But Staudinger was enthusiastic. ‘This is amazing!’ he said. ‘Absolutely mind… Where did your regiment fight?’
Chanele held her handkerchief in front of her face, probably because of the unpleasant smell. Janki had been asked so often by admiring lady customers to tell them about his heroic warlike deeds that he was not lost for an answer. ‘A soldier goes where he is sent,’ he said. ‘When the bullets are flying around your head, you don’t ask questions about geography.’
‘Correct,’ said Staudinger. ‘Absolutely correct. We were all young at the time, and didn’t know that we’d have to talk about it for the rest of our lives.’
‘Which you probably enjoy doing more than I do.’
‘Why?’
‘You won the war.’
Staudinger let out a barking ‘Ha!’ which was probably supposed to be a cordial, comradely laugh. ‘Very good. Really very good. I’ll have to remember that one. “You won the war.”’ Again he said ‘Ha!’ and that seemed to get the preliminaries out of the way as far as he was concerned, and he started relating his own experiences of the war. ‘We were standing at the Porte de Mézières. Have you heard of it? No? Well, it wasn’t right at the front as such, but it was a strategically very important point that absolutely had to be held. I can list the positions if you like. Well, perhaps another time. We will see each other again, I hope. Are you bound for Sylt as well? Westerland? Me too. We’ll absolutely have to… Which hotel? The Atlantic? On Herrenbadstrasse, I know. An elegant place, very distinguished, not everyone can afford it. I certainly can’t. Ha!’ He performed his laugh as if it were a duty, and then continued with his monologue, which he had doubtless delivered many times, word for word. ‘So our emplacement was at this gate, along with the first Battalion and a company of riflemen that had been assigned to us, and the grenades were flying over our heads. If you were there, you know the sound, that whoosh that gets louder and louder until you want to bury yourself in the ground. But we had an old colonel, Niedermayer was his name, a proper, cosy old Bavarian, never promoted beyond a certain point because of some old story or other, even though he was very hard working, he just laughed when we threw ourselves down, and said, “If you can hear them, they’ve already gone past.” And that was exactly how it was with me. I never heard the grenade that got me. Didn’t hear it at all, just imagine. Only my face was suddenly very hot, no pain, nothing at all at first, just that feeling of heat, and something damp ran over my hands; at first I thought my flask had been hit. But it was my own blood. So I was only vaguely aware of most of it, the French waving their white flags like mad, I don’t want to be rude, but that was how it was, and the peace negotiator coming through our ranks… But you’ll know all that. Until at last the medical corps came and…’ He suddenly broke off and looked at Janki with a slightly suspicious expression. ‘Were you injured too?’
‘In the leg,’ said Janki. ‘But the pain is bearable. I only feel it when the weather turns.’ Chanele was holding her handkerchief in front of her face again. The smell from the old upholstery was really very unpleasant.
By the time the train arrived in Hoyerschleuse the two men were the best of friends, and had firmly agreed to see one another on the island very soon. Staudinger, who planned to meet a few comrades here before travelling on to Sylt on the same ship, found them another porter for their luggage — he could put his booming, order-issuing voice on and off like a coat — gave Chanele another smacking kiss on the hand and bade farewell to Janki by resting his hand against the brim of his rifleman’s cap in the military style.
It was only when the luggage had been counted — two trunks, a new Russian leather suitcase, four hatboxes — and the porter had been paid, that Chanele managed to speak to Janki.
‘What sort of shmontses are you telling that man?’ she said. ‘The ladies in Baden might believe your adventures, but this fellow Staudinger was really at Sedan. An unpleasant person, by the way, with that scar.’
‘I can’t see it that way.’ They were standing side by side leaning on the railing of the Freya, watching the burly sailors untying the ship’s hawsers with insulted expressions, as if the ferry service for guests at the spa was far below the dignity of a true Christian seafarer.
‘Janki Meijer, the hero of Sedan!’
‘Scha!’ Janki turned round in horror. Luckily no one had heard.
‘Just a shame you forgot to pack your medals.’
‘What medals?’
‘The ones awarded to you by Napoleon the Third in person. For special bravery in the face of the enemy.’
For all those years Chanele hadn’t worried when Janki described the few glorious memories of his time in the military more colourfully each time. It hadn’t really bothered her, and in the company there was, God knows, enough to do that was more important. But since Janki had sold the Modern Emporium over her head, she no longer felt obliged to take his sensitivities into account. Chanele had grown bitter, almost from one day to the next, not argumentative, but obstinate, and as Janki had a very bad conscience about giving up the business, and could therefore not admit a mistake, there were more and more violent arguments between them.
Like a wine stored for too long, after forty years their marriage had turned sour.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Janki. ‘In a spa town like this you have to know the right people or else you’re left alone. So now we have an entrée into high society.’
‘Make shabbos with that!’ Chanele turned her back on her husband and for the next few minutes was very busy observing the flock of seagulls following the ship out of the harbour as a screeching escort.
Chanele’s unconcealed disapproval and the quiet anxiety that she might be right spoiled Janki’s delight in the preferential treatment they received as they put in at Sylt. While other passengers had to take pot luck with coaches, or even had to linger forlorn and abandoned beside their mountains of luggage, they had a liveried chauffeur waiting for them, with the word Atlantic emblazoned on his cap in gold letters. They were the only new arrivals who had booked in at this hotel in the very top category, and Janki was almost slightly disappointed that his new friend Staudinger was nowhere to be seen. He would have liked to wave at him in comradely fashion from the automobile that stood ready for the journey to the hotel, or even offered to take him into Westerland. There would have been enough room, because the car, at least as grand as François’s Buchet, had two spacious rows of seats as well as the chauffeur’s seat. Their cases, and Janki found this particularly elegant, were not simply tied on at the back, but jogged along behind them on a luggage car pulled by two horses.
They were welcomed at the hotel with much bowing and scraping, and that subservient attitude continued like that all day to such an extent that Chanele said ironically that you learned to tell the different employees apart by the backs of their heads. Their suite, ‘the best in the whole hotel’, said the fawning porter, had all the comforts of the modern age, electric lights, a bathroom of their own and a whole row of bell-pulls with which the correct employee could be summoned for any special wishes they might have.
‘You see how we’re welcomed here?’ said Janki, when they were on their own at last.
‘Like anyone else who’s expected to provide a decent tip.’
‘Better than anyone else.’ He had assumed a mysterious expression, but Chanele didn’t do him the favour of showing any curiosity, so he had to report the chachma that he’d thought up, and of which he was very proud, unasked. ‘I asked Herr Strähle, the manager, to notify his colleague here that we were particularly important guests. What do you think of that?’