Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘I have wanted to meet you for a long time.’ Malka Grünfeld had put on this sentence along with her chain of pearls and high-buttoned gloves, and found that in its affable condescension it suited her down to the ground.

‘Madame Meijer, I’m sure you know, my dear Malka,’ said Mimi, repeatedly putting a smile between the words like a piece of punctuation, ‘is the wife of Janki Meijer, who runs the French Drapery and the Modern Emporium in Baden.’

Malka Grünfeld smiled back just as artificially. ‘I have heard that one can find some very nice things there.’

‘Quite nice for a provincial backwater like Baden,’ that meant.

‘And in what field does your husband work?’ Chanele asked. She had only wanted to make polite conversation, but Malka Grünfeld threw back her head and was insulted. She was used to people knowing who she was.

You would have had to know Mimi very well to notice that she was smiling contentedly.

‘Shall I go now?’ asked Regula, who had put her parcel down on one of the tables.

‘Do that, my child.’ When she put her mind to it, Mimi could be at least as aristocratic as any nouveau riche Association President’s wife. ‘And see to it that you make some progress with the silver polishing. Is it not énervant?’ she added, turning to Malka. ‘By the time you’ve polished the last pieces, the first are always dirty again.’

‘We have silver cutlery as well,’ that meant. ‘And we’ve had it longer than you.’

Then the other ladies had to be greeted, with Mimi mentioning the Drapery Store and the Emporium every time an introduction was made. The better sort of people met in the Hachnasat Kallah Association to confirm to one another through demonstrative benevolence that they were also in fact superior. Chanele did not really know what to say in such society, so she created precisely the detached impression that Mimi would have wished.

‘That is Delphine Kahn,’ said Mimi, and led Chanele to a severe looking woman who wore her high-corseted bosom before her like a suit of armour. ‘You will have heard of Kahn & Co. The biggest silk importers in the country. The Kahns have a very charming son, Siegfried is his name, a very promising future lawyer. I think your daughter Hinda once met him by chance.’

If Hinda had been there, she would immediately have noticed the similarity between mother and son. Frau Kahn too had the habit of moving her head back and forth like a neckless owl. A pair of spectacles with round lenses further intensified the impression.

‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Madame Meijer.’ She couldn’t have uttered the phrase more precisely with an etiquette guide in front of her.

‘Frau Kahn also has a very charming daughter,’ Mimi said, and nudged Chanele with her knee in a very unladylike manner.

‘She is here,’ said the owl. ‘My Mina is such a good child that she wouldn’t dream of missing an opportunity to be present at a charitable event. I’m always telling her, “Young as you are, you don’t need to worry about such things!” — but it’s like talking to a wall. Over there — you see how hard she’s working?’

The daughter of the biggest silk importing business was easy to spot among the volunteers. A skinny girl, younger than all the others, was folding clothes at one of the tables. In her concentration she had bent her head so far forward that her long black hair hid her face like a widow’s veil. Chanele could only see that she wore glasses, like her mother. Her movements showed that indecisive caution that arises either out of short-sightedness or out of a lack of confidence. There didn’t seem to be anything really striking about her, but when she carried a stack of folded clothes to the laundry baskets, she seemed to swing a stiff right leg forwards in a semicircle with each step she took, and her body swung back and forth in counterbalance, as if she were drunk.

‘Polio,’ said Frau Kahn. ‘The poor child has to wear a metal brace.’

When all the clothes were sorted and all the comments on them passed — on the subject of Mimi’s donation, everyone agreed that she displayed both good taste and a tendency to wasteful frivolity — liqueurs and cakes were passed around, a generous and unanimously applauded donation from the esteemed President. The seating arrangement at the two long tables seemed to happen quite naturally, but followed strict rules of rank and age, with Zippora Meisels and Malka Grünfeld naturally holding court in the middle. Chanele, the unadorned simplicity of whose dress was interpreted, perfectly in line with Mimi’s plan, as the whim of a wealthy woman who doesn’t need to show off, was given the seat of honour beside the president, and pulled the resisting Mina Kahn down onto the chair beside her.

‘Perhaps I should really…’ the girl began to protest, but she wasn’t used to contradicting people.

Seen from close to, Mina had an unusually interesting face which, like the optical illusions that Arthur collected with such enthusiasm, seemed to tell a quite different story from one glance to the next. At one moment Mina was an intimidated girl who hardly dared look up from the floor, and a moment later an adult woman who had had to experience far too much already.

‘Perhaps it’s because of her illness,’ Chanele though. ‘Suffering can make you old. Or childish.’

They talked about unimportant things, passing the obligatory trivia to one another, as one passes salt or the bread basket at the dinner table. Only one thing that Mina said made Chanele prick her ears up. ‘Do you sometimes have the feeling,’ she asked out of nowhere, ‘that people only talk so they don’t have to listen?’

The general chat meandered like a river without waterfalls, through the most varied subjects, and landed at last with the plebiscite which was due that summer.

‘What will your Pinchas do,’ Mimi was asked, ‘if shechita is banned in Switzerland?’

‘He’s quite sure that the initiative will not be passed. Shechita is one of the most painless methods of slaughtering that there are. If one only explains that sensibly to people…’

‘Sensibly?’ Zippora Meisels grimly shook her head with its flaming red wig. ‘It would be the first time reason had achieved anything against rish’es.’

A whole row of wigs was seen to nod thoughtfully. Rish’es, the collective word for every kind of anti-Jewishness, is always a convincing argument.

‘My husband’s business friends’, Malka Grünfeld said with the pride of a woman for whom it always comes as a pleasant surprise that her husband even has any business friends, ‘all assure him that they will vote against the plebiscite.’

‘Initiative,’ a voice corrected her. ‘It’s an initiative.’

‘It doesn’t matter what it’s called,’ Malka said loftily. ‘The matter will be rejected in any case.’

‘If people had to state their opinion publicly, perhaps.’ Mina had so far only spoken when she was spoken to, and the surprised reactions clearly showed that in this particular circle they did not like it when unexperienced young things opened their mouths. Nonetheless Mina went on, although she avoided looking anyone in the eye. ‘But such a vote is not public. You just have to put a Yes or a No on your piece of paper and no one sees what they throw into the urn.’

‘My husband’s business partners…’ Malka Grünfeld began again.

‘One must take things as they are,’ Mina said, actually interrupting the president of the Hachnasat Kallah Association. ‘There’s no point in pretending.’

‘Quite right!’ said Chanele, so loudly that everyone looked at her. Then she apologised to the ladies because she absolutely couldn’t miss the train to Baden.