href="#ulink_4781f5aa-a955-502f-8616-f9ee7199cc38">1 It was a general store, somewhat more modern than her father’s in Kazimierz, with high counters, shelves and wooden crates. Her uncle Bernhard, who was also a sheep farmer and boasted that he was an optician to boot (a rather fancy word for the four pairs of spectacles he had on sale), sold a bit of everything in his store. Castor oil, shovels, sieves, dried biscuits, sugar, potatoes, poultices, ointment for horses’ joints, halters, ropes, flour, nails, tools, black soap, spectacles, even clothing – twill trousers, raw linen shirts and wide-brimmed hats.
Helena couldn’t stand the way the farmers’ wives dressed, in their rough calico frocks and frumpy lace-up shoes. Even if it wasn’t practical, every morning she put on one of her pleated silk dresses that constantly needed mending and her high-heeled boots that were worn down from riding horseback. Just the sight of a horse made her tremble. What an idea, to climb on its back! She wasn’t cut out to be a horsewoman. Her only concession to country life was the apron she put on over her dress in order not to spoil it when she was working in the store.
It was the first thing she did on arrival every morning, just before she went behind the counter. There weren’t any customers around, but she didn’t know how to sit still. She opened the ledger and took up the inkstand. Very soon she was busy at her bookkeeping.
‘Is that you now?’ asked a gruff voice from the room in the back. ‘Sure took long enough. What were you up to this time?’
‘My English lessons,’ she replied curtly. ‘I’ve been going to school every day since I arrived, you ought to know.’
And as soon as I know enough English to manage on my own, I’ll get away from here, she thought to herself, before immersing herself again in her figures.
Bernhard’s Yiddish accent exasperated her. As did his loud, coarse voice, not to mention his bad manners. He chewed tobacco, burped and picked his nose without the least compunction. Rebecca Silberfeld, Helena’s grandmother, would be furious if she could see her son’s rough ways. He had become a real yokel, with his muddy boots, sleeve covers, and a pencil behind his ear. He didn’t look out of place among all the colonists, gold prospectors and stockmen, or the ex-convicts deported from Europe. Things were different in the city: people were educated, well dressed, refined. She had noticed it at once when she got off the ship in Melbourne. The little she managed to see during the half-day she spent there, because Bernhard had some shopping to do, had immediately enchanted her. But in Coleraine there was nothing to do. The human species hardly mattered at all; in these parts, the sheep was king. Farmers raised sheep, the women who married the farmers looked after the sheep and had lots of children who would follow in their parents’ footsteps. Their sole topics of conversation were childhood illnesses and complaints about the weather, their Aboriginal servants, the drought, the floods, and, of course, the sheep.
Helena hurried along with her calculations. It was getting hotter and hotter, and she wiped her damp forehead on her sleeve. She couldn’t stand the climate – sweltering in summer, freezing, damp cold in winter. In fact, she couldn’t stand anything about the place. She’d spent nearly two years in this little pioneer town of two thousand souls that had sprouted up in the middle of nowhere in the southwest corner of Victoria, and she still hadn’t got used to it.
Coleraine was surrounded by vast, monotonous plains, swept by the violent wind that churned clouds of yellow dust in its wake and gave her headaches. Roughly six miles to the south was the Wannon River, which had given its name to the district, and which often flooded during the rainy season, isolating Coleraine and its surroundings.
Coleraine had a post office, three general stores including Bernhard’s, a saddler, a smithy, a local newspaper, a jeweller, a tailor, three hotels, one presbytery and a private school run by two old maids, Miss Crouch and her niece Miss Arrovoye, where Helena was learning English with students who were fifteen years younger than her. And there were two or three pubs where the farmers got drunk after the horse races, the only entertainment in the region.
Helena felt lonely and abandoned. She had no friends in Coleraine, nor did she try to make any.
People were kind, obliging and supportive – but Helena had little to say to them other than neighbourly pleasantries and the usual customer dealings. If only Eva had stayed with her. But after a year in Coleraine, her cousin, who didn’t get along with her father, had decided to go back to Melbourne with her three children.
Helena would have followed her if she’d known what she could do in the city. But with no money, where could she go? Now she had to prepare the meals all by herself. And she was also in charge of the housekeeping. Bernhard’s house had all the modern comforts, with a real bathroom – a claw-footed bathtub and a shower – four bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and dining room.2 But cleaning it all took a huge amount of time.
Her uncle wasn’t even grateful to her for it. When he wasn’t making fun of her lady-like clothing, the ridiculously high heels that she insisted on wearing even on the dirt roads, her parasols to protect her face, her fear of lizards, spiders and night noises, her urban mannerisms, her hopeless inability to ride horseback, or the charred legs of lamb, he said nothing. He could go for days without saying a thing, expressing himself solely through grunts and other unappealing noises. It was not surprising that he had never managed to remarry after the death of his wife, poor Aunt Chana. No sensible woman would want anything to do with such a man.
In the beginning, pressured by his insistent siblings writing all the way from Kraków, Bernhard was resolved to marry off his niece. During the first few months she was there, he introduced her to suitors chosen from among the handful of Polish, Romanian, and German Jews who lived in Coleraine and the surrounding villages of the Wannon district. All were charmed: Helena was a rare find in those parts. A shayna maidel, a pretty girl, judging by the appreciative gazes that followed her hourglass figure. And she had real character on top of it, which could come in very useful in this harsh terrain. They could already imagine her running their household, warming their bed, and keeping a strict watch over the many children they would be sure to give her.
But these men were farmers, blacksmiths, cobblers, gold washers: proster mensh, vulgar individuals who she could never imagine knowing in Kraków. So the mere thought of marrying one of them …
And because she rejected them out of hand, without even so much as a smile – no, I don’t want that Yankel, I couldn’t care less that his pub is the most popular one in Digby, nor do I want Moishe with his limp, or Nathan, he may be a rich farmer, but he’s still no better than an ongentrinken, a drunkard – Bernhard then resorted to introducing her to the remaining bachelors – goyim – in the area.
Helena wouldn’t get married. Over and over she had to explain – politely to begin with, then raising her voice in what turned into shouting matches after each of her rejections – she had no intention of shutting herself off in Coleraine. And so Bernhard gave up on the idea. From that point on he kept an eye on everything she ate as if calculating the cost of each mouthful. And yet Helena ate like a bird. When he had been drinking, he predicted she would dry up like an old sheepskin tanned by the brickfielder – the desert wind – since she didn’t want a man by her side.
But there was worse than Bernhard.
Louis, his younger brother, raised sheep in Merino, a little town twelve miles south of Coleraine. Louis was a lecherous bushman who slept with his boots on and spoke with a thick sheepherder’s accent. When Helena walked by he would run his tongue over his lips, as if she were a bowl full of cream. Whenever she came to visit, he insisted on teaching her how to ride a horse. After only a few minutes, Helena would complain of a backache and ask to go home. She couldn’t have said which was more frightening: the horse or her uncle.
Louis did not give up easily. His niece’s rejections even seemed to excite him. The last time he had got too close to her, in the stable, touching her breasts, she had clouted him with her parasol. Not wanting to see Gitel’s daughter disfigured – it would create havoc in the family – Bernhard had managed to calm his brother