Cafe Scheherazade (20 page)

Their hopes turned towards Paris. They fantasised a way out beyond their landlocked lives. At the centre of their imaginary map stood a beacon called the Arc de Triomphe. Radiating from the arch, like tracks of tinsel, sprawled the boulevards of a new dream. In their mind's eye they beheld dimly lit bridges rising from the River Seine. They saw themselves strolling over cobbled streets lit by lamps glowing like replica moons, or gliding in a carriage through the Bois de Bologne, the melodious clip-clop of hooves marking time within the shadows. They pictured the elegant decay of the Hotel International, its foyers reeking with stale carpets, its rooms layered with dust; and if its rooms proved to be too stifling, they could make their way to Scheherazade, a lover's retreat.

After all, despite all they had endured, Masha was twenty-one and Avram twenty-four, when they decided to leave Poland.

Avram left in mid-September 1948, when the first cold winds began to blow. The countryside lay resplendent under a veil of golds. Mid-morning frost rose from the earth. The land was spent, the harvest all but over; ochre haystacks and cow dung lay scattered over fallow fields.

There were six in the group: four men and two women. Comrades, toughened through years of struggle, buoyed by each other's company, and young enough to feel the thrill of intrigue. They were veterans, masters of stealth in times of danger. Each one had seen death many times over, felt its presence, inhaled its stench.

They journeyed by train south, from Lodz to Katowice. They squeezed into a taxi and drove deep into the Tatra mountains. They got out several kilometres from the Czech border, and moved on by foot, guided by a professional smuggler. They descended through a forest to a frontier stream, hid until evening, and waded across the border at night.

Many years later, what they would recall about this moment was not the fear, but their amused irritation as Avram chewed a bar of chocolate. The crackle of silver foil grated on their ears. It took a supreme effort to restrain themselves from breaking out into fits of laughter.

They crept over a strip of no man's land, and continued on, by foot, through the night, towards the Czech city of Bratislava. They approached its outskirts at dawn, joined Czechoslovaks on the way to work, and merged with the moving crowds. They made their way to the central station, and boarded a train to Prague.

They allowed themselves time to visit Prague's renowned synagogue, and the ancient cemetery that had miraculously survived the war intact, but moved on before the day was over. Now that they had set their sights on the west, they did not want to look back.

They entrained for Germany. They crossed over the Czech–German border with ease. For the first time they were not questioned. Their safe passage had been prearranged. They stepped off the train in Munich. Avram could not abide the thought of remaining there for even a day. Munich was the heartland of the former Reich. Dachau concentration camp was nearby; and just 160 kilometres to the north, stood the bombed city of Nuremberg.

A mere decade earlier the Nazi Party had marched over its cobbled streets. They held aloft banners of the eagle as predator. They had gathered, in their tens of thousands, on the outskirts, in the assembly grounds, on fields and runways where the Nuremberg rallies took place.

Whenever Avram saw men in uniform, whether railway bureaucrats or security guards, the passion for revenge shook his whole being. The final glimpse of his mother returned to goad him on. ‘Take care of yourself in the forest,' she told him. And then she disappeared, amidst the barking of dogs, the screams of the wounded, arm-in-arm with her daughter, Basia, clinging to baby Nehamiah, clasping the hand of little Shmulek.

Avram moved on in haste. Now that the decision had been made, he did not want to endure a moment's delay. And there was something else: his longing for Masha, a girl with blue-green eyes. Only now that they were separated did he realise how intense this longing was.

He left the group and travelled on alone, west from Munich to Stuttgart, where he met up with a former comrade. Together they journeyed to the French border, guided by a smuggler. They hid in a cemetery until nightfall. The smuggler directed them to a church that stood against the border. They scaled a brick wall and Germany was behind them.

They made their way to the nearest station, boarded the final night train, avoided the gaze of conductors, and remained curled up on their seats, their faces concealed by the dark. Their imagined freedom was within their grasp. Yet the hours dragged by. They finally drifted into an uneasy sleep. They journeyed through one last night; and awoke to a sprawl of Parisian suburbs, radiant in the morning light. It was 23 September 1948: Avram would always remember the exact date.

The Frydmans left Poland in the first week of October, almost a month after Avram. They left together: Masha, her father Joseph, her mother Yohevet, her sister Sala, the entire family, except for her younger brother, Lonka, who had preceded them to Paris. They left with official exit visas, and four hundred books packed tightly in wooden crates.

At the Polish–German border, officers entered their carriage. They examined their passports, stared at their photos. Masha recalls her fear, her heart pounding, her helplessness before these uniformed men. As the Polish border police searched their bags, the Frydmans adopted the pose they knew so well; they shrank back in their seats, as if trying to become invisible. One suspicious glance, one word out of place, would have betrayed their cause.

Nevertheless, Joseph was arrested, and led away. No explanations were given. The three women were left stranded. They returned to Katowice.

For three weeks they made inquiries, knocked on doors, prowled the corridors, waited for hours in police stations and government offices, until they finally traced their father to the city jail. And their fear returned; an ancient fear, compounded by so many false exits. Years later, in Melbourne, this fear would surge up whenever Masha saw policemen in uniform. She would cross the street to avoid their gaze, and she would hurry away, as if to suppress the memory of the moment when, yet again, her dash for freedom was derailed.

In Paris, Avram counted the days. He felt Masha's absence as a burning ache. As the time for her scheduled arrival drew closer, his anxiety increased. He made his way to the Gare de Lyon with a fearful heart. As the train he believed she would be on drew into the station, he scanned each carriage, each exit in vain. All that arrived were the four hundred books.

When Avram learnt what had happened to the Frydmans, he decided to return to Poland. It was simple: he could not live without Masha. But it was a dangerous mission. He needed a false passport and disguise. He waited nervously for the passport to arrive. He wandered the streets of Paris driven by a feeling of dread. The city had lost its imagined appeal. The Arc de Triomphe appeared cold, a hollow colossus, sagging with defeat. The Eiffel Tower was a weight of naked girders streaking into leaden skies. The City of Lights was an inaccessible vision. Its cafes mocked him with their promise of companionship. Sounds of laughter grated upon his ears.

Avram became acutely aware of the other city, within the shadows. He observed the weary-eyed revellers, searching like robots for half-remembered thrills. He saw those who wandered alone, kindred spirits in search of lost love. His gaze was drawn to the flights of steps, which descended to the lower embankments and netherworlds.

He could imagine them all too well, the sewers that threaded beneath the city's elegant streets. After all, they threaded through his dreams; a recurring nightmare of a man forever crawling through shit, through the incessant dripping of urine and sweat, a man tunnelling through the city's intestines for a way out. The tunnels spiralled into dead ends. He did not know where they led. Or under which city he was burrowing. Was it Vilna or Paris? Or was it a nameless city where informers begged for mercy with the terror of death in their eyes, a city where those who made love at dawn were hanged before the day was out?

Yet even these nightmares were preferable to the dreams of loved ones he had lost. They appeared before him in a revolving procession. Basia. Yankel. Shmulek. Nehamiah. And Etta, with a scarf held tight in her hands. ‘Take care of yourself in the forest,' she whispered. And in her place, like an apparition, appeared the face of a girl with blue-green eyes; her name was etched in the frost; and Avram was back in a room in Vilna.

He could hear the sounds of the mahogany piano drifting in from an adjoining room. A woman was playing; the keys flashed black and white like rotting teeth. Again he was disoriented. Was it his sister Basia playing the piano, or the girl with the blue-green eyes?

More faces appeared, at once distinct and vague; they vanished into the darkness from which they had emerged and in their place he observed faces of cruelty and stone, hovering over makeshift tables, barking orders, laughing.

Avram would will himself to awake; and he awoke alone, in the hotel room where he had imagined spending his first nights of consummated love. He glanced out of the window at a skyline of gables, spires and domes; a familiar skyline, his childhood Vilna writ large. He heard the hissing of the heating pipes, a cough in an adjoining room. He listened to the snarling of cats at war in a back lane.

Avram left his room and prowled corridors that smelt of stale cabbage and dust. Through a door, left momentarily ajar, he glimpsed a Russian emigre seated in front of an icon of his patron saint. The icon stood on an improvised altar, behind a solitary candle in which there flickered an ancient dream of return.

In a nearby room sat a circle of exiles, in flight from Franco's Spain. They were scanning newspapers from which they raised their heads to argue with each other. Or was it merely a futile attempt to pass time?

In the room opposite sat a grey-bearded Algerian, on the edge of his bed, his gaze fixed upon the wall. Who was he waiting for? How long had he been adrift? How long had he been spitting blood with each uncontrollable cough? Most likely he had made his way from the outposts of a dying empire to the City of Lights, only to find the doors locked; only to discover he was, after all, an outsider, an interloper from foreign shores.

In every room suitcases lay in corners, under beds, against walls. Some rooms had collapsible spirit-cookers, and a few odd utensils, a frying pan, a knife, a fork, or perhaps an all-purpose spoon.

The hotel was a universe of fading wallpaper and rickety chairs; of sagging mattresses in bare-boned rooms lit by a single bulb. There were times when every inmate, from the night porter to the last guest, seemed to be aflame with that exhausted longing so characteristic of the displaced.

As for Avram, his longing had been reduced to just one face. He ran his hands over his growing beard. He inquired daily after his fake passport. He spent his days at the Bund locale, where his comrades urged him to be patient. But at night he continued to steal through the streets, his mind ablaze with one thought. He barely registered the passing avenues, the neighbourhood squares, the dark waters of the River Seine. He was blind to the world about him. As he wandered, all he could see was the face of the girl with the blue-green eyes. With each echoing step, his longing mounted; and, with each passing night, the city seemed to mock him even more.

The three women made their way to the Katowice jail. The authorities refused them permission to visit Joseph. Masha travelled to Warsaw to plead on his behalf. After much persuasion and bribes, the Frydmans were allowed into Joseph's cell.

‘Do not wait for me,' he urged. ‘Leave for Paris. I am sure I will be released. But do not wait. It is time to get out.'

It was both a plea and a command.

Masha, Sala and Yohevet resumed their journey west. It was as if they had never ceased travelling. They were back on the same rails that had held so much promise just seven weeks before. And they feared the worst. They travelled not knowing whether they would see Joseph again.

They arrived in Paris in mid-December. The streets were hidden under a pall of snow. The city was masked by a white silence. Avram was at the station to greet them; his fake papers were yet to arrive. But his reunion with Masha was now tainted by Joseph's absence. The couple greeted each other without a sense of triumph. They had been stripped of any desire to celebrate. They could not rest until Joseph was free. They spent their days exploring every possible option for his release.

Two months later, in mid-February 1949, Avram and Masha answered a knocking at their hotel door, and saw Joseph standing in front of them, suitcase in hand. He appeared like a phantom returned from the dead. His clothes were frayed, his eyes gaunt. He was unshaven. He looked exhausted. But he had survived.

Several weeks later, in the first month of spring, 1949, Masha and Avram set out for their rendezvous at Scheherazade.

They went to the nightclub by taxi. They stepped out at the Place Pigalle. Broad boulevards radiated a confusion of options. They circled the neighbourhood. They walked through a warren of streets littered with cafes and music halls.

Waiters beckoned passers-by into their bars. The sounds of an accordion drifted through an open door. Semi-naked women of the night scouted for clients, their powdered faces lit by the glare of neon signs. Avram and Masha glanced up at lamps blinking like mysterious beacons on the Montmartre heights. And, just as they were about to give up, they found it, below a flight of stairs, near the corner where they had first stepped out.

An attendant dressed in a Cossack uniform greeted them at the door. Masha and Avram walked through the pages of their beloved novel. They walked across a dance floor encircled by tables. Each table stood in a separate niche. Avram asked for a bottle of Calvados. First you must buy a bottle of champagne, the waiter explained, for a cover charge of eight thousand francs.

They emptied their pockets. They could barely pay the required sum. They sat for hours by one glass of champagne; they did not eat. Serenading violinists strolled by the tables. Avram and Masha sat in the spotlighted darkness, as a singer crooned Russian folk songs, ‘Katusha' and ‘Dark Eyes'. It was a nostalgic charade which nonetheless revived memories of Red Army soldiers singing in the afternoon mists, of snow-bound steppes, and forests of conifers and birch.