Anna had never imagined she would end up living and working with Leopold Retter. The week they were released from Tatura he invited her over for afternoon tea. Anna put on her best dress, pinned her hair up into a chignon and rouged her cheeks. When she arrived at his aunt’s house, where he was staying with his younger sister Zelda, she was greeted warmly.
‘My nephew has told me so much about you, Miss Winter,’ the elderly lady held out her hand. ‘Come sit with us.’
On the sideboard was a photo of Leo and Zelda as children, seated side by side in a little wooden cart pulled along by two billy goats. Leo noticed her looking at it.
‘We used to love spending time in the park in Vienna,’ he said. ‘It was just around the corner from our house.’
Zelda poured some tea and slid a plate of biscuits towards Anna. ‘Some Vanillekipferl? I baked them myself.’
Leo had told Anna that when he and Zelda first arrived, his elderly aunt, who had come to Melbourne with her husband in 1926, was there to greet them on the dock.
‘Where are all the people?’ he had asked his aunt as they walked around Carlton later that day.
‘That’s the beauty of this country,’ she had replied. ‘There’s space to breathe.’
On his first evening in Melbourne, he had stood out in the backyard of her old weatherboard house in Leicester Street and looked up at the giant ring of light surrounding a full moon.
Back in Vienna Leo had worked in films, but when Nazi-inspired regulations called for Jews to be banned from the industry, he knew it was time to flee. He would find somewhere in the world where he could build a new career. Luckily, his uncle and aunt were able to sponsor both teenagers to come out to Australia and they escaped just in time. They had heard from various sources that the rest of the family had not been so lucky, although they had so far been unable to confirm this gruesome news.
‘We must work hard to make this our home,’ Leo had said to Zelda. ‘We’ll stitch together our lives and create something new. You’ll see.’
Soon after their arrival Leo took over a dusty corner of his aunt’s shed, clearing away the cobwebs, which were adorned with shrivelled cockroach carapaces. This would become a dreamer’s cave. A broom swept away sorrow, clearing space for optimism and wonder. He would create a business built on smiles and love. But with the outbreak of war, and his sudden internment at Tatura, everything had to be put on hold.
Leo was an obstinate man: once he made his mind up, nothing would stop him. He knew that war could also bring with it strange opportunities. Imports of German and Japanese dolls had already been drying up in Australia. His idea was to produce a perfect prototype for a doll’s head on which to model all the others, and start a successful homegrown doll workshop.
Leo put down his teacup. ‘Anna,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘Let’s get straight to the point, shall we? We want you to help us set up a doll factory in Carlton.’
Anna smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you, sweet man, but I’m afraid I hardly have enough money even for lodgings, let alone a large venture like that.’
Leo smiled. He held out his hand. ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’
He led her to the garage where he was building his world of dolls.
‘I want you to be part of all this, Anna. How would you like to come live with us and we can all work on the project together?’
‘That’s such a lovely gesture,’ she said.
Leo was a true gentleman, who lived life without the embellishment of quixotic dreams. She accepted his offer to move in, finally determined to throw off any wistful memories of Alter. It wasn’t long before he proposed to her and she heard herself say ‘yes’. Love didn’t need to be fiery and breathless. She had found warmth and trust instead.
They married in a simple civil service at the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registry in town one Thursday afternoon, with Leo’s aunt and his sister Zelda as their witnesses. Anna wore a beige skirt and cream silk blouse, and carried a small bouquet of daphne.
They had already been married several months when Leo came into the workshop after breakfast one day, cradling Lalka gently like a child.
Anna smiled. ‘What are you doing? I thought we agreed we weren’t going to have children?’
‘I know, Anna. It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking. What if we used Lalka as a model to create our own prototype doll.’
If there was one thing Germans knew how to do, aside from decimate an entire continent, it was how to make fine dolls. Up until the outbreak of war, the sheer quantity of dolls produced there placed them at the forefront of the world doll market. But this golden age had been ended by the economic recession. This was where Leo saw such enormous opportunity.
Anna sat quietly, listening to his idea.
‘She would be our inspiration for our most popular doll.’
Leo seemed feverish with excitement. If they were able to mass-produce her, the Australian version of Lalka – a classic Waltershausen doll made by J.D. Kestner – she would become the special doll that every little girl longed for.
‘Yes,’ Anna smiled. It felt oddly right.
They placed Lalka on the table. She sat up, arms outstretched, staring back at them. Laying out pages of old newspaper, Anna carefully peeled off Lalka’s clothes.
‘It’s okay,’ Anna told Lalka. ‘You’re going to be quite a famous doll soon.’
Even though Leo had recreated himself as a toymaker, read all the books and signed up for newsletters from international doll enthusiast clubs, he still found dolls a bit unnerving. They were little creatures holding invented, oversized personalities.
‘Yes, it’s okay, Lalka. Sit still.’ He found himself talking to the doll too, as if she were their child, gently applying wet newspaper to her cheek.
He dipped a paintbrush into a pot and smeared some glue onto the paper, applying more in turn. He tore tiny strips to mould around the thin lips, but the soggy layers kept falling off. He was intent on finding the right shape that might please children enough for a doll to earn their love. Anna held Lalka as he worked. When he was done, he cleaned Lalka’s face, put her clothes back on and carefully returned her to Anna’s arms. Leo ran his fingertips over the mask, smoothing out the wet mush.
That night, Anna lay in bed, Lalka watching her in the dark. She reached out and pressed the doll to her chest, burying her face into Lalka’s hair. The smell of glue seeped into her nostrils. The Mutti scent was gone, the faint memory of delphiniums and roasted chestnuts replaced by an acrid odour of fixative. Stifling a wave of regret, she cried herself to sleep. In dreams she shrugged off the world, riding the crest of memories that swept her onto the shores of the past and into its murky depths. Yet an imaginary future teased her with rays of hope. When daybreak flooded in through the flimsy curtains she awoke to the here and now, determined to embrace her life with resolve.