Melnitz

by Charles Lewinsky

  But Désirée couldn’t go on meeting this strange man – all right, not really strange, but it made no difference – couldn’t just go on meeting this man, what would people think? Esther offered herself as an alibi, as a chaperone and a co-conspirator.

  If you really thought about it, it was all her fault.

  The first time they went walking along the Sihl. The spring was almost over, and beneath the chestnut trees there lay a carpet of blossom. Esther always stayed a few discreet paces behind the others, but even though she couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, she could still see how Désirée changed during the walk, how her posture became increasingly soft and yielding. And she was walking more and more slowly, too; at first she had actually been walking away, and by the end, as they approached the Selnau again, she had become so slow that Esther almost had to come to a standstill lest she catch up with the others. Désirée no longer held her arms folded, but let them dangle by her side, almost as if she were hoping that Alfred would grab her and hold her tight. But he didn’t do that, he just said goodbye without a handshake, with a small, still bow, and when he had gone Désirée said, ‘He’s very different.’

  He was unhappy, but he said so without complaint, he just stated the fact, a doctor diagnosing an illness. Had Désirée ever heard of Kaspar Hauser? That was exactly how he felt, as if he had lost part of himself and no longer knew where he belonged. ‘I’m always in between,’ he said. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’

  He had never been able to talk to anyone about it before, not even with Mina, who understood everything. Never had he found anyone he could confide in about everything. Until all of a sudden Désirée had been there again, little Déchirée, who he had played with as a child.

  Not that he only ever talked about himself, far from it. He even apologised for bothering her with his problems, and generally treated her with such care it gave her the feeling that she was something particularly valuable.

  She often wondered when she had actually started loving him, and could find no answer. It hadn’t been right at the start, certainly not at first sight, and yet she felt as if it had never been otherwise. It had been going on for almost five months now, next week it would be five months.

  Five months since Désirée had had finally redeemed the promise of her name.

  Désirée, the desired one.

  When the story of the booth and the whale skeleton had happened, she had almost died of fear. But then in her desperation she had come up with the idea of attributing the whole story to Esther, and since then there had even been a second person to whom she could describe her feelings. It was almost as if she had told Mimi the whole truth.

  That she had only seemingly drawn her mother into her confidence was the most unforgivable thing of all.

  Mimi had happened by the Weill shoe shop just by chance, had seen all the boxes through the window and, as she liked to be the first where fashion was concerned – not that she was vain, certainement pas – she had gone in. To her disappointment, the new delivery consisted entirely of gentlemen’s boots; Mimi was about to leave again, but was held back by Herr Weill. He absolutely had to show her an extremely elegant clasp shoe that only women with very narrow feet could wear and which was therefore, he dissembled in his best rabbi voice, could have been made specially for dear Frau Pomeranz. Mimi knew he was lying to her – ‘No one has ever been able to deceive me’ – but she liked the compliment, and she had no urgent plans.

  She had just sat down – ‘but really just a moment’ – when to her surprise she caught sight of Esther, who was on her way to the store-room with a stack of cardboard boxes.

  ‘Oh, so you’re both back already?’

  ‘Yes, we’re. That is: we didn’t . . . we hadn’t arranged to see each other.’

  Herr Weill shooed his stammering daughter into the store-room. As proud of his educational principles as he was of his talents as a salesman, he was about to launch into a lengthy sermon on the text, ‘First work, then pleasure,’ but Frau Pomeranz was suddenly in a great hurry, had forgotten an important appointment and would have to try on the elegant clasp shoe, narrow foot or no narrow foot, some other time.

  ‘Never interrupt another sales conversation of mine!’ Herr Weill told his daughter, and couldn’t understand why Esther kept bursting into uncontrollable tears over even such a mild reproach.

  When Désirée came home, Mimi was lying on the chaise-longue, with a damp cloth on her forehead.

  ‘Headache, Mama?’

  ‘Ah, if only it were a migraine . . . Did you have a nice day, ma petite?’

  ‘It’s getting a bit cool, up in the forest.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Mimi in a pained voice, ‘and it will soon get much colder.’

  ‘Shall I bring you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Not necessary, ma petite.’ Mimi took the cloth from her forehead and put it back in the bowl of cooling lemon water. ‘Sit and join me for a moment, there, on the cushion, and tell your mother all the things you’ve done today.

  And so Désirée told the story of how Esther and her nameless admirer had met at the deer park, and how happy they had been to see one another again. It had been another nine days since the last time, ‘and nine days is a terribly long time if you’re in love, I think.’

  ‘So you think they love each other?’

  There could be no doubt whatsoever as far as Désirée was concerned. She herself had not yet experienced anything of the kind herself, she wasn’t the one who was in love, it was Esther, but if you saw the way the two of them held hands and wouldn’t let go, the way they kissed . . .

  ‘Ah,’ Mimi cut in, ‘So they kiss?’

  Désirée had promised her friend never to betray that to anyone, ‘but you can keep a secret, can’t you, Mama?’

  ‘Certainement,’ said Mimi, no one could be more discreet than she. She had sat up, and only her hand, which kept clenching on a handkerchief, showed that there was anything wrong.

  Désirée described how shy the two of them had been the very first time they kissed, how clumsy they had been for a long time. ‘Once he almost knocked the hat off her head, just imagine!’ – and how they then gradually, and more and more . . .

  ‘Practice makes perfect, you mean.’

  Yes, you could put it that way.

  ‘And you watch them?’

  No, of course not. Désirée was discreet, and left the two of them alone. She preferred to go back around the corner and warn the lovers if a walker was approaching. She had developed a special whistle, like the one used on Shabbos when you’re not allowed to use the doorbell. No, she didn’t watch them kissing, she certainly didn’t, what was Mama thinking of, but Esther was her best friend, and had told her exactly what it was like when one . . .

  ‘And? What is it like?’

  Wonderful, Esther had said, it wonderful. You came so close to one another, and at that moment you knew that you belonged together, ‘I don’t think you can kiss a man if you don’t love him.’ Because you also tasted and smelled, and there’s that expression, ‘someone not being to your taste’, and if someone wasn’t to your taste, Désirée assumed, then you couldn’t kiss him either. Yes, and then there was a funny story to tell: the young man, Esther’s friend, always sucked peppermint pastilles before they met, ‘isn’t that very funny, Mama?’

  Mimi didn’t laugh.

  ‘So the two of them know that they belong together?’

  Désirée was quite sure of that. She had seen the two of them often enough, and they complimented each other as well as . . . as . . . ‘As well as you and Papa. I’m sure you knew from the beginning as well . . .’

  Not quite from the beginning, thought Mimi.

  And they would overcome all obstacles, Esther had said. Even if their families were firmly opposed to the idea, nothing could ever tear them apart.

  ‘Why should their families be opposed?’

  ‘Beause he . . .’

  ‘Yes?’


  But Désirée had promised her friend not to tell, or else she might as well tell Mimi the name straight away. And she had already told her far too much.

  ‘Non, ma petite,’ said Mimi, and her voice had suddenly shed all its migraine and weakness. ‘You’ve talked quite enough already.’

  And then she talked about a delivery of English gentlemen’s boots – she said ‘gentlemen’s boots’ in the same frighteningly friendly tone in which she had said ‘whale jawbone’ not so long ago – a surprise delivery that had had to be cleared away immediately, first work, then pleasure, which was why Esther Weill had stayed at home for the whole afternoon, without a rendezvous, and without a walk and hand-holding and kissing. And now Mimi wanted to know, she wanted to know right now, who had met whom by the deer enclosure, who had kissed whom, and who the man was, this strange man whose name she was not allowed to know because the families would be opposed. ‘No more lies!’

  Désirée’s resistance held out for only a few minutes.

  She had always been an obedient daughter; even as a baby, if you believed the stories, she had cried less than others. Mimi had waited for a child for two decades, and had – she had so much to catch up on – been resolved from the first day to be a perfect mother. She shielded and protected Désirée so zealously that Pinchas had said to her more than once that even falling over was something that such a child needed to learn. Even later, when Hinda’s children, who were of a quite different temperament, turned the whole flat upside down, Désirée showed so little interest in pranks and adventures that Lea and Rachel derisorily called her ‘Mammatitti’. She had never learned to stand up to her mother, and if she tried to, a reference to the tortures that Mimi had suffered during her labour was quite enough to make her give up again straight away. All the lies of the past few months had only been possible because she had been telling the truth the whole time, she hadn’t invented anything, she had just given her experiences a different name, had said ‘Esther’ when she meant ‘I’, and had been happy somehow to be able to confide her secret in her mother in this way.

  She tried silence, pressed her eyes firmly shut the way little children do when they want to make something threatening disappear, and couldn’t keep the tears from flowing down her face.

  ‘Don’t ask me, Mama, please don’t ask me,’ she said again and again, but Mimi was more furious than Désirée had ever seen her, not so much with her daughter, even though she had told her monstrous lies, but much more with herself for allowing herself to be lied to, for having been blind and stupid, for having played along like an idiot, for giving good advice, for being led around by the nose. There could never be forgiveness for it, not for her and not for Désirée either.

  At last she gave in.

  Yes, it had been her, she herself, Désirée sobbed, it had been her the whole time, but she hadn’t been able to say so, because it would have been forbidden her, and she wouldn’t have survived that, no, she would rather have jumped from a bridge than give this man up. ‘You don’t know what it’s like when you love someone, Mama, you can’t know, or you wouldn’t look at me like that. But it’s my life and not yours, and I’m not going to let anybody break it.’

  ‘Who is the man?’ asked Mimi.

  Désirée swore that she would never give it away, never in her life, and yet she knew that she didn’t have the strength to resist her mother.

  ‘Is it a goy?’ asked Mimi.

  Désirée nodded and said at the same time: ‘No, no, he’s not a goy,’ but he was one and he wasn’t one, and now everything was broken, destroyed for all time.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Mimi.

  Désirée cried and pleaded and then said the name after all.

  Mimi locked her daughter in her room and set off for François’s house. If someone had himself geshmat and made himself unhappy for the rest of his life, that was his affair. But if his son, this goy Alfred, wanted to destroy Désirée’s life as well, that was something quite different. Something for which she would never, ever forgive him.

  47

  The whole flat smelled of the cheesecake – Mother Pomeranz’s old recipe – that Hinda normally only baked on Shavuot. She hadn’t let them take that away from her, although Zalman shook his head disapprovingly and said, ‘They’re not coming for coffee.’

  ‘Still,’ Hinda said and fetched the yontevdik tablecloth out of the cupboard. It was so heavily starched that its folds cracked slightly when it was laid out. ‘The whole family is meeting at our house! Do you want them to think they’re at a poor person’s house?’

  If it had been up to Zalman, they could have sat at the empty table, with a glass of water in each place and nothing else. He had taken part in lots of negotiations as a trade unionist, and it was his experience, he said, that one reached an agreement more quickly if the circumstances were niggardly. ‘You think better on an empty stomach.’

  ‘You’re more peaceful with a full stomach,’ Hinda replied and of course she was right again.

  Lea and Rachel were unusually helpful out of pure curiosity and, as on Seder evening, they carried in chairs from all the rooms.

  ‘Too many,’ said Zalman. ‘There are only nine of us. Janki and Chanele aren’t coming.’

  ‘There are still eleven of us,’ Lea contradicted him and started counting: ‘Three Meijers, Uncle Arthur makes four, three Pomeranzes makes seven and four Kamionkers . . .’

  ‘Two Kamionkers,’ Zalman corrected her. ‘You’re going to stay in your room. This is nothing for children.’

  Lea protested, as outraged as one can only be outraged at the age of eighteen to be described in those terms, and Rachel, who out of sheer high spirits often talked more quickly than she wished she had in retrospect, tried to support her sister. ‘If we aren’t allowed to then how come Désirée . . .?’ And wished she could have swallowed the sentence straight away.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Zalman.

  Then Arthur rang breathlessly at the door, had in his haste already taken his coat off on the step, and to his own surprise he was still the first. ‘And I thought . . . I couldn’t get away from the practice. Everybody’s got a cold in this weather. And it was summer only a moment ago. Can I go and wash my hands again, Hinda?’ At work he didn’t notice the smell of carbolic on his hands, but in any different surroundings he felt as careless as if he were bothering his fellow men with private matters.

  They all wanted to postpone the unpleasantness that awaited them, which was why no one wanted to sit down first. They remained standing very formally behind their chairs, and talked about all kinds of things, but not about what vexed them.

  ‘Have you heard anything about Ruben?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘He writes every week.’

  ‘Are things going well for him in Kolomea?’

  ‘He has become even more pious.’ It was impossible to tell from Zalman’s tone whether he was pleased or annoyed about this.

  ‘Good,’ said Arthur, and then, after a pause, again. ‘Very good.’ Like an old man, he reflected irritably, who has to keep his own company and fills his empty days with pointless scraps of language. He coughed with embarrassment, pulled out his watch, which he wore on an old-fashioned chain from his waistcoat pocket, and let the cover spring open. ‘They’re all late.’

  ‘There are two methods in negotiations,’ Zalman lectured. ‘Either you come first and are to some extent the balebos who determines the rules, or you keep the others waiting to demonstrate that you don’t need to be on time.’

  ‘This isn’t pay bargaining, Zalman!’

  ‘You’re right there, Frau Kamionker. In pay bargaining each side knows what it wants. Today they’ll just know what they don’t want.’

  The Pomeranzes appeared next. Mimi, all in matronly black, was breathing heavily, in a reproachful way, as if it were a personal affront to her that the Kamionkers could only afford a flat on the third floor. ‘You should lose some weight,’ Arthur thought, ‘then climbing the stairs wouldn’t be so
hard for you.’

  Pinchas’s beard had turned greyer over the previous few weeks, but perhaps Hinda was only imagining that. He rested his hand on Désirée’s shoulder the whole time, either to bolster her courage or just to hold on to her.

  Désirée had parted her hair in the middle again, which gave her the girlish appearance of someone who needed protection, and she was wearing a very plain white dress that must have been freezing for her in the street. She held herself very straight, like someone who is afraid of a fight and yet doesn’t want to show any weakness. She greeted her relatives with a certain formality – ‘Hello, Uncle Arthur, hello, Uncle Zalman’ – shook hand with each of them and avoided everyone’s eyes. ‘She’s decided not to cry,’ thought Hinda.

  The new arrivals didn’t sit down yet either, and also stood behind their chairs. Désirée gripped the back of hers so firmly that her knuckles turned quite white. For a few moments no one said a word. As in the service, when the whole congregation waits for the rabbi to bring the Shema to an end.

  And now, out of nowhere, Arthur couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘I’d like to know what’s supposed to be so funny here!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Mimi. But I was just thinking: we’re standing around here like . . .’

  ‘. . . like at a wedding sude,’ he had thought, ‘where no one is allowed to sit down before the bridal couple have taken their seats.’ And he hadn’t been able to hold back the laughter, because the comparison that presented itself to his head was so odd. This family meeting on the neutral terrain of the Kamionkers’ flat had been organised not to celebrate a chassene, but on the contrary to prevent one.