Ben was puffing from having sprinted down the platform. Thirty years ago he wouldn’t have raised a sweat, but now his legs ached and perspiration dripped from his forehead. He had at least put some distance between himself and the three youths hanging around near the waiting room. They were drunk, stoned maybe. Noisy as hell. Looking for trouble.
He stepped onto the train and glanced back down the platform and saw the youths get on the end carriage. Ben yanked the door closed and staggered into a seat in the empty vestibule.
His head hurt and his stomach groaned. Those last couple of Bourbon and Cokes had done it for him. He knew he shouldn’t have drunk so much at the wake but Sally would have expected it. Her brothers definitely appreciated it, their hugs and tears at the end were genuine.
The pastel green walls and dark green vinyl seats of the carriage didn’t make him feel much better. What was that expression he’d heard? ‘A bit green around the gills’ – that was it. Feeling crook was another term his Aussie friends used. With the beer, whiskey, prawn cocktails and party pies rolling around in his stomach he was feeling crook himself. Crook as a dog. He dry-retched a few times then expelled an arc of vomit on the floor splashing his shoes and the left leg of his corduroy trousers. Chunder!
The smell of spew in his nostrils made him heave again. This time his retching finished with a spattering of acidic green bile.
Ben lurched across to the seats opposite, away from the vomit. He saw his gaunt reflection in the window and felt sick again. Above the window was a poster advertising the Royal Easter Show – ‘There’s more to do in ’82 at the Royal Easter Show.’ Next to the poster was a stylised map of the Sydney Suburban rail system, a web of coloured lines. He read some of the names: Parramatta, Granville, Lidcombe. What names these are! The effort of focusing on the map brought throbbing pains to his head. As long as he made it to Central – the point on the map where all the lines joined up before forming the City Circle – he knew he could make it home from there.
Clunketty-clunk, clunketty-clunk. The train rattled on into the night.
The train pulled up at a station. The word STRATHFIELD in black bold font on a large white sign was illuminated by the sickly glow of the station’s fluorescent lights. Still a while to go. The doors on his carriages were pulled open with a crash. He looked up. The three youths he had seen before had now got on his carriage. One had a sharp nose and a weasel-like face, another was chubby with red hair and freckles, the third tall and powerfully built, his head shaved skinhead style, a small swastika tattoo visible on the side of his neck. Ben sat up as straight as he could and pretended to look out the window. The youths surrounded him. Bile rose in his throat once more.
The youth with the weasel-like face pulled out a flick knife that opened with a swishing sound. Ben’s heart pounded.
‘Look at you, ya dirty bastard. Spewed on ya dacks, and all over the seat. What a fine upstanding citizen you are.’
‘You should cut him for defacing government property, what ya reckon, Johnno?’ said the red-haired youth.
‘Maybe we need to fine him on the behalf of the New South Wales Government Railways,’ said the one with the shaved head, who was evidently called Johnno.
Johnno reached into the top pocket of his flannelette shirt and pulled out a pack of Winfield Blues. He took a cigarette out and lit it and inhaled deeply a few times. Johnno’s eyes were pale like a wolf’s and evoked a memory Ben thought he had forever buried. Goosebumps formed on his arms and he struggled to breathe as if he was the one inhaling the smoke.
‘What are ya looking at old man,’ Johnno said, taking another drag of his cigarette. He tapped the end of it sending a flurry of ashes towards Ben. One landed on his hand, light as a snowflake. He flinched and furiously slapped it off.
Johnno laughed. He flicked the cigarette again.
More ash landed on Ben’s shirt. He got to his feet and kept slapping and brushing at the ash, smearing his white business shirt with grey marks.
‘Get a load of this bloke. He’s more worried about the ash than the knife,’ Johnno said to his companions. He grabbed Ben by the collar and said, ‘Just give us ya wallet and we’ll leave ya be.’
In a rising panic, Ben pulled out his wallet. ‘Here, take it.’
Clunketty-clunk. The train was slowing.
Johnno took the wallet and shoved Ben back into the seat, banging his head against the wall. Ben yelped and rubbed the back of his head.
Johnno whistled as he pulled out a bunch of twenty dollar notes, passing them to the youth with the weasel face. He pulled out the cards from a side pocket of the wallet and flicked through them.
Screech. The train stopped.
‘Come on, Johnno, let’s get off here,’ said weasel.
‘Alright. Be there in a sec.’
Johnno held up one the cards and read from it: ‘Benjamin Cohen, Solicitor. Jewish are ya?’
Ben looked into the pale eyes and nodded.
Johnno held out the wallet. As Ben leant forward to take it, Johnno punched him in the face, rocking his head back and sending a jolt of pain through his body. He heard footsteps of the youths as they got off the train. They ran alongside the train laughing and hurling abuse at him as it left the station.
Blood poured from his nose onto his white shirt. His vision was blurry and his head throbbed. He barely remembered where he was or what he was doing.
Clunketty-clunk, clunketty-clunk.
As the train picked up speed he vomited again.
* * * *
In the bathroom of his semi-detached cottage Ben examined himself in the mirror. Dark blood was caked in his nostril and down his face. A bruise forming under his eye. A shiner! His freshly ironed shirt from the morning had blood and smudged ash all over it. He felt his nose and although tender he didn’t think it was broken. Turning to the sink he washed the night’s grime off his face, the water running a rusty red before eventually turning clear. He tossed his dirty clothes into his laundry basket and cleaned his teeth and went to his bedroom. He retrieved his pyjamas from under his pillow and pulled back the bedspread and blankets of the neatly made bed and sat on the edge of it.
Zoe, his fox terrier was barking outside. Ben stood up and unlatched the sash window and struggled with the wooden frame, squeaking in its runners as he lifted it up a few inches. He put his face to the fly screen at the bottom of the window and whistled. Zoe quietened down. It was beginning to rain. Well, at least I won’t have to water the garden tomorrow.
He got into bed and said his prayers. He flicked off the bedside lamp and listened in the darkness to the rain falling on the corrugated roof of the verandah.
Clunketty-clunk. He closed his eyes and straightaway had a dream.
* * * *
Clunketty-clunk, clunketty-clunk.
He was on a train. A different one. A different time. More crowded. He was famished and his mouth was parched with thirst. The cattle wagon they were traveling in had no windows, only a security grille that a guard looked through and spat at them every now and then.
The place stunk. The contents of the solitary wooden bucket in the corner had overflown long ago. Piss and shit sloshed across the floor with every roll and bump.
Light crept in through gaps in the wooden walls and ceiling cracks. Looking up through one of the cracks he could see a dull cloudy day outside. A man crammed in close beside him vomited green bile over the floor and his ragged shoes. Ben forced his way past the people to the bucket. He choked when he looked at it but pissed in it anyway, a stream of urine flowing across the floor. Nobody seemed to care any more that the entire floor was sticky. A family group sitting huddled on the floor stared at him unblinkingly, their small daughter pulling herself tightly into her mother’s arms.
Ben noticed an old man slumped on the floor. Another man kneeling over him lifted up his chin then checked his pulse. He shook his head and said, ‘Poor Mr Friedmann, he was a good man.’
Ben made his way back to the corner of the carriage to where his younger brother Eli was leaning half-dozing against the wall. It tore at his heart to see Eli’s normally wavy hair lank, his rosy cheeks drained of their colour. When they had stopped the previous night while Allied bombers droned overhead Eli had sat down crying for mother.
‘Eli, you have to be strong. Stick to me and we’ll be alright,’ Ben had told him. ‘The war will be over soon. The Allied bombers are proof that the Germans are losing. You’ll be back painting nudes in art school before you know it.’
There was a screech of metal and the carriage lurched. The train slowed and came to a stop. German voices shouted outside. The carriage doors were flung open letting in a blast of frigid air.
‘Raus, Raus, Juden. Everybody out. The tracks have been bombed. We march the rest of the way to the camp. Raus! Raus!’
Ben and Eli hopped down off the train. Recent snowfalls had turned the ground to slush under their feet. In front of them was a bare hillside with a light dusting of snow, above them a claustrophobic sky of dirty grey clouds. Guards shouted at them to form up and start marching. They didn’t need much convincing as the biting wind penetrated their clothes, chilling their bones.
They marched up the hill and as they reached the crest it started to snow. Ben had always loved it when it was snowing. When they were children he and Eli would run out of the house and stand with their palms raised upwards, delighting in the feel of the wet snow landing on them.
Ben halted momentarily and held out his hand to catch the snowflakes. They landed on his hand and arm only they weren’t snowflakes. He brushed at his arm and it spread a grey smear on his coat. It was ash, and it was flying all around.
A guard called out for him to move on. Ben stepped back into line and caught up with Eli and together they came over the crest of the hill. In the distance they could see the camp. From its centre thick black smoke billowed out of a giant tapered chimney. The smoke swirled in the breeze. The wind was blowing it towards them. It brought a smell that repulsed him.
‘Ben,’ said Eli, ‘they’re burning bodies, I know it. We’re going to die here aren’t we?’ Tears were brimming in his eyes.
An SS officer called, ‘You two there. Get moving, scum.’
Ben whispered to Eli, ‘You stick with me Eli and you’ll be fine.’
The officer strode across to Ben and shouted in his face, ‘Stop talking and get back in the line.’
Ben was transfixed by the officer’s eyes that were pale and cold like a wolf’s. It sent a shiver through him.
‘Yes, yes, I’m going back. I was just talking to my brother.’
‘Shut the hell up. You want me to teach you a lesson?’ The officer’s face went red. He drew a Luger from his holster and pointed it at Ben’s head.
Ben raised his hands and waited for the shot, images of his family going through his mind.
The officer’s arm swivelled and he fired the Luger, the shot echoing across the hillside.
Eli was lying on the ground, his dead eyes staring straight up. Blood and brains and bits of skull were strewn in a red smear across the hillside.
The echo from the shot lasted a long time, as if the frigid air had frozen the sound in his head.
‘That will stop you talking to your brother. Now move on.’
He heard a dog bark somewhere on the other side of the hill. The bark grew more insistent. Ben woke up in Sydney, his heart hammering against his ribs.
* * * *
For a moment Ben lay there frozen in his bed, terrified that the dream hadn’t ended. He heard Zoe barking at the garbage trucks in the lane and relaxed a little.
Ben reached over and switched on his bedside lamp. He squinted at the harshness of the light and rubbed at the back of his eyelids with upturned palms. There was something he needed to do. He got up and grabbed the chair from his desk and positioned it near the wardrobe. Standing on the chair, he reached up into the top cupboard and pulled out various objects – scraps of paper, manila folders, tins of coins. Annoyed, he pulled at a heavy shoebox and tossed it onto the floor, sending its contents across the floor. He started pulling at things and tossing them onto the floor. Ben tapped loudly with his hand and eventually right at the back of the cupboard his hand felt what he was looking for.
Ben pulled out the old faded leather satchel and sat down on the bed with it. Such a long time had passed since he last looked at it he felt queasy again. He blew off the dust and searched its contents.
At the very back of the satchel, where most people would have put important papers, he felt the thick piece of card and removed it and held it on his upturned palm.
It was a photograph. Mr Steinmann, one of their neighbours, had taken the photo out the front of their house, late 1938. Papa was standing there smiling proudly, his arm around Mama’s shoulders. Ben saw himself standing there, trying to look assured – he never thought of himself as being photogenic. On Papa’s left with the dark wavy hair and cherub like face was Eli, staring down the camera with his serious eyes.
Ben slowly traced his finger over Eli’s face then cursed when a tear fell onto the photo. It was while he was blowing the damp spot on the photo that he saw it for the first time. There. On Eli’s shoulder. The first snowflake of winter.
Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash
