The Mascot (2 page)

The
Nelly,
which brought my father to Australia in late 1949.

Not my father. He never showed any interest at all in his Russian origins, and because he didn't, we didn't, either.

Despite my father's determination to be an Aussie in every sense of the word, we didn't bond over footy or any other sport or “mateship” rituals that would have been typical of a father-son relationship in Australia in the 1970s. Rather, it was the image of my father with his case that created a bond between us. Whenever I picture my father in my mind's eye, he is invariably holding the case. Yet I still hadn't seen inside it.

I reached across and picked up, instead of his case, the small travel bag at his feet, the type that you would take for a weekend break, not a trek halfway around the world. We made our way down the dark corridor and into my tiny living room. My father remained standing, taking in his surroundings.

Our house in Altona.

“So this is where you live,” he declared rhetorically. “Small,” he added, raising his eyebrows melodramatically, “like a cave or a bunker.” Then he declaimed, glowing at the thought, “Not sunny like Australia.”

I observed him as he stood there in the half-light of my living room. His features had suddenly crumpled, and he seemed tired from the long flight.

“Dad,” I said as gently as I could, “do you feel like talking about this at all?”

“About what?”

The question provoked him to shift away from me to the other end of the room, where he began to examine the prints on the walls and the Japanese porcelain arranged on the mantelpiece.

“What do you think, Dad?” I said, baffled. “Why you're here, of course.”

“What's the matter with you?” he retorted innocently. “I told you I would visit you one day. To see what kind of life my number one son has made for himself.”

He stopped at the window, peering out at the small rear courtyard. Mollified a fraction, all I could manage was, “A bit of advance warning would have been nice, Dad.”

“How much notice do you need?” he said lightly. “I won't take up much space.”

Space wasn't the issue, of course, but it was clear he wouldn't harbor any further discussion about his sudden appearance. He turned toward me, and, for the first time, I noticed a gaping hole where his front tooth should have been.

“Your tooth!” I said, pointing to the gap.

“It fell out on the way here. Somewhere over India, I think,” he said, “but the rest of me got here okay.”

Despite his glib remark, the gap made him seem vulnerable—wounded, even—and I was reluctant to push him for an answer.

Over supper in the kitchen he suddenly confessed to me that my mother had no idea that he was with me in Oxford. He had told her a “fib” about going to Sydney to see Otto, an old friend from the circus who was in poor health. My father said that he had promised to call my mother every day, and he was ready to do so now. I led him to the phone in the study but then immediately went to the living room, afraid that listening in would make me a collaborator in this unfathomable charade.

But my collusion was inevitable. Even as I waited in the other room I tried to avoid making noises that might betray my father's scheme to my mother. Through the partly opened door I could hear him chatting amiably with her, and I tried to keep track of their conversation.

“Yes, I'm okay, luv. The doctor said Otto will be fine. He just needs rest,” I heard him say. “I think it would be better if I stayed here a few more days to keep him company, to get things organized for him.”

The tone of my father's voice as he explained his plan to my mother sounded just as convincing as his words. In fact, I was sure my mother would have no doubts about the situation in Sydney; extending his visit to Otto would have seemed to her to be perfectly natural behavior for her husband. He was a caring person who over the years had always gone to great lengths to help his friends, often putting their needs before his own. Sensing this, my mother often complained that people were taking advantage of him, but he would always just shrug and say gently, “That might be so, luv, but don't be hard on them. Anyway, I'd rather be kind to someone, even if they don't deserve it, than turn my back on them.”

I peeped into the room to see if my father was uneasy about having to lie to my mother. If he was, it was not obvious to me. He was casually moving around the study, still holding the handset and pretending to be in Otto's home. “Nah, between you and me,” he whispered into the mouthpiece, “it's not much of a place, luv. Dark and dingy. Poor chap.”

In the days that followed, my father seemed reluctant to move, as if, having reached Oxford, he was seeking refuge there and was content to lie low. We made occasional trips into town, wandering from college to college, as I pointed out places and objects of interest. My father was attentive, yet someone who knew him well, as I believed I did, would have noticed that he still seemed distracted, as if he had some unfinished business to address.

One evening toward the end of that week, we sat in silence over dinner. We had run out of small talk, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to skirt around the larger question of his entirely unexplained appearance in Oxford. The evasive dance we'd been doing all week was proving more and more difficult to sustain.

Out of the blue, he announced that he had decided to return to Australia the following evening. I was dumbfounded and found it hard to believe that the visit might now come to an end without my having the slightest understanding as to what had instigated it.

“So that's it then, Dad?”

“What?” He looked up at me, perplexed.

“You've made up your mind to go home? Just like that?”

“Well, I've got to go home sometime.” He laughed. “Mum will be wondering what I'm up to in Sydney. That reminds me, I'd better check the weather there in case she asks me.” He clicked his fingers at me. “Check in the newspaper for me, luv,” he demanded.

I grunted in a halfhearted way, unsure whether even doing this small favor for my father was tantamount to complicity with him.

He always had affectionate names for me—“number one son” and “Marky” were his favorites—but often he would use the endearment “luv” quite casually and without conveying any of its usual cloying overtones. Despite these surface intimacies, however, I never felt that he was taking me into his confidence. He was a man who kept his own counsel.

“Go on,” he pressed me.

I gave in and reached for the newspaper. Mystified, I decided that a change of scenery might have a salutary effect on us both and perhaps even help to break our odd impasse. Still partly hidden behind the broadsheet, I suggested that we spend his final day in London, at the end of which I would put him on the subway to Heathrow in time for his departure to Melbourne. He readily agreed and we began to make a plan that included having lunch at the Café Daquise, an old Polish restaurant in South Kensington known for its traditional eastern European food, which had always been my father's favorite.

During my childhood, my father would sometimes decline to join us as we sat down to our Australian meals of roast lamb or fish and chips, preferring instead dill pickles, rye bread, and—even now I shudder at its sight and smell—raw herring. I hoped that the Daquise might remind him of the cafés and delicatessens of Acland Street, one of the few places in Melbourne in the 1960s and '70s where he could indulge in these delicacies, the kind of world where he could relax.

As a child I used to love going to Acland Street with my father to buy cheesecake from one of its eastern European bakeries. I would stand next to him, holding his hand, as he stared into the front windows laden with pastries stacked high on display trays. One recollection came unexpectedly to mind. I had forgotten it completely, so I was a little perplexed at its sudden appearance. The memory seemed to have forced itself to the surface in order to point me toward an explanation for my father's visit.

On the occasion in question I had noticed him staring intently between gaps in the trays into the darker recesses of a pastry shop. I followed his gaze and saw that he was peering into a world I had never seen before: an exotic scene of somewhat alien-looking women, dressed to the nines, with vividly painted lips and exaggerated eyebrows. My father seemed captivated by their masklike faces and the studied and individual way in which they ate—their hands delicately poised, their fingers, laden with gold rings and bracelets, lightly touching their cheeks as they brought forks laden with moist cheesecake to their lips. In some way these women were afterimages of an arcane world that my father recognized and was enchanted with.

I suddenly remembered another incident from one of those visits to Acland Street. One day, as we stood before the window of a cake shop, I noticed that my father had become distracted by something reflected in the window. It was the image of a man behind us who was leaning on the hood of a car parked directly opposite. The man's arms were folded across his chest, and he gazed frankly, and with a friendly smile, at my father. I noticed that when his eyes met the man's my father seemed to freeze to the spot, even though the stranger continued to smile broadly, even giving my father a gentle wave. My father gripped my hand tightly and abruptly moved on, as if eager to escape from something. In retrospect, it seemed that even though the man did not know my father, he recognized something about him.

While my father was clearly attracted to these denizens of Acland Street, he also seemed to be slightly afraid of them. Sometimes I saw him cock his ear, sparrowlike, as if to listen for something. It was as if what he saw through the shopwindows were the landscape of another life, part of a web that threatened to ensnare him, as if he belonged to them and they to him.

T
he train into London was almost empty, and we found ourselves alone in our carriage. My father sipped his coffee and stared out at the measured English landscape. For a second I caught sight of his reflection in the carriage window and saw that he'd been staring at me, evaluating me. His expression softened when my eyes met his.

“You've done well, son. You're an educated man,” he said. I felt a little embarrassed to see him beaming with such pride. It was not his habit to praise me or my brothers. I turned my head to look out the window, mumbling, “Thanks, Dad.”

“I've never been to school, what with the war and things,” he continued.

“But you told me you were at school in the displaced-persons camp outside Hamburg.”

“Yeah, just for about a year. But I didn't learn one single thing. None of the teachers could control me—I was a little devil. I just wouldn't settle. I must have been restless from the war.”

These comments had come out of the blue and without any obvious connection to our trip to London. I was intrigued because he had never been willing to discuss his schooling before, cursorily dismissing any questions we posed. But before I could engage him any further, he abruptly raised his newspaper and hid behind it, lowering it only when we had safely reached Paddington Station.

The sunlight was blinding as we emerged from the underground at South Kensington. It was not yet 11:00 a.m., and I hoped that the émigrés who usually settled themselves at the Daquise midmorning would by now be there in full force: drinking coffee, eating cheesecake, and chatting volubly. If we got there any later, the cacophony of eastern European languages, especially Polish and Russian, would be supplanted by the lunchtime rush of local office workers, and I wanted everything to be undilutedly nostalgic.

We made our way to the café. I stood back as I watched my father peer through the front window. He put on his glasses, perusing the posted menu.

“Look, Marky, they've got latkes as well! I'm starving. Let's eat,” he declared as if he couldn't wait another moment. He gripped me by the elbow, trying to hasten me inside. “Open sesame,” he chuckled with relish as he pushed open the door. We stepped across the threshold.

From her stool behind the cash register the matronly owner, precisely coiffed, cast a disdainful look at us. She raised her bulk from her stool just enough to pass menus across the counter in a desultory fashion. With a barely detectable nod, she indicated that we should sit wherever we could find a table. It was what I imagined a typical eastern European welcome to be, a sour melancholy passing for enthusiasm.

We settled in a corner at the rear of the café. My father looked around the room, taking in his surroundings. Customers sat huddled at tables, drinking coffee, gesticulating, seemingly engaged in debate. At other tables, men or women sat alone, smoking, staring into space, or immersed in foreign newspapers.

“God forbid. Where have you brought me, son?” he joked somewhat edgily.

“I thought you'd like it here, Dad. Just like Acland Street.”

He smiled at me, seemingly touched by my consideration, then visibly relaxed. I noticed that he was guarding his battered case as closely as ever, and again I offered to take it.

“Give it to me, Dad. I'll put it against the wall behind me. Next to your weekend bag.”

“It's fine here, son,” he said, gently dismissing my fussing.

“C'mon, I'm not going to steal it or anything.”

He shook his head emphatically. “It's more than my life is worth, your life, too,” he declared. “It's your inheritance.”

We both laughed, knowing that it was true: he really did have little else but his case to leave me.

“Is that all I'll get?” I shot back with mock disappointment.

He grinned at me. “Be grateful for whatever comes your way.”

I signaled to the elderly waitress, who waddled over to take our order and gave a contemptuous snort in response to our indecisiveness. For an instant I feared that this unfriendly reception would dampen my father's interest in the surroundings, but I needn't have worried. He found her behavior amusing and stared after her, making light of her moodiness. “We must have got her on a good day,” he whispered, a twinkle in his eyes.

Just as on our visits to Acland Street years ago, my father was alert to the sounds of the various eastern European languages he could hear around him—Polish, Russian, and even a smattering of Yiddish. He glanced over his shoulder, stretching to see who owned the voices. Clearing his throat, he turned back to me. The sounds seemed to have triggered something inside him.

“Before I went to Riga when I was a child…” he started.

“You mean when you were lost in the forest?”

“No. Even earlier than that,” he said quietly.

“I thought you couldn't remember anything from that time?”

“There is something I remember.” He paused for what seemed an inordinate amount of time. Then he leaned forward to confide in me. “I have these two words locked away inside of me. I've never forgotten them.” Then he was silent. I waited.

“One is ‘Koidanov,'” he said finally, “and the other is ‘Panok.'” He repeated the words. “Panok. And Koidanov.” Immediately after they left his lips, he seemed distracted by them.

“Are they the names of people? Places? What do they mean?”

He leaned even closer across the table toward me. Then he shook his head, grim-faced, and shrugged. “No idea.” Then just as suddenly, he was energized by a thought: “But you know what I think, son? Those words are the key to who I was before the forest, before the Latvian soldiers…”

“When you were with your Russian pigherd parents?”

He fell silent, again seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then he said quietly, “If that's who I am.”

“If that's who you are?” I blurted out sharply. “What on earth do you mean, Dad?” I shot him a questioning look, but his eyes darted around, avoiding mine. I tried another tack.

“You've remembered these words all your life?” I asked more gently. “Have you told anybody about them?”

He shook his head. He stared at his hands, which rested on the table.

“I can't understand that, Dad.”

His head was slightly bowed, perhaps under the burden of what he had just revealed or in a vain attempt to deflect my line of questioning. But I persisted. “Why did you keep them secret?”

He gave a shrug, then abruptly pulled away from me, back to his side of the table. “It wasn't a secret,” he said. “I just thought that there was nothing to say about them. I didn't know what they meant and I didn't know how I could find out what they were.” He seemed exasperated by my puzzlement. “And besides,” he smirked, “Mum and I were busy raising you three boys. I didn't have time to think about anything else.”

I suddenly pictured my mother sitting alone in the living room in Melbourne. “Does Mum know about this?” I asked.

“I don't want her to know,” my father said, “for the time being. I just don't want to worry her.”

“Why tell me then? And why now?”

“I want you to do something for me, son.” Though he tried to seem offhand there was an underlying note of urgency in his voice. “I want you to find out what these words mean.”

He leaned further back in his chair, folding his arms in a gesture of finality, as if all he wanted me to do was to discover the significance of the words and not trouble myself with his reasons for keeping them secret.

“I want to know who I am. I want to know who my people are before I die,” my father said. Leaning forward across the table again, he added pensively, “I want to place a flower on my mother's grave. Wherever that might be.”

I fell silent. I was shocked.

“Please, son,” he said, as if he needed to convince me.

While I was thrown by his request, unable to recall a time when he'd asked me so directly for my help, it went without saying that I would help him, even if what he wanted still seemed so vague. I pulled out a piece of paper. “Tell me how to spell the words—”

We were interrupted by the waitress who arrived with our meals and slapped the plates down on the table. We ate in silence, my father bent forward, as was his habit, with one arm curled around his plate, protecting the steaming cabbage rolls as he devoured them greedily.

I had lost my appetite, however, and thought about his brown case again. It was true that I saw the case, despite its battered exterior, as something filled with riches, and all the stories it contained, especially all the tales of my father's life since his arrival in Australia, as my inheritance. They were the kind of enchanting stories of human bravado that would make any child proud of his father. I felt more ambivalent about the stories of his childhood in Europe during the war. I could never get a clear picture of what had gone on because my father painted that time in the broadest of brushstrokes.

We enjoyed one particular story my father often told us more than the others, about the time he spent wandering alone in a dark, overgrown forest at the age of five or six when he had become separated from his parents, who were Russian pigherds. He could never remember how this had actually occurred, he said, but he always believed that the trauma of it, together with his time alone in the forest in the freezing winter—for weeks and perhaps even months—caused him to forget both his name and his origins.

My father told us that at night he would tie himself inside the forks of trees to survive the wolves, whose howling he could hear in the distance. As he sat high above the ground, shaking with cold, swinging his tiny legs, and waiting for the first light of dawn, he sometimes imagined that he could hear his mother's voice calling out to him. But he could never remember her words. This part of the story prompted our avid inquiries.

“Weren't you afraid, Daddy?” we would ask. “Could you see the wolves' eyes glowing in the dark?” He would dismiss any questions that suggested he'd been at all vulnerable and respond as if he'd always been brave, confident, and readily equipped for any contingency. “Nah, boys,” he'd say, “I'd just make sure that I'd tied the knot tight enough.”

As if by an agreed-upon formula, one of us would usually exclaim insistently, “But, Daddy, you must know where you come from. Everyone does!”

When he would deny that he did, it only made us more insistent. “You must know, Daddy!”

My mother was always very protective of my father, and she would usually step in at moments like these, when our naïveté made us ruthless and we pressed him too much. “Boys! Leave your father alone,” she would insist gently. “Settle down now and let him get on with his story.”

As the years passed and he retold this story, my mother, my brothers, and I all came to accept the ground rules he set: sit in silence and ask nothing. But in my imagination I would create my own childlike images of my father as a little boy, a Mowgli-like creature wide-eyed with fear, despite what he'd said about his courage, being chased down dark, twisting forest trails by some large, shadowy figure, possibly half-human, half-beast.

My father told us that the turning point in his life came when he was found by Latvian soldiers in a forest on the outskirts of a deserted village somewhere near the Russian border in 1942. They had fed him and tidied him up. It was then that two figures surfaced who would play important roles in his future. The first was K
rlis Lobe.

Lobe was the commander of the Latvian police brigade whose soldiers had discovered my father and taken it upon themselves to give the boy a new name. They called him Uldis Kurzemnieks. Uldis was a common Latvian first name, much like John, and Kurzemnieks literally meant “one from Kurzeme.” Kurzeme was a region in the west of Latvia from which many of the soldiers had come. (My father would abbreviate Uldis Kurzemnieks to Alex Kurzem to spare his fellow Australians the pain of pronouncing the tongue-twisting foreign name.)

Lobe later gave my father a false birthday, November 18, chosen for him because it commemorated Latvian National Day. Eventually he made another key decision about my father's life, arranging for him to be removed from the potential dangers of armed conflict at the front and taken to the safety of Riga and the home of a Latvian family called Dzenis, who ran a chocolate factory.