Читать книгу Rosa - Ros Collins - Страница 8

INTRODUCTION

‘Hey, what you name? You have dog like Queen!’ The stocky little Italian waved at me from his front porch. His tall, dashing Greek friend smiled beneath a magnificent white moustache – partisan style – which rather clashed with his bike helmet and thongs. So I walked Roxie, the Welsh corgi, up the path to the verandah of their small cottage.

My name is Ros (Rosaline) but the two elderly men from Southern Europe who were chatting me up so charmingly promptly changed it; and so it is ‘Rosa’ who wanders through the following stories, sometimes fictionally, sometimes autobiographically.

The three of us reminisced about how things used to be, when we were all newcomers to this country. It was the eve of Anzac Day and we stood there in the weak autumn sunshine remembering the 1960s and a different society: we slept outside on the porch when it was a hot night and no one harmed us.

‘Hey Rosa! You pretty – you come again?’ they cried out, and I smiled as their voices wafted after me up the street, ‘Ciao bella Rosa, ciao!’

I was on my way to keep an appointment with my local doctor. He is from Georgia, not mint julep Georgia, the other one in the Caucasus, ancient Colchis where the Argonauts were heading, home of the Golden Fleece.

All of us now live in Australia, home of the superfine Merino.

Long ago, in the 1930s, I wore a satin ribbon bow in my hair and my grandparents also called me ‘pretty’, a sheyn meydl. It comes from the Yiddish. But I will not be taking you very far into Eastern Europe – too long ago in my ancestry.

It is a common misconception that all Australian Jews came here from places with unpronounceable names: Bialystok or Lviv or Częstochowa. Not so. The family of my husband, writer Alan Collins – including our convict – came from the slums of London and reached Sydney in the 1830s. I am a Londoner of more recent vintage.

My family history, Solly’s Girl (2015), is as accurate as my memory would allow, a companion piece to Alva’s Boy (2008), Alan’s account of his Bondi childhood. Rosa is much more personal – and freely written – and I have taken liberties with the truth. Memoir with a little fiction, or fiction with a little history? It’s hard to say. Memories with licence.

I write to entertain. ‘Life and times’? Shall we delve deeply into world history, cataclysmic events, or reflect on a dystopian future? I think not. Let me open a small window into some unfamiliar scenes of Anglo-Australian-Jewish life. Rosa’s journey starts in London and the finish line for this ‘ten-pound Pom’ will be Melbourne. Enjoy!