Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Then he drank another glass of tea, told the story of the three pedlars who fall into the stream, laughed, wiped his face, rose to go, said, ‘On the other hand…’ and sat down again.

‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘I did happen to hear something, and I’m a curious person, what can I do, may it not be held against me. There is said to be a family, very, very bekovedik people, with a son, how should I put it, an only son, a pearl of a person.’

‘Who?’ asked Golde, but Abraham Singer would not have been so successful in his trade had he not had two particular abilities: hearing everything that might be useful to him, and ignoring everything that did not fit his plans.

‘But he’s supposed to be clever, so I have heard,’ he went on, ‘a real Talmud chochem. And a very practical person, too. Not like one of those Talmud students who can’t button up their trousers without first looking it up in a sefer.’

He started laughing, but then, very much to the relief of his listeners, quickly regained control of himself and went on talking.

‘He also has a parnooseh, a very good job, any Jewish child would be grateful for. One day he will take over his father’s business, and he already works hard in it, even though he’s so young.’

‘How old?’ asked Mimi, even though by tradition she should have left all the talking to her mother.

‘Yes,’ said Abraham Singer, ‘you hear such things when you travel a lot. But I don’t want to bore you. When your daughter is sensibly not yet thinking of marrying, why would you be interested in where someone was looking for a shidduch?’

‘Where?’ asked Golde. She had long been worried that she might have to marry Mimi abroad, knowing her only child among strangers, possibly so far away that she couldn’t even hold her newborn grandson in her arms…

‘Not that far,’ said Abraham Singer, and Golde sighed with relief.

‘Where?’ asked Mimi.

Even if one is not a shadchen, only a curious person who hears something here and picks up something there, one still has to live, and he who announces his secrets in the street, this much was clear to Golde, finds many buyers but no payers. She was already standing up to get the little crocheted bag in which she kept her housekeeping money out of the cupboard, but to her surprise Abraham Singer resolutely refused, he even said, ‘May my hand grow out of the grave if I accept anything from you!’ And then, while Golde chewed around on her lower lip and Mimi wiped her suddenly damp palms inconspicuously on her skirt, Singer admitted, bowing even lower than usual, if possible, a little lie, ‘may it not be held against me’. He had not come here by chance, he had been commissioned and paid. ‘What do our wise men say? Woman is made of man’s rib, and if your rib is missing, then off you go and find it.’ He had been asked to call in at the house because this young man didn’t want just any old bride but — heaven alone knew how he knew her — one in particular, who had to be called Miriam and Meijer and be his wife because otherwise he could never be happy his whole life long.

‘How old?’ asked Mimi.

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Where from?’ asked Golde.

‘Here in Endingen.’

‘Who?’

‘Pinchas Pomeranz,’ said Singer.

*

Even though autumn was already coming to an end, it had been another hot day. When Chanele had emptied the mop bucket and put the scrubber away, she took off her brown dress and, in chemise and petticoat, stood quite still. The back room, into which only a very small amount of light fell from the courtyard, through a small window placed high in the wall, was pleasantly cool. It smelled of spices whose names she didn’t know, of foreign places to which she would never travel. She ran her fingertips, as she had recently become accustomed to doing, gently over her face, from her hairline down her forehead to her nose, and it was as if she felt her touch not only on her skin but all through her body. She raised her arms above her head, her fingers interlocking, and pressed her head against her arm, first on one side, then on the other. The smell of her body mixed with the spice, a foreign land among many foreign lands. She moved her hips and stretched her arms still higher, it was not yet a dance, but she already sensed its rhythm in the distance, and she thought: ‘Mademoiselle Hanna…’

‘Sorry. I thought you’d finished.’

She hadn’t heard the door open. Janki stood there, one leg hesitantly outstretched, a swimmer testing the temperature of the water with the tip of his toe. He held a chair in each hand.

Chanele turned away, her arms in front of her chest, but Janki only laughed, a laugh that she could sense on her skin like her fingers a moment before, and said, ‘At Monsieur Delormes’ shop, I was never anything more to the customers than a clothes stand. You don’t have to hide from a clothes stand.’

He set the two chairs down, not against the wall, where they belonged, but in the middle of the room, and gripped Chanele by the shoulder.

She did not pull away. She let herself be turned around and led to the chairs that stood facing one another like two men who have stopped for a chat after the service in the square outside the synagogue. Then they both sat there, Janki in the flowery waistcoat that he had had the tailor Oggenfuss make from the leftovers of a very expensive fabric, Chanele in her petticoat, which was like a dress, indeed, but not one meant for men’s eyes.

‘This is fortuitous,’ said Janki, as if there were nothing at all special about the situation. ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a very long time.’

But then he seemed to forget his question, and just looked at Chanele.

‘It suits you,’ he said. ‘Only here…’ and he reached out his hand and touched Chanele right on the sensitive spot above her nose, ‘here you need to be more thorough.’

Chanele didn’t reply.

‘It’s strange,’ said Janki after a pause, ‘I’ve only just arrived here, that is to say: it’s more than half a year ago, but it feels as if it were yesterday. So much has happened, and so much has changed and yet — can you understand it? — I still have the feeling…’

His voice faded away as if it had got lost.

Chanele looked past Janki. On the shelf on the wall the boxes were stacked untidily on top of one another. They contained the button samples that Janki didn’t sell, but which he had borrowed from a haberdasher so he could give examples to his customers. They needed to be put in order, thought Chanele, perhaps according to material, a system needed to be introduced.

‘I will have a new chemise made for you,’ said Janki, ‘out of cambric. Everything one wears against the skin should be cambric.’

‘Mademoiselle Hanna,’ thought Chanele.

‘I have this feeling,’ said Janki, ‘I often find myself thinking about it… That is to say: it isn’t really a thought. It’s more… more of a feeling, in fact.’

Or according to colour. That was better. If you organised the buttons according to colour, you’d always have them all together, the ones that matched a fabric.

‘Can you understand that?’ said Janki. ‘No doubt I have years ahead of me, and yet… I don’t know why, but I always have to do everything very quickly.’

‘I don’t even know what day his birthday is,’ thought Chanele.

‘It’s meshuga,’ said Janki, ‘but I’ve decided to get married.’

There was a smell of cardamom, of cloves and of a new life.

‘Yes,’ said Janki, got up and pushed his chair against the wall. He was about to clear the second chair away as well, but Chanele just sat where she was. She grasped his outstretched hand, took both his hands, lifted her head with its new face and looked Janki in the eye for the first time.