Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

‘You’re going…?’ The stammer was threateningly close. ‘You want to dismiss me?’

Not at all, Herr Ziltener. Certainly not. Who would want to dispense with such a reliable and discreet member of staff?’ Chanele waited until Ziltener’s shoulders relaxed with relief, and then added as if in passing:

‘Unless, of course, you found that you were not in a position to follow my instructions.’

Ziltener silently moved his lips, a schoolboy going through a calculation over and over again so as not to reach the wrong result. ‘I could… I could…’

‘Yes, my dear Herr Ziltener?’

‘I could of course fetch the money from the bank and then have it confirmed by the boss later on…’

‘That would not be a good solution.’

The schoolboy had worked out the calculation so carefully, and still no praise from the teacher.

‘Not a good…?’

‘I do not wish my husband to know anything about this sum.’

‘That’s impossible!’ In his excitement the accountant had repeatedly clutched his head; his thin hair, which he had combed over his bald patch with painstaking precision, was now standing up in all directions.

‘Regrettable. But if you say so. Many thanks, Herr Ziltener. That will be all.’

Ziltener didn’t go, of course he didn’t. He stopped by the desk and uneasily fiddled with his paper sleeves. For a moment the nervous rustling was the only sound.

‘If the boss finds out, he will fire me,’ he said at last, and his eyes were huge with anxiety.

‘If he finds out, I will fire you.’ Chanele had borrowed Francois’ smile for this conversation, ruthlessly polite and politely ruthless.

One could actually watch Ziltener struggling with the problem. His jaw worked; he had to chew on the bitter pill that she had given him to swallow.

At last he lowered his head and gave in. ‘But it’s all in order?’ he asked.

‘Of course, my dear Herr Ziltener,’ Chanele said in a friendly voice. ‘It’s all in order.’

During the time that the accountant needed to go to the bank, contrary to all custom, Chanele sat idly at her desk. If someone had come in unannounced — which of course no one would have dared to do — he would have wondered why Madame Meijer was smiling so dreamily.

Madame Meijer. Yes, she had finally grown into that name.

The first part of her plan had worked exactly as she had planned. Simply rebuking François, telling him that things could not go on this way, that he had to change his life, would have been utterly pointless. No support could have been expected from Janki either. He wouldn’t have taken the whole matter seriously, she was sure of it, he would have seen Francois’ affair as a little slip, as he saw everything his golden boy did, he might even have been proud of him. For men such stories were like a game, and everyone wanted to be on the winning side.

But now that Janki himself had fallen under suspicion…

And when he was firmly convinced that François was to blame…

It had not been easy to persuade Mathilde Lutz to join in. She hadn’t at first wanted to play the part that Chanele had assigned to her, but of course in the end she had given in. It wasn’t hard to manipulate people; one only had to take the trouble to find out how they worked.

And one mustn’t feel sorry for them.

So that evening Mathilde had gone to the Crown. It could equally have been the Golden Eagle or the Edelweiss, because Herr Rauhut the editor was bound to turn up at each pub in town sooner or later in the course of the evening. She had sat down alone at a table, as far as possible from the hustle and bustle of the regular guests. She had put on a hat with a thick black veil, an old hat that she had kept from her husband’s funeral, even though that was already many years ago. The veil had been Mathilde’s own idea. It wasn’t customary for decent women to visit a pub unaccompanied, and anyone who has a rumour to spread does not want to fall victim to another.

Rauhut arrived at half past eight, sat down at the regulars’ table where he was greeted with a loud ‘Hallo’, and was served his half of red without having to order it. As if merely continuing a conversation that had just been interrupted, he had immediately involved himself in a violent debate in which he outdid everyone, in the loudness of his arguments at least. He seemed to have settled at the table, and in the end Frau Lutz had to ask the waiter, who was already on his way with his next half litre, to tell the editor as inconspicuously as possible that there was someone here who had interesting information for him.

When he joined her, she began by complimenting him, exactly as Chanele had commissioned her to do, told him that she never missed one of his articles signed ‘fr’ (his first name was Ferdinand) in the Tagblatt , and had often thought how nice it was that at least one person in this city had the courage to say in the newspaper how things really were. Rauhut accepted the praise as no more than his due.

‘Then, when you tell him the story,’ Chanele had further instructed Mathilde, ‘do it haltingly, like someone who might have decided to reveal a secret, but who is tormented by her conscience.’ Mathilde didn’t have to dissemble to create this impression. One does not betray one’s king without palpitations, and she still saw Monsieur Meijer, with his elegant manners and his injury from the Franco-German war, as having something majestic about him.

Dissembling would have been pointless in any case. It was so noisy in the Crown, and Herr Rauhut already so intoxicated that she practically had to bellow the sensational news in his ear. ‘A salesgirl, a young thing, and the father is… No, not the girl’s father, the child’s father! — the father is…’

When he had finally understood her, there was a fat grin on his face, ‘a really fat great grin,’ Mathilde said to Chanele the following day, and she would have liked to take it all back again.

Yes, so far the plan had worked. The rumour was in the world, and had done its duty. Now the important thing was to make sure it was forgotten again.

Herr Ziltener now came with the money, and Chanele took the envelope as if he had brought her nothing more than a pair of gloves that she had forgotten somewhere. The receipt that he laid next to it she left untouched on the desk, and Ziltener didn’t dare remind her.

She thought for a moment about going home again and changing her dress, but that would have felt like disguising herself, and that was something Chanele had firmly resolved never again to do. So she stayed in her black shop uniform, put a coat on over it and fastened her hat to her sheitel. That was the least she could do; what she planned was an official visit.

She had already sent a messenger that morning. If Herr Councillor was in his office at about three o’clock, she had something that she wanted to discuss with him, and the reply had come that of course he was available to the esteemed Monsieur Meijer at any time. She had not mentioned Janki in her letter, but Herr Bugmann had — as Chanele expected — assumed as a matter of course that where business matters were involved it would naturally be the husband who came to see him.

On the way to the Weite Gasse, she met the wife of Cantor Würzenburger, who inquired after Arthur’s health, ‘the poor boy looked very ill on Thursday.’

‘I must make more time for Arthur,’ thought Chanele, murmured something along the lines of ‘everything’s fine,’ and apologised, saying she was in a hurry.

‘Are you going shopping?’

‘Yes,’ Chanele said, ‘you could call it that.’

Anyone who stepped into Councillor Bugmann’s law office found themselves at first confronted by a wooden barrier that made a petitioner of every visitor. Behind it a scrawny office boy sat by his desk on a high stool, in a distorted, boneless posture. He had wedged his pen behind his ear, something which, to judge by the ink stains on his face, was probably a regular habit.