Anna stretched out on the blanket, digging her toes in the sand. They had caught the tram across town from Carlton all the way to St Kilda Beach, just to cool off from the heat. Along the way, Anna had looked wistfully at Christmas decorations glittering in shop windows. Alter was the guest of a local Jewish family, the Eisners, who put him up in their home in the suburb of Brunswick. He eked out a meagre living by writing articles for the Australian Jewish Herald. Meanwhile, Anna was living nearby, in a bungalow out back of an elderly widow’s house, earning a small stipend for helping with meals and chores. Both Alter and Anna loved spending weekends together, exploring their new city.
Alter sat beside her, staring silently out to sea, his notebook abandoned beside him. Yawning loudly, he stood up and raised his arms above his head. ‘I’m going to take a dip.’
‘Don’t go in too deep, Alter.’
‘You don’t have to remind me I can’t swim, Anna.’
He made his way down to the water’s edge and waded slowly in the shallows alongside the wooden pier. Anna followed him, picking her way gingerly over mounds of broken shells, till she reached the shoreline. White sails ballooned on the horizon, fat-bellied gulls shrieking as they circled overhead. A pelican stared at her, sunning itself on a rock nearby. A hoard of sandflies congregated around a bloated jellyfish. Her feet were swallowed by the foam and froth of the waves, ribbons of kelp washing up beside her. Empty abalone shells glistened like jewels in the sand alongside mussels, limpets and the carapaces of crabs hidden among the rotting seaweed. Dumped onto the beach by waves, they lay abandoned by a receding tide. Just like her and Alter, she thought – washed up on a distant shore by the vagaries of history and time, parched and shrivelled under a harsh sun. She ran back to the safety of the picnic blanket.
She sat down again, squinting as she watched Alter. Should she be worried that he might be out of his depth, alert the lifeguards, those strong Australian men with broad smiles and broad chests? But he was already making his way slowly towards shore.
A sudden gust of wind blew open Alter’s notebook, tickling it with feathery fingers that seemed to beckon her to peer into his most private thoughts. She pinned down the pages, stealing a glimpse at the words he kept secret from her. Sentences burst into distorted shapes, sprawling along the lines. She should have realised he still hid his life behind the hieroglyphics of a tongue so foreign to her eyes that it resembled the whorls and spirals of the waves. She wondered what she had been expecting to find – fluent German sonnets penned in perfect Sütterlin, or poetry written with English cursive loops? She already knew he wrote in Yiddish.
The rhythmic sound of the waves lapping against the shore soothed her. Alter was wading back, lurching awkwardly from side to side. He ran up to her and shook himself like a wet puppy. The salty droplets cooled her skin. He dived onto the blanket beside her and gave her a sodden hug.
‘Stop it!’ she squealed.
A shaggy brown dog rushed up to them, its tail thrashing like a propellor.
‘Shoo!’ Alter tried to chase it away, but it darted to and fro, sniffing for food before its owner whistled for it to come.
The gulls circled. One brave bird sat down next to them, folding its red spindly legs under its belly. Its grey feathers ruffled in the breeze as it warmed itself on a bed of sand, watching them intently. Anna threw it a crust of bread. The bird dived on it, hastily flying away before being chased by other gulls. The sun was hot, but as the afternoon wore on the breeze whipped up.
They packed up their things and made their way back towards St Kilda’s Village Belle, strolling past Luna Park, the gaping plaster face of Mr Moon trying to swallow them into his maws. The Scenic Railway jostled people up and down, their screams reaching out across the bay. They finished off a pleasant afternoon with Kugelhopf and Polish cheesecake from Monarch Cakes on Acland Street, as delicious as you might find in any Konditorei back home. She liked Melbourne. It felt so familiar in many ways, a city with a truly distinctive European flavour.
That evening, crowds gathered to celebrate Alter’s arrival back in Melbourne. He had been invited to give a lecture at the Kadimah, the Jewish cultural centre in Carlton. The hall was filled with people eager to hear his lecture about The Dybbuk, a play by Ansky originally written in Russian but later translated into Yiddish. The newly released film was to be screened for the first time on Australian shores shortly, to everyone’s immense excitement. Alter mounted the stage, all eyes raised towards him. The audience was seated in rows inside the dim hall, but he could still make out the rapture in expectant faces. To those present he was a famous Yiddish poet bringing a taste of home and of the lives they had left behind in Europe. Here in Melbourne, where they had been given a chance to start afresh, they were trying to rebuild a world of secular Yiddish that had occupied the core of their existence. Alter lapped up the attention despite knowing his celebrity was over-inflated, but it felt flattering nonetheless. They seemed to hang on every word he had to say.
‘An immigrant is like a dybbuk,’ he said, going straight for the jugular, ‘a dislocated soul, searching for a body to possess. We are all dybbuks of a sort – Jewish wanderers forced to straddle the world of the shtetl left behind and the newness of a city with forty-eight Albert Streets. We each weave our old-world sensibilities with this new landscape. I want to help recreate our vanished world – not to blend in, but to transplant an entire culture through theatre, education, literary works and a flourishing press. Let’s make Yiddish the language of our everyday lives, alongside the King’s English; a secular identity, divorced from the rituals of prayer and devotion. Not adaptation and assimilation, but instead embracing a vibrant culture that already exists. Cliques, schisms, fractures, complexity, passionate dissent and debate – where there is one Jew, you have one opinion. But where there are many Jews, there are many arguments.’
He was met with rapturous applause and was excited to find such a vibrant and enthusiastic Yiddish-speaking community. Afterwards, people waited to meet him and shake his hand. A short, balding man who had been busily stacking up the folding chairs hovered at the back like a tattered moth. It was only when the crowd had started to disperse and Alter was packing his papers into his leather satchel, preparing to leave, that the fellow stepped forward. He cleared his throat to get Alter’s attention. With edgy distraction, Alter looked up. He was greeted by a broad, enthusiastic grin, which he returned with a tolerant smile.
‘Retter,’ the man held out his hand. ‘Leo Retter. Do you remember me?’
Alter’s smile melted from his face. Clearly not.
‘We met at Station Pier, on the very day you arrived.’
‘Ah, yes! Of course.’ Alter had no recollection at all of this man and turned to introduce him to Anna, in the hope that he might give her some sort of a clue.
‘This is my dear friend Miss Anna Winter. I found her in the middle of the desert, would you believe?’
Leo bowed, kissing the back of her hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you. Any friend of Alter’s is a friend of mine.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Retter.’ Anna had caught Alter’s wink and understood he needed rescuing. ‘How exactly do you two know each other?’
‘Oh! My dear, late uncle was an ardent fan of Mr Mayseh’s work in the Literarische Bleter, the newspaper he writes for back in Europe. In fact, he was the one who paid for his ticket to Australia, after Mr Mayseh wrote him such an impassioned letter. You would have known him as Rekhtman. They changed my name to Retter when I arrived in this country.’
Anna glanced across at Alter, whose face had turned pale.
‘Yes, sadly, you will recall that my uncle died just before your arrival,’ Retter continued.
‘Oh. I’m so sorry, Mr Retter,’ Anna said.
‘No matter. He had been poorly for such a long time.’ His eyes shone with warmth. ‘And please, both of you, call me Leo.’
‘Thank you, Leo.’
‘Anyway, when Mr Mayseh finally arrived last spring, my aunt took my sister and me along to greet the boat. It was a brief encounter, and I had hoped to get to know him better, but after a couple of weeks our intrepid poet had already disappeared. Off on an adventure to explore this great country, I hear.’
‘Well, there you have it!’ Alter came up behind Leo Retter and slapped him on the back. ‘We get to meet again, after all.’
‘Your late uncle must have been a very generous man,’ Anna said, trying to smooth over Alter’s rough edges.
Leo sighed. ‘Yes, indeed, he was. I also have him to thank for getting us out of Europe just in time. But I am very fortunate to still have my dear aunt. She has been like a mother to my sister and me since we arrived in Melbourne. It hasn’t been easy, but we had an idea recently to start up a business making dolls.’
‘Dolls?’ Anna’s eyes widened. ‘I’d love to hear more.’
Alter hopped from one foot to the other, restless to leave. He placed a hand on Anna’s shoulder, ushering her towards the entrance as he spoke.
‘Well, my good man.’ Alter looked back at Leo as he held the door open. ‘It was lovely to see you again, but you’ll have to excuse us. It is getting rather late, and I must see that Miss Winter gets home safely.’
‘Oh, of course! I didn’t mean to hold you up. It has been so wonderful to see you again.’ He turned to Anna. ‘And an honour to meet you, Miss Winter.’
As they strolled home, Anna prodded Alter. ‘Why have you never told me you were so famous back home? That man, Leo, was so excited to meet you, I was half expecting him to bend down and kiss your feet.’ She had been seated in the audience during the lecture, and although she hadn’t understood more than a few words of what Alter had said, she had enjoyed watching the elated faces of those around her.
‘Thank you for saving me from that little fellow. I felt so embarrassed I didn’t know who he was.’ Alter clucked his tongue.
‘He seemed like a very kind man. You could have been a little more polite, especially since his uncle was your meal ticket over here.’
‘Yes, yes. You’re right. Maybe I should invite him out sometime.’ He kicked some pebbles into the gutter. ‘Anyway, to answer your question, let’s just say there’s not a lot of competition here as far as Yiddish writers go, so celebrity status is not that hard to come by. Whoever thought I would hear Yiddish spoken under the Southern Cross? There is that Waislitz. What a performer! An actor from the famous Vilna Troupe. He was a disciple of Stanislavski, who breathed life into Yiddish versions of Chekhov and Molière, and he is here on a world tour of thirty-seven one-man shows and performances. That fellow Goldhar from Lodz lives in Melbourne now – the first editor of a Yiddish newspaper here, a fine writer with an eye for detail, albeit tinged with darkness and a tincture of despair. And he tells me he has translated some of the local writers into Yiddish. I have even been invited to attend a performance of The Dybbuk in Melbourne’s main theatre.’
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. What is a dybbuk?’ Anna asked.
‘That’s what I spoke about in my lecture. It is a creature who lives between two irreconcilable worlds, a disembodied soul who wanders the face of the earth in a relentless search of a haven inside a living person.’
They walked on quietly for a while. Alter stopped suddenly in front of the entrance to the Carlton cemetery.
‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘Maybe there’s a dybbuk wandering around here I could introduce you to.’ He smiled and kissed her.
‘I thought you were taking me out for supper.’
‘Believe me – this will be far more interesting, Anna. Just wait.’ He led her past the entrance.
She followed him along the path, all the way over to the Jewish section. They walked along a row of gravestones.
‘I want to show you something very interesting,’ he said. See those symbols? They tell us about the people, who they were.’
‘For example, this one over here.’ He stopped in front of a grave. ‘We can see he was a learned man by the symbol of holy books.’ He pointed to two hands with thumbs joined, the fingers paired to form a V. ‘These are kohanim hands, an ancient symbol of the priestly blessing. He must have been a kohen, a descendant of the priests of biblical Israel.’
They walked along the rows until they reached a gravestone with the image of a hand pouring water from a pitcher.
‘This is a Levite. That means the person’s ancestors were members of the Tribe of Levi, who assisted the priests by cleaning their hands.’
Beside it was a tiny grave, with a symbol of broken branches.
‘A child?’ Anna asked, stopping to read the inscription.
Alter nodded and walked away.