Gawenda my father

This Rocky and Gawenda  serial–for that’s how I have come to regard it– which has a beginning but as far as I know, has no middle or end,  is written with no readers in mind. After 40 years in journalism, that is a relief and  a liberation. My children, however, remind me that I have a regular readership of  at least two.  My son has written a  response to Long pants, Elvis and the dogs of childhood.  

By Chasky Gawenda

Last night I dropped in to Gawenda’s house after work. The porch was dark and the cool evening was silently fading, preparing itself for another cold, misty Melbourne night. I turned the key slowly, as quietly as I possibly could and carefully turned the door handle, which creaked ever so slightly. But it was enough. From inside the house I heard the scrambling of feet, little nailed paws on the floor boards getting louder and louder as he raced down the hallway and then, bang, there he was, on the other side of the door, scratching and whimpering in desperation. I hardly ever succeed in getting inside without Rocky hearing me, although it has happened a couple of times. The look on his face when I sneak up on him is priceless – a mixture of surprise and excitement and, I think, amazement that I managed to get in without him hearing. And then comes the onslaught, the wild joy expressed in repeated sprints up and down the hallway punctuated by great leaps and then the frantic little hind legged dance as he strives for my affection. I’m told he does this, in varying degrees, with every visitor. I like to think I cause the wildest greetings.

 So last night I walked down the hall, holding a squirming, whimpering Rocky who was trying, as always, to lick my ear and found my parents where I often find them – my mum at the computer, reading Gawenda’s latest blog entry, and Gawenda at the stove, cooking a pasta Amatriciana, a tea towel over his shoulder, wooden spoon in hand and a look of concentration, if not anxiety, on his face in anticipation of mum’s verdict.

 Rocky only gets slightly more excited to see me than mum, although mum does express her excitement quite differently to Rocky. Gawenda, always happy to see me, was nevertheless concerned that I had distracted mum from the blog. So I sat quietly at the kitchen table. Rocky brought me his green rubber toy, his latest obsession, and waited impatiently for me to join in a game of fetch. As I sat and waited, I looked at Gawenda who, every now and then, shot a glance at mum and watched her as if willing her to understand what it was he was trying to say, to see what it was he was trying to convey.

 I looked over at the mantle piece opposite the kitchen table, where there are two blown up black and white photos. One is a photo of me and one is a photo of Gawenda. We are in our early twenties and both in the same pose – side on, turning to look at the camera – both with an uncannily similar closed lipped half smile and a soft, slightly sad look in our eyes. I’m at a music festival, some blurry trees and instruments in the background. Gawenda is at his archaic looking typewriter, fingers poised on the keys, probably at The Age where he began his writing career some 40 years ago. Apart from the undeniable resemblance, which, while it is not at all surprising, is nevertheless arresting, I find this photo of Gawenda fascinating. I find all photos of Gawenda fascinating, especially the ones of him when he was a little boy, though there are very few of them.

 There is one such photo on the shelf beside the mantle. Gawenda is about two years old. He is sitting on the lap of his sister’s husband, Henyek, a concentration camp survivor. The photo was taken in a DP camp in Austria just after the war. Gawenda has often spoken, and written, about this photo. There is so much in Henyek’s expression – I don’t know where to begin. A young man having experienced horrors, unimaginable to me and my generation, his whole family wiped out, his entire world destroyed. He seems to stare past the camera lens, past you who is looking at the photo, his stare seems to pierce time and space and all that we, the fortunate ones, take for granted and believe to be real. But keep looking and you find that there is also something else there – a hint of a smile, a flicker of joy or pride. Scan across to young Gawenda, his bright eyed soft face, framed by long, curly golden locks of hair, oblivious to the darkness his family was escaping, a lopsided half smile, about to erupt into a giggle, on his mischievous face. Perhaps for Henyek, Gawenda represented new life, the possibility of happiness and innocence, something about being human that he could still be proud of.

 Rocky let out a bark reminding me that it was my turn to throw and mum, who is the only member of our family who attempts to discipline him, let out a low growling ‘nooooo’.  Gawenda, busying himself with the pasta sauce bubbling away on the stove top, while mum read the last few pars of his blog, asked me whether I’d be staying for dinner.

 I’ve often thought that taking a photo is a bit like cheating nature. We humans are good at that, playing God. Moments become forever frozen in time, and in a way, we gain access to memories that are not ours. I looked from Gawenda to the photo of him at his typewriter and then shifted my gaze to the two year old Gawenda on Henyek’s lap and I tried to merge the three. How could it be that all three of them were my father? Many people never know their father. Not properly. I think, no matter what, there are always parts of a father that are unknowable to a son, and vice versa.

 Lately, Gawenda has been writing a lot about Bono Wiener. I remember Bono. Occasionally, out of the blue, he would show up at our door with a bottle of whiskey and a handful of foreign currency for me. Although I learnt Yiddish at school and could communicate with my Yiddish speaking aunts and uncles, I could never understand a word Bono said to me. He spoke in a thick Lodz accent, the words tumbling out of his mouth in unintelligible avalanches of Yiddish. But he was a warm man, his eyes were always smiling. One could not help but like him.

 I would fall asleep to the muffled sounds of Bono and Gawenda talking in the lounge room. There is something about listening to your parents talking when you’re a kid, something both intriguing and comforting. I remember listening to their conversations and although I didn’t understand them, I was nevertheless fascinated – what was it that they had so much to talk about? They would pour each other glasses of whiskey and Gawenda would sit and listen to Bono as he talked and talked, Gawenda looking serious and contemplative, his hand across his mouth as it often is when he is deep in thought.

 Now, some fifteen or twenty years later, I read about Bono over my morning soy cappuccino in the latest Rocky and Gawenda post, about what Bono meant to the Labor Party, to the Bund, to Melbourne Jewry and most of all to Gawenda. I sit with my morning coffee and I read about parts of Gawenda I never knew existed.

 Rocky gave up on the game of fetch. He settled for a chewing session and as he often does, he placed his two front paws on my foot, the green toy between his paws and began working away at it, looking up at me now and then, perhaps as a little brother keeps an eye on his big brother to see what he’ll do next.

 When I brought Rocky home to my parents that day almost a year and half ago now, I could never have imagined that he would be the key to parts of my father I might never have known otherwise. In his last blog, Gawenda wrote about the morning his mother died. I of course never met my grandmother as she died when Gawenda was 11. I never met my grandfather either and although I heard stories about them from my aunties and uncles I don’t know much about them. I carry my late Grandfather’s name, Chaskiel, as is the Jewish tradition. I remember the first time I visited his grave as a child and my name was carved into the headstone. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was strange but not entirely morbid. I carry more than just his name.

 Gawenda didn’t say much about the morning his mother passed away. But in the things he said, and in all that he didn’t say, I found yet another side of Gawenda. The boy who lost his mother. The boy who refused to help her, as little boys do, the night before she passed away. The boy who climbed into bed with his mother because, who knows, he was scared or cold or just wanted to be close to her, as little boys do. As I stare at the photo of Gawenda when he was a little boy and grapple with the concept that the little boy in the photo is my father, I fix my inward eye upon that little boy who lost his mother and try to understand what that would have meant and how much of who he is now is a result of that and how it’s possible that he never told me before about that moment, when he woke to his father screaming his mother’s name.

 These things are not the first I’ve read about Gawenda’s past, about his life before and apart from me and my sister and my mum. He’s a writer and always has been and Gawenda the writer is someone I’ve come to know well. Gawenda the writer and Gawenda my father are not the same person and yet I’ve learnt over the years to live with them both and reconcile the two.

 But Rocky and Gawenda has revealed parts of him that I have never come across. And it is often the small things that kill me. Like when Gawenda, on one of his first assignments as a reporter, sat next to legendary ABC reporter Harry the Horse, who whispered in his ear to take notes when he took notes and then, by the sound of things, taught him a thing or two about drinking as well. Or Gawenda the kid who longed for a pair of long pants and wished he was Elvis Presley, because he’d never had a pair of anything except grey shorts and he was a poor refugee, not a rock ‘n’ roll star. Or Gawenda the little boy who sat on the roof watching the prostitutes and the hatchet wielding woman and the brawling drunks in 1950’s Fitzroy.

 Even Gawenda the old guy in shorts and a T Shirt, who walks alone along St Kilda Beach, his dog frolicking along the shore line, the old grey haired guy who notices the way in which the sunrise lights up the tops of the city buildings and the graceful and magical way in which the black swans glide across the water, and the beauty and stillness of a morning and all of this amounts to a moment of revelation. The old guy who still seems to wonder constantly about life and time and memories and right and wrong and the meaning of the whole goddamn thing.

 Gawenda – my father.

 Rocky let out a low growl. Then suddenly he was up and racing to the front door. My sister had arrived and by the sound of things, Rocky was greeting her every bit as wildly as he’d greeted me. Mum finished reading the blog. The smile on her face told the story but, still, Gawenda asked if it was any good or a load of rubbish.

 No Gawenda, it’s not a load of rubbish.

 It’s where I come from.