Arthur had no idea. ‘Fifteen francs?’ he said hesitantly.
‘Fifteen francs! Halevei! If I were to buy a pair of shoes for fifteen francs and sell them for eighteen, twenty per cent rewech, it would be a hanoe to me to pay for your flag, and the flagpole too!’ He shook his head, like a sage over the sins of this world, repeatedly lamenting, ‘Fifteen francs, he says! Why not make if fourteen?’
And in any case, said Herr Weill, one had been so overrun of late by shnorrers – ‘Do not take the word amiss, Doctor!’ – like wasps in a hot summer they were, and then of course there were the regular obligations too: if you was called up to the Torah in synagogue, you had to shnoder something, and apart from those charitable donations he also paid his shekels for the construction work in Palestine – he wasn’t one of those diehard Zionists, but one didn’t want to stand aside completely – and otherwise there was always this and that, in short: sorry thought he was, in this case he would have to say no. But if the Jewish Gymnastics Club undertook to buy all its sports shoes from him in future, then he would offer a ten per cent discount, what was he saying, fifteen per cent! Just so that the doctor could see that he was very positive on the subject.
That was the response that Arthur got wherever he went; the money simply wouldn’t come together. When he had gone all the way through the list of businessmen, the firm commitments came to less than a hundred francs. And a flag, even a modest one, cost at least four times as much as that.
Next June, which had seemed an infinite distance away only a short time before, was now suddenly, it seemed to Arthur, practically on his doorstep. Sally Steigrad called meetings in which the design was discussed, he had also already drawn up a list of the halls where the big ball might be held – ‘Of course there must be a ball, if you’re going to do something, do it properly!’ – and at the flag-makers’ they had told Arthur that three months was the least, the very least, he could expect; now that everyone was thinking about the national exposition in Bern, they were drowning in commissions.
Arthur didn’t dare knock on his father’s door again; Janki hadn’t recovered at all in the summer resort on Sylt, and had been constantly depressed since then. Being separated from his shop, with its smell of old spices, was harder for him than he had expected.
There was only one last possibility.
Arthur’s relationship with François had never been easy. As a child he had been unable to put into words the breathless admiration he felt for his big brother; even then he had found it hard to talk about emotions. Later, when he had perhaps found the words, the opportunity never arose, even though by now they both lived in Zurich. An ambitious businessman, who is already married and has a son, is worlds apart from a young medical student, and Arthur had felt as if the age difference between them was distancing them further and further; the more adult François seemed to him, the more immature he felt himself.
And then François had had himself baptised, and that had introduced such awkwardness into their relationship that nothing cordial could arise to combat it. One of Arthur’s teachers at grammar school had had a flaming red growth on his forehead that everyone had to ignore and yet couldn’t ignore, and that was exactly what he felt about François’s Christianity: the effort not to mention it all the time silenced all conversation.
But it was possible to talk to Mina.
François had had a villa built on the Zurichberg, in the new quarter near the university. The building was generous but lifeless, a mere stage, and Mina, who was supposed to be the mistress of the house, moved around the big rooms like an actress who hasn’t been given the script of her play. A janitor who looks after other people’s properties without having any claims to them herself.
‘No, Arthur, you aren’t a burden at all. This house is arranged for guests. We could have twenty-four people to dinner if there were twenty-four people who would accept an invitation from us.’ She said such things without bitterness, she was just establishing facts, and in her uncomplaining directness she resembled her mother-in-law Chanele.
A maid with a cap and apron served them tea. They had taken a seat at a little cast-iron table in the conservatory, where in spite of the cool autumn day it was almost too warm. Arthur admired a little orange tree with perfectly formed fruit hanging from its branches, and Mina followed his gaze and said, ‘As long as you don’t try to eat them . . .’
She thought it entirely possible that François could be persuaded to make a donation.
‘Even though . . .?’ Arthur couldn’t bring himself to ask the question, but Mina answered it anyway.
‘That’s why. François likes to stress that nothing has actually changed for him, that people are just too narrow-minded, too fixated on outward appearances to understand that he’s still the same person he was before . . . So why shouldn’t he support the Jewish Gymnastics Club?’
‘And? Is he still the same person?’
Mina poured a few drops of milk from the silver jug into her tea, added sugar, stirred it and drank. ‘Have a piece of cake,’ she said.
‘Is François still the same person?’
‘I fear so.’
‘Strange,’ thought Arthur, ‘that one can feel more closely related to a sister-in-law than to one’s own brother.’
When François came home he was in an excellent mood, and treated the presence of Arthur, even though he hadn’t seen him for months, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Good to see you here. I have something to show you. I’ve just got it.’ He waved a long green cardboard tube, a child proudly presenting a new toy, and in his enthusiasm almost knocked over one of the many flower-holders that turned the conservatory into a little civilised jungle.
He was in such a hurry that he didn’t even take the time to remove his jacket; he just threw his hat on one of the ornate wicker chairs. They had to follow him into the drawing-room, where he pushed the low table aside to make enough room on the floor. He knelt down, still in his coat, took a long parchment-coloured roll of paper out of the cardboard packaging and had Arthur pass him two heavy, polished ashtrays to fix one end of it down on the carpet. Then he unrolled the paper so carefully and almost tenderly that Arthur was reminded of the unrolling of the Torah in the service, although that comparison was more than out of place with François.
What François had brought was the plan of a store, a colourful architectural drawing, lovingly prepared down to the smallest details. Smiling mannequins, dressed in the latest fashions, already paraded in the window displays, and outside the double front door a line of carefully sketched customers waited impatiently to be allowed in.
The three-storey building was in the classical style, the wide shop windows separated from one another by half-relief Corinthian columns from whose capitals chiselled acanthus leaves flourished. On each of the two columns which, twice as broad as the others, flanked the entrance, there sat a stone lion with the crest of Zurich between its claws. On the upper storeys the windows were bigger than usual, which produced the idea of inviting, light-flooded spaces inside.
On either side of the plan a row of medallions was arranged, drawn window frames through which one could see as if through a window all the things that were actually going on in the store. A salesman was helping a customer in his shirt-sleeves into his new jacket, a woman was trying on a hat decorated with feathers, a young couple with a bashful expression considered a selection of cots.
‘This is it,’ François said proudly. ‘The most beautiful department store in Zurich.’ He looked so happy that Arthur felt closer to his brother than he had for ages.
‘You’re planning a new building?’ he asked.
‘Eventually. Eventually.’ François said it in such an exaggeratedly dismissive way that it was clear: he couldn’t wait to be asked about further details.
‘And where?’
‘Right beside the Paradeplatz.’ François rubbed his hands. He was still kneeling on the floor, and it looked as if he was praying.
/> ‘So you got the land after all?’
‘Not yet,’ said François, his face radiant with anticipation. ‘But it can’t go on for much longer. I have it from an impeccable source that old Landolt is on his death-bed.’
They had to admire the drawing, and François couldn’t stop revealing more and more details to them: ‘the whole thing has three underground levels – the store-room on its own has more floor-space than the whole shop! A garage specially for home deliveries – all motorised vehicle, of course, and the chauffeurs in uniform! An annual catalogue with a mail order service covering the whole of Switzerland!’ In his enthusiasm he was, without knowing it, an exact copy of his father. Janki had once, when he was bargaining over Mimi’s dowry, described the planned Modern Emporium to old Salomon Meijer.
Arthur made the right noises, said, ‘really?’ and ‘impressive!’, but he might just as well have said nothing at all, because François was basically just talking to himself. Mina, as was her way and special talent, listened to her husband as attentively as if he hadn’t described his plans and ideas to her a hundred times.
‘The most modern steam heating that closes off the entrance with an air curtain, so that the doors to the street can stay invitingly open even in cold weather! A tea-room in the fabrics department, so that one can look at the swatch books as if in the comfort of one’s own sitting-room! Four paternoster lifts and also . . .’
François got no further with his enthusiastic account, because there was suddenly a noise outside the door, a violent argument, a defensive voice could be heard, and another, furious voice that would not be fobbed off, and then the door to the drawing room flew open and Mimi stormed in, tramped over the rolled-out plan, her heels tearing holes in the paper, pushed Arthur aside and grabbed François by the arm, pulled him up from his kneeling position and grabbed him by the lapels of his coat so that he was forced to stand facing her, her face very close to his. The terrified maid appeared in the doorway and tried to explain that she had simply been pushed aside, that there was nothing she could do about it, but she couldn’t get a word out because Mimi was shouting at François, shouting at him so violently and so furiously that she spat as she did so, shouted and shouted and wouldn’t let go of him the whole time. He didn’t defend himself, just put up with it and tried unsuccessfully to understand what it was that Mimi was saying over and over again, and which made absolutely no sense.
‘I will never forgive you for that!’ Mimi shouted. ‘Never, never, never will I forgive you for that.’
46
In the end it was a delivery of English gentlemen’s boots that brought the whole structure of lies crashing down.
The two wooden crates full of shoe-boxes, which had arrived two days earlier than expected, were too big for the door of the warehouse marked ‘Bureau’, so they stayed in the salesroom and compromised the sales-promoting elegance on which Siegfried Weill placed such value in his shop. So he decreed that the crates be emptied immediately, and the boxes placed on the shelves, an operation for which he had to call upon the services not only of his two members of staff, but of his whole family, ‘yes, you too, young lady, you can take that elegant coat of yours off right this minute and put on an apron instead.’
That afternoon Esther Weill had arranged to see her friend Désirée, and had been on the point of leaving the house when her father stopped her and dragooned her to work for him in spite of all her protests. An hour previously, and this was among the precautionary measures they had agreed, she had dropped in at the Pomeranz household as if by chance, and had discreetly confirmed to Désirée that nothing stood in the way of their autumn walk together. Only then had Désirée confided in her mother that Esther Weill was meeting her suitor again, and that as her best friend she had once again to act as chaperone and alibi in one.
In the event of last minute obstacles, they had agreed this, the rendezvous was to be cancelled straight away and rearranged for a different time. But Désirée was too much in love to be sensible. More than a week had passed since the last time, and this week had been an eternity.
They had already missed far too many years together. As if everyone and everything had conspired to keep them apart. When in fact they were meant for one another.
From childhood onwards.
Désirée and Alfred.
Alfred and Désirée.
They had arranged to meet on the Dolder, in the deer park behind the Grand Hotel. It was a long walk there from the hut in the forest where the rack terminated, so one could be fairly sure, at least on weekdays, that one wouldn’t meet anyone.
When she arrived he was already there. He was always already there, he missed her so much every minute. Even from a distance he could see that Désirée was carrying her hat in her hand, and that made him happy because he knew what it meant. Mimi insisted that Désirée wear wide-brimmed hats because of her sensitive complexion, and they got in the way of kissing. They kissed each other for a long time, and no one was watching them. Only a stag, no more timid than a cow stood behind the bars of its enclosure, seemed like them to be waiting for something.
Esther didn’t come; it was already twenty minutes past the agreed time, and she had never been as late as this before. ‘She mustn’t have been allowed to get away for some reason,’ said Alfred. ‘You’ll have to go back straight away.’
But his face was so sad, and Désirée couldn’t bear to see him sad. ‘Just five minutes, just three, just one.’
His tongue tasted of peppermint. Before they met he always sucked these little pastilles; it made her laugh at him, and love him all the more.
And then a whole hour had passed, and there was no getting around it; she had to deceive Mimi one way or another. Sometimes Désirée completely forgot that she lied to her mother every time, it become so natural to let Esther Weill play the lead in her own love story. It was so easy to forget everything in the few hours they had together.
It was so beautiful.
‘Nothing will happen,’ Désirée whispered. They whispered often when they were together, even if there was no danger of anyone hearing them. She laid her head very close to his and whispered in his ear, and then there was his earlobe, which had to be kissed as well, sometimes she nibbled on it and even bit into it. Once she had tasted his blood, just a drop, and it had made a magical connection between them.
But they were magically connected anyway.
When they had met again anyway, just by chance, she had been dismissive of him, really quite brusque. Alfred continued to hold it against her, and claimed he was still angry with her about it. Only as a joke, of course, in truth he could never have held anything against her. Then he tried to pull a severe face, which he couldn’t do at all, and after that he imposed a punishment on her that had to be kissed away, kiss after kiss. ‘I am a lawyer,’ he said, ‘I cannot let lenience prevail.’
She had been quite brusque with him.
Her piano teacher lived and taught in Stockerstrasse, an old Frau Breslin who actually had a much more complicated Russian name, and who seemed to hate the music she hammered out of her piano every bit as much as she hated her pupils. No one liked going to see her, but her unfriendliness had won her a reputation of particular capability, and Mimi wouldn’t hear of her daughter giving up her lessons or switching teachers. ‘You just have to practise more,’ she said.
Désirée hadn’t practised that day either, and she was late as well, which would lead to a tirade half in German and half in Russian. At the Conservatoire in St Petersburg lazy pupils were rapped on the knuckles with the conducting baton, and Frau Breslin was very sorry that she wasn’t allowed to introduce this method in Zurich as well. Désirée had wedged the thin music folder under her arm, turned the corner far too quickly – ‘A lady doesn’t run!’ – and almost knocked him over. Her music fell to the ground, he bent down for it and only when he handed it to her did they recognise each other.
‘Where are you off to in such a hurry, Déchirée?’ asked Al
fred, and she wrenched the folder from his hand as reproachfully as if he had been responsible for the collision, and walked on without a word.
She had been really brusque.
And then, an hour later, when she left the house in Stockerstrasse again, he was already standing outside the door, he had just walked after her and waited for her and said, ‘Hello, Désirée.’ But the tone in which he said it sounded arrogant, and she didn’t like him at all, not at that first meeting, and not the next time either.
Because a week later he was there again. ‘I’ve waited for you every day,’ he said. ‘Except on Shabbos, of course.’ The word sounded artificial coming from his lips.
She didn’t like him, she really didn’t. She threw her head back and left him standing. He had watched after her for ages, he claimed later, but she hadn’t turned round. And why should she have? It wasn’t as if he thought she was interested in him.
She didn’t care about him, that’s right, she didn’t care about him in the slightest, but then she couldn’t stop thinking about him, she was all over the place, and dreaming with her eyes open. Mimi was already starting to worry because Désirée was always so careful and reliable about everything, she gave her cod liver oil, and Désirée had to gulp it down because she couldn’t tell her mother what was really wrong with her.
She didn’t understand it herself.
Eventually, and she would have burst if she hadn’t done it, she talked to Esther Weill about it, and Esther immediately got very excited. Esther was the kind of person to whom nothing dramatic or extraordinary can ever happen, because they don’t have the talent for recognising the extraordinary. That Désirée was experiencing secret love – ‘I don’t love him, what would give you such a meshuganeh idea?’ – and this love of all loves, which was so impossible and forbidden – ‘If you say “Love” one more time, I won’t talk to you again as long as I live!’ – that her best friend had fallen head over heels in love with this baptised relative – ‘Esther, really!’ – thrilled her so much that she was scared by the idea that this second-hand experience might soon be over. ‘You have to accept his invitation,’ she urged, because he had actually asked Désirée to meet him, just so they could talk, really, just talk, nothing more, he had so much to say to her.
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