Almost two years had passed since the start of the war. Anna spent that time living behind barbed wire. Corrugated-iron huts were arranged row upon row, in military fashion, each one divided into two cabins by a masonite wall. They were raised off the ground, three wooden steps leading up to each entrance. Anna’s cabin had its own window, a small table, two chairs and two bunks. Hooks nailed to the wall served as her makeshift wardrobe. Despite regular fumigation, lice were her constant companions. During the sweltering summers, she hung wet sheets across the doorway to try to cool the air down a little, but in winter, nothing could warm her up. Short, chilly days brought with them long, freezing nights. Every morning at dawn, without fail, the army bugler would wake all the internees, who tumbled out of their cots for morning roll call.
She was imprisoned at Camp Three, where internees came from all walks of life – doctors, musicians, teachers, tailors. A wide range of nationalities were represented, including Germans, Italians, Japanese and even some people from New Zealand and Finland, of all places. Anna sometimes caught herself searching among the sea of faces, wondering if it might be possible that one of them was Max Schmidt. She had never heard what happened to him after he disappeared from Birdum.
So many people had vanished on this blood-swollen earth. She wondered if she would ever know the fate of those she had left behind. Was she deluded to think there might be any chance Papa was still alive somewhere? And as much as she told herself that she never wanted to lay eyes on Alter again, she couldn’t help but wonder what had become of him.
Beyond the main living quarters lay a dam and acres of well-tended vegetable gardens, the pride of the internees. Just outside the barbed-wire fence, next to the main gate, a brick hut served as a temporary gaol for those who misbehaved. Not that anyone would find it easy to escape Tatura, which was too far from the coast to be much of a security concern. The gaol stood next to a large shed that housed a handicrafts and carpentry workshop.
Among the prisoners, all of them designated enemy aliens, were three hundred children, who attended school inside the camp all day, waiting impatiently for the highlight of the week, the Saturday evening puppet show. Karl Hennig, who had been a chef back in Vienna, set up Café Wellblech, with wooden tables and chairs arranged outside in the style of a European coffee house. He baked Käsebrot pastries in honour of the first puppet performance of the season. Official programmes were printed and distributed among the crowd, who mulled about excitedly in front of the makeshift theatre.
It was here that Anna ran into a familiar face.
‘Anna?’
She looked up from her programme.
‘Yes?’
‘Leo. Leo Retter. Alter Mayseh introduced us after one of his lectures. My uncle was the one who brought him out to Australia.’
‘Oh, yes! Of course, I remember.’
‘What a coincidence meeting you here, of all places.’
‘Well, it seems that it doesn’t matter what your politics are, if you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, you will end up here,’ Anna said.
‘Which part of the camp are you working in?’
‘I’m helping out a little with the children.’
‘We need a hand in the carpentry workshop. Would you like to join us making puppets for these performances? I remember you seemed quite interested in dolls the first time we met.’
It had been so long since Anna had felt even a flicker of excitement.
‘Of course! I’d love to.’
During the long, strange months that followed, Anna worked side by side with Leo in the toy workshop. At first they hardly spoke, her bewildered reticence stifling most conversation. But gradually, she found herself opening up to him, surrounded by the watchful faces of handmade puppets and dolls. She told him things she had never shared with anyone. And he held out his hand to her before she even knew she needed it.
They called him Leo, although he much preferred his real name – Leopold.
‘Is it so hard to pronounce?’ he asked.
She laughed.
‘Australians seem to break their tongues on anything more complicated than John Smith,’ he said. ‘So, Leopold Rekhtman became Leo Retter, courtesy of the lazy customs official at Station Pier. At least he gave me the distinctive flourish of that double T in my new name, a creative highlight in what I imagine is the public servant’s rather drab job.’
‘My name has been changed too.’
‘Really? What was it?’
‘Müller. A good German name.’
They laughed about what other embellishments had been inflicted upon immigrants with unwieldy surnames, turning them bland for easier public consumption: Aarons becoming Ashton, Cohen vanishing under Cowan and Solomon hiding inside Sullivan.
‘There is a joke doing the rounds about a Jewish man standing in line to be processed at the border entry,’ Leo said. ‘When his turn to present to the official came and he was asked his name, he felt so nervous that he stuttered and blurted out in Yiddish, shoyn fargessen – I’ve already forgotten. The clerk scribbled what he heard into a register and from then on, the man officially became known as Sean Ferguson.’
She was grateful that he didn’t ask her more about her name. He was such a respectful man, knowing when not to pry.
When Leo had met Anna back in Melbourne, albeit a brief encounter, there was a strength and determination about her that he greatly admired. Yet here, in Tatura, where chance had tossed them together again, he noticed her hands were often bundled into fists, her voice a tiny bird’s trill with a note of sadness.
One day as Anna carved a puppet’s head, the small knife slipped from her hand, embedding itself in the pulpy flesh of her thumb. Leo leapt up from the workbench. Never one to be squeamish, he pulled out the blade and wrapped a strip of cotton material around her thumb, pressing the wound with his fingers to stop the bleeding. He sat her down on a chair and propped her arm up on cushions.
‘You should have been a doctor,’ she said, feeling a little faint.
Leo rinsed his hands and poured her a glass of water before he set about cleaning up the mess. The workbench looked like a scene from a horror movie.
When he finished he came and sat beside her.
‘You need to be more careful, Anna.’
‘Ha! Not one of my strengths, I’m afraid. I’m starting to feel I haven’t anything left in me,’ she said quietly.
She gave him a plaintive look and burst into violent sobs. She wept inconsolably, the dam wall she had kept intact all this time suddenly bursting. Years of agony and shame she had never spoken of to a soul came flooding out – Mutti’s death, the professor’s threats, Tantine’s duplicity and, finally, Alter’s accusations, which had left her wondering whether anything she had witnessed in her life had been real.
Leo sat quietly, listening to the torrent of nightmarish memories emerge. How had this woman contained it all for so long?
‘I am not a Nazi, Leo. Please don’t think that of me,’ she pleaded, wiping tears away with the back of her wrist.
‘Why would that even enter my head, Anna? For heaven’s sake, you were a mere child growing up inside such a black cauldron of deception. I believe you.’
She calmed down a little. Numbness gave way to pain.