Rachel had only been verbally abused, that was all. And even that could have been avoided if she’d listened to Frau Posmanik’s warning. But why shouldn’t she go wherever she wanted to go? This was Switzerland, not Germany.
‘With the difference you can make Shabbos,’ said Uncle Melnitz. He was standing behind her, looking at himself over her shoulder in the mirror. ‘When they come marching in with their boots on, then you just say, “Gentlemen, this is Switzerland.” And then they’ll say, “Oops, sorry, we didn’t know that.” And they’ll march back out again. One, two, one, two, yes.’
He looked at himself in profile and let his nose grow until in the mirror it looked like the caricatures in the Stürmer display case outside Ruben’s synagogue. ‘Everything’s very different in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘Yes. They don’t even notice if someone’s a Jew. It doesn’t even strike them. Not if you dye your hair and put on clothes from the latest collection. They don’t notice it, do they, Rachel?’
‘That was an exception. They were Frontists.’
‘There’s always an exception,’ said Uncle Melnitz, standing closer behind her. ‘They’re always good citizens. Orderly people. Pillars of society. Until they get the opportunity not to be. It’s like that everywhere in the world, yes. Except for here in Switzerland, of course. Except in the good old Confederacy. They love us here.’ He let his face swell until it turned into the fat, sated face of an exploiter. ‘In Switzerland they have no prejudices.’
‘Of course here too . . .’
‘Of course,’ repeated Uncle Melnitz. ‘We don’t want to ask too much. When they help us wherever they can. When they have opened their borders to all refugees. When a red carpet is rolled out at every border crossing, whenever someone comes and needs a new homeland. Of course. Everything’s different in Switzerland, you’re quite right, Rachel, my child.’ And he made a wart sprout from his nose and a hunch from his back.
‘You have to understand that too. There are so many emigrants.’
‘Correct. And it would be undemocratic to let one into the country and not the other. Much better for them all to stay out. Dear God, make my excuse a good one.’
63
Zurich, 16 May 1937
Dear Frau Pollack,
My name is Dr. Arthur Meijer. I am a general practitioner here in Zurich, and I also sometimes treat the children in the Wartheim in Heiden. I am a member of the B’nai B’rith, for which you yourself have also worked, and it was they who asked me to take on this task.
I am writing to you because I have just had a copy of the letter in which the director of the Wartheim informs you of the state of your daughter Irma’s health. I fear she may have alarmed you unnecessarily. Fräulein Württemberger is not especially gifted when it comes to dealing with other people. (But then who is?)
Please don’t worry, and forget everything that Fräulein Württemberger has written to you. Irma is perfectly healthy.
For the first time in my thirty-year practice as a doctor (it’s only when one writes it down that one realises how old one has grown) I deliberately made a wrong diagnosis, and am, strangely, even proud of it. If I have correctly understood Irma (she is a girl who can express herself far better than one would expect at that age), it is very important for you and your children that they remain in Switzerland for the time being. The situation in Germany must be very difficult, probably far more difficult than we can imagine here in safe Switzerland. My nephew Ruben lives in Halberstadt, and what he reports in his letters often leaves me unable to sleep.
I sometimes think that the world has been sick since the Great War, and even today no one has found a prescription for healing it again. Perhaps there is none.
But always expecting the worst doesn’t help either.
I hope that with my ‘misdiagnosis’ I have acted in line with your wishes, and that I have been able to help you (I should have written ‘help you a little bit’, because a little bit is all it can be.) If I can do anything else for you, please let me know.
With very best regards
Dr Arthur Meijer
Brandschenkestrasse 34
PS: Reading it through, it occurs to me that this letter is full of parentheses. My sister Hinda would say: your writing is as chaotic as your thought.
Kassel, 24. 5. 37
Dear Dr. Meijer!
Many thanks for your kind letter. You must be a very nice person.
Luckily your well-meant concern was unnecessary. I have never been concerned about the state of my daughter’s health. Even before Fräulein Württemberger contacted me, Irma had told me everything in a letter. She even crept secretly into the village to bring it to the post office unnoticed. I have the impression that she’s really enjoying the whole conspiracy. She was a diva even as a very little girl.
So by the time Frl. W.’s letter reached me, I already knew everything. This woman who runs the home really seems to know very little about psychology.
By the way: Irma also expresses herself much better than her twelve years would suggest. In other circumstances I would be proud of it, but as it is I worry. It isn’t good when children have to grow up in a time that makes them grow up too quickly.
Irma writes to me that you are a Goliath, and from her that is a great compliment.
I have to explain that to you. She doesn’t mean the Biblical Goliath, who had no chance against David’s sling, but the hero of the bedtime stories that I have told my children for many years. (And which Moses still likes to hear.)
You must have infected me: now I too am starting to write in brackets, even though it was dinned into us in school that that’s the sign of a badly organised mind. (Apologies.)
In these stories, without which my children would never go to sleep, the family got into terrible difficulties of some sort in each new episode. If they climbed a mountain, it would turn out to be a volcano and erupt. If they were travelling on a ship, they would find themselves in a tornado. And so on. The disaster could not be bad enough, because at the very last moment Goliath would always appear and put everything right again. For example if they were about to be run over, he would suddenly be standing there and stop the car. Effortlessly, just with one hand. And smile as he did it. A hero, in fact.
You see: you have made a big impression on Irma.
I had to tell my children the episode with the car over and over again. Perhaps Irma has told you that my husband lost his life in a traffic accident.
I am very grateful for the fact that my children are allowed to stay in Switzerland for now. It is a great relief to me. Ideally they would never have to come back to Germany at all. It’s no longer our country. In Moses’ class they are now practising reading from a picture book: ‘Trust not the fox who roams the heath, nor Jews who all lie through their teeth,’ it is called, and the verses in it are so terrible that one can hardly imagine. There, for example, beside a real Stürmer picture, it says, ‘This is the Jew, it’s plain to see; the greatest rogue in Germany!’
I don’t want my son to learn such things by heart. And possibly recite them in front of the whole class. His teacher was a Party member early on.
The worst thing is that the author of this book is supposed to be just seventeen or eighteen years old. Such a young mind is quickly poisoned.
No, this is no longer my Germany.
I have decided to go to Berlin for a few days, and approach the various embassies. There must be a visa somewhere, regardless of which country it is for! Even though that is very difficult at the moment, particularly for someone who has no money. They say that you can sometimes spend two days waiting in the queue outside the British Embassy, before you can even fill in the application form to emigrate to Palestine.
I would most like to go to America. Do you know anyone there who could issue me with an affidavit?
Forgive me for asking you for something yet again. It isn’t my way.
One becomes so helpless.
Irma writes to tell me that she now has
a room of her own with Moses in the Wartheim. Did you organise that too? Then you really are a Goliath.
Once again: I am really grateful to you. It’s good to know that there is someone who cares.
With best regards.
Rosa Pollack
Zurich, 1 June 1937
Dear Frau Pollack,
I am certainly not a Goliath. Heroes are not short-sighted, and they don’t run out of breath if they have to go up a flight of stairs to see a patient. (Although: do we know whether heroes aren’t sometimes exhausted too? I’ve never met one I could have asked.)
(And we live in times in which such a Goliath would have a lot to do.)
Sadly I don’t know anyone in America. My brother-in-law once lived there for some years, and he also promised me to inquire whether one of his old acquaintances might be able to do something for you. But he isn’t giving me any great hopes. His time in New York was a long time ago, and he says that when it comes to asking favours of people they tend to have very short memories. (I’m afraid he may be right.)
I do have a good contact in Kenya who might be able to make something possible. But who wants to go there?
I also asked my brother, who does a lot of work with French companies. He says Paris is overflowing with German emigrants at the moment, and if you can’t speak the language perfectly you haven’t a chance of making a living. If I understood you correctly, however, that wouldn’t be an absolute necessity for you.
Have you actually ever thought of trying Switzerland?
With best wishes
Dr Arthur Meijer
PS: I will be going to Heiden again next week.
‘Until the end of October,’ Fräulein Württemberger said proudly. The tone of her voice made it clear: Irma and Moses had her and no one else to thank for this period of grace. She was one of those people who can constantly rewrite the world and their own role in it.
‘No further extension of the present exemption may be granted,’ she read from the decision by the immigration authorities, ‘and this office can process no corresponding application hereto.’ The official German of the letter skipped as nimbly from her tongue as if it were an essay by her beloved Professor Heidegger. She snapped the file shut and put it back in its place on the shelf, precise to the millimetre. ‘So, until the end of October, and then . . .’ Her right hand came down on the desk like a guillotine blade.
‘And then?’ asked Arthur.
Fräulein Württemberger didn’t reply.
‘How is Irma?’
She looked at him irritably.
‘Better,’ she said at last.
‘So the medication I sent her is working?’
Glucose. In a jar with an impressively complicated Latin name on the label.
‘We ensure that she takes it punctually.’ Fräulein Württemberger took the credit even for this success. And added, with the quiet joy that comes from rubbing the nose of someone one doesn’t like in a mistake they’ve made, ‘But she’s still having these attacks, which would make you think she was about to die at any moment.’
‘Really?’
‘Proper spasms. Then she rolls around on the bed and screams.’
Arthur took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. The gesture also allowed him to conceal a smile.
‘Is she still coughing blood?’ he asked with his serious medical face.
‘Sometimes. I’ve made an observation.’ A nervous hand went in search of escaping strands of hair. ‘I don’t know if it’s important.’ The modest doubt was only an empty phrase. Of course Fräulein Württemberger’s observations were always important.
‘Yes?’
‘Once I was standing next to her when she spat blood. It smelled quite sweet. Like sherbet powder. Tell me, Doctor, is that normal?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Arthur Meijer. ‘In this special case it is entirely normal.’
He found the pair in the adjacent building normally reserved for children’s camps during the summer months, but was now constantly occupied because of the extraordinary circumstances. Irma was making the beds in the big dormitory: the Women’s Association children who were no longer being paid for were used as labour wherever possible. His patient was wearing a grey work smock that was far too big for her, in which she looked like a little nurse. Moses assisted her, or at least tried to make himself useful. To make sure he stayed eager, Irma had come up with a special task for him: whenever a bed was made, he was to hit the pillow with the edge of his hand and ensure the perfect dimple.
And each time she praised him.
Arthur could have stood in the doorway and watched them for ever. He liked going to the cinema, and whenever a plot ended happily after a lot of setbacks, he shed a few pleasant tears in the dark from time to time. That was exactly what happened to him now: he was watching a strange harmony, and would have liked to be a part of it.
At last he cleared his throat. Irma – she seemed used to it – reached into the pocket of her apron, took out a handkerchief and held it to her mouth. Only then did she turn round. When she recognised him, she dropped the handkerchief and came running over to him. ‘Dr Goliath!’ she cried excitedly. ‘That means I can stop coughing.’
Moses came over as well, more timid than his sister, shook hands very formally with Arthur, bowed and asked, ‘Will Irma be well now?’
‘Not quite today. But we’ll get there, won’t we, Irma?’
‘Yes,’ said Irma and looked at him trustingly with her squinting eyes. ‘We’ll get there.’
In the grounds there was a small hill which could be all kinds of things in the games of the children at the home, the crow’s nest of a pirate ship, the tip of a jungle tree, the cockpit of a zeppelin, in which one could fly round the world and even all the way home. Today the hill was the parapet of a knightly castle, and Moses, a broken branch over his shoulder as a pike, was guarding the only entrance with a serious expression on his face.
Arthur checked that the little boy couldn’t hear them, and then said, ‘You’re exaggerating your illness.’
‘The witch has fallen for it.’ Impolite, but not a bad description.
‘You mixed sherbet powder with the blood.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Irma. One of her eyes looked at him innocently, while the other seemed to be looking for something in the distance beside his face.
‘So?’
‘It wasn’t blood!’ Irma giggled, as only a little girl who has managed to trick the adult world can giggle. ‘I promised you I would stop cutting myself. It was just red sherbet powder. If you put a spoonful in your mouth and then let the bubbles pour out . . .’
She was so triumphant that she couldn’t go on talking, and started to laugh. Arthur was infected by it too. The idea of the hygienic Fräulein Württemberger disgustedly sniffing a handkerchief and making the medical discovery that Irma’s bloody sputum smelled of sherbet powder was just too absurd.
‘Strawberry flavour!’ Irma managed to gasp between two fits of laughter. Arthur had never heard a funnier phrase. It was a while before he could speak again.
‘She asked me if that sweet smell was normal with this illness.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Yes, Fräulein Württemberger, with this very rare illness it is entirely normal.’
This time they laughed so loudly that Irma’s eyes actually crossed. Moses came running excitedly up the hill because he thought his sister was having a coughing fit.
‘The doctor tickled me when he was examining me,’ Irma lied, and then asked with her severest knightly expression. ‘What do you have to report, squire Moses? No hostile dragons on the way?’
‘All dragons repelled,’ reported the squire and marched, proud of his own importance, back to his sentry post.
‘You’re very fond of your brother, aren’t you?’
‘That’s normal.’
‘Of course,’ said Arthur, and was almost a bit envious of being this age when such normalities were not called in
to doubt.
And then, on this imaginary parapet, there took place what must have been the strangest lesson ever given in the Wartheim. Dr Arthur Meijer, experienced general practitioner by profession, showed a twelve-year-old girl how to pretend to be ill.
‘In future we’ll leave out the spasms and all that play-acting,’ he began his lecture.
‘Oh,’ said Irma, disappointed.
‘We don’t want Fräulein Württemberger flying into a panic and calling a doctor from the village.’
It was hard for Irma to forego her dramatic scenes, but she was prepared to do so for her Dr Goliath.
‘If anyone asks you how you are, you always say, “I’m fine.”’
‘Why?’
‘But you say it in a very weak voice. And when you go out, you hold onto the doorpost as if you were dizzy.’
Irma’s face was full of admiration at such cunning.
‘Every time you’re in the bathroom, hold your hands under ice-cold water for one minute.’
Never in his whole life had Arthur had such an attentive listener.
‘And then make sure someone holds your hand, and shake a little.’
Even Fräulein Württemberger, in a one-to-one class with Martin Heidegger, could not have listened with greater devotion.
‘And soap. If you rub some in your eyes, they will turn red and produce tears.’
‘But that will sting!’’
‘Only if you can stand it, of course.’
‘I can stand anything,’ Irma said proudly.
‘Can you also swallow soap?’
‘Then I’d feel sick.’
‘Good.’
Irma looked at him admiringly for a moment. Then she blinked at him, shook as if she already had soap in her mouth and asked anxiously, ‘Does it make you very sick?’
‘Quite sick,’ said Arthur. ‘Soldiers used to do it so that they didn’t have to go into battle. It can even give you a fever.’
‘Fever?’ she smiled dreamily as if he had promised her a particularly lovely present. ‘Then I’ll do that.’
Melnitz Page 69