To the Brat! (Russian for 'brother'),

In recent times I have been trawling through memories and seeing them with a new understanding, particularly of our Father.  He was not what he seemed, I now believe.

I never thought of him as a 'Dress Designer' but he produced a range of Pret a Porte frocks under three lables every year through the 1950's.  He must have dressed our Mother, but I never knew that she or any of her friends were wearing dresses designed and manufactured by our Father. 

During the Olympics, I remember him at events (I was just old enough to go) dancing with all the Russian Women Athletes as well as the Russian Women Officials, who were reportedly spies.  I believe he was 'spying' and reporting secretly to the Government.  I went once to some event at some military shooting place, that was all very 'those sort of chaps' or whatever, higher ranks, and I was astonished at how he seemed to know everyone, but by then the Cold War was warming up and his abilities to speak Russian were no longer needed.  There is also a pendant from the Romanians in gratitude for his help, because he spoke that Language also, and I guess was asking them questions on behalf of the Government.  Remember the 'blood in the pool'? Just after Russia invaded Hungary?  Anyhow, like everyone doing that sort of thing, he could not speak of it, nor anything else that might be transpiring, so we never knew.  I have no idea what our dear Mother knew, but I assumed enough because she went along with it. 

The biggest revelation in my revised memories was to see that our Father had fallen out totally with his own Father.  Our Grand-Father died a few years before I was born, but after the start of the War.  I believe he was quite religious, having been part of the break-away from Elwood to form the Addas Congregations, and our Father was not, and I suspect this was a problem.  He went once per year on Yom Kippur, and one year I walked round with him to other Shules, as one did, and went behind the curtain to say hello to our Grand-Mother, so I was perhaps ten years old.  She must have died during the next year as we did not do it again.  The highway that was High Street, between St Kilda Shul on one side and Elwood on the other, only five minutes walk apart, was an enormous distance that was never broached.  Later I met people who had grown up on the other side of the highway, and their Jewish World was utterly different from mine, yet, physically it had been so close.  I think we suffered from a fractured chain of paternal/filial relationships.