Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘He comes from a very good family,’ said Désirée.

‘And he is a Jew, I hope.’

‘From a very good Jewish family.’

‘That does reassure me. Although… I would actually be obliged to inform Rifki Weill that her daughter…’

‘You mustn’t!’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Mimi and wanted to know some details, as many details as possible, so she could reflect on the matter. This really was a novel from real life.

Mimi loved novels.

Désirée couldn’t say how the pair had met. ‘It must have been by chance,’ she said, and Mimi nodded meaningfully and murmured something about chances that one could help along if one put one’s mind to it.

‘At first she didn’t even like him.’ Désirée seemed relieved to be able to talk at last about something she had had to keep quite for so long. ‘At first she couldn’t stand him. She thought he had notions about himself. But then she realised that he was only shy. And unhappy. He’s terribly unhappy, Esther says.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s been through a lot. Says Esther. I myself don’t know him very well. Not at all, in fact.’

‘But you’re there when they meet?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Désirée, her cheeks now as red as her mother’s, ‘I can’t leave the two of them all on their own. That wouldn’t be respectable.’

‘However.’

‘But I stay in the background. I don’t sit at the same table when they go to a café. Or when they go for a walk I keep my distance. I don’t want to listen in on their conversations.’

‘Of course not,’ said Mimi, very slightly disappointed.

‘I’m so glad that you’re not cross with me any more.’

‘How could I be cross with you, ma petite? But from now on you tell me everything. You hear me? Everything.’

And so began the little conspiracy between mother and daughter. Not that Mimi approved of her daughter’s behaviour, quite au contraire . She had read enough novels to be able to paint for Désirée in the most garish colours the terrible, deadly consequences that could follow on from a secret dalliance, and she did so over and over again, adding new variants each time she did so. But she did not expressly forbid her daughter’s discreet favours as a friend, and above all: she didn’t tell anyone, not even Pinchas, who — men don’t grasp such things — found out nothing at all about the affair. If Mimi met Rifki Weill at the women’s association or at some other occasion, she always inquired with the most innocent expression in the world how her charming daughter was, already so grown-up and yet so girlishly innocent, and did so in such a conspicuously inconspicuous way that Frau Weill said to her husband, ‘If I didn’t know that Mimi Pomeranz had only a daughter and not a son — I would swear she was trying to make a shidduch.’

In return Désirée had to tell her mother everything, absolutely everything, about Esther Weill’s adventure, she had to report in the tiniest particulars on each bit of hand-holding and whispering-in-the-ear, and above all she had to describe in detail any moments of threat, which were by no means a rarity. Once, for example, because they thought an acquaintance was coming towards them, they had escaped into a tobacco shop, and the young man, whose name Mimi was not allowed to know, had bought a cigar purely out of embarrassment, and then actually tried to smoke it. Another time, on a walk in the Zurichberg Forest, Désirée had lost sight of the pair purely out of discretion, and then she couldn’t find them for ages, and when Esther and the young man — ‘No, I’m not going to tell you his name, please don’t ask me, Mama!’ — reappeared from a completely unexpected direction, the pair were so embarrassed that they couldn’t even look at each other, no, Désirée didn’t know if they’d secretly kissed, and that was really something that you couldn’t even ask your best friend, ‘isn’t that right, Mama?’

And once…

Désirée seemed to be having more and more fun talking about these strange adventures. Sometimes she even drew her mother aside when she was in the middle of some activity or other, to update her on a forgotten detail, and over dinner she even suddenly uttered the sentence, ‘He wants to grow a moustache, but it doesn’t suit him.’

‘Who wants to grow a moustache?’ said Pinchas, baffled.

‘No one,’ Désirée said quickly, and bent down for her napkin, which had fallen on the floor.

‘An actor in the Municipal theatre,’ Mimi whispered to her husband. ‘She saw him in a play and now, it seems to me, she’s un tout petit peu amoureuse .’ She put a finger to her lips, and when Désirée reappeared in a state of terrible embarrassment, Pinchas quickly changed the subject.

‘I’m even having to lie for you,’ Mimi later said reproachfully to Désirée. And was very proud at how skilfully she had rescued the situation for her daughter.

Generally speaking, Mimi took charge of the whole affair, came up with meeting places where disturbance was unlikely, and was particularly imaginative when it came to finding occasions that Esther and Désirée could use as an excuse for spending the afternoon together. ‘The new autumn collection is being presented at Seiden-Grieder today,’ she said for example, ‘that might be something for you girls.’ When she winked, fine cracks appeared in the powder around her eyes. ‘And in any case it’s high time that you finally started giving some thought to your appearance.’

She said those last words purely out of habit. In truth — perhaps her involvement in these strange adventures had something to do with it, or else it was simply down to the fact that her daughter was gradually turning from a girl to a woman — either way; recently Désirée had developed a great interest in fashionable matters, had even once burst into tears just because Mimi refused to buy her a pure silk azure sequined dress that she had discovered in François’s Store. But thirty-four francs fifty for a dress that would be out of fashion in a year was really too much. Mimi was already spending far more money on her daughter than was sensible. Perhaps if Pinchas had still had the butcher’s shop rather than the general grocery store, which was only doing ho-hum business, while Elias Guttermann, so it was said, had made a mint with the butcher’s shop.

Désirée had also stopped parting her hair normally in the middle, although that girlishly simple cut had rather suited her even face. She tried out a great variety of hairdos, and even gave her mother a great deal of fun by trying out all the hats in Mimi’s well-equipped wardrobe. But they were all too fussy, and a simple bolero with a little blue Atlas silk wing trim suited her much better. The hat was also from François’s shop, which now had the best selection, even though one had actually decided not to shop there any more.

The interesting thing about this matter was that Désirée changed more and more, while Esther Weill showed not a sign of her mysterious liaison. She remained what Mimi called an ‘uninteresting girl’, not pretty and not ugly, not particularly clever and not particularly stupid. Sometimes when she dropped by to play piano duets with Désirée — she had to take piano lessons too, although unlike her friend she really hadn’t the slightest talent for it — Mimi would drop a tiny hint, although without picking up so much as an echo. Such a one as Esther Weill was just wrongly cast as the novel character whose adventures Mimi experienced in sometimes daily instalments.

Even though Mimi wasn’t curious at all, she was tormented by the fact that she still didn’t know the male lead in this novel. But on this point Désirée remained stubborn. ‘I have given my promise,’ she said, ‘and no one will shift me from it.’