Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

The journey had never been so quick. He must, without noticing, almost have been running, because when he saw the roofs of the village in front of him he was out of breath. He tried to collect himself, to find a posture corresponding to his decision, he used his walking stick again and even limped a little. By the time he arrived in front of the house with the two doors, he was Jean Meijer once more, a matter-of-fact businessman who knew how to make decisions and, if necessary, correct mistakes.

The front door was locked, and no one responded to his knocking.

Salomon was probably out and about doing business, Golde would be drinking coffee somewhere, at Picard or Wyler, and complaining, full of anticipatory joy, about the upheavals of the imminent wedding, and Mimi would either be sitting at Anne-Kathrin’s, or would have found an illustration in the latest Journal des Modes that she urgently needed to show the tailor. But Chanele, surely Chanele must be at home!

Janki hammered on the door until Frau Oggenfuss poked her head disapprovingly out of a window on her half of the house. When she recognised Janki, she smiled politely, because since he had become not only a customer, but also a draper, she had the greatest respect for him ‘All flown away,’ she called. ‘Can I do anything for you?’

No, Frau Oggenfuss couldn’t do anything for him.

He found Chanele at Red Moische’s. He could see them through the window in the door, standing by the barrel of pickled gherkins. The gherkins were sold by the piece and not by weight, and Chanele was checking with a severe expression on her face whether Moische wasn’t taking unnecessarily small specimens out of the container for her.

She was wearing the brown dress that had hung on its hanger in the backroom of the drapery store for so long. The white cambric trimmings could only be seen at the sleeves, because the weather was cooler now, and Chanele had put a dark blue scarf around her neck. ‘The colours don’t go well together,’ Janki thought and noticed without surprise that this was the thought of an owner, not an observer.

He walked up and down outside the shop, paused now and then and threw his head back as if to etch on his memory the excessively long sign on the shop. General Goods and Grocery Store Moses Bollag , it said, and next to it, in a space far-sightedly set aside for the purpose, but in different writing: & Sons .

Chanele was now standing at the counter, and seemed to be haggling over something. Red Moische, known for his pettiness, was shaking his head and using, economical as he was, the same movement to scratch his head. His hair was no longer quite as red as it must have been in his youth.

There was not much to look at in the narrow alley, but Janki studied every door-arch, every ledge, every flowerpot on a windowsill. What was taking Chanele so long? They now had, he’d seen his customers with them, pocket watches for women. Perhaps one needed to… ‘One thing at a time, Janki,’ he interrupted himself. ‘One thing at a time.’

Red Moische, you could clearly tell from his slumped shoulders, even through the dirty window, had had to give in. He threw a handful of — what was that? Corks? — into Chanele’s shopping basket and turned very ungraciously away. Chanele hung her basket over her arm. Janki took three very quick steps away from the door. And then they were facing one another.

‘What do you need corks for?’ asked Janki. It wasn’t at all what he had intended to say, it had just slipped out.

‘To rub the cutlery to stop it getting rusty,’ said Chanele.

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Janki.

‘There’s lots you don’t know.’

She didn’t seem surprised to see him, or at least she didn’t ask any questions. She set off for home, and let him walk beside her.

‘Shall I carry your basket?’ asked Janki.

‘I would never ask that of a war invalid.’

‘I need to talk to you,’ said Janki.

‘If you need to, you need to.’

‘Couldn’t we…?’

‘You want to talk, I don’t.’

Chanele didn’t slow down at all. And so he had to tell her in a great rush about his big decision, about the mistake that he had only just recognised — ‘But it isn’t too late to correct it!’ — he had to divulge his reflections right there in the middle of the alley, that in the end what mattered was not the dowry, but that someone knew how to muck in, he had to jump over a puddle that hadn’t quite dried, as he explained to her that Mimi loved someone else anyway — ‘She kissed him in front of my very eyes!’ — and that it would therefore be more correct if, when things still hadn’t been made official, he followed logic to its conclusion and…

He hadn’t finished his sentence when they arrived at the front door and Chanele stopped for the first time.

‘What are you trying to tell me?’ she asked, as if he hadn’t been talking away at her all that time.

‘Will you marry me?’

Chanele’s only reaction was to switch the heavy basket from one arm to the other. ‘ Certainement pas , Monsieur Jean,’ she said and disappeared into the house.

If Janki actually had been in Sedan, amidst the roar of the cannon and the hail of the bullets, he wouldn’t have needed as much courage as he did for his conversation with Salomon. It was the fear of Salomon’s reaction, of course, but above all he needed the courage for himself. He had wanted to switch from one ship to another, while he was still safely in the harbour, and now there was no second ship for him to switch to, and he still had to get out, that much was clear to him, he had to jump into the water and swim and he didn’t even know where the shore was.

Salomon, the cattle-trader, didn’t bat an eyelid, took a pinch of tobacco, sneezed, just drummed his fingers on the table and tried to read Janki’s face.

‘We’d agreed twelve thousand,’ he said.

‘It isn’t about the money.’

Salomon went on drumming. In his experience it was always about the money.

‘Is there a reason?’ he asked.

Janki nodded.

‘Nu?’

‘I would rather not talk about it.’

‘Mimi!’ At lots of cattle markets Salomon had learned to be very noisy without making much of an effort. His massive body didn’t move, his eyes remained fixed on Janki and his fingers went on drumming, without losing their rhythm. But in the other half of the house Frau Oggenfuss looked at her husband and said, ‘There’s fire in the roof.’

Mimi didn’t allow herself any of the hesitations with which she otherwise liked to inflate her own importance a little, but a moment later she was standing in the room.

‘Your chossen wants to cancel the chuppah. Do you know why?’

‘I know why,’ said Mimi.

‘You don’t know,’ thought Janki.

‘Do you want to tell me?’

Mimi shook her head.

Salomon ran his fingers through his whiskers, apparently looking for something that he’d lost and urgently needed to find. Mimi and Janki stood there and didn’t look at one another.

‘Nu,’ said Salomon at last. And it meant: ‘What we have here is a shlimazl, but at least no one has died.’

‘I’m going to find myself a flat in Baden,’ said Janki. ‘That will be better.’

‘Yes,’ said Salomon. ‘That will be better.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Janki.

No one took the hand that he extended, so he walked in silence to the door.

‘You forgot your stick,’ said Salomon. ‘And your limp.’

Only now did Mimi start to cry.

Abraham Singer giggled.

He was sitting in the kitchen of Sarah Pomeranz, and had had three pieces of her famous marble cake — ‘The best I have ever put in my mouth, may all my teeth fall out if I tell a lie!’ — had reported on a birth in Neu-Breisach and a funeral in Strasbourg, had told all his stories, about the coachman whose horse is stolen, and about the three pedlars who fall in the stream, and then, after all the usual detours, had actually come round to the actual reason for his visit, and had at that precise moment begun to laugh for no reason at all. He had been giggling so helplessly for several minutes now that his little body just shook, and coughed crumbs of marble cake into his checked handkerchief.