Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘How do you think you know that?’ She couldn’t choke back the question, even though one shouldn’t really debate with such people.

‘You make too much of an effort,’ said Herr Grün.

Then he went and stood against the wall, without leaning against it, he didn’t ask for a chair, he didn’t ask when the boss would be there, he just stood there and waited. Each time someone came in he looked at him for a moment and always knew straight away that he wasn’t yet the right one. Even when Joni Leibowitz came back from a customer and complained loudly about the fact that the replacement buttons on a delivery of ladies’ coats had not been sewn in, even though that was what he had expressly requested, and who had to listen to the buyers’ complaints? He did! — even then Herr Grün only turned his head briefly and then sank back in on himself, a man who has done a lot of waiting, and for whom another few hours won’t matter.

Zalman had an appointment at the bank. He didn’t like going there, but he had no alternative; the more successful a company became, the more money it seemed to need. They had been extremely polite to him, and the clerk in charge had not only authorised credit for the purchase of a special button machine, but even congratulated him: he was doing everything quite correctly. Now, as long as the work force was cheap and the unions had no objections to make, one would have to start setting the markers; he would see how they started crawling out of their holes at the first sign of a recovery. In the interest of the company Zalman hadn’t been able to contradict him, and that level of self-control alone, he thought, would have been worth a director’s salary.

The man who had waited so long took a step forward when Zalman came in, like a soldier when the order to that effect has been given. ‘You are the boss here,’ she said.

‘And who are you?’

‘My name is Grün.’

‘Papa, I told him we weren’t taking on untrained workers, but he insisted on waiting for you anyway, Papa.’ Rachel would have liked to weave a third ‘Papa’ into the sentence. She was more than happy for this Herr Grün to know that she was the managing director’s daughter.

Zalman looked at the man. A refugee, of course, the world was full of refugees. The suit was good English fabric, so someone who had enjoyed better days. That counted against him, not because one should be ashamed of losing one’s possessions, but because people who were once rich generally don’t make good workers. You could teach the hands to do something, was his experience, but not the head. The suit, Zalman saw things like this at first sight, was made to measure, but for a much fatter man than Grün. So he must have been through some terrible things; that too wasn’t a rare thing for a Jew coming from Germany.

‘What’s your profession?’

‘Whatever is needed.’

‘He isn’t a tailor, Papa.’

‘I haven’t always been a refugee, either,’ said Herr Grün. ‘But I’ve learned it quickly.’

‘You must understand,’ said Zalman, and for the second time that day cursed the fact that he had to be the managing director here. ‘You must understand: twenty people come here every week. If I wanted to employ them all…’

‘Give me five minutes,’ said Herr Grün.

A real company director would have left him standing. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and Zalman had long lived according to the principle that you should give everyone a hearing before you say no to him.

‘All right, then, five minutes.’

The two men disappeared into the manager’s room, which was only really a cupboard, separated from the office by thin plaster walls. The door closed behind them, and Rachel raised her eyes to the ceiling in ostentatious despair.

Joni Leibowitz had observed the scene and was now, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, leaning on Rachel’s desk. She didn’t like the fact that he still took for granted a familiarity between them that had long ceased to exist.

‘I bet you a bottle of wine that he’ll take him on.’

‘Never.’

‘He’ll never take him on, or you never bet?’

‘Both.’ She had asked him several times not to use the intimate form of address with her in the office.

Joni let the ash from his cigarette drop into the hollow of his hand, a habit that Rachel thought was impossible, and then clapped his hands clean over the waste paper basket. ‘Would you like one?’ he asked, and held out the open case. It was made of electrum, but he hoped people would assume it was silver.

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Then the stubs with the traces of lipstick that I keep finding in the packing room must come from someone else.’

He grinned at her. Joni was a person who liked digging out secrets because he enjoyed the power that they gave him over others.

Having fun with power? That strange Herr Grün had said exactly the same thing about her.

‘Might I be allowed to carry on with my work?’ she said severely.

‘I don’t want to stop you.’ He let his cigarette butt fall into the waste paper basket — another of his typically reckless habits — and went outside. In the past, but that was now a very long time ago, Rachel had found his pointedly casual strolling gait actually quite attractive.

It took longer than five minutes, at least half an hour. Only then did the door of the manager’s office open, and the two men came out.

‘Herr Grün will start here tomorrow,’ said Zalman. ‘Somebody please show him how to operate a sewing machine.’

Arthur’s surgery was closed every second Wednesday. His receptionist, the elderly Fräulein Salvisberg, turned all his patients away and he drove to Heiden to do a free consultation at the Jewish children’s home, the Wartheim.

The journey to Appenzell would have been equally pleasant by train — Arthur had been particularly taken with the little cog railway that climbed the gentle slopes from Rorschach — but if the weather permitted he preferred to get into his little Fiat. What’s the point of having a car of your own if you don’t use it? However, it was almost embarrassing to him that he enjoyed this part of his voluntary work so much; his over-eager conscience was of the opinion that one could only take credit for a good deed if one had also suffered for it.

The fact that the Wartheim was forced to bring in a doctor from Zurich had to do with money, or rather with a lack of money. For the private children there were enough doctors in the village, and if they couldn’t provide a diagnosis, a specialist was called in for them from St Gallen. A child was considered private if his parents paid the full costs, which only Swiss people could do, and not all of those. The ‘official children’ whose lodging was paid for by a state agency for reasons of poverty, had a claim to medical treatment, although local doctors prudently guarded against diagnosing any illnesses that would have required costly treatment. The problem was the ‘women’s association children’, most of them wards of court who required support from the Union of Jewish Women’s Associations because their parents had stopped sending money, either because they had none left, or because the constantly tightening exchange regulations made regular transfers impossible. The children weren’t allowed to starve, of course not, but even though they were required to fill every school-free minute with menial work, and thus earned at least part of their keep, they were still a burden, and there was never enough money for unusual expenses such as visits to the doctor.

Arthur hadn’t needed to be asked twice to take on the job. ‘If I said no, I would feel as if I was playing truant from school,’ he had said to Hinda, and his sister had replied, ‘No, Arthur, what you’re playing truant from is life.’