Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

She could just come along, Chanele said, but at first Mimi didn’t want to let her. Chanele was certainly not dressed for such an occasion, and when shadchening the first impression was often crucial. People in Zurich were aware of Janki’s successful business deals, but Chanele herself knew most of them only from hearsay, and if she turned up in a dress, that… She didn’t want to be mean, she understood that with three children and a shop you didn’t have time to pay proper attention to your wardrobe, although it wouldn’t have done anyone any harm to be elegant.

Chanele refused to accept these reservations, and in the end Mimi, not unwillingly, allowed herself to be persuaded. But she demanded categorically that Chanele change her clothes, there were enough dresses there and something was bound to suit her. Chanele resisted the idea of changing, after all it wasn’t Purim, and it didn’t say anywhere in the Shulchan Orech that as a future mother-in-law you had to be got up like a maypole. Then Mimi had pulled out for her a cream satin afternoon dress from the pile that still lay on the bed, and a petticoat of starched taffeta with plissée flounces, and it was only the fact that the skirt was quite plainly far too wide around the waist that made Mimi relent. As a girl Chanele had been able to wear Mimi’s cast-off clothes without altering so much as a stitch, but recently, in spite of the best corsets, Frau Pomeranz had become somewhat matronly. Still, at least she could still do this, she quickly offered Chanele the hat that she would have lent her to go with the dress, a city model that Mimi herself had never worn, with a brightly coloured ostrich feather that hung delicately over one’s shoulder.

‘But there’s one thing I must insist on,’ she said as she put the hat carefully back in its box, ‘if you really are determined to come as you are, then you should talk very little and on no account are you to be polite.’ Chanele, she explained to her startled companion, was after all a woman from a wealthy business household, and that was exactly how she would have to appear. ‘If you think you’re too refined for them, they’ll all want to be involved with you.’

For herself Mimi chose an inconspicuous pale blue dress, very slightly enhanced with a few decorative buttons of carved mother of pearl. She was only in the background today, she thought; Chanele would have to make the big impression, that was what counted in such situations. To hear her lecture like this one might have thought she had become the successor to Abraham Singer, and whole hordes of young couples owed their happiness only to her intervention.

She pulled two more dresses from the pile, the maroon one with the cul de Paris and a dark blue one with slightly worn velvet buttons, those were the ones she wanted to sacrifice to the good cause. Regula was to bring the dresses down to them, no, they would certainly not just carry them down in their arms, even though it wasn’t far to the synagogue, certainly not, in that case she would tolerate no objection, such an appearance would create completely the wrong impression.

Hinda would have liked to go too, out of pure curiosity and even though she had no idea what Chanele and Aunt Mimi had in mind. Mimi brusquely rejected the idea. What was it that Golde, who knew lots of Jewish proverbs, had liked to say? ‘If you want to sell a rooster, you don’t go to market with a goose as well.’

On the way there Mimi held her head very high, as if the servant with the big parcel wrapped in pressing cloth were only walking behind her completely by chance. She even forced a driver to rein his horses violently in by walking right in front of his cart without looking to left or right. He went on swearing at her long after she had turned into the Löwenstrasse.

Because of the hot weather the doors of the synagogue were open. The shrill soprano of Frau Goldschmidt, the synagogue choir soloist, mixed with the sound of carriages and passers-by. She was rehearsing for Shavuot: the two women recognised — by the words, if not by the unfamiliar melody — the songs that accompany the bringing out of the Torah. At the ‘Raumamu’ she fluffed her notes twice in a row.

‘That is the reason why Pinchas is seriously thinking of leaving the community,’ said Mimi.

‘Because she sings so badly?’

‘Because of all these innovations in recent times. Women in the chorus and a harmonium. They’re talking about having a secession community like the one they have in Frankfurt.’

They entered the synagogue building through the side entrance on Nüschelerstrasse. The small hall served every possible purpose; there one could offer the community the traditional Kiddush after a bar mitzvah or hold the annual general meetings of the many social and charitable associations, whereby these two functions could be pleasantly combined. Today the tables were pushed together into two long rows at an angle to one another, at which volunteer helpers were sorting through the donated items of clothing. Most of them were what Mimi, with French discretion, liked to call ne plus vraiment jeunes , generously ignoring the fact that the women she so described were no older than she was herself. There is a stage in the lives of respectable bourgeois ladies when the children no longer make demands on their time all around the clock, when the well-oiled machine of the household produces clean washing and regular meals all by itself, and one has enough time and energy left over to devote it to culture, superstition or philanthropy. And gossip, of course. The practised eyes of the well-to-do ladies read the most detailed information from the donor, her generosity and her fashionable taste, and as their sharp-tongued commentaries were generally directed against absent friends, the Hachnasat Kallah Association never had the slightest trouble recruiting enough honorary workers.

The highest-ranking of the ladies present was Zippora Meisels, the widow of a former community president, who was known on the quiet as ‘the young old woman’ because in spite of her advanced years she could not be deterred from wearing a Titian-red sheitel. The youthful hair colour and the artfully curled hair contrasted with the sharp outlines of her weathered face in a ridiculous way. Even though she unusually had no official function in this association, she had got hold of the best seat, and sat precisely where the two rows of tables met at an obtuse angle, and from where one could not only follow all the conversations but also keep an eye on the door to the hall. Consequently she was the first to spot Mimi and Chanele. When she saw Regula coming in behind them with her parcel of clothing, she ironically raised her eyebrows — ‘We’re very elegant today!’ — giving her face a clownish appearance: she had painted the eyebrows on her face herself, and not quite matched the line of thinning hairs.

Malka Grünfeld, with whom she had just been talking, followed her gaze, apologised and went to meet the two new arrivals with outstretched arms. Frau Grünfeld was the president of the Association, a position that she owed not so much to her popularity as to a large donation from her husband, who had recently made himself rich by speculating on railway shares. Malka who for many years, as Mimi knew only too well, always bought the very cheapest pieces of Shabbos roast, now gave herself aristocratic airs and, if she honoured an occasion with her presence, always dragged a whole host of getzines-leckers behind her like a train.

‘My dear!’ she said in the singsong voice she had adopted as a wealthy woman. ‘How nice that you found your way here at last.’

‘You’re late,’ that meant, and, ‘I’m not used to being kept waiting.’

‘I was held up, pardonnez-moi .’ Mimi knew that Malka spoke no French, and was discreetly referring to that shortcoming. ‘I had a surprise visit from Baden. May I introduce you? Frau Grünfeld, Madame Meijer.’