Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Deft hands.

How the register had tried to give them a copy of Mein Kampf , as was the regulation for all newlyweds, had automatically started saying the words and then broken off mid-sentence because it wasn’t an Aryan wedding and the regulation didn’t apply. Many other regulations, but not that one. How he had then very hastily had them sign the wedding certificate, first the groom, Dr Arthur Meijer, then the bride, Rosa Recha Meijer, née Bernstein, widowed name Pollack, and then the witnesses, Trude Speyer and Dr Saul Merzbach. Rosa had been at teacher training college with Trude; Dr Merzbach had brought her children into the world and, now that he was no longer allowed to work at the hospital, he was her family doctor. Arthur remembered the name; he had read it at the bottom of the health certificate that Irma and Moses had needed to travel to Heiden.

Then, at Merzbach’s house, they had celebrated. Four people eating sandwiches and drinking Sekt. Could you call it celebrating? One bottle of Sekt, and yet Arthur had managed to get slightly light-headed, well, all the excitement, and he hadn’t eaten a thing all day.

After his dismissal from the hospital Dr Merzbach had had to set up a surgery at home; no one would rent him anything. The familiar smell of carbolic soap and cleanliness made Arthur careless, and of course the alcohol and the excitement. When Trude discovered a gramophone in the next room and insisted that the bride and groom dance together, right now, a little mitzvah tantz, he didn’t even try to get out of it. Then of course he had tripped and nearly tumbled over with Rosa. Whereupon Dr Merzbach wanted to give him a pair of his shoes, with heels. No, no, he could happily take them, sooner or later most things would have to be given away in any case. He had made some inquiries: doctors were needed in South America.

But then the shoes hadn’t fit.

Trude, who was good at such things, repaired the seam of his jacket.

Their suitcases had stood side by side the whole time, the picture had lodged in Arthur’s mind, his own, broken and tied together, and her two with the light patches where she had scratched off the stickers, the last remains of beautiful experiences that she didn’t want to be reminded of any more. Two suitcases, she took no more than that from her old life. She had taken her luggage to Dr Merzbach’s that afternoon. She didn’t want to go back to the little room in the house of her uncle with the heart condition.

They spent the night at Dr Merzbach’s too, the few hours until they had to leave again. Rosa slept on the sofa and Arthur in an armchair. They kept their clothes on, and he preferred it that way.

He couldn’t imagine it.

Rosa had asked that no one accompany them to the station, but Trude had come along anyway, and cried a little. Outside it was already starting to rain. Just individual droplets at first, so that you could follow the trace of each single drip on the glass, and then more and more until the landscape blurred as if behind frosted glass.

‘In one of your letters,’ she said quietly, ‘you wrote to say that I should enjoy the good days. Do you think they’re starting now?’

‘I’ll do my best.’

She shook her head. ‘These Goliaths! They even want to be responsible for the weather.’

When she laughed, she squinted very slightly, not like Irma, but still noticeably. He was pleased by the observation. Precious things belong to one much more when one knows their hidden little flaws.

He had been mistaken: she was a beautiful woman after all.

While he…

Would she expect caresses from him? Or even put up with them? Arthur felt guilty again.

At the wedding he had kissed her, of course, but it had had nothing to do with the two of them, it had just been a formality. ‘Sit down, give me your papers, kiss the bride!’ A ritual. When his patients got undressed in front of him, they weren’t really naked either, but had just brought their bodies to him as one takes a watch that has stopped working to the watchmaker.

But she wasn’t a patient. She was…

A slender waist under the flower-patterned dress.

She was now his wife.

Rosa Meijer.

‘Rosa Recha Meijer.’

He must have said the name out loud, because she nodded and repeated it a few times, like someone who wants to commit to memory a word in a new language.

Rosa Recha Meijer.

‘Will you be able to get used to it?’

She took his hand and very slowly ran her finger along the outline of his. She held her head tilted, and a strand of hair fell into her face.

‘You have good hands,’ she said at last, and even though she might not have answered his question, he was still pleased.

At the next station two noisy women pushed their way into their compartment, talking about their husbands and their neighbours and paid no heed to the couple by the window.

‘They’re all equally annoying,’ said one, and the other agreed and confirmed that that was how it was, but you had to take them as they came, there were no others.

Anyone who was under illusions about people had only themselves to blame, said the first, and the other one nodded and said, they weren’t as stupid as that any more, by no means.

Then they took thick sausage sandwiches out of their baskets, and choked their irritation with humanity down with them.

Rosa and Arthur looked at each other, and Rosa squinted very slightly. Nothing connects two people more than being able to laugh at the same things.

There were no problems at the Swiss border. The border guard looked at their marriage certificate, studied the date, paused, then put his hand to his cap and said, ‘Many congratulations.’

They changed in Basel, and soon they were sitting in the train bound for home. ‘Home,’ repeated Rosa, and that too was a new word.

‘What sort of flat do you have?’

‘Too small for four people,’ he said, too hastily. ‘But perhaps Désirée will swap with us.’ Now, of course he had to explain to her who Désirée was, and why she was called Déchirée, what had happened with Alfred and why his brother François was a goy. He grew talkative without noticing.

‘I think I’m going to get on with Désirée,’ said Rosa.

Then they were already pulling in to Baden, where there was also much to tell, they passed through Dietikon and Schlieren, the train slowed down, it wasn’t even afternoon, and they were in Zurich.

They got out, he carried her big suitcases and she his small one. Suddenly he stopped and said, ‘We should take them to the left luggage office.’

‘Why not home?’

‘We could take a detour via Rorschach.’ And in response to the question in her face, ‘That’s where you catch the train to Heiden.’

When she was happy, her face was much less precise.

In Heiden she ran down the gravel path to the children’s home, in completely inappropriate shoes, tripped in the rut of a cartwheel and fell over. When she struggled back to her feet, unkempt and laughing, the heel of her shoe had broken off.

‘We’re a match,’ said Arthur.

She had torn her stockings and scraped one of her knees. ‘You marry a doctor,’ she said, ‘and when you need him, he just ties a hanky around your leg.’

Fräulein Württemberger wasn’t pleased to see them. She was trying, with hourly, daily, weekly timetables, to drive from the Wartheim the chaos that lurks everywhere there are people and above all children, and now here was this Dr Meijer, turning up on a day that wasn’t even scheduled for the examination of the Women’s Association children, he just stood in her office and had even brought his wife with him, when everyone said he was a confirmed bachelor. A woman with torn stockings and broken shoes. Like a tramp. And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he wanted her to call Irma and Moses, right there and then, when they were on kitchen duty, and if they were four hands short in the kitchen her whole plan would fall apart, and dinner would never be on the tables on time. And they had already had enough of a fuss with all the special treatment that Irma needed because of her illness.