Melnitz

by Charles Lewinsky

  ‘She is a pearl of a child, of the kind all Jewish parents would wish. A little quiet, perhaps, but then silence is golden, isn’t that right?’

  Chanele, holding her index finger impatiently between the pages of the book, confirmed that his observation was quite correct.

  ‘And she will have a nedinye . . . We are not rich people, but God willing, we are fine.’ His wife had said the same thing word for word; she had the tendency of quoting her husband’s words without divulging the source, as one quotes a proverb or a well-known aphorism. ‘Yes, my Chaje Sore is a good match, and angel, God willing, and at twenty-one she is exactly the right age. Your son is a doctor, isn’t he?’

  ‘Arthur? You mean that Chaje Sore and Arthur . . .?’

  ‘He’s thirty-three, my wife tells me. Exactly the right distance between them. Of course my Malka sees shidduchim everywhere. What do they say? “God couldn’t be everywhere, so he created the Jewish Mamme.” But I like the thought. A doctor from Zurich – it’s a far cry from a chandler or a trader in Herring. Everyone thinks they’re something, while in fact . . . In a little village it’s easy to be a king. So, Frau Meijer, what do you say? Are we agreed? Shall we shake on it?’

  Chanele didn’t pull a face and it wasn’t easy. Hersch Wasserstein looked so ridiculous, kneeling in front of her there in the sand, in his bathing costume like the ones that wrestlers wear at the funfair, and with the straw hat that he had bought two sizes too small. He actually held his hand out to her the way Salomon had done when a cattle trade had been concluded and only needed to be sealed, he really thought he could do the deal here on the spot and then move on to truly important matters like the prices on the lumber market and how last winter’s storms would affect them.

  But he was also a father, who wanted the best for his daughter.

  Chanele remembered Zalman asking so clumsily for Hinda’s hand, that had been ridiculous as well, and the pair had been happy together, she thought of all the things she herself had done to marry off François, so she didn’t laugh, but just said, ‘Not so fast, Herr Wasserstein. You don’t even know my son.’

  ‘I know his mother!’ he said and with an elegant motion that would have suited a frock coat better than a sweaty bathing costume, Wasserstein put his hand to his heart. ‘If the son is bentshed with only ten per cent of your charm . . . What am I saying?’ he broke off and began to negotiate with himself to hike up the compliment, ‘If he has only five per cent, only one per cent . . .’

  ‘You don’t know him,’ Chanele repeated, ‘and in any case: you would have to discuss such matters with my husband.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ said Hersch Wasserstein. ‘Business is men’s affair. I have also made some inquiries. Tell me: this Meijer who has that fine store in Zurich – is he mishpocha of yours?’

  ‘Meijer,’ said von Stetten, ‘that is a good German name. We had a Meier in our regiment, he even became a district president.’

  They were sitting at their regular table in the Strandcafé, and the first round of beers stood still untouched on the table. The six musketeers had a lot of things to discuss, because something that had originated as an idea prompted by beer or grog had quickly assumed concrete forms, so quickly that they were quite alarmed. The management had made the ballroom available to them, for free, and had undertaken, at its own suggestion, to ensure that it was appropriately decorated. The editor of the Kuranzeiger, with whom they had very cautiously discussed their plan, immediately went great guns for it, and contacted all the associations on the island, all of which now wanted to take part in the parade. At that point the mayor of Westerland had suddenly realised that he had long ago conceived this plan himself, and offered not only to greet the heroes of Sedan with a word of welcome, but also to award them the Sylt badge of honour, a distinction normally reserved for hoteliers celebrating their anniversaries or for particularly meritorious wine suppliers.

  It would all have been wonderful, if the editor of the Kuranzeiger hadn’t announced in bold letters that a real veteran would deliver a speech for the occasion, relating his own experiences in the great battle.

  None of the musketeers wanted to be that speaker, and each of them had a different excuse. Von Stetten argued that the memories of a private soldier would be much more effective than those of an aristocratic officer. Kessler mentioned a stammer that always afflicted him when he appeared in public, Neuberth, he had learned that trick in the men’s singing club, suffered from hoarseness, Staudinger had witnessed none of the crucial events because of his injury and Hofmeister blushingly admitted to his comrades that he had been with the baggage train and not with the fighting troops. So that left only Janki, whose detailed accounts of the battle they had all listened to with such fascination.

  ‘But he’s a Frenchman!’ Kessler protested. His objections were eloquently demolished by the others. The former enemy being allowed to speak on such an occasion, von Stetten said, was a proof of genuine chivalry, and Neuberth supported him, saying that after the Battle of Sedan even Bismarck had treated the defeated French emperor with exquisite politeness. And in any case, said Staudinger, Comrade Meijer wasn’t really a true Frenchman, because after all he came from Alsace-Lorraine, and that had been a solid part of the German Reich for over forty years.

  Which prompted von Stetten to observe that Meijer was also a good German name.

  Janki demurred, but not very violently. He already saw himself marching into the ballroom to the sound of the Hohenfriedberger, limping but brisk, he already saw himself standing behind the lectern, supporting himself on his walking stick, whose story he would of course tell, he already saw the expectant faces and already heard the applause. So he drained his beer glass in one go, as he had learned, rose to his feet and said, ‘Comrades! When duty calls, a soldier cannot shirk.’

  At the table d’hôte Chanele wanted to tell her husband the funny story of Hersch Wasserstein’s surprise offer, but Janki’s thoughts were so focused on the planned party that he didn’t hear her words. He was very disappointed – he hadn’t expected otherwise, but he was disappointed none the less – that his wife was not at all enthusiastic about his plan, and was even trying to put him off the whole idea. She had never understood, he said, how important it was in this world to be accepted, and what acceptance could be more complete than to be allowed to give the ceremonial address at a Sedan Day party?

  ‘But you weren’t even at Sedan!’

  Janki gave his wife a censorious look and then said in his most charming voice, which had previously been reserved only for his best lady customers, ‘Why don’t we order another bottle of wine, my dear? We have something to celebrate.’

  The next day, when the six musketeers were in the Strandcafé again, discussing the details of the big day – in what sequence were they to march in? Did one shake the mayor’s hand after the badge of honour had been awarded, or did one give a military salute? – a strange man approached their table. He was wearing a white linen beach suit with brown street shoes that didn’t match. A straw hat a couple of sizes too small sat ludicrously on his curly hair.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ said the man, ‘but I had something urgent to discuss with Herr Meijer.’

  His voice had an unpleasantly foreign accent.

  ‘As you see, we are very busy,’ Staudinger said dismissively.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ said the man, who was clearly used to having things that he had got into his head sorted out on the spot. ‘Five minutes, if we agree. And if we don’t – well, we will have finished even more quickly than that.’

  ‘We really have no time for business right now,’ said Staudinger.

  ‘Which one of you is Meijer?’ asked the man, and when everyone looked at Janki, he shook his hand like that of an old friend and said, ‘Be moichel me, I should have explained straight away. I’m sure your friend mentioned it to you.’

  ‘May I ask what it’s concerning?’

  ‘Chaje Sore, of course. A pearl of a daughter. E
xactly the right one for your Arthur. A shidduch – made in heaven, God willing.’

  Von Stetten rose to his feet, a judge getting up to deliver his verdict. His voice suddenly had the same booming commanding tone that Staudinger had used on the train to Hoyerschleuse. ‘Comrade Meijer,’ he said, ‘Do you know this Jew?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘No idea he says he has, this Herr Meijer,’ said the persistent stranger, ‘when our children are to marry.’

  The echoing laughter that these words provoked around the table faded quickly away. They saw Janki’s embarrassed face and knew that there was nothing to laugh about here.

  ‘Meijer,’ said von Stetten – the ‘comrade’ had been lost along the way – ‘Meijer, I have just one question for you: are you a Jew?’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything? I’m also a Frenchman, and you said . . .’

  ‘I would prefer it, Herr Meijer,’ said Lieutenant von Stetten, ‘if you would address me formally from now on.’

  44

  Afterwards, Arthur couldn’t and wouldn’t forget, afterwards, which was always a before as well, when they were able to breathe again, and their hearts no longer hammered as if they had climbed a summit, and it was a summit, every time, an impassable summit which one fears, while it draws one irresistibly, different each time and each time more familiar, with paths that one would yearn to walk again, and again and again, were one not afraid that one might exhaust oneself before exploring others, afterwards, when one did not yet wish to open one’s eyes, as one tries to prolong a dream even though one already knows that one will not be able to bring it back, not until the next time, when it will be different again, yet more beautiful, yet more mysterious, yet more dangerous, afterwards, when the fine hairs on the skin still bore that charge, and drew sparks beneath the wandering fingertips – wait! not now! not yet! – afterwards, when the everyday seeped once more through the closed shutters with its weary smell, that stench of reality that one can drown out for a few minutes but not really expel, when self-evidence fell from them like a badly stitched coat, when their nakedness was nakedness again and liberation no longer, afterwards, when they got up and lingered for a few seconds, afterwards, when they sat side by side and dangled their feet in the air, as if it were not the couch in Arthur’s consulting room, but a shore, a lake, a sea, and really cold water into which they were now to jump – not yet! please not yet! – as they both stared at the glass cabinet of medical books because they did not yet have the courage to let their eyes meet, afterwards, when it was over and slight disappointment rose up in them, the kind that belongs to happiness as age does to life, afterwards, when time stood still and yet must start again, they covered over the seconds of their sweet embarrassment with the unchanging sentimental ritual.

  ‘Oh please, Doctor,’ Joni had to say, ‘when can I have another appointment with you?’

  And Arthur had to take the black diary from the desk, had to flick through it as if he didn’t know the answer, as if he were not the only answer in his life that he did not doubt, and had to say, ‘Whenever you like.’

  They had met here, here in this room with the smell of disinfectant and the freshly printed diploma on the wall. Arthur had just furnished the room, but it felt too old for him, he felt like a little boy putting on his father’s trousers, far too long for him, and a jacket his arms couldn’t find a way out from, who paraded like that through the flat and imagined he’s grown up. Back then Janki had shouted at him for dragging the carefully ironed trouser legs over the freshly waxed floor, and he had only wanted to try out what it was like if you . . .

  He had just wanted to try it out.

  No, that wasn’t true. It had been more than curiosity.

  Much more.

  Joni had come to him with a pulled muscle, nothing serious, not even particularly painful, but the next weekend there was to be a competition, and he wanted to know if there wasn’t a remedy for it, something to rub in or something, because this particular competition was particularly important. ‘Are you interested in wrestling, Doctor?’

  And Arthur had said, ‘Please slip out of your things.’

  Sometimes quite ordinary sentences, sentences that one has said a thousand times, suddenly acquire a new meaning, the words come freshly coined from the mint, gleaming and new.

  Please slip out of your things.

  Open, Sesame.

  He had used, ‘du’, the informal form of address, of course he had. The boy was seventeen, no longer a child, but not yet a man either. Why shouldn’t he have called him ‘du’?

  There was no ulterior motive.

  And then Joni had been standing naked before him. For the first time.

  His muscles weren’t particularly powerful. Not for a wrestler. A brutal fighter could have grabbed him and broken him. Could have hurt him. Quite slim hips. And his belly . . . Tense, as if a clenched fist were hidden in there, just waiting to be . . .

  Stop. Jonathan Leibowitz. A patient. Rectus abdominis well developed. Legs perhaps slightly too sturdy for real symmetry. Flat feet? No, it was just the way he was standing. Combative was the wrong word. He wasn’t just ready to fight, he was ready for anything.

  ‘Did you say something, Doctor?’

  His voice. Like running a hand over your arm without quite touching it, just brushing the fine hairs so that they stand up and yearn for more – that was the sort of voice that Joni Leibowitz had.

  ‘Did you say something?’

  A strain in the levator scapulae, hence the slight pain when he had to move his shoulder. Arthur showed Joni the muscle on one of the coloured posters that he’d been given for the opening of his own practice. The flayed man, one arm resting, the other held aloft, always reminded him of the bloody martyr in the poster for the panopticon all those years ago. That had been another such day, a day that had changed everything, when nothing afterwards was where it had been, when one suddenly understood . . .

  ‘What can we do about it, Doctor?’

  He had prescribed him an ointment that would help or not, and said, ‘Can you come back a week today? I would like to take another look at you.’

  All of a sudden the most natural sentences were no longer so natural.

  I would like to take another look at you.

  Then he had gone to the fight. Just like that. In the Israelitisches Wochenblatt there had been a small advertisement requesting support for the Jewish Gymnastics Club, so why shouldn’t he go, when he had nothing better to do on that Sunday afternoon? He would just say he’d dropped by at the schoolhouse on the Hirschengraben, he would just mingle among the spectators, but there were hardly spectators there, there was no real competition, and the wrestlers – this made it much easier for him later on – didn’t have many fans anyway. The people looked around when he came into the gym, and Sally Steigrad, the chairman of the club, hurried towards him, garrulous as befits an insurance salesman, and greeted the young doctor as a welcome guest of honour.

  Joni was sitting on a bench next to three other wrestlers, all four of them in long white gymnastic trousers and tight vests. A curl had fallen into his forehead, he threw his head to one side and his eye caught, by chance – but nothing that Joni did involved chance, it wasn’t possible that this could all be chance – his eye, as if by chance, caught Arthur’s. Then he smiled, and seemed to lose interest in the new spectator.

  As Arthur was to discover, Joni had two kinds of smile, a public and a private one.

  In the middle of the vast gym the mats had been laid out, a raft in the sea, and the spectators arranged themselves around it in almost indecent proximity. They were competing in only four weight categories, the young Jewish gymnastics club did not yet have any more wrestlers to offer. It was a very unequal competition: inexperienced rookies against confident veterans, who knew all the holds and counterholds and gained their points routinely, as a matter of course. Joni’s turn was last; the score was already three-nil, and his fight was no longer s
ignificant. But he was to be brought out anyway, Sally Steigrad had agreed with the chairman of the opposing team, ‘My boys need experience.’

  Joni’s opponent had very hairy arms, far too coarse to be grappling with this slender boy’s body.

  Far too coarse.

  When the two of them stood facing one another and entered the first clinch, when they pressed their torsos against one another, golem and angel, when their heads touched as if in a caress, Arthur had to take off his glasses and rub his nose. He had been seized by a strange emotion, a not unpleasant sadness that brought tears to his eyes.

  Then the fight was over. Joni had been knocked off his feet, his opponent left the raft of mats, had finished his job, which had been strenuous but not particularly difficult, and Joni was still lying on the mat with his face contorted, pointing at his shoulder, which his opponent had tugged at like a farm hand straightening a sack of corn before getting a proper hold of it and throwing it on the pile with the others.

  ‘Would you be so kind, Doctor?’ asked Sally Steigrad.

  It was as if Joni had no smell of his own. The sweat of his hairy opponent rose into Arthur’s nose, the dust of the mat he knelt on, and the sour aroma of effort and exhaustion common to all gyms in the world. But Joni? Even when he bent over him to examine the injury, there was no scent for him to catch. Or was it so close to his own that he wasn’t even aware of it, as one isn’t aware of one’s own smell?

  ‘The same spot again?’ Arthur asked.

  Joni turned his head towards him and smiled at him from below, with his very private smile.

  ‘Oh, please, Doctor,’ said Joni, ‘when can I have another appointment with you?’

  It was the first time he had said it.

  That was how it started.

  Arthur would have done anything to be close to Joni, and Sally Steigrad was proud of this new, academic member whose suddenly awakened interest in wrestling he attributed to himself, or at least to the appeal that he had placed in the Wochenblatt. Arthur was not a really gifted athlete, but he tried, and as a medic he had the advantage that he knew about bones and sinews, and didn’t need to have the holds and their effects explained to him in great detail. He just had to overcome the inhibition of applying that knowledge practically in a fight.