At last Singer calmed down, only little squeaks emerged from him from time to time, bubbles from a sunken ship, he wiped his brow with his huge handkerchief, which still had cake crumbs stuck to it, and at last said in a very weak voice: ‘Forgive me, please. Be moichel. But the story is . . . You will laugh with me. Or cry. It’s the same song, just with a different tune.’
‘What story?’ Sarah Pomeranz was a polite and hospitable woman, but if she ever became impatient it was not a good idea to keep her waiting.
Abraham nodded up at her and said, ‘You will remember’ – as if they wouldn’t remember! – ‘that you sent me, not sent me exactly, don’t let me tell a lie, but neither did you forbid me to talk about it, that I told you about a shidduch that might interest you . . .’
‘Nothing came of it,’ said Sarah, ‘and you kept your fee.’
‘Fee?’ Singer pulled himself up to his very modest height. ‘Am I a shadchen? You gave me a present, your rewards will be in that other world, and I may have talked about the matter, here or there, the way one does when one travels around a lot.’
‘I was opposed to the idea from the outset! Anyone with eyes in their head must surely see that Miriam and Pinchas are not made for one another.’
Sarah looked at her husband with surprise. It wasn’t usual for him to say much in the Pomeranz house. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Is our Pinchas perhaps not good enough for her? Just because she dolls herself up like Schippe Malke? Or is a beheimes trader something better than a shochet?’
Abraham Singer was already giggling again. He even had to bite into his handkerchief to control himself.
‘Forget this shidduch. I have a better one for you. A much better one.’ And already he was laughing again.
‘I bet it’s a good one!’ Sarah Pomeranz didn’t quite catch the right dismissive tone. A mother who offers a bride for her son has a lot of trouble feigning a lack of interest.
‘A good family,’ said Singer. ‘And a nedinye – that any Jewish child would be pleased with. Twelve thousand francs.’
If Naftali had had a daughter, he couldn’t have given her half of that as a dowry. ‘And the parents are sending you to us?’
For some reason Abraham Singer had found that question irresistibly comical. ‘No,’ he giggled. ‘The parents aren’t sending me. The parents have no idea.’
‘Who then? The Prophet Elijah?’
‘The kalleh! The kalleh speaks to me in the street, offers me money – am I a shadchen? – and says to me, more or less like this, “Go to the Pomeranzes and inform them . . .” – am I a town crier with a drum? – “inform them,” she says, and I’m thinking, why is she being so elegant? “Inform them!”’
‘Who?’ asked Sarah.
‘I’m a polite man,’ said Singer, ‘please don’t consider it arrogance on my part. If I am asked – why should I say no? So!’ His hands were, in contrast to the rest of his body, a normal size, so they looked enormous. He hammered out a town-crier’s drumroll on the table-top, and looked as if he would happily have climbed onto the chair to play his part to perfection.
‘Hear ye, hear ye!’ he crowed. ‘I am informing you all!’
‘He’s drunk,’ said Sarah.
‘It’s just a good thing that I’m a discreet person,’ said Singer. ‘Anyone else would want to tell the whole world.’
‘You tell it!’ Sarah Pomeranz was wringing her hands with impatience.
‘Well then. A shidduch for your Pinchas. A very good shidduch. But with two conditions.’
‘Conditions?’
‘First of all,’ said Singer, and beat the next drumroll, ‘first he has to get a pivot tooth.’
‘What does his tooth . . .?’
‘I’ll tell you. And secondly . . .’ – drum roll – ‘secondly he is to move away from Endingen.’
‘The woman must be meshuga.’
‘No,’ said Singer, and now he wasn’t laughing any more, ‘she isn’t meshuga. More and more Jews, as you know, are living in Zurich, and they have no butcher’s shop of their own. Not only could a shochet find a parnassah there . . . he would need staff.’
‘Zurich?’ Sarah repeated the name as pitifully as if it were a city in America, unreachably far away at the other end of the world.
‘Nowadays you just have to take the train from Baden. You’ll be there in three quarters of an hour.’
‘He’s too young for a butcher’s shop of his own.’
‘What can I teach him?’
‘Not nearly independent enough!’
‘He slaughters a cow better than I do.’
‘A dreamer is what he is.’
‘Don’t you have any questions for me?’ said Singer, breaking into the argument.
‘What?’
‘Who the kalleh is.’
‘Yes,’ said Naftali, ‘of course. Who . . .?’
‘Leave him alone!’ said Sarah and got up. ‘He’s a discreet person, he’s not going to tell us. And besides, it’s just occurred to me . . .’ She rapped her husband on the top of the head, as the teacher does at cheder when a pupil doesn’t know the simplest answer. ‘It’s just occurred to me: I urgently need to pay a visit. To Golde Meijer. I imagine that the two of us have a lot to talk about.’
14
Anyone who suddenly makes the seamstress sew different monograms into the trousseau linen might as well book the drummer and announce his news in the village square. In Endingen, where people liked to spice the dry bread of everyday life with other people’s excitements, everyone knew that. But they did Mimi the favour of playing along when she shook her curls with pearly laughter and said she still couldn’t believe it, people had actually believed, her and Janki – and they were cousins, of course, he was like a brother to her, while Pinchas, well, now that the date for the chassene was set, she could admit it, she’d been wild about him ever since she was a little girl. And the meshugena was, said Mimi, with a yet more pearly laugh, that she herself had known nothing about the misunderstanding for a long time, people everywhere had congratulated her on her betrothed, on the lucky fellow, and it had never occurred to her – never occurred to her! – that someone might mean Janki, Janki of all people, who presumably wasn’t interested in getting married yet, when he was only interested in his shop and nothing else at all. But that came from these old-fashioned customs, she had begged her father, practically begged him, to make the engagement as public as was customary amongst civilised people, with printed cards, but he’d refused to have anything to do with it, and so this crazy misunderstanding had come about, that she and Janki, of all people – you must forgive her for laughing out loud.
People were polite and said, ‘Me neshuma!’ and ‘Is it possible?’ and Mimi kept her head held very high when she walked through the village. At home she was as unbearable as she had been as a fifteen-year-old when she had discovered that Mimolette was the name of a cheese. She had made herself ridiculous, and because she knew that it was her own fault, she couldn’t forgive the others. She locked herself in her room for hours, and when Pinchas, as custom thoroughly permitted, came by for a visit, she let him know that he would have plenty of time to fill her head with nonsense when they were married.
Then Pinchas would sit, often until late in the evening, in the parlour with Salomon, and they talked together about all the things that were needed for a kosher butcher’s shop in Zurich, because people now found this plan, which Mimi had actually only concocted to get away from Endingen and from prying eyes, worthy of serious consideration. Salomon got on well with his surprising new son-in-law, and even taught him to take snuff, a habit that Janki had always resisted, and laughed warmly when Pinchas, trying to do it only too well, stuffed an enormous amount of Alpenbrise up his nose and then sneezed so hard that his yarmulke fell off his head. When he also started taking an interest in the breeding guide for Simmental cows and even made a very sensible suggestion for how the complicated lists could be drawn up more comprehensibly, Salomon was finally won over by him.
Golde didn’t reply. When Salomon had already been snoring for ages, she went on staring into the infinity of the dark ceiling and chewed around at her lower lip. Pinchas, and there was nothing she could do about this, would always be a changeling as far as she was concerned, an invader who had driven away her Janki, her Janki, that’s right, there’s nothing you can do about your feelings. And if Schippe Siebele, the lowest card in the game, had made the trick, well then, she would get used to it eventually, as she had got used to lots of things in life, but being pleased about it, no, unfortunately no one could demand that of her, not that. As she fell asleep she tried to improve her mood by imagining all the festivities of the impending wedding, but she saw only empty tables, a chuppah without guests and a musician who couldn’t scrape a single note out of his violin.
Chanele had gone to bed, in her chemise, which wasn’t made of cambric. Next to her lay Uncle Melnitz, who smelled of damp dust and cold earth, pressed himself against her back as a night-snail nestles against a green leaf, and talked away at her in his toneless, old man’s voice.
‘Good,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘Very good. So you’ve decided to become a martyr. How lovely. How delightful. You deserve praise for that, yes. We Jews love martyrs. We have to love them. We have so many. Sadly no one will sing for you. “Didn’t want this man, allowed herself to be buried alive.” Oy, oy, oy. You can be proud of yourself. Everyone will be proud of you. They will tell your story to the young girls when they fall in love with the wrong man. The story of Chanele from Endingen, who didn’t take Janki because she wanted the big love and he had only the small one for her. A bad deal he offered you there, Chanele. You were right to turn it down.’
He embraced her with thin, cold arms and pressed her to him. ‘You did the right thing,’ he whispered to her back. ‘You didn’t compromise. Your honour is saved, that’s the important thing, the only thing that matters. A martyr, just as we like them. Like the women of Massada who took their own lives before the fortress fell. Like the women of Worms who jumped off the roofs when the crusaders overran the city. Like the women of Lublin, who barricaded themselves in their burning houses lest they fell into the hands of the Cossacks. You are a heroine, Chanele. One of them. No, you’re an even greater martyr than that, because you must go on living with your heroism, yes. You will be an old maid, you will go on washing your plates and scrubbing your pans and always saying to yourself, “I didn’t take him because he didn’t lay paradise at my feet and I wouldn’t settle for less.” Good, Chanele. Very good. If you can’t have heaven, then you mustn’t have the earth either.’
His hands, dusty parchment, slipped under her nightshirt, which was not cambric, and his voice went on whispering. ‘We are gifted at martyrdom, we Jews. We carry it in us like a sickness. And do you know why, Chanele? Because we haven’t the courage to drink dirty water, and would prefer to go thirsty. We are chosen, and he who is chosen may not want less than everything. You understand me, don’t you, Chanele? You’re proud of your renunciation? Is it not a lovely feeling, suffering like that?’
He crept inside her, he rubbed his desiccated body against her youthful one, fingered her breasts and her useless belly, and wouldn’t stop talking. ‘I’m proud of you, Chanele. They’re all proud of you. They would be proud of you if they knew what you’ve done. No one will say, “She was stupid to let him go.” Not a soul. Certainly not. They will admire you. Admire you. Children will be named after you. Other people’s children, because you won’t have your own. Are you proud of yourself, Chanele? Are you proud? Yes?’
When she woke up, she felt those musty hands still on her, pulled the nightshirt, which wasn’t made of cambric, from her body and couldn’t stop washing.
Janki had learned to pack, in Monsieur Delormes’ drapery shop and in the army. He had got hold of a basket, a big basket with cloth handles that you could load on your back like a military rucksack. He hadn’t borrowed it from Golde, but bought it at the market in Baden and taken it home. No one asked any questions when they saw him with it; one looks away when a coffin is carried into the house. When he said he had now rented a flat, not the big one from Herr Bäschli, just a garconnière with two cramped rooms, they nodded and quickly changed the subject. Only Golde said, ‘Then you’ll definitely need . . .’ and left the sentence hanging in the air, a paper kite caught in a tree.
Janki folded his uniform trousers, each bend in exactly the right place. And the red and black jacket, with the flash that they had had to sew on themselves; the only time in the military that he had been better at something than his comrades. Chanele had washed the old bandage and rolled it neatly up again, and he packed it up too, a souvenir of times that he would only enjoy talking about when their reality was forgotten. The yellow neckerchief that no longer suited him; only pimply boys whom he woudn’t take on as clerks put things like that around their necks, not a businessman with his own shop. He had more shirts than he needed. Three waistcoats with pockets, big enough for a silver watch – eventually he would buy one like the one Monsieur Delormes had had, with a pendant on the heavy chain. His shaving things. First he would have to buy a bowl for the soap. And towels of course. Bed linen. He had never thought about needing bed linen, he had only bought a bedstead from Herr Bäschli, and a mattress, and Herr Bäschli had rubbed his hands and said, ‘Only one bed? Not very much for a new household.’ And he would need plates, too, but that wasn’t urgent, first he had to . . .
‘Let me do that.’ Chanele had come in without knocking, as if into a room where no one lives. She carefully inspected the clothes that he had neatly laid out side by side on the bed, picked up the uniform jacket, shook it out and set it carefully down again, folded slightly differently; in her concentration she looked as if she were bending over a patient.
‘I can manage on my own,’ said Janki.
‘Of course, said Chanele. ‘Who would dare to doubt it?’
‘You know I’m moving out because of you,’ said Janki.
‘Not because of Mimi? After all, you were engaged to her.’
‘Because I hadn’t understood . . .’
‘Ah,’ said Chanele, very busy with a shirt. ‘And now you’ve understood?’
‘Except you don’t want to,’ said Janki.
Chanele gave a strangely incomplete movement of her head; it was impossible to tell whether it was a nod or a shake. ‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I don’t. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘Does it say anywhere in the Schulchan Orech that you always have to do what you want?’
Janki reached for her hands, which were at that moment laying out a shirt. Now it hung between them by its sleeves, a child forcing its way into its parents’ conversation.
‘Does that mean . . .?’
Chanele looked at him for a long time, two sceptical eyes under brows that no longer met in the middle. Then she freed her hands, turned away and smoothed the shirt on the bed, again and again, even though there was no need.
‘You could have come to me a second time,’ she said.
‘Then would you have said yes?’
‘You know,’ said Chanele and unfolded the shirt, which she had already laid folded on the bed. ‘I have no nedinye. I have no family. I have no place where I really belong. Can I afford to turn down a job I’m offered just like that?’
‘I haven’t offered you a job,’ Janki said furiously.
‘That was how it seemed to me.’
‘Just because I said I needed someone who knows how to muck in?’
‘I have nothing against work.’
‘What do you expect me to do? Declare my love?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Then what am I supposed to . . .?’
‘Nothing at all
.’
Janki sat down on the bed, in the middle of a freshly folded shirt, and struck his forehead with both fists. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘I know.’ Chanele nodded several times. ‘You’re stupid.’ Then she sat down beside him, hunched her shoulders as if slipping into a dress a size too small for her, and said very quietly: ‘But we can live with that.’ And rested a hand on his.
‘Can I kiss you?’ asked Janki after a long moment.
‘No,’ said Chanele. ‘Maybe later. We’ll see.’
When Janki announced that he was going to marry Chanele, Salomon just said, ‘Nu!’ which in this case meant: ‘Nothing in this house surprises me any more.’
Golde almost forgot to hug them both, because while Janki, less eloquent than they were used to hearing him, was still delivering his contorted explanation, it was clear to her that she would now have to prepare for a double chassene, a task whose like had never been seen in Endingen before.
Mimi’s reaction to the news, and this might not necessarily have been expected, was friendly, practically relieved. ‘Now I know at last,’ she later said to Anne-Kathrin ‘that it’s not because of me that Janki . . . I have, without knowing it, been nurturing . . .’
‘. . . a viper at your bosom!’ Anne-Kathrin, who had read the same books, completed the phrase.
The two chassenes were to take place on the same day, which struck Salomon as only sensible. When the wedding was being planned, Mimi insisted that Janki and Chanele – ‘It’s unthinkable otherwise!’ – come under the chuppah ahead of her, and told only Anne-Kathrin the reason: ‘All the people will stay there to wait for me and Pinchas, and the others will be standing outside after their wedding, and nobody will be there to congratulate them!’
Janki had already decided to give up on the house with the Red Shield, and was pleasantly surprised when he learned that Chanele was to have a nedinye after all – and what a nedinye! Chanele even cried when Salomon told her, which was extremely unpleasant for the cattle-trader, who had never known her to do anything of the kind. To complicate matters even further, he didn’t tell them that the sum was only as high as it was because Janki had negotiated badly the first time.
Melnitz Page 16
