Sunrise West (17 page)

‘Not really.' I could feel Esther's unease beside me.

‘So you're still hurt about the collective. But think — fate might easily have reversed our roles.'

‘No, never.'

‘Well, just listen to me, please. I have been delegated to talk to you and it has to be now, since I must disembark at the border.' He sat down on the bench opposite. ‘You are travelling towards a new life, a new world. Needless to say, I wish you the best of luck, so let's let bygones be bygones.
I hope that, as a party man, you understand that everything I did was for the good of the collective. And you, as a good socialist, have to pass this on to our comrades in Melbourne. You know how dependent we are on outside financial support. Tell them about the positive work we are doing here. Don't dwell on the mistakes of some. I'm sure you understand that there are times when a leader has to sacrifice an individual for the good of the many.'

‘You know,' I told him, ‘you
almost
sound convincing.'

‘Oh, please,' said the passionate commissar. ‘Just hear me out and you'll see that I mean you well. Besides, I hope you're aware that, on my recommendation, you could be admitted into Melbourne's Bundist leadership.'

I was losing my patience. ‘Look, comrade, I've learnt to be cautious of those in authority. They can appear as friends when it's to their advantage, but they don't stand by you in times of distress.'

‘So what is your answer?'

‘You've just heard it. The only other thing I can tell you is that we are almost at the French border, and, as you yourself have pointed out, you must relieve us of your gracious company.'

 

 
At Sea
 

In the middle of March, at Marseilles, we boarded the 7000-ton Egyptian vessel
Misr
(aptly named, as it turned out), bound for Australia. The ship had been a wartime carrier of cattle to and from South America, but had a few
small cabins on the upper deck. Esther knitted her brows and was hesitant to embark when we were told that — despite our voyage having been paid for by the aforementioned uncle of hers who had gone to the USA before the war — we were not to be given one of the cabins. ‘This is terrible,' she said. ‘We're all being separated again.'

We ended up sleeping in huge adjoining holds, each containing hundreds of strangers.

During my boyhood I had dreamed of becoming a sailor, just like one of Jules Verne's intrepid heroes. Yet no sooner had I crossed the gangway onto the ship, moored firmly but rocking from side to side, than I became violently seasick. So much for the idea of ever joining a crew!

Then, once the
Misr
reached the open sea, and devilish winds began to obstruct our voyage, challenging our captain's authority, and huge waves tossed our vessel about like a ball of wool, and people stared at one another with fear and prayers on their lips, I thought of the biblical tale of Jonah: ‘
But the Lord cast a mighty wind upon the sea, and such a great tempest came upon the sea that the ship was in danger of breaking up.'

However, instead of a divine response to our prayers (‘
In my trouble I called to the Lord, and He answered me
') we received, through the loudspeaker, the one and only song that the
Misr
possessed in its musical arsenal:

Kiss me sweet, kiss me simple,

Kiss me on my little dimple,

Kiss me night, kiss me morning,

Kiss me underneath the awning.

And to my surprise, this nonsensical ditty worked no less effectively than any command from the Lord!

Just prior to entering the Suez Canal we were told about a registration procedure for all passengers which was to take place on the lower deck before lunch. Esther and I made our way there and joined the queue. Behind a wooden desk sat a serious but obsequious-looking man, immaculately dressed in a black double-breasted suit, white shirt and blood-red tie. Next to him was a frilly-haired, over-confident blonde, well made up and wearing a sleeveless white dress. When we reached the desk and gave our names, her sing-song voice rang out: ‘Catholics?'

‘What do you mean,
Catholics
?' asked my astonished wife. ‘We are Jewish!'

‘Well, on my list you're pencilled in as Catholics.'

‘Madam,' I replied, ‘one cannot be a Jew as well as a Catholic. We are Jews, we went through the war as Jews, and we intend to begin our new life as Jews!'

The blonde's companion whispered into her ear: ‘Just cross out Religion.'

‘But we've got too many Jews on board,' she protested. (We later learnt that according to the current agreement, Jews were to comprise no more than 25 percent of the passengers on any ship.)

‘Madam,' I cut in, ‘no matter how few we are, to some people we will always be too many.'

Late in the afternoon, sitting on a chair on the ship's nearly deserted lower deck and gazing out at the marvellous sunset, I heard footsteps. Soon there stood before me
a tall gentle-looking man with a dignified smile on his thin lips.

‘My name is Anton Rakow,' he said. ‘Actually, Amshel Rakowicz. May I join you? I'd like to have a talk.'

He seemed open and friendly enough, so I welcomed him with a wave of the hand.

‘I was next in the line when you made a stand about your Jewishness. I'm Jewish too. We were the only Jewish family in a little town near Rostov in the Caucasus. We lived like Marranos. On Friday evenings my mother lit candles in a discreet little side-room, and some nights my father taught me Yiddish and Talmud in a basement under our house, by the flame of a kerosene lamp. I admire your and your wife's religious assertiveness.'

‘But I am not religious,' I responded. ‘Not at all.'

‘Then how come you declare yourself so resolutely Jewish?'

‘The one has little to do with the other.'

‘So, don't you observe the basic laws at all?'

‘I do, but in a different way. As a matter of fact, my wife Esther comes from a profoundly traditional home, and I from a secular, free environment. We had a civil marriage, perhaps because we had no one to invite. You see, our parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins were all murdered by the Germans. Even so, after three months of living in sin, so to speak, it was I who insisted on having a ceremony in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel.'

‘That's remarkable, really remarkable,' Anton exclaimed. ‘It shows how deeply such things are ingrained in us.'

Then, quite unexpectedly, my curious new acquaintance asked: ‘Do you believe in God?'

I was taken aback. ‘This is a very direct question.' I paused to compose my words. ‘There are people who may not believe in a God that dwells in heaven, yet conduct their affairs as though they have a God in their heart. I envy such people, my friend, because they are the most noble, most authentic human beings on earth. And if there
were
a God in heaven, they would be His very chosen.'

 

 
Anton Rakow
 

Rakow, who was thirty-two, turned out to be a wise and upright man, prone to irony. He was also something of a poet — the friendship between Stalin and Hitler he dubbed ‘the Mephistophelean tango'. He became a permanent fixture at our dining table. When we learnt that Anton had been a member of Rokossovsky's army, had fought the Germans at Stalingrad, marched across war-torn Russia and Poland into Berlin, and was among those who hoisted the red flag over the Nazis' Reichstag, he grew in our eyes to the stature of a living legend.

‘Do you know,' Anton asked us, ‘why the clatter of a soldier's gun in battle is the sweetest music to his ears? Because it means he's still alive!' But when he began his tale of blood-shed and destruction, of his parents' and siblings' demise, how they were locked up in their own little house and burned alive, his irony would desert him. Then, like any other camp survivor, he told stories that would tear you apart.

Soon after we entered the Indian Ocean we heard that a man from the upper deck had taken his own life. Apparently he had received a cable informing him that all his plans had miscarried, and he just couldn't take another setback. Individual tragedies, Anton commented, are much harder to live through than collective misfortunes. ‘There is a devastating loneliness in a solitary affliction,' he said. ‘A man, especially one who is married with a child, is not a free prince any more. His life is not a personal orchard where he can do as he likes, even destroy the fruit he has grown.'

‘Please,' Esther replied, ‘we don't know these things, they belong to the darker side of our thinking. The deed is done and no amount of philosophy can change the past.'

‘I'm curious, Anton,' I ventured, ‘how you would judge the following case. In August 1945, three months after hostilities in Europe ceased, America in its benevolence decided to open her gates to fifty orphans who had made it through the war, and there was this little Jewish man who had spent years in hiding with his daughter who was now six. Without a second thought, he made sure his child would qualify!'

Rakow fell silent. I could sense his anguish. ‘What an insane deed,' he said at last. ‘And how will this little girl go through life now?'

‘Anton, there is no room here for judging, for seeking logic,' said Esther. ‘Every person carries some sort of secret. My relationship with my own father taught me that.'

One unbearably hot afternoon, as our ship forged its way south across the oceanic cosmos like a lost planet, Anton — drenched in sunlight, mopping the sweat from his forehead
— reopened our gloomy dialogue with an almost care-less ease.

‘In 1920 my father's fanatically religious brother,' he began, ‘ran away from the Bolsheviks to Shanghai. He died soon after, but his son — my cousin and my only living relative — sent me a permit after the war to enter Australia, a country I know only from school geography and stamp-collecting. Yet my cousin reassured me that I'd love it there, that I would live the life I'd always aspired to.'

‘Why should you doubt that?' I asked.