Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Even though the other shopkeepers of Baden didn’t wait so long, Janki opened his shop at nine on the dot, in the Parisian style. With the chiming of the town bell he turned the key in the lock, left the door open so that the sunlight laid an inviting carpet on the wooden floor, and took his place behind the counter. From that position, since the salesroom was a few steps lower than the street, one could only see headless passers-by passing through the picture-frame of the door: black frock coats floating gravely over the cobbles, uniformed legs stamping as they marched past, once a whole colony of lace-up boots under identical dark brown coats. The only ones who stopped were the dogs. They sniffed after the new smell, and probably wanted to lift their legs to renew their claim to the territory, but were dragged away on their leashes by invisible hands and vanished from the field of vision.

The beam of sunlight on the floor wandered slowly from left to right, and anyone who had the time to concentrate on it could see its shape gradually changing, shortening the higher the sun rose, particles of dust floating above it, performing a gentle, courtly dance, disturbed by not a single draught of air.

You could rest both hands on the counter or just one, you could put your other hand in your pocket or shove it under your jacket like Napoleon, you could rest one forearm on the freshly painted wood, which conveyed an obliging and yet aristocratic impression, you could fold your arms in front of your chest or link your fingers behind your back and stretch inconspicuously, you could walk up and down, bob your knees or balance on one leg, you could open the glass doors over the shelves and arrange the bales of fabric yet more perfectly and enticingly, you could spot a dirty mark on the wall and rub away at it with your sleeve, you could polish your shoes again and, as you used the brush, think of Chanele’s clever precaution, you could push the red money bag, the only object in the drawer under the counter, from the right to the left and then back again to the right, you could clear your throat and check whether your own voice hadn’t lost all its power after such a long silence and, like the smell of cloves and peppercorns, crept into a dark corner, you could say ‘Why?’ out loud or shout or bring your fist down on the table, you could do whatever you liked, you were, after all, your own master in your own shop, and there was no one there that you could have disturbed by doing anything at all.

The chimes marking the hours or quarter hours seemed to be following one another more and more quickly, even though the time between them stretched out to infinity. The room, which had seemed so bright and inviting in the morning, now that the sun stood right over the house and no longer sent its rays through the open door, became more and more confined and oppressive. It was already almost midday, and the only visitor to Jean Meijer’s French Drapery had been a little boy whose hoop skipped down the steps, bumped into the counter and lay there as if dead. The boy apologised politely and then, at the shrill cry of a female voice, ran quickly out again. Janki would have liked to hold him back, because in the end somebody — dear God, somebody! — wanted something from him.

Just before twelve, when Janki was adding up all the francs and Louis d’or that he had pointlessly and senselessly pulverised for the dream of his own shop, when he was already setting out the arguments for Uncle Salomon, who would, it was true, not welcome his failure, but would comment upon it with the benefit of hindsight, when he was already wondering whether the tailor Oggenfuss could use someone who knew something about fabrics, so, when he — he who lies to himself cheats doubly — was almost ready to admit his defeat, something unexpected happened. A man came into the shop, came down the steps like someone entering a house that he has just bought for the first time, peered attentively around, only then seemed to notice Janki and said with a smile that was more a baring of teeth, ‘Jean Meijer — is that you?’

Janki nodded curtly, as Monsieur had done with dubious customers. ‘With whom do I have the pleasure?’

‘We will find out later whether it is a pleasure or not,’ said the man. ‘How many customers have you had today?’

‘I’m not sure…’

‘How many it was, or whether it’s any of my business? I can tell you the answer to the first: not a single one.’

There was nothing special about the man. He was about forty, not big and not small, not fat and not thin. He wore a grey suit of heavy tweed, the jacket done in the German style with a belt at the back. An edelweiss made of fabric was fastened to the lapel of his frock coat.

‘Did you want to buy anything?’ asked Janki.

The man barked with laughter. ‘You have a good sense of humour,’ he said. ‘Gallows humour. Which, as I see it, might be a very suitable expression.’ He walked around the counter and, without asking permission, opened one of the doors. He ran two fingers along a dark brown Jacquard material woven with orange flowers, smelled his fingers as if the quality of what he had felt could be read from them, and then said appreciatively, ‘Very pretty. Good quality. One might actually feel sorry that no one will be interested in it. Until it is placed on sale when the shop goes out of business.’

Janki clearly felt a blood vessel pulsing in his throat and wondered for a moment if it was the vein that the shochet had to sever cleanly if the slaughtered animal was not to be impure. ‘I have no intention of abandoning my shop,’ he said, and for the first time he had the feeling that the Yiddish melody made his German sound somehow inferior.

‘Nicely put.’ The man showed his teeth again. ‘But sometimes in life we do things we don’t intend to. Have you read the Tagblatt today?’

The question was so unexpected that Janki was stumped for an answer.

‘There is a very interesting article in it,’ said the man. ‘Page four.’ He pulled a folded newspaper from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out to Janki. ‘Here. A little courtesy between colleagues. With the compliments of the local shop-owners.’

He stopped again in the doorway, looked around and sniffed. ‘Hm. One might wonder: is that still the old spices, or is it already the new stench?’

The article ‘from our Paris correspondent’ sympathetically described the oppressive conditions in the French capital, which had had to endure not only starvation under the Prussian siege, but also the lawlessness of the so-called Commune and the horrors of its bloody defeat. ‘Lutetia’, the correspondent wrote in flowery terms, ‘is like a virgin sorely tried by fate. Even yesterday she still skipped on rosy toes from delightful dance to delightful dance, and today she drags herself wearily through the streets, her features gaunt, more bowed by shame at her own frivolity than by longing for her former glory.’ The article spoke of Castor and Pollux, the two elephants from the Jardin des Plantes, whose trunks had appeared, at the height of the famine, in the English butcher’s shop on Boulevard Haussmann, ‘to give a few wealthy profiteers the chance of one last debauch, while all around wailing infants sought in vain the withered breasts of their mothers’. With revulsion, but also with a certain relish, the author went on to describe the bloodbath at Père Lachaise Cemetery, at which French troops had once and for all put down the uprising of the Communards, ‘their blood a bitter but necessary fertiliser, to let the tender sprouts of law and order flourish once more in place of the barricades erected by the deluded fanatics.’

The correspondent went into the greatest detail about the regrettable hygiene conditions in Paris. He described the prevalence of rats and other pests, explaining this not only with reference to the collapse of refuse collection, but also to the fact that their natural enemies, dogs and cats, had ended up in the pots and pans of the starving Parisians, ‘and had indeed, even at the most noted restaurants, at Brébant and Tortoni, appeared on menus under the most fantastical names’. As scientists were agreed that rats could spread devastating plagues with their droppings — ‘We need think only of cholera, whose hordes of vandals have time and again stormed across our own peaceful land’ — the authorities had passed strict rulings to ensure that the two disasters of war and popular uprising were not followed by a third. All supplies of goods and products contaminated by rat droppings — after that hungry winter there were no food supplies left — were to be delivered by decree to the new government, and destroyed by fire under the auspices of the authorities. This draconian measure had led to great losses among many traders and manufacturers, driving some of them to ruin, but had nonetheless been accepted and obeyed in the interest of the health of the nation.