Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Mimi hadn’t wanted to leave, not really. She had only come out with all those things because she’d felt sorry for Pinchas for a moment, because she didn’t want to leave him standing in the street like that. If you’ve started a book, you don’t set it down mid-chapter. And if you really thought about it, she even owed Pinchas something, Janki owed him something and she was Janki’s fiancée so she had her obligation. Yes, it really was a proper obligation. If Pinchas hadn’t written that article, which was much more dextrous and imaginative than anyone would have thought him capable of, Janki might have been an assistant to tailor Oggenfuss right now, and wouldn’t have been able to think of marriage. Of course, Janki wouldn’t be pleased by what she’d done, but he didn’t need to find out, and if he did, well, then he needed to learn from the start that a Mimi Meijer would not be ordered around by him like that, she had her own head, she could think for herself, after all she was the daughter of the respected Salomon Meijer and brought with her a nedinye that no one needed to be ashamed of.

There was no one else on the road in Endingen, at least not in the Jewish part of the village. At around this time most people were asleep, crushed by the weight of the heavy Sabbath dinner. Only later, when the men went back to the synagogue for Mincha, would the women visit one another to ruddel, to swap the latest gossip and rumours. What was wrong with meeting a girlfriend, a goyish girlfriend, fair enough, but is a girlfriend not a girlfriend? What was so wrong about sitting with her in a gazebo for half an hour, when there was so much to talk about and discuss before a wedding? Whose business was it if one took the path along the river and then — just because it was closer, why else — forced one’s way through a hedge in one’s fine dress?

Pinchas was already sitting there. He leapt up when he saw Mimi coming, he was about to dash towards her, but stumbled over the single step that led into the gazebo. His black Shabbos hat rolled to her feet, and as they both bent down for it at the same time, their heads were very close to one another for a moment.

‘Here,’ said Mimi and handed him the hat.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Mimi was almost two heads smaller than Pinchas, and when she looked up at him now, he seemed to tower above the low roof of the gazebo. ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Pinchas. ‘Let’s do that.’

The entrance to the bower was more than wide enough for two people, but Pinchas still took a step backwards, it wasn’t clear whether he was politely letting her walk ahead, or whether he was afraid of touching her.

Left over from a patriotic celebration or some Italian party or other, ribbons with brightly printed paper flags, already slightly faded were strung below the roof of the gazebo, and a few wind-battered Chinese lanterns hung there too. Mimi was reminded of the brightly decorated Tabernacle in which they had sat only two weeks before.

Pinchas rubbed his hat with his sleeve, even though it wasn’t dusty in the slightest. At the same time he wiggled his tongue in the gap in his teeth like a trumpeter going through a difficult piece in his head before putting the instrument to his lips.

‘So,’ said Mimi, when Pinchas showed no sign of starting the conversation. ‘I came.’

‘I didn’t expect you to,’ said Pinchas.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ Mimi threw her curls out of her forehead in a playful sulk, a gesture which, and she had tried it in front of the mirror on more than one occasion, suited her very well.

‘No, I do,’ said Pinchas quickly, ‘of course. But…’ The tongue was now playing prestissimo in the gap. ‘I thought perhaps you didn’t want to hear what I… I mean: it’s not seemly.’

‘What isn’t seemly?’

‘For me to… When you and Janki…’

‘So am I not allowed to talk to anyone any more?’

‘Talk, of course. But…’ When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple moved up and down at least an inch and a half. Anne-Kathrin, who knew such things or claimed to, had once claimed that men with conspicuous Adam’s apples were particularly tender. The purest nonsense, of course. It was easy to claim assert something that you could never try out or put to the test. Pinchas of all people.

‘You’re laughing at me,’ said Pinchas.

‘Not at all.’

‘You smiled.’

‘Don’t you like that?’

It was like a game. Pinchas threw her the balls, and she caught them or batted them back, just as she wanted. There were little boys in the village who could make their hoops dance in the street, in a straight line or a circle, and barely had to use their whips. That was exactly what Mimi was like right then.

‘Don’t you like it?’ she said again.

‘I do. I like everything about you. You’re…’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve tried to tell you before. You’re beautiful. Like a herd of…’

‘Oxen, I know.’

‘Goats.’

‘Not any better.’

‘Rashi says King Solomon…’

‘Is this turning into a lesson?’

‘I just wanted to…’

‘Yes?’

‘I just wanted to have told you once.’

‘What?’

Pinchas stared at the paper flags with the faded Canton crests, as if there could be nothing more fascinating than the bears of Bern or the chamois of Graubünden. As he did so he murmured something, so quietly that Mimi couldn’t make out the words.

‘Well?’

‘I love you, Miriam,’ said Pinchas.

‘What?’

‘I wanted to have said it once. Just once. I have loved you. Really. You will marry your Janki and I will marry some woman that Abraham Singer will find for me, but at least I’ve told you. I would have loved you.’

There was a laugh that one was supposed to laugh at such moments, ‘pearly’, it is called in the books, and Mimi had always liked the word. But now, when it would have been appropriate, she couldn’t do it.

‘Are you crying?’ asked Pinchas.

‘Of course not,’ said Mimi.

A gust of wind rustled the flags as if they had something important to whisper to them.

‘And now?’ asked Mimi.

‘It will soon be time for Mincha,’ said Pinchas. ‘I should…’ But he made no move to get up.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mimi.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

And then, because it was the last time, because Pinchas looked so unhappy, because she’d read so many novels, for one reason and for every possible reason and for none, because Janki demanded such impossible things of her, because it was autumn, because she would soon be a married woman, with an apartment of her own and a sheitel and a bunch of keys, because she was furious and surprised and touched, for whatever reason, she reached out her arm and drew Pinchas’s head to her and pursed her lips and…

‘So that’s how it is,’ said Janki.

He had run after her because Chanele had wanted him to. He had been in such confusion that he would have done anything Chanele had asked of him, that is: almost anything. You have to remain sensible and you can’t lose sight of important concerns. He had wanted to set Mimi’s head straight, perhaps in fact using the example of Chanele, who understood that some things were possible and some were not. He had wanted to make up with Mimi, they were engaged after all, and he had heard Monsieur Delormes say often enough, ‘As a business relationship begins, so it usually remains.’

He hadn’t come creeping after her, he hadn’t hidden himself. That hadn’t been necessary, either, because Mimi didn’t turn around once, she walked through the narrow alleyways at a quick, defiant trot. At first he had thought she just wanted to be alone, as he himself had on the day the shop opened — less than half a year had passed since then, and it seemed so long ago. He had thought she was just after a bit of peace and quiet, just as he had taken the path via the Nussbaumener Hörnlio to think everything through once more, and it struck him as a good sign that she wanted to think about things again. But then it had quickly become apparent the she had a predetermined destination in mind. She was hurrying not away from something, but towards something.