Arnold Zable - Cafe Scheherazade

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 nervesapping search for a home.

Before them lay many more walks through the City of 210 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 cloudridden 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 211 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, 212 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?

213

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.

215

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?

216

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 217 classmates. His former life. So he had left, within hours, knowing he would never return.