Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Nothing dramatic.

With a sudden movement he slung his hat in the water. A quiet splash, then all was still again.

The entrance to the offices, François had explained to him on the telephone, must be in the bed-linen department on the second floor, somewhere among the shelves full of dressing table accessories, guest towels and wall coverings on which the predetermined legend ‘hard work brings blessings’ had yet to be embroidered. In the end, Arthur asked a salesgirl the way, and she showed him the little door, which bore no sign. He had walked past three times without noticing it.

When one stepped through this door, one suddenly found oneself in a quite different world. In the spaces meant for the public, François’s department store had something of the brilliance of a stage set, a superficial magnificence that was supposed to give the customer the feeling of being one of those lucky people for whom a few rappen or even francs make little difference. Behind the door everything was bare and matter-of-fact. One was welcomed by the musty smell of a room that no one took the time to air, like a lackey switching back from the staterooms to the servants’ passageway.

The door wasn’t locked, but when it opened it bumped against an obstruction: right behind it, in a narrow corridor, was an old sofa, as if temporarily dumped there by removal men during a move and then never picked up again. The man sitting on it seemed to have been forgotten as well. He had fallen asleep in an uncomfortable seated position, his head sunk on his chest, and presented the visitor with the pimples on his reddened nape. It was only the uniform cap lying next to him on the seat that reminded Arthur where he had seen the man before: he was the chauffeur whom François seemed to hate for some reason, and yet never sacked. Landolt snored quietly. He was probably waiting here for his next assignment.

The doors on either side of the passageway bore no inscriptions, and through the little frosted-glass panes it was impossible to tell what lay behind them. Arthur stopped indecisively until one of them opened directly behind him. A woman with a severe hairstyle — ‘I am something important,’ her facial expression said — came out and looked suspiciously at Arthur. Her buttoned-up black satin blouse had a collar that reached up to her chin, so tight that her eyes bulged slightly. ‘Or perhaps she just has a slight case of Basedow,’ thought the doctor in Arthur.

‘Can I help you?’ said the lady. Her tone left no doubt that if it was up to her no one around here would be helped at all.

‘I’m looking for François,’ said Arthur and corrected himself straight away under her disapproving governess gaze: ‘Herr Meijer, I mean. I’m his brother.’

She looked at him as dubiously as if every day she had to deal with con men, claiming some kind of family relationship in order to trick their way into the chief executive’s holy of holies.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked.

‘I have an appointment.’

‘Then follow me.’ She had the ability to turn even apparently polite sentences into accusations just with the tone of her voice.

‘So, how do you like my Cerberus?’ asked François when the two brothers were alone.

‘Let’s say: she isn’t excessively polite.’

‘That’s as it should be.’ François clapped his hands together as if he had just concluded a profitable business deal with himself. ‘She has to keep people off my back. Otherwise I won’t have a minute’s peace here, and won’t get a stroke of work done.’

‘Sorry to disturb you, then.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ François must have been in a particularly good mood, because apologising wasn’t normally his way. ‘Make yourself comfortable. As best you can, I mean. I’m not set up for guests here.’

Unlike his house, where he had commissioned the architect to design everything as impressively as possible, regardless of the cost, François’s office was practically Spartan in its furnishings. The furniture wasn’t as old as the pieces in Chanele’s office in Baden, but with the best will in the world one could not have called them distinguished. There wasn’t even a chair for visitors. The only place to sit was a couch covered with greenish material which reminded Arthur of the treatment couch in his surgery. Mina had once told him that François slept in his office if there was a lot to do there. He hadn’t made it very comfortable for himself.

François followed his gaze and laughed. ‘Not exactly luxurious, is it? But I’m not putting another rappen into it. It’s going to be very, very different anyway.’

‘You plan to rebuild?’

‘Perhaps.’ François made the wouldn’t-you-like-to-know? face that Arthur knew from childhood. Then, when François had something particularly good on his plate, a chicken leg, for example, or the slice of birthday cake with the sugar icing, then he had always left it there for a long time and waited, with exactly that face, and it was only when Hinda and Arthur had eaten their portions and stared enviously at his still-full plate that he asked, ‘Would anyone like some more?’ Woe to anyone who said ‘yes’, because it was only then that he ate it all himself, cut very small pieces off to prolong the torment of the others, chewed carefully and noisily, like a wine connoisseur savouring the taste of a good wine, and it was only the fact that they had to watch him enviously that made his relish complete. It was only if one didn’t answer, and acted as if one were far too full to take an interest in what was left on his plate, that one had any kind of chance.

So Arthur asked no more questions, and instead got straight to the reason for his visit. ‘I have wanted to talk to you about this for three months, but then this business with Désirée and Alfred got in the way.’

‘That’s all been sorted out. I hear from my friend Charpentier that Alfred is working very sensibly in the shop. I asked him to introduce the boy to the various houses, you know what I mean. That will distract him. Until he has forgotten the girl in a year.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘You’ll see. So, what did you want from me?’

‘Well… The thing is this…’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing to have to ask you for money, but…’

‘Is the practice going so badly? From what one hears, you aren’t very popular with your patients.’

‘I don’t need the money for me!’

‘Oh, back to the good? Is my brother out to improve the world again?’ François didn’t mean it nastily, but almost with a hint of pity, as if Arthur’s inclination to be concerned about other people were a regrettable weakness, which one must accommodate in a brother, but with a heavy heart.

‘It’s about the Jewish gymnastics association.’

‘Not this business with the flag again! Papa told me about your begging. I’ve never understood where your sudden enthusiasm for the sport comes from, but each to his own.’ François sat down behind his desk, straightened his notepad and screwed off the cap of a thick fountain pen. There was something condescending about it, as if he were granting an audience, and Arthur wondered if he himself came across like this to his patients as he prepared to listen to their case histories.

‘So you’ve bought this flag.’

‘Not bought as yet. We would like to, but…’

‘Hang on! The flag consecration ceremony has already been scheduled. I read that in the Wochenblatt .’

‘You still read that rag?’ Arthur asked in amazement.

‘Just because the occasional baptised reader looks into it, it doesn’t make it treyf. So you’re having a flag consecration ceremony, but you have no flag. In other words: your collection campaign was unsuccessful.’