Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘Brutality?’ thought Mimi, and realised only from Janki’s reaction that she had said it out loud.

‘I haven’t translated it very well. In her it’s something positive. It means “strength” or “power”.’

‘That sounds better,’ thought Mimi.

‘… an expression of almost savage power, in which a physiognomist would probably have recognised the signs of profound egoism or a great lack of feeling. It’s hard to find the correct words,’ he added quickly. ‘It sounds far too crude in Yiddish.’

‘Go on!’ Mimi pleaded and when Janki bent obediently over the book once more she felt something almost like savage brutality within her.

‘Her face bore an unusual charm, her smile young and fresh, and her eyes filled with tenderness and flirtation. The blood of youth flowed warm and fast in her veins and lent her complexion, as white as camellia blossoms, a delicate pink tone.’

‘Camellia blossoms,’ Mimi thought and breathed in deeply. Hanging in the air of Endingen was the stench of the spring slurry that a farmer was spreading in his field. The bench in the gazebo was cobbled together from rough planks, the ground still covered with rotten leaves from the autumn, but Mimi lay stretched out on a sofa in an attic room, a gifted young poet sitting beside her, reading her poems that he had spent long nights writing, just for her.

‘Her hands were so weak, so tiny, so soft on his lips; those childish hands in which Rodolphe had laid his reawakened heart; those snow white hands of Mademoiselle Mimi, who would soon tear his heart in pieces with her rosy fingernails.’ Janki marked the spot with his own fingernail and snapped the book shut.

‘Go on reading! Please!’

Janki shook his head, a gesture that Mimi sensed rather than saw. She had closed her eyes, and the warm spring sun stroked her lids.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Janki. ‘It’s not a book for young girls.’

‘I’m not a child any more!’ said Mimi, but not violently or challengingly as she did in her arguments with her parents, but quietly and with a hint of surprise.

‘It was just because the name reminded me… Mimi.’ She felt as if no one had ever called her by it. ‘But then you’re a Miriam.’

‘Are you absolutely sure of that?’ The kitten stretched its limbs again. ‘If you breathe in deeply,’ Anne-Kathrin had advised her, ‘they look at your breasts.’ Mimi breathed in deeply. It sounded like a groan.

‘Are you in pain?’ asked Janki.

‘Only because you’re treating me like a little girl.’ She hadn’t had to think for a moment for that answer, and was very proud of herself. ‘How does the story go on?’

‘She leaves him.’

‘Oh.’

‘And then she comes back to him. But it’s too late.’

‘Because she’s married to someone else?’

Janki smiled. ‘Marriage… The book is called Scènes de la vie de bohème .’

‘Of course,’ Mimi said quickly, because it had dawned on her that a book deals with fantasy, while a marriage, particularly in Endingen… The shadchen Abraham Singer had been to see her more than once, but every time she had asked Golde to send him away. What did she want with cobblers’ sons and Talmud students? Gap-toothed Pinchas, the son of the shochet Pomeranz, made cow eyes at her every time he met her, and couldn’t say a word. That was why you needed books, because in them everything was different. Because in them the right man was suddenly at the door, and you just had to let him in. ‘Of course,’ she repeated, and felt very wicked. ‘Why should she marry?’

‘She gets involved with men,’ said Janki and looked her firmly in the eyes. ‘Because they give her presents.’

‘In the book?’

‘In the book. But that happens in reality as well. I have known such girls. The seamstresses at Monsieur Delormes… Your parents wouldn’t want me to tell you about it.’

‘My parents aren’t here,’ said Mimi.

‘No,’ replied Janki, ‘your parents aren’t here.’

Salomon Meijer was away again to see to a cow. And Golde — who can count all the things a Jewish housewife has to do, a few days before Pesach? She had to get horseradish for the Seder plate and cover it with soil so that it would stay fresh and hot, she had to attend to the matzos, and she didn’t want, only lekoved Yontev, of course, to appear in the synagogue with the same ribbons on the same dress as last time.

Chanele was alone at home when the master butcher Gubser appeared at the door, and at first she didn’t even hear his knocking. She had gone up to the attic to bring down the first box of Pesach crockery, and in passing — if she didn’t attend to it, who would? — it had occurred to her that the little room needed to be cleaned and aired again. It was a matter of urgency, too. If you pressed your cheek firmly onto the pillow, you could distinctly smell Janki’s male smells, of smoke and sweat and very slightly of cinnamon.

The room had been tidied, but the yellow neckerchief with the knotted coins was nowhere to be seen. ‘He must have found a hiding-place for it,’ thought Chanele, and felt hurt, only for a moment, by such mistrust. The foreign uniform hung stock-straight from a hanger as if still standing to attention. Although Chanele had brushed it out and aired it outside for several nights, a smell still clung to it, probably the smell of war: hay, gunpowder and tobacco. If you closed your eyes…

But Gubser was hammering more violently at the door now, with the heavy stick he always carried to drive on reluctant cattle, and which, if he met one of his good customers in the street, he liked to present as a rifle.

He didn’t present arms to Chanele, he just gave a half-bow, impossible to tell whether it was meant politely or as an ironic insult and asked, ‘Is Herr Meijer not at home?’

‘They’re all out and about.’

‘I should have guessed. Busy people. Always busy. Like ants.’

‘Can I give him a message?’

‘That would be charming of you, lovely Fräulein, charming. I am most indebted to you.’ Gubser placed his hand on his chest, where something bulged over his heart, probably his money bag. ‘Tell him he is a clever man. What they say is quite correct: if a Christian is clever, he’s prudent, if a Jew is clever, he’s cunning. Tell him it worked.’

‘Shall I also tell him what worked?’

‘He’ll probably know that himself, won’t he? Perhaps he doesn’t want everyone to find out. Discretion is what they call it. Discretion. He is an intelligent man. Tell him to call in on me. I have something for him.’

‘What?’

But Gubser only shook his head, bobbed again in a half-bow and was already walking down the street. Before he turned the corner into Badweg, he gave a little skip, as if on the dance floor.

His path led him past the schoolhouse, where he saw Anne-Kathrin, that blonde with the heavy braids, sitting bent over a piece of embroidery in the bay of the schoolmaster’s house. It was a picturesque, very Swiss picture, and Gubser could not know that Anne-Kathrin had neither the patience nor the skilful fingers for such work, and had never finished a piece of embroidery in her whole life. She was only using a pretext to keep watch inconspicuously for her father, who had gone off once again for one of his healthy outings into the open countryside, at a marching pace and with his walking stick over his shoulder. If he came back earlier than expected, she had arranged with Mimi, Anne-Kathrin would immediately run to her own room, which opened out onto the garden and, at the open window, knock out the heavy winter clothes which, now that it was getting warmer, had to be packed up and locked away safe from the moths. The carpet beater, and they had tried it out, made a satisfactorily loud noise that could be clearly heard in the gazebo.