Sunrise West (27 page)

Like many other Jews in prewar Poland — who were not permitted to enter state high schools, universities or the public service, even at the lowest level — Nahum was seduced into the arms of Communism. He had no problem reconciling the Talmud with twentieth-century socialist revelation, and soon began to ruminate over Marx's teachings in the tones of his own homely chassidic chant. He was proud of this synthesis of an ancient heritage with his new political horizons, for he knew that while it was possible to change one's ideology and one's language, the
music
one inherited from home would never cease to resonate in the soul.

But this is not the essence of the story. What is truly extraordinary about Nahum Kafewicz is that he became Hitler's private tailor!

A Jewish Communist as the Führer's clothier? It sounds bizarre, I know. Well, that in effect was what he became. Because even if this occurred by proxy, and anonymously, the basic reality is the same. Nahum became the third point of a sartorial triangle, the other two being a German tailor (let us call him Klaus) and the latter's clientele. Klaus took the measurements and did the fittings, and Nahum carried out the tailoring and completion of the garments. Klaus — a
canny, balding, anaemic, morose-looking chap with short swift-moving arms and fleshy boiled-sausage fingers — had discovered Nahum by accident, but he quickly became aware that, by comparison with Nahum's skills, he himself was not even an apprentice.

A workshop was established outside the ghetto. Nahum's customers, whom he never saw, belonged to the highest and cruellest echelons of the Nazi hierarchy. In the wake of the failed attempt on Hitler's life in 1944, all the uniforms and other garments torn or damaged in that explosion fell into Nahum's hands. The thugs praised Klaus for his excellent work.

But it appears that even before that, in January 1944, Hitler's most trusted lieutenant, Martin Bormann, had spotted a new uniform worn by Eva Braun's brother-in-law during a gathering at Berchtesgaden. He summoned Klaus promptly to his headquarters. The tailor feared the worst, but to his enormous relief Bormann instead entrusted him with a length of coffee-coloured gabardine and directed him to take the Führer's measurements. Klaus was elated. Back at the workshop he handed over the material to Nahum — reverently, as if handling a holy talisman — and then whispered in his ear: ‘Follow the instructions, then destroy them.'

When I heard this story, I found a vicious satisfaction in giving free rein to my fantasy by ‘imagining' Nahum's secret brief.
Jacket: three shoulder-pads on left shoulder, one only on right. Extra-stiff canvas to build up sunken chest, double calico between lining and sleeve fabric to hide the flab. Trousers not to be cut too baggy; omit the usual 5 mm for private parts
... Then, I fancied,
Klaus might well have added:
Make him look like a Caesar.
In other words, transform a sardine into a leviathan.

After Klaus had successfully discharged his mission, he began to rely more and more on his Jewish ‘assistant' because he knew that Nahum was the finest craftsman in the land. When the Germans finally pulled back from Warsaw they took Nahum with them, hoping there would still be another chance to make supermen out of cripples. But the war had turned; now, every general wanted to pass for a miserable private. Nahum was placed in a camp somewhere in Austria, from which he was liberated in the early days of May 1945 by two American Jewish paratroopers, with one of whom he would remain in contact for the rest of his life.

 

 
Clothiers
 

It was almost immoral for a clothier not to take his morning break in the Tango coffee shop in Flinders Lane, at the heart of Australia's
haute couture
. On my third visit I had the good luck to encounter a man whose voice I heard before he emerged from a haze of cigar smoke. ‘You must be new,' he said. ‘So what are you having, white? — or just black, like me?'

He didn't give me a chance to answer. ‘This is a marvellous place, my friend. You may not realize, but you've just entered Melbourne's sartorial bazaar. Here, my boy, if you watch with your ears, you can pick up the quixotic whisper of a swift silver needle, the golden gossip of a rising Midas, the sigh of a sucker gone to the wall...'

And so, between a sip and a sip, a wink and a hint, I learnt that in this establishment, Albert — clothier, manufacturer, fashion designer — was like an all-knowing sage. He was in his mid-forties, tall, effervescent, not ugly but certainly not handsome, with ginger eyebrows and moustache, and yolky hair slightly balding at the top. He sat as if posing for a painter, his unbuttoned camel coat revealing a brown suit and a green silk cravat, while the manicured little finger of his left hand was adorned with a chunky ring. From his language, his wit and his manner I conjectured that he must be a bohemian-turned-businessman. What attracted me was his sense of humour and, as I soon discovered, his ability to laugh at himself.

‘Fashion people,' he told me once, ‘whether men or women, are divided into three categories. The first sleep with their buyer — this, my friend, is the aristocracy and against them there's no hope of competing. The second entertain the models — they have a great time, but finish up as beggars. And the third are the puritans — they are the bribers.

‘I have done well, my friend,' he went on in his deep, resonant voice, ‘in fact, very well. And do you know why? Because I worked on all three fronts. But to follow my example, one must be an artist, a clown — and clowns, my boy, make everyone laugh but themselves. So devise a smoother way for yourself than mine, and you'll be a happy man.'

Needless to say, from our very first encounter Albert became my coffee companion. The moment the arms of the factory clock pointed to 10 a.m. I was off to meet with this witty new acquaintance.

‘I can tell you,' Albert confided during one of our early get-togethers, ‘some of the people who frequent this coffee shop could be world-famous magicians. Anyone who can't make warm buttered rolls from frozen snow, so to speak, is wasting his time in the rag trade. You see that man over there, hunched over a fashion magazine full of ladies' swim-wear? His name is Laurence. He may give you the impression that he's reading, but he's not. He's actually undressing each girl on every page. He touches their breasts and private parts, makes them promises, invites them to bed and has a ball. Walter Mitty type, if you know what I mean.

‘Before he arrived in this country Laurence was a lawyer, but here they wouldn't let him practise his profession. So he became a milkbar owner, and then a clothing manufacturer. I must say he did quite well, though of course he didn't have a clue about the fashion industry. Future scholars will be amazed at how former lawyers, architects and doctors became the foremost clothiers in Australia, while the true tailors eked out a living behind their dusty sewing-machines.'

And Albert proceeded to tell me the later history of the fellow in question. ‘Laurence was quite smart and did rather well, as I said. But who's to know why a man who has a sweet wife and a fine little boy, and has bought a nice house in the suburbs, would start entertaining a young girl — one of his models, an innocent, willowy blonde fresh from modelling school?' Here Albert grew pensive and scanned the smokefilled void. ‘Yes, my boy, innocence has been the cause of many a tragedy. Smart Laurence lost his head, took Innocence interstate, wined and dined her, till finally she opened.'

‘Did his wife ever find out?'

‘Of course. She took their boy, their house and his money, and left. As for the blonde — she soon found someone else to tango with.'

 

 
My Husband's Son
 

The clothing industry was permeated with a myriad of interesting characters. Kurt Timber was a man of medium build, with eyes like bullet holes and a scalp like a polished mirror. He had made a miraculous escape from the land that, for twelve years, was absent from the map of civilization, and arrived in Melbourne at a time when peace had hypothetically been granted a place around the table of the family of nations.

His background was in business, and no sooner had he sniffed out the possibilities of the moment than he opened a small ladieswear shop in Collingwood. His wife Dora, a stout, wise and good-hearted woman with a pleasing manner, helped Kurt to build up his ‘Emporium', but his ambitions reached far beyond Collingwood: he dreamt of establishing himself in Footscray, Moonee Ponds, Bendigo, Ballarat, and other working-class areas, upholding an old bourgeois maxim:
Work with the poor, and you'll drink with the rich
. Needless to say, this burning desire to climb to the apex of his trade gave him sleepless nights; maybe as a diversion, or perhaps as a means of lulling himself to sleep, he fathered three boys.

Kurt, opinionated and cocksure, was only an outwardly happy man. My link with him was commercial, yet between a word and a word I realized that he was not too fond of family life. Possibly his natural urges had trapped him into a marriage he soon regretted. He once asked me if I was married, and without waiting for my answer observed that family wasn't everything, that a man should aspire to shine in society.

One had to admit that Kurt knew exactly what to buy and what not to touch. Consequently his enterprise grew from month to month until finally it became an enormous success. This prosperity must have proved too much for Dora to handle, so after consulting with her husband and securing his approval she became a full-time housewife and mother to their three toddlers. As a result of Dora's withdrawal, Laura, a popular 25-year-old salesgirl, took her place as manageress. She was a modest young woman, with a pallid face that belied a pair of dark, almost beckoning eyes, and a light coquettish walk that made her behind wiggle provocatively.

Although Kurt had a razor-sharp mind, he somehow kept forgetting to settle his accounts. One had to send him reminders, and eventually turn up at his shop — though in the end everybody was paid, for Kurt was no swindler. But because his business had grown so formidable, he was always short of cash. Besides, despite now having outlets all over Melbourne, he insisted (doubtless for superstitious reasons) on retaining his original Collingwood shop as his central office.