Melnitz

by Charles Lewinsky

  ‘He lies on the floor?’ Nothing was as Chanele had imagined.

  ‘Sometimes for hours at a time. Then in between he’s quite unremarkable again. Hides in his corner and watches the others. They recognise him by his white doctor’s coat. One of these modern things. I gave it to him. I let him talk me into it once, because lots of colleagues in Berlin . . . But I’ll have to get used to it now. He’s happier when he wears something white. He says that’s how it has to be.’

  ‘Why?’

  Dr Hellstiedl spread his arms wide, a movement that made Chanele think of Salomon. ‘Ask him!’ he said. ‘It’s almost always possible to talk to him. When he’s on his feet he even talks to the other inmates. Tells them he will soon be a father.’

  ‘A father?’

  Dr Hellstiedl nodded and shrugged at the same time. ‘“In case it’s a boy”, he’s invited me. To that party that the Jews have at a circumcision. But if that’s the case, as we suspect, Frau Meijer . . .? If that’s the case there will be no circumcision. Because you are not a boy.’ Dr Hellstiedl rose to his feet. ‘Let us postpone it no longer,’ he said. ‘Come, Frau Meijer, I will take you to your father.’

  23

  They walked – thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight – along a corridor on whose walls red tiles framed non-existent windows, turned – seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six – into a second corridor so similar to the first that Chanele almost expected to meet herself waiting there, left the building through a back door and crossed a deserted courtyard, followed – one hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three – a narrow gravel path that crunched under their shoes, and then, through a side entrance that Dr Hellstiedl had to open with an outsize key, entered the old castle – one hundred and seventy-three, one hundred and seventy-four, one hundred and seventy-five – through two rooms in which decommissioned plank beds were stacked into towers, reached a staircase, once the magnificent entrance to the castle, climbed up one curved flight of stairs and then another – two hundred and twenty-six, two hundred and twenty-seven, two hundred and twenty-eight – then Dr Hellstiedl unbolted a grille, pointed to an open door and said to Chanele, ‘So, do you dare?’

  Two hundred and forty-seven.

  Two hundred and forty-seven is the gematria of moyreh.

  Moyreh means fear.

  ‘Frau Meijer?’

  If you don’t speak, your voice can’t fail. Chanele nodded. And went inside.

  The room was high and bright. Over the windows were curtains of dirty tulle, which did little to keep out the harsh sunlight. The crossed bars of the grille appeared as dark lines on the pale fabric. Protruding from the ceiling was a big iron hook, from which a chandelier would once have hung, and on the walls the remains of stucco ornaments in the form of woven wreaths could be discerned. The floor was covered with roughly planed boards that creaked when someone walked over them. Hanging in the air was the smell of sweat and old clothes.

  There were about fifteen or twenty men. Most of them sat at a long table with benches lined up beside it, the others stood around somewhere in the room, singly or in groups. One man had put a broom handle over his shoulder like a rifle, and was marching repeatedly from one wall to the other in a military goosestep, performing a ragged turn every time he got to the end. Without the disturbance of his movement, the atmosphere would not have been much different from men’s shul at the start of prayers.

  None of the men were lying on the floor, and Chanele couldn’t see anyone in a white overall.

  The patients weren’t dressed identically. A few of them wore quite proper suits, as if they had been invited to an official gathering, others, like poor relatives, only peasant trousers and coarse shirts. Some of the patients’ clothing had bizarre features, as with the marching man who had fastened several spoons as medals to his jacket. Another wore a tatty tailcoat over his bare chest.

  Chanele had stopped in the doorway. A few of the men at the table had their heads turned towards her, but looked in such a way that any sign of perception glided over her, giving her the confusing sensation of being invisible. It was some time before anyone noticed her. Two men, both similarly tall and gaunt, like brothers, came towards, stopped close in front of her and looked at her with such harmless curiosity, such childish shamelessness, that Chanele couldn’t help smiling at them.

  ‘Hello,’ she said and then, when no reaction was forthcoming, she rummaged through her memory for one of the few French words she had picked up from Mimi: ‘Bonjour’.

  The men looked at her with as much amazement as if she had performed a circus trick for them. A third man, the strange figure in the tailcoat, hurried over on tripping feet and tried to push the two others aside. They let him do so, but kept pushing their way over again as if attracted by a magnet.

  ‘You’re a woman,’ said the man in the tailcoat.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Chanele.

  ‘I thought so,’ said the man, as satisfied as a scientist whose experiment has proved a disputed theory. He turned to the two curious men and explained in the tone of a museum curator presenting the treasures of his collection to some visitors: ‘She’s a woman.’

  The two men stood there wide-eyed. Some drool fell from the corner of one of the men’s mouths.

  ‘You don’t belong here,’ said the man in the tailcoat. ‘Women are on the other side.’

  ‘I’m visiting.’

  With a reproachful shake of his head the man pushed the others a few steps back and explained to them, ‘She’s visiting.’

  ‘I’m looking for . . .’ Chanele began, but the man with the bare torso raised his hand majestically. Under the armpit of the tailcoat, where the seam had come apart, a big hole gaped.

  ‘I know who you’re looking for,’ said the man. ‘Of course I do. People often come here looking for me. But I’m here incognito.’ In an exaggerated pantomime he looked around just to be sure, and then winked at Chanele.

  ‘I’m not looking for you.’

  The man nodded in agreement, as if she had said exactly the right thing, winked at her again and explained to the two importunate onlookers, ‘She isn’t looking for me.’ And he added with a triumphant giggle, ‘She didn’t recognise me.’

  In the meantime they had been joined by a fourth man. He was poorly dressed, with a pair of trousers several sizes to big for him, which he had tied together with binding twine, and a jacket that was missing all its buttons. Before Chanele could dodge him, he had gripped her by the upper arms, pulled her to him and kissed her on the forehead. He smelled like old potatoes.

  ‘I have blessed you,’ the man said. ‘Now nothing more can happen to you.’ He wiped his hands thoroughly on his trousers for a long time and walked away again.

  The two curious men pushed closer, and the man in the tailcoat pushed them away. ‘You’re a woman,’ he said to Chanele. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  On either side of each window hung heavy, drawn night-blue curtains. From behind one of them a man who had been hiding there stepped forward.

  A man in a once-white doctor’s overall.

  He was old, at least as old as Salomon, and Chanele saw nothing familiar about him. His face had deep wrinkles like those that come from hunger or from many tears, and his cheeks were covered with stubble. He had covered the thin strands of his hair with a white linen cap, of the kind that men wore to service on high feast days. He was barefoot. Below the seam of his coat, thin calves could be seen.

  The man was now standing right below the window, and the bright light delineated the outlines of a thin old man’s body.

  He was ugly.

  And he was a complete stranger to Chanele.

  None the less, without thinking, and as if her legs had a will of their own, she walked up to him. She just pushed the two curious men aside. There was no sign now of the man in the tailcoat.

  Walked up to him.

  He saw her coming, and on his face, that lived-in, broken, old fac
e, the emotions alternated as quickly as the light changes when a wind lashes scraps of cloud past the sun. Surprise. Amazement. Disbelief.

  And love.

  He stretched out his hand, not like an old man looking for support, but like a young man who can be a support to others, he stretched out his hand to her, a hand covered with brownish patches, so that she had no option but to hold out her own, and he gripped it, his skin like paper, like the pages of an old book that falls to bits when you read it, took her fingers between his own, rubbed them with thumb and forefinger to see if there was really something there, if there was really someone there, opened his mouth, moved his lips, soundless at first, the way one speaks a prayer or a magic spell, gulped and said in a voice full of tenderness and full of fear, said with an old, young voice, ‘Sarah, my darling, why are you not in bed? You should lie down.’

  And then, startled by his own words, he let go of Chanele and darted back as if he had burned himself on her. He put his hands side by side, palms up and fingers bent, as if drawing water from a well, lifted them very slowly to his face and covered his eyes with them.

  She still hadn’t even seen what colour they were.

  He stood quite still for an endless minute. Then he began to rock his torso back and forth, at first quite undiscernibly, then faster and faster, he rocked, he shockelled, began to hum, a prayer without words that was part of no service and no feast day, assembled from scraps of melodies, from all nigunim and none, moved his head back and forth as if someone had gripped it and was forcing it to move, pressed the balls of his hands into his eye sockets, never wanted to see anything again after he had seen Chanele, and then, after a minute, after an hour, he became calmer, he stopped humming, stopped shockelling, slowly lowered his hands and splayed his fingers in front of his eyes as little children do when playing their favourite game of making the world disappear and reappear, and asked very quietly, in an almost inaudible voice full of disbelieving hope, ‘Sarah?’

  ‘I’m not Sarah.’ Chanele didn’t know if she’d said it or only thought it.

  Either way, he had heard. He reached his arm out towards her, a thin branch in a white sleeve, moved his hand back and forth, as if to wave away steam or perhaps a ghost, approached her forehead very slowly, the contact, when it came at last, as tender as when one bumps into a cobweb on a dark staircase, stroked her forehead, her temples, ran his hands along her eyebrows, that straight line along the edges of her nose, moved back and forth, Chanele had never stroked herself more tenderly there, and a smile crossed his face, a loving, enchanted, young smile that sat on his wrinkled face like a colourful painted mask. ‘You’re Sarah,’ he said. ‘No one has such beautiful eyebrows as you.’

  Chanele was forty-one years old and only now did she know what her mother’s name had been.

  His hand was on her cheek now, it had found its place there like a butterfly on its final flight. She moved her head very slowly up and down. It could have been a nod, it could have been assent to what was happening to her, but perhaps too it was just the desire to be stroked by this hand.

  ‘Are you well?’ he asked, and answered his own question. ‘You are well, my darling. The sun is shining, even though it’s January.’

  She was born in January.

  The smell he gave off was not pleasant. It was a smell of illness, of decay. A smell of destruction.

  Behind her back the man with the broom handle marched back and forth. Back and forth.

  ‘Your time will soon come,’ said the old man. His eyes were directed at her, but she had the feeling that he was talking to someone very different. ‘Everything will be as it must be,’ he said. ‘Everything will be fine. If it’s a boy we’ll call him Nathan. After your father.’

  Nathan. Another name that belonged to her. Once upon a time she had also had a grandfather.

  ‘And if it’s a girl . . . You say, Sarah, my darling. What shall we call it if it’s a girl?’

  ‘Chanele,’ she said.

  And he repeated: ‘Chanele.’

  The soldier marched back and forth. Every time he stepped on the wooden floor on which Chanele stood she was lifted slightly into the air, because the boards had only been loosely laid and had shifted over the years, and underneath there was a very different floor, probably a much finer one, which no one had seen for a long time.

  ‘It will be a big simcha,’ said the old man. ‘A simcha that people will talk about. Eating and drinking and singing. We will invite everyone, and they will all come. Even Dr Hellstiedl. He is a goy, but a good man. We will invite him. Won’t we, Sarah?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chanele. ‘We will invite him.’

  ‘You will still be weak.’ His hand lay on her cheek as if it had gone to sleep. ‘For the first few days one is weak, and that mustn’t alarm you. I will carry the child for you. I will hold it. I will never drop it. Nothing will happen to it. Nothing will happen. I know.’

  ‘No,’ Chanele said. ‘Nothing will happen to anyone.’

  She will die, your Sarah that you loved so much, and you will lose your mind. A strange man will come, a beheimes trader called Salomon, and he will take your daughter away and bring her up in his own home. After many years he will write letters and look for you, and you will meet your daughter again and you won’t know.

  Nothing will happen to anyone.

  Suddenly and for no external reason the old man shouted out loud. His voice was suddenly much louder than it had been. He drew his hand away from Chanele’s cheek and stared wide-eyed at his fingers. Then he hid his hand behind his back. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ he said, and repeated twice more: ‘Means nothing. Means nothing.’

  Chanele had never seen anything sadder than the reassuring smile he tried to put on.

  With his eyes still on Chanele – but who could have said whom he really saw in front of him – he walked backwards, walked away from her on tripping little steps to the window and stuck his hand in the folds of the heavy curtain.

  ‘You mustn’t be afraid,’ he said, speaking faster and faster, someone using the last of his strength to run for help, and yet knowing that he won’t find it. ‘The blood means nothing. Nothing at all. It is quite natural. The doctor will come and make everything good again.’

  His voice was fragmenting more and more. The wrinkles in his face waited for water like dried up river beds.

  ‘The doctor will come. He has already been sent for. He will come and say, “There is no need to be afraid.” He is a good doctor. He is called Dr Hellstiedl. He is the chief doctor. He can determine everything. Everything. Everyone has to obey him. He will determine that you are not dead. That you are not dead. That you are not dead.’

  His body had disappeared into the curtain. Only his face was still visible, becoming older and older and stranger and stranger.

  ‘He will determine it,’ he repeated. ‘If I ask him to, he will determine it. You don’t need to be afraid. He is a good doctor. A good person. He gave me this shroud. He is a goy, but he gave me a sargenes. I have more need of it than he does, he said. Because I have already died.’

  He cried, letting the tears flow down over him like rain. She would have given anything to know how to comfort him.

  ‘You will not die, Sarah. Dr Hellstiedl will heal you. You will not be dead. Only me. Only me. I gave my life for yours. Because it was meant to be.’

  He had now crept all the way into the curtain. The endless, disembodied echo of his voice could only be made out in scraps.

  ‘Not die . . . means nothing . . . determine everything.’

  A strange hand tapped Chanele on the shoulder. The two curious men were standing there, hand in hand now, two children egging one another on. With them was the man in the tailcoat.

  ‘He is dead,’ he explained kindly. ‘When they are dead they have to wear white shirts. That’s how it is with Jews.’

  Chanele wanted to push him away, but her body wasn’t strong enough to move.

  ‘He will sing in a minute,�
�� said the man in the tailcoat. ‘They have to sing, even when they are dead.’

  And true enough: behind the curtain Chanele’s father started singing in a high, thin voice.

  ‘I thought he would,’ said the man in the tailcoat and winked at Chanele. ‘I know all about them, but they don’t know me. I’m incognito here.’

  ‘Yisgadal,’ sang the old man. ‘Yisgadal veyiskadash shmey raba.’ It was the kaddish, the prayer for the dead that one speaks in memory of one who has died, sons for their fathers and fathers for their sons.

  He sang it for himself.

  He sang the whole long prayer, and in the places where the congregation has to join in, Chanele silently said the Amen.

  The heavy fabric moved. The head of the man they called Ahasuerus here, and who was her father, became visible, not up where it had disappeared into the curtain, but down on the floor. He must have knelt down and lain on the floor and was now crawling, lying on his back, into the room, he pushed himself away from the wall and lay motionless on the raw floorboards, his arms by his sides, his sightless eyes wide open.

  ‘They put them on the floor when they have died,’ explained the man in the tatty tailcoat. ‘They wash them, and they lay them down, and then they put them in the coffin.’

  Chanele crouched down by her father, by this strange man. She would have liked to pray, but none of the many blessings that Judaism keeps ready for every possible event and opportunity suited the situation. At last she murmured what people say when news of a death arrives: ‘Praise be the judge of the truth.’ The old man didn’t stir, but she had a feeling he was content.

  She closed her eyes and would have crouched for a long time like that beside the motionless man, if there hadn’t been a sudden smell of wet potatoes, a smacking kiss on her forehead and a voice saying, ‘Nothing more can happen to you now.’

  Then Dr Hellstiedl was with her. Perhaps he had arrived at that precise moment, but probably he had been watching the whole thing from somewhere. They must have had observation windows up here, where not even a nurse was paying attention to anyone.