Cafe Scheherazade Page 17

  ‘I resumed my walks in search of those moments of solitude and grace. And they returned. In the slight nod of a passer-by. In a bemused smile. In the sudden rearing of a breeze, or a fog lifting on a winter's morning on the way to work.

  ‘On such mornings I would detour to a city garden. I would sit down on a park bench and observe a single leaf, covered in dew. Gradually a droplet would form. I would watch it slide on the leaf's veins. For a moment it would balance, on the edge. I would be willing it to hang on, to remain poised, fixed in time. But slowly it would slip over, and fall. And I would say, “Ah. Now I can go to work.”

  ‘This is what all my wanderings have taught me: that the moment itself is the haven, the true sanctuary. If only we could hold on to that. And savour it. Perhaps then we would not be so inclined to tear each other to pieces.’

  We remain seated as darkness descends, Zalman and I. We eat our evening meal garnished with fables and tales. We imagine cities, strung across the globe, like pearls upon a silver chain. We see frayed maps etched in the foreheads of the old men who sit at neighbouring tables. Rivulets from distant continents course through their veins.

  We sit until the last customer departs. We sit until the waitresses and chefs leave for home. We sit until the night manager shows us to the door.

  We make our way along Acland Street. The pavement echoes beneath our feet. The air is warm, scented with a breath of summer breeze. Teenagers weave by on rollerblades. A streetwalker hovers in the shadows. She takes out a compact and powders her face. A young boy plays Beethoven's one and only violin concerto, for small change which he hopes will convey him to the great concert halls of Europe. A cardboard sign proclaims it. We stop, and listen for a while.

  A man carrying a duffel bag stops every few metres to conduct imaginary conversations with passers-by. ‘It was a time of evil. There were seven hundred and fifty-nine men. They were surrounded by the police, by security forces. They were trapped. What chance did they have?’ He recites the same lines at every stop, the same refrain every night.

  We turn left into Shakespeare Grove. We stroll to the foreshore. Families are camped on the beach. Conversations bubble like froth on a breaking wave. Toddlers wade in the shallows. Lovers lie entwined on blankets. A tram floats by, a ghost rider in full flight.

  We make our way to the pier. Boats sway within the marina. Some are returning from the sea, conveying the heat of a summer's day. It can be seen on the passengers' faces as they step onto their allotted jetties: the sun absorbed into their skins, their cheeks flushed by northern winds.

  The inner city rises across the water in congregations of light. All we need do is extend our hands to touch the many lives that pulse within them. The streets of the new world are emptying. A mechanised sweeper moves by, absorbing the litter of a fallen day. The streets glisten with its spray.

  We follow the rim of the sea. Phosphorus dances on the lips of shallow waves. We walk as silence descends upon the bay. We walk as our own voices are stilled, and are left trailing in our wake. One tale is ending, while others begin.

  Storytelling is an ancient art. They stood by the fire, the first storytellers, and held their audiences entranced. Their faces glowed, half in darkness, half in light. Their voices flowed into the star-laden night. They recounted tales of battles fought, the first woman, the first man, the first moments of love and hate.

  Yet, perhaps there is something beyond our endless recycling of words. The faintest traces of sunrise seep into the sky. The first rays are moving. They wipe away the stars, one by one, teardrops suspended in space. They sweep the shadows from the night-darkened sea. Blues give way to silvers, tinged with rose. A ship makes its way in the emerging light, bound for foreign ports.

  The beach is strewn with seaweed and kelp. It covers the rocks, it clings to the pier, it sprawls by the bluestone wall. It lies in piles, interlaced with driftwood and bloated fish, sodden feathers and fractured shells: the detritus of the sea. The air is still, the sky mute. Spent waves lick the shore. Sailors know the moment well. The ancients knew such moments well, the calm after the storm.

  We sit on the foreshore, against the retaining wall, Zalman and I, our backs turned to the streets, beyond desire, beyond reach, in the time before tales.

  And, seeing that the dawn had broken, Scheherazade fell silent, as at last she was at liberty to do.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  While all dates and historical events have, wherever possible, been checked and authenticated, this is not a book about history. Rather, it is a homage to the power of storytelling, a meditation on displacement, and on the way in which the after-effects of war linger on in the minds of survivors.

  Whenever I hear of another outbreak of conflict somewhere on the globe, whenever I see images of columns of refugees snaking across war-ravaged landscapes, my thoughts turn back to the tales of survivors, living in Melbourne, many of whom I have known since my childhood.

  For the record: Scheherazade restaurant and cafe does exist. Founded in 1958, it still trades at the same venue, 99 Acland Street, St Kilda. There have been a number of partners over the years, but the business was principally owned and managed by Avram and Masha Zeleznikow for forty-one years. Since their retirement in 1999, the business has passed into other hands.

  While Cafe Scheherazade is based on actual events, and upon tales that Avram and Masha and others have told me, I have reshaped and re-imagined them. Yossel, Zalman and Laizer are composite characters, whose fictional journeys are based upon tales I have heard from many survivors. The image of the old man and his songbird, on the banks of Suzhou Creek, is partly derived from a scene I observed while travelling in China in 1985.

  Wolfke's restaurant, otherwise known as Velvkeh's, did exist and I have met people who spent time there in pre-war Vilna; but in this novel it is a fictional place.

  I have augmented some of the tales with information gleaned from a number of texts. In particular I wish to acknowledge the following books: From That Place and Time: A Memoir 1938–1947, Lucy Dawidowicz, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1989; Secret War in Shanghai, Bernard Wasserstein, Profile Books, London, 1999; Far from Where, Antonia Finnane, Melbourne University Press, 1999; The Fugu Plan, Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, Paddington Press, New York, 1979. And, for inspiration, Erich Maria Remarque's Arc de Triomphe, first published in 1945.

  The remarkable story of Chiune Sugihara has only recently been told in full. It is a complex and intriguing tale, the details of which can be found in Hillel Levine's In Search of Sugihara, Free Press, New York, 1996.

  I was assisted in my translations of Russian songs, and of H. Leivik's poem ‘On the Tracks of Siberia’, by Romek and Rivke Mokotow. The translations of the Yiddish songs are mine.

  I wish to thank Pinche Wiener, Sevak Kusznir, Romek Mokotow and Alex Skovron for their support and the time they put into responding to the manuscript. I have many other people to thank. Because of their wish for anonymity, and because I have woven them into the text, many of them must remain unnamed.

  Michael Heyward of Text has been a marvellous editor and publisher, with a sharp eye for both the detail and the overall tenor of the book. He grasped what I hoped to achieve from the moment I contacted him.

  My wife Dora, and son Alexander, have supported me in many ways. I cannot imagine writing the book without them.

  As for how the stories are told, the reader has only the author to blame.