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From the day that Luba fell in love with another man, her husband smelt bad. The smell was like stale, sweet cheese. It came from his body, and hovered in a thick net around the bed. It made Luba feel bilious.

She began sleeping with the window open. For thirty-three years she had lived with dead-locks, combination-locks, iron bolts, and her home security system updated annually. Now, her fear of rapists, burglars and murderers paled next to the horror of the smell.

It came from his ears, his feet, his hands and his neck. She could smell it in the bathroom when he showered. In the kitchen it crept across the breakfast table. It soaked into her coffee and filtered itself through her grapefruit juice.

Was Roderick suspicious? Was this his body’s reaction? Like a skunk putting out a stink when it feels in danger?

But Roderick didn’t know that she was in love with anyone but him. She had been devotedly faithful to him for thirteen years. More than that, they were the ideal couple. Luba loved the image of herself, a dark, wild-haired, large-eyed Jewess, standing next to the tall, pale son of the city’s establishment.

The smell lodged itself in Luba’s throat. She was unable to eat. She got up and called to her children through the intercom system. “Kids, we have to leave in five minutes or you’ll be late for school.”

Luba had never been late for anything. In five years of psychotherapy she had not missed one minute of one session. Luba liked to deliver her children to their schools an hour early. This allowed time for possible delays due to heavy traffic, a flat tyre, a mechanical failure or other emergencies. Luba felt that she would be able to tackle any emergency clear-headedly, secure in the knowledge that she would still be on time.

As a child, Luba herself was always at school early. Very early. The night before her first day at school, Mrs Blutnick. Luba’s mother, had sat Luba down for a talk. The family had been in Australia for three years. Mr and Mrs Blutnick worked behind sewing machines in a factory during the day, and behind sewing machines at home at night. “Lubala, my Lubala,” Mrs Blutnick said. “You will be in a school now with Australian children. I want you always to remember that a Jewish boy will make you the best husband. Australian boys, they learn from their fathers to drink beer and to smack their wives. My Lubala, what do you know what it is to be smacked? To be treated worse than a dog?”

Luba couldn’t imagine anyone smacking the beautiful, red-haired, vigorous-hipped Mrs Blutnick. She knew that the Nazis had. They had tattooed a number on Mrs Blutnick’s tender strong arm. Luba told anyone who asked, that this number was their new phone number.

“Lubala, look at Mrs Stein’s daughter. She married someone who is not Jewish. A nice man he seemed. An accountant. Look at her Lubala. Three children, no money, dirty everything. He is in the pub every day straight after work, then he comes home and gives her a nice klup on the head. That’s what will happen to you Lubala if you marry an Australian.” Luba wasn’t surprised at this prospect of violence. Most nights she was woken by Mrs Blutnick screaming in her sleep, and Luba knew that she herself didn’t yet know half of how frightening the world was.

She did know that there was danger everywhere, and that life was a series of narrow escapes. By the time she was thirteen, she had a highly evolved, complex system of warding off evil. She had to touch all the doorknobs and cupboard handles in her bedroom ten times each, in the correct order, from left to right, before going to bed. Then she could sleep.

On Sunday nights the world looked better to Luba. In the afternoon Mrs Blutnick would bake a sponge cake. It always come out with a soil brown covering, like lightly spun velvet. The sponge was her specialty, and all the women envied her touch. Next, she laid out the bowls. A bowl of dark, shiny chocolates, a bowl of delicately-sprigged branches of muscatel raisins scattered with almonds, a bowl of black, fat prunes, and a bowl of fruit flavoured boiled lollies.

Then she prepared supper. It was always the same. Grated egg and spring onion salad, schmalz herring, smoked mackerel, chopped liver, dill pickles, radish flowers, sliced tomatoes, some rye bread and some matzoh. After that, she unfolded four card tables and chairs, and arranged them in the small loungeroom. At four o’clock Mr and Mrs Blutnick had a nap for an hour.

By eight o’clock the air was scented with heady perfume and cigarettes. Mrs Mann’s long, polished nails sparkled as she dealt the cards. Luba loved her husky voice. and the way that her breasts moved with her breath.

Mr Rosen argued with Mr Goldman. “Abe, you are an idiot! You walk with your eyes shut, you will be finished if you go into partnership with such an idiot like Felek Rosengarten, you mustn’t do it.” “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Mr Blutnick admonished them in his most formal English.

Mrs Krauss sang in a low voice as she played. “Motel, Motel voos vat sein mit dir, dre Rabbi soogt du kanst nisht lernen”, she sang – Morris, Morris what is going to become of you, the Rabbi
says you are not learning.

And Mr Zucker, as usual, slipped Luba a couple of the very expensive, large, chocolate-covered liqueured prunes that she loved. Mr Feldman whistled an old Polish lullaby as he smoothly swept his winnings over to his corner.

Sometimes the hum of the room was low and calm, and other times the atmosphere was feverish. Moves were disputed, news was dispensed, rumours were scorched or debated, advice was given and taken, and money was won and lost.

Although Luba had often been told that Mr and Mrs Blutnick had lost all their families, their parents, nine brothers and seven sisters, in Auschwitz, she thought that the Sunday card players were all related to her. She called them Aunty and Uncle. Aunty Marilla and Uncle Adek, Aunty Regina and Uncle Joseph, Aunty Fela and Uncle Abe, Aunty Rooshka and Uncle Shoolac, Aunty Marysha and Uncle Tadek.

Mrs Blutnick never played cards. She made cups of black lemon tea, refilled the glasses of soda water, emptied the ashtrays and served the supper.

Driving the children to school. Luba remembered Roderick, 20 years old, his speech almost a stutter that was expelled in short bursts. He looked much happier when he was not speaking. And Luba was then free to imagine his thoughts.

One day Roderick told her that he was never going to marry. He said that he would be too worried that his wife would leave him. This revelation was at odds with Luba’s understanding of Roderick. She saw him as independent, self-contained and peaceful. The thought of not being the one who had to worry about being left, appealed to Luba. Six weeks later they were married.

Luba and Roderick became good friends. They laughed together. They blossomed as parents, and were bound together by a fierce pride in their two beautiful and clever children.

For the first few years of the marriage Luba was captivated and wholly satisfied by Roderick’s blondeness. She would lie awake next to him for hours looking at the golden hairs glinting on his arms.

Luba dropped the children off and parked the car in the supermarket car park. She walked to a taxi rank and caught a taxi to Garth’s apartment.

In the taxi, the lies, the deception and the tension of the last month visited Luba briefly, but her happiness crept up and covered her.

Garth was waiting for her. His smile looked as though it might lift him off the ground. He rambled as he held her. He had prepared coffee. She watched him pour the coffee.

The first time they had made love Luba had felt like a virgin. She and Roderick had shuffled in and out of sex comfortably, companionably. Now, she ached. She had forgotten what it was like to ache for a man. It felt like a violin screaming between her legs.

That evening at dinner Roderick said “I think Garth Walker is in love with you.” “What,” she said. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Roderick answered. “He doesn’t take his eyes off you. He talks to the kids and he looks at you. He talks to me and he looks at you.” “Don’t be silly,” said Luba. She felt bilious.

“It’s infatuation,” said Luha’s closest friend Margaret. “It wears off. After a few years you and Garth will be like you and Roderick. It’s not worth the bother ”

Luba fantasised about finding another wife for Roderick. She would find someone intelligent, well-read and with a good sense of humour, and they could all be friends. They could buy a small block of flats and create two large apartments. They could eat together. They could share holidays. And the children wouldn’t miss out. The prospect of this happy communal life made Luba feel exhausted.

When Luba told Mrs Blutnick that she was going to leave Roderick, she knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. “So, Hitler didn’t kill me, now you are going to do it for him,” screamed Mrs Blutnick. Mr Blutnick said “I lived through Auschwitz to hear this news. I wish I would have died.”

Mrs Blutnick rang Roderick to tell him she would do his laundry. She didn’t want, she said, Roderick to suffer the humiliation of having his clothes washed by a wife who was in love with someone else.

*  *  *  *  *

Luba had not had such an hysterical effect on her parents since the day, thirteen years ago, when she told them she was going to marry Roderick. “Lubala, Lubala, how can you do this to us?” Mrs Blutnick wailed. “What will our friends say? They will say that we didn’t bring you up properly. They will say that we should have sent you to Mount Scopus, not to an Australian school. Luba, get me some Stemetil, I feel sick.”

Now Mr and Mrs Blutnick were depressed and angry. “Luba, you and Roderick were our big hope, our example of how a mixed marriage can work. Everyone says what a wonderful man Roderick is and what a wonderful couple you are. Lubala, wake up,” Mrs Blutnick screamed.

For most of her adult life Luba had had trouble waking up. She used to daydream while she was cleaning, while she was driving, while she was reading or watching television and while people spoke to her. She would nod from time to time, and on the whole, no-one noticed.

She had a whole set of fantasies she could slip into. When Mrs Blutnick delivered her regular lectures about losing weight, Luba would plug herself into the dream in which she had just completed her fifth, best-selling novel. A novel which had made millions of readers weep. A novel which had earned Luba hundreds of thousands of dollars. A novel which had caused passionate debate in dining rooms in Paris, London and New York. Last week Luba was being interviewed by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show when Mrs Blutnick finished her speech. “Lubala you will be able to go on the beach and feel happy, and maybe one day even wear a bikini, and you will live longer.”

When she was with Garth, Luba was wide awake. So awake she could feel every part of her body. She could feel her nervous heart. She could feel her knees. She felt as though she could inhale the earth and touch the stars.

Garth taught her about art. He played her music. Mahler, Sati, Berg, Poulenc, Glass, Stravinsky. He read her poetry. Poems by Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva, Brodsky, William Carlos Williams. Poems by Anne Sexton. And he never stopped looking at her.

He looked at her as they walked. He looked at her as they made love. And he painted her. He painted her happy and he painted her sad. He painted her pained and he painted her exuberant. He painted her as a Madonna and he painted her as a warrior queen, a Boadicea streaking across the canvas. Hundreds of portraits of her were stacked around the walls of his studio.

Mr and Mrs Blutnick had observed every detail of Luba’s life. What she ate, how often she changed her underwear, who she spoke to in the school grounds. Mrs Blutnick would watch Luba every lunchtime, after she had delivered her daily hot lunch of chicken soup and noodles, or schnitzel and potato, or sometimes frankfurts and sweet cabbage. Later on, Mrs Blutnick kept a record of Luba’s menstrual cycle on a chart inside the pantry cupboard. And the internal intercom system which connected all the rooms in the house was always switched on.

Everything was a potential catastrophe. A cause for anxiety. A sneeze indicated pneumonia, a cough was a sign of asthma, a stomach ache pointed towards kidney and liver trouble. An unexpected knock at the door would leave Mrs Blutnick breathless, and if Luba was ever late home from school Mrs Blutnick prepared herself for the worst.

Luba, who still complained that nothing that she did escaped her parents’ intense scrutiny, became, later in her life, an observant parent herself. Luba adored her son Justin. For the first 1½ years of his life she recorded his every bowel movement. She drew up a chart and headed the columns, Time, Size, Consistency and Colour. Another chart recorded every mouthful of food baby Justin swallowed. This was headed. Food, Description, Amount, Time and Attitude.

*  *  *  *  *

Luba would probably soon be able to wear her first pair of bikinis. The weight was dropping off her. Every day she was thinner. Garth satisfied all her appetites, and she no longer felt hungry.

As a child Luba used to wear lumpy, frilly bathers. They had a gathered yolk and a full skirt which Mrs Blutnick said disguised Luba’s hips and thighs.

Mr and Mrs Blutnick spent the Saturday afternoons of most summers at St Kilda Beach. The whole gang would go. Mr and Mrs Mann, the Rosens, the Goldmans, the Rosengartens, the Zuckers, and the Krausses. Mrs Blutnick always brought cold boiled eggs and rye bread, and Mrs Mann made her special carrot and pineapple salad. The Rosens brought ham and Mr Zucker brought long cucumbers from his garden.

They sat under the ti-trees on the foreshore, on thick, soft rugs, and ate and drank and talked. The Italian man who sold peanuts was always happy to see them. They bought 12 large bags. Enough peanuts to last until dinner.

Every now and then someone would go for a dip in the water. Most of the gang couldn’t swim. Mrs Blutnick was the only good swimmer. She would stride into the water in her gold lamé bikinis, or her silver and purple polka-dotted pair, or the green bikinis which were covered in latex leaves.

At five o’clock Luba started getting ready to go home. Garth phoned for a taxi, and then came and sat down next to her. “Luba, I love you, I’ll always love you. There’ll never be anything in my life more important than loving you. I feel as though I was born to be with you.”

The next day Luba told Roderick that she was moving out with the children. All he said was, “Have you slept with him?” “No,” she lied.

Garth, with his dark hair and large, heavy-lidded eyes, looked Jewish. Luba had hoped that the Blutnicks would see this as progress.