Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘They weren’t cruel people, but they had their orders. When they sat around their fires in the evening, they sang beautiful songs, with dark, soughing basses, but they had their orders. When they drank vodka, they became sentimental and melancholy, and the tears ran into their beards. But they had their orders.

‘They had the whole village line up. In rank and file. The men, the women, the old, the young. The children too. They had to take off their clothes, because they could be used again. If you want to win a war, you can’t waste a thing.

‘The old rabbi stood there, his skin as thin and grey as if it had been made of yellowing tomes. The young girl for whose hand two men were fighting; she secretly loved a third, who was now standing there too, quite close to her and yet too far away for her to take his hand. Two men who had scrambled all their lives for honours and dignities. Now each would have yielded to the other, but they were no longer asked. The village idiot stood there, the one who had always laughed when carrying water and chopping wood, and who was now afraid, because everyone had such serious faces and he didn’t know if it was his fault. The beautiful woman stood next to the ugly one; for the first time they were naked, and could have compared one another. But there was no longer any difference between them; they were dead, even though they were still alive. The fat man stood next to the thin, the rich next to the poor, the one with all the plans next to the hopeless one, and between even them there was no longer any difference.

‘The Cossacks did their work as they had been instructed to, without cruelty or ill will. They had a row step forward, their sabres struck, the next row stepped forward, the one behind that and so on and so on. Last of all they killed old Bathsheba, who had lost five children and therefore become a midwife. She had brought every other person in the village into the world, and now she had to watch as they were driven from it again.

‘That was how it was in Homiel, during the birth pangs of the Messiah, yes. Nothing of the kind could happen today. We’re living in the twentieth century, and no one uses sabres any more.’

The air was warm, and even though it hadn’t yet struck seven, you could already tell that it was going to be a hot day. The birds were waking up in the chestnut tree above their heads, and the stones around them were not gravestones, but the bases for benches and tables, so that you could sit down, order a beer and enjoy your day.

‘You’re not asking me,’ said Melnitz. ‘I haven’t even told you how I got my name.’

They didn’t ask, and he told them anyway.

‘The prettiest girls,’ said Melnitz. ‘The Cossacks didn’t kill them. They dragged them inside the church and had them baptised, they made them their wives and impregnated them with their children.

‘When the horror had passed — it always passes, and it is always too late — when Khmelnitsky was defeated and everyone despised him, even those who had admired him — especially those who had admired him, that’s always how it is — when they wrote the special prayers in which Khmelnitsky would be remembered for all time — may his name be erased! — they called a great va’ad in Lublin, a synod of all the scholars who had survived the bad times. Only a few came, and they had a lot to discuss and to decide. It isn’t easy to recreate a normal, everyday life, when for a few years nothing was everyday or normal.

‘And now,’ said Melnitz, ‘now I have something that will make you laugh. They also made a decision because of all the women who had been baptised, or who had given birth to Cossack children even without baptism. It was decided that they were to be brought back into the community of Israel. Every soul was needed, because many had not remained alive during those years, when the rest of Europe was enjoying its new-found peace. They were to belong to the community again, it was decided, they and their children.

‘What they didn’t decide, and what happened anyway: these children, whose fathers were unknown, were given a nickname. They were called Khmelnitskys. Because they owed their existence to the wicked enemy.

‘Perhaps,’ said Uncle Melnitz, and bleated his gravelly laugh, ‘perhaps we Jews only continue to exist because we have so many enemies. They ensure that we don’t forget who we are, yes.

‘Khmelnitsky is my name,’ he said. ‘Melnitz. A name that cannot be erased.’

When they got back to the old people’s home, Chanele was awake again and even recognised them. At least she smiled and said, ‘Nice of you to come.’ With Frau Olchev’s help she had put on her black dress with the white edging and sat very straight in her armchair.

‘Why didn’t you bring your children, Arthur?’ she asked.

They missed everything. The solemnities, the debates, the brawling. Simply everything.

The Zionist Congress was taking place, for once and at last in his own city, and Hillel wasn’t there. Chaim Weizmann, whose picture he had hung on his locker, walked each day to the meetings in the Stadttheater, and Hillel didn’t get to see him. The scholar Nachum Goldman had travelled in specially from Honduras, where he had lived in exile since being expatriated from Germany, and Hillel couldn’t ask him for an autograph. David Ben-Gurion was there, the union leader, and many others whose names one only ever read in the newspapers. They were all there, all of them. But not Hillel, even though he had been chosen to go on guard duty for Shomer Hatzair, even though he could have stood outside the front of the theatre in his blue shirt, his arms propped on his hips and his alert gaze staring into the distance, like one of the guards of the Hula Valley in a photograph.

Böhni fared no better. Not that he would have been interested in the Congress, of course not, but something was going on in the street. Demonstrations were being organised and flyers distributed against the invasion of straggly beards, against these foreign-looking figures who tried to haggle over the price of the ticket in the tram and didn’t even know that you were supposed to leave a tip in the café. They acted as if the city belonged to them, they were pushy and noisy, and they couldn’t even speak proper German. No wonder there were arguments, but Böhni wasn’t there, he could only read the appeals in the Front not to let Zurich become Zurisalem, or Bahnhofstrasse Zionsallee.

And the worst thing was: they had to put up with each other, twenty-three hours a day, or even twenty-four if you added an hour’s yard exercise. They stayed together there as well, and stood apart from the others, because the others were all real criminals, and they had a healthy respect for them.

The judge had given them short shrift: brawling under Article 133, three hundred franc fine for each of them, or thirty days detention, that’s that. An example had to be set, he had roared, in Switzerland they didn’t pursue political arguments with street fights and skirmishes, and if anyone couldn’t see that then they needed to be taught a lesson until they did. He didn’t care who had started it, who had provoked whom, and the law wisely didn’t care either. ‘Anyone involved in a brawl…’ was all it said, neither of the accused had disputed their involvement, and political convictions were not mitigating circumstances. The legislator, and in the end that was the people, didn’t care in the least whether they were reds, blacks, browns or as far as he was concerned grass-greens or lemon-yellows, these fellows who tore into each other with their fists, brawling was forbidden either way, and involvement was punished by prison or a fine.

Böhni, Walter, and Rosenthal, Heinrich: three hundred francs, pay up or do your time, next case, please.