Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘Janki and I, on the other hand…’ She sensed that she was hurting Pinchas by saying these words, and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. How had they put it in that Mimi novel? Savage brutality.

‘Do you see any possible way of helping him?’ she asked. ‘That article…’

‘I’ve thought about it.’

‘And you could…?’ Her voice suddenly sounded wheedling, a child that wants something it hasn’t really deserved. He knew this voice was a lie, but he happily allowed himself to be lied to.

‘You know what I learned yesterday in Gemara?’ he asked and added quickly: ‘It’s relevant. I think it’s relevant.’

And so it came to pass that Pinchas, in the gazebo of the goyish schoolmaster, told the story of Rabba bar bar Chana, who claimed that while on a sea voyage he had encountered a fish, entirely covered with sand and grass and so big that people thought it was an island, that they disembarked and lit a fire on the fish to prepare their dinner. Mimi didn’t interrupt him until he had also told her how the fish, when it felt its back getting hotter and hotter, plunged into the water, and all the seamen would have drowned if their ship hadn’t been anchored so close by. Only then did she ask, ‘And what are you telling us?’

‘Well,’ said Pinchas, ‘of course the story isn’t true. Any more than the story in the paper is true. And even so, our sages in Babylon wrote it down and put it in the Talmud. Then the question arises: why?’ Pinchas lapsed back into the tune of a Talmudic disputation. ‘What could the reason be? Are we to learn something from the story? Are we to believe that there are fish that people can mistake for islands? Hardly. The Amoraeans who wrote the Talmud were practical people. They were concerned with barriers for artesian wells and things of that kind. They knew that history was a fairy tale and still they preserved it for later generations. What reason might they have had for that?’

‘ Nu? ’ thought Mimi.

‘Might it not be that they simply liked the story? Because it was a good story? Because people like to believe good stories? Even though they know that they can’t be true? What do you think?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it: they put a story in the paper so that no one would buy from Janki. So we have to come up with a better story to make them change their minds. They’re lying? So be it. We’ll just lie better!’

Chanele had spent a long time sitting on the edge of the fountain, dipping her arm into the water. She felt as if she had to wash the man’s touch off her, as if his hand on her sleeve had left a stain that everyone could see on her. She herself didn’t understand, couldn’t explain to herself, why she hadn’t just pulled away and pushed him off, why she had answered him, why she had answered him in front of those men, why she had spoken of something that didn’t even concern Golde, why she had let him…

‘There you are,’ said an unfamiliar voice. Chanele spun round and lifted her arms as if to ward off a blow.

It was the barber’s wife, a bony, matter-of-fact person that you could have imagined behind a market stall if there hadn’t been a smell of talcum and face lotion about her. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ she said.

‘Leave me alone!’ Chanele heard herself talking in a strange voice, fearful and insecure.

The woman sat down next to her on the edge of the fountain. ‘Careful,’ she said after a pause, ‘you’re making your dress all wet.’

Chanele defiantly plunged her arm even deeper into the water.

‘They’re men,’ said the woman. ‘Men need enemies. I don’t know why. It seems just to be something inside them.’

‘What do want with me?’

‘If they speak,’ said the woman, ‘then you have to let them speak. There’s nothing you can do. But I wasn’t happy about the way they treated you. Why did you come into our shop, of all places?’

‘I thought a barber…’

‘There are six barbers in Baden. Five other barbers. Everybody knows my husband doesn’t like Jews.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Chanele, feeling guilty. ‘I just wanted…’

‘I heard what you wanted.’ It sounded like a reproach. ‘Completely wrong. You don’t do something like that with razors. You have to pluck. It hurts, but you’ll survive. Here.’ She held a tin out to Chanele.

Chanele folded her arms.

‘As you wish,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t care.’ She dropped the tin into the fountain and got to her feet. ‘But you’d really look a lot prettier without those eyebrows.

On her own again, Chanele looked at the tin for a long time. It hadn’t sunk, but floated, turning gently bobbing circles on the surface of the water. On the lid, two heads stared into the distance: an English officer with a bushy moustache and a dark-haired man in a turban. Above the picture it said in ornate writing: Original Indian Macassar Hair Pomade . The tin seemed to be trying to make its way towards her again and again, and each time it did, before it reached the edge, it was driven away again by the stream of water from the fountain pipe.

At last Chanele reached into the water, fetched the tin out and opened the lid. The tin seemed to be full to the brim with crumpled paper, the firm, light brown paper that is pulled over the head-rests of barbers’ chairs. It rustled when she unfolded it.

When she saw what the strange woman had brought her, Chanele’s eyes filled with tears.

It was a pair of tweezers.

‘He fought in the Battle of Sedan,’ said Pinchas.

‘He says he never heard a shot.’

‘Could be. But that doesn’t make a good story. And of course he was wounded. A bullet went through his arm.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ Mimi cried in horror.

‘You’re right, Miriam,’ said Pinchas, ‘let’s leave his arm alone.’

Mimi nodded with relief.

‘He needs his arm for his work. They shot him in the leg.’

‘What?’

‘You choose which one.’ Pinchas laughed. He was completely transformed, he talked uninhibitedly, gesticulated and kept interrupting Mimi.

‘That tailor he worked for in Paris. What’s his name?’

‘Delormes. But he’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ said Pinchas and nodded contentedly. ‘That’s good. Then he won’t contradict us. And this friend of yours, what’s her name?’

‘Anne-Kathrin. Is she going to appear in the story as well?’

‘She’s going to lend us paper and ink,’ said Pinchas. ‘We’ve got to write it all down.’

‘An interesting anecdote from the Franco-Prussian War. During the siege of Paris — our correspondent reported extensively on this in these very pages — a series of events began which will provoke shock and sympathy in the heart of any well-intentioned and sensitive human being. We have no wish to deprive our dear readership of the report that has only lately reached our ears, not least because the chain of events in its outermost link has also touched our lovely town of Baden, confirming the saying of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus that war is the father of all things.’

Pinchas, who read the Tagblatt every day, had insisted on the convoluted sentence construction. The classical quotation was supplied by Anne-Kathrin, who had a large supply of them thanks to her father.

‘Our lady readers, particularly if they regularly study Die Dame or Jardin des Modes ’ (a contribution from Mimi) ‘will be familiar with the name François Delormes. This master of the needle, as effusive admirers have praised him in the past, proudly refused, in spite of the requests of his many friends and admirers, to leave his beloved native city before the outbreak of hostilities. In a reversal of the cynical saying, he would dismiss all warnings with, Ubi bene, ibi patria .’