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Produced and published by the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Published July 2008
Published July 2008
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I glimpsed the village idiot on a winter's night in 1958. I was eleven years old at the time. 'We are going to the Yiddish teater', Father had announced in a tone of voice that suggested he was speaking of something extraordinary, something sacred.
It was a 10-minute stroll from our Canning Street house, through the heart of North Carlton to Lygon Street. We turned right, from Fenwick Street, and approached a two-storey building called the Kadimah. Directly opposite, enclosed behind a fence of cast iron palings, stood the Melbourne General Cemetery.
The foyer was crowded with perfumed women and men wrapped in gaberdine overcoats. The air was glutted with cigar smoke. And they talked, everybody at once, so it seemed, in a loud, unabashed, fiery Yiddish that sprinkled the air with loud greetings and gossip. The foyer glittered with sequined bodices and rouged lips. Occasionally an acquaintance stooped over to pinch my cheeks. I spun about in a whirl of excited adults who had becomes like children, momentarily unhinged and adrift in a fun fair.
The repeated ringing of a warning bell summoned us to our seats. All the while, the talking continued. It subsided only as the hall lapsed into darkness. A spotlight descended upon musicians seated in front of the stage, to the right, beneath a glowing red exit sign: piano, clarinet, violin and drums. A medley of old world melodies enveloped the audience. They were taken up as a humming, a soft singing under the breath.
The curtain rose to reveal a transparent inner curtain, a veil behind which could be seen the dimly lit living-room of a village cottage. To the rear, a large window opened out on to a backdrop of crooked dwellings backed by fields within which stood a cemetery, a jumble of stones leaning askew at acute angles.
A narrator's voice intoned the prologue: Napoleon Bonaparte, it was rumoured, had buried a treasure near the cemetery as he retreated from Moscow through the river valleys of White Russia. And Napoleon himself, no less, could now be seen, emerging upon the dark stage. He walked slowly, in front of the veil, to the beat of a bass drum, followed by two aides carrying a basket. The trio disappeared into the wings, and reappeared moments later, as distant shadows, lowering the casket into the cemetery grounds.
The veil lifted. The living room of the gravedigger's hovel erupted into life. Over the next two hours a succession of villagers beat a path to the door: wealthy merchants and paupers, philanthropists and beggars, communal big shots and small fry, all drawn by the rumour that the gravedigger's son, the village idiot, knew the whereabouts of Napoleon's treasure.
The townsfolk were obsessed. They vied for the attention of the village idiot. Their desperate need and longing inflated into hysteria. Like souls possessed they filed about the dimming stage in a winding procession, led by the idiot grasping a lantern. They followed him outside the house, towards the graveyard chanting: Kumt alle, lomir zuzukhen. Come everyone, let us search.
It was the Cemetery that loomed into view as we emerged from the Kadimah on a crisp winter's night. It stood motionless behind a shield of cypresses and pines. It was approaching midnight. The spirits of the dead, Father whispered, were stirring, arising from their tombs, making their way in white shrouds among the pines and cypresses, as they did every night.
As we retreated from Lygon Street, I imagined the shrouded corpses bent over in silent prayer, led by a village idiot clasping a lantern. All remained in darkness, except for a solitary flame in the hands of a fool.