‘What’s it to be?’ asked Mimi, and moistened the tip of the pencil with her tongue, as she had once seen the clerk do at the post office counter. ‘Young? Pretty? Rich?’
Chanele didn’t respond to the facetious tone and answered the questions very seriously. ‘Rich will be necessary. Yes, I think so. At least well-to-do. Otherwise Janki won’t agree with me. Young? That’s not so important. As far as I’m concerned she can be older than François. He isn’t supposed to fall in love with her, he’s just supposed to marry her.’
Mimi couldn’t believe her ears. For her, having grown up with novels, Chanele had just said something monstrous. ‘Not fall in love?’
‘I don’t think François can. That’s why it wouldn’t be good if the girl was pretty.’
‘You’re joking now.’
‘I’m just trying to see things as they are.’
‘And you see your son with an ugly old bag?’
‘I see François. As he is. And I know: if he’s married, he will cheat on his wife.’
‘Chanele!’ In a play, Mimi had heard an actor say something similarly dreadful. But not in such a calm, natural voice.
‘There’s no point pretending,’ Chanele said. ‘If you don’t accept reality, eventually you go mad. Believe me, I know that. François will always want to have everything, especially the things he’s not supposed to. And he will get them. That will make him a good businessman and a bad husband.’
‘So . . .’
‘I’ve thought about it very hard. A pretty young woman who’s always been accustomed to compliments, whose suitors have always been queuing up outside the front door – she would be destroyed by a man like François. First she would blame him, then herself, and then she would be unhappy for the rest of her life.’
‘You’re meshuga!’
‘You think?’ Chanele took the diary out of Mimi’s hand and set it back down in its place. Only then did she go on talking, so quietly and tonelessly that Mimi had to lean forward to understand her. ‘If Janki had married you then – could you bear being treated as he treats me?’
‘Does he treat you badly?’
‘No,’ said Chanele. ‘Does one treat one’s desk badly? One’s cigarette case? He isn’t interested enough in me to treat me badly. It’s enough for him that I’m there and do the things that need to be done.’
‘I’m sure that’s partly . . .’ – ‘your fault,’ Mimi had wanted to say, but the Chanele who was siting opposite her was no longer the same Chanele she had known all her life. And she herself, it seemed to her in her bedroom right now, was no longer the same Mimi. ‘I’m sure it’s down to work,’ she said for that reason. ‘A man like that has a thousand things on his mind.’
‘Of course,’ said Chanele and didn’t mean it. ‘But what matters is this: I’ve never expected much from my life, so I can cope with the fact that I haven’t had much. While you . . .’
‘While I have no children. I’ll soon be an old woman, and I become more and more superfluous with every year.’
‘You aren’t superfluous,’ said Chanele. ‘I, for example, need you a lot.’
Mimi rubbed her temples and then her eyes as well. She still had headaches, but that had nothing to do with it.
26
Mimi was needed, so she forgot all her complaints.
Admittedly Chanele’s plan was meshuga, she thought, and if she, Mimi, had ever come up with such an idea, people would have said she was wool-gathering again, but sometimes she had the feeling that we live in a meshugena world, and being crazy was perhaps the only reasonable option. Chanele had been very right to come to her straight away with her wish, not just because they were friends – ‘That’s what we are now, aren’t we, Chanele?’ – but above all because here in Zurich she knew every Jewish family, really every single one, that was the advantage, but also the curse, if you owned the only kosher butcher’s shop in the city. She could list every marriageable girl in the community, she could write a list if necessary, right now on the spot in the diary with the red binding. And she could introduce her to the families at any time, very discreetly and as if by chance. It was only a shame that Chanele hadn’t come up with her plan a few days earlier because today, today of all days, as a day for such introductions would have been a good one, surprisingly good, in fact, she herself believed in such hints from fate, and at some point, in a quiet minute, she would have to confide something in Chanele – one couldn’t talk to Pinchas about such matters – about one Madame Rosa and certain messages that one received at her house, but now was not the moment. She sometimes got lost in her thoughts like a child in a room full of enticing toys. Chanele had to ask her twice what was so special about this day, and she didn’t immediately understand Mimi’s answer. The clothes collection of the Hachnasat Kallah Association, she explained, clinging to the bedpost so that Chanele could tighten the laces of her corset – ‘Much tighter, I can take it!’ – this clothes collection to which she, Mimi, had to go anyway, in fact she was already far too late, would have been the ideal opportunity to take an initial look, one could meet most of the women with eligible daughters, and shidduchim, whatever men thought, were always made by the mothers. When she talked about it, Mimi was entirely in her element, and the rustic red patches on her cheek became so pronounced that she had to hide them with foundation cream; one didn’t want to look like a milkmaid, after all.
She could just come along, Chanele said, but at first Mimi didn’t want to let her. Chanele was certainly not dressed for such an occasion, and when shadchening the first impression was often crucial. People in Zurich were aware of Janki’s successful business deals, but Chanele herself knew most of them only from hearsay, and if she turned up in a dress, that . . . She didn’t want to be mean, she understood that with three children and a shop you didn’t have time to pay proper attention to your wardrobe, although it wouldn’t have done anyone any harm to be elegant.
Chanele refused to accept these reservations, and in the end Mimi, not unwillingly, allowed herself to be persuaded. But she demanded categorically that Chanele change her clothes, there were enough dresses there and something was bound to suit her. Chanele resisted the idea of changing, after all it wasn’t Purim, and it didn’t say anywhere in the Shulchan Orech that as a future mother-in-law you had to be got up like a maypole. Then Mimi had pulled out for her a cream satin afternoon dress from the pile that still lay on the bed, and a petticoat of starched taffeta with plissée flounces, and it was only the fact that the skirt was quite plainly far too wide around the waist that made Mimi relent. As a girl Chanele had been able to wear Mimi’s cast-off clothes without altering so much as a stitch, but recently, in spite of the best corsets, Frau Pomeranz had become somewhat matronly. Still, at least she could still do this, she quickly offered Chanele the hat that she would have lent her to go with the dress, a city model that Mimi herself had never worn, with a brightly coloured ostrich feather that hung delicately over one’s shoulder.
‘But there’s one thing I must insist on,’ she said as she put the hat carefully back in its box, ‘if you really are determined to come as you are, then you should talk very little and on no account are you to be polite.’ Chanele, she explained to her startled companion, was after all a woman from a wealthy business household, and that was exactly how she would have to appear. ‘If you think you’re too refined for them, they’ll all want to be involved with you.’
For herself Mimi chose an inconspicuous pale blue dress, very slightly enhanced with a few decorative buttons of carved mother of pearl. She was only in the background today, she thought; Chanele would have to make the big impression, that was what counted in such situations. To hear her lecture like this one might have thought she had become the successor to Abraham Singer, and whole hordes of young couples owed their happiness only to her intervention.
She pulled two more dresses from the pile, the maroon one with the cul de Paris and a dark blue one with slightly worn velvet buttons, those were the
ones she wanted to sacrifice to the good cause. Regula was to bring the dresses down to them, no, they would certainly not just carry them down in their arms, even though it wasn’t far to the synagogue, certainly not, in that case she would tolerate no objection, such an appearance would create completely the wrong impression.
Hinda would have liked to go too, out of pure curiosity and even though she had no idea what Chanele and Aunt Mimi had in mind. Mimi brusquely rejected the idea. What was it that Golde, who knew lots of Jewish proverbs, had liked to say? ‘If you want to sell a rooster, you don’t go to market with a goose as well.’
On the way there Mimi held her head very high, as if the servant with the big parcel wrapped in pressing cloth were only walking behind her completely by chance. She even forced a driver to rein his horses violently in by walking right in front of his cart without looking to left or right. He went on swearing at her long after she had turned into the Löwenstrasse.
Because of the hot weather the doors of the synagogue were open. The shrill soprano of Frau Goldschmidt, the synagogue choir soloist, mixed with the sound of carriages and passers-by. She was rehearsing for Shavuot: the two women recognised – by the words, if not by the unfamiliar melody – the songs that accompany the bringing out of the Torah. At the ‘Raumamu’ she fluffed her notes twice in a row.
‘That is the reason why Pinchas is seriously thinking of leaving the community,’ said Mimi.
‘Because she sings so badly?’
‘Because of all these innovations in recent times. Women in the chorus and a harmonium. They’re talking about having a secession community like the one they have in Frankfurt.’
They entered the synagogue building through the side entrance on Nüschelerstrasse. The small hall served every possible purpose; there one could offer the community the traditional Kiddush after a bar mitzvah or hold the annual general meetings of the many social and charitable associations, whereby these two functions could be pleasantly combined. Today the tables were pushed together into two long rows at an angle to one another, at which volunteer helpers were sorting through the donated items of clothing. Most of them were what Mimi, with French discretion, liked to call ne plus vraiment jeunes, generously ignoring the fact that the women she so described were no older than she was herself. There is a stage in the lives of respectable bourgeois ladies when the children no longer make demands on their time all around the clock, when the well-oiled machine of the household produces clean washing and regular meals all by itself, and one has enough time and energy left over to devote it to culture, superstition or philanthropy. And gossip, of course. The practised eyes of the well-to-do ladies read the most detailed information from the donor, her generosity and her fashionable taste, and as their sharp-tongued commentaries were generally directed against absent friends, the Hachnasat Kallah Association never had the slightest trouble recruiting enough honorary workers.
The highest-ranking of the ladies present was Zippora Meisels, the widow of a former community president, who was known on the quiet as ‘the young old woman’ because in spite of her advanced years she could not be deterred from wearing a Titian-red sheitel. The youthful hair colour and the artfully curled hair contrasted with the sharp outlines of her weathered face in a ridiculous way. Even though she unusually had no official function in this association, she had got hold of the best seat, and sat precisely where the two rows of tables met at an obtuse angle, and from where one could not only follow all the conversations but also keep an eye on the door to the hall. Consequently she was the first to spot Mimi and Chanele. When she saw Regula coming in behind them with her parcel of clothing, she ironically raised her eyebrows – ‘We’re very elegant today!’ – giving her face a clownish appearance: she had painted the eyebrows on her face herself, and not quite matched the line of thinning hairs.
Malka Grünfeld, with whom she had just been talking, followed her gaze, apologised and went to meet the two new arrivals with outstretched arms. Frau Grünfeld was the president of the Association, a position that she owed not so much to her popularity as to a large donation from her husband, who had recently made himself rich by speculating on railway shares. Malka who for many years, as Mimi knew only too well, always bought the very cheapest pieces of Shabbos roast, now gave herself aristocratic airs and, if she honoured an occasion with her presence, always dragged a whole host of getzines-leckers behind her like a train.
‘My dear!’ she said in the singsong voice she had adopted as a wealthy woman. ‘How nice that you found your way here at last.’
‘You’re late,’ that meant, and, ‘I’m not used to being kept waiting.’
‘I was held up, pardonnez-moi.’ Mimi knew that Malka spoke no French, and was discreetly referring to that shortcoming. ‘I had a surprise visit from Baden. May I introduce you? Frau Grünfeld, Madame Meijer.’
‘I have wanted to meet you for a long time.’ Malka Grünfeld had put on this sentence along with her chain of pearls and high-buttoned gloves, and found that in its affable condescension it suited her down to the ground.
‘Madame Meijer, I’m sure you know, my dear Malka,’ said Mimi, repeatedly putting a smile between the words like a piece of punctuation, ‘is the wife of Janki Meijer, who runs the French Drapery and the Modern Emporium in Baden.’
Malka Grünfeld smiled back just as artificially. ‘I have heard that one can find some very nice things there.’
‘Quite nice for a provincial backwater like Baden,’ that meant.
‘And in what field does your husband work?’ Chanele asked. She had only wanted to make polite conversation, but Malka Grünfeld threw back her head and was insulted. She was used to people knowing who she was.
You would have had to know Mimi very well to notice that she was smiling contentedly.
‘Shall I go now?’ asked Regula, who had put her parcel down on one of the tables.
‘Do that, my child.’ When she put her mind to it, Mimi could be at least as aristocratic as any nouveau riche Association President’s wife. ‘And see to it that you make some progress with the silver polishing. Is it not énervant?’ she added, turning to Malka. ‘By the time you’ve polished the last pieces, the first are always dirty again.’
‘We have silver cutlery as well,’ that meant. ‘And we’ve had it longer than you.’
Then the other ladies had to be greeted, with Mimi mentioning the Drapery Store and the Emporium every time an introduction was made. The better sort of people met in the Hachnasat Kallah Association to confirm to one another through demonstrative benevolence that they were also in fact superior. Chanele did not really know what to say in such society, so she created precisely the detached impression that Mimi would have wished.
‘That is Delphine Kahn,’ said Mimi, and led Chanele to a severe looking woman who wore her high-corseted bosom before her like a suit of armour. ‘You will have heard of Kahn & Co. The biggest silk importers in the country. The Kahns have a very charming son, Siegfried is his name, a very promising future lawyer. I think your daughter Hinda once met him by chance.’
If Hinda had been there, she would immediately have noticed the similarity between mother and son. Frau Kahn too had the habit of moving her head back and forth like a neckless owl. A pair of spectacles with round lenses further intensified the impression.
‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Madame Meijer.’ She couldn’t have uttered the phrase more precisely with an etiquette guide in front of her.
‘Frau Kahn also has a very charming daughter,’ Mimi said, and nudged Chanele with her knee in a very unladylike manner.
‘She is here,’ said the owl. ‘My Mina is such a good child that she wouldn’t dream of missing an opportunity to be present at a charitable event. I’m always telling her, “Young as you are, you don’t need to worry about such things!” – but it’s like talking to a wall. Over there – you see how hard she’s working?’
The daughter of the biggest silk importing business was easy to s
pot among the volunteers. A skinny girl, younger than all the others, was folding clothes at one of the tables. In her concentration she had bent her head so far forward that her long black hair hid her face like a widow’s veil. Chanele could only see that she wore glasses, like her mother. Her movements showed that indecisive caution that arises either out of short-sightedness or out of a lack of confidence. There didn’t seem to be anything really striking about her, but when she carried a stack of folded clothes to the laundry baskets, she seemed to swing a stiff right leg forwards in a semicircle with each step she took, and her body swung back and forth in counterbalance, as if she were drunk.
‘Polio,’ said Frau Kahn. ‘The poor child has to wear a metal brace.’
When all the clothes were sorted and all the comments on them passed – on the subject of Mimi’s donation, everyone agreed that she displayed both good taste and a tendency to wasteful frivolity – liqueurs and cakes were passed around, a generous and unanimously applauded donation from the esteemed President. The seating arrangement at the two long tables seemed to happen quite naturally, but followed strict rules of rank and age, with Zippora Meisels and Malka Grünfeld naturally holding court in the middle. Chanele, the unadorned simplicity of whose dress was interpreted, perfectly in line with Mimi’s plan, as the whim of a wealthy woman who doesn’t need to show off, was given the seat of honour beside the president, and pulled the resisting Mina Kahn down onto the chair beside her.
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