Four Fires (32 page)

But suddenly the air above us is filled with a high whine and then a roar and everyone looks up.

Coming down out of the cloudless morning sky, like a dive bomber, is the yellow Piper Cub with Mrs Barrington-Stone sitting in the cockpit at the controls.

The Piper Cub skims over our rooftop and, with a roar, rises up into the air and banks in the direction of the highway towards Melbourne. We all see that it's trailing this long banner, clear and sharp against the clean, rain-washed sky, made up with these cut-out letters: sarah M. proud of you!

chapter ten

Now I have to tell you about the brouhaha, which is the name Mrs Barrington-Stone gives to the unfolding of the Grand Plan between Melbourne University and Sarah.

On her enrolment day, 10 March 1956, Sarah turns up with Morrie Suckfizzle at the university.

Sarah's got a bottle-green cotton dress Mike has made for her which he said was the New Look.

It has a long skirt almost to Sarah's ankles and she wears it with white ankle socks and flat shoes.

Mike said her tummy spoils the line and it's the best he could do under the circumstances. It is true, Sarah seems to grow larger every week and Nancy's theory of twins is being increasingly bandied about although Morrie says it's highly unlikely.

Morrie's still got his long black coat and black suit and black hat that's not like the hats Australians wear, as well as the white shirt with celluloid collar and the black tie that's a bit frayed around the edges. Morrie wants so badly to be like an Australian but this outfit is his Sunday best and he can't see that it makes him look like a scruffy little reffo.

The other students, all of them blokes, some of them smoking pipes too, look more grown up.

They must think the two of them look VerY strange, the young pregnant redhead and the funny little reffo, because they can't take their eyes off the pair of them and there's a fair amount of giggling going on behind their backs.

Sarah's feeling pretty embarrassed at being the only girl and her being in the family way to boot.

Morrie doesn't seem to notice that he's equally the odd person out. He smiles at everyone and chats to Sarah and seems very excited. You'd have to wonder a bit what there is for him to get
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excited about, seeing he's got to do most of the hard work to become a doctor all over again and he's going to have to get a night job as well. Morrie s passed the foreign doctors' exam they held last year in September so he can skip first year.

I wasn't there, of course, but Sarah's pretty good at remembering things and I've listened to Morrie's version of what happened that first day as well and I think I can put it all together more or less the way it happened.

Professor Marcus Block is sitting in room 18 in Medical Block 22 together with the assistant registrar, Mr Tompkins. There's sixty students to be interviewed on this day although there are two hundred and forty-eight first-year students in all. They wait in this big hallway with polished lino and white walls, where there are these little alcoves in which there are marble busts on plinths of famous medical men and women, people like Hippocrates, Sir Alexander Fleming, Florence Nightingale, Madame Curie and even Leonardo da Vinci, who I thought was an artist but must also have been a doctor. Along the wall there are benches, though not enough for everyone and Sarah looks embarrassed when two young blokes in almost identical grey suits, white shirts and ties and nicely polished black shoes, one of them smoking a pipe which keeps going out and which he has to keep lighting again, get up and offer her and Morrie their seats.

The idea is that Mr Tompkins comes to the door in room 1 8 and calls out a name in alphabetical order and the student whose name is called goes in to have his details ticked off by the assistant registrar and is then interviewed by Professor Block. This is the final step to being accepted into the Faculty of Medicine. You know, it's to check you haven't got two heads and you are who it says you are on the application form. Although, I suppose, in a way, you could say Sarah has two heads although one is in her stomach.

Well, the letter 'M' comes before 'S' and Sarah is eventually called in after waiting three hours.

She's pretty tired and her ankles are

swollen because she's been doing her share of getting the house in Carlton ready. They've been scrubbing and cleaning and even though Sophie constantly begs Sarah to stop and put her feet up, Sarah's not the sort to stand by looking on when there's work to be done. When Mr Tompkins finally calls out Sarah's name and she gets up, so does Morrie. Tompkins puts up his hand to block Morrie, 'You can't come in, sir. Your daughter must go in alone.'

'Miss Maloney, she is not my daughter, I am her friend!' Morrie pronounces, confident as all get-out. I guess he's learned to bluff his way in the concentration camp and after being pushed around by experts in refugee camps and probably at Bonegilla as well. Underneath everything, Morrie is a pretty tough character.

'Oh? Is there something I should know?' the assistant registrar now asks, looking at Sarah's stomach. You can see he's not happy as he observes this plainly pregnant girl with the little bloke who's dressed like Shylock bearing down on him. He's accustomed to having to deal with meek and mild enrolment students in grey suits or tweed jackets. Harmless boys just out of school with their heads still filled with footy results and statistics, smoking cigarettes and playing at being grown-ups.

Morrie points to the door, 'Inside we must go, at vunce!' It appears as if the task of explaining his presence with Sarah is only possible beyond the door of number 1 8. He moves forward, giving Sarah a bit of a shove in the back to get her going. Tompkins is forced to stand aside and Sarah pushes past him, brushing her big tummy against him, followed by Morrie in his long black coat and hat and clunky boots.

I forgot to say about the boots. When Morrie came to Australia, he was wearing shoes made of cardboard and not proper leather like ours. They were issued to him in the refugee camp and when they wore out, the bootmaker in Yankalillee couldn't mend them. So he went and bought a pair of workmen's hobnailed, steel-capped boots like tommy's that would last a little bloke like him about a thousand years. With the long black coat and the big black hat and the Horace the Horse boots, he looks pretty strange even for a reffo. Good thing he's shaved off his curled-up-to-his-ears moustache when he changed his name or you'd never know what could've
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happened.

Well, the professor is writing up some notes when the two of them enter and he doesn't look up until Mr Tompkins clears his throat and says, 'Miss Sarah Maloney and . . .' He hasn't got to 'S'yet and doesn't know Morrie's name. 'And her er . . . escort,' he concludes lamely. Only then does the professor look up. 'Good God!' he exclaims.

Morrie removes his hat and does a bit of a bow, 'I am Professor Maurice Zukfizzleski, Professor of Surgery, Krakow University 1935, not registered to practise in Australia and name now changed to English, Morrie Suckfizzle pleased ter meetcha, for purpose of becoming Australian.' He says it all in one breath in the voice he's been practising that he thinks sounds like the ABC voices he's heard on the wireless. We have told him a hundred times that his English name is Morrie Suckfizzle and not 'Morrie Suckfizzle pleased ter meetcha' but he never gets it right when introducing himself. I think he just likes saying the whole thing because he thinks he's speaking fair-dinkum Australian.

Morrie now turns to Sarah, 'This is Miss Sarah Maloney, my very good friend.' Morrie turns back to Professor Block and makes another small bow then smiles, 'We have za honour and za hope, sir, to be your most excellent and diligent students.'

The professor looks confused and spreads his hands, 'I don't understand?' He points to Sarah,

'You're pregnant, young lady!'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did I hear you introduced as Miss?'

'Yes, sir.'

He looks down at the paper in front of him. 'It doesn't say you're pregnant and unmarried in your enrolment form?'

'That wasn't one of the questions they asked, sir. It only asked if I was single or married, I put single.'

'Hmm.' He turns to Morrie. 'One of my students? You are one of my students?'

'Yes, Professor, I have za honour and za privilege.' Then Morrie asks suddenly, 'You are Polish, I think?' Sarah tells later how she doesn't know how Morrie picked it because the professor had this posh accent, more English than Australian, like on the wireless.

Professor Block ignores Morrie's question and looks up at Tompkins, 'Get me Mr Zuck-'

'Suckfizzle! To suck and to fizzle, Morrie Suckfizzle pleased ter meetcha.'

'Get me Mr Suckfizzle's papers, please, Mr Tompkins.'

Tompkins goes to his table and shuffles papers about a bit and brings Morrie's enrolment form over. Attached to the form are his Polish medical papers as well as his immigration and refugee papers. Professor Block looks at the enrolment form. 'I see, you're here to retake your medical degree.' He starts reading Morrie's papers then looks up. 'Very impressive, Professor Zukfizzleski, you taught Surgery but you also have a postgraduate degree in Gynaecology.'

'I specialise in infant and child surgery/ Morrie explains, surprised at the professor's observation. 'You read Polish, Professor?' Morrie points to his papers, 'You can read this, no?'

'My mother was Polish, my father German, I speak both,' Professor Block explains without looking up.

'Ja, I think so the accent, Polish and German, but more Polish and also Jews?' Morrie pronounces it juice' like orange juice.

Block looks slightly annoyed, Morrie's picked him in one despite his careful English accent. 'Yes, we are Jewish and arrived in Australia after the Great War, I was eleven. There was no hardship beyond the usual business of settling in a new country and the inevitable anti-Semitism in some parts of the community and, of course, at school.'

'That is good, there has been enough hard times already for everyone,' Morrie answers in a consoling voice.

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Professor Block puts his elbows on the table and brings the tips of his fingers together and smiles. 'Professor Suckfizzle, I deeply regret what you've been through and admire the courage you show to start all over again.'

Morrie gives a little shrug, 'If I mustn't, I wouldn't. But I must, so I will do it, that is all.' Then he adds, 'I am a doctor, Professor, I do not want to be anything else in my new life.'

Professor Block smiles, 'I personally welcome you to the university of Melbourne. I also regret that, with your credentials, you must virtually begin all over again. As for my colleagues, I can't say how ey will regard you as a student, they know the details of the Nuremberg trials of course, but alas, over here the recent history of the

Jews in Europe is not a burning issue.' He sighs. 'Australia is a long way away from anywhere, we are not always as interested in the Nazi concentration camps as we ought to be.'

'Thank you, Professor, I hope to be a good student.' Professor Block now looks over at Sarah,

'What have we here, then?' He looks down at her enrolment form, having already forgotten her name, 'Sarah Maloney, that's an Irish name if I'm not mistaken, Catholic, is it?' 'Yes, sir.'

Professor Block nods his head as if her being a Catholic explains everything. 'And your relationship with Mr Suckfizzle?'You can see an idea suddenly crosses his mind and he looks at Morrie in some alarm, 'You're not . . . ?'

Morrie entirely misses the implication but Sarah doesn't and she flushes, but still manages to say.

'No, sir, it was a high-school romance, Professor Suckfizzle is a family friend and mentor as well as being my doctor.'

Professor Block looks relieved, then seems to be thinking. Finally he says, 'It's very difficult.' He looks down at the papers on his desk without appearing to read them. 'We have no precedent for the admission of a pregnant student and in my time there has only been one third-year student who became pregnant and she, very wisely, chose to discontinue her degree. It may be all right in Arts but not in Medicine.' He looks up again, this time at Morrie. 'Mr Suckfizzle, you are, or rather were, a physician and a teacher at a university, do you know of such a precedent? A Polish precedent perhaps? May I take it that, as her mentor, it is you who have encouraged Miss Maloney to take her medical degree?'

'Encouraged yes, that is true,' Morrie exclaims. 'Sarah, she will make a very good doctor. But always, since she is small, she wants to be a doctor, this idea is not comink from me! She is making up her own mind.'

Professor Block looks at Sarah and then at Morrie, 'Well, you must both understand that I think it highly unlikely that Miss Maloney will be granted permission to study Medicine in her, er . . .

present state. Even if I were to agree to it, and I can't say I do, I would have to seek the advice of the Professorial Board and I cannot think of a single

reason why they would consider her case to be exceptional. Quite plainly she is pregnant and that is sufficient to exclude her.'

'Let me ask you a question, please, Professor?' Morrie doesn't wait for permission but continues.

'Za boy who makes her pregnant, if he is a medical student with high marks, the highest marks of all za students for entry, would he be rejected?'

Professor Block gives a little laugh, 'I dare say if he were pregnant, otherwise no.'

'So you are judging Sarah's condition and not her intelligence?' Professor Block sighs, 'I am doing no such thing, Mr Suckfizzle, I am simply applying the rules. Every institution has rules, without rules there would be anarchy, this is likely to be as true of this university as with most public institutions.'

'Rules? There is always rules, this is true.' Morrie appears to think for a moment, 'But you ask me if I have for you a precedent, maybe in Poland? So let me ask you, Professor, is not a precedent an example where the rules have been broken so they can be broken anuzzer time? 'Yes, precisely. Given a strong enough precedent, it can justify changing a rule, hence my question to
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you.'

'So, do I have such a precedent?' Morrie spreads his hands and purses his lips, 'Not exactly, no.

But maybe there is something else more important. It is breaking a rule because to keep it is to deny both humanity and justice. Just because it is a rule does not mean it cannot be challenged, cannot be changed. Also, to wait for a precedent is to deny natural justice. Maybe also it is a test of the kind of doctor you are if you have za courage to challenge a bad rule? This I can give you.