Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

Chanele had stopped in the doorway. A few of the men at the table had their heads turned towards her, but looked in such a way that any sign of perception glided over her, giving her the confusing sensation of being invisible. It was some time before anyone noticed her. Two men, both similarly tall and gaunt, like brothers, came towards, stopped close in front of her and looked at her with such harmless curiosity, such childish shamelessness, that Chanele couldn’t help smiling at them.

‘Hello,’ she said and then, when no reaction was forthcoming, she rummaged through her memory for one of the few French words she had picked up from Mimi: ‘Bonjour’.

The men looked at her with as much amazement as if she had performed a circus trick for them. A third man, the strange figure in the tailcoat, hurried over on tripping feet and tried to push the two others aside. They let him do so, but kept pushing their way over again as if attracted by a magnet.

‘You’re a woman,’ said the man in the tailcoat.

‘That’s true,’ said Chanele.

‘I thought so,’ said the man, as satisfied as a scientist whose experiment has proved a disputed theory. He turned to the two curious men and explained in the tone of a museum curator presenting the treasures of his collection to some visitors: ‘She’s a woman.’

The two men stood there wide-eyed. Some drool fell from the corner of one of the men’s mouths.

‘You don’t belong here,’ said the man in the tailcoat. ‘Women are on the other side.’

‘I’m visiting.’

With a reproachful shake of his head the man pushed the others a few steps back and explained to them, ‘She’s visiting.’

‘I’m looking for…’ Chanele began, but the man with the bare torso raised his hand majestically. Under the armpit of the tailcoat, where the seam had come apart, a big hole gaped.

‘I know who you’re looking for,’ said the man. ‘Of course I do. People often come here looking for me. But I’m here incognito.’ In an exaggerated pantomime he looked around just to be sure, and then winked at Chanele.

‘I’m not looking for you.’

The man nodded in agreement, as if she had said exactly the right thing, winked at her again and explained to the two importunate onlookers, ‘She isn’t looking for me.’ And he added with a triumphant giggle, ‘She didn’t recognise me.’

In the meantime they had been joined by a fourth man. He was poorly dressed, with a pair of trousers several sizes to big for him, which he had tied together with binding twine, and a jacket that was missing all its buttons. Before Chanele could dodge him, he had gripped her by the upper arms, pulled her to him and kissed her on the forehead. He smelled like old potatoes.

‘I have blessed you,’ the man said. ‘Now nothing more can happen to you.’ He wiped his hands thoroughly on his trousers for a long time and walked away again.

The two curious men pushed closer, and the man in the tailcoat pushed them away. ‘You’re a woman,’ he said to Chanele. ‘That’s what I thought.’

On either side of each window hung heavy, drawn night-blue curtains. From behind one of them a man who had been hiding there stepped forward.

A man in a once-white doctor’s overall.

He was old, at least as old as Salomon, and Chanele saw nothing familiar about him. His face had deep wrinkles like those that come from hunger or from many tears, and his cheeks were covered with stubble. He had covered the thin strands of his hair with a white linen cap, of the kind that men wore to service on high feast days. He was barefoot. Below the seam of his coat, thin calves could be seen.

The man was now standing right below the window, and the bright light delineated the outlines of a thin old man’s body.

He was ugly.

And he was a complete stranger to Chanele.

None the less, without thinking, and as if her legs had a will of their own, she walked up to him. She just pushed the two curious men aside. There was no sign now of the man in the tailcoat.

Walked up to him.

He saw her coming, and on his face, that lived-in, broken, old face, the emotions alternated as quickly as the light changes when a wind lashes scraps of cloud past the sun. Surprise. Amazement. Disbelief.

And love.

He stretched out his hand, not like an old man looking for support, but like a young man who can be a support to others, he stretched out his hand to her, a hand covered with brownish patches, so that she had no option but to hold out her own, and he gripped it, his skin like paper, like the pages of an old book that falls to bits when you read it, took her fingers between his own, rubbed them with thumb and forefinger to see if there was really something there, if there was really someone there, opened his mouth, moved his lips, soundless at first, the way one speaks a prayer or a magic spell, gulped and said in a voice full of tenderness and full of fear, said with an old, young voice, ‘Sarah, my darling, why are you not in bed? You should lie down.’

And then, startled by his own words, he let go of Chanele and darted back as if he had burned himself on her. He put his hands side by side, palms up and fingers bent, as if drawing water from a well, lifted them very slowly to his face and covered his eyes with them.

She still hadn’t even seen what colour they were.

He stood quite still for an endless minute. Then he began to rock his torso back and forth, at first quite undiscernibly, then faster and faster, he rocked, he shockelled, began to hum, a prayer without words that was part of no service and no feast day, assembled from scraps of melodies, from all nigunim and none, moved his head back and forth as if someone had gripped it and was forcing it to move, pressed the balls of his hands into his eye sockets, never wanted to see anything again after he had seen Chanele, and then, after a minute, after an hour, he became calmer, he stopped humming, stopped shockelling, slowly lowered his hands and splayed his fingers in front of his eyes as little children do when playing their favourite game of making the world disappear and reappear, and asked very quietly, in an almost inaudible voice full of disbelieving hope, ‘Sarah?’

‘I’m not Sarah.’ Chanele didn’t know if she’d said it or only thought it.

Either way, he had heard. He reached his arm out towards her, a thin branch in a white sleeve, moved his hand back and forth, as if to wave away steam or perhaps a ghost, approached her forehead very slowly, the contact, when it came at last, as tender as when one bumps into a cobweb on a dark staircase, stroked her forehead, her temples, ran his hands along her eyebrows, that straight line along the edges of her nose, moved back and forth, Chanele had never stroked herself more tenderly there, and a smile crossed his face, a loving, enchanted, young smile that sat on his wrinkled face like a colourful painted mask. ‘You’re Sarah,’ he said. ‘No one has such beautiful eyebrows as you.’

Chanele was forty-one years old and only now did she know what her mother’s name had been.

His hand was on her cheek now, it had found its place there like a butterfly on its final flight. She moved her head very slowly up and down. It could have been a nod, it could have been assent to what was happening to her, but perhaps too it was just the desire to be stroked by this hand.

‘Are you well?’ he asked, and answered his own question. ‘You are well, my darling. The sun is shining, even though it’s January.’

She was born in January.

The smell he gave off was not pleasant. It was a smell of illness, of decay. A smell of destruction.

Behind her back the man with the broom handle marched back and forth. Back and forth.

‘Your time will soon come,’ said the old man. His eyes were directed at her, but she had the feeling that he was talking to someone very different. ‘Everything will be as it must be,’ he said. ‘Everything will be fine. If it’s a boy we’ll call him Nathan. After your father.’