by J. S. Margot
“Barley. Marrow bone. Do you like marrow bone?”
“Os à moelle? No, I don’t. But Daddy does. His mother made really yummy cholent. And grated potato, stuffed intestines, saucisson.”
“Beef?”
“Of course. Never something from a pig. That’s why we don’t eat many of the sweets that you can eat. And why we only buy confiture that a rabbi has approved. Yours has gelatine, which is extracted from animal bones. Including pig bones.”
“And fish?”
“Fish is pareve. It is neither meat nor dairy. The right fish can be eaten with both.”
“What do you do if you can only afford one cooker?”
“You build a little wall between the hobs. Not a real one, of course! One made of aluminium foil, for instance. The best thing is never to cook meat and dairy on a single hob at the same time. But if you don’t have a choice, you have to make sure that nothing splatters from one pan to the other. And if you lift up a lid, no gouttes may drip from one pan into the other.”
“Good grief, Elzira,” I joked, worn out before I’d even touched anything, or before we’d begun to prepare a single dish, not even “Jewish penicillin”: chicken soup with matzo balls. “I’m unclean. This afternoon I ate a pizza with salami and melted cheese!”
Clearly in her element, she shoved a red-handled whisk into my hand. The bowl was full of egg whites. “Please beat those for the matzo balls. We make a lighter, more modern version than the traditional recipe.”
Thirty-Seven
At around eight o’clock, Nima and I cycled to the Schneiders’.
The pavements, usually bustling with Jewish pedestrians, looked deserted. So did the streets: there was hardly any traffic. The synagogue service had already finished. In houses that permitted a glimpse of the interior, you could see people gathered together, and lighted oil lamps and candles, not just those of the menorah.
We’d been asked not to ring the bell—not to activate an electrical circuit. The front door stood ajar and, once we were inside, Nima and I shut and bolted the door behind us, as we’d been instructed to do—there were three bolts in all.
Once inside we were allowed to take the lift—“goys can do anything, even on Shabbat”—but we didn’t. With our shoes in our hands, we climbed the stairs noiselessly.
I’d imagined that Shabbat would be observed in solemn silence: a bit like in church, where all sound and action happened near the altar, and people were only allowed to speak or sing when the leader gave permission. That turned out to be a misconception. Even before we got to the top of the stairs, we could hear a catchy melody being sung in deep, cheerful male voices, followed by loud laughter, including from women.
Mr and Mrs Schneider were waiting for us at the top of the stairs. They greeted us warmly; Mr Schneider embraced my boyfriend in the manner of Middle Eastern men: chin on each other’s shoulder, each thumping the other on the back with both hands.
Mrs Schneider and I looked at each other. She kissed me twice. Never before had she kissed me. I held out the bouquet of flowers we’d bought for the occasion. She took it appreciatively, almost shyly. She nodded to Nima; her expression was sweet and friendly.
“Hadn’t we told you not to bring anything, except your spouse!” exclaimed Mr Schneider. He laughed very hard, and we laughed along with him, somewhat less hard.
Mini-Sara, who’d meanwhile overtaken her big sister, was running busily between the kitchen, living room and the stairwell, waving and calling out “Shabbat shalom” without looking at us.
Jakov—the oldest now that Simon was serving in the Israeli army—had joined his father in the stairwell. He scrutinized Nima from behind his new spectacles. As the two shook hands, he checked out my boyfriend in the way of parents all over the world sizing up their future son- or daughter-in-law: critically, nervously, curiously. He nodded at me: “Oh, so this is him.”
Nima gave Jakov a couple of manly thumps on the back, a friendly gesture that took Jakov by surprise. To hide his blushes, he put his arm over his face and felt his yarmulke, as if he suddenly needed to check whether it still was in place.
Elzira, subtly made up and wearing a slightly fitted, dark-blue dress with a lace collar, looked like a very young mix of Cindy Crawford and Julia Roberts. She wasn’t afraid to meet Nima’s eye and when he held out a hand—despite me repeatedly having told him not to—took it cordially: “Enchantée de vous connaître, pleased to meet you.”
I experienced this Shabbat celebration in a daze. I could recall everything that happened before the dinner much more clearly than the dinner itself which, after various solemn blessings, morphed into a boisterous, Mediterranean-style family celebration in which the children, big and small, were the focal point—not just the children of the Schneiders themselves, but also the four belonging to another family. They crawled under the table. They played hide and seek. They were allowed to eat with their elbows on the table.
The dining table’s leaves had been pulled out to extend it at both ends; it looked gigantic. Seated at it were lots of people in Orthodox Jewish dress, none of whom I knew. When we came in, the faces of at least three of them suddenly stopped, like clocks. I’d looked forward to seeing grandmother Schneider, but it turned out she wasn’t there. “My honoured mother is visiting her sister in Amsterdam.”
The table was spread with all kinds of special dishes whose name I didn’t know or had forgotten. I couldn’t even remember whether I’d helped prepare them, or seen them prepared. The plaited loaves that Elzira and Irma had baked that afternoon waited in a silver bowl, flanked by a pot of honey and a salt cellar. Where were the maids? Were they in the kitchen, washing up? Where did all these tasty-looking dishes keep coming from?
These are the things I do remember.
That in their loud conversations, which sometimes sounded more like arguments, the men spoke a mishmash of languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, Dutch, English, French.
That we were asked hardly any questions. Everyone interrupted everyone else; the dinner was an incredible cacophony. Not only words, but also gestures were echoed. If one person gesticulated, the other would gesticulate even more strongly. Everyone reached across the table, passing dishes. During the meal, people took children onto their laps.
That Mr Schneider and Jakov read aloud from the siddur, a Jewish prayer book that father and son often read together, an act that strengthens their bond. That they were assisted by a six-year-old nephew who could read Hebrew with amazing speed and who, as he followed the words with his tiny index finger, kept pinching the leg of his little sister, who was sitting next to him. That—and this is how I remember it, but I could be wrong—Mr Schneider didn’t use his index finger as a reading aid, but followed the text with a silver pen whose end, shaped like a hand with an outstretched index finger, slid under the letters.
That Nima occasionally nudged me under the table. When Mr Schneider launched into the joke about the dying man and his business partner. When Elzira dropped her fork. When Mrs Schneider eyed him secretly from under her lashes. When I gazed too long at one of the children’s aunts and didn’t realize I was staring.
That the dinner must have been delicious, though afterwards I could only recall the sweetish, nutty taste of the chicken soup. Even the matzo balls that I’d rolled were a blank; I couldn’t recollect their taste or texture.
That the men sang zemirot, Shabbat hymns, at the tops of their voices, and that I lowered my eyes during their rousing singing, I think because the exuberance and the intimacy overwhelmed me. I peeped sideways at them, feeling like a voyeur.
That I was envious of the naturalness with which they sang together, and not immune to their belief in the need for communal singing. That I envied the unity expressed in their hymns. Together, the men seemed to be spontaneously writing a story that greatly transcended their own individual histories. Strength of th
at kind was new to me, and sitting there I believed that people and peoples who sang together had a stronger bond than people who didn’t, and for my own part I felt this lack.
I was reminded of the birthday parties of my childhood.
On my birthday, I would invite my school friends to a party at my home. My Moroccan, Turkish and Greek friends from Meulenberg wouldn’t accept these invitations. Their parents weren’t familiar with the birthday party tradition and, not knowing the language and rituals of their host country, didn’t feel confident enough to send their daughters to a Flemish family, least of all a family where the mother was a teacher. A kind of shame seemed always to separate our different worlds. The one immigrant girl who was allowed to come to such parties always felt too uncomfortable to join in properly: because Dutch was the only language spoken, because she felt everyone was looking at her, because she didn’t know the customs, because we had more money than her family did, because she knew her parents would never throw such a party. The girl would stand on the sidelines. Just as I was standing on the sidelines here at this Shabbat celebration. I’d been flattered to have been invited. But in the Schneiders’ living room I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Nima and I had stepped into an ancient painting, a tableau vivant in which we didn’t belong. And in which we perhaps had no business to be.
Thirty-Eight
In 1991 everything went wrong.
One:
For the first time in Belgian history, the far-right party Vlaams Blok blew away all the mainstream parties in the federal elections. The city of Antwerp turned out to be the breeding ground of this extremist party. That Sunday couldn’t have seemed blacker.
Two:
Jakov and his best friend Jack smashed up Jack’s father’s car. The boys had reached the age when you can legally drive in the United States, and they didn’t want to be outdone by American teenagers. Neither of them had ever driven a car before, neither knew how to change gear or where the accelerator and brake pedals were. But one day, when his father was away on business, Jack had pocketed the car keys and they’d set off for a spin. A very short one as it turned out: reversing out of the drive at top speed, they’d shot straight into the garage door of the neighbour opposite, crumpling up the back of Jack’s father’s Jaguar like a concertina. The neighbour in question, a non-Jew, was absolutely beside himself and called the police.
In their panic, all the boys could come up with was to tell the police officer that Jack had been driving. They’d thought it would make things simpler for the insurance. But Jack’s father’s insurance policy didn’t cover this kind of stupid stunt. Mr Schneider was asked to help foot the bill. He refused. As far as he was concerned, his son had merely been a passenger.
Jack was the first to crack. He confessed to his father that Jakov had been driving the car. Jakov accused his best friend of lying. The tension between fathers and sons got worse. To say nothing of the owner of the smashed garage door, who grew angrier by the day.
I was the only one to whom Jakov confessed his lie. It had caused him sleepless nights, and he didn’t know what to do. I advised him to tell his father the truth. He did so—two weeks after the event. By which time, besides car and door, a lot of collateral damage had been caused.
The third piece of bad news, in June of that annus horribilis, also had to do with Jakov.
Jakov was doing his final Dutch exam, for which he wanted to write a really good essay. As good as the ones he and his friends had been handing in these last few years.
The essay had to be written on the spot, in the exam room. The pupils were given five titles to choose from. They had three hours—from nine to twelve—in which to write a well-argued piece.
Jakov overreached himself. Neither he nor two of his mates, who’d been buying my compositions for years, wanted to take the slightest risk. And so they took a risk that was their undoing. One afternoon they managed to sneak into the staffroom. They searched for the Dutch teacher’s exam papers. They found them. They photocopied them. In their nervous haste they left the originals under the lid of the photocopier. The teacher realized what had happened. The class was called to account. Under pressure from the others, the three owned up. Fortunately they were smart enough and scared enough not to confess to their years of deception. At least not to the school. To his father, who demanded an explanation, Jakov confessed all. He told him all about our little sideline.
“T’es un con!” Mr Schneider exclaimed. “How could you be so stupid?”
Mr Schneider, it turned out, wasn’t so much angry that his youngest son, with my connivance, had been hoodwinking the school authorities. Above all, he was incensed by Jakov’s carelessness, by his son’s amateurishness. “If you want to cheat, do it properly or don’t do it at all!”
The whole time this affair raged, no member of the family ever questioned my integrity as a tutor. At least, no one ever took me to task about it.
Jakov and his friends were severely reprimanded by the headmaster and the Dutch teacher, but they weren’t expelled.
They made a complete mess of the exam essay.
Four:
As if the sky of 1991 wasn’t already dark enough, one evening, as Elzira and I were bent over her books, she mentioned casually that the shadchan had paid a visit.
“What’s a shadchan?”
“She’s a matchmaker.”
“What does she do?”
“She arranges marriages.”
She told me that the shadchan was a greatly respected figure in the Orthodox community, that she knew all the Jewish families in the world and had everyone’s particulars in her card filing system. All the necessary data on their genealogy, family background, character and genetic particulars.
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“What?”
“Her knowing so much about you?”
“It’s our custom.”
“Are you being married off?”
“There’s someone who wants to marry me.”
“Are you being married off?” I repeated. My heart was beating very fast.
“Men who are interested in me introduce themselves to me and my family via the matchmaker.”
“So you are being married off.”
“No, I’m allowed to choose.”
“Choose between two men?”
“Yes. No. I’m allowed to put forward candidates myself. So are my brothers. Anyone can.”
“And if you don’t like a candidate you can send him packing?”
“Yes.”
“Time after time? A thousand times, if you want?”
“That won’t happen.”
“And what if you fall in love with some other man? Someone you meet by chance.”
“That won’t happen.”
And then came the fifth uppercut. That blow struck in my own circle.
Marjane was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Tehran. Initially it was thought that a stay of a few months would get her back on the rails. In the end it took more than a year before she felt remotely human again.
During her therapy sessions it emerged that Marjane had been raped in Brussels, more than once.
When Nima heard that he didn’t say a word, but smashed the bathroom mirror to smithereens with his bare fist and stalked through the flat, letting the blood drip on the floor.
The same Nima who was responsible for the good news of this dark year.
“I must do better than her,” he resolved.
“Better than she,” I corrected.
He passed his second-year engineering exams and got a temporary job as a sound technician.
I, having meanwhile got my degree, continued to combine one part-time job after another with working for the Schneiders. The jobs rarely if ever made me happy.
Thirty-Nine
>
Jakov went abroad to study. First in Israel, then in New York and Boston, then in Israel again. Having tried his hand at business as a schoolboy, it was time to make it official: he wanted to get an MBA.
In the first years after leaving home, he would regularly send me postcards: “See, I can still write Dutch” and “This month I even read a literary novel, by a Jewish writer, too, Philip Roth, I didn’t think much of it.”
So, not counting Monsieur, that left just the three of us.
Sara. Elzira. Me.
Sometimes I helped Sara prepare for tests. But we never really developed the bond that I’d built up with Jakov and Elzira. Sara got excellent marks, so everything went swimmingly.
I saw Elzira even more than before.
We weren’t friends, exactly, but we certainly grew closer together. She talked to me about things she’d never have mentioned when Jakov and Simon were still at home. Perhaps she was just more open because she was older.
“On Tuesday after school Mummy drove me to Brussels.”
“Oh. To go shopping?”
“I had make-up put on.”
“You what?” I asked, stunned.
“Je me suis fait maquiller.”
“But you haven’t got it on now?”
“On Tuesday evening, before I went to sleep, I washed all the make-up off my face.”
“Did you have to go to a party?”
“It was for practice. Before long we’re going to a cousin’s wedding. She’s getting married in Amsterdam. She’s marrying a Dutchman. She will live in the Netherlands.”
“Did you look pretty?”
“Mummy thought I looked very pretty. So did Daddy. But Sara said I looked prettier without all that peinture.” She looked at me enquiringly.
