Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Only, and this passage was marked in red ink in the margin of the newspaper, only a few reckless businessmen whose own dirty profits trumped, as they saw it, the lives of their fellow citizens, had once again found ways and means to evade the law. These people — the correspondent, who had hitherto believed from the bottom of his heart in the natural equality of all peoples and nations, wrote it very much against his will — were almost to a man sons of Abraham. They smuggled contaminated goods, such as fabrics for clothes, out of the country where they were then, only superficially cleaned, sold on by the fellow members of their line, to credulous folk. What a rude awakening awaited these harmless customers, who could not guess that death and pestilence lurked in the goods that they had supposedly acquired at such a keen price! The correspondent had learned with horror that even in idyllic Baden, where one imagined oneself so far from war and revolution, a new shop was to be opened that would offer for sale materials from that self-same city of Paris. Without wishing in the present case to level at anyone accusations which might — and the correspondent’s deep-rooted love of humanity led him to hope as much from the bottom of his heart — be unfounded, after weighing up the pros and cons he considered it his duty to raise a warning voice in the public interest. ‘Caveat emptor!’ he wrote in conclusion, and added for readers without a knowledge of the Latin tongue, the translation, ‘May the buyer beware!’

Janki began to crumple the newspaper, then changed his mind and carefully smoothed it out again on the counter.

Pinchas Pomeranz only ever allowed himself to read the Badener Tagblatt when, after working in the butcher’s shop, he had studied and understood the prescribed passage from the Talmud, his daily page of the Gemara. That Monday it was already after eight o’clock in the evening by the time he had finally battled his way through a particularly tricky passage from the Bava Basra tractate. It had been a hair-splitting and rather boring discussion about the correct level of restrictions surrounding wells, but in the middle the wise Rabba bar bar Chana had suddenly started telling fantastical tales. He talked of a crocodile the size of a city of sixty houses, and a fish so huge that seafarers confused it with an island.

Pinchas was strangely troubled by what he had studied, and picked up the newspaper with a certain relief. He had no real interest in the reports on the debates in the Great Council or the number of cattle at Zurzach Market, but just enjoyed the simplicity and directness of the subjects. He had toiled his way up a steep mountain, and now he was enjoying a few paces on the plain. Usually this reading left him calm and relaxed, but this Monday everything was different. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and ran, in his slippers and still clutching the newspaper in his hand, out of the house, ‘like a meshugena’, commented his mother, who had been about to bring a piece of fresh honey-cake to his study table.

After a number of detours he found Mimi on the little slope above the bend in the road, where one could sit on a toppled tree trunk and look over the way to Baden as comfortably as if sitting on a garden bench. Not that Mimi had been waiting for Janki with any particular impatience, certainement pas , but a letter had arrived for him, a letter from Paris, and it might contain something urgent, something that could not be postponed. And besides, and that would probably be permitted, she had needed to take a short walk in the open air; it was always so terribly stuffy in the house, now that the days were getting warmer.

Pinchas half-ran, half-hobbled towards her. He had lost a slipper on the way, and in his almost bare foot he had stepped on a sharp stone. Unused to running, and breathing heavily, he bared his teeth, making the gap between them look even bigger than usual. ‘Miriam,’ he struggled to say, ‘you must… you absolutely must…’

Anne-Kathrin had always said as much. Shy men saved up their little bit of courage for years, and then wanted to spend all their savings in one go. Mimi sat up straight and held her head inclined slightly to the side, a gesture, she hoped, that would make her look at once incorruptible and unapproachable.

‘You absolutely must… talk to Janki,’ panted Pinchas.

‘Meshuga,’ thought Mimi, unaware that Pinchas’s mother had said the same thing a quarter of an hour before. ‘Does he think I need to request permission from something from Janki? Standing there with his slipper, waving his newspaper around in front of his face and talking nonsense.’

‘On no account must he…’

‘What?’

‘Open his shop. Here! Pinchas waved the paper still more violently. ‘Read!’ At first Mimi hadn’t a clue what slaughtered elephants and revolting rats might have to do with Janki’s drapery. Pinchas had to explain it to her, in a Talmudic singsong, with a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘thens’. And conclusions drawn from the general to the particular. ‘And that’s why Janki shouldn’t open his shop,’ he concluded his disquisition, having recovered his breath.

‘He’s already opened it. Today.’

‘Oh,’ said Pinchas.

‘His goods are clean, I know that for sure. They might come from Paris, but he ordered them from the best dealer, even though I’m sure there were cheaper ones, and…’

‘All goods from Paris are clean,’ said Pinchas. ‘At least so I assume.’

‘But it says here…’

‘If I wrote on a piece of paper, “Miriam is ugly”, would that make it true?’

‘Of course not,’ thought Mimi.

‘I could…’ Pinchas took a deep breath and then said every quickly, like someone who doesn’t want to pass up on his very last chance, ‘I could use up a whole sea of ink, and it would still be a lie.’

Mimi no longer understood anything at all.

‘Because you are fabulously beautiful,’ said Pinchas. Anne-Kathrin’s theory about shy and economical people wasn’t so wrong after all. ‘Like a herd of goats from the hill of Gilead.’

‘What sort of goats?’

‘Your hair. And your teeth… like sheep all of which bear twins. Besides, I’ve made some enquiries. The gap in my teeth can be got rid of. There’s a doctor in Baden, he puts something in, it’s called a pivot tooth, and then you can’t see it any more. It’s expensive, but my father would lend me the money, if you…’

‘If I what?’

‘If you…’ But Pinchas had already spent his small amount of capital, and his voice subsided again. ‘Most beautiful of all are the twin fawns grazing among the lilies.’

‘What kind of fawns?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Pinchas whispered and turned bright red.

‘You wanted to explain to me…’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. What they are writing here—’

‘Just sit down! You’re making me nervous.’

Pinchas squatted on the very edge of the tree trunk, where there was no danger of accidentally touching Mimi. But he could inhale her smell, of youth and sweat and something he couldn’t name. Pomeranzen — bitter oranges — must smell like that, a fruit that he had never tasted, but had looked up in the dictionary because of his name.

‘ Nu ?’ When Mimi grew impatient, she resembled her father more closely than she would have wished.

‘This article in the paper… Someone has put it there to damage Janki. So that no one buys from him.’

‘But if the rats…?’

‘Into fabrics they will creep.’ As soon as Pinchas was able to argue logically, he became noticeably more confident. ‘Which are so tightly rolled that they have to eat their way in. And you would see it in the fabric. No, no, the whole story is one big lie. Except: people will believe it.’