‘Why are you hiding yourself here on the stage?’
‘I just wanted to . . .’ Arthur fell silent. He couldn’t tell Sally the truth. ‘I’m hiding’, he should have said, ‘because I’m afraid of meeting Joni. Because I’m even more afraid of not bumping into him. Because I don’t know what I should say to him. Because I don’t want to say the wrong words. Because there are no right words.’ But as it was, he just shrugged, took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
‘Come on, come on!’ Sally clapped his hands as his regional director always did. ‘Into the hall with you!’
So many people had come – ‘From both communities!’ Sally observed with satisfaction – that even the big Volkshaus hall was full to the rafters. The tables had had to be pushed forward again, and in the end there was hardly enough room, once the official part was over, for dancing or, as Sally had called it in his small advertisement in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt, paying homage to Terpsichore. Apart from those for the few official guests – the community presidents, the rabbis, the gymnastics association delegation and of course the generous donor Janki Meijer – there were no reserved tables, so when the door opened at seven o’clock in the evening an amusing competition for the best seats had begun, in which the yontif-suited men and the heavily made-up women in their glittering dresses had to pretend not to be in a hurry, and were only moving more quickly than usual out of a sudden excess of energy.
To Hinda’s displeasure and Zalman’s secret amusement, Rachel had no ladylike inhibitions. Holding up her skirts, she had been the first to charge off and had conquered a table for eight for the family, right beside the dance-floor, and was now successfully defending it with Lea’s help. Zalman who, as a good tailor, didn’t just know about coats, had conjured two evening dresses for the twins out of remnants from one of last year’s collections, and they looked irresistible. So they had to sit in a spot where they could be seen. When was one to make conquests, if not today?
Zalman and Hinda were wearing the same clothes as they had on Seder evening, the suit and the twice-altered skirt which they’d also worn to synagogue, and which they would take out of the wardrobe again for the high holidays. Admittedly Hinda had seen a beautiful dress in a shop window and made eyes at it for a few days, but in the end a wooden-barrel washing machine with a crank drive had been more important.
On the other hand, Aunt Mimi rustled into the hall in a new black dress embroidered with diamante, and with a hat the size of a wagon wheel full of ostrich feathers. She ignored Rachel’s achievement in finding a family table, and sat down in the best seat as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Uncle Pinchas had refused to put on anything more solemn than his black lustrine jacket, but Mimi had compelled him to put on a silk cummerbund, and had tied it so tightly that in the course of the evening he had to keep pulling it out with his index finger so that he could breathe.
And Désirée . . .
She hadn’t even wanted to come along at first. When Mimi insisted she gave in, but explained that she wouldn’t dance, not so much as a step. As long as she was parted from Alfred, it would have seemed as inappropriate as going to an operetta in the ‘terrible days’ between New Year and the Day of Atonement. Then she also refused to put on a ball-gown, even though, much to Lea and Rachel’s envy, she had two in her wardrobe. Now she sat with the others at the table in a plain linden-green dress, drawing attention by being so conspicuously inconspicuous.
The last chair was meant for Arthur, but for the moment he had no time to sit down. The children he had trained for the flag ceremony came charging at him from all directions, and their parents seemed to be waiting even more excitedly for the great moment. He had to repeat over and over again that they still had plenty of time, first there would be the prologue and all the gymnastic demonstrations, and then, at nine o’clock at the earliest . . .
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and it wasn’t the next impatient father, but Joni.
Joni.
Joni, who gave him a smile, half public and half private, and said, ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
His dark blue suit was slightly too small for him, and it made his upper arms look particularly powerful. Since meeting Arthur for the first time he had grown a vain moustache that sat on his upper lip like a stuck-on little brush. His face had the puffy look that athletes often get when they stop training. He wasn’t, if you took a proper look, an extraordinarily attractive man, but Arthur saw only Joni, his Joni, and had to take off his glasses and rub the bridge of his nose before he could say, ‘Nice of you to come.’ His voice barely quavered.
‘You have to do something for me,’ said Joni.
‘Yes?’ The question was over-eager and far too quick. ‘I’m not a waiter fighting for a tip,’ Arthur thought irritably, and felt the heat rising into his face.
‘This Désirée Pomeranz,’ said Joni. ‘She’s something like mishpocha of yours. Can’t you give me an official introduction?’
Luckily they were joined at that moment by Sally Steigrad, who needed Arthur very urgently. The stage manager was causing problems about the torches that they’d planned to use for the big pyramid in the finale, something to do with safety regulations and permissions. ‘Deal with it,’ said Sally, who had recently adopted a Napoleonic tone, so Arthur was able to escape behind the stage with an apologetic gesture.
The flag consecration, or at least the first part of it, was a complete success.
Sally had written a prologue in verse, in which he rhymed ‘high aspirations’ with ‘gymnastic sensations’ and ‘mighty hand’ with ‘fatherland’, thus reaping enthusiastic applause. Then he announced the gymnastic work – among athletes it was customary in this context only ever to speak of work – and the men’s squad began their free exercises. Sally had had the idea, or had taken it from a report in the gymnastics newspaper, of having the rhythmical elements accompanied by the band, and the old conductor Fleur-Vallée had arranged a pot-pourri of well-known and well-loved melodies especially for the occasion. At particularly daring transitions, as when the folk-song ‘Ramseiers wei go grase’ suddenly modulated into a nigun from the Simchat Torah liturgy, a murmur went around the hall. Apart from that, Sally noted with satisfaction from behind the scenes, the beat of the music effectively covered up the inevitable little slips made by the gymnasts.
The bar and stretching exercises were rather tedious, but were still loudly applauded, as is customary at family occasions. The appearance of the newly-founded ladies’ squad even prompted actual cheering, although some guests from the Orthodox religious society shook their heads disapprovingly over their skimpy costumes.
Then at last it was the turn of the children.
Monsieur Fleur-Vallée, who was becoming more and more modern with increasing age, had had the impudence to rearrange ‘Entrance of the Gladiators’ into a solemnly synagogical minor key, and when the boys and girls marched in, not from behind the scenes, as expected, but through the doors from the foyer, a general ‘Ah!’ ran through the hall. They were all wearing white shirts or blouses, and had knotted a scarf in the blue-and-white colours of the association and the city around their necks. The display that Arthur had rehearsed with them over four evenings in the gym hall did not create its full intended effect for want of space; the additional tables had made the dance floor shrink considerably. But that did nothing to dampen the general enthusiasm. In the finale, when the children, to the notes of the Hatikvah, formed a Star of David, Pinchas recorded for his report in the ‘Blättchen’ that the cries of bravo sounded as if they were never going to end.
A break followed, during which the children had another important task to perform: they had to sell the lottery tickets, without which no association event could cover its costs. After long consultation, Sally Steigrad had set the prices very high: one ticket for twenty rappen, six for a franc. ‘They all know each other,’ was his argument, ‘so no one can afford to be stingy.’
Only now,
in the break, did Arthur manage to greet his parents. Although a major argument in favour of selling the shops had been that they would have more time for their children and grandchildren, Chanele and Janki had not been in Zurich for ages. Instead they hid themselves away in their flat in Baden, which was far too big for them, and Janki for one didn’t seem particularly pleased if one paid them a visit there. He was finding it increasingly difficult to walk; the war wound that he had never had was now very painful, just as a bad dream can pursue one into real life. Chanele, one could tell by many little gestures, had grown into the role of nurse, and if she considerately adjusted Janki’s sash or encouragingly handed him a handkerchief, there was always something triumphant about it, a collector unnecessarily straightening a valuable item that he has at last acquired after a great struggle, to confirm to himself that it now really belongs to him.
Arthur noticed that his father was repeatedly clutching the left side of his chest, and the doctor in him was already looking for the illness to match this symptom. But in fact Janki was only reaching for the manuscript of his speech as flag sponsor. ‘Just don’t talk too much about the Battle of Sedan,’ Arthur said as a joke. His father looked at him severely and replied: ‘I wasn’t even at Sedan.’
The old Kahns, Mina’s parents, came by and congratulated Arthur with pointed cordiality on his production of the children’s display. They ignored Janki and Chanele, the parents of a son-in-law who had had himself geshmat, equally pointedly. Mina herself, of course, hadn’t come.
When Arthur had finally fought his way through to the family table, his seat was already occupied. On the last chair, right next to Désirée, sat Joni Leibowitz.
‘I have taken the liberty of introducing myself,’ he said. ‘I’ve already told Fräulein Pomeranz that we are very good friends. We are friends, aren’t we?’ The threat in his voice could not be ignored.
‘Of course,’ said Arthur. What else was he supposed to say?
‘Then I’m sure you won’t mind if I occupy your seat for a little longer.’ Joni stroked his young moustache, took a drag on a cigarette and smiled at Désirée from behind the smoke with slightly narrowed eyes, just as the lovers did in the picture house. ‘One seldom encounters such charming company.’
Lea and Rachel looked on enviously – ‘Not even a ball-gown, and already an admirer!’ – and in the shade of her ostrich-feather hat Mimi smiled as contentedly as if she had created Joni Leibowitz in person.
Arthur would have liked to flee, but he couldn’t immediately find an excuse. Luckily Sally Steigrad had become accustomed to treating him as his personal adjutant, to whom all unpleasant tasks could be passed, and just at the right moment – in the form of a hastily dispatched young gymnast – a messenger appeared on Sally’s behalf, urgently summoning Arthur back behind the stage. A noisy argument had broken out there between two young ladies, a Fräulein Horn and a Fräulein Jacobsohn, about the home-made donation from the ladies’ squad. They were both supposed to hand over to the flag-bearer the accessories concomitant with his office, and were now, at the very last moment, tearing out each other’s carefully coiffed hair over who was to hand him the glove and who place the embroidered scarf around his neck. Arthur unburdened all his dammed-up despair upon them, yelled at them so loudly and with such pointless violence that it must have been audible through the curtain and all the way into the hall. No one was used to hearing this man, normally so mild and reticent, using such tones, and the startled ladies very quickly reached an agreement.
Sally Steigrad put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m excited too, but one must be able to maintain one’s composure.’
The act of consecration began with an orchestral prelude for which Monsieur Fleur-Vallée had borrowed extensively from Richard Wagner. When the curtain opened at last, all the gymnasts, male and female, were standing to attention on the stage, with Sally and Arthur in the front row. The flag-bearer – chosen because of his imposing physique – stepped forward and allowed the representatives of the ladies’ squad to hand him the insignias of his office. After Fräulein Jacobsohn had handed him the scarf, she kissed him on the cheek, at which point Arthur also realised why the two ladies had been arguing so violently about the task.
The flag-bearer, so charmingly fitted for his function, left the stage before stepping back onto it with the wrapped flag in his fist. He was followed by Janki Meijer, who, supporting himself on his walking stick with the silver lion’s-head handle, slowly and solemnly limped to the lectern.
As flag sponsor he had prepared an address that included lots about masculinity and courage, and in which the gymnasts were compared with all kinds of heroes, from the Maccabees to the founders of Switzerland. Only his family noticed that Janki untypically avoided drawing the obvious connection with his own heroic feats in the Franco-Prussian War. Chanele listened to her husband with observant concern, and moved her lips mutely as if she were at a service. He had read his address out loud to her so often, in all its new versions, that she could speak along with it by heart.
Janki hadn’t even got halfway through his speech when a murmur arose in a corner of the hall, one that couldn’t be silenced even with shushing hisses from the other tables, but which instead gradually took hold of other parts of the hall, just as a glowing ember eats its way through dry wood before suddenly turning into wildfire.
Janki paused irritably. Chanele had warned him several times that his speech was far too long; it was probably better to skip a whole passage, perhaps the one in which he described Old Testament figures as prototypes of modern athletes, David with his sling as the first marksman and Samson as the model of all strongmen. Perhaps he should cut straight to the end, he thought, and get without further ado to the handover of the new flag to the association. If only one knew what was going on down there in the hall.
What was going on had nothing to do with Janki and his address. It was world history which, as is world history’s wont, disturbed the flag consecration of the Jewish Gymnastics Association at the worst possible moment. In the streets outside special editions of the paper were being sold by shouting newsboys, and one of them had made its way into the big hall of the Volkshaus. Herr Knüsel, senior salesman with Schuhhaus Weill, was the bearer of bad news, because he felt obliged to tell his boss, who bought in all sorts of goods from all over the world, about what had happened straight away. The heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, had been shot in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo; the murderer was a nineteen-year-old schoolboy and his name was Princip. Whether he had acted alone or as part of a plot was not yet known with any certainty, but a telegram had arrived from Berlin saying that the signs of a Greater Serbian conspiracy had been piling up for some time, and it had even said in a special edition of the Vienna Freie Presse, that the Serbian ambassador had expressly warned the Archduke against travelling to Bosnia. One could only speculate about the consequences of the bloody deed, but – and in this conviction the people in the street were just as united as the people in the Volkshaus hall – they were bound to be terrible.
There were whispers and soon loud discussions at all the tables; it was only on the stage that no one yet knew where the sudden disturbance was coming from. Out of fear of finally losing his thread, Janki didn’t dare to shorten his speech, instead rattling his text off with ever greater speed. The unveiling of the new flag, which was actually the absolute highlight of the evening, was acknowledged only by a few stalwarts with fleeting applause, and the heralded programme of artistic entertainment (songs performed by Frau Modes-Wolf and Jewish recitations by Herr Karl Leser) was cancelled completely. Not even the tombola draw could be carried out in an orderly fashion; Sally Steigrad was obliged to publish the winning numbers two weeks later in the Israelitisches Wochenblatt. He still tried at least to let them perform the pyramid, the traditional finale of any gymnastics party, but it proved completely impossible to prise even half of the participants away from the discussion groups that had formed all around
the hall.
Neither was there any dancing. When the musicians of the orchestra packed their instruments away, Rachel burst into tears and had to be comforted by her twin sister.
Very slowly, page after page, Janki tore up his manuscript and said to Chanele, ‘Never again, for as long as I live, will I deliver another speech.’
‘That’s fine,’ she replied.
Joni Leibowitz edged his chair closer to Désirée’s, stroked his sprouting moustache and said with vain courage, ‘If there should be a war, of course I will have to fight. You’ll see, my uniform really suits me.’
Désirée had allowed his compliments to wash over her all evening without reacting. Now she smiled at him, which he took as a hopeful sign. But she had only been thinking, ‘If there’s a war, Alfred will come home very soon.’
‘You see,’ Sally Steigrad said to Arthur and tried to look as if he had planned even this surprising outcome to the evening, ‘this is why we need insurance. Because you never know what’s going to happen.’
‘A war would be a punishment from God,’ said Pinchas.
‘But is it good for the Jews?’ asked Mimi.
In front of everybody, Zalman Kamionker put his arm around his wife Hinda and drew her to him. ‘I feel sorry for Emperor Franz Joseph,’ he said. ‘He really has no luck with his children.’
51
The war broke out, and Alfred didn’t come home.
On the day of Germany’s ultimatum to France, François sent a telegram to Monsieur Charpentier. Alfred set off on his journey the following day, but the order had already been issued for general mobilisation. He was a French citizen, and when his train reached the border, he was taken out of his compartment and asked for his military leave orders. His train had set off from the Gare de l’Est before the official start of mobilisation, so he was not accused of desertion. Alfred was only brought back to Paris and brought before the recruitment board. He was, like almost all candidates in those days, found to be fit, and assigned to a training unit. By the time his family in Zurich found out, Alfred was already a recruit.
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