by J. S. Margot
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know, love. They’ve lived in Amsterdam for many centuries. That must play a role. Along with the Dutch tendency to be open-minded. Flemings are more inward-looking, you know that as well as I do. Dutch people are always ready to be charmed: everything and everyone is ‘leuk’ (nice) or ‘enig’ (delightful). The Flemish say the Dutch are more superficial. That’s certainly true. But it would be wrong to think that, just because they tend to make an issue out of everything, people have more depth. Though I admit that too much superficiality can be very tiring.”
I was reminded of Abigail, Simon’s wife. After just one day, she’d treated me much more spontaneously than Elzira, even after six years. And the American woman I’d shared the sherut with in Bnei Brak: more communicative than the average Fleming. What was there in our tap water that made us roll down the shutters of our existence as soon as anyone showed the slightest bit of curiosity or spontaneous joy? And hadn’t some of our Flemish friends and acquaintances, after meeting Martinus, reacted just as they had when they met Nima, using the word “real” like Milena, when she talked about Jewesses? “Oh, but you’re not a ‘real’ Dutchman, you’re like one of us.” By which they meant that Martinus wasn’t insufferably loud and didn’t urinate against the cathedral.
“Do you think it’s nice, the synagogue?” asked Martinus, dragging me back from my thoughts.
“The De Langhe and Isgour one? It’s kind of austere. And you’re right, the paint is peeling off.”
“Inside, I mean!”
“I don’t know.”
“But it’s the Schneider family’s synagogue?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve never been inside?”
“Never.”
It had never occurred to me. In all the years I’d lived in Antwerp, I’d never been inside a synagogue. I’d never even peeked in the Dutch Synagogue, right across the street from where I’d studied. Nima and I had photographed and filmed its oriental facade: it was the most beautiful shul in Antwerp, perhaps in the Low Countries. Not until this conversation in the train did I realize I’d only seen the building’s grand exterior. Yet on study trips to Barcelona I had visited the Old Synagogue on Carrer Marlet, even had it explained to me by a rabbi and a tourist guide. Not till Barcelona did it dawn on me that, unlike churches, you seldom saw a hearse outside a synagogue. I learnt there that a Jewish body is seen as ritually unclean; the dead and their rituals have no place inside a sacred Jewish place, unless the dead person was named Cohen, the Hebrew word for priest. How was it that in Antwerp, where there were over fifty synagogues and where I’d lived for nearly fifteen years, I’d never been aware of this custom?
“In a place they don’t know, people are perhaps a bit more daring,” Martinus reassured me, “and that certainly applies to Flemings.”
“Going into a synagogue has nothing to do with daring,” I said.
“It does have to do with leaving your comfort zone,” he replied. “How many people never use public transport in their own town? But once they’re somewhere else they suddenly don’t have a problem travelling by metro, bus, tram and taxi. Until they return home. Then they get back in their cars again. Even to go to the baker’s on the corner.”
I looked out of the window. We were passing through Heide-Kalmthout. Once, many Jews had lived here, close to the Dutch border. The history of Mrs Schneider’s family, which had been nearly entirely wiped out, had happened in this place. That much I’d grasped from the odd remark she and her children had made. More than that, and the fact that almost none of the Jews who lived here had survived the war, I didn’t know.
A deep sigh escaped me. I just couldn’t shake off the Schneiders. Martinus slid next to me.
“If you let me read the paper now, I’ll treat you to a taste of Jewish Amsterdam very soon.” He stuck his arm through mine. “We’ll go to Sal Meijer’s and have a salt beef sandwich.”
Fifteen
I’d never had a salt beef sandwich before. At Sal Meijer in Amsterdam’s Scheldestraat I ate two in a row.
“I don’t know any place like this in Antwerp,” I said. “We don’t even have this type of pastrami.”
Martinus: “I used to work in a cafe near here; in the small hours we’d drop in at Sal’s.”
We were in a cheerful mood: the family visit had gone well. It had been a very Dutch affair. People found me leuk and enig, but also a bit odd, because I didn’t say very much. We had sat in a circle around a few bowls of crisps and drunk coffee and soft drinks. More than once people commented that when I did open my mouth I spoke such lovely Flemish, and once I was asked to repeat an idiom, because it struck them as so expressive—much more expressive than the Dutch equivalent. In this company, I suddenly felt myself back in the role of outsider, entering an unfamiliar tableau vivant, but I didn’t mind.
Sal Meijer’s looked like it dated from the 1960s or 1970s. White tiled walls, men with aprons, old-fashioned crockery, plain rolls amply filled with high-quality meat and fish, nothing fancy. No frills, unless you counted the Amsterdam accent, which filled the small space.
The customers were young and old, Jewish and non-Jewish, Orthodox and liberal. Nearly all the tables and chairs had been taken, outside too. The atmosphere was relaxed. A rabbinical certificate hung on the wall. If someone ordered a ham roll, they’d get a roll with beef sausage or salt beef shoved under their nose without comment. No one asked where the pork was. Milk and butter didn’t exist in this establishment.
“Ah, you’re from Belgium.” An older man addressed us. He was drinking tea at the table next to ours.
“Well spotted,” I said.
“Guess you’re on the lookout for Dutch celebrities?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Sonja Barend. Bram Moszkowicz. Ralph Inbar, that guy who hosts Banana Split. Hanneke Groenteman, they all come here.”
“We’re just here for the sandwiches,” Martinus said. “I really wanted her to see this place.”
“Oh, so you’re Dutch. How nice. You’re quite right to bring her here. Jews and Amsterdam: they go together like peas and carrots,” the man went on.
“Are you Jewish?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Jews and Amsterdam go together like peas and carrots? Only one fifth of the Jews came back after the war,” I blurted out. “In Belgium, there was more resistance to the Nazi genocide.”
I had a tendency to do that, I’d noticed. To stick up for Belgium when I was in the Netherlands, or talking to Dutch people. As if I felt called upon to defend my country, my place of origin.
The man fell silent. He finished his cup of tea. I could feel him sizing me up.
Before he left, he asked if we wanted to hear a funny story, typical of Amsterdam Jewish humour. I nodded without much enthusiasm. Martinus sounded keener.
The man, Jacky, told a story about a student who used to help out at Sal Meijer at peak times.
One day, Jacky, a regular at Sal’s, said to the student: “Give that young lady some cutlery for her beef sausage sandwich.” (Some customers ate their sandwiches without cutlery, he told us, whereas others absolutely insisted on a knife and fork.) Jacky had pointed discreetly to a woman sitting at a table by the window.
The student had held out a knife and fork to the woman: “Alstublieft, here you go.”
Then he blushed bright red. The customer turned out to be a thalidomide victim. Born to a woman who’d been prescribed the drug during pregnancy, before it was known to cause birth defects. One of her arms ended in a stump.
“Now that’s Jewish humour,” Jacky said, and he burst out laughing. The men in aprons roared too. Martinus joined in somewhat hesitantly. I shrugged in mock stoicism. I was confused and didn’t know what I preferred: Mr Schneider’s jests or
Jacky’s mockery, drenched in pain and self-loathing—only blacks can make jokes about blacks.
Sixteen
It was the first time I’d seen Elzira’s intended; Isaac was white as a sheet and looked as if he might faint at any moment. Two men led him to the chuppah: his father and Mr Schneider. Tall, thin and gangly, his wide-brimmed hat looked more substantial than he did. He wore a white robe over his suit. He didn’t have a beard and I caught myself being relieved to note that.
Isaac stood under the silk canopy. The rabbi spoke and chanted. The women’s gallery, where I was sitting, was abuzz with chatter; sometimes voices were raised loudly, like in a market. All the women, except me, had a lot to discuss. They stood up, sat down again, strolled around the gallery. They were dressed to the nines. They laughed, made phone calls. In addition to Dutch, French and Hebrew, I mainly heard American English around me. Only the odd snatch of Yiddish. Children ate sweets and chased each other around. No one was concentrating. I had to bite my tongue so as not to tell them off: “Hey, pipe down a bit, this is Elzira’s and Isaac’s wedding, you know!”
As far as I could tell, I was the only non-Jewish woman there. But I might have been mistaken. After all, I myself could have passed for modern Orthodox. I was wearing a black, floor-length dress. My hair was shoulder-length and dark brown. No wedding ring gleamed on my finger, so I didn’t have to wear a wig. The dress code surprised me: I’d expected dark colours to dominate. There was plenty of dark blue, but lots of the ladies were wearing pastel or bright shades. A few could have gone straight onto the cover of a glossy magazine.
I looked for Abigail, Simon’s wife, and Sara, but couldn’t spot them. I couldn’t see anyone I knew or recognized. Close relatives were probably somewhere else, nearer the bride and groom. Two hundred to two hundred and fifty guests, I estimated. Where was Granny Schneider? I really wanted to say hello to her; how long had it been since we’d seen or spoken to each other? I didn’t know how many granddaughters she had. But I knew she was fond of Elzira.
I was sitting right at the front, at the balustrade, and could see the men on the floor below. Martinus was nowhere in sight. He would surely have hooked up with other guests by now, had probably already been invited to coffee by somebody. In addition to his social skills he had another trump card: Isaac’s family had Dutch roots, so the guests must include Amsterdammers. Perhaps he’d seen someone he knew. At the entrance, a man had handed Martinus a blue velvet yarmulke. My boyfriend could be taken for a Jew, especially in the dark suit he was wearing.
In defiance of the wedding list, we’d bought the young couple a lovely and (for our budget) extremely expensive duvet cover. Kingsize. White satin with silver stripes. The same colours and motifs as on their wedding invitation. As I sat there waiting for what was to happen, I suddenly realized we should also have bought an identical duvet cover for a single bed. I’d completely forgotten that Jewish women slept in a separate bed when they were menstruating. How could I have been so stupid?! We should have followed the wedding list.
I’d already caught a glimpse of Elzira as we came in. The bride-to-be was sitting on a decorated throne. She looked lovely. Corkscrew curls, flowers in her hair, pink blusher on her otherwise pale, translucent cheeks. An intense look in her eyes. Her hands resting in her lap. A crowd of people surrounded her; I’d kept at a distance. My eyes welled up. I was nervous for her. For Moses, the sea split in two; for this young couple, men and women split into separate camps.
Elzira. In a small way my Elzira. The bride. The kallah. Her mother and Isaac’s mother led her to the canopy. In a plain, white wedding dress and train she advanced slowly and calmly towards Isaac, her face covered by a veil. She’d chosen a beautiful sleeveless dress from the Natan fashion house, carefully modified by tailors to meet Orthodox Jewish norms. With the two mothers, candle in hand, she circled Isaac seven times. It was one of the few rituals I was familiar with. The world had been created in seven days. She was creating seven bulwarks around her marriage; enough, hopefully, to protect it from external harm. A lot happened. I can’t remember any more in what order. My mouth felt dry. The rabbi began to speak; he gave his blessing, in many words and long sentences. Wine was drunk from one goblet, and from another. Mrs Schneider took away the veil that hid Elzira’s face. Isaac looked at her. She smiled. I saw all the tension flow out of him. He had a disarming smile. The rabbi talked again. The women around me looked at the chuppah where Isaac was sliding the ring over Elzira’s right index finger. The rabbi continued to talk and read aloud. I waited for the moment when Elzira would place a ring on Isaac’s finger. There was a time I’d have been worried she might drop the ring. Now I had no such worry. But Isaac didn’t get a ring on his finger. Elzira fiddled with hers, put it on one of the fingers of her other hand. The young couple signed a form whose contents the rabbi had, I supposed, just read out. After the signing Elzira handed the document to her father. Mr Schneider had to fumble for his handkerchief.
Then Isaac stamped on a glass, breaking it. The shards—another thing Elzira had told me—symbolized the ruins of Jerusalem, the fragile peace in Israel and, by extension, the imperfection of the world.
“Mazel tov!” everyone shouted.
My eyes scoured the floor below. I so wanted to be with Martinus!
PART III
2001–the present
One
Funnily enough, years after my sojourn in Bnei Brak, it wasn’t Elzira but Jakov who I saw first.
Returning from a stay in San Francisco, Martinus and I had, on a whim, added three days in the Big Apple to our trip. Both Jakov and Elzira lived in New York.
“Why don’t you give Elzira a call?” Martinus asked.
“It’s Friday.”
“Still early afternoon, though, not yet Shabbat.”
“You can’t do that!” I said. “Just suddenly ring someone up after you haven’t seen them for years and say: ‘Hello, it’s me—surprise surprise, I’m in town, and I’ll be on your doorstep in a minute!’ Elzira has a family, she’s got her own life now.”
But there was more to it than that. I couldn’t just knock on the door of an Orthodox Jewish family without mental preparation. I couldn’t hop from one moment to the next to a life full of religious laws—certainly not after a stay in Frisco. One day, I’d certainly visit Elzira. But she and I would prepare for that thoroughly, and well in advance.
Over time, our relationship had changed, of course. We didn’t see each other any more. The contact I still maintained with the Schneiders’ married children was unstructured. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear anything from them for a year, nor they from me. When their children were born, I usually got a card or an email. Since nobody was being born at my end, I occasionally looked for other reasons to get in touch. Like the time I ran into Opris, asked after Monsieur, and was sorry to hear that the little dog had died.
“Why don’t you ring Jakov, then?” Martinus persisted.
“He’s got even more on his plate than Elzira. His wife and children. His job. Living in New York is super expensive.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I don’t want to bother them, Martinus.”
“I’d like to see Jakov. And so would you, right? You miss the Schneiders, so why not look them up while we’re here?”
“You don’t even know Jakov.”
“Yes I do. I talked to him for ages at Elzira’s wedding party.”
“Ages? A quarter of an hour at most! And that was years ago! We can’t just suddenly rock up without warning.”
“I’m sure Jakov would be pleased to see us.”
“I don’t want to be pushy.”
“That’s such a Flemish mindset. Why shouldn’t Jakov be happy to hear from us? What the Dutch call nice and considerate, the Flemings called pushy.” He pulled a face to show he didn’t get it at all. A face t
hat also signalled I was wrong.
“Why don’t you call him, then?”
“What’s his number?”
Within hours, Jakov was striding through the automatic doors of the hotel lobby. In my mind’s eye, I see him wearing a lightweight K-Way rain jacket. A red one. Though I’m not sure this is actually true. It’s quite possible I invented this red jacket later, attributing a colour to the relaxed impression he made. I do know, though, that he was wearing dark-blue Levi’s, “because of Levi Strauss, of course, the Jew who taught the world to wear jeans”.
“How cool to see you so unexpectedly!” Jakov thumped Martinus’s shoulders till they were sore, and gave him a crushing handshake. I received a cordial, happy nod. “Welcome to New York, best place in the world. What brings you to my city?”
I thought: How big he’s grown. Big in the sense of grown-up. Serious too. I panicked a little: what if we didn’t know what to talk about, if we just exchanged platitudes. I was scared we might end the day with a gulf between us.
Jakov took charge. He wanted to show us a local food truck. “They sell the best Brussels waffles in the world.” Gesturing expansively, as if he were an enthusiastic tour guide, he told us that the importer of the kosher waffle dough was a Jew from Antwerp: imagine, a Jew makes New Yorkers passionate about Belgian waffles, while you’d scour Belgium in vain for kosher waffles baked on the spot.
He took the lead. It had always been the other way round. The constellation had changed.
