Melnitz

by Charles Lewinsky

  ‘We’ll see.’

  If you cast a person’s feet in a concrete block and throw him in the water – does he drown?

  We’ll see.

  It was just for a few weeks.

  ‘We had got the same dressing-room.’ Herr Grün said it as if nothing had ever given him such grounds for amazement. The same dressing-room. The same stage. The same sketches. ‘Only my suit didn’t fit any more. You don’t stay fat in a concentration camp.’

  In the stalls the sport tourists from all over the world ordered expensive wines, had the punchlines translated for them and were amazed to find such freedom of thought in a Germany that had been decried as a dictatorship. Evidence once again that you couldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.

  Guten Tag, Herr Grün.

  Guten Tag, Herr Blau.

  All as it had been.

  Not quite everything. For the first time in the career, Grün and Blau were on after the interval. The big names weren’t there any more. One had emigrated to Holland. One to America. One had been run over by a tipper in a quarry.

  There was no applause to greet them when they came on stage, either. They had been forgotten. ‘A year in the camps does nothing for your popularity,’ said Herr Grün, and there was not a trace of irony in his voice.

  Much had changed behind the scenes as well. Between their performances Schlesinger no longer read clever books, and Grün no longer romped with the twirlies. They sat in their dressing-room, looked at their own strange faces in the mirror, and every now and again one of them asked, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It isn’t true,’ said Herr Grün, ‘that you think more quickly when it’s a matter of life and death. On the contrary. Thoughts get bogged down like car wheels in the sand. Wheels in the sand.’

  He fell silent and looked out into the peaceful Zurich night, without seeing it.

  On the Limmat Quay a light came on in a bathroom. A shadow moved behind the frosted glass. Only when the window was dark again did Herr Grün go on talking.

  ‘We put on our performances, two every evening. But it was as if we weren’t really standing on the stage. As if we were just pushing ourselves back and forth, like big puppets. I don’t know if you can understand that.’

  ‘I understand it very well,’ said Désirée.

  At two in the morning, when the audience had gone, they met up with their colleagues. They sat in the cold smoke of an empty auditorium and asked the same questions over and over. They called themselves ‘the temporary ones’. No one knew who had invented the expression, but everyone used it. And had thus already given himself his answer.

  They were only there temporarily, all of the ones who had been released from the camps because the Olympic guests needed entertainment. The gigolos who had once again swapped their clogs for patent leather shoes: temporary. The masculine women with their monocles and starched shirt-fronts: temporary. The cabaret artistes with the funny lyrics and sad eyes: temporary.

  The dead on leave.

  It was all just for a few weeks. After the Games they would be rounded up again.

  Should one try to escape before then? That was the question.

  And how best to do it? That was the problem.

  There were a few optimists among them, and Schlesinger was one of those. ‘We have an agreement with them,’ he said. ‘We’ve fulfilled our part. We appear again, and in return they leave us in peace afterwards. Of course they will close our venues again. I’m not naïve. In future we’ll have to do something else. Anything. Cart bricks about on a building site. If need be. But they won’t lock us up again. What good would it do them? We aren’t dangerous to them any more.’

  Grün couldn’t persuade him otherwise. There’s always someone who thinks you can strike a deal with the devil.

  For three weeks they appeared on stage. For three weeks people laughed.

  Guten Tag, Herr Grün.

  Guten Tag, Herr Blau.

  And then, on the very last day, when Siegfried Schlesinger still refused to abandon his blind hope, clinging to it like a child to a favourite cat that had been run over by a car – no, it isn’t true, it isn’t dead, I’m just not going to believe it! – on the very last day Herr Grün didn’t come on stage.

  ‘I’m a skilled practitioner,’ he said into the silence of the night. ‘I knew what was on the cards. I went to Vienna, where I had friends, I just took the night train. It wasn’t even difficult. I had fake papers, and the border guards were dozy. Once I was there, I found out that they’d all ended up back in the camp. All rounded up again.’

  ‘They ordered Schlesinger to tell them where I was. He didn’t know, but they tried to beat it out of him anyway. This time they didn’t just break his nose.’

  A beetle flew over their heads, rumbling like a plane.

  ‘Yes,’ said Herr Grün, ‘they let us go. That was the worst thing they did to us.’

  All of a sudden he stood up and walked to the edge of the hill, which after a low wall falls down to the Limmat. He spread his arms, it looked in the moonlight as if he was about to pray or argue or fly away, and then Herr Grün whispered something. ‘Du bist beslozzen in minem herzen,’ whispered Herr Grün. ‘Verlorn ist daz slüzzelin, du muost immer drinne sin.’ The key is lost, you are there for ever. It sounded almost like Swiss German.

  Then he came back to the two women, stopped in front of them, impatient again, and quickly finished the story, the way you sometimes rush to the end of a bedtime story when you can’t wait to clap the book shut at last and turn out the light. ‘Then I crossed the Swiss border on foot. Wladimir Rosenbaum got hold of a work permit for me. He knows an official who likes to meet up with ballerinas. Shall we go?’

  Their footsteps rang out in the sleeping city. And there was no conversation for them to drown out.

  First they brought Rachel home, and then Herr Grün insisted on walking Désirée to Morgartenstrasse as well. Outside the door – she had already opened it – he stopped and took off his hat.

  ‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ said Herr Grün. ‘Even though one can’t actually say that. You don’t do thoughts. They do themselves. They eat their way through your head like worms through wood.’

  ‘And where have your woodworms crept to?’ Perhaps Désirée was smiling, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness.

  ‘You have lost someone you were very fond of,’ said Herr Grün. ‘That is obvious. You’ve been alone since then. That is obvious too. And I . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘We go well together.’

  ‘No, Herr Grün.’ She had expected his question and formulated the answer long ago. ‘We are too similar. Two left shoes, bent in the same direction. But two left shoes don’t make a pair.’

  ‘I’m not that much older than you.’

  Now Désirée really was smiling, you could tell even without any light. ‘And you aren’t that much older than Rachel either,’ she said.

  ‘Fräulein Kamionker?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Désirée. ‘You need someone you can argue with.’

  Her lips ran softly over his without really touching them, and then the door had closed behind her and the key turned in the lock.

  Herr Grün didn’t bring Rachel flowers, and she didn’t put a picture of him on her desk. Still: the relationship between them was noticed, and there was much talk in the kosher clothes factory. Not just because Rachel was the boss’s daughter, although of course that made the story even more interesting, but because Joni Leibowitz opened a book on the subject. You put a franc on a particular date, and the one closest to the day the engagement was officially announced won the whole pot. So, for example, early dates were much sought-after because it was said that Rachel and Herr Grün had been seen together at the cinema, You Are My Happiness with Beniamino Gigli and Isa Miranda, and even during the big aria they hadn’t looked at the screen once, so preoccupied were they with each other. Then again it was said that the couple had been seen
arguing loudly over a coffee in the Old India on Bahnhofplatz, which meant the whole thing was over. Joni revealed this with hand-rubbing satisfaction, because as banker he had reserved nil for himself, which meant: if no shidduch had happened within six months, the whole pot went to him. So sure was he of his win that he had already spent, as an advance, some of the stakes he was supposed to be administrating. ‘Rachel will never marry,’ that was his firm conviction, because she had after all, nearly twenty years before, fended off his advances, and that could mean only that the woman was frigid.

  Both the rumours were incidentally true, and false. Herr Grün really hadn’t heard anything of Beniamino Gigli, not, however, because he had been using the darkness of the cinema to canoodle, but because he had fallen asleep during the first act. And that in turn had to do with politics. The Frontists had decided that the scantily clad dancers in Wladimir Rosenbaum’s revues were undermining public morals in a typically Jewish way, and to prevent graffiti and broken windows a round-the-clock guard had been mounted around the Corso. After a sleepless night even the most musical of love stories can’t keep you awake.

  The argument in the Old India had actually happened as well, but anyone who had bet for that reason on a failure of the relationship was backing the wrong horse by miles. Rachel and Herr Grün enjoyed arguing with one another, as two jazz musicians enjoy improvising variations on a given tune together. And Rachel had to admit that Herr Grün was by far her superior in verbal combat, or rather: she would have had to admit it if the admission of any kind of weakness had not been so alien to her nature.

  Her Grün complimented her, and she insulted him for it. Or else she insulted him and he complimented her about it. Désirée had been right: they needed one another.

  At first they didn’t see each other very often. By day Rachel sat in the office, and in the evening Herr Grün was in the Corso. Then they gradually stole more and more time for each other. He still had his room with the Posmanik family, but he no longer slept there every night. ‘He has so much to do that he spends the night in the theatre,’ Frau Posmanik explained to little Aaron.

  No one in the kosher clothes factory knew anything about the event that would have influenced the betting more than any other. For Rosh Hashanah, the New Year festival, Herr Grün had been invited to Zalman and Hinda’s for an official lunch. Désirée, Arthur and the Rosenthals were also coming to Rotwandstrasse; on such days the family should be together. Such an invitation, one would think, is not a special occasion among adults, but in the run-up Rachel was as touchy as a teenager who is about to present her boyfriend to the family for the first time. Even so, Herr Grün refused to put on anything but the suit he always wore. Still: he put on the new bow tie she had bought for him, and even brought flowers, even though that isn’t really appropriate for Rosh Hashanah.

  Hinda had, as always at family occasions, taken a great deal of trouble cooking, and was disappointed that her guest ate so little. Until he explained to her that someone who has had to go hungry for a long time has only two options: give in to the unstinting desire to eat yourself to death, or else to keep strict control of yourself, not only when eating, and to keep a tight rein on your emotions. ‘It isn’t a wonderful life,’ said Herr Grün, ‘but being alive at all is more than I was allowed to expect.’

  Of course the conversation turned to the situation in Germany. Adolf Rosenthal, who never turned down the opportunity to deliver a lecture, wanted to explain his favourite thesis over soup, namely that National Socialism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions, but Herr Grün just looked at him, from the side and without uttering a word of disagreement, which made the mathematician, who could not otherwise be interrupted, stutter and quickly change the subject.

  It was exactly the way the drunk in the White Cross had reacted to Herr Grün’s calm voice, Rachel thought proudly. Hillel too was full of admiration for the man from Germany and said smarmily, ‘I’ve been in jail as well.’

  ‘No,’ said Herr Grün, ‘you were on holiday.’

  It wasn’t really a comfortable meal; they weren’t living in comfortable times. They had, as is customary, begun the meal by dipping a piece of apple in honey, but no one thought it would be a sweet year because of that.

  When the talk turned to Ruben, Herr Grün said, ‘Get him out of there. If you have anyone at all important to you in that country, get them out!’

  Arthur took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  ‘He doesn’t want to leave his congregation,’ said Hinda. Herr Grün reacted with so impatient a gesture that he knocked over the yontevdik salt cellar. ‘Go and fetch him back,’ he said to Zalman. ‘Rachel tells me you’ve fetched him back once before. From Galicia.’

  Whereupon of course all the old stories had to be told, about the soldiers who ate soap in order to be signed off sick, and about the smokers looking for cigarette papers in the latrine, ‘this one’s clean, this one isn’t.’ Even though today was New Year and not Seder evening: stories about old deliverances are always welcome.

  Zalman asked Herr Grün to say the blessing, but he refused, on the grounds that he didn’t see himself in the position of ever acting again in his life. No one asked him what exactly he meant. Afterwards he cleared his throat right from the very bottom; he had probably got used to doing that backstage, so that his voice was clear from the first sentence of his act.

  Guten Tag, Herr Blau.

  ‘There’s also this, Herr Kamionker,’ he said. ‘You gave me work, and I am grateful to you for that.’

  Zalman, who had never been good with gratitude, gestured dismissively, as if waving away the smoke of his cigar.

  ‘It has caused you nothing but problems,’ said Herr Grün. ‘First of all I nearly killed that fellow Leibowitz . . .’

  ‘What?’ No one had told Adolf Rosenthal the story.

  ‘. . . and now I’m taking your best worker away.’

  ‘Does that mean . . .?’ asked Hinda.

  ‘He asked me.’ Quite out of character, Rachel was a little embarrassed. ‘And I said yes. But it was Felix’s idea.’

  ‘Felix’, she said, not ‘Herr Grün’.

  ‘How lovely!’ Hinda hugged her daughter, and Lea beamed at her twin sister and cried, ‘Mazel tov!’

  Rachel blushed, not as a young bride might be expected to – a bride is always young, even if she’s approaching forty – but like someone who has been the victim of an awkward misunderstanding. ‘No, it’s not . . . You’ve got it wrong . . . Felix has just . . .’

  ‘Wladimir Rosenbaum wants someone for the artistic manager’s office,’ said Herr Grün. ‘I suggested Rachel.’

  ‘Ah.’ Lea had to polish her thick glasses out of sheer disappointment. ‘And I thought . . .’

  ‘The things you think!’

  ‘So we’ll have more time for each other,’ Herr Grün explained. ‘When you’re working in the same place.’

  ‘What did you think, Lea?’ asked Adolf Rosenthal, who had no ear for undertones. He got no answer.

  The pause was long and awkward. It was so quiet in the room that everyone could hear the faint singing note when Désirée ran her fingertip along the rim of her glass. She let the sound fade away and then said quietly, ‘One left and one right shoe. Why not, in fact?’

  She didn’t look at Herr Grün as she said it, but he first raised his head and then shook it, quite violently, like someone trying to wake up. Then Herr Grün shrugged and spread his arms. It was an exaggerated gesture, the kind one might make on stage to be seen from the very back row. ‘You’re right: why not, in fact?’ he repeated. ‘What do you say, Rachel? I’ll get used to it. I’m a skilled practitioner.’

  The glasses of mazel tov bronfen had already been poured when Rachel was still explaining to Herr Grün that that was really no way to propose to somebody.

  71

  The three of them bullied him without making much noise about it, with a chummy cosiness that had a lot to do with their So
uth German dialect. It had been a mistake to keep the confirmation from the Jewish congregation in his passport, of all places; one of them unfolded it, read the few sentences and then held the piece of paper out to the others, smiling expectantly, a child that has found a new toy under the tree, and is already imagining all the things that can be done with it.

  The train stopped in open countryside, far from any station. There was nothing there but a shack, with a flagpole looming over it. As polite as hotel porters they asked him to get out, and please to take his little suitcase with him too, no, his papers were in order, as a Swiss citizen, that was quite correct, he didn’t need a visa, but there were a few checks to go through, nothing personal, just a few technical things relating to customs and hygiene. Yes, they understood that he was in a hurry, and really, they were sorry that the train had now left without him, but they also had their duty to do, just as the train driver did, and they wouldn’t advise him to try and deter them from doing their duty in the correct manner, that was a punishable offence, and if they had to file a complaint against him it would take even longer.

  ‘Meijer?’ they asked, ‘So, so, Meijer?’ and held his passport up to the light, and what had his original name been, Meierwitz or Meierssohn or Meier-Rosen-Blumen-Lilienfeld?

  They left him his underpants, just peeked into them briefly, one after the other, and smiled. Then he was allowed to watch as they rummaged through his belongings for contraband. They did it thoroughly, and with a certain care. When they cut off the heels of his shoes because, you never knew, diamonds might be hidden in them, they put the severed pieces back, each tidily next to its shoe, ‘so that they don’t get confused.’

  They ignored the rings. He had, so as not to lose them, fastened them to his key-ring, and they probably thought they were worthless pendants.

  He hadn’t packed much, he planned, they planned, to travel back the next day, so the officials found nothing that might have been described as contraband. But then, when he was starting to think he had passed the test, they moved on to the anti-epidemic examination. In Germany they were in the process of freeing themselves from vermin, and one had to be alert to ensure that no new ones were smuggled in. They cut open the seams of his jacket with a razor blade, but found neither lice nor fleas inside, and the new tie that he had packed for the ceremony they dipped in the inkwell, for disinfection, they said.