Cafe Scheherazade Read online

  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.

  They sat in the semi-darkness at a glass-topped table. Avram inhaled the scent of perfume. He closed his eyes and touched the warm hands of the girl with the blue-green eyes; he felt the tightness in his fingers give way.

  Avram and Masha made their way to the dance floor. They danced to the music of a Gypsy orchestra. How long was it since Avram had yielded so easily to touch? How could he have known that this was what he had craved for in his years of exile and flight?

  It would take years for Avram's anger to soften; but now he was dancing in Scheherazade, with its painted scenes of St Petersburg palaces, and cathedrals with onion-shaped domes. They danced in the shadows of lost childhoods, when the frost flowed with each breath. They danced to the memories of horse-drawn sledges, gliding over streets gilded with ice.

  Masha drew close. Avram seemed to radiate the faint scent of resinous forests, the traces of his perilous journeys. As she danced Masha recalled her own journeys, a girl struggling, waist-deep, through a landscape of snow. A lone figure was stealing out into the Siberian night, beneath a sky vaulting with unknown galaxies and indifferent stars. Then she was back in Paris, in Scheherazade, warmed by her partner's touch; and she was moving across the dance floor, to the minor keys of a Gypsy violin.

  Masha observed, as if for the first time, how young her partner was. His black hair was ample and thick, combed back in waves. She felt his strength; the body toughened by the hard earth on which it had slept, and the caches of arms it had hauled on forest raids.

  Avram and Masha savoured the passing hours. They danced to the last strains of the violins, sipped their last drop of champagne, ascended the stairs, and embarked on the long stroll home.

  They walked the avenues of the Pigalle past bistros where groups of men huddled over games of baccarat. They moved beneath street lamps that cast their lights on the branches of sycamore trees. Even at this hour, at least one light remained burning in each apartment building; a reminder that there was always life.

  Avram took Masha's hand. He felt light. Unburdened. He was surging; in this moment he did not fear the sound of footsteps, nor did he imagine the whispers of stalkers moving in his wake. He marvelled at the events of this night. Scheherazade had not betrayed him. It was the first dream that had not betrayed him for many years.

  Masha too felt light. It had been so long since she had first taken flight, since she had crossed the borders to the east, accompanied by the sounds of Red Army soldiers singing ‘Katusha’ on a winter breeze. Years later, she was still on the move, gliding along the Champs Elysees to the arch of forgotten triumphs.

  Masha and Avram stopped by the tomb of the unknown soldier, with its eternal blue flame. They glanced at the single flower, a quiver of memory that someone had placed upon the grave. They strolled on aimlessly and descended to the lower embankments of the Seine. A barge drifted past lit by a solitary lamp. In the shadows lovers pressed close to each other, as if this night was to be their last.

  And still they walked, Masha and Avram, hand in hand, through mazes of alleys and boulevards, in and out of silent courtyards, through visible layers of time. There were moments when Avram thought he was hallucinating. The sight of an arch, of serpentine streets and cathedral spires, and he was back in Vilna, retracing the footsteps of a child. Paris was so like Vilna, even down to the plane trees and chestnuts that had lined the avenues of his childhood strolls.

  It was touch that brought him back, the gentle pressure of a hand. He glanced at Masha and, in the stillness of the pre-dawn, he saw the fierce determination with which she walked. She moved with the same sense of purpose she applied to all aspects of her life. And she saw, moving beside her, a troubled man; and again she knew it would be difficult. She had always known this, but for now they were lovers moving side by side, accompanied by the echo of their footsteps, by the harmony of their breath.

  The dark gave way to the first light of a cool dawn. Avram and Masha entered the narrow streets of the Algerian quarter. Cleaners swept the gutters. Shopkeepers raised their steel-ribbed shutters. Carts trundled through cobbled lanes. Workers bent over bowls of coffee in run-down cafes. A Buick glided by, with a smaller Renault in its wake. Workers hurried to the Metro and descended its stone steps like miners disappearing into the earth.

  Avram and Masha made their way to the entrance of their cheap lodgings. They climbed the wooden stairs to their single room. All the long years were now pared back to this
room which lay beyond the cruel gaze of dictators. Here life could resume the unhurried rhythms of love, free from terror.

  Avram lay in the afterglow of love. He glanced about the room, noted the chair draped by a dress, by a slip and discarded stockings, illuminated by the ascending light of day. Beside him lay Masha, asleep. He moved closer, and regained her softness, her warmth.

  He got up and closed the wooden shutters, returned to the bed, ran his hand over her body again. The room was full of her presence. Yes, love was a physical presence, full-blooded, a definable force.

  He had known variations of this presence once before. At Benedictinski 4. As he lay beneath an eiderdown, knowing that nearby hovered his protectors, his father who wove grand visions, and his mother who would enter his room, to tend to his illnesses, to make sure he was warm. This was Etta's only thought when she saw Avram for the final time. She wrapped him in her scarf, in her warmth. Then she was gone.

  Avram rested his hand upon Masha's breast, as if to reassure himself she was not an illusion. He watched the rise and fall of her breath. He glimpsed the ascending sun through the slats of the shutters.

  Their rendezvous was over, but their journey had not ended. They were, after all, ‘displaced persons’, still on the move. Before them lay many more months of waiting, the humiliation of meals in soup kitchens, the twice-weekly visits to the police, the eternal round of visa stamps, queues and interrogations, the nerve-sapping search for a home.

  Before them lay many more walks through the City of Lights. They roamed Paris like children let loose at a fun fair. ‘Walking is cheap. Walking does not cost,’ they reasoned. ‘Walking is a way to pass time while our lives are still on hold.’

  They came to know neighbourhood courtyards with children at play. They strolled over the Pont Neuf to the left bank, and sat in its cafes. For the price of a glass of soda they could sit for an entire evening at marble-topped tables, with their heads buried in Le Monde or Paris Soir, and pretend they belonged there.

  Theirs was still a counterfeit life; and there were times when Paris seemed closed to them, leaving them stranded at its padlocked gates. Yet still they walked, even if it was on uncertain ground, from the left bank back to the right; they paused upon the city's bridges from which they gazed upon the Notre Dame, the cathedral of Our Lady. It reared in the night sky like a citadel, concealing stone pillars and cold vaults.

  After nights of love-making the city would regain its radiance. It was in the small details that a world they had almost forgotten reappeared: leaves regained their veins; the waters of the Seine were a pageant of lustrous greens; a sudden ray of sun became a shaft of gold; the breeze a refreshing spirit; a cloud-ridden sky an ocean of silver-greys.

  The rendezvous was over, but before them lay many more nights in that single room; spring nights scented with jasmine and budding blooms; summer nights laden with sultry skies, autumn nights imminent with storms; winter nights echoing with falling snow; full moon nights when tiled roofs shone and the city was cast in an unearthly glow; countless nights on which recurring stories gave way to silent dawns.

  Yes, the rendezvous was over, and there were nights when other faces intruded. Faces contorted with cruelty. Unwanted faces that Avram could not tame. They dragged him back into the darkness, to the smell of terror, to the ache of his all-too-recent wounds. He wanted to interrogate them. He wanted to scream out the eternal why. And he would awake to his hardened breath; and the redeeming softness of Masha's presence. He would gaze at her, reach over and touch her; touch her hair, her face, her bare arms.

  Yes, the rendezvous was over, and before them lay many nights when Avram recoiled from love. Nights when he retreated to the forests, to the memories he had concealed, to tales of partisans who fell upon their foes like enraged animals. They pointed their guns at cowering families, at the boy standing in front of his father, begging them to spare his life. At the mother, standing in front of her daughter, to shield her from their desire to rape; while watching them was a nineteen-year-old boy called Avram.

  And only now, after so many nights in the back room of Scheherazade, do I see the first glitter of Masha's tears. Only now, after so many hours of self-control, does Masha speak of the moments when she had come across him, unexpectedly, or had approached him from behind, and laid a gentle hand upon his shoulder; and he had turned, with his arms raised, shaking with suspicion, ready to defend himself, back in the forests, alert like a wild animal to the stalking of a hunter; and he would turn on her as if she were a stranger.

  Avram gently rocks at the remembrance. He stretches out a gentle hand to Masha. Touches her on the shoulder. And whispers, yes, she had to withstand so much confusion, so much rage.

  We are drawn together, the three of us, in a circle of subdued light, and in that light, Avram and Masha seem transparent, fully revealed. Avram's hand is resting, softly, upon Masha's shoulder; and he is whispering ‘Yes, she had to endure so much. But, tell me, how could anyone come out of that gehennim whole or sane?’

  Then we are back in Paris, where Avram's tales were absorbed in a lover's arms. Where the first child was conceived, born and bathed. Where love was first regained.

  No. Scheherazade had not betrayed them. The Gypsy orchestra still awaited them. For the price of a bottle of champagne they could remain in the half-light, in the recesses, or glide to the strains of a violin; to the melodies of those who live on the fringes, who know both brutality and romance, who know that only in love can there be redemption, a permanent home.

  Before them lay an ocean, and another voyage to an uncertain life, to a new world, and a new city, perched on its southern extremes; a city with a street crowded with cafes and restaurants based upon old-world dreams. And years later, when they embarked upon their audacious venture, what option did they have but to call it Scheherazade?

  IX

  Sanctuary is the word that comes to mind. It can be sensed at the entrance to Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay: a narrow opening, a three-kilometre stretch of water, between two peninsulas that sweep towards each other like hands reaching out to complete an embrace.

  A line of foam marks the divide where the open ocean and bay collide. Incoming waves break before the outgoing tide. They call it the Rip, this gauntlet that ships must run to gain the protection of the bay. Over the years many have faltered at the threshold, in clashing tides and winds, in contending currents and submarine drifts.

  I try to imagine it, as it may have seemed to those who arrived here in search of new lives. Perhaps this is how they saw it: the bay opening up in an ample embrace, a glimpse of gnarled she-oaks and scrub, of sea grasses clasping at low-slung dunes, the flight of a gold-hooded gannet, wings extended, scanning the waters for its prey.

  A place of refuge. An ample embrace. A seabird's graceful glide. These are the images that come to mind. This is how I like to imagine the moment of arrival. But would they have perceived it as such? Zalman, Yossel and Laizer? Masha and Avram?

  The war was long over. They had received their papers, their hard-earned permits. Their journey was nearing its end. The wharf was approaching. The city was manifest before their eyes. And yet?

  Zalman recalls his state of mind. The city was an apparition, its features obscured by bitter thoughts. He was still a young man. And a cynic. By the time he left Shanghai, in January 1949, his youthful sense of anticipation was long gone.

  ‘It was just another city coming into view. I did not see myself as coming here to build a new life. I had no ambition. I just came. I wanted to drink, make merry and pass the time. I wanted only to live for the day. I wanted to have as many affairs as possible. I had no grand plans for a permanent home. I no longer cared what people thought. The city was just another imposition. Another joke.’

  And Laizer? He recalls mere glimpses: the lighthouses upon the alternate points, one black, the other white. The wreckage of a ship glued to an outcrop of rocks. The occasional mansion overlooking a strip of deserted beach. An expanse
of flatlands, broken by two shallow hills; the distant city hovering like a mirage; the wooden customs sheds surfacing upon the pier.

  But for the most part he was captive to a mind filled with jousting images of the past; a mind leached by Siberian snows, bleached by Arctic winds. And a heart swamped by the feelings which had overwhelmed him when he returned to the streets of the city of his birth to find his house erased from the face of the earth. And with it his entire family. His friends. His classmates. His former life. So he had left, within hours, knowing he would never return.

  And Yossel? The landscape which appeared about him made little impression. It was irrelevant, a mere backdrop at the periphery of his vision. He was already at work as he entered the bay. He scoured his address books. He underlined the names of contacts, gem dealers and market stall-holders, factory foremen and speculators. His mind teemed with the same schemes that had allowed him to prosper, wherever he had gone. The city was yet another arena of opportunity to revel in, to impress upon with his cunning and charm. A place for future fortunes made, fortunes lost, wealth squandered, wealth regained.

  Yossel stepped ashore with a sense of anticipation. His heart was light. He envisaged a new paradise of crowded cafes and meeting rooms, of hotel foyers and elevators, soft carpets and polished floors. He glanced about him, sniffed the air, and knew at once what was what.

  And Masha? Avram?

  Masha has the clearer recollection. A sense of isolation was her dominant feeling. The surrounding land seemed to reflect it: the empty beaches, the windswept dunes, the expanse of low-slung houses squatting by the coast. She felt adrift, disconnected from the vibrant cities of her past. She saw the new city as a wasteland. She had a baby to nurse. And she harboured regrets, resentment over ambitions thwarted.

  Yet, in time, a sanctuary it proved to be. It is Zalman who holds the key. We sit in Scheherazade, at the window table, from which we can observe the passers-by. ‘I know now, there are moments,’ says Zalman. ‘There will always be moments. This was the memory that returned to me as I grew accustomed to yet another city. The space allowed it. The sense of peace fostered it.