Things Could Be Worse (15 page)

Morris Lubofsky ordered another creme caramel and three more coffees. ‘Today is a write-off diet-wise, so I may as well pig myself,' he said. ‘I'll go back on my diet tomorrow.' Lola had a scientific theory about why all Jews were on a diet. She had told Garth about this theory last week, and he seemed to think that there could be some truth in it. She explained the theory to Morris.

‘Morris, I think that you and I are genetically predisposed to putting on weight. See, I think that the Jews who survived concentration camps must have had very efficient metabolisms, and that's why they could survive on very little food. It stands to reason that the offspring of people with such slow metabolisms would have extremely slow metabolisms. That would explain why Garth can eat anything he likes and not put on weight, whereas you and I can eat hardly anything and get fat.'

‘I think you've got something there,' said Morris Lubofsky. Just then, Aviva Jacobsen walked into the Cafe Roma. Aviva was the child of concentration camp survivors. She was two or three stone overweight. Morris and Lola nodded at each other. Aviva was evidence of the validity of Lola's theory.

‘Hi, guys, how are you?' Aviva said. ‘I'm just between cases. I've got a sentencing at four o'clock, and I've got to get to the children's court before then, so I won't stop.' Aviva, a barrister, lived her life on the run. She was busy defending this murderer, that thief, this distraught father, that battered child. Lola often thought that Aviva was driven. When Aviva wasn't working, she went to the theatre, to the opera, to the cinema, to concerts, to art openings, to museums. She was always doing something. And always in a hurry. Lola found Aviva's ceaseless activity exhausting.

Aviva's sister, Fay, moved very slowly. Fay looked permanently tranquillised. She lived in Israel. Very few Israeli men were limp or insipid, but Fay Jacobsen had found one such Israeli and married him. They had four boisterous, unmanageable children, and their fifth child was due any day now. Fay and her husband were supported by her parents.

Lola had met Aviva and Fay's father last week. He told her he had just spoken to Fay. ‘I did ask her', he said to Lola, ‘how the economic situation in the country is. She said to me, “I don't know, Dad. I don't have to work, Igal doesn't have to work. How do we know how the economy is?” ' Mr Jacobsen looked both proud and troubled by his daughter's reply.

‘You know, Lola,' Mr Jacobsen said, ‘I had a dream when I came to Australia. My dream was to earn enough money so that my children would never have to worry about money. And I did it.' Mr Jacobsen looked bothered.

Morris Lubofsky was talking to Garth about his girlfriend Elizabeth's legs.

‘She's got amazingly long legs,' he was saying.

‘Morris,' said Lola, ‘this relationship with Elizabeth will never last. Even if she marries you, she'll leave you in a few years. And then what will you do, look for wife number five when you're fifty? I saw the way Elizabeth looked at you when you had that hayfever attack. Her concern was efficient, not affectionate. Anyway, she's not Jewish, and she's too young for you.'

One of the nice things about Morris Lubofsky, Lola thought later, was that he was very good-natured. ‘At the moment I'm not really worried about how long the relationship will last,' Morris replied. ‘I feel happy with Elizabeth. She's given me a confidence that I didn't have. She tells me I'm a fabulous lover, and that's been very good for me.'

Lola had someone in mind for Morris Lubofsky. It was her friend Roslyn. But Roslyn had a penchant for non-Jewish men. Her two husbands hadn't been Jewish. Lola was trying to show Roslyn the error of her ways. She was trying to persuade Roslyn that her next husband should be Jewish.

Roslyn and Morris would be a perfect match, thought Lola. Roslyn's mother had been in hiding, in Poland, during the war, and so had Morris's mother. Roslyn was very bright. She wouldn't take any crap from Morris if she was his wife. She'd put Morris on the right track, thought Lola.

A friend of Lola's had once said to her, ‘Lola, you should marry someone who will make you more than you are, not someone who will make you less than you are.' Roslyn would make Morris Lubofsky more than he was. And Roslyn would no longer have to struggle. She had struggled all her life. She had worked full-time while getting her degrees. She had always had to support herself. Things would be easier for her as a member of the Lubofsky family. And Roslyn wouldn't exploit their wealth. Roslyn was a modest and independent girl.

Yes, Roslyn would make a perfect wife for Morris Lubofsky. Lola talked to Roslyn about the importance of marrying a Jewish husband. ‘What about Garth?' said Roslyn. ‘Garth is more Jewish than I am,' answered Lola. ‘He knows more about Judaism than I do. Anyway, there are no other goys like Garth.'

Josl Bensky had been at Lola's house one day when Lola was talking to Roslyn. ‘You have to stop running away from your Jewishness,' Lola had lectured Roslyn. ‘You think that having a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur is the action of a mature person who has come to terms with themselves?' Lola asked Roslyn. ‘You are Jewish,' Lola continued emphatically, ‘and it is a very attractive part of you.'

Josl Bensky had been sitting between the two women. He looked amused. Was this the same girl, the same Lola, his daughter, who'd gone out with tow-truck drivers, who had dated a black African from Nigeria, who had been in love with drug-addicted rock-and-roll singers? Was this the same daughter who had rejected all her mother's matchmaking efforts? The same daughter who hadn't gone out with a Jewish boy since she was eighteen? Was this Lolala Bensky speaking?

‘Lolala, my darling,' Josl Bensky said. ‘There is an old Yiddish saying. It says, “If you live long enough, you see everything.” '

Lola and Garth said goodbye to Morris on Lygon Street.

‘Will you be here for coffee on Saturday morning?' asked Morris. Lola nodded. ‘Good,' Morris said. ‘See you then.'

Things Could Be Worse

Lola Bensky saw herself on the screen. There she was. She was the second guest on the right at Tzeitel and Motel's wedding in
Fiddler On The Roof.
It was her. The same hair, the same eyes, the same mouth, the same expression.

Now, the Lola on the screen was dancing. Look at her. Her skirts were whirling. She was turning this way and that way. Stepping to the right. Stepping to the left. Now she was clapping and dancing. She was dancing the hora. She was dancing the mitzvah-tensl. Now Lola Bensky could see that it wasn't her up on the screen in
Fiddler On The Roof.
Lola Bensky couldn't dance.

Lola had tried to dance. At sixteen, when her friends were jiving to Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin and Crash Craddock, Lola had tried to look like a carefree rock-and-roller. She had had the right rope petticoats, the right T-bar shoes, the right lipstick and the right hairstyle. But she had had the wrong expression. She looked anguished, embarrassed and uncomfortable. She had tried to keep smiling through ‘Only The Lonely' and ‘Boom Boom Baby', but her discomfort had dislodged her smile.

Lola had tried again in her early twenties, when dancing had become more creative. You could make up the movements or follow the go-go dancers. At Ziggy's discotheque, Lola had kept her eyes glued to the go-go dancers. Six go-go dancers danced in cages suspended from the ceiling. Lola often felt dizzy looking up at the dancers while she copied their arm and leg movements, but Lola had no talent for choreography. Her imagination didn't extend to dance steps. If she couldn't see the go-go dancers, she couldn't dance.

At twenty-three, Lola gave up dancing. She didn't dance again until she met Garth. Garth was a fabulous dancer. Lola clung to Garth as he turned and stepped and twisted around the dance floor. Garth held Lola close to him, and clutched her tightly. From this secure position, Lola Bensky could smile while she danced.

Lola had seen herself on the screen before. She had seen herself in old footage of the prisoners of Dachau being liberated by the American army. She knew that the young girl behind the barbed-wire fence in Dachau, in front of the ditch filled with dead bodies, was her.

Lola saw herself in photographs, too. She saw herself in photographs of street urchins in the Lodz ghetto. She saw herself in a photograph of a small girl sitting next to her dead mother in the ghetto. She saw herself in photographs of Jewish women smiling for the camera in displaced persons camps.

Lola also looked for relatives in these photographs. She searched through photographs, books and films for members of her family. She looked for the son that her parents had had before the war. She looked for her grandparents. She looked for her aunties and uncles and cousins.

In her handbag she kept a notebook with the names of her parents' parents and brothers and sisters. In this notebook, she also kept an index of the titles of the books on the Holocaust that she owned.

Lola hated the word Holocaust. It was too neatly wrapped into a parcel. There were no loose ends and no frayed edges. The Holocaust. It was a nice, compact abstraction. But what else could she say? The alternatives were so wordy. She could say the Nazi extermination of European Jewry. She could say the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis. She could say Hitler's murder of six million Jews.

Lola had a library of over one thousand books on the Holocaust. She had read most of them. Lola had a good memory. She had always had a good memory. She could remember hundreds, if not thousands, of phone numbers. Conversations she had ten years ago, she could recall verbatim. Yet the facts and statistics of the Holocaust flew out of her head. She had to check and recheck the information. Was it in Bergen-Belsen that British troops had found over ten thousand unburied bodies? Was it there, in Bergen-Belsen, that five hundred inmates a day had died from typhoid and starvation in the week after liberation? Was it in Mauthausen that the Nazis had murdered thirty thousand Jews in the last four months of the war? Lola had to check and recheck.

When she was thirty, Lola had begun to ask her parents about their experiences in the war. They had answered her questions, hesitantly at first, but they had answered. Lola had listened. She had listened quietly. She had taken notes. She had tape-recorded some of the conversations. She had videotaped a long interview with each of her parents. And still their stories blurred and wandered in her head.

Lola had been shocked to find that other Jews her age didn't know or couldn't remember what had happened to their parents during the war. Solomon Seitz, with his Oxford D.Phil, didn't know. Susan Shuster, a researcher for the Prime Minister, couldn't remember. Boris Kronhill, the physicist, had a vague idea. He told Lola that his mother had been in hiding in a convent and his father had been in a labour camp in Russia. Lola knew that Boris had it all wrong. Renia knew the Kronhills and had told Lola that Mrs Kronhill had been in Auschwitz and Mr Kronhill had been hidden in a haystack on a farm in Poland for two years.

Renia and Josl's friends thought that Lola, with all her questions and all her books, was crazy. ‘What does she want to read books about concentration camps for?' said Genia Pekelman. ‘Does she want to go crazy?'

Lola came out of the Adelphi theatre in Mordialloc. Mordialloc was a long way from Russia and the world of Tevye and Tzeitel and Motel.

Lola's mother had died nine months ago. Last night, Lola had been feeling out of kilter. She had seen in the
Herald
that
Fiddler On The Roof
was playing at the Adelphi, and she had decided that she needed to see it. This morning Lola had bought a packet of Fantales and a packet of Minties, and driven for an hour to Mordialloc to catch the early matinee session at the Adelphi.

There had been only five other people in the cavernous theatre. Lola thought that she and the four elderly women and one very old man must have been the only people in Melbourne who hadn't yet seen
Fiddler On The Roof.

Now, outside the theatre, Lola felt a bit disconcerted. It was a bright, blue, hot day. Mordialloc looked prosperous. People were eating Chiko Rolls and pies in the pizza shop next door to the Adelphi. Poor Tevye had been so poor that he had to carry his milk deliveries himself when his horse had become too old. Here everyone had a car and could afford a milkshake.

Lola bought a custard tart and drove back to Melbourne. On her way home she stopped at Texoform, the factory in which her father worked. Josl had been with Texoform for nine years. Josl's clothing company, Joren Fashions, like many small businesses, had closed down in the seventies. At first Josl had felt devastated. Now, he enjoyed his job at Texoform. He had his own office, and he was in charge of ordering the fabrics. Josl felt as though Texoform was his own company. He was overjoyed when he saved the firm money, and he worked hard to create a high morale and a sense of loyalty among the workers.

Josl was surprised to see his daughter, but then nothing that Lola did really surprised Josl. For many years, Lola had been at odds with herself. At odds with him. At odds with his beloved Renia, who had died just when everything was looking promising. Renia had died when both of her daughters were happily married and her grandchildren were turning out to be everything she had hoped for in her own children.

Josl wiped away the tears that came when he thought about Renia. He still got up early every morning and tiptoed around the bedroom so that he wouldn't disturb her. And every morning he was jolted out of his quiet by the realisation that Renia was no longer there. His darling Renia, the woman he had loved since he was twenty-two and she was sixteen, was dead.

Josl kissed Lola hello. He looked at her. Lola had changed. In her thirties Lola had changed, and all the things that Josl had loved in her as a small child had returned. He had loved her curiosity and her enthusiasm. And he had loved her laugh. When Lola was little she used to laugh and laugh. If something struck her as funny she would laugh with her whole body, with her whole being. She would be completely immersed in her laughter. It used to give Josl so much joy.

‘Hi, Dad,' said Lola. ‘The photo of Mum looks good on the wall. I like this new office. How are you, Dad?'

‘I'm all right, Lola. I'm all right,' Josl answered.

‘You know what I did today?' said Lola. ‘I drove out to Mordialloc and went to the pictures. I haven't been able to work well lately, and I noticed that
Fiddler On The Roof
was playing, so I went and saw it.'

‘You haven't seen
Fiddler On The Roof
before?' said Josl.

‘No, I'd never seen it,' said Lola.

‘You never saw
Fiddler On The Roof?
But everybody did see
Fiddler On The Roof.
What a picture! I loved
Fiddler On The Roof.
Topol was very good in the film, but that Hayes Gordon, who did play Tevye on the stage in Melbourne, he was terrific. He is not a Jew, yet he was one hundred per cent a Jew on the stage. Your Mum and I, we loved him. We saw him twice. I can't believe that until now you didn't see
Fiddler On The Roof
.'

‘I'm glad that I went to see it,' said Lola. ‘I loved it. Dad, I know it's not Wednesday, but will you have dinner with us tonight? I'm making a beautiful veal and beef klops with sauerkraut.'

‘I don't want you to start again with the “can I eat with you” business,' said Josl. ‘I told you, I'll come once a week and that's it. Klops with sauerkraut? Is it the same way that Mum made it?' Josl asked.

‘It's exactly the way that Mum made klops and sauerkraut,' said Lola.

‘It is a little bit hard to say no to klops with sauerkraut. All right, all right, I will come, but don't put me in this position again. I'm not going to be a burden on you or anybody,' said Josl.

‘Dad, you know that it makes us happy to see you,' said Lola.

‘OK, Lola, OK. I will come but I won't stay long. I want to have an early night. I didn't sleep so well last night. I started thinking, and I couldn't fall asleep. It's no good to think too much. It can get you so mixed up. I started to feel crazy. First I was thinking about Mum. She did everything right. She was slim, she didn't smoke, she did do exercise, and still she died. She was young. Sixty-three is not old today. Then I started to think about the past, and that maybe what happened to Mum in Auschwitz was what did give her the cancer. After a few hours thinking like this you can think you are crazy. It's better not to think too much,' said Josl.

‘It's better not to think too much' was something Josl had said repeatedly since Lola was small. Lola had stopped thinking altogether when she was sixteen. Until then she had topped all her classes, played the piano well and won prizes for her French and German poetry recitations. At sixteen she failed two of her five final year high-school subjects. The following year she had passed the two subjects that she had failed and failed the three that she had passed. The third time, to everyone's relief, she passed all five subjects.

Lola had drifted through the next ten years. She became a journalist. She became a wife. She became a mother. She seemed like a good journalist, a good wife and a good mother. But Lola was crooked. She was skew-whiff. She was at an odd angle. And no-one noticed.

Arrows of anger and shafts of self-pity pitted her thoughts. Fear ruptured her nights. Fantasies and dreams were intertwined with her daily life. She thought she was Renia and Josl. She thought she had been in the ghetto. She thought she had been in Auschwitz too.

Lola had always been plump. But from the age of sixteen, she grew, slowly and steadily, until she was huge. She grew a cocoon around herself. And in this unoccupied territory, this haven, this no man's land, Lola, a bit breathless and tired, spent her youth.

Lola didn't start thinking again until she was twenty-six and went to see a psychoanalyst about her weight problem.

‘What sort of answer is that to a weight problem?' Renia had said when Lola asked her to look after Julian while she went to the analyst. ‘Is this a solution to being fat? To go to a psychiatrist? What sort of a solution is that?' said Renia.

‘Lola is going to see an analyst about losing weight?' said Ada Small. ‘Why doesn't she go to Weight Watchers? Whoever heard of somebody going to see a doctor for mad people, for meshuganas, when she just wants to lose some weight? It's crazy.'

‘What about a hypnotist?' suggested Genia.

‘What about Limmits biscuits, or the egg-and-grapefruit diet?' said Renia to Lola. ‘I have heard some very good reports about that egg-and-grapefruit diet. You can have as many boiled eggs as you like, as long as you eat half a grapefruit first. Lola, what did we do to deserve the shame of a daughter who goes to see a psychiatrist?'

‘You think too much and you don't do enough dieting,' Josl had said. ‘Anyway,' he had continued, ‘I have heard some not very good things about this Herr Professor, this expensive doctor psychiatrist. I heard he got divorced from a very nice woman. I heard that he is the meshugana, not the patients that he treats. The worry about this is making your mother sick. Her daughter is going to see a lunatic doctor. She needs this like a hole in the head.'