Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

The first parcel that seemed to be the right size and the right weight was a disappointment. Christine’s knife revealed only a slipcase of black books, the prayer books for all the feast days of the year, in the Rödelheimer edition with the German translation. His name was embossed in gold on every siddur: Arthur Chaim Meijer. It looked elegant, and it was an expensive present, from Uncle Pinchas, of course, the member of the family most devoted to tradition, but Arthur set it carelessly aside.

The next package was far too light; he took it out of Christine’s hands and put it back. She was quite indignant about the fuss he was making. But the third — ah, the third!

A box made of elegant stained wood, no, not a box: a proper little cupboard, with two wing doors like the Torah ark in the prayer room. There was even a lock, small enough to seal a diary, and for a moment Arthur panicked because he couldn’t find the key for it straight away. But below the little cupboard there was a drawer with a moveable brass handle like the one on the chest of drawers in Mama’s room, and when Arthur pulled it open, there lay the glass plates wrapped in silk paper and, sure enough, the key. He put it in the lock and for a moment — probably because of the special day — he had the feeling that he had to say a prayer before he opened it up. Then the two wing doors flew open, and there it was.

His microscope.

‘Which one shall we open next?’ asked Christine, and Arthur felt as if someone had suddenly started talking loudly about the weather or his business deals at the most sacred moment of the service.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll do that tomorrow. Otherwise Papa will get impatient.’

Christine was happy to go. She had, it was true, given Louisli precise instructions, but many a soup has been burnt at the very last moment because someone didn’t stir it with the necessary care.

His microscope.

It couldn’t simply be lifted out, there was a fastening that first had to be released with a tiny wing nut, but then, once you had wiped your fingers, moist with excitement, on one’s trousers, you could hold it in your hands, very, very carefully, you could set it down in front of you, ideally on the window sill, the light was brightest there, and you could look at it in peace, no longer as a picture in a book. Arthur wasn’t aware of it, but he was making the same face as Hinda did when she looked at Zalman Kamionker.

The viewfinder with the three lenses looked a little like the kaleidoscope that Aunt Mimi had brought him, except of course that it wasn’t wrapped up in childish, brightly coloured paper. It was made of brass, only the ring around the eyepiece was made of a lighter, gleaming metal with a matt finish. There was a regulating screw at the side which you could turn, and then the tube became longer and still longer, and if there had already been a glass plate on the bracket it would have broken there and then.

Arthur would, he had firmly decided, perform his first scientific experiment on his own blood, he would prick his finger with a needle and squeeze out a drop. A true researcher and discoverer doesn’t balk at pain.

When Chanele came to get him, he was sitting on his chair by the window, the same chair on which he had always sat by Uncle Salomon’s bed, stroking the microscope with his fingertips as if it were a living creature. ‘Are you happy now?’ she asked.

He was so happy that he couldn’t put it into words. And at the same time he had a guilty conscience because Uncle Salomon was dead, after all.

They were all sitting around the table already; it was laid for a feast, because even though one might not have wanted to make a fuss about it, it was still a bar mitzvah. The good Sarreguemines crockery rested on the best tablecloth, the knife with the silver handle lay beside the board with the Sabbath loaves, and the wine for Kiddush had already been poured.

Janki looked younger than usual, perhaps because he was proud of his son. Pride always made him sit up straight, as befits an old soldier. He gripped his walking stick with the lion’s-head handle, and when Chanele ushered Arthur in he gave a signal with it, and everyone began to clap.

François did so only with his fingertips, and held his head at a slight angle as if to say, ‘This might all be superficial theatre, but if it has to be, I won’t flinch from it.’ But he also winked at Arthur, and it was like a mark of distinction, like being accepted into a secret society of which the others knew nothing.

Hinda clapped loudest, no, second loudest, because Zalman Kamionker was sitting next to him, and each time he brought his hands together it sounded like a shot ringing out. He also tried to strike up a song, but when no one joined in he just laughed and let it pass. Kamionker had come to Baden without shabbosdik clothes, and Janki had insisted that he put on one of Uncle Salomon’s old jackets. Although Salomon had been a burly man, the tailor’s broad shoulders almost burst the seams.

Uncle Pinchas whispered something in Aunt Mimi’s ear, and she turned bright red in the face and slapped him on the arm and said, ‘ Mais vraiment , Pinchas!’ Then she pursed her lips and blew a kiss to Arthur, and he nearly thanked her for it and said as he had done at the reception, ‘Many thanks for the lovely present!’

The only guests who weren’t part of the family were Cantor Würzburger and his wife, who couldn’t have been left out because Arthur still had to deliver his droosh over lunch, and it was better if someone was there just in case he stumbled. The cantor, applauding, cried ‘Bravo!’, and because the sound of his voice didn’t strike him as sonorous enough, he reached into his waistcoat pocket with two pointed fingers, took out a sal ammoniac pastille and popped it in his mouth.

Chanele had sat down too now, at the other end of the table, opposite her husband. It must have been Mama who had persuaded Papa to buy the microscope even though it was so expensive. Arthur was sure of it, and loved her for it very much. It was because of his mother that he had never understood why, in the morning prayer, one thanks God for not creating one as a woman.

Christine and Louisli stood in the doorway and would probably have applauded as well, if they hadn’t had to hold onto the plates with the salted carp.

‘It’s lovely to belong to a family,’ Arthur thought, and decided that he would have three children as well one day, at least three, and that he would give them anything they wanted.

‘Now sit down,’ said Chanele. ‘You’re dreaming again.’

‘It’s lovely to belong to a family,’ thought Arthur. He took off his glasses, closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his middle finger. Such a young doctor, who can’t afford to turn down night-time house calls, has trouble staying awake during a long ceremony. The gesture inconspicuously concealed the fact that his eyes had once again filled with tears, with that inexplicable stirring of emotion that suddenly came upon him, time and again, in situations where he should really have been happy.

And he was happy. Of course he was happy. Why shouldn’t he have been happy?

As they did every year at Pesach, almost the whole of the Zurich family had gathered together. They had got used to the fact that two of them were missing, that there should really have been two more chairs around the table, each with its cushion, that there should have been two more glasses on the white table-cloth. One was left with no other option but to get used to it.

It was now seven years since François…

It was seven years ago, and it still didn’t seem natural. On the contrary: the silence about the thing no one wanted to mention got louder every year. ‘As if we were all patients,’ Arthur reflected, ‘still feeling a limb that was amputated long ago.’