Henry joins me at a formica table overlooking the parking lot. He places the photo before me.

Sonia's right arm is curved around the waist of Solly. Her hand rests upon his stomach. She holds him close. Her grip is firm, yet gentle. Solly is about two years old. He wears a striped jumper. Her left hand holds the handle of a pram in which lie the twins, Leon and Henry, one asleep, and the other, eyes wide open. They are dressed in white. Their heads are slightly elevated on white pillows.

Neatly parted on the left, Sonia's black hair falls in waves to her shoulders. She has taken care over her appearance. She wears a floral dress, evoking summer, and she looks directly at the camera. She is beautiful.

A barely visible coil of barbed wire in the background suggests it was taken in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Person's Camp. It is one of the few photos of her taken ‘over there'.

There are no inklings of the demons that would come to possess her. There is no hint of the pale tormented being she would become. No indication of the voices that would hold her hostage in a distant continent.

Henry is grateful the photo exists, that it has been uncovered. Brought to light. Sonia's expression reveals an unexpected sensuousness. It suggests contentment and passion expended. Her smile is mild and inviting. Knowing. She appears at ease,
both worldly and dreamy. She is quietly determined, a woman with expectations, looking forward, but also wistful. She has a subdued radiance.

The photo suggests what might have been, and, perhaps, what had been. It suggests a time when all hung in the balance: the ghosts of the past, for the time being, in abeyance. And it suggests romance, if only for fleeting moments.

‘If only…if only.' Henry repeats the words, insistently: ‘If only…if only…'

Henry brings other photos in a black plastic bag when we next meet. He spreads them out on our usual table: Sonia at family gatherings surrounded by grandchildren. They are sturdy men and she, dwarfed by them, pale and hesitant.

There are photos of the grandchildren as infants, the Nissen clan expanding. The boys and their wives and girlfriends are seated at dining room tables covered in white cloths, with birthday cakes and grandchildren leaning over to blow out candles; and beside the cakes, white plates stacked in readiness for distribution.

A photo of Sonia by the kitchen stove, tending the food, an apron over her dress, her hair covered by a scarf. She looks like a babushka. And a group photo of the Nissens: Simche and Sonia standing behind the sofa, ageing patriarch and matriarch. Simche leans in towards her. Their cheeks are almost touching, and Sonia is almost yielding.

A photo taken in earlier times: the family on a summer outing in forest surroundings. Solly, Leon and Henry in shorts and sandals. Paul kneels in front. His arms are wrapped around
Sandra, the toddler. Between the older boys are Simche and Sonia. She wears a cotton dress. Her shoulders are slumped forward. Her face is pale, and ghostly. She stands slightly in front of her husband, yet she appears to be receding, fading into the forest behind him.

Sonia is both present and elsewhere. Her image suggests another dimension, a state of limbo. She is a bewildered soul in search of a way home, a foundation.

There is a photo of the family at the beach: Sonia and Simche with the pale faces and white bodies of the inner-city dweller, the factory worker. The children are darker. They are of a newer world. Henry remembers none of this.

And a photo of a wedding party, taken outdoors. It is summer. The men stand in open-necked shirts, and the women in light dresses. Henry, the groom, is dressed in a white shirt, white trousers and white jacket. He stands between his bride and his father. Simche wears a light grey suit, with a white carnation pinned to the lapel. Sandra, in her teens, is seated in front, cross-legged, and a bearded Leon stands in the back row, holding one of his two infants. The other is snuggled against Sandra.

Sonia stands in the back row beside her husband, enfolded in family. She wears an off-white dress and a matching jacket, with padded shoulders. She is more present than she appears in other photos. Almost grounded. This has been, her wan smile implies, a day worth living.

‘Mum, poor girl,' says Henry.

He does not deviate. He will always talk of her good nature. He will insist that the four brothers and sister remained loyal,
protective of themselves and of each other, subscribers to an unspoken pact—a collective response to a common peril.

‘Mum, poor girl. She taught us compassion. She made us grow up quickly. And made us able to take on the world.'

18

Some streets away from the house at 212 a woman sat on a veranda holding a jar of boiled lollies. From time to time she rose to her feet and stepped up to the fence to make her offering. She held the lollies in her upturned palm to passing children. She did not speak, but she sat in the chair with a shy smile, and an expression of childish wonder. The children accepted the sweets gladly. They called her the lolly woman.

She was middle aged but looked older. She was short and wiry, her hair prematurely white, her nose and chin sharp and angular. In winter she was rugged up in a wool coat that made her appear even smaller.

On summer days she wore short-sleeved dresses. The
children were struck by the tattooed numbers on her forearm. The dark-blue ink stood out against the white skin. The ugly asymmetry of the six figures spoke of a world they had glimpsed in reruns of wartime newsreels. The tattoo haunted them.

Her husband was never seen, but he could be heard, for hours on end, playing the violin. Music emanated from the depths of the terrace, fragments of sonatas, symphonies and concertos.

The playing seemed to move about the terrace, from the ground floor to the second storey, from the kitchen to the front rooms, and the room behind the balcony. It erupted in strident bursts and endured in longer passages. And was so distant at times, it seemed to come from the backyard.

There were only the two of them, husband and wife, one barely an implied presence, and the other visible, yet ethereal. Through the open doorway the children could see a dark passage and a flight of wooden stairs that disappeared towards the upper storey. Somewhere up there, the children assumed, lived the mysterious violin player.

The lolly woman was there to soundlessly greet the children as they walked to school. And she was there mid-afternoon as they returned, as if she had not moved all day. Always with the jar of boiled lollies, and her smile deepening each time she stepped up to the fence and a child accepted her offering. Over the months she became a trusted presence. In time, the neighbourhood children called her Mother.

She was one of many mothers—mothers who had enough love for their own children, and for the children of others. Mothers who lived in homes where the doors were always open.

When they enter, Leon and Henry are cheerful, polite. Respectful. They understand that he who is well behaved may be liked and accepted. In return they receive the gift of maternal affection. The gift of Blossom, Eileen, Colin's mum, Mrs Mac, Mrs McDonald. The twins called her Bloss.

Bloss lived several doors from the Reads', in a single-fronted brick cottage, with her husband Bob and their only son, Colin. The front window was so close to the pavement, a passer-by could reach in and touch it.

She now lives a two-hour drive south, in a brick-veneer unit, a ten-minute stroll from the ocean. The unit is modestly furnished, and the beige carpet perfectly vacuumed. The walls are expanses of white, save for several photos of the grandchildren. Out the front is a well-tended garden, and in the air is the scent of sea breezes.

Bloss is ninety. She is tiny, with wisps of white-hair receding. Her keen blue eyes are magnified by silver-rimmed glasses. She reaches up to embrace Henry and holds on tightly. She releases her grip, keeps him at arms length, and surveys his face, laughing. They hold each other's gaze until finally she steps back and invites him into the lounge room.

She ushers him to an armchair, and seats herself on a brocade sofa. When Bloss settles back, the rounded armrests enfold her and she all but vanishes. But her presence is commanding. Her booming voice is at odds with her modest surroundings. She is a no-nonsense monarch on a padded throne surveying her white-walled kingdom. There is a lot of living yet to be done, and a long life behind her. Like Henry, Bloss exudes vigour.

‘I couldn't pick you boys apart,' she says. ‘You'd lift up your shirt and point to a scar on your stomach, just above the navel. Remember? You showed me the scar to convince me it was you I was talking to. I eventually got to know the differences between the two of you, but I still can't tell you apart on the telephone.'

‘No one can,' laughs Henry.

‘I loved having you boys around. I loved having kids around. We had plenty of kids come through the house: Colin's friends, Amess Street children. Their mums worked, so we looked after 'em. You came in through the front door and by the back door from the laneway.

‘Whatever way you came, you'd go straight to the ice chest out on the back veranda. My Bob had put shelves in the chest and converted it into a cupboard. It was packed with toys. You and Leon would open the door and the toys spilt out everywhere. You pounced on them. It was mayhem.'

Bloss leans forward.

‘Of course we knew what was going on,' she says, a tone lower. ‘No one could hide like they do nowadays. I'd see your mum go by. It was obvious she was a sick lady, I hope you don't mind me saying. One day she'd be lovely, and the next day angry. I can still see her. She was short, slim. Sort of petite. Well presented, as though she was ready to go out. When she walked by the house, she looked frightened.