Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

For Herr Tarangolian was not the only visitor to the Institut d’Éducation. Now and then Uncle Sergei showed up as well, to observe our practice à la barre and au milieu and to say to Madame Aritonovich something like: “That little one there, in the pink tricot — she is already fourteen?” Madame Aritonovich answered in Russian, which we didn’t understand. Both laughed. “You misunderstand me completely, Fiokla Ignatieva. I am only speaking of her stiffness. How did they loosen up stiffness in the old days? By pulling or by beating?”

But usually the prefect sat alone during ballet class, his legs spread out a little in order to accommodate the bulge of his belly, his ringed fingers clasping the handle of his ebony cane so that he could rest his chin. His mustache was twirled out into two venomously black radish tails. A carnation flared in his buttonhole, and his white playboy’s spats gleamed brightly over his delicate, pointed, highly polished shoes.

His dialogue with Madame Aritonovich had the same easygoing tone we knew from our own conversations with her, which were remarkably open and refreshingly accepting. And although she spoke about the most risqué things in front of us, and with a disarming naturalness that might have petrified other grown-ups, we’d grown so used to it after a few days, that no one ever thought anything of it. Nor can I remember any of her charges ever using an inappropriate tone with Madame, and there were fewer secrets, whispers, and rumors and less talk of sexual matters among the students in the Institut d’Éducation than in any of the schools we later attended.

“You are the only person, Coco,” said Madame Aritonovich, with whom I associate as if I were carrying on a correspondence.” She inserted a new cigarette in her long jade holder and had him light it. “Take a look at your protégée Tanya. She is truly talented. And you, Solly,” she called out to little Brill, who was trying in vain to bring his short leg up to the barre, “make a little effort. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

“Some people might have lots of will, but there’s still no way,” said Solly. Madame Aritonovich and Herr Tarangolian laughed out loud.

“Come over here, Solly,” said the prefect.

“Certainly, Herr Coco.” Solly planted himself unabashedly between the knees of our old friend and fingered the handle of his cane. “Ivory, yes? Well well. Genuine? What’s it cost, a cane like that?”

“It belonged to my papa.”

“ Nu , so it’s an antique. But what’s it worth?”

“I don’t know. Your papa’s the one to ask that.”

“He’ll know for sure.”

“Of course he will. And how’s he doing, your papa?”

“The old man? How is he supposed to be doing? Miserable, that’s how business is — so he says.” Solly cocked his head ironically.

“And how’s business really doing, Solly — just between us?”

Solly leaned over to whisper the answer in the prefect’s ear.

“Oo! said Herr Tarangolian and raised his thick black eyebrows in comic amazement. “In the course of this one year?”

“Do you think he’d be sending his children to French institutes if not?

“Don’t talk nonsense, Solly. Your papa always pampered you beyond bounds.”

“Yes, of course, as a late-born child … Bubi flies into pieces every time I say bonjour to him, followed by a monsieur as to a subordinate. That’s as much French as he still understands, barely a word more. He’d like to but can’t, poor guy.”

“But he’ll end up giving his father more joy than you, you rascal.”

“That’s what you think. You should have heard the ruckus he had again with the old man last night. The whole floor was rocking and shaking.” Solly snuggled up to the prefect’s stomach. “Is that the chain from your watch? Gold, eh? Is it hallmarked?”

“I’ll show you the watch if you show us how your brother Bubi argues with Papa.”

“I see a lot of watches. Better give me ten leos.”

“All right, ten leos. But you have to do it right, like in the theater.”

“Deal.” Solly turned to us. “Everybody stop your fussing so I can show Herr Coco here how Bubi had it out with my old man. Nonsense time! Solly Brill’s Summer Theater!”

“Nonsense time!” we cheered back.

The institute had a standing policy that all instruction would stop briefly to accommodate any proposal that promised to be sufficiently entertaining.

We sat in a half-circle on the floor, blissfully awaiting the play.

“So!” said Solly, as he bustled about. “Picture for yourself, here is the shop floor, here is Mama sitting at the cash register, here is the old man, here is Bubi, wearing a trench coat he’s thrown over a pair of tennis shorts, the silly guy. And the old man says to him — I’ll be the old man now …”

Solly crossed to the place he had indicated for his father, and immediately underwent an almost uncanny transformation: his head sank between his shoulders, his face — that ruddy, freckled boy’s face containing the preformed characteristics of an ancient race — shrank together, knitted and pursed and lined like that of an aging man. His voice, too, became hoarse and worn.

“So,” he growled almost voicelessly at the imaginary Bubi Brill — whom we saw right before us in the flesh—“so, for this I–I, Usher Brill, a respectable merchant in this city — for this I have toiled with my hands my whole life long and slaved away in order that you, my flesh and blood, turn into a parasolnik , a peacock, a salon-knight, a kept man, a layabout? For this you studied at the lyceums and business schools at home and abroad, off my money, I should live like that, and turned into a grown man living off my money, a nice boy with red cheeks, a kind of reservist in the finest regiment, running around in a gold-braided uniform a whole expensive year and not a day with the soldiers and all at my expense — and for this you spend every evening at Schorodok’s Trocadero getting drunk with the officers and whores? While I stand the whole day, with my varicose veins here on the shop floor!”

Solly paused, changed back into himself, and looked Herr Tarangolian right in the eyes with inimitable self-assurance. “Not good enough?”

“Excellent, Solly, absolutely excellent,” said the prefect.

Solly pulled his head into his shoulders and wrinkled his face to look like a red-haired man who’d spent his whole life peering at burning embers. Then he marched up to the prefect, as if Herr Tarangolian were Solly’s older brother, Bubi.

“For this I have davened every day, so that something like that should become of you? A dandy, a bon vivant, a fashion fop and aesthetnik , instead of a regular, decent hardworking honest man! For you to lounge around the ball fields instead of standing on the shop floor like your father and your mother and your little sister and working! For you to sit watching the ballerinas”—Solly was standing right in front of Herr Tarangolian—“the little children twelve and thirteen years old in their tricots …”

“That’s fine, Solly!” said Herr Tarangolian, wiping his eyes and so delighted he was incapable of laughing. “You’re a genius. But stick to your father and Bubi.”

“Deal!” Solly said and jumped, with the dancer’s agility he owed to Madame Aritonovich’s instruction, to the place he had designated for Bubi. “Now I’ll be Bubi.”

He took on an expression of bored superiority and at once Solly disappeared and in his place we saw the snooty upstart Bubi Brill, wearing tennis shorts, quarreling with his hoarsely rasping father, who vented his spleen in rage — no, not just them: with a single gesture he also conjured his fat mother on her throne behind the cash register, unmoving as a sphinx, his sister Riffke lurking in the background, and the blasé, condescending salesmen of Brill’s large department store, leaning over tables covered with samples and receipt ledgers. The scene took place in the atmosphere of relaxed and unstinting openness Jews create with one another — the intimacy of an Oriental people deeply acquainted with life.