by J. S. Margot
Her mother, she went on, had warned her to keep this tip to herself: a devout Jewish woman shouldn’t wear alluring perfume.
“Mummy doesn’t wear a wig either. Never. She told me and Sara that as a married woman you can be true to your religion, your tradition and your husband without a perruque. Mummy is very religious, but she is more moderne than most of us.”
Once again, Elzira began to sob.
Were she to cry in public in her own neighbourhood, her outburst would instantly be public knowledge. Crying was a bit like eating: you couldn’t do it outside the home—and certainly not on the street—without being noticed.
We went and sat on a bench. My bottom got wet and cold, and I made Elzira sit on my rucksack.
Elzira asked if she could tell me something in confidence. Her voice was hoarse and she was breathing quickly.
“Of course,” I said.
“But you mustn’t tell it to anyone. À personne. Not even Mummy and Daddy.”
I reminded her that I was only eight years older than her, and told her that I’d once been an Elzira just like her. Also that all children have secrets they want to keep to themselves, stories their parents should never know.
“It’s about Him, the Eternal One,” she said.
“It can be about anyone,” I said, “it’ll stay between us.”
She told me that when she was in primary school she prayed to God every day, asking Him to turn her into a bird. He could do that, she knew; every now and again He would grant a special wish to a girl who’d been good. She’d done her best to be good, always and to everyone, but she’d never become a bird, not even for a single instant, so she probably hadn’t been good enough, because otherwise He’d have let her soar through the air just for a little while, with strong wings instead of trembling fingers. That’s why she’d wanted to be a bird, because birds don’t have hands, but they do have freedom, and she’d just wanted to experience that for a single day, she’d longed for that gift much more than the bicycle she got for her bat mitzvah.
After praying to be a bird, she’d often prayed for a friend. Still did, in fact. She was nice to all the girls in her class, and the other girls were nice to her, but not especially nice, whereas she would do anything for a friend if she had one, but she didn’t, because no one chose to be her friend, just as, when picking teams in gym class when I was at school, no one picked the fat girls.
Sometimes, increasingly in fact, she couldn’t sleep at night because she was thinking of her future. As she lay there in bed, she grew fearful. She had visions of future suitors leaving her in the lurch. If she couldn’t make friends, she’d certainly never be able to find a husband. That, le désintérêt des autres, was her biggest nightmare.
“I hate my hands,” she said. “I’d like to hack them off.”
She pulled her sleeves down over her fingers. Like so many girls—I’d been one of them—she hunched her shoulders to make her budding breasts look smaller. A time-honoured method of concealment until their owner was more used to their curves.
Elzira pulled her sleeves over her fingers because her hands had become an obsession.
She said she often fantasized about having them surgically amputated. In that fantasy, her father had two prosthetic hands made for her. Of course, people would stare at her artificial hands, but less judgementally than at a healthy teenager who couldn’t hold a fork, glass or pen properly. What’s more, you could control prosthetic limbs, but not shaky hands.
She talked non-stop, holding my hand. She assured me her parents would buy me new gloves, because it was her fault that they’d got oily from the bike chain. She showed me her wrist: scraped and swollen, but certainly not broken, hopefully not sprained.
“We’re going home,” I said.
“No, please help me back onto the bike,” she said.
Then she asked me to put a note under the windscreen wiper of the Renault with her parents’ telephone number on it.
I did write a note. But the number I gave was made up.
Fifteen
Our training sessions were tough going. But after each fall she got up again, by the end often in fits of laughter.
Two months after that Sunday afternoon Elzira could cycle, even on quite busy roads, without losing her balance or panicking. In fact she seemed transformed as she pushed down on the pedals, radiating a new self-confidence.
One evening, after having seen his daughter cycling through the local streets, Mr Schneider came into the office, after having knocked on the door three times, and asked me if I knew the story about the girl and the spider.
I shook my head, bracing myself for another anecdote along the lines of Moshe and Abe. Once again Mr Schneider showed all the symptoms of a man about to tell a joke he thinks is very funny: a theatrical stance, twinkling eyes, anticipation of applause.
He did not tell a joke. He’d decided, he said, that from now on tutoring sessions wouldn’t be held in the office but in the children’s rooms. Everything we needed was there. It was warmer, too, in winter. “And the walls aren’t so bare.”
Then he told me about a girl who was terrified of spiders, and about the tests to which she’d been subjected by a group of psychologists and medical researchers. They put a big black spider in the middle of a room and encouraged the girl to walk towards it. Four metres was as close as she ever got; she didn’t dare go any nearer. At that distance her heart rate would shoot up. She would start to sweat and shake, grow pale and hyperventilate.
For the next stage of the test, the researchers had invited about ten of the girl’s friends to join her. They sat on a raised bench where they could see the spider.
Each time the girl began her assignment, her friends high-fived her. Backed by her team of supporters, the child managed to approach within two metres of the spider the very first time she tried. By the tenth time, all her physical fear responses (which were scientifically measured) had gone down to normal.
“You are like such a team for our Elzira,” he said. And he turned to his daughter: “N’est-ce pas, ma fille?”
Sixteen
Jakov told me he had French and history tests coming up: could I help him prepare? He asked it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
We used his bedroom as our workspace. All four children had their own bedrooms, even their own bathrooms. A washbasin, toilet and shower for the boys; the girls had a Jacuzzi as well. I was stunned by such luxury. At my home, we’d had to draw up a roster for the bathroom on Friday evenings. Otherwise there’d be a pile-up, especially if more than one of us hoped to score at a party. Our house didn’t have a shower and we bathed only once a week. The same bathwater had to be used by at least two people, and you weren’t allowed to top it up with hot water.
Jakov’s room had been painted sky blue. The curtains were dark blue. On the bed lay a blue-and-white-striped coverlet. The carpet was yet another shade of blue. Everything in his room seemed to have been designed with care. His bed stood against the longest wall. At its foot was a little platform, with his desk at the centre, ornamented by five miniature sailboats. Sitting there, we could see the posters he’d hung on the wall by his bed.
Other boys his age brightened up their rooms with photos of footballers, pop singers or film stars. The more pretentious ones hung up pop-art prints by Andy Warhol; Jakov went to sleep under the stern gaze of eight chief rabbis.
The portraits were life-size and hung in two rows of four. All the rabbis had beards. All the pictures were black and white. Some of the faces seemed to date from antiquity.
“Are those Jewish ayatollahs?” I joked, still a bit nervous. I’d assumed by now that the Schneider boys weren’t going to need my services, and found that comforting. I already had my hands full teaching Elzira, which took up several hours a day. As yet, Sara didn’t need any help with her homework, but in a year or two
I’d be tutoring her too.
“Eight ayatollahs next to your bed. Do you sleep easy, Jakov? They’d give me nightmares.”
“Don’t mock Maimonides, Judah the Prince and the other great Jewish minds,” Jakov said drily. He got two ring binders out of his rucksack and threw them on his desk.
“Nima would be intrigued by these portraits,” I went on.
“Who’s Nima?”
“My boyfriend.”
“Funny. Sounds like a woman’s name.”
“He’s Persian.”
We were sitting next to each other, but about three feet apart. Clutching onto the arm rests and pressing my bottom against the seat, I made a few frog leaps with the chair in his direction. Jakov didn’t react.
“Can I see your history book?” I asked. “Where have you got to? What period are you learning about?”
He opened one of the ring binders.
“If I have to test you, I’d rather sit opposite you,” I said, “like in an oral exam.” Jakov looked uncomfortable at the idea.
“We don’t have oral exams yet.”
“But you do with me.” I stood up and put my chair opposite his, on the other side of the desk.
“What’s a Persian?” he asked, before I’d even sat down properly.
I looked at him in surprise. “Someone from Iran. Don’t tell me you don’t know that.”
“Un Persan? A guy from Persia? Why didn’t you say so? We learnt about Alexander the Great last year.”
“It’s not ‘Persan’ but ‘Persian’.”
“Your boyfriend’s from Iran? If my parents knew that…”
“Your parents do know that.”
“No kidding?”
“Ask them.”
“Do you see him often?”
“We live together.”
He blushed. “Are you hoteldebotel about him?”
I was amazed that his Dutch extended to a word like hoteldebotel.
“It’s Yiddish for ‘madly in love’.”
“I didn’t know that. So you’re teaching me now. Great! And yes, I am hoteldebotel about him.”
“Dutch also gets the words lef and mazzel from us.”
“From Hebrew, you mean.”
“By a detour. They meandered from Hebrew to Yiddish, then from Yiddish to Dutch.”
“Congratulations. What a lot you know.”
“Are you married?” He averted his gaze.
“No, we’re not married.”
“Do my parents know that too?”
Now he did look me straight in the eye.
“Yes.”
“But your boyfriend is Catholic…”
“No, Muslim.”
“He’s not!”
“He is!” I said. For once I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I said it.
“Mummy and Daddy don’t know that.”
“Yes they do.”
Jakov looked at me, suspicious and curious. His gaze betrayed a strange mix of respect and censoriousness.
“But you’ll soon marry and have children.”
“I don’t think I’ll marry. And I’m not sure if I want children.”
He took off his spectacles, polished them with a big checked handkerchief and replaced them, as if cleaner glasses would help him understand me more clearly. His blush had spread to behind his ears, even his earlobes glowed.
“We share a bed too, of course,” I added, having found a way to get him back for all those as-you-knows. “If you know what I mean.”
He saw that I was aware of his growing agitation and embarrassment. I feigned not to notice his blushes, turning slightly to face the posters. That, too, he saw.
“We’re in the middle of the Second World War. The teacher is keeping the subject as general as possible.”
“One minute we’re talking about my bed, the next about the war?” I said. “Only joking.”
“He’s not asking us to tell our family history,” he said.
“Were your relatives in concentration camps?” I asked, now serious again.
I’d often wanted to ask Elzira that question, but had always stopped myself in time. Now it popped out.
“We don’t talk about that.”
“Is your history teacher Jewish?”
“No, he’s secular. This year we’re going to Fort Breendonk. And the Anne Frank House.”
“That’s good.”
“Breendonk is a terrible place.”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Lots of people were tortured and killed there, Jews and non-Jews. After the war, it was used as a prison for collaborators.”
“You know more about it than I do.”
“My grandfather, my father’s father, died in Auschwitz. My grandmother survived the camp. Mummy lost nearly all her family… Daddy was born during the war. We children were all named after relatives who were rounded up in raids and never came back…”
I was silent.
“Who was Jakov?”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
His colour had returned to normal. “Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, did you know that?” he announced perkily.
“I find that hard to believe,” I retorted. “Yiddish is an Indo-European language, and I happen to know a bit about Indo-European languages!”
“Bet you a hundred francs that the Yiddish and Hebrew alphabets are the same!”
I didn’t take him up on it. Instead, I asked him if that meant that Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose books had been recommended to me by my German teacher, wrote his whole oeuvre in the Hebrew script. He asked me who Singer was.
“Don’t you have a Yiddish newspaper here somewhere? That would settle the question.”
“We don’t take a Yiddish newspaper. There is one though: the Forverts, the Jewish Daily Forward. It’s published in New York.”
“The Jewish Forward! That must have a big circulation,” I mocked.
“Before the Shoah there were quite a few Yiddish newspapers,” Jakov said. “But the Yiddish-speaking Jews were almost exterminated during the war. Of the six million Jews who were killed, they were the biggest group.” And he changed the subject once again. This time drastically: “Your boyfriend, is he circumcised?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“And do Muslims also bury the foreskin, as a sign of the sanctity of the body?” he asked.
He couldn’t have blushed any more hotly. And I no longer knew where to look.
Seventeen
Jakov had to write a report on his trip to the Anne Frank House, and asked for my help.
He grumbled at the assignment, calling it a waste of time and effort. It was a museum for girls, he complained, though he did allow that Anne couldn’t help being born a girl, of course, any more than she could help being born Jewish—“Some people have all the bad luck.”
He’d counted on being able to write most of the report on the way back, on the train, but things didn’t work out like that.
On the train journey from Antwerp to Amsterdam, one of the boys, David, had managed to catch his jacket on the arm of a seat, tearing it in the process. The conductor had witnessed this mishap. He told the boy and one of the three teachers accompanying the group that they could probably claim the damage on the insurance. “But it would be best if you reported it as soon as you arrived.”
Later, as they stood at the counter of the railway office, his teacher, Mr V., had asked: “Why have you taken your yarmulke off to talk to the official?”
David hadn’t understood what Mr V. meant. Until he saw his yarmulke in his hand. “But sir, when we’re outside our community it’s always better for us to keep a low profile. If I was on my own, I w
ouldn’t even be doing this. Better a torn coat than be accused of being a thieving Jew.”
On the journey back, in a separate carriage that had been reserved for the group, Mr V. had discussed this incident with the other boys. It became a much bigger topic of conversation than the history of Anne and Margot Frank, their betrayal and Bergen-Belsen.
They could all tell stories about their instinct not to stand out. They could all list instances of attempts to conceal religious identity, so strikingly advertised by certain dress codes.
Fathers who, when road rage threatened, ripped their yarmulkes from their heads for fear of being called a dirty Jew by other drivers. Relatives who, attending a Diamond High Council reception where non-Jews would be present, put on goyish suits just in case, or made sure to leave their coats and hats in the cloakroom—so that no one would complain about the long coat draped over the back of a chair. To do anything to avoid people saying or thinking, “Another Jew.”
The boys were particularly on the alert at stations, it turned out. The previous winter, at Gare du Nord in Paris, two of them had been surrounded by a group of lads of about their age, perhaps even younger. The youths had forced them into a corner and pulled the yarmulkes from their heads. They’d even set fire to one in front of their eyes: holding a lighter underneath it, yelling Allahu akbar. The boys had bought new yarmulkes in the Marais. Ever since then, they’d pull the hoods of their jackets over their heads in stations, or hide their skullcaps under a cool baseball cap.
“You report these nasty incidents to the police, I hope,” one of the teachers had ventured.
“There’s no point,” they’d answered. “The cops don’t like us; some of them at least. They don’t say that to our faces, but we can tell.”
“Nima’s told me similar stories,” I told Jakov. “And he and his friends reacted the same way. They don’t trust the police here either.”
“Nima won’t be hiding his yarmulke.”
“There are Iranians who change their first names. As a precaution. Names that sound too foreign don’t work to your advantage. Or they say they’re Persian. Un Persan gets a different response to un Iranien, to put it in your words.”
