Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

The spa orchestra in the Music Shell on the promenade now wore theatrical uniforms from the time of the Napoleonic War; there was a ‘Fatherland Concert’ on the programme, which meant that the eight musicians would have to play one military march after another, even though their instrumentation wasn’t really suited to it. But the sole trumpeter tried gamely, and the band leader — whom Monsieur Fleur-Vallée would have mocked as as a pitiful dilettante — had for once set his violin aside and instead rattled the instrument known as a Turkish crescent. The spa guests seemed to like it; the ladies hummed along with the memorable tunes, and sent the flower arrangements on their hats bobbing rhythmically; the men tapped their walking sticks on the ground in time with the music. A few children had shouldered the little spades with which they usually built castles on the beach, and marched eagerly back and forth under the orders of a twelve-year-old.

Chanele’s toilet — why did she object to being helped by a lady’s maid? — took time, and then Janki himself couldn’t decide between three different ties. When at last they reached the Music Shell, at a comfortable stroll as befitted the spa promenade, even though they had allowed good time, all the white painted chairs were already occupied. They were not the only ones who had to stand, but Janki, who was staying in the most expensive hotel in town, was extremely dissatisfied with the lack of foresight from the spa administration. There was not a sign of Staudinger, even though the selection of music would have been to his taste.

While Janki looked searchingly around, ready to doff his hat at any moment, even though no one knew him here apart from his railway acquaintance, Chanele gazed with fascination at the orchestra’s cellist, an elderly gentleman with fine, narrow features. The tunes of the Fatherland Programme were all written in the same 4/4 march rhythm, and the cellist seemed visibly to be suffering from the undemanding qualities of the music that he was having to play. He was indeed scraping his bow quite correctly — one, two, one, two — across the strings, but he kept his eyes closed, as if he could no longer bear to see the conductor with his Turkish crescent. He bobbed his head back and forth to a quite different rhythm, moving his lips as he did so. Chanele imagined that as he did his duty he was singing an inaudible counter-melody to himself, a song that belonged to him alone, and which no one could take from him.

After each individual piece of music the gentlemen applauded, and the ladies patted their fine gloves together. The short break produced each time the pages were turned was suddenly broken by a piercing cry, and a little boy in a sailor suit ran from the troop of drilling children, who were at that moment presenting their spades in file, and pushed his way through the rows of seats in search of his mother. Now children on the spa promenade were thoroughly tolerated; as long as they remained cute and silent even complete strangers patted them on the head and gave them a sixpence for their piggy-banks. But this little boy was noisy, his cries were penetrating and to top it all he carried behind him a spade that was doubtless full of sand and dirt, without paying the slightest heed to the dresses of the ladies that he was barging into. He drew behind him a trail of disapproving comments and severe pedagogical glances, just as the dust of the street hangs in the air when a car has driven past. The boy was aware of none of this. He couldn’t find his mother, and had a terrible outrage to complain to her about, so he yelled at the top of his little lungs.

‘Mamme!’ yelled the little boy. ‘Mamme!’

Chanele handed Janki the parasol on which he had insisted, pulled her arm out from his as one pulls a thread from a needle, and left him standing. Her laced ankle-boots were made for elegant promenading; it was not so easy to reach the other side of the audience quickly enough. She was watched with looks of disapproval; this must have been the unfortunate mother who was incapable of keeping her child under seemly control.

The little boy came shooting out of the rows of seats headfirst; he must have tripped over a slyly extended parasol, or even over his own feet. He had lost his spade, but he didn’t care, he just wanted to be hugged and hidden and comforted.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Chanele.

‘I want to be a soldier too!’ the boy wailed. He said it in Yiddish, of exactly the same hue that Chanele knew from her son-in-law Zalman.

With a ching of the Turkish crescent and a boom of the kettledrum the music started up again, and the sound seemed to make the boy so miserable that he buried his tear-stained face in Chanele’s dress and clung to her desperately with his hands. She would never get the stains out of that delicate crépon.

Chanele bent down to him and picked him up with the sure grip of a woman who has consoled many children and grandchildren in the past. The boy’s hair smelt of sun and sand, and Chanele couldn’t help hugging him. ‘Hush now,’ she whispered to him, ‘hush now. We’ll find your Mamme.’

It had all happened so quickly that Janki didn’t know whether he should go running after his wife or wait for her exactly where he was. A voice with a Southern German inflection relieved him of the decision. It addressed him with such noisy cordiality that some of the spa guests looked around disapprovingly for the source of this new disturbance.

‘There you are, Meijer,’ roared Staudinger. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself all this time? I would like to introduce you to a few comrades.’ If you’re holding a walking stick in one hand and a parasol in the other, it’s hard to lift your hat as form decrees. The four men who accompanied Staudinger didn’t seem to be bothered by this. They had just emerged from an early drinking session that had carried on over lunch, and cared nothing for formalities. They clapped Janki on the shoulder and shook him, regardless of walking stick and parasol, by the hand. One of the men, as awkwardly as if he had copied his movements from the drilling children, presented his hiking stick, covered with little metal crests, with great military precision, and they all talked over each other so excitedly that Janki couldn’t even hear the names by which they introduced themselves. The man with the hiking stick, that much he understood, had even mentioned an aristocratic title.

They insisted that Janki accompany them to the Strandcafé, where the beer was particularly good, straight away and with no dawdling, because drinking, they thought, was like artillery fire — it was only when you stopped that things got dangerous, ha! They put him in the middle, and no one who met the group on the way to the café really knew whether someone was being flanked by a guard of honour or led away as a criminal.

They drank beer. Janki’s suggestion that he celebrate their encounter by buying a good bottle of wine or even champagne was laughed at like a good joke, absolutely mind-boggling, but then he was a Frenchman, they said, so allowances had to be made. But they recommended that he abandon such dandified cravings forthwith, lest they find themselves forced to resume hostilities.

‘Ha!’ said Staudinger.

Janki laughed with them. He would have laughed at anything, so happy was he to be included in this company, of which one member even had an aristocratic title.

Staudinger, whose scar had been turned bright red by the sun or by the beer, must have described the encounter in the train to Hoyerschleuse in all its details to his four colleagues, and he exaggerated proficiently. He had clearly turned Janki into a Gallic hero fighting with courage born of desperation, who might have turned around the fortunes of the Battle of Sedan single-handedly, had a bullet not struck him in the leg and injured him with potentially fatal results. He did not necessarily wish to assert that this bullet actually came from the ranks of Staudinger’s Second Battalion, but it was still a possibility, which was why the two men — a soldier is a soldier, regardless of which side he is fighting on — were linked by a kind of mystic blood-brotherhood, which had to be celebrated at all costs, and to which glasses must be raised.