THIRTEEN

The usual pall of grime hung over Redfern Station and the surrounding shunting yards, festooning it all like a grubby spider’s web. The Oberon goods train trundled across the myriad points, each one directing it to its ultimate destination, a siding where the great shining milk tanks were tran-shipped by truck to the company dairy. Joshua had actually enjoyed the ride in the guard’s van. The guard, an old time socialist and staunch unionist, told Joshua the Vietnam war was ‘‘the peasants against the Imperialists and Capitalists and I reckon the Jews and Catholics have a finger in the pie too!’’ Joshua, too exhausted to agree or correct the old man, was happy enough that he was not thrown off the train. He realised that after a day and a night in the bush, he looked no better than a derelict. Bazza had been easy to consign back to Bathurst. As for himself, it was only after he had told the guard that the police were after him, that the old man began to sympathise. ‘‘Bloody political persecution, that’s what it is,’’ he growled as he hauled Joshua aboard the van.

They said goodbye and swore working-class solidarity to each other. Joshua sneaked out of the goods-yard and headed for the nearest phone box. The tattered piece of paper he took from his pocket bore the now barely discernible Hebrew alphabet/numbers of Uncle Siddy’s telephone. Joshua dialled the number, catching a glimpse of himself reflected in the glass. ‘‘Not even my own mother would recognise me,’’ he told himself, and grimaced at the bitter truth of the statement.

The ringing stopped. A man’s voice asked tentatively, ‘‘Who is it?’’

Joshua thought he would play the same game. ‘‘Who wants to know?’’

‘‘Why do you ask?’’

‘‘What does it matter?’’

‘‘To me it matters.’’

‘‘Siddy?’’

‘‘Joshua?’’

A cackle of laughter came down the line so shrill, Joshua held the phone away from his ear. After the laughter lapsed into a coughing fit (Joshua could almost smell the cigar) Siddy asked him where he was. Joshua hesitated to tell the old man, who had a big mouth. Instead, he gave the number of the call box and asked Siddy to ring the number at seven o’clock that night. Pretending to be hurt that he was not to be trusted, the old man agreed. They said goodbye. Joshua found a dilapidated cinema showing Italian films. He bought a ticket and sat through two showings of a sleazy B grade film then roamed the streets until it was time to phone.

The phone box was empty. Joshua pretended to scan the Yellow Pages. Right on seven, the phone rang. But it was not Siddy. Laura’s voice, laced with love and excitement came to him, letting loose a flood of emotion. The phone was quite inadequate to convey their feelings; neither would let the other finish a sentence, Laura trying desperately to explain how the Commonwealth police had trapped her into revealing Joshua’s Bathurst hide-out and Joshua reassuring her that no harm had been done. Suddenly it all came to an abrupt end.

Ilan’s hard, clipped Israeli accented voice was in command. ‘‘Tell me where you are. Do not move, I shall come in the van. Yes, the same one we …’’ He overrode Joshua’s recall of the drive to Bathurst by hanging up the phone.

Joshua left the phone box and lounged against a fence. He felt his unshaven face and allowed himself a smile as he imagined Laura’s reaction to seeing him look exactly as she thought a draft-resisting revolutionary ought to look. Minutes later, Ilan’s black van slid into the curb. They shook hands briefly and the van headed through a maze of Redfern’s narrow lanes. It pulled into a backyard strewn with decaying cartons. The two men went up a fire escape to a barn of a room with a cathedral ceiling. Steel shelving lined the walls and much of the floor space. After his brief experience in Andy’s wrecking yard, Joshua could identify some of the motor parts in the opened cartons.

Uncle Siddy had what appeared to be a cash sale, no-receipts-given trade in hot spares.

The old man rose from behind a film-set version of an executive office. He waved his unlit cigar at Joshua, who for one dreadful moment thought Siddy was about to utter those immortal words, ‘‘Some day, son, all this will be yours!’’ But the old man was content to put his arms around Joshua and declare proudly, ‘‘You beat the bloody coppers, son, and that’s all that matters.’’

Ilan, bristling with efficiency, prised him out of the old man’s embrace. ‘‘Now, Joshua, let us get down to business. But first I am unhappy to tell you that soon you will get a visit from four people …’’

‘‘Not the police!’’

‘‘Not the police, definitely.’’

‘‘Then who, and why ‘unhappy’?’’ Joshua asked.

Ilan had the knack of changing in an instant from being boyishly enthusiastic to showing a depth of maturity that belied his age. Joshua had noticed this on many occasions and attributed it to his living in Israel, a country in a state of perpetual tension and suspicion. He repeated the question. Siddy had disappeared behind the shelving, and was traceable only by cigar smoke. Ilan sat in Siddy’s bizarre swivel chair. Joshua was forced to stand in front of him; to break up a situation that made him appear like an employee about to be lectured, he sat loosely on a corner of the huge desk.

Ilan spoke softly, almost intimately to Joshua. ‘‘I say ‘unhappily’, chaver, because the plan I am to put to you will mean that it may be some time before you see your father, Shulamit Rothfield and, I am sorry to say, our little prickly pear, Laura.’’

Joshua leaned across the vast desk and grabbed Ilan’s shirt. ‘‘You scheming bastard, you just want to get your hands on Laura, don’t you! Plans! You must think I’m really dumb, Ilan.’’

The Israeli gave Joshua’s wrist a sharp twist, breaking his grip. His expression had not changed. He continued: ‘‘Look, chaver, we both know that you are in deep shit, as they say. The police are closing in — those two you left bashing their way through the Abercrombie bush are not too impressed. They want vengeance even if they call it doing their duty.’’

Joshua interrupted, ‘‘Get to the point, Ilan.’’

‘‘The point is,’’ and Ilan sat bolt upright in the chair, ‘‘the point is: you will have to leave the country.’’

‘‘Oh yes, smart-arse, where do you suggest? Tasmania, Torres Strait Islands? How about New Zealand?’’

Ilan started to say, ‘‘How did you …?’’ then stopped; his frown changed to laughter. ‘‘Well, well, Joshua Kaiser, as they say on the racecourse, that’s the first leg of the double.’’ He got up and came around the desk to Joshua. ‘‘The second leg is for me to get you to Israel where there is no extradition agreement with Australia.’’ Joshua gasped in amazement. Ilan added slightly contemptuously: ‘‘Not that Israel wants to be a refuge for those avoiding their military responsibilities.’’

Right and wrong, duty and morality — it was a grey scale starting from an imperceptible white through to the impenetrable blackness that ended in despair. Joshua was now struggling desperately to find a pinpoint on the scale where he could live with his conscience. Men like Ilan were immune from such dilemmas. Women like Laura could flit from one end of the scale to the other with seeming indifference.

Ilan did not allow him time for philosophising. He went on, ‘‘Before the others come in, I want to tell you how we shall go about it. It’s no good discussing it in front of them. You know what it’s like trying to get Jews to agree on anything. The war would be over before we settled anything.’’

Joshua said bitterly, ‘‘Don’t I have a say in it?’’

‘‘Not if you want to stay out of gaol,’’ was the instant response. ‘‘Look, Joshua, we fly you to Wellington, New Zealand, OK? You don’t need a passport for that leg. Before you leave, you get your visa for Israel. We pick up a plane for Rome and from there you fly El Al to Tel Aviv.’’ He leaned back in the chair and grinned like a man who had just pulled off a good deal. Before Joshua could speak, he reminded him that, under the Israeli Law of Return, as a Jew he could automatically become an Israeli citizen.

Joshua’s first reaction was to refuse the citizenship offer but he thought that in view of all the aid he was getting from the ubiquitous Ilan, it might be perceived as ungrateful. Instead he readily agreed with the transport proposals. ‘‘You spoke of ‘we’ Ilan. Are you coming too?’’

Ilan smiled at him. ‘‘Joshua, you know the saying: ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’? Well, chaver, I have to tell you that we want from you something in return. Israel could be facing another war. This time, against most of the Arab countries — Egypt, Syria and Jordan to name three. In such an event, there would be total mobilisation.’’ He let this sink in.

Joshua said slowly, ‘‘Are you suggesting that having refused to fight for Australia in Vietnam, I should now fight in Israel?’’

‘‘No, that is not what I mean. Where you can help is behind the lines—well behind, Joshua. Doing a soldier’s civilian job while he is with his unit is one very important way to help and it will repay what I am doing for you.’’ So sure was he that there could not possibly be any objection to his plan that he relaxed in the big chair and stuck out his hand. Joshua rose slowly from the corner of the desk and went around it to take Ilan’s hand. It was a long journey.

Ilan pushed a bell on Uncle Siddy’s monstrosity of a desk. It sounded far off, but barely had it stopped than a small cavalcade of Joshua’s dearest family and friends came into the warehouse from a side door he had not noticed previously. They filed in led by Jacob. Shulamit Rothfield followed and then Abe Lewis and Uncle Siddy, who had his arm around Laura, the old rascal pretending to need her support. Joshua went to Jacob and hugged him. Mrs Rothfield basked in this show of filial affection and waited her turn. Joshua kissed her on the cheek. Abe slapped him on the back and Siddy, having winked conspiratorially, turned to Ilan and ordered him out of the swivel chair.

When all had welcomed him in their way, Laura kissed him so passionately that the others turned away in embarrassment.

Joshua, his face quite flushed, finally found his voice. ‘‘I presume you all know about Ilan’s plan? How I’m to be smuggled out of Australia to wind up milking cows on, on …’’

Jacob stood alongside his son. ‘‘On Kibbutz Jezreel, Joshua, where Pnina is buried. Ilan will accompany you all the way because he has been recalled to his unit. You are to take his place on the kibbutz.’’

Ilan, who had ignored Siddy’s request to get out of the chair, said: ‘‘Correction, Joshua. Your job will be in the kibbutz print shop which I can now reveal was established some years ago with funds provided by Mr Jacob Kaiser.’’

Abe Lewis, who had been silent up till now, took Joshua aside. ‘‘I’m not one for the sloppy sentimental stuff, Josh old son, but there’s something I reckon you ought to do when you’re over there. I remember my poor Irma, Ruthie’s mum, saying that before she kicked the bucket, she’d like to have known what happened to all her mob that died in the Holocaust. Well, I wasn’t able to help and so the poor girl never knew.’’ He caught Jacob’s eye and beckoned him over. ‘‘I was just tellin’ Josh what you and me talked about — you know, findin’ out about his real dad and his mum’s family.’’

To Joshua, Jacob Kaiser had always appeared older than his forty-odd years. Even when he had been a small child Jacob had not been one for joining in play with him. When other fathers rolled with their kids down the grassy slopes behind Bondi Beach, Jacob had been protective and cautious, a watcher not a doer. It had always been this way, right throughout his growing up. Old Mrs Shulamit Rothfield showed more spirit in play than Jacob.

At this moment Joshua realised that he had never had a proper childhood, never known real parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. And now they wanted him to raise the ghosts of those relatives he had never had a chance of knowing. He smiled to himself. Every one of them would be a foreigner — he wouldn’t even be able to understand them!

‘‘You think that it’s a joke, Joshua?’’ Jacob shook his head. ‘‘It is a duty you must carry out. You are the only survivor of your family.’’

Laura joined them uninvited. They cut the discussion short and Abe, ever the romantic, took Jacob’s arm and steered him away. ‘‘I reckon the kids want to be together, Jake. You’ll see him in the morning just before the plane goes.’’ Foolishly Jacob asked where they were going. Mrs Rothfield, whose hearing was perfect, chipped in: ‘‘If you have to ask such a question, you’ll be told a lie and quite right too.’’ She turned to Joshua and Laura. ‘‘Go in good health, children. Enjoy! ’’ She said this as though it was her blessing on them. She called Ilan. ‘‘OK for them to go off now?’’

Ilan checked his watch and nodded. ‘‘I’ll collect you at 0800 hours. I don’t expect you to be alert but I do expect you to be on time.’’

As Joshua circled the room with Laura, saying farewells to them all, he felt like the many bridal couples he had seen doing much the same thing. The difference was, he told himself, it would be a very brief honeymoon and then a future nobody could predict.