Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Mimi was really annoyed that Pinchas had switched to the Orthodox Community, because it couldn’t be one of them, they were all far too pious. She would really — but this would have attracted attention — have liked to seize the opportunity to go to the synagogue on Löwenstrasse to look from the women’s loft with her Argus-eyes at the young men of the community. ‘But I’ll find out in the end,’ she thought, and was by now already firmly convinced that she had uncovered the story simply thanks to her superior knowledge of human nature. She had already completely forgotten about the coincidence of the closed booth.

Until Pinchas mentioned that precise story over dinner, just by chance.

‘I don’t know if you know about this,’ he said. ‘A very strange crime was committed a few weeks ago, right here in the city. In a booth on the Platzspitz some circus person was exhibiting some sort of giant fish…’

‘A whale,’ said Mimi. ‘It’s a mammal.’

‘Do you remember the story?’

No, said Mimi, she didn’t remember, it had just been a general observation.

‘At any rate, this whale, which is said to have been so big that you could actually have had a picnic on it — anyway, one day the skeleton was no longer complete. Someone had stolen the lower jaw. Do you really not remember?’

Désirée had never heard of it either.

‘This bone, which must have been almost a metre long…’

‘Almost three metres,’ said Désirée, and quickly added that someone in school had been talking about whales and that she seemed to remember that their jaws…

‘In any case: one day this bone had suddenly disappeared.’

‘Really?’ said Mimi, and Désirée was very surprised as well.

‘This skeleton was to an extent the exhibitor’s livelihood, so he had had it insured. With Sally Steigrad. It was insured for a considerable sum, and now he wanted to claim on it on the grounds that an incomplete skeleton had lost all value. But now a witness has been found, I have this from Sally himself, who saw this famous Herr Zehntenhaus himself dragging the jaw out of the booth and throwing it in the Limmat. Business wasn’t going very well, so he wanted to… A simple case of insurance fraud! What do you think of that?’

It was unbelievable, the things people came up with, said Désirée. And Mimi added, ‘Secrets like that are utterly pointless. Everything comes out sooner or later.’

For the first holiday trip of his life, Janki had himself measured for three new suits. In one, with a black frock coat and striped trousers, he looked like a diplomat, and also, when trying it on, checked that the sleeves didn’t slip back too far if one doffed one’s hat politely on a spa promenade. With the second he opted, after a long, expert discussion with the tailor, for a sporty, American style, with a matching button-down waistcoat, which was worn this season with shirts with a Caruso collar, not particularly comfortable, but the high cut forced one to hold one’s head very straight, and that gave one’s whole figure an elegant air. Thirdly, he ordered a very light beach suit: trousers of white English flannel and a double-breasted navy blue jacket, along with a sailor’s cap with an embroidered ribbon and white beach shoes, which François had to order him specially from a supplier in England. In case of high winds — and on the North Sea one had to expect such things — there was a tennis coat of heavy white frieze, and while he was about it, he also bought a few small items, not absolutely necessary but elegant, a small box containing some particularly soft travelling slippers, for example, or a practical double clamp with which one could fasten one’s straw hat to the lapel of one’s coat on hot days. What was the point of co-owning a store if one didn’t take advantage of it?

Chanele, in her intractable way, didn’t want to buy anything new at all at first, she already had more than enough unworn dresses in her wardrobe, and where did it say in the Shulchan Orech that you had to dress up like a trained monkey only to get sand in your shoes on some godforsaken island? She wouldn’t listen to any of Janki’s arguments, either that after working for so many years one could allow oneself a treat, or that one couldn’t turn up at the table d’hôte like a nebbish from the provinces, and only gave in when she was persuaded by Mina, who was much more sensible about these matters than her mother-in-law. In the end she had a bathing costume of heavy napped cheviot forced on her, a dress and jacket made in silk according to the latest Paris fashion, and for bad weather a rubber mackintosh in a Raglan cut. Janki also tried to persuade her to have a loden suit in the Bozen style, but Chanele said she didn’t intend either to go climbing mountains or to learn to yodel.

Then, of course, their two trunks weren’t enough, and at the last minute François also had to buy a big leather suitcase for them. It was so new that all the contents later smelled as if they had had Russian leather perfume poured all over them. François didn’t come to the station; he avoided meeting his Jewish family more than absolutely necessary, they had nothing to say to each other, and every time his mood was spoiled by the way everyone tried so hard to talk to him normally and without reproach.

But the others were there. Mimi, as excited as if her friend and her husband were setting off on an expedition to the sources of the Nile, kept saying over and over again: ‘Be very careful, please be very careful.’ She found it hard to cope with the August heat, and every time she dabbed away the sweat she tried to pretend it was tears of farewell.

Pinchas had brought a food parcel with him for their journey, including a dry sausage which smelled so strongly of garlic that Janki, even when he was thanking him for it, decided to leave it in the compartment at the first possible opportunity. ‘So that you have something kosher with you,’ said Pinchas, and it could also have been heard as a reproach. In Westerland — they didn’t talk about it, but everyone had thought about it — everything would be chazer-treyf. Mimi darted him an accusatory glance — ‘Sometimes he can be so tactless!’ — and by way of distraction began to complain about her housemaid, whom she would probably have to fire because the goy preferred to read the paper rather than dust under the furniture.

Désirée had appeared in an embroidered white voile dress which made Lea and Rachel so envious that they whispered to each other that they wouldn’t want to be given something like that, it made you look like a little doll, and the slightest stain would ruin the marvellous thing in a second. Of the Kamionkers, only Hinda and the two girls were there; Ruben was already studying in Kolomea, and Zalman, who had just taken a new job, couldn’t just stay away from it in the middle of the week.

Arthur had assembled a little travelling pharmacy for his parents, ‘just in case’, and Mimi found that so touchingly considerate of him that she had to dab away her tears or her sweat all over again and say, ‘Take care, for heaven’s sake take care.’

‘What’s going to happen to them?’ Mina didn’t like emotional outbursts. Since having polio as a child, she had had to watch and listen to far too much, and like someone with a subscription ticket who goes to the same theatre three times a week, she had become more sensitive to wrong notes with every passing year.

The locomotive spat smoke. Lea and Rachel were already waiting with mischievous delight for the first specks of soot on Désirée’s white dress, when all of a sudden Alfred turned up as well. He didn’t greet anyone, he didn’t even look his relatives in the face, but only held out a package of gingerbread to Chanele, ‘for the journey’, doffed his student cap and then, because the stationmaster was already trilling excitedly on his whistle, and slamming the doors to the compartment with an official expression on his face, he gave his mother his arm and walked along the platform with her to the exit, he ramrod straight and she bent-backed, Mina hobbling from side to side as always, as if she were drunk. She had always worn very wide skirts so that people couldn’t clearly see how she had to swing her paralysed leg around in a semi-circle with each step she took. The whole family watched the ill-matched pair with such fascination that at first no one noticed the train setting off. And then they all ran after the carriage, waving furiously.