Cafe Scheherazade (19 page)

Avram can still recall the book the doctor gave him. It was an account of the Spanish Civil War; and it was a wise choice. Not too intimate a subject as to overwhelm, but close enough to his deepest interests to excite his imagination, his love of history and ideas. As he read it, memory, history's indispensable but fragile partner, began to return. Avram lapsed in and out of sleep. He floated between the printed page and his fractured dreams.

Through his barely opened eyes he glimpsed the psychiatrist. She stood by the bed with a colleague. ‘This is an interesting case,' Avram heard her whisper. ‘A boy from Vilna. They found him in the streets. Lying unconscious, in a pool of blood. He had a deep gash on his forehead. He was without documents, without arms. All he had as identification was his Red Army coat. He lay in a coma for six weeks from which he has just emerged. He is still suffering from amnesia.'

‘Is your name Avramel?' the visiting doctor asked.

‘Yes,' the patient replied. And was startled into a sudden remembrance of himself. Of a child called Avramel. Avramele. Names first heard in the cradle, within a trusting world.

‘Is your family name Zeleznikow?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you had a sister called Basia?'

‘Yes.'

‘And a father called Yankel?'

‘Yes.'

‘And a mother called Etta?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you lived in an apartment at Benedictinski 4?'

‘Yes.'

‘I knew them all. My name is Dr Baranowski. I sometimes visited your house. Your father was a friend of mine. I knew you when you were a child.'

Etta. Yankel. Basia. Avramel. A family called Zeleznikow. An apartment at Benedictinski 4. The doctor had touched on the intimate core. A samovar bubbled, centre table. Shadows played upon the walls. Yankel, Etta and their guests sipped brandy and tea. They mapped out missions and talked of ambitious schemes. Avramel lay in bed, in the adjoining room, and was lulled to sleep by the babble of voices. They argued late into the night, enveloped by warmth and light.

Avram glimpsed familiar faces, shimmering white. And beyond them, he saw the white coat of the doctor who stood above him. She was smiling. At Avram, Avramel, Avramele. A boy with a name, an address, a past. A boy with a father and a cradle and a mother singing: Ai-le-lu-le. Ai-le-lu-le. Sleep my child in peace. Fortunate is he who has a loved one. Ai-le-lu-le-lu. Blessed is he who has a loved one. Ai-le-lu-le-lu…

Avram was discharged from hospital weeks later. He reported back to intelligence headquarters. He asked for his delayed wages and was told that, in his absence, the cashier had taken his three months of pay. She was involved in an affair with a Red Army officer, and had become pregnant. She needed an abortion. She was desperate for the money.

‘Forget it,' advised Avram's commanding officer. ‘If I report her, she will be sent to Siberia, and you will not regain your pay anyhow. She will repay you with sexual favours, if you wish. Screw her and forget it. We still want to keep you. You have a talent for intelligence work. You are an experienced interrogator.

‘We will send you to the Crimea for a rest. And from there you will be sent to a special school in Moscow. We will put your skills to good use.'

‘It sounded okay to me,' Avram tells me. ‘I signed the paper. I didn't care. Nothing mattered to me. It did not seem important. Two days later I was approached by a Red Army captain. He was a member of my intelligence unit.

‘“Are you a Yid?” he asked.

‘“Yes.”

‘“I must tell you something in confidence. You must promise to keep it to yourself. Do you know what papers you have signed? Do you know what sort of school they are sending you to?”

‘“I have no idea.”

‘“It is a centre for the study of espionage, a school that trains spies. Once you enter it, they will never let you go. You will be trapped for life. If you want to get out while there is still time, I can help you. This is your only chance. When you attend your medical examination ask to be seen by Dr T. He will know what to do.”

‘“And who are you? Why do you want to help me?”

‘“I am a disciple of the Lubavicher rebbe. He has told me, I can do whatever I like. Eat pork. Drink vodka. Sleep around. Forsake my prayers. As long as I save Jewish lives.”

‘The next morning I went to the medical centre. Dr T gave me a certificate that stated I had epilepsy, due to my recent injuries. I would no longer be reliable as an interrogator or spy. When I returned to my commanding officer he took one look at my certificate and ordered me out. “I never want to see you again,” he said. “But do not reveal you have ever been here. Do not breathe a word of what you have been involved in.”

‘I left the barracks that had been my home for many months. I wandered the streets of Vilna. Again, I was alone; and free of expectations, of all care. An hour or so later I ran into Nina Gerstein. I had known her all my life. Her family lived in the floor above us at Benedictinski 4. I did not know she had survived.'

‘She lives in Mexico now. I have met her many times,' says Masha, who has rejoined us. Her voice sounds disembodied, as if drifting from afar.

‘You see, I have got a witness. Now you know what I have been telling you is completely true,' says Avram with an ironic smile. ‘Nina told me she had spent the war years in Vilna, hidden in a house beyond the ghetto walls. She was being repatriated to Poland in the next few days. This was my big chance. She urged me to leave with her. She was fifteen years older than I. By law, survivors under twenty-one years of age could be adopted by Polish citizens, as long as we were not employed in important work.'

‘You see, Martin, it was fated.
Beshert
,' says Masha.

‘I received my documents from the city council,' continues Avram. ‘I had lost my intelligence job just in time. My birth certificate proved I was still under twenty-one, by just two months. Days later, as we crossed from Soviet-occupied Lithuania into Poland, I heard the news that Hitler had suicided. I arrived in Lodz on May Day, 1945. And fourteen months later I met Masha. Yes. You could say it was
beshert
.'

‘He was wild when I met him,' says Masha. ‘He would suddenly explode. Without warning. At the slightest provocation.'

‘I am still wild.'

‘He is joking. But in those days, when I first met him I was wary. I was unsure; but he kept me with his stories. When I heard them, I understood.'

‘I look back at that time,' says Avram, ‘and I see a man out of control. But I had to find a way out. I needed someone who would listen.'

‘His stories were unbelievable,' says Masha.

‘A thousand and one nights it would take to tell them all,' adds Avram.

‘I can still listen to them,' says Masha, ‘and over the years I have noticed changes. He sees things differently with each telling. He is softening. But when I met him he was a man full of mistrust. I could see it in his eyes. If not for the stories I would have run. I was young. I had plans. I was not burdened by so much darkness.'

‘I fell in love with her the moment I saw her; and heard her name. She had a twisted ankle, and walked with a limp. And she was called Masha. I could not believe it. I had known another Masha. We had met in 1938, when I was fourteen years old. Vilna was my whole life, and I was in love with Masha. She was my first love. And she vanished into the same darkness that consumed all my loved ones. Now I was looking at a beautiful woman called Masha. I knew that I could not afford to let her go. I knew instantly that I would pursue her to ends of the earth.'

‘I did not take to him at first,' says Masha. ‘I was suspicious. I sensed something else; and it frightened me. And, in years to come, what I sensed was to prove true.'

‘Martin, I have never told Masha this. When I fell in love with the first Masha, I would lie in bed on winter nights and write her name on the frosted windowpane. I always coupled her name with two other words, all beginning with M.
Masha. Mamme. Makht
. Masha. Mother. Strength.'

‘It does not surprise me,' says Masha. ‘In later years I would have to mother him. I could feel it even then, that he needed a lot of care. But he was very determined. He pursued me. The next time we met, after our first encounter at the Bund camp, was when he stopped over in Katowice. I had not yet moved to Lodz. He was on party business, and he invited me to the hotel. So I went. I was naive. Of course, he wanted to take me, immediately.'

‘I only wanted to give her a kiss,' says Avram, laughing. ‘Instead, she slapped me. It was a full-blooded
patsch
, in the face; and it was wonderful to feel it. In the forests I had lost all desire for sex. Like everything else, it seemed brutal. There were partisans who fell upon each other like animals. Sometimes we had to defend our women from partisans who lusted over them. There were some who did pair off, who found comfort in each other's arms. But most of us had lost our desire. There is a Russian saying. It is a curse.
Zhit budiesh no yebat nye zekbotches
. May you live, but lose the will to screw. And I remained cursed until, with one glance, at the first sight of Masha, in the summer of 1946, my desire returned with full force.'

‘He did not let go. He pursued me. Whenever he saw me with other men, he was jealous; but he did not give up. After I moved to Lodz we would go for long walks to the theatre, the cinema and city parks; and he was always telling me stories. In a way he was cunning. He could see how beguiled I was. And he was a legend, a partisan, a fiery speaker at Bund rallies. A survivor of Vilna, the famous cradle of Yiddish life. Also, I must admit, he was a good-looking boy.'

‘What can I say? When I met Masha, I knew I could not lose her. I had lost too much.'

‘It was not so simple for me. There was a long way to go before I fell in love with him. Even when we did finally become lovers, I still saw the signs, the moments of rage. Martin, it is a long story. Do you have time for all this?'

‘I met Masha. She listened. She took me back to my first love. Perhaps, after all, it was
beshert
.'

Besbert
. It is a word impossible to translate. An Hebraic word, with many layers of meaning. A word which invokes treks across biblical landscapes. An expression which contains the traces of chance encounters that change lives, and epic voyages towards the light. A word which hints at miracles. Or, perhaps, just mere coincidences. A term which twists its way back to Masha and Avram, to the first intimations of love.

VIII

I
n Acland Street, St Kilda, there stands a cafe called Scheherazade. Yes, dear reader, the question still remains: why did Avram and Masha choose that name? We have sat through long evenings, and greeted many dawns. We have met so many times, on Sunday mornings and week-day afternoons. We have seen the turning of the seasons, the passage of three full years.
Nu
?

‘It is simple,' says Avram.

‘Not so simple,' claims Masha. ‘First we should tell Martin how we left Poland. Actually, I did not want to leave Poland. I was happy in Lodz. I was studying to be a doctor. Instead I became a refugee all over again. A nobody'

‘For a time I felt the same,' says Avram. ‘I thought we could rebuild our lives in Poland. But after the Kielce pogrom I was not so sure. I was sent there, in July 1946, as a member of a Bund delegation, to investigate. Out of a pre-war population of forty-five thousand, two hundred Jews had returned to Kielce after the war, from the Soviet Union, from the camps and places of hiding.

‘The police confiscated the pistols of the returnees the day before the pogrom. They had no means to defend themselves. Forty-two Jews were murdered in the assault. Our delegation was denied entry to the city, but I saw some of the injured when we returned to Lodz.

‘Their wounds were terrible. Some even had stiletto marks imprinted on their faces. They were attacked by a mob, by men clutching knives, and women who used their pointed heels as weapons. They battered their victims in a frenzy. When I looked at the wounded my old suspicions returned; and my bitterness, my rage.

‘Yet even then I wanted to stay. Not all Poles were anti-Semites. There were Poles who had saved Jewish lives. There were Poles who had been our comrades in the forest, or worked with us in the partisan underground. If I have learnt nothing else, it is this. No one has a monopoly over hatred. No one has a monopoly over suffering.

‘The final blow came in 1948 when the Communist Party absorbed the Polish socialists. We understood what this meant. Once the Bolsheviks came to power there would be no compromise. The Bund would become a prime target. We had no alternative but to escape.'

‘I was anxious to finish my studies,' says Masha. ‘I had reached the fourth year. But I also had no choice. As a Bund leader in Katowice my father was in danger of being arrested. He told me if I did not join him in leaving Poland, the whole family would have to stay. I would have their lives on my conscience.'

‘We were under surveillance,' says Avram. ‘For months we had been smuggling out our comrades and friends. Some stole out via the port of Danzig, over the Baltic Sea to Sweden; others fled via the Tatra mountains to Czechoslovakia. We had contacts in the Polish border police, a network of smugglers and supplies.'

‘I remember the day of our decision well: 25 May 1948, Avram's birthday. We were with a group of Bund comrades in an apartment in Lodz. They were all planning their escape.'

‘You see, Martin, there were two ways to leave Poland,' says Avram. ‘Those of us who had been very active in the Bund decided to steal across the borders. But Masha's father tried the legal option. He wanted his family to remain intact. He had applied for, and received, official exit visas, a year earlier. He decided to leave openly.'

‘On that day, Avram's birthday, when he told me he was going to escape, we agreed to meet in Paris,' says Masha, pursuing another tack. ‘It was then that there came to us the idea that we would celebrate our reunion in Scheherazade, as did the lovers in Remarque's novel. We would go to the nightclub and drink Calvados, the apple brandy that the lovers drank. It pleased us to think we were involved in a romance. It pleased us to think we were like characters in a novel. It lightened our burden. Besides, it was not certain that we would ever see each other again.'