Things Could Be Worse (8 page)

Some of Lola's most pleasant childhood memories were of being nursed through a cold by Renia. All Renia's anger seemed to dissipate. The harsh looks she often gave Lola were gone. She was soft and sympathetic. She no longer focused on Lola's diet. ‘Eat up,' she urged.

All the Benskys' friends could rely on Renia to look after them when they were sick. She visited them. She shopped for them. She rang twice a day to enquire after their progress. She was full of love for them.

In the Lodz ghetto, Renia had found her school friend, Raisl, lying in Palacowa Street. Raisl's face was covered in blood. Renia knew it was tuberculosis. She carried Raisl the four blocks to her apartment. Josl's parents and brother, who shared a room with Renia and Josl, were horrified. They told Renia that Raisl had to be put back in the street.

‘Let her at least have a few hours' sleep,' Renia pleaded. Renia cleaned Raisl up and tucked her into her own bed. Raisl kept coughing blood.

Suddenly there was a great commotion outside. It was another raid, another round-up of Jews to be transported out of the ghetto for ‘a better life'. Renia, Josl and his parents were trapped. They had no time to run anywhere. Up until then they had been lucky. Josl had a cousin in the Judenrat who had managed to tip them off when a raid was due on Palacowa Street.

Josl's father, Shimek, looked defeated. Josl pushed the four of them into a small cupboard. They all knew it was no use. The SS had dogs. They were done for.

A few minutes later, the door was bashed in by an SS officer. He took one look at Raisl and fled. The SS, Josl's father later laughed, were such cowards. They were terrified of contagious diseases.

The next morning Raisl was dead. Renia walked beside Raisl's body, in the cart that picked up the unclaimed dead, and said Kaddish for Raisl.

* * *

Renia bought four loaves of bread a day for the birds in her garden. She bought rye, white sliced, wholemeal and Vienna. She walked to Acland Street to get the best bread.

She always had plenty of bread in the house. The few stories about Renia's past that she shared with Lola were about bread. She used to say, ‘Lola darling, you don't know what it is to be without bread.' Renia was often eating the toasted rye with caraway seed that she loved when she told this to Lola. ‘You know, Lola, there were some people in the ghetto who killed people so that they could have their bread. Mrs Berg, my high-school teacher, didn't report the death of her daughter. She kept the body with her for two weeks so she could claim her daughter's rations. Finally, the neighbours couldn't bear the smell and told the authorities.

‘I, myself, one day was carrying my bread ration home. I was stupid and was holding the bread in my hand. A young boy did snatch the bread from me. I ran and ran after him. I did catch him, but he had already gobbled my bread while he was running. He was only about eight years old. His stomach was swollen from starvation. I couldn't even cry for my bread.'

Sometimes, at night, Lola was woken by her mother's nightmares.

‘Mama,' Mrs Bensky would call out. ‘Mama. Mama. Mama.'

Even when she was little, Lola knew that her mother was not just in the world of sleep. She knew that Renia Bensky was in another world, in another time, with another family.

Lola suspected that this family that her mother was joined to in her nightmares was her mother's real family.

When Lola was seventeen she had crept into the Benskys' bedroom, late one night, to get her alarm clock from their sideboard. Renia and Josl were fast asleep.

As Lola picked up the clock, it slipped from her hand and fell to the ground. Mrs Bensky jumped from her bed. Her eyes were wild. ‘Go on, kill me!' she shouted. ‘Go on, I don't care what you do to me. Kill me. Kill me.'

Josl woke Renia up gently. He calmed her down. ‘It's all right, my darling. It was just a bad dream. Everything is all right. Go back to sleep.'

When Renia was asleep again, Josl went to find his daughter. Lola was in the bathroom washing herself. She had locked the door.

Josl called out to her: ‘I am sorry, darling, but when your Mum goes to sleep she can't get away from the past. As soon as she shuts her eyes, she is back again. Are you all right?'

‘Yes, I'm fine,' Lola answered. She finished washing her legs and her feet. Her bowels had given in to the shock. She had shat herself.

Renia sat in her kitchen drinking a cup of black tea with cloves. Today the
Herald
was very good. There were two very good death notices today. They both had wonderful quotations. ‘Death surprises us in the middle of our hopes,' Mr Jack Lane's wife had put at the end of the notice of her husband's death. And at the end of another notice was: ‘Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.'

The
Jewish Times
, which came from Sydney, also had a very nice death notice this week:

His life was gentle and the elements

So mixed in him that Nature might stand up

And say for all the world, ‘This was a Man.'

Renia had heard that the editor of the
Jewish Times
was a very poetic woman.

Renia added these quotes to her notebook of obituary quotations. Her two favourites were: ‘A man's dying is more the survivor's affair than his own.' Thomas Mann had written this. And John Donne's beautiful passage, ‘Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.'

Renia folded the
Herald
and put it away. She had to prepare dinner. Josl liked to eat at 5 p.m. She thought that she would just ring Lola quickly before she began the dinner. Genia had told Renia yesterday that Malka Frenkel had lost three stone at the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centre. This was not the first good report that Renia had received about the Jenny Craig Centre. She'd heard that Nusia's friend Fela had lost two stone, and that Topcha's daughter, who had always been a big fatty, was now thin. Renia walked to the telephone and dialled Lola's number.

The Holiday

It was the holiday in Olinda, they all agreed, that marked the beginning of the end. Mr and Mrs Bensky, Mr and Mrs Small, Mr and Mrs Pekelman, Mr and Mrs Ganz and Mr Berman had been a group for thirty-two years. ‘Our company', they called themselves. Every Easter and every Christmas they went somewhere together.

At first the holidays were modest. They were all migrants, newly arrived refugees, when they met in Australia. They met in the summer of 1950, at Solly Nadel's Guest House in Hepburn Springs. Mr and Mrs Bensky had arrived at Nadel's on a truck. Mrs Bensky and Lola had travelled in the cabin with the driver, and Mr Bensky was strapped to a chair on the back of the truck.

Josl Bensky had paid Jack, the driver, to drive them to Hepburn Springs. In two weeks, Jack would come and pick them up and take them home. The return trip cost Josl five shillings. Mrs Bensky had wept all the way there. She was sure her Josl was going to fall off the truck. And Lola, unnerved by Mrs Bensky's cries, had screamed all the way to Hepburn Springs.

When they arrived, Mr Bensky had had to wait for Jack to unstrap him. He felt a bit humiliated when a group of guests gathered to watch.

It was the Benskys' first holiday in Australia. Mrs Bensky entered Lola in the fancy-dress competition. From some cardboard and newspaper and glue, and a bottle of black ink, Mrs Bensky made Lola a witch's outfit. A black pointed hat, a black fringed cloak and a big false nose. Little Lola, the witch, won second prize.

By the end of the fortnight the ‘company' had been formed. Mr and Mrs Bensky, Mr and Mrs Small, Mr and Mrs Pekelman, Mr and Mrs Ganz and Mr and Mrs Berman had gone for walks together after dinner at night. They had bottled the mineral water from the springs together. They had eaten together. They were firm friends.

Mr and Mrs Pekelman had arrived in Melbourne only four weeks earlier. Mrs Bensky took Mrs Pekelman under her wing. She introduced her to Mrs Papov and to Mrs Berg. It was essential, Renia Bensky explained to Genia Pekelman, to be on the good side of these gossip-mongers.

Later, in Melbourne, Renia took Genia shopping. The two women bought a length of black knitted fabric from the Victoria Market. From this material, Renia made two tops with scooped necklines and three-quarter sleeves, and two straight skirts.

Renia made a whole wardrobe for herself and Mrs Pekelman. The total cost of this wardrobe was less than the price of one dress at Myers. Mrs Bensky felt very proud of herself. Mrs Pekelman was grateful, and she remained in eternal admiration of Mrs Bensky.

The two women looked so stylish, so elegant, so beautiful in their new clothes. Mrs Bensky's hair was cut in the new, chic, short, gamine style. She had taught Mrs Pekelman how to roll her thick auburn hair into a chignon. Both women were olive-skinned and strong-limbed. Looking at them, it was impossible to believe that five years ago Renia Bensky was in Auschwitz and Genia Pekelman was in Bergen-Belsen.

At Solly Nadel's Guest House, the men (and an occasional woman) sat inside and played cards. One hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit, and they sat with the windows closed, the air thick with cigarette smoke. And they played cards. They played Red Aces, poker and gin rummy.

The women sat in small groups outside. They chatted to each other and fussed around their own children and other people's children. Shouldn't little Johnny be wearing a sun hat? How could Harry's mother let him out without some sunburn cream on his nose? And look at that Layla, didn't Mrs Hersh know that a young girl shouldn't be allowed to get so fat? And the Horowitz boy, he was already out of control. What would it be like when he was a teenager? For the women on holiday, here at Solly Nadel's in Hepburn Springs, these were the questions of the day.

At night there was dancing. The guests at Solly Nadel's could be divided into six categories. The good dancers, the bad dancers and the non-dancers, and the good card-players, the bad card-players and the non-card-players.

The good dancers enjoyed the highest status at Solly Nadel's. Their importance could only be surpassed by a professor or a doctor. There were not too many professors or doctors at Solly Nadel's, so the good dancers were the elite.

‘Look at that Mr Gruner, what a dancer,' Genia Pekelman said almost every morning at the breakfast table. ‘He dances the tango and the foxtrot like he was in a world championship of dancing.' Genia Pekelman, who was awkward in the kitchen and around the dinner table, turned into a light-footed, delicate slip of a girl on the dance floor. All her self-consciousness left her. She side-stepped and back-stepped. She whirled in neat, graceful circles. She swivelled her hips and held her head at a coquettish angle.

During the day, the ballroom at Solly Nadel's was used as a dining room. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were served there. At meal times the noise was deafening. One hundred and twenty people ate and talked simultaneously. They ate while they talked. They talked over the top of one another. If they felt they weren't being heard, they shouted. Some of the guests shouted everything they said. The same conversations were repeated every day. The sentiments that were voiced were interchangeable among the guests. Mrs Bloom would probably be saying the same thing as Mrs Fink, and Mrs Freedman's thoughts often echoed Mrs Rose's.

Slivers of sentences shot through the room like crossfire. ‘How old is little Esther? Oh, she's not talking yet? My Johnny says many words. And Esther is still in nappies? What a shame. Johnny says for quite a few weeks already, “I need pishy. I need cucky.” '

Most of the men were looking for ways to better themselves. The same conversations travelled from table to table. ‘Did you hear that Mr Brown was looking for a good tailor? You can get a job at the Renee of Rome Factory. He doesn't pay so good, but he always gives the Jews work. Watch out for Mr Sal. Never do piecework for him. He complains about every garment.'

Every summer Solly Nadel employed Mr Muller, an elderly Austrian baker, to bake bread. Mr Muller worked seven days a week in December and January. He baked from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. He baked rye bread, pumpernickel and Vienna, and he baked special challah rolls for dinner.

There was never any bread left on the tables after the meals. Mr Grossman saved the leftover bread from his table. After two weeks, he took home three cardboard boxes of bread. Other people did the same.

‘He is a peasant, that Mr Grossman,' said Mrs Lipshutz. Frieda Factor interrupted her. ‘We should understand, Mrs Lipshutz, that this is not his normal behaviour. I don't know if you know this, Mrs Lipshutz, but Mr Grossman was in Mauthausen concentration camp.' ‘Well, he is now in Melbourne, Australia, where there is plenty of bread,' Mrs Lipshutz replied. ‘That sort of behaviour causes anti-Semitism,' she added.

Mrs Lipshutz, who had been in Australia for ten years, was not happy with the postwar influx of Jews. ‘They are a different brand of Jew altogether,' she told her Australian neighbour, Mrs Cunningham. ‘They are peasants. We, Adam and I, came from cultured families. We read books, we went to the theatre, we went to the opera, we always had the best seats. We travelled in Europe. My father spoke fluent French. We were not peasants. You will see, these Jewish refugees will make the Australian people into anti-Semites.'

‘Oh, no, Mrs Lipshutz,' said Mrs Cunningham. ‘I feel so sorry for some of them. They're still young girls. With those numbers on their arms they remind me of branded cattle. And Mrs Lipshutz, I met a young woman who was a dentist in Warsaw before the war, and now she is a cleaner. And her sister, who was a doctor, is working as a machinist.'

‘Pheh!' said Mrs Lipshutz. ‘They all say that they were doctors in Poland.'

Later that night, Mrs Lipshutz told Mr Lipshutz that her greatest fears had been confirmed. Mrs Cunningham, their hard-working, church-going neighbour, had told her that these new Jewish migrants looked like cattle.

If it was so easy for a good, kind person like Mrs Cunningham to be an anti-Semite, said Morry Lipshutz, what hope was there for the world?

The company went to Solly Nadel's for their Christmas holidays every year until 1959. By then they had a bit more money. Things were looking up for most of the group. The Smalls and the Pekelmans were partners in a knitting factory. Mr Bensky owned Joren Fashions, a small factory that manufactured ladies' suits. Costumes, Josl called them. Pola and Moishe Ganz already had six machinists working for them at Champs Elysees Blouses, and Mr Berman wholesaled plastic bags. Joseph Zelman was the wealthiest of the group. He was already building his sixth block of flats. He bought the land, built the flats, and sold them as they were being built. He worked day and night. He undercut his competition by settling for a smaller profit. In 1959 he was on his way to banking his first million.

In 1959 the company went to Surfers Paradise. They rented four units in the same block in Cavill Avenue. Mrs Bensky brought her own frozen chicken stock. Mrs Zelman brought six pounds of lean beef, which she made into three big klops on the first day. One klops for lunch, and two for later in the week. Mrs Ganz stewed a big pot of apples and baked a sponge cake, and everyone felt at home.

They ate their meals outside, around the swimming pool. At night they walked along the beach. For Mr Bensky, the highlight of this holiday was the matzoh brei that Mrs Zelman made for everyone most mornings. Josl was the first at the breakfast table each morning. He looked so happy eating the matzoh brei that Mrs Zelman thought she could have happily made it for him forever. Some men, she thought, are so easy to please.

Surfers Paradise, the company decided, was a very successful holiday place. They went there often after that.

The company had other memorable holidays. They went to Rotorua in New Zealand. They had mud baths and mineral spas. Mrs Bensky loved this. She sat happily for hours covered in hot mud. Josl had to be ordered into the mud. He hated it. On the second day Josl sprained his ankle, and had to spend the rest of his New Zealand holiday doing what he liked best. He lay on the bed in the motel room and read detective novels. He finished a book and a box of chocolates a day.

Mrs Ganz and Mr Zelman went to the mineral baths together. Mrs Bensky was worried. She feared that the attachment between them was more than it should be. No-one else appeared worried.

In New Zealand the company discovered duty-free shopping. All the families came home with new cameras.

In 1982 the company went to Israel. They had planned this trip for months. Mr Bensky was in charge of the itinerary. They stopped in Las Vegas on their way to Israel.

Mr Bensky was one of the keenest card-players of the group. He loved to gamble. Mr Zelman and Mr Pekelman thought that Las Vegas wasn't really on the way from Melbourne to Tel Aviv, but they kept their thoughts to themselves.

Josl Bensky was deliriously happy in Las Vegas. He lost at blackjack, he lost at roulette. He lost playing chemin de fer and five card stud poker. He played the poker machines in the main gambling hall, and he played the mini poker machines in the toilets. In two days Josl Bensky lost $700. ‘Las Vegas', he told everyone in Melbourne when he got back, ‘was the best part of the trip.'

‘There's too many Jews here for me,' said Izak Pekelman in Israel. ‘I don't feel so good among so many Jews.' The rest of the group thought that what Izak said may have sounded a little strange but, in different ways, they all knew what he meant.

Renia Bensky stayed in the hotel room with the flu for most of their three weeks in Israel. Genia Pekelman wouldn't go to the pictures, or to the theatre, or to any concerts. ‘If it's all the same to you,' she said, ‘I would prefer to stay in the hotel. It makes me too nervous to be with a crowd.' To her husband Genia said what the others had understood she was trying to say: ‘Izak, I can't stand being in the middle of so many Jews. It makes me too nervous. What if someone starts to shoot at us? It reminds me too much of too many things.'

George Small couldn't eat anything in Israel. ‘This is not what we ate at home in Poland,' he said. ‘This is the food of Arabs, not the food of Jews.'

In Mea Shearim, the Orthodox area of Jerusalem, Josl Bensky bellowed: ‘Who do they think they are, these Orthodox? What are they doing? Why do they have to draw such attention to themselves? Where in the Talmud does it say you have to wear such a long black coat, and the short black trousers, and the black hats? This is the modern world, not the old world. Stupid bastards. They cause trouble for everyone. Haven't the Jews had enough trouble?' By now Josl was almost in tears.

That night the company were having dinner in Jerusalem. A group of Orthodox young men came and sat at the next table. Josl looked at them and said loudly, ‘Oy, I'm going to vomit.'

Mr Berman liked Israel. But Chaim Berman was a quiet man. He always agreed with the majority. He kept to himself the elation that he felt at being in the homeland of the Jewish people. He loved the robustness of the people, the honesty, the lack of artifice. He loved the commitment and the loyalty. Chaim thought that it was a privilege to live for an ideal, and in Israel people were living for an ideal. They had, Chaim Berman thought, something more valuable than central heating and new television sets.