An Ermine in Czernopol

by Gregor von Rezzori

  The last sentence pained us, even though we knew Blanche in no way meant to annoy us. Because the words “if you’re interested,” along with the simple fact that she hadn’t thought it worth the trouble to inform us right away about such important events concerning Tildy, were certainly her way of getting even with us for the shameful way we accosted her with the pitifully shoddy poetic efforts of the author of “Springtime.” Blanche was too outspoken for that. Rather, it was an indication of the distance that had crept, unbidden, between us ever since we had been discovered in Dr. Salzmann’s class. I don’t think that Blanche had consciously removed herself, though a certain tactful reserve may have played a role. But with Solly, who hardly knew the meaning of the word “tact,” it was the same: ever since we were kept away from the Jewish religious instruction, an invisible wall had risen between us that would never have been there had we simply acted as declared Christians and never taken part in the course. We had contributed to the erection of this barrier ourselves, albeit unconsciously: we felt like renegades and traitors, and this secret sense of guilt affected our interactions with our friends. This had nothing to do with yielding to the attraction, or magic, if you will, of another religion—of being “partly in the clutches of Israel”—but was first and foremost a delicate matter of principle: loyalty toward our friends, a loyalty we were powerless to maintain. But in cases like that, powerlessness justifies everything but excuses nothing. Powerlessness is a condition without grace, tantamount to a state of indebtedness. Then again, it’s possible that the real source of the new distance came from breaking the bond of common experience in such an essential matter as religion.

  It is a tribute to Madame Aritonovich’s pedagogical prowess that we were able to confide our worries to her. She responded with a coldness that we found inexplicable at the time, but whose wisdom we later learned to admire.

  “Surely you don’t want to find out what your friends think about you?” she said. “A question like that is a sign of cowardice. We all want to know the truth about ourselves, because every judgment we hear pronounced out loud seems more bearable than what we suspect is being kept concealed from us. And with reason. So you can safely assume the worst.”

  In this way we were left to our own courage to deal with the matter, which was dreadful at first but ultimately proved salutary. The fact that Madame had so unsparingly confirmed our guilt left us no way out, and we learned that when it comes to the soul there’s no excuse for powerlessness.

  Blanche brought us a copy of the insane locksmith’s letter to Tildy, which went like this:

  … And my pain is so great that everything good and most dear in the world can no longer heal my aching burning wounds. The sun cries, the wind is sad, the snow has turned completely blue, and the meadow is silent. The moon is deep in concern: everyone is suffering my pain. The concrete of the prison cell is cracked from my tears. The heavy iron is slowly eating through to my bones. Everything, everything feels, everything sees my suffering and my undeserved misfortune, living and dead things alike, only one human being does not. I am unhappy, indeed—the unhappiest among the unhappy.

  After I was imprisoned in deepest sorrow, my hound died, then right after that all my chickens, and right after that my cow. My child was born and the sun cried through his window about my undeserved misfortune, and a few days later he was sad for his father and a few days after that he left this hated world—and today he is being carried to his grave, with no father and mother, accompanied only by strangers. Because his father is being tortured and his mother has practically forgotten the entire world, including her child and his father. She lies quietly in bed, holding a candle, looking up to heaven. I have nothing more, nothing on earth.

  Tanya read it and broke down in tears.

  We could see how much our sister Tanya was suffering by the way she danced. Only the visitors who had no idea what was going on could come to rehearsals and say things like: “What’s wrong with the girl? She always danced with such grace.” “She probably has stage fright, poor girl. That will pass.” “I don’t think so. That’s how it often is with talented children, they don’t fulfill their promise.” “Well, she’s coming into a difficult age now.”

  Madame Aritonovich never wasted words on misunderstandings of that sort disguised as half-questions. She merely ignored them and smoked one cigarette after another, unmistakably nervous. During the rehearsals she had eyes only for Tanya. She evidently didn’t care that our performance, too, was rather mediocre. Blanche failed entirely. The corps de ballet became a wooden chaos. Madame Aritonovich nodded and said: “Fine, that will do. But Tanya has to repeat it once more.” We had the impression that she couldn’t care less whether the performance succeeded or not, that everything was being undertaken solely for the sake of Tanya. The ballet hall, which presumably had been the main dining room of the private villa that now housed the Institut d’Éducation, became the arena for a daily struggle over Tanya’s soul.

  Madame Aritonovich didn’t spare her in the slightest. We quit trying to understand her relentless criticism, although at first we, too, were surprised by Tanya’s lack of fluidity. But as a consequence of the cruel repetitions, Tanya seemed to attain the peak of technical perfection. Her leaps and battements were downright acrobatic. Nevertheless, Madame Aritonovich kept interrupting: “That’s an imitation of a stork,” she said. “You’re thinking, my child, you’re thinking too much about what you’ve learned. Let it go. Forget everything except the music. Close your eyes and listen, listen. Nothing else.”

  She spun around sharply to Herr Tarangolian. “Can’t you make this child’s obtuse parents take her to Paris right this minute to show her some ballet? Diaghilev is there, Coco! Think what it would mean for her!”

  “I’m not certain,” said the prefect, “if Tanya’s parents would be so delighted if she chose to devote herself completely to the ballet. It’s sad, my dear Fiokla Ignatieva, but even if Diaghilev appeared in person to tell them that we have a second Pavlova, even if Pavlova herself confirmed it …”

  “But that’s not what I mean at all!” she interrupted him. “Don’t you understand me either, Coco? I’m not trying to breed ballerinas here. Let me confess something to you: I’ve never really liked children. Of course I claim I do, and I persuade others as well as myself. The fact is, they torment me. I can’t bear seeing their need. But what I can stomach even less is standing idly by, watching the way they’re ruined while being processed into ‘grown-ups.’”

  “Of course,” said Herr Tarangolian. “But where do you want to begin? The domestic circumstances in this case are a lot more difficult than you suspect … And don’t you say yourself that children cannot and should not be spared anything?”

  “My God, Coco, how thick you are today! An everlasting kindergarten is not my notion of an ideal world. Of course they should grow up. But in a different way.”

  “Don’t you think that a good portion of the unhappiness we see here is because too much is being demanded, Fiokla Ignatieva?” asked Herr Tarangolian. “Excuse me, but surely you see the pain in her eyes each time you criticize.”

  “You’re confusing cause and effect, my dear—just like everyone else. I can’t do anything to help you, but I have to do something so she doesn’t make the same mistake.” She turned to Tanya and looked her over from head to toe. “Believe me, Coco,” she said, nervously inhaling, “there is no other cure than this. I know exactly why I have my children dance. I assure you, it’s not just fun and games.”

  “I know, my dear,” said the prefect. “I truly admire you. You know that.”

  “I know you do. But you don’t believe me. Even though we’re true soul mates, you and I. You wouldn’t be such a good prefect if you weren’t so musically—or should I say, dancerly—inclined.”

  “Aha,” laughed Herr Tarangolian. “You flatter me too much. My job might be better compared to belly dancing than to your harmonious choreographies.”

  “In any case, it�
��s a question of hearing—of hearing that goes down to the blood and bones.”

  “Very beautifully put. That’s what I do: I bend my bones to the harmony of my sphere.”

  “Now don’t go senile on me, my dear Coco,” Madame Aritonovich said drily. “You’re getting sentimental. But I suspect you’re simply being insincere—and always have been. You enjoy the tune you dance to, don’t try and pretend with me!” She turned back to Tanya. “Come, Tanya, once more, all by yourself. All the others to the barre!”

  The person clearly most bored by the constant repetition was Solly Brill.

  “As far as I’m concerned you can take all this jumping up and down and stick it in a pipe,” he said. “Anyway, I like soccer better. But this? Nothing but shmontses. Too much aesthetics and not enough athletics. From the pedagogical point of view, the whole thing is off target. What does it have to do with here and now? D’you hear about the game on shabbes afternoon? Makkabi over Jahn? Did they take a tanning or what? Seven to three—a nice embarrassment for the swastiklers. And then they wanted to get fresh on top of that. So they paid for it with a couple of teeth. Then they wanted to get at the referee. But he gave Strobel—that’s the center for Jahn—such a blow it laid him out. And meanwhile the guy was one of them. Next Sunday it’s Makkabi against Mircea Doboş. Well, I’m excited … And what are we doing?” he finished, morose. “Hopping around on our tiptoes in a hooped skirt. Am I some kind of dying swan or what? The whole thing is nothing but shmontses.”

  Then, one morning, Tanya had a breakdown. She fainted for a very brief moment, and had already come to by the time anyone could help her. She smiled, a little embarrassed and confused, but it was a smile—and we hadn’t seen her smile in weeks. Then she said quietly: “It’s nothing, I’m fine, I can keep dancing.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?” asked Madame Aritonovich. “Let me see you move your feet. Nothing hurts?”

  “No,” said Tanya. “Please, may I continue right now? And from the beginning, if that’s all right?”

  Madame Aritonovich helped her to her feet, face-to-face, and looked her in the eye. “Fine, from the beginning, then.”

  I’ve occasionally wondered whether Madame Aritonovich might have seen those first movements Tanya made by looking in the mirror, but that’s impossible, because she was walking away from her, in the direction of Herr Tarangolian, who was sitting in his usual corner. In any case she had turned her back to Tanya and was heading toward the prefect with such a triumphantly relieved smile that I, a rather clumsy snowflake deployed close to that same corner, couldn’t help being amazed. The prefect lifted his heavy eyes as she approached his chair, and said: “How did you do that, you sorceress?”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Madame Aritonovich. “Could I please have a light, Coco?” I saw how her hands were shaking. She lit her cigarette with the match he offered, and only then did she turn around to look at Tanya.

  “This is one of the few truly miraculous events I have witnessed in my entire long life,” said the prefect. Madame Aritonovich did not respond. She was focused on Tanya’s dancing.

  “Ahh,” said the prefect, gasping with glee. “Fiokla—such a port des bras! But don’t pretend—that was you, you’re the one who brought it out of her.” He expressed his delight in an artificial excitement. “I admit, the child was always talented, we agreed on that from the very beginning, but this, this is brilliant. Brava, brava!” He applauded. “You see …” He played the awestruck admirer with such verve that he wound up being truly moved. “What balance, what elevation, what ballon!”

  (Ballon refers to a special trick in dance, or better, the divinely given ability of a ballet dancer to appear to hold a position in the air, as if released from gravity. The effect is attained by the dancer’s rapidity in assuming the desired position during a jump, which makes the flight seem more drawn out, relaxed, and full of élan.)

  “She already had all of that,” said Madame Aritonovich. “What she had lost, and has now regained, is herself.”

  “I admire you, Fiokla Ignatieva,” said Herr Tarangolian. He kissed her hand ardently.

  When the scene was over, Madame Aritonovich said: “Well done, Tanya. And the rest of you were excellent. Ice cream for everyone. Who would like to volunteer to go get it?”

  We broke out in cheers. Herr Tarangolian got up, went over to Tanya, took the red carnation out of its buttonhole and presented it to her with a very seriously intended, exaggeratedly gallant bow.

  “Nu, finally something worth hearing: ice cream for everyone,” said Solly Brill. And then, to Tanya: “You could have come up a little sooner with the dance discipline and all that, you know.” He sighed. “Whimsical creatures, these women, by God!”

  He had planted himself in the middle of the room and watched Herr Tarangolian, who had righted himself after bowing to Tanya and was gravely prancing back to Madame. “Herr Coco, you have a button open!”

  The prefect looked down at himself, dismayed and embarrassed. “No, on your left gaiter,” said Solly. “Why? What did you think?”

  That same afternoon Tanya was missing at home. They called for her but she didn’t come. They went looking for her, increasingly agitated, but she was nowhere to be found. We were forced to ask at the neighbors, but she hadn’t been seen there either. Uncle Sergei was sent into town to look for her at Madame Aritonovich’s or at the institute. But she wasn’t there, either. They were on the point of asking the prefect to contact the police when she came striding through the garden gate—accompanied by our father and Aunt Paulette.

  Without paying any attention to our mother’s worried expression, our father went straight to his room. That was the sign of a rising crisis, and everyone took pains not to say a single unnecessary word.

  “Where were you?” asked our mother.

  “She was with me,” said Aunt Paulette, in place of Tanya. “I took her to visit some friends.”

  “Couldn’t I have been told beforehand?”

  “No,” said Aunt Paulette, without any further explanation, and likewise retreated.

  Tanya kept quiet about her adventure. Everything remained very secretive and enigmatic.

  But a few days later, over the after-dinner coffee—to which Herr Tarangolian no longer came—Aunt Paulette asked: “Will it be possible for me to borrow one of the children this afternoon?”

  “I don’t know exactly what you mean?” said our mother.

  “I need a chaperone. I’d like to visit some friends.”

  “And might we know what ‘friends’ you have in mind?” asked Mama.

  “Herr Adamowski. Don’t worry: the children’s moral health will not be placed in danger.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Elvira went with you?”

  “I can’t imagine she would much enjoy herself.”

  “But you think that one of the children might?”

  The conversation was clearly growing sharper by the second. Only Aunt Paulette stayed charmingly casual, her head leaned lazily against the back of the chair. “One of the children can drink chocolate and browse through some of the picture magazines. But if you think Elvira would be satisfied with that …”

  “I have no intention,” said Aunt Elvira, poisonously.

  And so I was chosen to accompany Aunt Paulette.

  We passed through the Volksgarten the same way we went to school. Aunt Paulette hardly said a word to me, then stopped at a booth and bought me a bag of sticky candies, with the casual hint of contempt that was her way. But I preferred to go with her than with Aunt Elvira; she was eye-catchingly pretty with her dark-waved bobbed hair and wore her clothes with a natural elegance. She was tall and had beautiful legs, which she was already beginning to show back then—not past the knee, as later became common, but just enough to reveal the striking taper of her calves down to the ankle: when it came to fashion, Aunt Paulette was always ahead of the time, thanks to a certain intuition. Her flesh-toned silk stockings with the straight seam increa
sed the appeal. I’ve always regretted that this seam, which connotes a slight disguise, has all but disappeared today. The overly thin hose-gauze looks like bare skin, causing the legs to appear naked. “Nakedness,” Uncle Sergei used to say, “has no charm. It is always the covering that awakens the erotic.”

  Herr Adamowski lived on a side street off the Neuschulgasse, on the fourth floor of an ugly, dark apartment building. He had on a casual jacket of brown velvet with braid trim on the front. The homemade mixture of student-fraternity-jacket and Hussar uniform struck me as particularly revolting.