Melnitz

by Charles Lewinsky

  ‘Pain?’ asked François.

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Even your leg?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  ‘I had the impression . . .’

  ‘That’s the old war wound. It’s only natural that I should feel it from time to time.’

  Janki had never been in a battle in the war of 1870–71, and had certainly never been wounded. But François didn’t contradict his father. Everyone has the right to turn himself into whatever he wants.

  The dining room, he was always surprised to notice, was much smaller than he remembered. Even the table – tropical wood! – was a perfectly ordinary table. The tantalus still stood on the sideboard, the half-full crystal jug in its silver prison. Since his childhood the level of the golden liquid locked in it hadn’t changed. ‘What’s actually in there?’ asked François.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had a key for it.’

  The contracts were sound. The French Warehouse and the Modern Emporium were bought by Paul Schnegg, a son of the rich Schneggs who also owned the House of the Red Shield, and whose parents François had once met at an unfortunate soirée. Schnegg took over the shops as they were, and wanted to go on running at least the Modern Emporium. There wouldn’t even be a closing-down sale. The price was good, and Janki would invest the money in François’s firm.

  ‘What does Mama have to say about that?’

  ‘I’ve been working for forty years,’ said Janki. ‘Haven’t I earned a bit of peace?’

  ‘So she didn’t agree.’

  ‘It’s a purely business decision.’ Janki carefully arranged the papers that François hadn’t even discomposed. ‘And it will do her good too. We will travel. A spa treatment by a lake, and later perhaps Italy.’

  ‘So everything’s all right?’

  ‘Everything’s all right.’

  There must have been violent arguments between his parents, François was quite sure of that. The store had been the content of Chanele’s life. What was she supposed to do without her shop?

  But the decision was sensible, and good sense has to govern decisions in business matters. Just good sense, no emotions.

  Clear conditions. Clear rules. Clear decisions.

  Anything else was unfair.

  Damn it, it was unfair.

  He had turned up at Landolt’s the following day. With his baptismal certificate in his pocket.

  Landolt smiled, offered him a chair and pushed the cigarette case with the family crest over the table.

  The family crest that made him something better just because it also hung in some guildhall or other.

  How he hated this man.

  ‘What brings me this unexpected pleasure, Herr Meijer?’ asked Landolt and coughed into his handkerchief.

  Cleaned his glasses awkwardly before putting them on again.

  Then studied the baptismal certificate as thoroughly as a scholar studies a document in a foreign language.

  Even held it up to the light.

  Folded the paper up again and set it precisely in the middle of the table. A poker player putting down his bet.

  But games have rules, and Landolt wasn’t sticking to them.

  He took his glasses off again and said:

  He said it in a very friendly voice.

  As if it were really a question.

  Said: ‘May I ask why you’re showing me this?’

  ‘The property. You couldn’t sell it to a Jew.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Landolt and shook his head regretfully. ‘It’s really almost a shame. But you see, my dear Herr Meijer: even a baptised Jew is still a Jew.’

  ‘Damn it, Landolt! Drive!’

  40

  Mimi ate liqueur chocolates for medical reasons. Dr Wertheim had actually prescribed port for her frail constitution, but Mimi couldn’t stomach alcohol – ‘I will never understand how anyone can enjoy getting tiddly!’ – and actually had to force herself at least to take the recommended stimulant in this form. If she now put the fourth of these balls of sweetness into her mouth, it was entirely Désirée’s fault.

  You trust your children, you make sacrifices for them, and then something like this happens!

  She had become quite dizzy with excitement, and her migraine was announcing its presence again. She drew little circles on her temples with her fingertips, leaving fine traces of chocolate.

  ‘Good that you’re back, Désirée,’ she said and smiled tragically. ‘So you’ve been out with Esther Weill?’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ said Désirée, looking rather surprised. Esther Weill, of the shoe-shop Weill’s, was her best friend, and Mimi had never before objected to the two of them going walking or visiting exhibitions together.

  ‘And you really saw a big fish in that booth, at the top of the square?’

  ‘Not a fish, Mama, a whale. A whale is a mammal.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Mimi in a worryingly benign voice. ‘How considerate of you to enlighten your stupid mother about such matters. So it’s a mammal? How interesting.’

  Her hand reached for the next praline.

  ‘Of course it’s only a skeleton. But massive! Much bigger than I’d imagined. They have to transport it on three carts and reassemble it in each new town. The skull alone . . .’

  ‘The skull,’ said Mimi and turned a chocolate wrapped in shiny silver paper around in her fingers like a missile. ‘I’m particularly interested in that. What does it look like, this skull?’

  ‘Very long and narrow. Like an enormous bird’s beak.’

  ‘A bird’s beak. Very interesting.’ The little ball turned rotated faster and faster.

  ‘Are you quite all right, Mama?’

  ‘Me? Why ever not? I just always like to hear about all the things my daughter experiences. With her best friend. Describe this whale’s lower jaw?’

  Désirée stared at her mother. ‘It’s lower jaw?’

  ‘Or do whales not have things like that? Perhaps because they’re mammals?’

  ‘I don’t understand what’s up with you, Mama.’

  ‘But I understand very well.’ Mimi had planned to remain quite calm, but now she struck the table. Brownish juice dripped from her fist onto the good table-cloth. ‘I understand that my daughter is lying to me.’

  ‘I . . .’

  With an extravagant gesture that had something of a practised air – and she had actually tried it out two or three times as she waited for her daughter – Mimi set down the Tages-Anzeiger down in front of Désirée. The gesture didn’t have entirely the dramatic effect that she was looking for, because her fingers stuck to the paper. She irritably took her handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her hand clean.

  ‘Read!’ she said. ‘Page four. “Miscellaneous news”.’

  Now it would not have been true to say that Mimi studied the newspaper every day. The small letters put too much of a strain on her eyes. But the new bishge, who had an urge for higher things, read the paper, which Pinchas subscribed to, every morning from cover to cover during her coffee break and, if Mimi was unable to avoid her, liked to repeat her newly acquired wisdom. Today it had been a very small news item, which she was absolutely unable to get over. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ she had asked, shaking her head.

  ‘A curious theft,’ read Désirée, ‘took place the night before last in Zurich. From the travelling natural history cabinet currently attracting the attention of the educated classes behind the Museum, the lower jaw of the skeleton of a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) on display there was pilfered. According to Herr Marian Zehntenhaus, the owner of the booth, the missing piece of bone was almost three metres in length, and can only have been carried away on a cart. So far there is no trace of any perpetrator, but it is assumed that irresponsible night-time gangs lie behind this low crime. A reward of fifty francs is offered for any information about the location of the nobbled piece of skeleton. This generous sum is explained by the considerable scientific damage done by this senseless act of vand
alism. In the view of Herr Zehntenhaus, an incomplete skeleton is entirely worthless and no longer suitable for exhibition purposes. So the booth on the Platzspitz remains closed until further notice. Tickets already purchased may be returned to the booking office.’

  Désirée looked up from the newspaper, her face bright red.

  ‘Can you explain to me,’ said Mimi, her voice as sweet as her pralines, ‘can you please explain to your stupid mother how you and Esther Weill visited an exhibition that isn’t even open?’

  ‘We . . .’ said Désirée, fingering the piqué collar of her blouse. ‘We went . . .’

  ‘I don’t deserve this.’ Mimi’s powdered cheeks quivered like those of a wine connoisseur testingly sloshing a good wine around in his mouth. ‘If I were one of those mother hens who go around checking up on every single little thing their children do, then perhaps I might understand. But I’m not like that. Certainement pas. I have never in my life got involved. Never. That’s why it pains me so much that you have lately begun to consider it necessary to lie to me.’ She darted an exploratory glance at her hand and then, when it was seen to be satisfactory free of any traces of chocolate and liqueur, she brought it to her bosom. ‘It hurts me deep in my heart.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mama.’

  ‘And you think that’s enough?’ Mimi dabbed the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘All my life I have sacrificed myself for you, you have no idea how I have suffered just to bring you into the world, tu m’as déchirée, ma petite, and this is the thanks I get now. You have secrets from me. See-crets.’ She stretched the word out as long as it would go.

  ‘Today Esther and I were . . .’

  ‘No, don’t say anything.’ Mimi, red-cheeked, was enjoying the drama of the scene. ‘I don’t want to know. If my daughter no longer trusts me, if I no longer have a daughter, then I must live with that. It breaks my heart, but if it is to be my fate, then I shall endure that too. That too,’ she repeated in a quiet voice, tilted her head to the side and, in a gesture that she had lately seen in the Municipal theatre, laid the back of her hand to her brow.

  It took ten minutes and two more liqueur chocolates before Désirée was finally prepared to deliver her confession.

  ‘But you must promise me not to tell anyone.’

  ‘You know me, ma petite. No one can keep a secret as well as I. Lots of people have told me that.’

  ‘You swear?’

  ‘All right then,’ said Mimi. ‘I swear.’

  And then, with a lot of fidgeting and blushing, it suddenly came out: Esther Weill, Désirée’s best friend, had an admirer.

  ‘A real admirer,’ said Désirée.

  They met in secret, took long strolls, hand in hand, drank coffee in places that decent people didn’t go to, and where for that reason people weren’t afraid of being surprised by someone they knew, and Désirée supplied their alibi, nodded in agreement when Esther lied as brazenly to her parents as she herself had been lying to her trusting mother for weeks, invented details about events that they had never visited, even acquired brochures just to lend more credibility to their lies, had, for example, bought a flyer about the prepared whale skeleton for five Rappen, so many metres long, so many tonnes in weight, just because she didn’t trust her mother, who had once been young herself and knew very well what it’s like when your heart beats faster because of a man, a mother who had, after all, sympathy for the aberrations of young souls, whom one could confide in, in whom one should have confided long ago instead of coming up with silly fairy-tales that would sooner or later . . .

  To the point: ‘Who is the man?’

  But that was precisely what Désirée could not tell her mother. She had promised her friend absolute confidentiality, and Mimi must surely see that one could not break such a promise, ‘Isn’t that so, Mama?’

  Mimi was not a curious person, certainement pas, and she didn’t even think of interrogating Désirée. If she didn’t want to talk about it, then that was fine, completely fine, and Mimi was even properly proud that her daughter was so dependable.

  ‘However . . .’

  She threw her objection into the room as a fisherman casts a fish-hook in the water. ‘However you are also assuming a great responsibility. If the young man, I’m only saying this as an example, were to come from an entirely unsuitable family . . .’

  ‘He comes from a very good family,’ said Désirée.

  ‘And he is a Jew, I hope.’

  ‘From a very good Jewish family.’

  ‘That does reassure me. Although . . . I would actually be obliged to inform Rifki Weill that her daughter . . .’

  ‘You mustn’t!’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Mimi and wanted to know some details, as many details as possible, so she could reflect on the matter. This really was a novel from real life.

  Mimi loved novels.

  Désirée couldn’t say how the pair had met. ‘It must have been by chance,’ she said, and Mimi nodded meaningfully and murmured something about chances that one could help along if one put one’s mind to it.

  ‘At first she didn’t even like him.’ Désirée seemed relieved to be able to talk at last about something she had had to keep quite for so long. ‘At first she couldn’t stand him. She thought he had notions about himself. But then she realised that he was only shy. And unhappy. He’s terribly unhappy, Esther says.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s been through a lot. Says Esther. I myself don’t know him very well. Not at all, in fact.’

  ‘But you’re there when they meet?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Désirée, her cheeks now as red as her mother’s, ‘I can’t leave the two of them all on their own. That wouldn’t be respectable.’

  ‘However.’

  ‘But I stay in the background. I don’t sit at the same table when they go to a café. Or when they go for a walk I keep my distance. I don’t want to listen in on their conversations.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mimi, very slightly disappointed.

  ‘I’m so glad that you’re not cross with me any more.’

  ‘How could I be cross with you, ma petite? But from now on you tell me everything. You hear me? Everything.’

  And so began the little conspiracy between mother and daughter. Not that Mimi approved of her daughter’s behaviour, quite au contraire. She had read enough novels to be able to paint for Désirée in the most garish colours the terrible, deadly consequences that could follow on from a secret dalliance, and she did so over and over again, adding new variants each time she did so. But she did not expressly forbid her daughter’s discreet favours as a friend, and above all: she didn’t tell anyone, not even Pinchas, who – men don’t grasp such things – found out nothing at all about the affair. If Mimi met Rifki Weill at the women’s association or at some other occasion, she always inquired with the most innocent expression in the world how her charming daughter was, already so grown-up and yet so girlishly innocent, and did so in such a conspicuously inconspicuous way that Frau Weill said to her husband, ‘If I didn’t know that Mimi Pomeranz had only a daughter and not a son – I would swear she was trying to make a shidduch.’

  In return Désirée had to tell her mother everything, absolutely everything, about Esther Weill’s adventure, she had to report in the tiniest particulars on each bit of hand-holding and whispering-in-the-ear, and above all she had to describe in detail any moments of threat, which were by no means a rarity. Once, for example, because they thought an acquaintance was coming towards them, they had escaped into a tobacco shop, and the young man, whose name Mimi was not allowed to know, had bought a cigar purely out of embarrassment, and then actually tried to smoke it. Another time, on a walk in the Zurichberg Forest, Désirée had lost sight of the pair purely out of discretion, and then she couldn’t find them for ages, and when Esther and the young man – ‘No, I’m not going to tell you his name, please don’t ask me, Mama!’ – reappeared from a completely unexpected direction, the p
air were so embarrassed that they couldn’t even look at each other, no, Désirée didn’t know if they’d secretly kissed, and that was really something that you couldn’t even ask your best friend, ‘isn’t that right, Mama?’

  And once . . .

  Désirée seemed to be having more and more fun talking about these strange adventures. Sometimes she even drew her mother aside when she was in the middle of some activity or other, to update her on a forgotten detail, and over dinner she even suddenly uttered the sentence, ‘He wants to grow a moustache, but it doesn’t suit him.’

  ‘Who wants to grow a moustache?’ said Pinchas, baffled.

  ‘No one,’ Désirée said quickly, and bent down for her napkin, which had fallen on the floor.

  ‘An actor in the Municipal theatre,’ Mimi whispered to her husband. ‘She saw him in a play and now, it seems to me, she’s un tout petit peu amoureuse.’ She put a finger to her lips, and when Désirée reappeared in a state of terrible embarrassment, Pinchas quickly changed the subject.

  ‘I’m even having to lie for you,’ Mimi later said reproachfully to Désirée. And was very proud at how skilfully she had rescued the situation for her daughter.

  Generally speaking, Mimi took charge of the whole affair, came up with meeting places where disturbance was unlikely, and was particularly imaginative when it came to finding occasions that Esther and Désirée could use as an excuse for spending the afternoon together. ‘The new autumn collection is being presented at Seiden-Grieder today,’ she said for example, ‘that might be something for you girls.’ When she winked, fine cracks appeared in the powder around her eyes. ‘And in any case it’s high time that you finally started giving some thought to your appearance.’

  She said those last words purely out of habit. In truth – perhaps her involvement in these strange adventures had something to do with it, or else it was simply down to the fact that her daughter was gradually turning from a girl to a woman – either way; recently Désirée had developed a great interest in fashionable matters, had even once burst into tears just because Mimi refused to buy her a pure silk azure sequined dress that she had discovered in François’s Store. But thirty-four francs fifty for a dress that would be out of fashion in a year was really too much. Mimi was already spending far more money on her daughter than was sensible. Perhaps if Pinchas had still had the butcher’s shop rather than the general grocery store, which was only doing ho-hum business, while Elias Guttermann, so it was said, had made a mint with the butcher’s shop.