Incidentally, Madame Aritonovich didn’t leave any time for an answer. She said: “As I told your mother and her rather sour companion—what do you think, Coco, it was probably her sister, no?—anyway, as I explained to the two ladies, the most important thing a good school can teach is a small dose of cynicism. Do you know what that is?”
We said we didn’t, and were very eager to learn more.
“That’s the word used to differentiate smart people and dumb ones. Please take note of that, because we’ll never speak about it again. Perhaps people will tell you something completely different later on. And when they do you should think of me. Or else think of the story about Queen Victoria and Prince Edward. She caught him cheating at cards. “Do you know what happens to little boys who cheat at games?” she asked, in English. To which he replied: “Yes—they win.”
She turned to a young person who had witnessed this exchange with undisguised disapprobation—one of the teachers, as it later turned out.
“Be so kind as to show these little titmice the classrooms, Fräulein Zehrer. And don’t let them know that from now on they are my favorite students.”
As we later discovered, this was something she said in front of all her new students. But Fräulein Zehrer, who was our German teacher, made it very believable by treating us especially badly from then on.
And I remember as if it were today that we suddenly saw how beautiful Madame Aritonovich was—in an entirely different way than the somewhat shallow white-golden good looks that had been our only model for beauty up to then. She was so thin that the delicate bone structure of her skull seemed to be covered with nothing but skin—or perhaps just a layer of powder. Her face was a death mask; only her eyes were full of the splendor of life. Her mouth was large and very mobile, with thin lips. When she closed it, there was something strained or even exhausted in its expression, which immediately vanished as soon as she smiled or began to speak, and both things happened the moment she looked at you. Her neck—the same neck that caused Uncle Sergei to wish he were an executioner, really did stretch in an almost alarming fashion from her shoulders, longer than Miss Rappaport’s, and incomparably more attractive. We realized that the spirit of a woman could be seen in her neck. Even later, after Madame Aritonovich had aged abruptly and hid her neck under rows of thick fake pearls—“my tortoise neck” was how she put it—it was still full of grace and poise, and ennobled by the shimmering pale-blue lines of two veins that emerged below her cheeks and ran to her collarbone—the runes of the sangre azul, which had given the light-skinned Goths the name “Blue-bloods.”
But as much as her beauty stemmed from her innate vivacity, it derived even more from the masklike quality of her face, which had something terribly sublime—a feature we later found in only two other women, who were as different from her as they were from each other: Madame Tildy, once her addiction had destroyed her and made her into a human wreck; and a young woman who will appear later, a streetwalker named Mititika Povarchuk.
That same day we encountered beauty in another form, which if a play on words may be permitted, was not marked by the terror of the sublime but by the sublimity of terror. It was a child’s face, which belonged to a girl our age, looking at us among all the other children’s faces when Fräulein Zehrer introduced us to our class. Her dark eyes, her tender, pale cheeks framed by a luxurious tangle of black hair, and her almost overly expressive mouth, which seemed too experienced, too mature, showed a ready capacity for enduring all kinds of brutality—noise that was too loud, colors that were too garish, will that was too headstrong—a capacity that transformed extreme vulnerability into courage. Nothing could have shown greater contrast than the bold fearlessness, with which Madame Aritonovich looked upon the face of the Medusa, whereby she became its mirror image, and the brave suffering of little Blanche Schlesinger, who in her way seemed to have learned that the gaze was not to be averted, the sight of horror not to be avoided, and whose torment was amplified by the realization that she would not be able to turn to stone.
It was Fräulein Iliuţ, the hunchback, who found the right words for our schoolmate—she had also worked as a seamstress for the Schlesingers: “Looking at her, you realize,” she stated, “that Jesus was a Jew.”
Blanche was the first person whose friendship we sought and eventually found, although only after overcoming a great and strangely superior shyness, and unfortunately for only a very short time.
Another friendship sprung up right away and established itself with an assertiveness that was so carefree it was practically brazen—and which delighted us immensely. This new friend was a small, red-haired, freckled boy with short legs: very animated, cheeky, and intelligent. His name was Salomon Brill.
He immediately approached us as if it were the most natural thing in the world and spoke to us directly. At first we had some difficulty understanding his manner of speaking, because he pelted us with a hailstorm of questions, and we had been drilled to answer every question right away. It took us a while to catch on that he didn’t expect answers to most of his questions; nevertheless, we kept ourselves ready because of our upbringing and always fell behind, so that every time he really wanted to know something, we became confused, focused as we were on all the previous questions. But that didn’t matter to our new friend, who just considered us a little stupid and clumsy—which he had probably assumed anyway, and which, compared to him, was undoubtedly the case—and didn’t dwell anymore on the matter. So actually it’s not true when I blame our difficulty on some trait of his. There was nothing difficult about Solly Brill: his lively spirit, which was always focused on the matter at hand and never on anything personal, made everything easy; he let things glide as if on ball bearings, so to speak, and we found his company so enjoyable that it gradually became a kind of vice, a habit that was hard to break and produced a severe withdrawal when we were forced to give up our friendship with him.
The minute Fräulein Zehrer left us alone he planted himself in front of us—standing a full head shorter than me—and said, “The new arrivals, let’s have a look at you. So, who are you? What are your names? You want to play with us? Or maybe you’re too good for that? Maybe you want to learn something here? How old are you? Did you bring money for kigla? Or maybe you don’t know kigla? Or maybe somebody’s watching you the whole time? Are you enrolled in the French course or the German one?”
He showed a great and completely genuine interest in our family circumstances, the character of each person, how much they owned, and for the quality of our clothes and our satchels.
“Look at those antiques! Nu, you haven’t heard of zippers? You can find them in our store. The latest type. The man who invented them became a millionaire overnight—in dollars. The dollar is worth about sixhundredthirtyfive, figure that!”
“But why should we figure that if you know the answer?” asked Tanya, puzzled.
Solly Brilly never dwelt on misunderstanding. “Schmontses,” he said, “what kind of nonsense is that! Figure that, like … can you imagine? Not like go do the arithmetic. Nu, so you want to play kigla, or don’t you know how?”
We found out that kigla were marbles. Solly’s were fantastic—glass ones almost as big as your fist, with bands of color wound inside, and others that were tiny but weighed just about the same, of heavy flashing metal, like quicksilver, like Solly himself.
“Just a game,” he said. “You can have some of mine. As a present. No joke. Later I’ll take something of yours. Deal?”
Solly helped us understand many things—including several interesting details that belonged to the story of old Paşcanu.
It turned out that Herr Tarangolian had a much closer relationship with Madame Aritonovich and her Institut d’Éducation than we had imagined. The prefect came to the school every week, mostly when we had ballet lessons, and would spend entire afternoons there, as a connoisseur of dance, and of Madame Aritonovich’s conversational gifts. Occasionally we asked ourselves how he found time for his
official duties, given the number of his visits. But he typically got up very early—although he never admitted this, incidentally—and much to the horror of his subordinates, he often appeared in his offices in the provincial government building at six o’clock in the morning, and was ready to leave just before eleven. Moreover, much of the success and intelligence of the measures he enacted was undoubtedly due to his custom of donning the mask of a bon vivant and mixing, like Harun al-Rashid, among the people, thereby discovering anything of any importance that was going on, and especially what was brewing or ready to happen.
His visits allowed us to witness firsthand the inconspicuous and sly manner by which he came by his information. Naturally this meant we had to give up the exciting and somewhat ominous impression we’d formed of a man who commanded his own secret service—an impression that was reinforced whenever he revealed some amazingly detailed tidbit about a case or an event, something he never did without a specific intention. But even if we had to give up our image of shady, masked characters stealing through the night and reading secret documents by flashlight, or else disguised as lackeys and secretaries eavesdropping on conversations, our admiration for him only increased when we saw how simple and practical his methods were, how ably he could discern background, intent, and motive, and how cogently he drew the proper inferences.
Whether or not it was a passionate folly of Madame Aritonovich that she couldn’t give up, ballet clearly formed an essential component of the institute’s educational program, with the classes conducted by Madame herself. After we had performed our pliés to her satisfaction, we were given a short course in etiquette. The girls were taught the art of curtsying, from the court curtsy—six steps forward four back, knee bending on the fourth step—to the simple curtsy with bent knee while standing; for us boys, greeting a person of respect meant standing three steps away, giving a slight bow of the head while clicking our heels together, then approaching, giving another slight bow and accepting the hand that was offered. We practiced the various intonations of bonjour and au revoir depending on whether we were addressing a superior or someone of inferior rank—if, for instance, a monsieur were added to the bonjour, it was a clear sign that one was dealing with a subordinate. Solly Brill would shrug his shoulders when he performed these assignments and make comments such as “About as useful as a wreath on the head!” or “We’re rocking dead babies here!” a phrase taken up by Madame Aritonovich and whoever happened to be visiting.
For Herr Tarangolian was not the only visitor to the Institut d’Éducation. Now and then Uncle Sergei showed up as well, to observe our practice à la barre and au milieu and to say to Madame Aritonovich something like: “That little one there, in the pink tricot—she is already fourteen?” Madame Aritonovich answered in Russian, which we didn’t understand. Both laughed. “You misunderstand me completely, Fiokla Ignatieva. I am only speaking of her stiffness. How did they loosen up stiffness in the old days? By pulling or by beating?”
But usually the prefect sat alone during ballet class, his legs spread out a little in order to accommodate the bulge of his belly, his ringed fingers clasping the handle of his ebony cane so that he could rest his chin. His mustache was twirled out into two venomously black radish tails. A carnation flared in his buttonhole, and his white playboy’s spats gleamed brightly over his delicate, pointed, highly polished shoes.
His dialogue with Madame Aritonovich had the same easygoing tone we knew from our own conversations with her, which were remarkably open and refreshingly accepting. And although she spoke about the most risqué things in front of us, and with a disarming naturalness that might have petrified other grown-ups, we’d grown so used to it after a few days, that no one ever thought anything of it. Nor can I remember any of her charges ever using an inappropriate tone with Madame, and there were fewer secrets, whispers, and rumors and less talk of sexual matters among the students in the Institut d’Éducation than in any of the schools we later attended.
“You are the only person, Coco,” said Madame Aritonovich, with whom I associate as if I were carrying on a correspondence.” She inserted a new cigarette in her long jade holder and had him light it. “Take a look at your protégée Tanya. She is truly talented. And you, Solly,” she called out to little Brill, who was trying in vain to bring his short leg up to the barre, “make a little effort. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
“Some people might have lots of will, but there’s still no way,” said Solly. Madame Aritonovich and Herr Tarangolian laughed out loud.
“Come over here, Solly,” said the prefect.
“Certainly, Herr Coco.” Solly planted himself unabashedly between the knees of our old friend and fingered the handle of his cane. “Ivory, yes? Well well. Genuine? What’s it cost, a cane like that?”
“It belonged to my papa.”
“Nu, so it’s an antique. But what’s it worth?”
“I don’t know. Your papa’s the one to ask that.”
“He’ll know for sure.”
“Of course he will. And how’s he doing, your papa?”
“The old man? How is he supposed to be doing? Miserable, that’s how business is—so he says.” Solly cocked his head ironically.
“And how’s business really doing, Solly—just between us?”
Solly leaned over to whisper the answer in the prefect’s ear.
“Oo! said Herr Tarangolian and raised his thick black eyebrows in comic amazement. “In the course of this one year?”
“Do you think he’d be sending his children to French institutes if not?
“Don’t talk nonsense, Solly. Your papa always pampered you beyond bounds.”
“Yes, of course, as a late-born child … Bubi flies into pieces every time I say bonjour to him, followed by a monsieur as to a subordinate. That’s as much French as he still understands, barely a word more. He’d like to but can’t, poor guy.”
“But he’ll end up giving his father more joy than you, you rascal.”
“That’s what you think. You should have heard the ruckus he had again with the old man last night. The whole floor was rocking and shaking.” Solly snuggled up to the prefect’s stomach. “Is that the chain from your watch? Gold, eh? Is it hallmarked?”
“I’ll show you the watch if you show us how your brother Bubi argues with Papa.”
“I see a lot of watches. Better give me ten leos.”
“All right, ten leos. But you have to do it right, like in the theater.”
“Deal.” Solly turned to us. “Everybody stop your fussing so I can show Herr Coco here how Bubi had it out with my old man. Nonsense time! Solly Brill’s Summer Theater!”
“Nonsense time!” we cheered back.
The institute had a standing policy that all instruction would stop briefly to accommodate any proposal that promised to be sufficiently entertaining.
We sat in a half-circle on the floor, blissfully awaiting the play.
“So!” said Solly, as he bustled about. “Picture for yourself, here is the shop floor, here is Mama sitting at the cash register, here is the old man, here is Bubi, wearing a trench coat he’s thrown over a pair of tennis shorts, the silly guy. And the old man says to him—I’ll be the old man now …”
Solly crossed to the place he had indicated for his father, and immediately underwent an almost uncanny transformation: his head sank between his shoulders, his face—that ruddy, freckled boy’s face containing the preformed characteristics of an ancient race—shrank together, knitted and pursed and lined like that of an aging man. His voice, too, became hoarse and worn.
“So,” he growled almost voicelessly at the imaginary Bubi Brill—whom we saw right before us in the flesh—“so, for this I—I, Usher Brill, a respectable merchant in this city—for this I have toiled with my hands my whole life long and slaved away in order that you, my flesh and blood, turn into a parasolnik, a peacock, a salon-knight, a kept man, a layabout? For this you studied at the lyceums and business schools at home a
nd abroad, off my money, I should live like that, and turned into a grown man living off my money, a nice boy with red cheeks, a kind of reservist in the finest regiment, running around in a gold-braided uniform a whole expensive year and not a day with the soldiers and all at my expense—and for this you spend every evening at Schorodok’s Trocadero getting drunk with the officers and whores? While I stand the whole day, with my varicose veins here on the shop floor!”
Solly paused, changed back into himself, and looked Herr Tarangolian right in the eyes with inimitable self-assurance. “Not good enough?”
“Excellent, Solly, absolutely excellent,” said the prefect.
Solly pulled his head into his shoulders and wrinkled his face to look like a red-haired man who’d spent his whole life peering at burning embers. Then he marched up to the prefect, as if Herr Tarangolian were Solly’s older brother, Bubi.
“For this I have davened every day, so that something like that should become of you? A dandy, a bon vivant, a fashion fop and aesthetnik, instead of a regular, decent hardworking honest man! For you to lounge around the ball fields instead of standing on the shop floor like your father and your mother and your little sister and working! For you to sit watching the ballerinas”—Solly was standing right in front of Herr Tarangolian—“the little children twelve and thirteen years old in their tricots …”
“That’s fine, Solly!” said Herr Tarangolian, wiping his eyes and so delighted he was incapable of laughing. “You’re a genius. But stick to your father and Bubi.”
“Deal!” Solly said and jumped, with the dancer’s agility he owed to Madame Aritonovich’s instruction, to the place he had designated for Bubi. “Now I’ll be Bubi.”
An Ermine in Czernopol Page 21