When they came down from the hill, Irma was holding his hand.
‘No dragons or hostile armies,’ Moses reported.
‘Very good, squire Moses,’ said Arthur, and saluted, although in all likelihood that wasn’t the custom among knights in armour.
After his consultation with the Women’s Association children – a scald from kitchen duty, a sprained ankle from sport – when he was back in his topolino and driving down into the valley, he sang quietly to himself.
Zurich, 10 June 1937
Dear Frau Pollack,
Yesterday I was in Heiden again, and spent a most enjoyable hour with Irma. Interesting, by the way: every time she laughs, her squint gets worse. Have you ever noticed that? (Stupid question. Of course you have. You’re her mother.)
Together we practised making yourself convincingly ill without exaggerating too much. At first Irma was very disappointed, I think. She likes drama. What did you call her? A diva. If it was up to her, she would be miming the closing scene from La Bohème once a day. At least. Do you like the opera? (Forgive me, that was another stupid question, I’m sure you have other things on your mind.)
Moses has grave concerns about his sister, and I couldn’t really take them away from him, even though I did my best to reassure him. Irma and I have never dared to let him in on our conspiracy. We fear he might blab sooner or later. (The scribble on the last word is because I used a Swiss phrase that you mightn’t have understood. Sometimes I think that if all the words in all the countries meant the same thing there would be no more wars.)
Moses did a drawing for me. It’s on the wall in front of me as I write this letter. The picture shows your family, with a very big father who has put his arms around the others and is protecting them. It must be very hard when such protection suddenly is no longer there. But somehow in these times it is almost reassuring that it was a traffic accident, and hence something impersonal.
Please write and tell me how your plans are progressing.
Kindest regards
Dr Arthur Meijer
PS: (I don’t think I’ve ever written a letter without a PS.) I hope you won’t misunderstand me if I refer to the chance nature of a traffic accident as something reassuring. I have here a patient whose back is covered with scars, and imagine that he will never be able to forget the faces of the people (people?) who did that to him.
64
At the Strickhof the pupils slept in rooms of six, and they were expected to make their beds with military precision, the sheets smoothed flat and the woollen blankets given an edge as if with a ruler. The shoes had to stand as if on parade, laces tied in a bow, under the bed – only the smart shoes, of course, there was a wire shelf near the front door for the dirty work boots in which one had tramped around in the fields or the stables. Kudi Lampertz, who was also in charge of the rooms, had been a corporal in military service, and held the view that it was only order in one’s belongings that led to order in one’s head.
The only untidy thing that he was unable to do anything about was the locker doors. It was an old tradition in the Strickhof that everyone was allowed to pin up whatever he liked on his own locker door, however odd or tasteless it might be. Even caricatures of the teachers had to be tolerated there, and even much worse things than that. Once Lampertz complained to the headmaster about the photograph of a blonde with a shamelessly revealing cleavage – he never went to the cinema, so he didn’t recognise Mae West – and Gerster replied with one of his strange jokes: ‘Let him have the picture. It’s probably his mother.’
The iconoclastic controversy in which Hillel and Böhni now became embroiled, and which finally led to the fateful bet, was not about film stars, but about idols of a quite different kind. Böhni started it, by hanging on his locker door – just to annoy Rosenthal, in fact – a picture of the far-right leader Dr Rolf Henne, standing at the microphone at a National Front meeting, his left thumb hooked in his belt and his right hand sticking into the air; it could have been seen as a rhetorical pose, or as a Hitler salute. Hillel countered with a photograph of Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist organisation, he too photographed delivering an address, but without any big gestures, his hands resting on the lectern, an academic delivering a lecture. Böhni looked at the face, the bald head and the little beard and asked, ‘Who’s that meant to be? Lenin?’
Next he brought in a poster that he’d kept at home in Flaach for almost four years, because he had thought it was funny even as a boy. Under the promise ‘We’re clearing up!’ an iron broom was sweeping away three kinds of undesirables: fat cats with top hats on their heads and fat cigars in their mouths, Communists with the hammer and sickle on their hats and Jews with hooked noses.
Hillel said nothing about it, but just put up a new photograph: a shomer on the plain of Chule, peering alertly out across the landscape, blond and tanned. The gun over his shoulder and the resolute, manly features, the eyes narrowed into the sun clearly signalled, ‘We Zionists won’t put up with anything, and are prepared to defend ourselves.’ The photograph was generally appreciated in the six-man room, and Kudi Lampertz said he hadn’t thought Hillel was interested in cowboys.
To escalate matters, Böhni actually wanted to get hold of a photograph of Hitler, but then he started feeling uneasy, so instead he merely jibed at the shomer. Far away in Palestine, perhaps the Jews had balls and knew how to use a gun, he said, but here in Switzerland he’d never seen one at the shooting club. He wasn’t casting aspersions at anybody, people weren’t all the same, some had timidity in the blood, and were startled by the slightest bang.
Whereupon Hillel – he was eighteen by now, and you can’t let such accusations go unpunished – naturally had to declare that he was willing to take up Böhni’s bravery challenge any day, whether on a trip in the box-cart or wherever he liked. And thus the bet was sealed after lights-out in front of witnesses, which went as follows: Böhni was to determine a test of courage, but lest he come up with something impossible, he himself must be willing to submit to it. The loser, it was solemnly decreed, must make himself available to the victor as his personal servant for a whole week, and obey all his orders, make his bed, clean his shoes, indeed, if he called for it, even butter his breakfast bread. Böhni, already sure of his victory, described how he was going to go stomping specially through slurry every time his shoes were due to be polished.
The others in the room, who saw the whole thing as a great joke, expected Böhni to choose something that would be much easier for him, the farmer’s son, than for city-boy Rosenthal. It would, most of them assumed, have something to do with Napoleon, the Strickhof’s prize-winning bull. This particular creature was a cunning and malevolent great hunk of a thing, which could barely be tamed even with a nose ring, and Böhni was one of the few who was able to cope with him to any extent at all.
But the challenge that Böhni finally made was quite different, and apart from Rosenthal himself the witnesses to the bet at first didn’t understand what it was actually about. Böhni explained that the most horrible and scary thing that he himself had had to do recently had been a perfectly ordinary visit, he wouldn’t say where to quite yet. They’d tried to bore him to death, and that, he could assure his listeners, was a particularly painful way of being killed. Hillel had to put up with the mockery, because any kind of denial would only have made him look ridiculous. So, Böhni went on, he had decided that as a test of his courage Rosenthal should also go with him on a visit. Yes, just a visit, they didn’t have to look so surprised. Where they were going to go, however, he would only say once Rosenthal had accepted the invitation. Of course he could refuse, but then he would have lost the bet, and his week as a servant would begin immediately. He, Böhni, thought that cleaning the toilet would be a nice first task, ideally with his bare hands, so that at least they got something out of it. So, what was it to be, yes or no?
What option did Hillel have but to say yes?
That was very brave of him, Böhni
grinned. He had in fact decided to go the Bauschänzli on Saturday evening, the National Front meeting, that was a kind of visit, and Rosenthal could go with him if he dared. He could imagine that they would have a special warm welcome there for a Hillel Rosenthal.
‘You’re a sly bastard,’ said Hillel.
‘And you always thought cunning was your speciality? You’re going to pull out, of course.’
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Hillel, proud that his voice didn’t tremble. ‘Of course I’m going to come.’
He said nothing about any of this at home. His mother would only have tried to persuade him out of the whole thing, and his father would have thought he could forbid him from going. But some things you just have to go through with, when you’re eighteen and it’s a matter of honour. Even at the Hashomer Hatza’ir, where they met on Shabbos afternoon, he didn’t say a word about it. They wouldn’t have let him go on his own, and there would have been a big fight before they even got to the front door.
He went quite deliberately in his work gear. As Grandmother Chanele would have said: where does it say in the Shulchan Orech that you have to put on a tie for reshoim? And in any case, his work gear includes heavy boots, and if it came to the crunch those might come in useful.
They had agreed to meet at seven, a time when it was still light in the summer. Even so, the Fröntlers had already set up burning torches in front of the pub, which flickered away unnoticed in the daylight. A Bavarian band in lederhosen blared out tunes for people to sway back and forth to; but the music had nothing to do with the event in the hall, it was to entertain drinkers in the beer garden. Children played tag on the gravel paths between the rows of tables. The men had hung their jackets over the backs of the chairs and pushed back their hats, there was a general hubbub, and they were already waving for the waiter while they washed down their bratwurst or pig’s knuckle with the last dregs of their beer. The women laughed too loudly and fed the ducks in the Limmat with bits of bread. The smoke from countless cigarettes and cigars mixed in the air with the black, oily fug from the torches.
The atmosphere was peaceful, as if on a big family’s excursion into the country. And yet Hillel was about to set off on an adventure even bolder than his race down the steps on the box-cart.
He had deliberately arrived a few minutes early, and spent a while strolling around between the tables, like someone who has already got a seat but just wants to stretch his legs for a few minutes. He noticed a few policemen who were sitting at a table by the entrance to the pub. They had taken off their helmets, and were trying to look as if they had just come from police headquarters after a hard day’s work, to enjoy a quiet beer in privacy by the river. But their glasses were still full, even though – as one could tell from the dried-on foam – they had been served some time ago, and they studied everyone who walked past them with an interest that was far from private. Hillel didn’t know whether he should feel threatened or protected by their presence.
No sign of Böhni. But the Fraumünster clock was striking seven, and Hillel had decided to be exactly on time. A minute’s lateness would have been construed as cowardice.
Coming from outside, one first entered a narrow entrance hall, and after the late sunlight on the terrace he had first to stop for a moment to let his eyes get used to the gloom. He was almost rammed into by a waiter coming out of the kitchen with a fully laden tray. The man murmured a curse, but only very quietly, and looked anxiously over his shoulder. Hillel followed his gaze, and only then did he spot the two stout lads guarding the entrance to the hall. They were part of the Harst, the fighting troops of the National Front. You could tell by their grey shirts, their black ties and red armbands with the party emblem, the long-legged Swiss flag with the spiked club – the ‘Morgenstern’ – in the middle.
‘Morgenstern is a Jewish name,’ Hillel found himself thinking, and agitated though he was, he nearly burst out laughing. There were two brothers by that name in the Hashomer Hata’ir.
He walked towards the entrance, and the two bouncers stopped him. They didn’t actually stand in his way or hold out a hand, but the way they just looked at him with their arms folded clearly said: no stranger was going to get past them.
Was Aunt Rachel right after all? Could they really tell you were Jewish just by looking at you?
But probably they stopped anyone they didn’t know.
‘Is this where the meeting’s being held?’ asked Hillel, and tried to peer into the hall. Böhni must be waiting for him somewhere.
No reply.
‘A friend invited me. His name’s Böhni. Walter Böhni. We’re at agricultural college together.’
‘Aha, a man of the farming class,’ said the other of the two bouncers, and appreciatively pondered Hillel’s working gear. ‘We can use someone like you. Name?’
Hillel was prepared for this one. ‘Rösli,’ he said, and almost stood slightly to attention. ‘Heinrich Rösli.’
‘Admitted,’ said the bouncer, and for a moment Hillel thought he meant he had just admitted that his name was Rösli. It was only when the other Harst man gave the appropriate nod of the head that he walked quickly – but not too quickly, that would have attracted attention! – past the two men.
Böhni had been standing just behind the door, and had listened to the conversation. ‘Rösli,’ he repeated. ‘I see, I see.’
That was the crucial moment. What was Böhni capable of? He only had to tell one of these Harst men – and there were plenty of them in the hall – what this fellow Rösli’s name was, and all hell would break loose.
But he just nodded appreciatively. ‘You’ve got a neck. Have to give you that . . .’ He nearly said ‘Rosenthal’, which was what he always called him, but he quickly swallowed the name. ‘I’ll have to give you that, Heinrich. How did you choose the first name?’
‘That’s what it says in my papers.’
‘Not Hillel?’
This really wasn’t the place to explain the difference between an official and a Jewish first name. So Hillel quickly distracted him and said, ‘There aren’t very many people,’ and Böhni actually forgot his question and eagerly explained that the leader Dr Henne would not be talking until half past seven, and since the weather was nice many people were bound still to be sitting outside, and would only come in at the last moment.
The hall wasn’t very big, and at half past seven it was still barely half full. There was nothing remarkable about the appearance of the audience, except that almost all of them wore grey shirts. It seemed to be customary here to keep your hat on during the meeting.
Without talking about it for long, Böhni and Hillel went and found seats far at the back.
The Hast bouncers had lined up by the stage at the front, they were also standing at the sides and by the door at the back, their resolute faces turned towards the audience as if they were guarding a room full of prisoners. They all wore the same shirts, ties and armbands, only their trousers were different. They probably weren’t part of the uniform.
When the speakers came in through the side door, the Harst leader ordered: ‘Stand to attention!’ whereupon they all adopted far more rigid postures, stuck their right arms aloft and roared ‘Harus!’ Then someone performed a roll on a landsknecht drum, and Hillel wondered whether he might have been one of the people in Fortunagasse.
He was glad when the speeches began. If Böhni had planned to reveal him as a Jew, he had missed the most suitable opportunity.
The leader seemed – like Propaganda Minister Goebbels in Germany – to place great value on his doctorate. The man who introduced him only ever referred to him as ‘Dr Rolf Henne’, and Henne himself peppered his speech with phrases like ‘as a scholar of the law I can tell you’. The first thing that struck Hillel about him was his Schaffhausen accent, which always sounds slightly ludicrous to someone from Zurich. There was nothing obviously threatening about the man as a whole. He spoke hurriedly, was proud of his own arguments, couldn’t wait to put t
hem forward and in this reminded Hillel of his own father. When Henne became combative, and that always happened all of a sudden, as if the moments were written down in the manuscript of his address, and he only noticed the instruction at the very last minute, he clenched his hand into a fist and struck the lectern two or three times, but very carefully, like someone who isn’t entirely at ease with physical force.
The subject of the meeting was department stores and the threat they represented to Swiss craftspeople. Henne only ever called them Jew shops. They were the root of all economic evil, he declared, because with their tempting sale offers they drove the small shopkeeper into a price competition that he would never be able to win. Their big turnover also meant that the market was excessively saturated, which would lead to a drop in manufacturing and thus unemployment, plummeting tax revenue and general ruin. His argument rambled on: thus for example he explained in detail and with an expression of extreme rage that the bristles of brushes bought at a one-price store were shorter and less firmly ensconced than in specialist shops, or that all metal goods were manufactured from lighter materials than had previously been the case.
This obsession with detail made his address not more credible, but less. Only someone unsure of his own case needs to make such an effort to prove his own theses.
At first Hillel had planned to pay very close attention, but there was something soporific about Henne’s style. Even the other members of the audience, who had responded to his harangue with occasional words of agreement, seemed to feel much the same. Even Böhni, sitting next to him, seemed to have glazed over.
‘And that’s your idol?’ Hillel whispered to him.
‘Henne’s right in what he says,’ Böhni whispered back. ‘But he is a lawyer, and they always make things complicated.’
One of the Harst men saw their two heads stretching towards each other, and took a menacing step towards them. Chatting was not tolerated at this meeting.
The speaker noticed that the hall was slipping away from him and only woke up when he started talking about the Jews. So he concentrated more and more on that subject and explained that it wasn’t just the department stores that were controlled by Jewish cultural Bolshevism, but also half the press – one need only think of the Galician Volksrecht and the Basel ‘Zionalzeitung’ – and obviously the dark red city council. They were all in it together, and that was why a flyer against department stores and one-price stores published by the National Front had been forbidden and confiscated. That provoked fury, the listeners woke up again, and Henne’s closing sentence, ‘One cannot improve Jews, one can only get rid of them,’ was received with shouts of ‘Quite right!’ and much applause.
Melnitz Page 70