The Story of Danny Dunn (32 page)

After a year in the local primary school Franz had been recommended for Woollahra Opportunity School, a primary school for bright kids, and at the age of thirteen had been given a scholarship to Sydney Boys High, the state school in the Eastern Suburbs that catered for gifted boys.

However, each year the various private schools in the Eastern Suburbs kept an eye out for a truly bright student whose parents couldn't afford the fees for a private school. It was their social-conscience scholarship. Scots College in Bellevue Hill offered Franz their scholarship in 1941. His mother had been in a quandary. The selective high school had the better academic reputation and normally this was all that would have counted with Franz's parents, but with her husband away she'd listened to the advice of one of their wealthy Vaucluse customers, Bryan Penman, himself a fifth-generation Australian Jew, who came from a well-connected family who had several vineyards in the Hunter Valley and a distillery that produced fortified wines. ‘He's a clever boy,' he'd advised Mrs Landsman, ‘so it doesn't much matter where he goes, he'll do well. But there's one thing you ought to consider.' He paused, so as to add weight to his next words. ‘Connections. In this country it's called “the old-boy network”. You say your boy wants to go into the law? Believe me, Mrs Landsman. I'm a trained lawyer, though I don't practise. It will come in more than a little useful in his career if he goes to Scots. In fact, I'd venture to say it would be foolish not to avail yourself of this opportunity for your lad to have a private-school education. In this city, and particularly in the law, it is less about what you know and more about who you know.'

Hester had written to her husband in the Hay camp and he'd replied,
It's good advice, in Austria it was the same.
So Franz's parents had taken Bryan Penman's advice and enrolled their son at Scots College. While Franz was indistinguishable from any native Australian, with his father in an internment camp he was immediately regarded as a ‘bloody Kraut', not a good thing to be in the midst of the war, so he copped a fair amount of schoolboy shit from the sons of the privileged minority in the exclusive Eastern-Suburbs private school. He soon became known as a swot and, while he wasn't exactly a sissy, he was the next best thing – good at chess and debating, and hopeless at sport – and so was rewarded with the double status of being referred to as ‘unco' (uncoordinated) and nicknamed ‘Snake Mouth', quickly shortened to Snake because of his so-called poisonous tongue. He could more than match his persecutors in sharp, sometimes cruel quips. Thus, he effortlessly gained the reputation for having a dangerous tongue and for being essentially a loner.

Franz Landsman completed his final-year exams in 1946 and achieved the third highest pass in the state, by far the best Scots College had ever achieved in the state-wide exam. As his ultimate revenge, his name was transcribed in perpetuity in gold letters on the honours board in the school assembly hall. Franz Landsman had improbably joined the list of the school's immortals.

In the
tradition of Scots, and to the delight of the headmaster, Franz Landsman elected to study law, although he didn't meet Danny until partway into his first year, shortly after Danny had instigated what was to become a famous incident among his fellow students.

Danny had avidly followed news of the War Crimes Tribunal, set up to try the officers and guards who had murdered and tortured his fellow prisoners of war.
During one lecture, his Law professor, discussing the universal rule of law, had claimed that the War Crimes Tribunal was an excellent example of international justice finally administered fairly and impartially. Danny could feel himself becoming agitated and tried in vain to control the fury building inside him. Jumping to his feet, he signalled to the lecturer that he wished to speak, then, barely waiting for permission, he called, ‘With the greatest respect, Professor Dodds, that's simply not true. It seems you can starve prisoners, punish them with indiscriminate beatings, lock them into a small wire cage so that they cannot move
in the blazing tropical sun without water for three days, force them to eat salted rice until eventually they die of thirst or sunstroke, deny them fundamental medical treatment so that they die of preventable tropical diseases, and finally, with impunity, work them to death. Provided you don't actually line them up and shoot them in cold blood, you've acted according to the rules of warfare and so go unpunished. My Japanese commandant, Colonel Mori, spent six months in a military prison in Singapore before his case was summarily dismissed. His incarceration in Changi was very different from my own; the food was good and plentiful – in excess of 2000 calories a day, contrasting with ours, a starvation diet of 1000 calories of mouldy rice – he wasn't required to work and every medical treatment and care was available to him. The War Crimes Tribunal then deemed the six months he'd spent awaiting trial as sufficient punishment for my three and a half years of beatings, brutality and starvation and paid for his ticket back to Japan. I believe in such cases, and they are too numerous to be exceptions, that the law has failed in its moral and legal duty. As usual, the law has been applied in a typically discriminatory manner! There is one rule for officers, and another rule for the rank and file.'

Until this outburst Danny had kept a low profile on campus – one look at his face was enough to earn him the respect of the younger students – but this single short, eloquent speech brought him instant notoriety. When he sat down, his chest heaving, there was a spattering of applause from the braver students.

‘See me afterwards,' Professor Dodds said tersely, and Danny's heart sank. He knew what was coming.

But he was wrong. The professor commended him on his performance. ‘You seem to have all the prerequisites for becoming an excellent barrister, Mr Dunn,' he said with a wry smile. ‘You should consider the bar.'

A week after what students called ‘The Great Jap Spat', Franz Landsman had approached him in the university canteen. ‘Mind if I join you?' he'd asked.

‘No, go ahead.' Danny pointed to a vacant chair, then stuck out his hand. ‘Danny Dunn.'

‘Yeah, I know. Franz Landsman.' He shook Danny's hand, adding, ‘Congratulations on the other day with Dodds.'

‘Oh that,' Danny laughed. ‘You'd think at my age I would have learned to keep my big mouth shut.'

‘My problem precisely,' Franz replied, ‘though I reckon we could make a bit of a splash as partners in the debating society. What say we give it a go – two Law students with big mouths and a brain or two to spare.'

Danny liked the young guy immediately; he wasn't sycophantic like so many of the other students who'd approached him since the confrontation with Dodds. Franz's approach had been straightforward – he'd come with a mission and put the idea of joining the debating society without any preliminary fawning. Like a kid from Balmain – like Lachlan Brannan, Danny suddenly thought – Franz Landsman appeared to be a cheeky young bugger. But, unlike Lachlan, who, like so many Balmain kids, hadn't been led to expect much out of life, Franz Landsman had a confident demeanour and assured grin and seemed to have a fair idea of his self-worth. As someone who'd once possessed the same easy confidence in great abundance, it was a quality Danny immediately recognised. And so began a friendship that, unbeknown to either of them at the time, would eventuate in a law partnership that was going to last into their dotage.

‘Debating, eh? Never thought of joining,' Danny said.

‘Be good, the Wasp and the Yid – formidable!'

‘Wasp?' It wasn't an expression he'd heard in Balmain, probably because most people who lived there answered to that description. And the only Jew he knew was Pineapple Joe, who didn't count because he was, well, just himself.

‘Yeah, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,' Franz explained.

Danny grinned. ‘Oh, then we're off to a bad start, mate, because my background's Irish Catholic.'

‘Shit, eh? That's better still. A German Jew and a Tyke, two blokes with hefty chips on their shoulders who are angry at society and can think on their feet – that's a pretty impressive combination.'

Danny pointed to his face, which, after the plastic surgery looked almost normal, though, as he sometimes said, it was good panel beating but easy enough to tell where the prang had occurred. ‘If I'd thought on my feet, my physog wouldn't look like this,' Danny replied.

‘Okay, I'll do the fancy footwork – the tap dancing – and you supply the emotion – the anger, the vehemence. You were bloody excellent the other day with Dodds and neither of us lacks for brains. I reckon we could debate the arse off the rest of this university.'

‘Careful – you haven't met my wife, Helen.'

‘She in the debating society?'

‘No, but if I join she might, and she'll insist on always being on the opposing team.'

‘She good, then?'

‘Yeah, and then some. She takes no prisoners.'

‘She a law student?'

‘No, archaeologist. She's got her masters in ancient history.'

‘In other words, a good brain wasted,' Franz said dismissively.

‘Hey, whoa . . . hold on, mate! Life's not all about making a quid,' Danny protested.

‘It isn't? Shit, now you tell me!' Franz quipped.

Danny grinned. ‘What was it Henry Adams said? Oh yes. “Those who ignore the past are condemned to relive it.”'

‘See, you need me, Danny. Henry Adams didn't say that and the quote is wrong. It was George Santayana who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”'

‘So what have we got here . . . a smart-arse?' Danny said, slightly defensive.

‘No, no, the point you make is still valid,' Franz Landsman insisted. ‘My family, Mum and Dad and I, we escaped the Nazi death camps by leaving Germany in 1932. Six
million Jews didn't escape. Persecution of the Jews is a fact of history – it's happened several times before and we simply forgot to remember, and now it's happened again.' Franz Landsman paused, then said quietly, ‘I apologise for being a smart-arse and belittling your wife's vocation.'

‘Don't worry, mate. If you ever meet Helen and try to belittle her, you'll have your hands full.'

‘Good mind, eh?'

‘You better believe it, son,' Danny said, liking Franz Landsman for his own good mind, forthright manner and honesty. It was like having a younger quick-witted brother who kept you on your toes. ‘Well, okay, let's start by being friends,' Danny said, extending his hand again. ‘But you need to understand I'm not one of your mob.'

‘What, a Jew?'

‘Christ, no! I mean from the soft underbelly of the Eastern Suburbs and the North Shore, a private bloody schoolboy. My folks own a pub in Balmain.'

‘And mine own a delicatessen in Bondi Road.'

‘Righto, that's about equal; the chips on our shoulders are roughly the same size. But you have to do the legwork for the debating society, okay?'

‘Shit, already the Yid is being persecuted by the Gentile.' Franz laughed. ‘Then you pay for another Coke. Two good minds working together is thirsty work.'

‘Stuff'll rot your gut. In the army we'd leave our dirty brasses in it overnight, and next morning they'd come out shining like a new pin.'

‘Won't bother me, mate, I was brought up on Jewish cooking.' The boy from Bondi was quick.

Danny came third in his first year, with Franz Landsman ahead of him in second place, first place going to an ex-serviceman called Ron Ridge, who had missed the last three months of his first year due to an operation on his lung and elected to repeat. Danny had completed his Arts degree during his first year of Law and Helen believed that was why he hadn't topped the year, although Danny was chuffed with his result, if secretly a little annoyed that Franz had beaten him. But he pulled away quite significantly in second year to take the top spot, with Franz Landsman second and Ridge still in the top ten. After two years full-time at university, Law students began work in a law firm and continued their studies part-time.

The city law firms would line up to select those students they wanted to invite to serve their articles with them for the next two years. This was when well-connected parents flexed their social and business muscles, using any means available to influence the big important firms. It was a no-holds-barred contest that roped in uncles, cousins and friends, and employed dinner parties, nominations to exclusive clubs, the calling in of old favours, sometimes even threats or occasional blackmail, to help work the legal profession and the old-boy network. It was the time when who you knew in town really mattered.

So, there were quite a few powerful noses out of joint when Danny and Franz, two nobodies, a Tyke and a Yid, not only filled the first two places for second year but, despite their total lack of legal connections, were selected by the venerable Sydney law firm Stephen James & Stapleton, who until then hadn't employed a single Jew or Catholic on its staff of twenty-four lawyers. As Franz put it to Danny, ‘Mate, I've done my research and you can hear the buzz from that particular Wasp nest from three blocks away.'