Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Arthur was shocked as well, but in his case the emotion had little to do with Ruben. He was thinking about all the letters Rosa Pollack had written to him from Kassel. If she found herself in difficulties, if she was arrested or even locked up, it would be his fault.

His alone.

Because he had failed in everything that he had tried to do for her.

‘Anyway, I don’t understand why Ruben didn’t come back to Switzerland long ago,’ said François.

‘He doesn’t want to.’

‘Meshuga,’ said François, and the word sounded strange from his lips.

‘It’s because of his community. But now,’ Hinda said resolutely, ‘now he has to think about his children. I’ll write to him today and tell him to come.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘Then Zalman will have to go and get him.’

‘I should go and fetch someone too,’ thought Arthur. ‘But they wouldn’t let her over the border.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

A waiter came out of the pub. His apron reached to the ground; you couldn’t see his feet moving, so that he seemed to float. On a tray he balanced everything that belongs to a lavish breakfast: a steaming jug, fresh rolls, eggs, cheese, jam. He set the tray on the table, where it sank like a stone into dark water, without leaving a trace. Then he shoved up alongside François on the bench, carefully straightening his apron as a well-bred lady might straighten the hem of her skirt. ‘You don’t mind if I join you for a moment?’

‘You’re dead!’ said François. ‘When will you finally admit it?’

‘When I no longer need to be alive.’

Uncle Melnitz looked cheerful, almost exuberant. Even the smell that emanated from him had changed, as dust changes its smell when it rains. ‘It’s starting up again,’ he said, and rubbed his hands as if before an interesting job or a good meal. ‘I can feel it in all my bones: it’s starting up again, yes.’

‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ said Hinda.

‘Of course not, my lovely, of course not.’ Uncle Melnitz’s arm was suddenly so long that he was able to pat Hinda’s cheek across the table. ‘Just you keep your hands over your ears. Shut your eyes. Then nothing will happen to your son. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t happen.’

‘What do you want from us?’ asked Arthur, even though he knew exactly what Uncle Melnitz wanted.

‘I want to tell you a story,’ said the old man. They had never seen him so full of life. ‘I’m sure you want to know where I got my name.’

They didn’t want to know. Actually they didn’t want to know anything about him at all. But when Uncle Melnitz wanted to tell a story, he did so.

‘Sixteen hundred and forty-eight,’ he said. He let the syllables melt away on his tongue. ‘A wonderful year. The Thirty Years’ War was coming to an end, and there was peace all across Europe. Although not for the Jews. Perhaps because we calculate time differently. For us it wasn’t 1648, it was 5408. 5409. Terrible years.’

‘We don’t want to hear your old stories,’ said François. He tried to stand up, but Uncle Melnitz pressed him effortlessly back down onto his seat. The more often he died, the stronger he became.

‘You’ll like this story,’ he said. ‘You most of all, Shmul. There are Jews in it who have themselves baptised.’

Uncle Melnitz hadn’t been so young for ages.

‘It was in the Ukraine,’ he said, ‘which wasn’t yet called the Ukraine. Countries change their names. They also change their friends. Only their enemies always stay the same. We always stay the same, yes.

‘The story I want to tell you is about Bohdan Khmelnitsky. Do you know the name? Of course you do. For our sins God punished us Jews with a good memory. If someone has done something particularly bad to us, we say, “May his name be erased.” And then we remember it for all eternity.’ Uncle Melnitz laughed. He threw his laughter onto the table, a hand full of sharp-edged pebbles.

‘Bohdan Khmelnitsky, yes. He wanted to wage a war with his Cossacks against the Polish magnates who ruled the Ukraine, and because it was such a long way to Poland he first took it out on the Jews. It’s an old game. The crusaders played it in their day too. Jerusalem was so far away, and the Jews were so close at hand. Khmelnitsky never got to Warsaw. He only got as far as Pereiaslav. Pyriatyn. Lokhvytsya.’

‘You’re dead,’ said Hinda. ‘You don’t exist any more.’

‘Good!’ said Uncle Melnitz, and drew out the vowel as if he were praising a child. ‘Goooood! You’ve worked it out. None of them exist any more. They’re all dead. In Pohrebyshche. In Zhivotov. In Nemyriv. In Tulchyn. In Polonne.’

‘I don’t even know where those places are!’ Arthur heard himself shouting, even though he hadn’t shouted at all.

‘Of course you don’t,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘That’s why I’m telling you about them. So that you remember when it starts up again there. In Sasov. In Ostroh. In Kostyantyniv. In Bar.’

Hinda threw her hands over her face, as she had done when Zalman’s train set off from the station for Galicia and disappeared among the winding tracks. ‘Please, please, please…’

‘Pleading doesn’t help,’ said Melnitz, and threw the next handful of pebbles on the table. ‘It never helped. Not in Kremenetz. Not in Chernigov. Not in Starodub. Not in Narol.’

‘Please…’

‘Not in Tomaszow. Not in Sczebreczin. Not in Hrubieszow. Not in Bilgoraj. Not in Homiel.’

‘That no longer has anything to do with us.’

‘Of course not,’ replied Uncle Melnitz. ‘Nothing at all. It’s all such a long time ago. People today are so much more intelligent than they were in those days. Do you know what the idiots in the Ukraine called their times? The birth pangs of the Messiah. Because they thought Salvation would have to come after so much suffering. But the birth was a long time coming. It must have been a phantom pregnancy.’ He gave a bleating laugh and, without standing up — ei! ei! ei! — did a little dance.

‘They were funny people, Bohdan Khmelnitsky and his haidamaks. People with imagination. When they tied a belt around a woman’s neck and dragged her behind their horses by it, they called it: giving her a red ribbon. Isn’t that ingenious? When they cut someone’s throat they called it: playing shechita. Come on, that’s a good one! When they cut open a pregnant woman’s belly and sewed in a living cat…’

‘That was then,’ said Hinda quickly.

‘In the Dark Ages,’ said Arthur.

‘They don’t have things like that any more,’ said François.

‘I’m sure you’re right. I’m a stupid old man, and besides, I’m dead. Today none of those things would be possible. The animal protection society would intervene and protect the cat.’

The gravel rattled on the table and sprayed away in all directions.

‘Even in those days they weren’t always so imaginative,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘At least they were only doing their duty. What would become of the world if people didn’t carry out orders as they were given? In Homiel, for example, there were no acts of cruelty. Everything went its orderly way, yes. There was a wooden synagogue there, but they didn’t drive the Jews into it to barricade the doors and set it on fire. Even though synagogues burn so well. Because of all the books.

‘No, Khmelnitsky’s Cossacks were too sensible for that. A synagogue is a building, and you can always use buildings again. As a stable. As a granary.

‘If it had been possible to take them all away, the Jews themselves could have been sold. The Turks paid per head and claimed their investments back as ransom from the communities in Italy and Holland. But the Cossacks had no carts to hand.