Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

Mama Brill hadn’t returned to the institute. “What do I care if she runs after Riffke,” said Solly. “What I want most of all is to be out on the street myself — but no, it’s a snowflake I have to be playing, the one time something fun is going on outside.”

We asked Blanche about her mother. “I don’t have a mother anymore,” she said. “You couldn’t have known. She died two years ago.”

“And your father? Is he here?”

“No, he wanted to come, but he was called to the asylum. I’m all by myself.”

We began to grow apprehensive. Report after unsettling report alarmed us to the point where we lost our joyful anticipation of the ballet. Seven o’clock came but Madame Aritonovich gave no sign to begin: Herr Tarangolian had yet to appear, and she didn’t want to start without him.

Uncle Sergei arrived late and unaccompanied — Aunt Paulette had turned back when she saw the seething crowd in the Volksgarten. Giving his most charming smile, he said: “The mood on the streets is just like before a revolution. I saw someone almost beaten into mincemeat.”

At seven-thirty, Madame Aritonovich asked Dr. Salzmann to go to the corner apothecary and telephone to see if the prefect would be able to attend — unlike today, back then it wasn’t a given that a private school would have its own phone connection. Dr. Salzmann set off with eyes ablaze and martial mustache twitching — and never came back. Frau Dr. Biro (née Wurfbaum), who had laid out the cold buffet and was chewing on the remnants, set off to find out what had happened to him. After a very long while she came back and informed us that Dr. Salzmann had been to the apothecary — which incidentally was hastily closing its shutters despite the official after-hours service — but had disappeared in the direction of downtown. In any event, Herr Tarangolian could not be reached; she herself had tried, in vain. Nevertheless, her trip wasn’t entirely for naught, because she was sucking on a gumdrop with great relish and satisfaction.

“So we’ll start without him,” said Madame Aritonovich. “All right, then, children, to your places!”

But the parents had already decided to put off the performance to another day. The way things were, it was time to get the children home as quickly as possible.

“Please,” said Madame, “consider the fact that right now is the worst possible time to be driving through the city. At least wait till after the promenade. Besides, I don’t believe that anything serious is going to happen. There’s no reason for …” She interrupted herself.

“What was that?” someone asked. “Those were gunshots.”

For a few seconds all of us in the festively decorated Institut d’Éducation were deathly silent. We heard the same roaring crowd that we had heard in the afternoon coming from the playing field — except now they sounded much closer, just down Iancu Topor Avenue. We heard a noise as though a handful of beans were being tossed into a bucket. After that it went quiet for a moment, and then the noise broke out again, louder and higher by a whole tone. We could now make out individual voices, very agitated, shouting.

“A salvo,” observed Uncle Sergei, gleefully.

Panic broke out among the grown-ups, though not among us children. They threw coats on top of our costumes, grabbed our clothes, and fled to the carriages.

“What you are doing is insane!” Madame Aritonovich cried out. “Don’t go out onto the street right now while there’s shooting going on. It’s bound to be over very soon.”

“That was just a warning,” one of them countered. “If things don’t calm down after that, then the shooting will really start in earnest. And we want to be home before then.”

That point of view was compelling and ultimately proved correct. Madame Aritonovich’s request to spare the children the sight of the pandemonium was ignored. After all: there was property and furnishings to protect.

Our mother was inclined to stay in the institute until the worst was over. But Aunt Elvira said: “I wouldn’t take the risk of waiting in a school like this. The bitterness is clearly directed toward Jews.”

Uncle Sergei also thought it would be better to return to the villa district, which would be relatively free from danger.

“I beg you, think of your husband,” Aunt Elvira added. “I refuse to be held accountable if anything happens.”

“If you do decide to go,” said Madame Aritonovich, “please take little Brill and Blanche Schlesinger and see that they get home. They’re both on their own here.”

“Yes, but you have teachers from your institute at your disposal,” said Aunt Elvira. “For us it would mean taking a long detour through downtown.”

“That’s true,” said Madame Aritonovich. “But we don’t have a carriage. Please, do it for the sake of your children’s friendship with them.”

“Of course,” said our mother. “After all, we have Sergei to pro- tect us.”

Our coachman was a long-serving, reliable man, whom we had brought from the country. “ Ach , that’s nothing” he said. “People beating on each other like at the fairgrounds, knocking out windowpanes, firing into the air to chase everyone away. We’ll put up the cover so we won’t catch a stone on the nose, that’s all. I’ll see that everyone gets home.” Uncle Sergei sat heroically next to him on the box. And in fact the noise seemed to have passed in the direction of the Volksgarten.

We made a loop through several streets that were completely deserted, and crossed Iancu Topor Avenue just before the Ringplatz. The pavement was strewn with shards of glass, but otherwise empty. At the main street, however, we ran into the commotion. Our coachman charged so fiercely into a mob of suspicious characters that a few of them barely escaped getting run over. One stone hit the cover of the carriage.

Solly Brill was fidgeting between us anxiously, as much as the cramped space allowed. “There’s our shop,” he called out. “Look at what they’re doing, the pigs!”

Some of the rabble was in the process of systematically demolishing the Brills’ store. The roller-shutters were torn off, the windows shattered. A few men had crawled into the display window and were tossing the wares to the others outside.

“Look at the robbers!” Solly cried. He jumped up and clambered onto Aunt Elvira’s lap, stuck his head out the window, and shouted, full of tears: “Why does it always have to be us! Aren’t there any other Jews?”

He was pulled in as quickly as possible.

But then we saw something that made us shout with jubilation.

From the darkness of the chestnut trees in front of the provincial government offices, a troop emerged and fell upon the plundering mob like a flock of avenging angels. They were muscular young men dressed in white linen pants covered with flour; their shirts were open, and their heads were covered with little visorless felt caps — apprentices from the numerous kosher bakeries. Swinging their long wooden peels like double-edged swords, they mowed their way through the streets like threshers.

And leading them into battle was a Jewish Mars, a stout god of war, powerful and glorious in his ecstatic rage, his fat face flushed red like David when he became a man, his black eyes flashing behind the high cushions of his cheeks, his mustache bristling furiously over his scarlet lips, and a greasy wreath of black ringlets on his neck:

It was Dr. Salzmann in his hour of greatness.

We turned away toward Theaterplatz. Around the synagogue we could see the glow of fire. Evidently a real battle was under way there. Soldiers with fixed bayonets were running diagonally across the plaza as if attacking.

Our coachman drove calmly ahead in a quick, steady trot, then turned onto a side street that led onto a somewhat elevated lot where circuses set up their tents, but which now was empty. Just before the small rise, the coachman brought the horses to a gallop and had them take the embankment in three bounds. We were shaken through and through, but soon the carriage was again rolling smoothly on the hard-packed ground. The shortcut was cleverly chosen, since it allowed us to avoid the streets that might be jammed with soldiers, and we approached the Brills’ house from the rear.