Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘This is impossible,’ said Zalman.

Mimi pursed her red painted little mouth and leaned back in her chair with her arms folded. ‘If my opinion isn’t wanted here — please, I don’t need to say anything. Certainement pas . I can be silent too.’

‘Listen to me, François,’ Pinchas began again. ‘I want to present you with my point of view without excitement, but also with great clarity. Deborah is a respectable Jewish girl…’

‘Deborah? Since when has she been called Deborah?’

‘It was the name of my late grandmother, may she rest in peace.’

‘You see? That’s exactly your problem. You want everything always to be as it was for your forefathers.’

‘Who are also yours.’

‘Perhaps. But they lived back then, and we live today.’

‘Some things are always valid.’

‘And some things change.’

‘At any rate I will not let my daughter marry a non-Jew…’

It didn’t happen often that Mina got involved in debates. But when she did, you listened.

‘Alfred isn’t a goy,’ she said. ‘He’s my son.’

‘He’s baptised.’

‘He’s my son,’ repeated Mina, and even Pinchas had no objection to raise to this, because the child of a Jewish mother always remains a Jew, regardless of what detours his life might take.

‘But he’s also my son,’ said François with the menacingly quite voice of someone who can barely contain himself, ‘and I forbid…’

‘I don’t care what you forbid or what you allow!’ Désirée wasn’t used to raising her voice in front of other people, and her voice, like a flute being blown into too violently, immediately tipped over into shrill. ‘And I don’t care if Alfred goes to synagogue or to church or nowhere at all! I don’t care. I love him.’

‘Nebbich,’ said Mimi. ‘What does anyone your age know of love?’

‘At what age is anyone supposed to know about it?’ asked Arthur, but no one listened to him.

François spoke of the necessary adaptation to society in which his son was not to become an outsider again. Pinchas quoted passages from the Talmud, none of which really applied to the situation. Mimi repeated her bon mot about chrétiens and cretins, and even Arthur, who normally always found something worth supporting on both sides of an argument, took a position for once and said very sadly that some relationships, however painful it might be to those affected, were condemned to failure from the outset, it pained him to say it, but that was his experience. Only Mina said you had to take things as they came, and sometimes she had the feeling that some people only talked so that they didn’t have to listen.

They threatened and they begged, Mimi even wept and sobbed, ‘ Mai tu m’as déchirée! ’ But the old accusation had lost its power. Désirée just went on repeating over and over again, ‘I love him,’ a magic phrase that suspended all reality. And Alfred, the law student, explained stubbornly that he was an adult now, and as soon as Désirée turned twenty-one nothing would stop of them from doing what they thought was right.

‘And what are you going to live on?’ cried François. ‘You won’t get a rappen from me.’

‘You can’t buy everything,’ Alfred replied, and Désirée, with a courage that scared even her, reached for his hand across the table and said, ‘The really important things are free.’

The more often the same arguments were repeated, the more everyone talked at the same time. You could hardly make out a word, even though Lea and Rachel had now opened the door to their room wide, curious passers-by standing outside a circus tent without tickets, and trying to guess from the reactions of the spectators which sensation they had just missed.

‘What if we made them some more coffee…’ Rachel wondered aloud, but Lea shook her head. ‘Papa will kill us.’

At first Rachel seemed entirely willing to take even that risk into account. She had — ‘It’ll be her red hair,’ Zalman always said — a fiery temperament and was inclined to rebellion. But then she stayed sitting next to her sister on the bed after all.

‘What kind of person is Alfred?’ she asked.

Lea shrugged. ‘Would you have thought Déchirée capable of such a thing?’

‘No,’ Rachel replied, and added yearningly after a long pause. ‘But I’d like to be able to love someone as much as that one day.’

They finally agreed on a compromise that satisfied nobody.

‘If no one has really won,’ Zalman said afterwards to Hinda, ‘then no one has really lost.’ Even though it had been not a piece of pay-bargaining, but a love story, he was probably right.

The solution, which wasn’t a real solution, and which could therefore be accepted by everybody, consisted in putting off the decision. The two lovers were obliged not to see one another for a whole year; then, if they were still sure of their cause — ‘Which God forbid!’ — then they would see what happened next. At worst they would be allowed to do as they pleased, although it was to be hoped — ‘Very much to be hoped!’ — that they would have come to their senses by then. Désirée and Alfred claimed that nothing, nothing at all, could part them? Then fine, now they would have the opportunity to put their conviction to the test.

But as long as they both remained in Zurich, the Meijers and the Pomeranzes were agreed, they could not be relied upon to keep their word on anything. They were practised at secrecy, and even without Esther Weill’s help they would find ways and means of getting round any arrangement. Over the last few months Désirée had demonstrated that she was able to lie shamelessly to her parents, above all to her mother, who had — ‘ Tu m’as déchirée, ma petite! ’ — sacrificed herself for her all her life.

So the family council decided that Arthur, during this cooling-off or probationary period, would interrupt his studies and go abroad. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let him study so young, and the spoilt rich sons in a fraternity had probably not always been the best models for him. A thorough dose of practical work, François hoped, would drive the fancies from his mind. In Paris — that was far enough away — François had a business friend, a certain Monsieur Charpentier, who also ran a department store; he would get in touch with him and ask him to take his son on as an apprentice.

Mimi, who liked things to be dramatic, suggested that the two of them shouldn’t be allowed to write letters to each other either during the agreed year, but everyone thought that was too harsh. ‘But I will read every letter that comes to our house,’ said Mimi, having the last word after all.

The arrangement with Monsieur Charpentier was soon in place. He didn’t just agree to taking Alfred on in the various departments of his store and, if he proved his mettle, even giving him some responsibility, he also personally found him a little lodging, nothing luxurious, but with a good reputation, where the young man could suitably stay. In a long letter full of solemn French politesses he promised Mina to keep an almost paternal eye on Alfred, and in a second, significantly less formal letter, he agreed with François that he would keep him discreetly informed if his son did anything stupid. Whereby the two businessmen agreed that a particular kind of stupidity in this special case was thoroughly desirable. In Paris, according to François’s secret plan, the women weren’t nearly as buttoned up as they were in Zwinglian Zurich. A young man would find enough distractions there to forget any kind of romantic nonsense.

Désirée wasn’t even allowed to accompany Alfred to the station. Mimi even tried to keep the date of his departure secret from her, but in contrast to the image that she had of herself, she had no great gift for dissemblance, and chattered with such incredible excitement about trivial matters that Désirée set down her knife and fork and said, ‘He’s leaving today, isn’t he?’