of her being. I was born and bred in Sydney, but my hair is a little too curly and my skin a little too dark to escape the question: where are you really from? My grandmother likes to tease me that there may be some Gypsy blood somewhere in the mix (on the other side, of course), but really it’s Hungarian Jews all the way back.
I stare at the faces around me, a sea of oversized sunglasses in an assortment of kitsch. I can imagine what lies behind those gaudy imitation Chanels and diamante-studded goggles: sweaty, over plucked eyebrows and mediocre facelifts. Behind those, there are memories of similar lists of dates and countries, wars and revolutions, immigration and reinvention. It’s their story, too.
But I know it’s not the only one.
So I wait for the eulogy to end, for the crowd to meander lazily into the hall a few metres away for much-needed drinks and not-so-needed nosh because I know that’s where the other stories are told. The real stories come out little by little after the second scotch, between spoonfuls of chocolate torte and mouthfuls of air kisses.
They are what I’m here for.
The ones about how he regularly visited a certain infamous Surry Hills brothel and how he once charged his own brother interest for a gambling loan. I’m here to listen to the way they talk about his dreadful singing voice and how they call him “simple”, always after carefully looking left and right, and always in a whisper. The real Frankie Symonds stories.
“I went to school with his second wife, you know. What a disaster!”
We don’t join in because of my grandmother’s sudden bout of selective mutism, and we waddle around arm in arm listening in to the various adjuncts to the rabbi’s eulogy. Occasionally a friendly hand squeezes hers or an understanding smile salutes us with a knowing tilt of the head. She responds silently, stoically, as sympathetically as she can muster, and we move on to the next group.
“Well, you know he came to the café several times a week. I tell you, never a tip! Imagine, not a penny! And you want to know why?” – followed by something in Hungarian.
My grandmother punctuates every overheard comment with a disapproving humph but never explains what is said.
“That must be her granddaughter, Lily … so skinny and still not married. Imagine!”
I cringe.
“Frankie never liked him, you know, he told me mindig csak az adóján.”
“Well, she just went and quit her studies. Just like that. What a story!” And then something else in Hungarian.
Humph.
But I don’t speak Hungarian.
When I was ten years old, I asked my grandmother to teach me Hungarian.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she replied, irritated.
I went to my mother.
“Teach me Hungarian,” I said, full of the naïveté that I was told is reserved only for children and peasants.
Mama didn’t even look up from her novel.
“Don’t be an idiot, Lily,” she replied, irritated.
It’s the only time I remember my grandmother and Mama agreeing on anything.
“You know Hungarian is impossible to learn.”
I had heard it all before: Hungarian is impossible to learn, and Hungarians themselves are impossible to talk to. Hungarians, Mama would explain, are the worst. For Mama, Hungarian is the language of idiots and bigots, all of whom hate the Jews more than anyone else. It is the language of obsessions, complexes, and ridiculous Old World superstitions that had made her feel afraid and guilty and ashamed in the New World, and the language of smelly homemade lunch boxes that had made her Australian classmates not want to sit next to her in the playground. For me, Hungarian is the language of family secrets. It is the language of surprise visits and anticipated presents, the language of family controversy and conspiracy theories. Hungarian holds the reason Mama and my grandmother hate each other and the endings of the sentences I can never understand.
“Let’s go,” I whisper to my grandmother as she shamelessly stuffs an assortment of cookies into her handbag. “I have to get to the gallery.” Since I quit my promising career as a medical student a month ago, I’ve been working part-time at an art gallery on Danks Street, hoping to earn a few dollars as I embark on the not so promising career of a painter.
Humph.
I try to drag her away from the buffet table. Not far to go to the door: three more rumours and two more humiliations and we are there.
And that’s when I hear it. It’s loud and rough and throaty. I turn to see an elderly woman consoling Frankie’s son.
“Don’t be an idiot, daahrlink,” she tells him.
About the same vintage as my grandmother, she looks outrageous squeezed into an elegant designer suit several sizes too small, a dead animal draped over her shoulders and a mass of teased hair. I recognise her face, but I’m not sure from where. She could be a relative. Maybe a distant relative. Definitely another Hungarian. I watch her pour two whiskies and sit down.
“Vot a bloody mess!” she booms.
It’s the voice. I know that voice. It carries me straight back to the rummy table from my childhood home in Reina Street. It’s then I realise I once loved her. Her tone of voice takes me to a safe place, the smell of stale smoke on the green felt table cloth, the long, red fingernails with manicured half-moons clutching a glass of medicine, the coolness of beads on my back as I watch the game from her lap.
I motion to my grandmother. “Look,” I tell her. “She’s here.”
My grandmother growls and tenses and vigorously pulls me towards the door.
I suddenly know where it was I last saw her: in an old family photo album. She had been an integral part of our story, like Mama and Papa and my grandmother and then all of a sudden, about halfway through that light blue album, she disappeared from the pages and from my memory. I haven’t seen her since. I haven’t heard about her since, at least not in English, anyway.
I can still hear her from the doorway.
“Was that her Lily I saw with her? I didn’t think she’d be so skinny, but I always knew …” and then something in Hungarian.
Humph. “Idiot,” my grandmother says. She is supposed to be mute today, but she just can’t help herself. I look around to see if anyone has noticed, but it doesn’t matter anymore. We are almost at the car.
My grandmother is visibly agitated but insists on driving me to work. As we step into her beat-up ’82 Datsun, I wonder whether this is the time the car finally breaks down for good. All the way to the gallery, my grandmother swears even more than usual at the broken air-conditioning and the anti-Semitic traffic lights. I hear murmurings of “what a bloody nerve” and something else in Hungarian. “I’m awfully mad,” she keeps saying, over and over again. That’s my grandmother: she is never just regularly mad. It always has to be awful too.
I have a busy few hours at work,
