As we have said: a very special relationship.
At home Hillel didn’t say much about the Strickhof, but his parents worked out that he had more to do with one of his fellow pupils than the others, and Lea insisted that he invite him to dinner, quite informally, it didn’t have to be a Friday evening with candle-lighting and Kiddush. Hillel wasn’t keen on the suggestion, and kept putting off the invitation; such things weren’t customary at his school, he said, and Böhni certainly wouldn’t feel at ease at their house. But if Lea wanted something, she had a very calm way of insisting on it, and Hillel had no answer to the rhetorical question of whether he was ashamed of his family.
So in the end he invited Böhni. To his relief Böhni wasn’t quite sure at first, and had a thousand excuses. But as is so often the case: precisely because Böhni responded like this, the matter suddenly became important for Hillel, he was even quite offended that Böhni should have baulked, he started over again every day, and in the end even ironically reassured him that he didn’t need to be scared, the feast of Pesach was over, and it would be next year before they needed to slaughter a Christian boy to bake matzos out of his blood. Böhni refused to be accused of cowardice, and finally: a dinner isn’t such a big deal, and it’s soon over.
And so it happened.
Normally they cycled into town, but for some reason Böhni insisted that they take the twenty-two, even though a tram journey like that was just a waste of money, thirty rappen in each direction. When they met – ‘Please be on time, Böhni! My father insists on it!’ – at the Milchbuck tunnel, Hillel had to suppress a smile, because Böhni turned up in his dark blue Sunday suit, and had tied his tie so tightly that he had to stretch his neck even to be able to breathe. He had even brought flowers for Lea, a bunch of pink tulips. They were bred at the Strickhof for the weekly market on Bürkliplatz, and anything that came back unsold ended up on the compost heap. Böhni had wrapped the bouquet in an old edition of the Front, although at the last moment that struck him as unsuitable, so he quickly unwrapped it again outside the front door. He crumpled up the newspaper and stuffed it in his jacket pocket, where it went on rustling all evening.
Hillel’s parents actually looked quite normal, not like Jews at all. His father had no sidelocks, and neither a hat nor a cap on his head. He didn’t have a crooked nose either. Hillel’s mother, with her thick glasses and the continuous line of her eyebrows reminded him of Fräulein Fritschi, with whom they had had to sing those pious songs in confirmation class.
The good blue suit had been a mistake; his hosts were dressed quite normally. Only Herr Rosenthal was wearing a smoking jacket that looked a little oriental, but peeping out from underneath it was the same kind of dotted bow tie that Herr Gerster liked to wear.
There was nothing unusual about the flat itself either, except that they had lots of books. But that could also have been because Herr Rosenthal was a teacher. The only striking thing was that beside every inside door there was an odd capsule with a Hebrew sign on it. Böhni knew what Hebrew looked like; in the caricatures in the Front the German letters were sometimes written with thin vertical lines and broad horizontal bars so that you knew straight away: Jews. Herr Rosenthal, who couldn’t stop being a teacher even in his leisure time, noticed him glancing at the doorposts and went off on a complicated explanation of which Böhni understood only that there were Bible quotations in the capsules. He was reminded of the Lord’s Prayer that hung in the kitchen at home in Flaach, with angels printed in four colours hovering around it. He wasn’t happy with the parallel.
‘Flowers? You really didn’t need to,’ said Lea, and to Hillel, ‘So, this is your friend.’ That was the moment when Hillel started to look for the word that best describes a non-friend and non-enemy.
The visit took place on the day after Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. That was sensible, because it meant that Lea didn’t have to cook anything extra; there was still enough left of the cheesecake that goes with the feast. She prepared it exactly according to the recipe of the legendary Grandmother Pomeranz from Endingen, and got even better results than Hinda.
Böhni also had to listen to a lecture on the subject of the Feast of Weeks. Hillel rolled his eyes at his father’s mania for teaching, but his father refused to be put off by such reactions. As he often did at the Strickhof during theory classes, Böhni only listened with half an ear, but still grasped that Herr Rosenthal didn’t know much about agriculture. He claimed, for example, that the first wheat of the year had been brought into the temple as a sacrifice on this day, and that was plainly nonsense: in May the wheat isn’t nearly ready to be harvested. Although . . . Maybe down in Palestine it was different. He would have to ask Rosenthal afterwards.
Also left over from the Feast of Weeks was an opened bottle of wine on the dresser, also from Palestine, and Herr Rosenthal poured each of them a little glass. The wine was as sweet as syrup, and Böhni would have preferred a beer.
Hillel’s mother wanted to hear something about his family and how he liked school, but he just gave taciturn answers, not out of shyness, but just because he wasn’t used to people talking so much over dinner. Apart from that, the cheesecake was really particularly good.
As long as there was anything to eat on the table things went well, but eventually the plates were cleared away, Lea filled up everyone’s tea again and they made conversation. In this household that meant: Hillel’s father delivered a monologue, while everyone else got to make tiny interventions. Perhaps he had got used to that in school, where doubtless no one was allowed to interrupt his lectures on trigonometry or the calculation of probability, but in all likelihood chattiness was just his way. Sometimes, if he developed a thought too long-windedly, his wife nudged him under the table and reminded him with a look that they had a visitor. But that only made things worse, because then Herr Rosenthal would try to create the appearance of a conversation with questions. Böhni felt as if he was taking an exam. He soon started sweating, as if he had to tell Kudi Lampertz the correct proportion of phosphate and potassium in fertiliser for feed corn.
Before dinner, Herr Rosenthal had read the evening edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung – he did that every day and finished precisely to coincide with the meal – and now he was arguing about something called the Peel Commission that Böhni had never heard of. It had apparently delivered some kind of report that he didn’t know about either. ‘And this is a report about which, ‘said Herr Rosenthal, ‘we might, to put it very cautiously, be very much in two minds.’
‘I don’t think Böhni’s interested in this,’ Hillel tried to rein in his father.
‘Why not? He’s an intelligent young man. So, what is your opinion on the subject?’
As he sometimes had to do in class, Böhni first tried to talk around the subject. So he said very carefully that he thought Herr Rosenthal was completely right, but then there were two sides to every question.
He wasn’t getting away that easily, Herr Rosenthal insisted, he must surely be interested in politics. Böhni could confirm that at least with a good conscience, after all, he read the Front every day, even though a whole year’s subscription cost eighteen francs, a lot of money for a small farmer’s son from the wine-growing country.
That was what he thought, Herr Rosenthal nodded, he noticed it again and again, even in school, that young people today were much more interested in these things than they had been even a few years previously. But now Herr Böhni should not duck the question, but freely express his opinion. ‘So, what is your view of the work of Lord Peel?’
‘Of who?’
He was the leader of the commission, Frau Rosenthal helped him, that had now presented a plan for the division of the mandated territories.
Mandated territories. What was that again?
‘Could we please talk about something else?’ asked Hillel and glared furiously at his father.
Herr Rosenthal paid him as little attention as he would have an unruly pupil in class. He would be very in
terested, he went on, to know Herr Böhni’s opinion about this planned division. It was always very instructive to learn how an unprejudiced and neutral observer saw a subject.
Hillel was no help at all to anyone. He had folded his hands behind his head, rocked his chair back and forth and looked up at the ceiling as if to say, ‘I’m not even here.’
Böhni finally rescued himself with a method that always worked with Kudi Lampertz as well. The subject struck him as difficult, he said, really complicated, so he would be grateful if Herr Rosenthal could explain it to him very precisely once more, if that wasn’t too much trouble.
It wasn’t too much trouble for Herr Rosenthal at all. Quite the contrary, he nodded encouragingly to Böhni – if you don’t ask, you won’t learn – and launched into his next monologue.
In Palestine, he explained, an uprising by the Arab population against the Jewish settlers had been under way for a year. There had been repeated shootings and attacks, and also many people killed, as he was sure Herr Böhni must be aware. Now the British Government, which had been administrating Palestine since the end of the Great War, as everybody knew – ‘Aha!’ thought Böhni – had finally set up a commission that was to make proposals for bringing peace to the region. And this commission had now put forward a proposal for a division of the territory, with a very small Jewish state in the North West and a corridor from Jaffa to Jerusalem, which was to remain under British control. According to this plan the whole of the rest would go to Transjordan, which brought it under the sway of King Abdullah.
‘What’s your opinion, Herr Böhni? Should one accept such a plan?’
Böhni would have liked to give him the right answer, just to stop having all these questions fired at him. But he didn’t know what Herr Rosenthal wanted to hear. So he said very carefully that at first glance that all sounded very reasonable.
That was an unfortunate move. It was extremely unreasonable, Herr Rosenthal thundered, as could be proven with reference to a thousand historical examples. Founding a state in such a small territory was pure suicide, above all when that small territory was itself divided by a foreign corridor, and one could only hope that the World Congress in the Stadttheater . . .
Where the Stadttheater suddenly came into it Böhni had no idea, and his confusion was visible.
‘The World Zionist Congress,’ Lea explained helpfully, ‘is meeting in Zurich this year, and at the Stadttheater.’
Böhni nodded, even though he didn’t really know what Zionist meant. The word had cropped up in the brochure that he had copied out for his punishment essay, and in the Front the pro-Jewish Basler Nationalzeitung was always mocked as a ‘Zional Zeitung’. But that probably wasn’t the same thing.
‘. . . that the World Congress will reject this suggestion once and for all.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Hillel, and was suddenly no longer indifferent, but to Böhni’s surprise absolutely furious. ‘What you’re saying is complete nonsense.’
‘Hillel!’ his mother said, trying to calm him down, but father and son had argued too often about this subject, and so they could start up again right in the middle of an old quarrel, with a flying start, as they called it in the six-day race.
What his father was coming out with was total nonsense, Hillel said. Of course they had to found the state, even if was only a few square metres.
And excuse me, what good would that do, Herr Rosenthal inquired quite tartly.
It was only if one finally took a first step that other steps could eventually follow, said Hillel, and brought his fist down on the table, making the tea glasses dance. If you wanted to wait for the British or the League of Nations or a good fairy to agree to a Greater Israel one day, then one could equally well decide to spend another two thousand years in exile. What good had it done, spending all those centuries praying every day for the chance to return? None at all! Now that a practical chance seemed to present itself, they had to grasp it, and not make unrealisable demands and be left empty-handed in the end.
That was a short-sighted view, his father contradicted, that was practically fanatical. A state of one’s own was by no means the most important thing, and exaggerated nationalism had never led to anything good.
So, said Hillel, that was exaggerated nationalism, and could his father perhaps explain where all the refugees from Germany were supposed to go, if not to their own state?
It was regrettable that so many people were being driven out of Germany, said Herr Rosenthal, but in both the literal and the figurative sense no state could be made with them, because they did not come from conviction, but only from Germany. Besides, the refugees were a passing phenomenon, Hitler wouldn’t stay in power for ever, and by the time such a state was founded in Palestine, National Socialism would have faded from the scene. It wouldn’t keep going for long.
Actually Böhni would have liked to contradict him on that point, but he didn’t get the chance to speak, and it was better that way.
Luckily, said Hillel, the reasonable Zionists would definitely be in the majority at the World Congress, and not reject the Peel Plan without further ado.
It was very questionable, said Herr Rosenthal, whether there could even be such a thing as a reasonable Zionist.
Whereupon Hillel pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘Come on, Böhni, we’re going!’
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Lea tried to mediate. ‘What sort of things are you interested in, Herr Böhni?’
‘He wants to get back to his room on time,’ said Hillel. ‘That’s the only thing he’s interested in.’ According to the rules of the Strickhof, farmers in training had to spend the night in the school, which was only sensible when you had to be back up at five o’clock in the morning for milking. No exceptions were made even for rare city pupils like Hillel.
‘There’s a bit of cheesecake left over,’ said Lea. ‘Shall I wrap it up for you?’
‘Sure,’ said Hillel sarcastically. ‘Böhni still has a page of his favourite paper in his pocket. That would be the ideal wrapping for a piece of kosher cake.’
The hasty departure was a bit like a flight, and on the tram back to the Irchel – the twenty-two to the Milchbuck had stopped running by this time of night – Hillel was in a bad mood, and not saying a word.
‘I would never dare contradict my father like that,’ Böhni said, trying to start up another conversation after they got out.
‘I hope your father doesn’t talk as much rubbish as mine.’
‘To be honest: I didn’t quite understand what it was actually about.’
‘You can’t understand, either, with all that Fröntler crap you fill your head up with.’
If he hadn’t been so annoyed with his father, Hillel wouldn’t have yelled at Böhni like that. And if Böhni hadn’t felt so ill at ease all evening he wouldn’t have reacted so sensitively and given Rosenthal a shove. Either way, regardless of who started it, on the way from the tram stop to Strickhof they fought for the first time. It felt really good venting their tempers like that, they rolled on the ground almost with pleasure, in spite of Böhni’s good blue suit, and it actually felt good as they beat each other’s noses bloody.
Their pleasure wasn’t visible to the naked eye, however. If someone had walked past he would have thought the two young men were trying to kill each other.
When it was over, and neither of them had won, they had come strangely closer to one another. It didn’t make them friends, certainly not, but neither did it make them enemies. They were not mates, and not chaverim, but something different, for which there must be a special word.
61
Arthur wasn’t one of those bachelors who knew how to operate a stove. When he came back to his little flat after work he heedlessly stuffed something into his mouth, a bit of chocolate or a few slices of salami, whatever came to hand. So when Désirée paid him a visit she always brought along something she had cooked herself. As she heated it up in his kitchen, Arthur cleared up or arranged h
is papers and magazines into manageable piles. He laid the little table with the fine Sarreguemines crockery from the Baden flat. He had inherited a whole cupboard of it, enough for the big family he would never had.
With melancholy self-irony they called these evenings they spent together the ‘lonely hearts’ ball’, because they had both come to terms with the idea of spending their lives alone. Since Alfred’s death Désirée had seen herself as a widow, and even though her grief for him had settled into a scar, any interest in another man would have felt like infidelity. Arthur had slipped into being alone as a drinker slips into alcohol: with no conscious decision, but also with no prospect for change. When they sat there together, both alone, their conversation was almost like that of an old married couple, they repeated the same phrases over and over again and felt quite at home in them. When Arthur had emptied his plate, for example, he always said, ‘A family of one’s own would be nice.’ And Désirée replied, ‘When it comes to that, let’s swap flats.’
She didn’t really mean it, because she had now spent forty years living in the same place, she had grown up in the flat on Morgartenstrasse and had, in spite of the fact that it had far too many rooms, taken it over quite naturally after Pinchas and Mimi’s death and never changed anything in it. She often didn’t step into Pinchas’s office, its desk still covered with unread papers, for weeks at a time, she only had disagreements with the cleaning lady and hence kept coming up with plans for a change. They remained plans, because there was something that always held her back: just as a jar of formaldehyde captures a scientific specimen for all time, the flat preserved for her the young girl she had once been, the smitten teenager with her bedside table full of bonbons that smelled of almonds and rosewater.
Melnitz Page 66
