One of the stories that inspired the novel Homeland. 3rd Prize Winner Judah Waten Short Story Competition, and published in literary magazine Southerly. Judge Thomas Shapcott said of the story: 'A powerful story that grows through its cumulative detail... The story in itself is quite simple: a group of now elderly Lithuanian migrant men live in a tenement in Kings Cross. Their contacts with their old culture have withered... Death is in the shadows and the dramatic highlight is in the brief disappearance of one of the group. The author handles this material, which could be treacherously sentimental, with great skill. The ending is a triumph... Last year I read other stories of this same group of migrants, clearly by the same author. If there is a whole collection, I hope they have been submitted to a major publisher.'
Of the four old men who live in the house Gus and Rom are the only two who still occasionally make the pilgrimage to
the Community House. Never singly, not any more; only together will they dare the long train ride to the western
suburbs and, worse, the return trip late in the afternoon.
It is not the tense slender Vietnamese youths they fear, but the rough hardy Australians - forty percent
unemployed in Cabramatta, the newspapers say.
Gus and Rom make sure they're back at Kings Cross Station well before dark and always seek a compartment with
middle-aged travellers or with families.
Today they sit, full of koldunai* and rich cream sauce, ensconced in the midst of a large Vietnamese family
which, Gus is hoping, will go all the way into the city.
Gus used to go regularly to the Club - with or without Rom. The national food served each Sunday was lure
enough, but a few years ago on the way home two youths beat him up and robbed him.
He shivers now, remembering - the shock and pain. He thought his last moments had come, that he'd be another
name in the weekly obituary in Musu Pastoge*, with the community shaking heads sadly : Another one gone, we're dying
off like flies.
Not that there'd be anyone really to miss him - only old Vik inconvenienced and flustered, with his fragile
English having to grapple with solicitors, arrange the funeral, transfer the house. They have willed the place so
that on the death of one, the surviving owner retains his possession and the two tenants their shelter. Only when
they are all dead does the house go to the community.
'Why did you leave it to the community?' Vitas Taurinskas demands on the now rare occasions he and Gus meet. 'In
thirty or forty years some snug little third generation committee will sell up the assets and split the take among
themselves.'
Gus does not want to believe this. 'The community won't die away; look at the Irish and the Greeks,' he
protests, but Vitas scoffs.
'You can't compare us with them. There's thousands of them, half of Australians have Irish blood, and the Greeks
are everywhere. We were only ever a few thousand; we'll just disappear and be forgotten. You've got family at home,
Gus,' Vitas says. 'you should think of them. One day you'll be able to transfer money over there.'
'It's too late now anyway. It's all arranged, and I'd never get old Vik to change it.' Gus shrugs. 'Why worry?
I'll be dead anyway, and this way at least Rom and Joe will be looked after.'
'If you had kids of your own,' Vitas invariably regrets for him.
Sometimes, Gus thinks as the train rattles along, though he and Vitas are old friends going back to the German
camps, sometimes he's glad he sees Vitas only occasionally. Vitas and his wife both tend to delve too much into the
past, into mistakes made and opportunities missed.
'Remember those girls from Tasmania?' Beryl always asks. 'Liz and Kathy. The pretty one, Kathy, was really keen
on you, Gus.'
'Good Catholic girls, too,' Vitas teases. He knows Gus still goes to mass occasionally.
'That's nearly forty years ago', Gus mumbles, wishing they would forget it; but cannot forget himself.
The girls worked in the same office as Beryl; Gus and Pran were tenants in the house that Taurinskiai had
recently bought. Several times Beryl brought the girls home to dinner or for parties and Gus was attracted to Kathy.
He can still picture her : pretty, as Beryl says, fluffy-haired, a little shy.
'The boys are mad on racing,' Beryl informed the girls over dinner. 'Why don't we all go? You and Frank can show
us the ropes, Gus.'
Twice they went to Eagle Farm, and celebrated their wins with dinner at Mama Luigi's .
'See how lucky you are when you go with the girls?' Beryl needles Gus, as they shovel spaghetti.
'Kathy really likes you,' Beryl persists, back home.
'I bet she's a virgin too,' Vitas suggests slyly; but Kathy's virginity was in fact part of the problem.
A good Catholic virgin meant commitment, and Gus was still committed elsewhere: to the lakes and sacred forests,
to the rolling Baltic dunes and the black and white of winter and the translucent green of spring and summer...
'I'm just rubbish here. How can I marry?' he demands.
'What a thing to say!' Beryl protests. 'Rubbish! Kathy says you're the most perfect gentleman she's ever met.'
'I've got nothing and no prospects.' Gus turns away. Can't Beryl realise why he gambles?
'You'd work together,' Beryl pleads. 'Like Vitas and me. Have children and everything.' She is chunkily
pregnant.
While Gus was still pondering the possibilities, Kathy and Liz went home to Tasmania. Beryl was growing rounder
by the day and Gus and Pranas were unnerved by the thought of all that coming domesticity.
'There'll be more Lithuanian women in Sydney,' Gus hoped. But the government had brought few women, had not
considered that side of their lives, and here he was forty years later, alone. And Pran, even worse, immobile for
years from a stroke, stuck in a nursing home out at Parramatta.
During the contract times, despite all the heavy work, it was not so bad, Gus muses. At least they were all more
or less in the same boat. It was when their bonds finished, and they were on their own, each man for himself, that
some of them couldn't cope.
Gus is so engrossed in his thoughts, he is unaware of the train racketting along, of Romus dozing beside him, of
the neat Vietnamese children opposite staring fascinated at his mouth as it works around names that seethe in his
memory.
Sarkauskas - that's a name dredged up from deep down. A loner, another gambler, Gus and Pran would meet him
sometimes at Eagle Farm or Deagon. He boarded with an old Russian woman. Committed harikari, blood flooding the
landlady's bath one Saturday night after a bad day at the races.
And Stasys Klanauskas, who hung himself one long wet solitary Sunday in his boarding house room, without a hint
to anyone or a note of explanation; perhaps he felt neither was necessary.
And Vaclovas Ceicys, always cheery, gregarious, but Gus had shared a tent with him fruit-picking in the
Riverina, heard his shouts of nightmare. When Vac mashed himself and his motor-bike against a lamp post, Gus
wondered.
The names, the faces, the vaguely recalled identities broil in Gus's head.
What was it all for? Perhaps if he had pursued and caught Kathy O'Dea or some other young Australian female?
But not even marriage was a guarantee, and he grimaces sourly - not even two marriages. Like Stasys Rutagis, a
surveyor, one of the few to gain professional status, one of the first to own a house, everything seemed to be going
for him, but he drank his way through two childless marriages to a lonely death.
And Petras Jozys and Algis Rimkus, both with Australian wives and kids, but working at two and three jobs and
dead of heart attacks in their forties.
And Bruno Zemaitis, his Australian wife was a real bitch, people said, treated him like dirt. There was a little
red-haired daughter whom Bruno adored, but one day he drove into the bush and killed himself in the car exhaust.
A canker of exile and loss seems to eat at us here, Gus thinks, deep down in all of us, infecting those we love,
or could love; even Taurinskiai, for all their dears and darlings, it's there, inside the pair of them.
Perhaps the Lithuanian matrons were right all those years ago. He can still hear them spitting words about
Vitas and those others: chasing kangaroo tail. Still, in some future generation a descendant of Vitas may recall: I
had a great-great-grandfather from a small, distant land, Lithuania. Whereas we single men are like the convicts,
dying out without progeny. Gus has read about the convicts, going crazy in the solitude of the bush. We turn crazy,
he tells himself, in the loneliness of city crowds.
He sneaks a glance at Rom, slumped beside him, grey with fatigue after the day out and a few drinks. And he and
I are the youngsters of the household! Vik is seventy-six, surly and taciturn; and as for Joe, he'll not even eat
properly unless they tempt him with some of their own food: Gus's veal and borscht, or Vik's greasy heavy version of
kugelis*.
He's liable to wander off, too. Like last month - lost all weekend while they searched the parks and lanes
around the Cross. The cops located him at last in a North Shore hospital, taken there in an ambulance after
collapsing in the street.
Suffering from malnutrition, the doctor said, his tone reproving.
The police too - Gus could see they were puzzled by the three old men struggling to tell their story. Could they
be a bunch of old queers? Here at the Cross? Where had they come from? Lithuania? Oh, yes, that's the place on tv.
But what we meant was, where do you live?
Never knew there was any of them Livuanins in Australia, let alone round here but, Gus heard one young
policeman say to another.
We are the forgotten men, passing like ghosts in a city that does not see us, in a country that barely knows we
existed; and a terrible sadness wrings Gus's heart, like hands twisting, and he asks himself again, Should he have
come here at all? Should he have stayed, taken the risk of Siberia? But when they came, young, glad of a haven, they
didn't think it would be forever. He certainly didn't.
Beside him Romus stirs, and murmurs, 'Was that Redfern?'
The old Vietnamese smiles at them as though acknowledging their shared foreignness and the littlest of the three
girls smiles when she sees her grandfather do so. She is cuddling a baby-doll, with its curly blonde hair against her
own straight black hair. When she notices Gus is watching her she rocks her baby and croons to it. Her grandmother
smirks proudly.
Gus grimaces back, not quite a smile. The child's high-pitched nasal chant irritates him, reverberates down his
nervous system to his heart where a prickle of resentment prods. All right for them to be so pleased with themselves,
one of them gets here and then the whole mob follows; if only we could hear grandchildren sing the old lullabies in
the ancient language. Instead we are abandoned, old and alone except for each other.
Viktoras and Kaziemeris, Jouzas and Romulus - even the rhythm of the old names lost, become ugly English
monosyllables: Vic and Gus and Joe and Ron.
The train pulls into Circular Quay and the Vietnamese file out, jabbering among themselves; and Gus chides
himself for the ugly word. That was what the Australians used to say about them when they were the bloody Balts,
innocently jabbering on street corners where only English had been heard before. Even accused by some Australians of
being Nazis, of being Russian spies...
The old grandfather, last to alight, seems to accept Gus's twisted smile as a farewell gift, and bows as he
squeezes past. 'Goodnight,' he manages. His English is even worse than Vik's.
'Good night,' Gus answers, but adds to Rom, 'It's a good night for him, with his family here and everything.'
Romus glares back, as if not comprehending. His face is pale and drawn, his eyes sunken. 'I'm very tired
tonight,' he growls. 'I think that trip's getting past me.'
A blade of fear, the fear of further isolation, turns in Gus's heart.
Then it's Kings Cross and the two old men are trudging silently down Victoria Street. It's supposed to be
dangerous here but for them the street has the security of familiarity. It feels no worse than any other street these
days. And look what some of the people have done with the terraces - not that one up ahead, lolly pink; everyone,
except the Police apparently, knows what that is - but those others, all heritage colours, most of them owned by
young doctors from St. Vincents, so they say.
He and Vic should do something to their place - even a coat of paint would help, but Vik won't spend a cent.
Inside the place is depressing, especially coming from the sparkle and bustle of the Club with its polished wood and
gleaming glass and the chatter of the pokies...
All the same he'll be glad to get home, he's dog-tired, can't wait to have a cup of coffee. Vik and Joe will be
waiting, he can see them both, Vik pulling at the hairs on his arms, dozing off, and Juozas hunched over the kitchen
table, slurping his coffee, agog for the latest gossip : Who was there? How's Ben going? Is Stan still driving his
car? How'd Eddie's operation go?
Rom will take his cup and totter off upstairs for a lie-down; Gus'll be the one who'll have to answer all Joe's
questions. Well, it gives him something to do, he supposes, being mother and father to Juozas. Some child - his
eightieth birthday coming up, and his Name's day soon after.
They should give him a party for his Name's day, but who to ask? We could ask the girls from the brothel -
they're passing the bright pink building now - only we wouldn't know what to do any more; and Gus gives a giggle so
Rom eyes him suspiciously. They're always watching each other lately; this Alzheimer's a worry. Well, if age counts
for anything, Joe and Vik should be the first to go - both of them a good ten years older than him and Rom.
Tottering up the short, over-grown garden path Gus sees at once that things are not as usual. They decided years
ago, after the hooligans burst across the narrow front yard that time, that they'd have to keep the front door shut,
but today it's standing open. Vik is framed in the doorway, hanging onto the jambs as if hovering there, waiting for
them.
He's in his slippers, baggy pants, the fraying cardigan; his face is grey, all the lines seeming to strain down,
his skin powerless against gravity, sagging.
'Juozas is gone,' he calls at them.
'Gone!' Gus echoes, with a start of guilt. It's as if he's wished this on Juozas, and the shock of it, suddenly
like this on a late Sunday afternoon...
'He didn't sleep in his bed last night. I went up just after you left.' Vik's look seems to reproach. 'To make
him get up and have something to eat, but he wasn't there, just his pyjamas in a bundle under his pillow.'
Gus readjusts his expectations, says, 'But we all went to bed early last night.'
'Not him. Remember he went to sit outside in the backyard for a while; he must have wandered off again up the
lane. I've been waiting for you to come home,' Vik accuses. 'Here by myself; you know I can't get around.'
'If we had the phone on,' Gus murmurs, but that's an issue for another time, though no argument will convince
Viktor.
Who have we got to ring up? he demands whenever Gus raises the matter. It would be for emergency, the Police or
Ambulance, Gus argues; thinks, and I could ring my sisters at home, but such personal reasons only reinforce Viktor's
opposition. Vik truly has no one to phone, no one to phone him.
Rom and Vic are staring at Gus; he's the one who will have to do something. Juozas could have been lying out in
the sun all day, or beaten up in some gutter, or collapsed with hunger again, lost somewhere, mumbling in his own
language, his scanty English gone, no one to understand him.
Vik is shaking now and ashen and Gus leads him to the lumpy couch, brings him a drink of water and one of his
pills. 'Lie there and rest,' he advises. 'Rom and I will look through the house again.' It's such a jumble of a
place, over a hundred years old with rooms added on everywhere, Juozas could have fallen down in a corner somewhere
or behind a piece of furniture. 'When we're sure he isn't here I'll go down to the Police,' Gus says. 'Don't worry.
We'll find him.'
'They'll put him in a home for sure this time ,' Rom quavers. 'And he'll die, no one even to talk to.'
'No they won't,' Gus declares. 'They can't stop us bringing him back home,' and suddenly he knows why he's been
here in this alien land, stuck all these years in this tumble-down dingy house, why all the mistakes made, the
chances missed.
His heart is swelling with the knowledge of it -like music, like one of the old songs, it's more than simply the
practical matter of finding Juozas, bringing him home, feeding him if they have to, nursing him.
It's the old beautiful language which Vitas and those others with their Australian wives and children have
lost; it's the memories of castles and lakes, of birch and aspen, and the camps and the transports and the long years
together like family, all they had of family.
And Gus can't wait to bring Juozas home, to bathe him and feed him, to stroke his arms, to sing to him even,
singing and stroking the love from his fingers and heart into the old tired flesh of his countryman.
Koldunai : Small pies
Kugelis : Baked potato cake
Musu pastoge : My haven