Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

For Pinchas, François’s conversion had been a cause for mourning, and he preferred to avoid the theme: one does not put a strain on a painful body part. Mimi had come up with a pun on ‘chrétien’ and ‘crétin’, which she repeatedly threw into the debate, even though no one had laughed even the first time she had said it.

‘Some people try to get things by being a nice guy,’ he said. ‘François will try and get them by being a nice goy.’

The table prayer was over, the third cup drunk and the fourth poured. In the ritual of the Seder evening they were now reaching the point where the flat door is opened to admit the prophet Elijah who, it was promised, would arrive the evening before the Pesach feast to announce the time of redemption. Désirée was sitting closest to the door, so she was the one dispatched. It was already nearing eleven — such a Seder evening can go on for a long time — and she had to feel her way along the corridor. Behind her, Zalman was intoning the prayer in which God is exhorted to rain his fury down upon the unbelievers. The gas light was burning in the stairwell, and through the frosted glass it looked for a moment as if someone was standing outside the door, just waiting to be let in.

‘They have devoured Jacob,’ Zalman recited in Hebrew, ‘and destroyed his dwelling place.’

Someone — probably Mimi, who was always afraid of burglars, had put the security chain on the door. It took Désirée a moment to free the hook.

‘Pursue them in indignation, and destroy them from under your heavens.’

The door creaked as it opened, like a dying man struggling to breathe.

Someone was actually waiting on the step: a young student in full regalia, with cap, ribbons and sash, all in the green and white colours of his fraternity. He was tottering slightly, and when he started talking his breath smelled of beer.

‘Hello, Déchirée,’ the student said. ‘Déchirée,’ he said, as if they knew each other. ‘Today’s the day when the hungry are invited. So I thought I’d just drop by.’

‘Who…?’ asked Désirée and gulped before she could finish the sentence. ‘Who are you?’

‘Don’t you recognise me?’ said the student. He belched, almost brought his hand to his mouth and then waved it away wearily: completing the movement was too much of an effort. ‘I’m Alfred. Alfred Meijer. The goy.’

‘Scandaleux,’ said Mimi.

She said it for the fourth or fifth time during this late breakfast, while buttering her matzo with such furious ardour that it crumbled to tiny pieces on her plate. The satin bow that fastened her dressing gown of Turkish-patterned muslin at the throat with gaudy elegance fluttered into the void for a moment and then settled once more on her bosom. Mimi had not grown fat, certainement pas , but she had, the closer she came to sixty, assumed certain matronly qualites, ‘statuesque’ would have been the word in the novels that she still liked to read, and it gave her, as she repeatedly noted in front of the mirror, a certain dignity. Her face was still smooth, a condition that she eagerly supported with powders and creams; only on either side of her mouth, below her slightly doughy cheeks, did two deep wrinkles stretch down to her chin, the kind that life draws on the face if one has had much to endure; other people have no idea.

‘ Scandaleux ,’ Mimi repeated. ‘Of course he was drunk. At their pub crawls, or whatever they call them, they drink beer like pigs from a trough. Such impudence, simply coming in and joining us at the table! As if he were part of the family!’

Désirée had lowered her eyes and was concentrating hard on a tiny chip in her coffee cup. You don’t use your very best crockery for Pesach, it just sits in the attic all year waiting for someone to bring it down for a week. If you ran your fingernail along the edge of the cup, it always made a quiet, almost inaudible clicking sound when you reached the crack. ‘He is a relative, though,’ said Désirée without looking up.

‘Not one of mine. Kinship is something different. You have to bear in mind where he comes from, this… this student.’ Mimi uttered the word with such revulsion as if she couldn’t find a more contemptuous one in the dictionary. ‘Even Chanele — you know I love her, may she live to be a hundred and twenty, but she’ll only ever be a foster-child. And Janki… a grandson of an uncle of a grandfather. If that’s mishpocha, then I’m related to the whole world. A stranger. Stood outside our door in Endingen in the middle of the night like, like…’

‘Like Alfred yesterday?’

‘Alfred!’ Mimi’s fury had immediately found a new direction, like a dog chasing a new odour trail. ‘What sort of a name is Alfred!’

‘He can’t do anything about that. My name is Désirée, although…’

‘Although? Although?’ When Mimi became annoyed, she got bright red cheeks like a stout market trader.

‘Sorry, Mama,’ said Désirée, although she had said nothing she needed to apologise for.

‘Just outside the door.’ Mimi’s rage went on bubbling away, as milk goes on foaming even after you’ve taken it off the flame. ‘And he was so bold as to sing along.’

During the Hallel, Alfred had sat there in silence. A chair had been found for him, and Rachel had even had to fetch a pillow, from her own bed, because pillows and cushions are part of a Seder evening. But he didn’t lean back, he sat there with his back straight, both feet planted firmly on the floor, like someone who was about to get up and leave at any moment.

They had all tried not to stare at him, whether out of politeness or embarrassment, who could say? Only Ruben stared at his cousin the whole time, as he might have stared at a piece of pork that had landed on the Seder table after an intricate sequence of chance events — more unusual situations arise in the elaborate examples in the Talmud. ‘You are a treyf goy and have no business here,’ the expression was supposed to say.

Had anyone looked at him like that in his fraternity’s regular haunt — although Ruben could not have known this — Alfred would have immediately challenged him to name his second. Here he didn’t even notice the looks. Nor did he seem to hear the twins exploding with mirth time and again, however much they pressed their napkins to their mouths in a vain attempt to control themselves. He just sat there, rocking gently back and forth. Back and forth.

Like someone shockeling.

Once, just as the others were chorusing ‘Omeyn!’, a belch escaped him. He leapt to his feet, clicked his heels together and seemed about to launch into an apology. But then he forgot what he had wanted to say, looked around with confused eyes and sat down again.

Arthur took off his glasses and pressed his fingertips against the bridge of his nose. ‘The poor boy doesn’t know where he belongs,’ he thought. ‘That’s the most terrible thing that can happen to anybody.’

Hinda had taken Mina’s hand and was gripping it very tightly. The gesture said, ‘I know how you are feeling right now,’ and Mina was grateful for the pious lie. Of course Hinda, to whom nothing really bad had ever happened in her whole life, couldn’t begin to imagine what was going on in her sister-in-law’s mind, but consolation draws its power not from understanding but from good intentions. So Mina’s son was suddenly sitting at the table, an only child, in the wrong place at the wrong time and in the wrong world, drunk and chaotic and ridiculous, and she couldn’t throw her arms around him and press him to her, she couldn’t just kiss away his confusion, as she had kissed away his little hurts when he was a little child. She could only look at him. All her life she had had to look at everything.