Cafe Scheherazade (2 page)

This is a tale of many cities: each one consumed by the momentum of history. Each one recalled at a table in a cafe called Scheherazade, in a seaside suburb that sprawls upon the very ends of the earth, within a city that contains the traces of many cities.

Such as Odessa. The new Odessa is a stroll from Scheherazade. Masha alerts me to the fact. Compared to Avram, she is more firmly attuned to the present. She exudes an intense curiosity. It can be seen in the distinct lines that criss-cross her face. It can be deduced from her quick, deliberate steps. It can be seen in the neatly cut suits she wears. It can be sensed from her bearing, so upright and proud. It can be heard in her English, which is refined, if somewhat accented. And it can be inferred from her observations, her sharp retorts, the remarks she inserts into Avram's monologues.

Yes, the new Odessa is a mere stroll away, Masha tells me. Make your way into Acland Street. Turn left by the Indian takeaway into Shakespeare Grove. Walk past the gaping mouth of the moon, patron saint of Luna Park, past the screams of revellers clinging to the evening skies as they career, at breakneck speeds, on the roller-coaster ride. Cross the car-choked Esplanade to the palm trees that line the foreshore, and proceed to the beachfront, accompanied by the soothing aroma of sea breezes.

It is here that they congregate, the Russian emigres of the 1990s, the latest wave of wanderers in search of a haven from a troubled past. They lie on the soft sands of their new world, and remember old Odessa, its dockyards and palaces, its courtyards filled with washing flapping on makeshift lines, its noise-ridden workshops and cafes, and the melody of tenement children at play.

They stroll the St Kilda foreshore and pier, and recall the Odessa waterfront, its run-down eating houses, its rickety warehouses and loading ramps, its wharves and marinas, crowded with ferries that once conveyed them into the Black Sea on weekend cruises. They glance at the bay, and are reminded of the turquoise waters of their receding pasts. And when night descends they stroll to Scheherazade for a bowl of apple compote, a bite of almond torte, and recall bands performing in park rotundas, evenings at state theatres which resembled Turkish castles, and nights at the Odessa Opera where orchestras accompanied the singers of a dying empire.

And, just as nostalgia threatens to overwhelm them, they recali the one-room apartments in which they perspired on summer nights, the slow-moving queues for rationed supplies, and the sub-zero winters during which they stumbled out into damp courtyards smelling of urine and sweat, to relieve themselves in communal latrines choked with the waste of many families.

So their Odessa may not have been very different from the city in which Etta Stock arrived in the year 1900. Tartars strolled in black fezzes alongside Turks in tight-bound turbans. Jews en route to the Holy Land and Muslims on their once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca prayed in its synagogues and mosques. Gypsies and troubadours performed in its wine cellars and bars. From its boulevards ships could be seen emerging from the fog, bearing merchandise from distant lands; while at night, drunken sailors, mumbling in disparate tongues, stalked the alleys in search of brothels and gaming dens, and conspirators gathered in concealed meeting places to plot the overthrow of the Tsar.

In Odessa, Etta studied nursing. To pay for her studies she worked in a factory where she was drawn into a cell of the Russian socialist movement. She became obsessed with saving the world. She marched in demonstrations under the cold gaze of gendarmes. She distributed illicit pamphlets and newspapers, and travelled to neighbouring villages on covert missions. She sat on committees that argued over strategy until the dawn light sponged the skies. And she worked in an underground printing press in the city of Kishinev alongside the young Joseph Stalin.

At least, this is what Avram claims. It is a family legend which he loves to recount, one of the many anecdotes which inflate his pride.

‘You see? My family is part of history!' he exclaims. ‘You see? My mother was a rebel, a daring fighter, a woman of the world!'

Another night has flown. The neon sign over the entrance blinks Scheherazade in rounds of lilac, blue and rose. Proprietors are drawing the shutters over their stores. The last customers are stumbling out through Scheherazade's doors.

‘Martin, I warned you,' says Masha. ‘This is a story without end.'

But by now I am entranced. I may have been drawn here as a journalist in search of an intriguing tale, but this is far greater than a column, a life story at a glance. There are moments when I no longer know where I am. Time extends beyond time and I return the next night as if lured by a recurring dream.

Scheherazade is crowded with theatregoers and lonely men sipping tea. Two powdered streetwalkers eat toasted cheese on rye. A medical student reads
Gray's Anatomy
over a bowl of chicken soup. Waitresses run from the kitchen balancing trays laden with steaming meals.

So take your time. Sit down at our table. Break bread. Share our bottle of red. Observe the white-haired storyteller Avram, his hands in motion, his voice straining to maintain its vigour, his ample eyebrows darting up and down as he proclaims that the century truly began in 1905, with frenzied young men and women careering through the streets of Tsarist Russia screaming: ‘
Daloi Nikolai! Daloi Nikolai!
Down with Tsar Nicholas! Down with Tsar Nicholas!'

Avram is precise in his knowledge of historical details and dates, but whenever I am in doubt I retreat to libraries to fill in the gaps. I have been drawn into the hunt. I am engaged in reconstructing other times, other worlds.

On 9 January, in an incident that was to become known as Bloody Sunday, a procession of workers converged upon the winter palace in St Petersburg. They marched, two hundred thousand strong, bearing icons and portraits of the Tsar. They trudged through the snow, in search of an audience with their
Batyushka
, their revered Father, the emperor of all the Russias. They surged into the palace square, unarmed, singing anthems, led by a rebellious priest.

A cordon of troops barred their way. Horses strained at the bit. A sudden hail of bullets rent the crisp winter air. In their thousands the marchers ran, from the frenzied charge of cavalry. In panic they fled, from the batons and bayonets of militiamen. In their hundreds they fell, under the hooves of crazed horses, in a tangle of chaos and fear. The bloodstained corpses of men, women and children lay in the snow. Bullet-riddled images of the Tsar were scattered over the square. The social fabric was in tatters, countless lives torn to shreds. And never again would those who marched trust their
Batyushka
.

The spirit of rebellion spread. A year of revolution engulfed the land. In February, Grand Duke Sergei, the Tsar's Moscow envoy, was assassinated in his carriage, as he drove through the Kremlin gates. Peasants turned on their masters and seized their estates. Industrial workers closed down factories and surged out on a general strike. Soldiers mutinied in Vladivostok and Tashkent. And in June, whilst on manoeuvres in the Black Sea, the crew of the battleship
Potemkin
turned upon their officers.

The admiral in charge of the ship ordered the rebels to be shot. The firing squad refused to obey. The crew seized the squad's weapons, rushed their officers, threw some overboard, and locked the remainder in their cells. The
Potemkin
sailed into Odessa harbour flying the red flag. And on the morrow, Etta Stock, now a trained nurse, was sent on board to tend the crew, while rioting workers fought Street battles, and the city was engulfed in flames.

‘Now you understand?' exclaims a triumphant Avram. ‘My mother was a legend! A maker of history! A revolutionary! As too was my father Yankel, the son of Alter Zeleznikow the lumberjack.'

Avram speaks with obvious pride. The son recalls the father, who begets the grandfather, and Alter Zeleznikow is reborn.

In the early years of this century, Alter would stand astride a flotilla of logs, which he guided along the River Pina from the city of Pinsk to the confluence of the River Dnieper. Hundreds of kilometres south he floated, upon the Dnieper's fast-flowing currents. On the banks hovered cathedrals with onion-shaped domes. In nearby fields huddled villages graced with that chroofed homes. In the distance loomed solitary farmhouses hewn out of stone, as the flotilla drifted downstream towards the Black Sea coast.

‘Avramel,' interjects Masha. ‘You are straying again. We will never reach the end of it!'

Masha moves from language to language with ease. She speaks Yiddish to Avram, addresses the waiters in Polish, consults the cafe-manager in Russian, greets her new guests in English, and converses with her friends in a fluid mixture of all four. As for the cabbage soup steaming in front of me, it is based on a recipe Masha gleaned from her mother.

‘In Poland I would never have believed that one day I would be recreating my mother's dishes in a restaurant called Scheherazade,' she muses. ‘I never imagined that one day I would cook for a living. Or that I would become a restaurateur. I always thought I would be a doctor. A professional. I studied medicine for three years. I studied medicine until the day I was forced to flee.'

Avram ignores Masha's comments. His mind is fixed upon the distant past like a man obsessed. He takes up the narrative where he left off, in 1905, the year of the first revolution, the year in which fifteen-year-old Yankel, Alter the lumberjack's son, was drawn into the secret cells of the Bund in Pinsk.

Yankel joined his elder brother, Shlomo, the commander of a band of vigilantes whose task it was to defend the Jewish quarters from anti-Semitic attacks. The year of rebellion was drawing to an end. The revolutionaries were a spent force. Tsarist troops crushed the lingering resistance with ruthless ease. Jews were singled out as ‘enemies of Christ' and fomenters of civil unrest. Another wave of pogroms engulfed the townlets of White Russia and the Ukraine.

Uncle Shlomo fled for his life across a succession of borders to the port of Marseilles and, weeks later, sailed into New York harbour. He gazed with longing at the Statue of Liberty, stared in awe at the city's skyline, negotiated his way through the turnstiles of Ellis Island, and emerged into the crowded streets of the Lower East Side, where a job in a run-down sweatshop set him on the road to wealth and pride.

As for Yankel, he could flee only as far as the outskirts of Pinsk, where he took refuge in a hideout, a forest retreat. And waited, marking time, as he prepared for the next swelling of the revolutionary tide.

I glance round the cafe. A waitress tends the late-night guests. She is middle-aged, dressed in a black mini-skirt, black stockings, and a white blouse. Her perfume hovers in the air as she hurries by. A couple, bound within an aura of intimacy, gaze into each other's eyes. Several old men are ebbing towards sleep. A young man sits alone, and reads
A Treatise on Boredom
. He bites into a slice of cheesecake, washes it down with coffee, and all the while he is engrossed in his treatise on boredom.

I glance back at the ever-present Masha. On the table stand our stale teas, and half-eaten pastries.

‘It is a miracle how couples meet,' Avram says, as if awakening from a trance. ‘We are the children of accidents. Of random encounters. Take Yankel and Etta. It is a marvel how they met.'

Avram pours another glass of red. Pauses. And resumes his chronicle in 1908, the year in which Etta Stock journeyed on a mission, 250 kilometres north, from her native Tulchin to Berdichev: a city celebrated for its cantors and scribes, Hasidic dynasties and spiritual guides. A city where biblical Hebrew flowed from eighty prayer houses, the enduring language of a wandering tribe. A city where Yiddish coursed through the courtyards and market places, and emerged as the language of daily life. A city of trade workers and hired labour, where the Bund was able to regroup after the debacle of 1905.

Etta approached the seasoned leaders of the Berdichev Bund. She required their support in her efforts to kindle the flame of revolution back home in Tulchin. In response to Etta's request the party sent Yankel Zeleznikow. A good ten years younger than Etta, at eighteen Yankel was already a seasoned cadre and union organiser. In Tulchin Yankel boarded with Etta's family. In time, they became lovers. And by 1910 Etta was expecting a child.

Avram tells the tale matter-of-factly. And he is moving fast. I would like to know more about the romance. But Avram is concerned with data, with documenting his parents' heroic deeds in the erratic ebb and flow of history; and he is well prepared for the task. He reaches into his satchel. He covers the table with pamphlets and letters, journals and books, and photocopies of the Yiddish
Folkszeitung
, the Bund newspaper, announcing the marriage of party comrades Yankel Zeleznikow and Etta Stock.

Neither marriage nor pregnancy slowed the pace of the couple's work for a revolution they believed was pre-ordained. Yankel resumed his activity in the factories of the Ukraine. He urged workers to strike for better conditions, higher pay. One strike veered out of control; a gendarme was killed. The factory owner accused Yankel of the crime. Yankel was arrested and imprisoned in Pinsk. Etta was imprisoned in the nearby city of Kobrin; and it was in prison that their first child, a daughter named Basia, was born.

Avram points to the letters. He extracts a yellowing page. The Hebraic script, penned by Yankel in a prison cell, within days of his arrest, is all but impossible to comprehend.

The letter is addressed to his brother Shlomo in New York. Avram knows the contents well. Yankel agonises over his predicament. Should a revolutionary rear a family? he asks. When would I have time for a child? For the care and love she needs? And how will the family survive now that I have been sentenced to fifteen years labour so far removed from home?

Etta was released from prison after serving six months; but Yankel was exiled to a Siberian work camp near the city of Irkutsk, on the shores of Lake Baikal. In winter it glistened white, a boundless sheet of compressed ice. In spring it melted into an inland sea of billowing snow. In summer the horizon linked lake and sky in one seamless vista of bleached blues. In the autumn, cold winds heralded another season of stagnant twilights and gale-swept nights.