Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Even the visiting room smelled of cleaning fluids, but less sharply. They probably used a better product here.

‘Did Böhni say…?’

Gerster turned back towards him. If Hillel hadn’t known it wasn’t possible, he could have sworn that his headmaster was smiling.

‘Then I will have a great deal of difficulty discovering the true culprit. Tell Böhni, “In dubio pro reo.” He doesn’t understand Latin, but you can translate it for him.’

When the warder had left and closed the cell door, Hillel said, ‘You tried to save my skin, didn’t you, Böhni?’

Böhni was busy scratching a stick figure into the wall with the handle of his spoon, and couldn’t look up.

‘Do you know what, Rosenthal?’ he said. ‘You’re off your head.’

‘But you’re a dick,’ said Hillel.

‘At least I’m not a Jewish one.’

‘Gerster says I’m to tell you, “In dubio pro reo.”’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That I have to put up with your stupid face for another whole year of school.’

‘And I have to put up with yours,’ said Böhni. ‘That’s much worse.’

When Herr Grün had returned to health he went to the kosher clothes factory to quit his job.

He thanked Zalman, whom he had told, on the first day, about what had happened in the camp, and who had understood that you have to help such people.

‘If you need anything else…’ said Zalman.

‘I don’t need anything else.’

Herr Grün shook Rachel’s hand and said, ‘Without you I would never have got better.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Rachel.

‘I’m still wondering whether I should be grateful to you for that.’

He was always saying things like that.

‘Would you rather have died?’

‘It might have been better,’ said Herr Grün, ‘but now this is how things are.’

‘Where are you going to work from now on?’

‘I’ll send you free tickets,’ said Herr Grün. ‘You and Fräulein Pomeranz.’

He kept his word.

In the foyer of the Corso Theatre Rachel handed in her coat at the cloakroom and noticed very quickly that she had chosen too elegant a dress. Admittedly this was the premiere, but in a revue theatre like the one managed by Wladimir Rosenbaum, the word meant nothing more than all the ‘Sensationals!’, ‘Uniques!’ or ‘You’ll Weep With Laughters!’ that he splashed so liberally over his posters. There was a premiere here every few weeks, and Rachel was the only one wearing a proper evening ensemble for the occasion, in the bold, modern colour combination that Fräulein Bodmer, the directrice, had seen at Patou in Paris: skirt and jacket of red duvetine, green satin neckline. Still: the women looked at her enviously, and the men looked at her the way one likes men to look at one, so that one may assume an expression that suggests one hasn’t noticed their gaze at all.

She got there early and had to wait for Désirée. The people, it seemed to her, came to the Corso with stubbornly cheerful faces, they had decided to spend money on an enjoyable evening, and the investment was to pay itself back from the very start. The women laughed shrilly and held their fingertips, with their red lacquered nails, in front of their mouths; as they walked, the men bounced at the knee with an excess of vigour, and when they could be persuaded to buy cigarettes or a cuddly toy from the trays of the salesgirls with the page costumes, they tried to look as if they had planned the purchase from the outset.

At last Désirée arrived, right at the agreed time but much too late for Rachel’s impatience. Her hair was parted severely in the middle as always, and she was wearing a very simple brown dress with floral embroidery around the collar and the hem, ‘a young girl’s dress,’ Rachel thought, ‘and she isn’t — me neshuma — a young girl any more’. But she had to admit that Désirée, with her slender figure, could still carry off such a thing.

The usherettes were also dressed as pages, with a tight bodice that thrust out their bosoms, and flesh-coloured tights on their long legs. The peroxide blonde who showed Rachel and Désirée to their seats could have been a sister of Blandine Flückiger: a dress size of thirty-eight and a smile for every man in a ten-metre radius.

They were sitting in the expensive part of the theatre, where the seats were upholstered, and with a tiny table in front of each pair. There were also tables that sat four and six, and there the laughter and conversations were particularly noisy. Rachel saw only bottles standing on the tables and wondered whether it was also possible to order wine by the glass here. But then the waiter — a real water, not a fake page — was already bringing an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne to their table. ‘A little gift from Herr Grün,’ he said. ‘With best wishes for an enjoyable evening.’ He popped the cork and poured two glasses so precisely that the crown of foam rose over the edge and then settled back down without a single drop being wasted.

They clinked glasses — ‘To Herr Grün!’ — and then Rachel said, ‘In for a penny,’ waved over one of the page-girls with her tray and bought a programme. One franc fifty, completely meshuga. A stitcher would have had to sit at the sewing machine for a whole hour for that.

Herr Grün’s name was nowhere to be seen in the programme. They didn’t have time to wonder which of the many other names he might be hiding behind, because the orchestra was already rising from the pit on a hydraulic lift. Twelve men in glittery jackets, three saxophones, and on drums a Negro with a broad, white grin. The bandleader had no baton, but instead used his clarinet to tell the musicians when to come in.

‘A little different from Fleur-Vallée.’ Rachel had wanted to whisper that to Désirée, but had had to repeat the words at the top of her voice to drown out the orchestra and the conversations going on all around them. They both laughed. In their youth no Jewish occasion was imaginable without the old conductor with the powdered nose. Every time you had to beg and plead with him to play something, and every time he just happened to have brought his violin along.

The orchestra sank back down again, the red curtain rustled open and ten girls swung their legs. They were dressed as sailors, because the title of the revue was Journey Round the World . In their final pose they turned their backs to the audience, bent low and smiled at the audience with red painted lips from between their spread legs. Fastened to their lace panties were letters spelling the words BON VOYAGE! The effect received hearty applause.

Every act on the programme was assigned to a different country, which could sometimes only be achieved with some clever bits of stage management. Thus Miss Mabel, with her trained poodles, had to represent the whole of Africa, to which end she appeared in a white tropical suit and a sola topee, and the poor creatures had crêpe paper lions’ manes tied around their heads. For the apache dance (Paris), a French accordion wailed from the pit, and during the plate-spinning (China), the orchestra did its very best to imitate the sounds of the Far East. The knife-thrower and his fearless partner wore wild west costumes; but Rachel and Désirée were sitting near enough to the stage to hear the partner cursing in a pronounced central Swiss dialect every time a knife landed too close. The girls danced the Spanish flamenco and the Russian kazachok; both countries seemed to be very thrifty with their material when it came to making the national costume.

By the interval Herr Grün still hadn’t appeared on the stage.

‘He probably won’t be on until the second half,’ said Désirée. ‘He told me once that that’s when the big acts come on.’