It was now seven years since François . . .
It was seven years ago, and it still didn’t seem natural. On the contrary: the silence about the thing no one wanted to mention got louder every year. ‘As if we were all patients,’ Arthur reflected, ‘still feeling a limb that was amputated long ago.’
All the other Meijers were there. In fact it wasn’t at all correct to call them ‘the Meijers’, because they were called Pomeranz and Kamionker, but if one had asked them that was what they would have called themselves too. On the sideboard, as if by way of proof, stood the photograph for which Salomon and Golde had once reluctantly posed, she with her sheitel, which sat at an angle like a wonky tea cosy, he supporting himself on his umbrella like a general on his sword, both their faces contorted, by the requirement to stand still for a long time, into stern masks, as if to intimidate posterity. The photograph had faded; Hinda kept planning to put it in a different place where the sun wouldn’t shine on it so directly, but she kept forgetting. There were too many other things to do in this household.
Today of all days, when the Seder needed to be prepared for the whole mishpocha, she needed four hands or at least a maidservant. At the Kamionkers’ they only had a cleaning lady, for a few hours a day, and even she sometimes had to wait longer for her wages than was strictly respectable. Frau Zwicky wasn’t very efficient, and she certainly didn’t show a great deal of initiative, she didn’t see the work if you didn’t hold it up in front of her nose, but she had two little children at home and a husband who hadn’t earned any money since an accident. You don’t fire someone like that; Zalman would never have allowed it. ‘Can’t you stop being a trade unionist at least at home?’ Hinda had once asked him, and received the answer, ‘Then I would be someone else, and getting involved with a strange man is adultery, Frau Kamionker.’
In the end Hinda didn’t care if her household wasn’t run perfectly. As long as her husband was amused by the inevitable little disasters – why should she get worked up? Once, when the children were still small, they had had a visit, a preannounced visit, please note, and there had been a full pot de chambre – in such delicate cases Mimi wasn’t the only one who spoke French – in the middle of the room. The ladies of the Russian Refugees’ Relief Committee talked about the matter for ages afterwards, and didn’t know what they should be more outraged about: the unspeakable object itself, or the fact that that Hinda had only laughed at the embarrassing event.
Zalman, who was an extremely hard worker, could have forged a career for himself, he should have been a cloth preparer or even a shop-floor manager, instead of going on sitting by the sewing machine like a simple tailor, ruining his eyes, but sooner or later he always ended up having a row with his boss over some kind of injustice that didn’t even affect him personally, but only ever affected other people who couldn’t defend themselves or didn’t dare to. Most of them were Jews from the East, many of whom had fled to Zurich after the Tsarist pogroms of 1905, and who came quite as naturally to Zalman Kamionker as the shnorrers had once come to Salomon Meijer in Endingen. Zalman found them jobs, fought their battles for them and often won them, too, and when after a victoriously fought battle he was thrown out on the street, he always reported proudly on his dismissal when he got home. ‘You’re meshuga,’ Hinda would say, and Zalman would reply, ‘Luckily so – otherwise you’d get far too bored with me.’
It was a good marriage, even though money was always in short supply in the Kamionker household. But what’s money? When Hinda saw her husband sitting in the place of honour as Seder host, having the bowl and towel for the washing of the hands passed to him, in this setting he was Croesus, and the Seder would have been unthinkable anywhere else, not at the Pomeranzes’, where sickly Mimi could never have done all the work, and not at Arthur’s, because his bachelor flat didn’t even have a big enough table. And of course not at Mina’s, poor Mina who deserved such sympathy after her husband and son . . .
Don’t think about it. Not today.
Today was Pesach, a joyful celebration, a day of liberation and redemption. ‘All who are hungry, come and eat; all who are in need, come and celebrate Seder.’ They had told the story of the flight from Egypt, they had asked the traditional questions – ‘What distinguishes this night from all other nights?’ – and given the traditional answers, they had heard about the four sons, the clever one, the bad one, the stupid one and the one who doesn’t know how to ask questions, they had listed the plagues of Egypt and for each plague spilled a drop of wine from their full cups – if others are suffering, one should diminish one’s own joy – they had eaten the things that one eats on this evening, the symbolic foods, sweet, gluey charoset and bitter horseradish, as well as the worldly ones, matzo balls and gefilte fish, they were already singing the Shir Hama’a lot that introduces the table prayer, they would have been a Jewish family like any other, a happy family, even though François . . .
Don’t think about it.
As always, the singing turned into a friendly little competition. From Kolomea, Zalman had brought with him a different pronunciation and tunes different from those familiar in Switzerland, and was now drowned out by the rest of the family. The result was a cheerful cacophony that made even Pinchas chuckle, even though he took the religious traditions more seriously than anyone else.
Zalman sat at the head of the table like a king – ‘no, like an emperor’, thought Hinda, because the more his moustache invaded his cheeks, the more Zalman looked like the Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph.
He was an enthusiastic father, who would have loved to bring a whole dynasty of little Kamionkers into the world. When Ruben was born, nineteen years ago now, Zalman had loudly declared at the bris, inspired by paternal pride and mazel tov bronfen: ‘I already know the names for the next ones,’ and had started listing them all, ‘Simon, Levy, Yehuda, Dan, Naftali . . .’ to indicate that he, like the patriarch Jacob, wanted to have thirteen children, twelve sons and a daughter. There had only been three in the end, Ruben and the twin girls, but the number thirteen had retained its special secret significance for Zalman and Hinda. Even now, when they were a long-standing couple and far beyond such silliness, he could still make his wife blush with embarrassment at dull social occasions by whispering in her ear, ‘Wouldn’t you rather go home and complete the thirteen?’
Ruben saw his mother smiling and thought reproachfully, ‘Her mind isn’t on it.’ Uncle Pinchas, to whom this honour fell at every Seder, had just struck up the table prayer, and for the fulfilment of the commandment it isn’t enough just to join in with the communal singing out of habit, while following one’s own train of thought, no, one must speak the text word for word along with everyone else, and be aware of its meaning. For some time Ruben had felt obliged to think rigorously about religious matters, because after the feast days he would be leaving Switzerland for at least a year to study at the yeshiva. Not one of the big, famous yeshivas, he wasn’t such a brilliant student as that, but still a real one, meaning one in the East. At first Zalman, for whom the traditions of his religion meant more than their study, had not been at all keen on Ruben’s wish, and had even hurt Uncle Pinchas, who often studied with Ruben, with the accusation that he was determined to turn his son into a rebbe, when he didn’t have the mind for it. But in the end he had yielded – ‘If someone wants to be an apple tree, you’ll be waiting a long time for pears!’ – and had organised a year’s study for Ruben in his home town of Kolomea, along with lodging at the home of a friend from his tallis-sewing days, who was even willing to put Ruben up in his house for nothing. ‘I would do anything for a son of Zalman Kamionker,’ the friend had written. This generosity had something to do with a fight with drunk Ruthenians, who had considered it pleasing in the sight of God to break the nose of a young Jew one Sunday after church. ‘There were six of them, and he was alone,’ said Zalman. ‘I am a peaceful man, but I really had to get stuck in.’
Ruben cast a disdainful look at the twins, who couldn’t
even stop squabbling during the table prayer. In the excessive zeal of his new-found religious severity, he even felt obliged to put an admonitory index finger to his lips, which sent them both into a fit of giggles. Girls were silly, his sisters especially.
The twins had got their names because Zalman had said when they were born, ‘I’m like the patriarch Jacob. If I’m not going to have twelve sons, at least I’ve got a Lea and a Rachel.’
Anyone who didn’t know them would never have thought the two seventeen-year-olds were sisters, let alone twins. Lea took after her grandmother, she had inherited Chanele’s unbroken monobrow, and a dark complexion that nothing would lighten, however much she tried to stay out of the sun. Rachel, a quarter of an hour younger, was almost a head taller than her sister and had – never in living memory had such a thing appeared in the Meijer family – flaming red hair. Her freckled face and bright green eyes didn’t match the rest of the family at all, which was why Zalman affectionately called her ‘my goyish daughter’. In one respect, however, Lea and Rachel conformed precisely to the image that people have of twins: they were inseparable. They would have liked always to wear the same clothes, but that was a luxury the Kamionkers couldn’t afford. They had to make do with what Zalman was able to procure cheaply from his employers, either rejects or last year’s models. So on this Seder evening Lea was wearing a dark red velvet dress cut far too old for a seventeen-year-old, while Rachel, in a white cheviot dress with a Bengaline collar, looked even more pale-skinned than usual.
Déchirée, on the other hand . . .
A late arrival in Mimi and Pinchas’s life, their daughter wasn’t really called Déchirée. Her name was Désirée, the longed-for one. For Pinchas, Deborah, his daughter’s Jewish name, would have done just as well – Désirée and Pomeranz were two worlds that didn’t really fit together – but as the French elegance made his wife happy, he didn’t resist.
Although . . . French names . . . If François had stayed plain Shmul, perhaps he would never . . .
Such thoughts were to be avoided.
After the difficult birth Pinchas had fulfilled Mimi’s every wish; the torture had lasted over twenty-four hours, and Désirée had been an unusually big baby. Mimi had been poorly for all those years. Sometimes she didn’t leave her bed for days at a time, drank only camomile tea, ate chocolates and played patience on the bedcovers. She nurtured the complaints of her motherhood as devotedly as she had once tended the torments of her childlessness. Today, for example, when they sat down at the Seder table, stressing her weakened state, she had had Pinchas and Arthur give her their cushions, and made herself a proper little sofa, on which she now reposed in splendour, a sovereign long weary of ruling and who still refused to give it up.
From childhood Désirée had been a model daughter, a child who caused few problems, and yet if she did anything to discomfit Mimi, laughed too loudly or wanted to play the piano when Mama was resting, she was put firmly in her place with the same rebuke, ‘Ah, ma petite, mais tu m’as déchirée!’ Mimi used this irrefutable argument so often that it eventually became a nickname, and even Désirée had stopped minding when it was applied to her.
Today, once again, she was wearing a dress that couldn’t help but make Lea and Rachel envious. Although she was only nineteen, just two measly years older than her cousins, it wasn’t an outfit for a flibbertigibbet, but a very grown-up, hand-embroidered crêpe-voile dress with Valenciennes insets, a model, Zalman had established with his first expert glance, that must have been imported from France; nothing of such quality was produced here in Switzerland. Her dark hair, parted severely in the middle, was held in place with an ornamental comb that actually seemed to be made of real silver. In spite of all her finery, Désirée, mollycoddled and always, since childhood, put to bed for the slightest indisposition, had an attractively helpless quality. She sat there with her eyes lowered and her hands in her lap, and during the communal singing her lips moved only silently.
The second-last sentence of the table prayer, observant practice decrees, is only whispered, because the words ‘I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread’ might hurt the feelings of a needy dinner guest. But today there was no one who had been invited out of pity, apart perhaps from Mina, who as a married woman and mother had to go alone to someone else’s Seder because her husband . . .
There was an extra cup on the table, filled to the brim with wine, waiting not for François, but for the Prophet Elijah. It was more likely that the prophet would seek out this flat – 12 Rotwandstrasse, third floor – and this date – 21 April 1913 – to announce the imminent arrival of the redeemer, than that François Meijer, store-owner and successful businessman, would once again celebrate such a feast in the family circle.
For that was what they were being so noisily silent about at this Seder table: François Meijer had had himself baptised.
Had had himself ‘geshmat’.
Had rid himself of his Jewishness like an annoying pimple.
It was seven years ago now, and the question of ‘Why?’ after ‘How could he?’ and ‘Why did he do that to us?’ still prompted the most violent debates in the little circle. Not today, of course, because today Mina was sitting at the table. Mina, Francois’ wife. It had been hardest of all for her, everyone agreed, a Jewish wife with a goyish husband, and still she hadn’t divorced François, but had gone on living with him as before. The cynics among the Zurich Jews – and there was no shortage of those – said she probably couldn’t part from his money, because François Meijer had become rich more quickly than others and, it was whispered, hadn’t always kept his hands clean in the process. Milder temperaments traced Mina’s surprising fidelity back to quite practical difficulties: ‘How can a goy write a Get?’ A Get is the letter of separation that a husband must issue to his wife to make the divorce legal and enable her to marry someone else, and as it is also a religious document, of course it cannot be issue by a non-Jew.
The true reason was that Mina didn’t want to lose her son, because François – and Hinda resented this more than anything else – had also dragged Alfred along into being geshmat, an innocent twelve-year-old at the time, who couldn’t have guessed at the momentousness of the event. ‘He didn’t even allow him a bar mitzvah,’ she said every time she talked to Zalman about it, as if this particular detail was the most contemptible aspect of the matter.
Arthur, the brooding theorist, was the only member of the family who thought it possible that François – even though it didn’t fit with his calculating nature – had experienced a genuine epiphany, that a sudden insight, whether genuine or putative, had led him to renounce his ancestral religion and adopt another. But Arthur, as everyone knew, had always admired his brother beyond all measure, and was far too easily inclined to find an exculpatory explanation for the errors of others, ‘as if he himself were hiding something he hoped to be forgiven for,’ as Chanele had once thoughtfully observed.
The affair had taken its toll on her and Janki; Chanele because she feared that her eldest son would never be able to find equilibrium as long as he lived, and Janki out of concern for his reputation in the community. In the first flush of his fury he had even sworn never again to exchange a word with his son, and would have stuck to his principles had it not been for all those unavoidable business meetings. Francois’ shop had been set up with Janki’s money, an investment that had made Janki a wealthy man. But for seven years he had repeatedly turned down the invitation to come to Zurich for the Seder, and preferred to endure a joyless ceremony on his own with Chanele in their echoing Baden dining room. In Zurich he would have had to go to the synagogue, where he would have met the Kahns, Mina’s parents, who always looked at him as reproachfully as if he had personally dragged his son to the font. Mina herself had never reproached anybody. She endured her husband’s decision as she had endured her polio as a young girl, patiently and without complaint.
For Pinchas, Franço
is’s conversion had been a cause for mourning, and he preferred to avoid the theme: one does not put a strain on a painful body part. Mimi had come up with a pun on ‘chrétien’ and ‘crétin’, which she repeatedly threw into the debate, even though no one had laughed even the first time she had said it.
‘Some people try to get things by being a nice guy,’ he said. ‘François will try and get them by being a nice goy.’
The table prayer was over, the third cup drunk and the fourth poured. In the ritual of the Seder evening they were now reaching the point where the flat door is opened to admit the prophet Elijah who, it was promised, would arrive the evening before the Pesach feast to announce the time of redemption. Désirée was sitting closest to the door, so she was the one dispatched. It was already nearing eleven – such a Seder evening can go on for a long time – and she had to feel her way along the corridor. Behind her, Zalman was intoning the prayer in which God is exhorted to rain his fury down upon the unbelievers. The gas light was burning in the stairwell, and through the frosted glass it looked for a moment as if someone was standing outside the door, just waiting to be let in.
‘They have devoured Jacob,’ Zalman recited in Hebrew, ‘and destroyed his dwelling place.’
Someone – probably Mimi, who was always afraid of burglars, had put the security chain on the door. It took Désirée a moment to free the hook.
‘Pursue them in indignation, and destroy them from under your heavens.’
The door creaked as it opened, like a dying man struggling to breathe.
Someone was actually waiting on the step: a young student in full regalia, with cap, ribbons and sash, all in the green and white colours of his fraternity. He was tottering slightly, and when he started talking his breath smelled of beer.
‘Hello, Déchirée,’ the student said. ‘Déchirée,’ he said, as if they knew each other. ‘Today’s the day when the hungry are invited. So I thought I’d just drop by.’
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