Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘You two had a real adventure today,’ he said. Mimi started in alarm, because she was thinking of Madame Rosa, but her husband was bent over a slice of cold meat with such concentration that he didn’t notice.

‘At least I’ll have something to talk about at home in Baden,’ laughed Hinda.

‘But don’t exaggerate too much!’ For Mimi it was unimaginable that someone could pass on an experience without embellishments. ‘Otherwise they’ll stop you coming to see me.’

‘I hardly think Hinda lets people stop her doing anything very much,’ Pinchas said.

‘It really looked very dangerous. Imagine: our little Hinda and that huge man—’

‘He wasn’t that big,’ Hinda said.

‘—comes charging at us as if he’s about to rob us, with his hair dishevelled and those black, black eyes—’

‘Green eyes,’ said Hinda.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I know,’ said Hinda.

‘Perhaps I should go along to this congress as well,’ Pinchas considered. ‘Talk to a few people and write an article about it.’

‘Are you a shochet or a journalist?’

‘Both.’

‘Can I come along?’ asked Hinda.

‘To the congress?’

‘It might be quite interesting.’

‘ Certainement pas! ’ said Mimi. ‘That’s absolutely out of the question! I would reproach myself for the rest of my life if anything…’

The front doorbell rang in the corridor. Not twice, which according to local minhag would have meant a customer turning up when the shop was shut, after remembering something he absolutely needed from the butcher’s shop, but just once.

‘At this time of the evening?’ said Mimi.

‘Maybe Guttermann wants to know something. Or else it’s someone from the community.’ Pinchas who, say what one liked, was far too easily persuaded to perform his duty, had been elected to various committees, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that someone had dropped in unexpectedly at an inconvenient time to discuss a problem with him.

From outside came the sound of the maid thundering down the stairs to open the front door. The staff changed often in the Pomeranz household. Mimi wasn’t terribly successful at dealing with the staff, one day treating the young things like best friends, and then being unnecessarily strict with them the day after. The ‘speciality of the month’, as Pinchas called each incumbent, was called Regula, and was of rather limited intelligence.

‘Frau Pomeranz,’ she said, when she came into the dining room — and Mimi had dinned it into her a thousand times! — without knocking. ‘There’s a man here.’

‘What sort of man?’

‘I don’t know him,’ Regula said as if that was an end to the matter.

‘Then please ask him his name.’

‘As you wish, Frau Pomeranz.’ Pinchas had only to dart a glance at his wife to know that Regula too would not remain long in her job.

‘It’s so hard to find good staff,’ said Mimi. ‘You have no idea, Hinda.’

‘I’ve asked him now,’ said Regula, coming back into the room.

‘And?’

‘I didn’t catch his name,’ Regula said. ‘It’s something foreign.’

‘Then please ask the gentleman for his visiting card.’

‘Perhaps it would be better if I just…’ said Pinchas and was about to get to his feet. But Mimi wouldn’t let him.

‘How is she to learn if we always do her job for her?’

‘He says he hasn’t got a visiting card,’ Regula said a few moments later.

‘Then give him a sheet of paper, and tell him to write his name on it.’ Things were never as complicated as this in the social novels that Mimi always liked to read.

After a further short exchange — Regula asked in all seriousness where she could find some paper, when she dusted in the study every day! — the improvised visiting card lay on the table in front of Pinchas. ‘It’s not even such a difficult name,’ he said.

‘But it is foreign,’ Regula insisted. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’

‘Zalman Kamionker,’ Pinchas read. ‘Do you know who that is?

‘Probably a shnorrer. Regula, does he look like a shnorrer?’

Regula didn’t know what a shnorrer was.

‘We can play this out all evening,’ said Pinchas and stood up. ‘But perhaps there’s another, easier way. Regula, bring the gentleman in.’

‘I don’t think he is a gentleman,’ Regula said. ‘He looks more like a man.’ And she went out to fetch the gentleman, or the man.

‘Kamionker,’ Pinchas repeated thoughtfully. ‘Where can I have heard that name before?’

‘In Galicia.’

It certainly wasn’t a gentleman who had come into the room. He wasn’t even holding a hat, just a greasy leather cap.

‘That’s him!’ said Mimi, pointing an accusatory hand. ‘The man from the Palm Garden.’

‘Yes,’ said Hinda. ‘That’s him.’

‘The musician gave me the address,’ Zalman Kamionker explained, without the slightest embarrassment. He spoke German in a curious Swabian accent, mixed with scraps of Yiddish. ‘The klezmer, you know the one. The one who was standing by your table. He didn’t want to let me have it, but I shook him. I didn’t really shake him, don’t worry, I just told him I would shake him. I’m a peaceful person.’

‘That’s not how it looked this afternoon,’ Mimi said severely.

‘There are times when words aren’t quite enough. What is one to do?’

He had rough shoes on and his trousers had been darned, but he stood there in the room quite at his ease, legs splayed like a sailor’s, solid on his two feet and prepared for any storm that might come his way. He had put his cap back on and buried his hands in his trouser pockets, not out of embarrassment, but like a craftsman who only unpacks his tools when he needs them. He didn’t seem bothered that they were all staring at him, he just looked back with friendly interest, from Hinda to Mimi, from Mimi to Pinchas and back to Hinda, and then said: ‘Nice place you have here.’ It was an observation, not a compliment.

‘So you’re…?’ Pinchas began.

‘Guilty as charged,’ said Zalman Kamionker and didn’t look guilty in the slightest. ‘I didn’t start the brawl, but neither did I run away. Such things happen. What’s a person to do? That’s how it is in politics.’

‘I don’t think I find this way of conducting political debates very correct,’ said Pinchas.

‘Me neither. I am, as I said, a peaceful man. That’s why I came to apologise again. To Frau Pomeranz and to her lovely daughter.’

‘She isn’t my daughter.’

‘Of course not,’ said Zalman Kamionker and took a hand from his pocket to strike himself on the forehead. ‘Where is my seichel? You’re far too young to have such a grown-up daughter.’

‘ Il fait des compliments ,’ Mimi said, but was still flattered.

‘This is our niece,’ Pinchas explained, although strictly speaking it wasn’t true. ‘Fräulein Hinda Meijer from Baden.’

‘Fräulein Hinda,’ said Zalman Kamionker. He put a hand on his heart in an old-fashioned gesture and bowed. ‘Will you accept my apology?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Hinda said dismissively, feeling her face suddenly becoming very hot. ‘I’m not going to blush,’ she thought. ‘I’m not Arthur.’

Kamionker seemed not to have noticed anything. He turned to Mimi with the same formal gesture — he had the quality of only ever paying his full attention to one person at a time, as if that person were at that moment the only one in the world — and asked: ‘And you, Frau Pomeranz? Are you moichel too?’

‘You tore her dress,’ Aunt Mimi said, trying to look severe.

‘It can’t have been a really good stitch.’ The young man laughed, showing big teeth. ‘But never mind. Give me the dress and I’ll do a double cap stitch, an elephant could pull on it and it wouldn’t tear.’