Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Pinchas had set up his tabernacle on the roof, where the washing was normally hung. Its board walls were decorated with faded pictures of famous rabbonim, and chains of wrinkled chestnuts and now colourless paper garlands crossed above the solemnly laid table. Where there are no children in the house, no one makes new decorations. The October evening was cool, but at least it wasn’t raining, which was why, in accordance with the rules, they were able to open the solid roof to eat, and see the stars. Arthur too was invited into the sukkah every year, and Mimi complained to Pinchas — in French, as one should when discretion is called for — that it would be very cramped in there with seven people. Basically, however, she was very proud to be able to demonstrate that they didn’t need to economise in her household, and were entirely capable of entertaining even unexpected guests. The bean soup, so full of sausage and smoked meat that a spoon would have stood up in it, would have fed twenty people.

Quite contrary to his normal habits, Arthur was late and nearly missed the kiddush. He had been called out to an emergency at the last minute, he apologised, to tend to an elderly Galician who had, while escaping, received a serious wound in the foot that was now beginning to fester dangerously.

When he was introduced to the foreign guests — ‘The Wasserstein family, Dr Arthur Meijer!’ — something strange happened. The daughter of the family, a very reserved young woman who hadn’t said a word all evening, suddenly burst into loud laughter. It was a reaction that had nothing to do with cheerfulness, a hysterical, breathless screaming or panting. As she did so she pointed her finger at Arthur and repeated over and over again: ‘Arthur Meijer! Arthur Meijer! Arthur Meijer!’ The laughter broke off as abruptly as it had begun, and turned just as swiftly into tears. She shook off all attempts by her mother to console her, but then allowed Désirée to take her in her arms and rock her like a baby.

‘Please be moichel,’ said Herr Wasserstein. He seemed to be just as discomfited as his daughter by the fact that Dr Arthur Meijer was sitting opposite him here in a Zurich sukkah. He shook his head again and again, and ran his fingers through his curly hair as if he were about to rip it out in bunches. ‘This coincidence…’

‘You must know, Doctor,’ his wife explained, ‘you two were to be married.’

Chanele and Janki had never mentioned the encounter in Westerland, they had been very tight-lipped about their summer holiday, so it came as a complete surprise to discover that — at least in his parents’ plans — he had once been to a certain extent engaged to Chaje Sore Wasserstein.

‘But now of course she will never marry,’ said Hersch Wasserstein.

Chaos knows no order, so the story was told in fragments and without a logical sequence. The listeners had to assemble much of it from hints, and complete certain things left unsaid. There were many such stories around this time, and the only special thing about this one was that it very tangentially touched the Meijer family.

The Wassersteins had been extremely surprised by Janki and Chanele’s hasty departure. Their own stay on Sylt had come to an end without further events, but also without a shidduch. Back in Marjampol they had tried to resume contact with the Meijers, but no reply came from Baden. ‘So, not every business deal ends with a handshake,’ said Hersch Wasserstein. ‘One learns that as a businessman.’

And he quickly added, as if his words might be thought presumptuous, ‘Now I am of course no longer a businessman, but only a shnorrer. I must put on other people’s clothes and be grateful for it.’

‘We are grateful,’ his wife said quickly. ‘We have nebbech lost everything.’

The Russian troops had burned down the sawmill; there was wood enough for a magnificent blazing pyre. Hersch Wasserstein had tried to stop them from destroying his life’s work, there had been an argument, and little Motti — ‘A boy like that doesn’t know how bad people can be!’ — had run to help his father. He probably thought the war was like the parading children on the spa promenade, just a game, and they wouldn’t let his father join in.

They impaled him on the bayonet, ‘not even in anger’, Malka said in a voice of wonder, as if her son would still be alive if only someone could explain that one circumstance to her. ‘They weren’t even furious.’

‘Praised be the judge of truth,’ murmured Pinchas.

‘ Affreux ,’ said Mimi. That too sounded like a prayer.

Chaje Sore had pressed her head to Désirée’s dress, and was moving it up and down very slowly, as if to be stroked by the silk fabric.

The Cossacks — ‘Only a little shock troop, but you don’t need an army to make a family unhappy’ — had then celebrated, which in their case meant: they had had a drink. What soldiers do when the vodka goes to their heads and their loins was well known, and Chaje Sore was a pretty girl.

The tabernacle had neither gas nor electricity. An old-fashioned paraffin lamp cast flickering shadows on the walls; the lips of the framed sages seemed to move, as if they were speaking kaddish for little Motti.

And a prayer that won’t be found in any siddur for Chaje Sore Wasserstein, who had been too good for any man, and then good enough for twenty.

Later, when they were saying goodbye, Malka Wasserstein said something surprising to Arthur.

‘If you had married her, she wouldn’t have been there,’ she said.

Arthur took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Two hours before, he hadn’t known that there was such a person as Chaje Sore Wasserstein, and now he felt responsible for her fate.

All night he kept starting awake, as he had often started awake in his school-days and as a student before exams, and when he did go back to sleep he dreamed of questions he was being asked, for which he didn’t know the answers.

The next morning he went to the prayer hall, right at the beginning, when only the most pious are there, to help form the minyan on time, and for hours read along word for word with all the blessings, pleadings and songs of praise, as if they might somewhere conceal a sentence that was meant for him and him alone.

The Sukkot service has a quite special character; the palm frond, the lulav, is waved in all four directions, and laid out on the lecterns; the essrogim, the ritual citrus fruits that have no name in any other language, spread their very special fragrance. But when Arthur tried to find an answer in the familiar words and gestures, there was none to be found. Only the haftarah, the word of the prophet, which follows the reading from the Torah, seemed to contain a reference to the events of the previous evening: ‘The city shall be taken,’ Zachariah threatened, ‘the houses shall be rifled and the women defiled.’ But even the prophet could not say what one was supposed to do if one felt guilty for all of that, when in fact one was not.

In the short break that always happens before the Torah rolls are lifted, Pinchas murmured to him, ‘Désirée had another letter from Alfred. Yontif or no yontif, we opened it. He writes that at last they have ammunition. But he is sure that the war will be over long before new recruits have to go into battle.’

‘Nothing seems certain to me any more,’ Arthur whispered back.

Only when service was over did he notice that Hersch Wasserstein had been there as well, right at the back in the last row meant for strangers and beggers. He wore the suit that Pinchas had given him the day before, and now, in daylight, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the jacket was too tight and the trouser legs too long, the clothes of a shnorrer who has not yet learned his craft. Each time someone held out their hand to him to wish him a good yontif — as if he could ever have a good day again! — he hesitated for a moment before taking it. He was used to waving away the submissive cordialities of supplicants, and had to keep reminding himself that he himself was now the supplicant.