 Behind Stories Lie Other StoriesbyGillian PolackA friend once commented to me that tales of loss and change often start off with a joke. Maybe it’s a Jewish thing, because jokes are so very tempting when one is Jewish. We might as well take advantage of a stereotype and let people believe that, by birth or conversion, all Jews are sources of comic genius. It’s surely better than aligning one's future with a bleak past. If this story had started with a joke, that joke itself would have begun “My mother says she and Arnold are related through marriage, through the dwarf.” Except it’s not funny. It’s not even a joke, except on a long Friday night when the family has run out of relatives to dissect. Mum also says that Arnold isn’t really a relative, just a relative by marriage. Over and again she says it, just in case I claim more than I’m entitled: this also is very Jewish. Or maybe it’s just Australian-Jewish. Just to make it clear, it’s the dwarf to whom I am related by marriage. Arnold wrote about that dwarf. We don’t have much in common, Arnold and I, except a certain passion for words. I’m round, Arnold is slender. I’m short, Arnold is tall. At least, I think he’s tall. I’ve only seen his picture. In every picture of Arnold his bones define his face, his hands, his smile. My bones are private and my smile much cheekier. And yet, still, we’re related through the dwarf and the story is an important one and the story is, of course, tragic. After all, we’re both Jewish and were once from Europe. What else is there but tragedy, even if I can’t make a joke to lead into it? Actually, there’s a lot more than tragedy. It’s all very convoluted. It centres around Arnold. Before I tell you why even Arnold’s bones daunt me, I must digress. This is another part of family stories. The art of perpetual digression. When my cousin Diana told me the truth about how our family saved itself and why Arnold’s book is one of the few memories of those who didn’t reach safety, she also covered her tonsillectomy on my great-grandmother's kitchen table, how my great-grandfather was one of the most wonderful people to walk the earth, how his wife was his opposite, and how very nice my mother’s orange-almond cake is. The fact that the childhood tonsillectomy happened in St Kilda Melbourne, Australia and not in Bialystock, Poland was due to my great-grandfather. For nearly two generations family and family-by-marriage and possibly even family by self-definition came out to Australia, each helped to safety by my great-grandfather and his mob.* The last to come out was Arnold. He and his parents were denied entrance, and they ended up in New Zealand. Better than returning to Bialystock, in the late 1930s. What this meant was that Arnold was much closer to the Shoah than my immediate family. His mother told different tales to mine, stories of a large community snuffed out in a hush of hate. Arnold says in Jewels and Ashes that many tales were not told at all, that the hush reached across the world. This is all important. Also important is that Arnold is an exquisite writer. This is why I haven’t ever gone up to him and said “Hi, Arnold, we’re sort of related through the dwarf, though Mum (who thinks you need to eat more) says we’re not really cousins.” The dwarf was Faivel. His sister or his cousin married into our family. When I ask for more, Mum gives me a long list of cousins I can ring. Except that I’m only in Melbourne until the day after tomorrow and there isn’t time. Besides, I feel a tad reluctant to say to a cousin (age at least eighty), out of the blue, “Tell me about Faivel. Was it his sister who married a Shwartz?” I study the Middle Ages so that this sort of phone call won’t, can’t, will never arise. Mum met Faivel. He played tricks on maternally-inclined strangers. For the details, you will have to apply to my mother. She will be embarrassed, but she might tell you if you say I suggested it. Or she might not. I pity Faivel's wife (my relative): this is not the Jewish sense of humour one wants in a family. Faivel appears in Arnold’s attempt to sort out the magnitude of the loss in Bialystock and to understand the last days of the family that didn’t escape. There's a description of Faivel on page fourteen—“Faivel Lilliput”—a circus performer, a dwarf, with “a hand held against his chest in a Napoleonic gesture.” Arnold talks about Faivel as he knew the man, after the war in Melbourne. Everyone, it seems, knew Faivel. Arnold's full name is Arnold Zable and the book, Jewels and Ashes, is a magic book. Full of sorrow and understanding. Enchanted and dangerous and tragic. What I want to know, is why Arnold (having written a truly great book about tragedy and loss) also writes about food. Remember, this is the man my mother thinks doesn’t eat enough. My family and family-by-marriage has a thing about food. My grandmother made sweets for a living, my sister is an expert in wine and olive oil, I research food history. Another sister married into Louis’ family. Louis was ‘Louis' Cakes’ in Chapel Street, Melbourne. My father was Louis’ dentist. That's right, my father, whose mother made sweets for a living, was a dentist. That's another story. Arnold’s food story was more about stories than food, to be honest. He wrote about Café Scheherazade. This was the café where a group of European Jews, mostly Shoah survivors, helped bring central European café culture to Australia. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but today I’m telling you what the family has told me, not writing a thesis. While Café Scheherazade isn’t the tour de force that is Jewels and Ashes, it’s still lovely. It also documents a culture that has gone. The café has moved, and my brother says the food in the new one lacks the magic. Reality can be a bit bedraggled sometimes. I need to find out for myself one day. Maybe the magic is there, mutated into something new. I thought this column was going to be about Arnold. I was going to give you a potted biography, some thoughts on early articles he wrote for the Melbourne Chronicle and maybe some comments on his writing technique. It’s not about Arnold at all. It’s about family and it’s about how we share our stories and which stories we share. Good food is important. Without good food, I wouldn’t know about that tonsillectomy or even one of the tricks Faivel played on middle-aged ladies with warm hearts (and, I suspect, bad eyesight). Family afternoon teas are the best source of strange family tales. Food and stories, the perfect combination. The exact combination that helped me learn about an almost-relative I’ve never met. All that’s missing is the cake recipe. Best eaten with tea (Darjeeling or maybe Orange Pekoe, one spoon a person and one for the pot, let it brew, not stew), but if you must have coffee, make it Italian-style if you want to mirror the time when I learned about almost-cousin Arnold or in a plunger if you feel daringly modern. ORANGE-ALMOND CAKE Ingredients: 2 large navel oranges Method: Wash your oranges and cook them with 2 tbs water (the saucepan lid should be really tight) for an hour. Reserve the liquid. Let the oranges cool. When the oranges are cool, quarter them. Remove as much pith and seed as possible. Blend them (including the peel) with the sugar and eggs until it’s delightfully smooth. Gently fold in the almonds. Bake in a greased tin at 160 degrees C for 1/2 to 1 hour. While the cake is in the oven, take the liquid you put aside. Put it in a small saucepan and add some sugar. Simmer it until it just begins to caramelise. When the cake comes out of the oven, spread this glaze very thinly over it before it cools down. While you do that, I'm going to have some chai. I have my own stories as well as my family's, and those stories taste quite different. * An Australian mob is to do with mateship, not mafia. Or it’s sheep. Books mentioned in this column:
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