Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

And then, much too late, much too soon, the train stopped.

Only a single taxi was waiting outside the ornate station, and at first it didn’t want to take him. Broken suitcases don’t inspire confidence, and neither do shoes without heels. It was only the banknotes in his wallet that made the driver friendlier. Arthur paid in advance, and was probably short-changed. That didn’t matter any more either.

He couldn’t have said what he had expected, but irritatingly the town they were driving through struck him as all too ordinary. There shouldn’t, it seemed to him, have been such a thing as everyday life here. But there was nothing particularly striking. People, cars, shops. Like everywhere. It could have been Zurich. If it hadn’t been for all the flags with the crooked cross.

When Arthur told him he was in a hurry, the driver seemed delighted. He pushed back his cap and honked all the other cars out of the way.

‘You’re Swiss?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Another one of ours,’ said the driver, and nodded like someone who has secret information. ‘Just like Austria. You’ll see.’

In the course of the journey he became more and more talkative, treated Arthur as a rich uncle treats a poor relative, and with proprietorial pride explained to him the sights that they were passing, the regional museum and the Torwache.

Then they were turning into Königstrasse.

The same street where Rosa Pollack’s husband had been run over.

‘Here’s the town hall,’ said the driver. ‘Do you want to visit the mayor?’

And laughed and waved to Arthur, who stood forlornly on the pavement with his twined suitcase, once again as he drove off.

The big clock over the entrance — flanked by two stone lions, that too could have been in Zurich — showed him that he had arrived on time. Ten minutes early, in fact. Now he only had to find the right room.

Was there a porter with whom he could leave his suitcase?

And then a woman came out of the town hall door, a fat, agitated woman clutching a little bunch of flowers, looked searchingly around and then hurried towards Arthur. The closer she came the more slowly she walked, more and more hesitant, looked at him as one looks at a present one can tell one doesn’t like even from a distance, but about which one must pretend to be delighted, out of pure politeness.

Looked at his suitcase, the broken shoes, the jacket with its lining hanging out. He should have kept his coat on and not carried it over his arm.

‘Arthur Meijer?’ she asked. Plainly she hoped she was mistaken. ‘Are you Arthur Meijer?’

She was so ugly.

A bloated woman who had tried to powder a better colour on her face. A brightly coloured dress that bulged all over her body. The swollen, discoloured scar of an inexpert vaccination on her left upper arm.

‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘I’m…’ He had first to put down his suitcase, that tied-up, unsightly relic of a suitcase, on the ground in order to doff his hat. ‘Doctor Arthur Meijer,’ he introduced himself, and involuntarily bowed slightly as he had seen little Moses do.

She shook her head in disbelief.

Hairs on her upper lip. Short, prickly hairs. Something he’d always found unbearable in a woman.

‘You’re not as I imagined,’ she said.

‘Nor you…’ but he had committed himself now, he had given his word without anyone asking him for it, he hadn’t given anyone the chance to talk him out of it, so it was only right that he should choke back the words on his lips right now. Instead he said, ‘Those people pulled my shoes apart.’

In her amazement she stuck out her tongue, which gave her face a babyishly stupid expression.

‘The border guards,’ he tried to explain. ‘They took me off the train and…’

‘We’ve got to hurry.’ She breathed out deeply, as one does before unpleasant or unavoidable decisions, and then, before he could do it himself, picked up his suitcase. Even though it wasn’t a very hot day, she had patches of sweat under her arms.

In silence, and without even checking that he was following her, she stamped her way up the stairs in front of him. ‘Legs like fat Christine,’ he thought. It was only when they got to the third floor that she stopped by a door, not even breathing heavily, as one might have expected given her weight, and told him, ‘In fact the smart wedding room is downstairs, all carved oak, but it’s only for Aryan marriages.’

‘Yes,’ he said resignedly, ‘then we’ll just have to get on with it,’ and was about to give her his arm. She looked at him, as she had been looking at him all the time, with disbelief and disappointment, and stepped aside. ‘Let’s hope it’s the right thing,’ she said. ‘Give me your coat and your hat. It’s better if your hands are free. And hurry up! Rosa’s already waiting in there.’

The next morning they were at the station before sunrise. If there had been an earlier train, they would have taken it. Arthur was in a hurry to get back to Switzerland, and Rosa couldn’t wait not to be in Germany any more.

They were sitting opposite one another and they were married.

They had set off while it was still dark. Now it was gradually brightening outside, but neither of them felt like looking out of the window.

In this compartment too there was a picture frame above each seat, but the frames were empty. The photographs had probably shown something undesirable, and they’d had no time to replace them.

There was much to talk about, but they sat mutely facing one another, only every now and again saying inconsequential things as one might to a stranger. ‘No, I don’t mind not facing the front,’ or ‘It looks like it might rain.’

He asked none of the questions that really interested him, because they didn’t know where to start. ‘It’s like that first term,’ thought Arthur, ‘when I took the big anatomy atlas home and didn’t dare to open it for two days. I was too scared of having to memorise it all.’

Reality ran after the train and couldn’t catch up with it.

They sat opposite one another.

Her face, he could find no other terms to describe it, was precise, with clear, distinct lines, as if drawn by a draftsman who doesn’t hesitate when he sets down his strokes. A confident nose and a resolute chin. Hair shorter than was fashionable in Switzerland, almost a boyish cut. Her earlobes had once been pierced and were growing closed again. Perhaps she had had to sell her earrings.

‘You’re looking at me as if you want to learn me off by heart,’ said Rosa.

But he hadn’t even got that far. He was only just starting to spell her out.

She wasn’t beautiful, no one would have said that of her at first glance, but then not every woman is a woman for the first glance. It was easy to imagine looking at her anew, over and over again, across a table.

Or from bed to bed.

No, he couldn’t imagine that.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, having read his thoughts. ‘We managed that thing yesterday.’

And she suddenly burst out laughing.

‘Like my sister,’ he thought. ‘When Hinda was still a girl, she would suddenly explode with laughter for no good reason.’

Rosa had a very young laugh. And she was the mother of two children, with a fate and with memories that must have hurt.

A young laugh.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But the fact that you actually mistook my friend Trude for the bride… Admit it, you like her more than me! Admit it: you’re sorry that you had to take me instead of her.’

It had been a strange wedding. Even standing outside that town hall, in a suit like a homeless man standing in worn-out shoes at the door of strange houses, begging for a bowl of soup. That was probably what he had looked like. Or when they had been supposed to swap the rings and he couldn’t get them off his key-ring. Tugged away at them and apologised at the same time. Until she took the keys and liberated the rings.