‘How many children to you have?’ asked Malka, but didn’t wait for the answer, her sluice-gates were too wide open, but instead reported on how her husband Hersch — ‘I sometimes call him Hershele Ostropoler after the famous jester, because he has such meshuganeh ideas’ — had hit upon the notion of crossing the sea, not for a holiday — ‘I need that like a corpse needs suction cups!’ — but because he wanted to meet people, voyleh Juden, who also had children and who were on the lookout for a shidduch, and who one knew for certain moved in the right circles, precisely because such a summer resort cost a lot of money and not everyone could afford it.
When Malka Wasserstein talked like that, she sounded a bit like a schoolgirl hoping to impress her teachers with undigested phrases from her parents’ conversation. Outwardly, too, she looked like a little girl dressed as a grown-up, because — only in Marjampol could it have been considered elegant — she had chosen a street dress of very colourful, broad-striped silk fabric that swathed her chubby figure like casually tied-up wrapping paper. With it she wore a hat with a heron-feather, which Chanele would never have sold anyone for afternoon wear; heron feathers belonged in the ballroom, where it was this season’s fashion to let it bob along when dancing the tango.
But much more than her clothes, it was her movements that made Malka’s origins in the Galician provinces unmistakeable. She talked with her hands, and with her gestures even the story of her holiday turned into a dramatic event.
So they had set off — ‘The cost! The bother!’ — but of course Hersch hadn’t looked into everything in advance, he always liked to get things done quickly, he plunged into everything he did like a bridegroom into a mikvah, and he had actually booked their holiday on Borkum, Borkum of all places! Did Chanele have any idea how they did things there?
No, she could have no idea, and she should thank God that she didn’t! He had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, but he must have overlooked Borkum, because that place was far, far worse than the two biblical cities, an island full of reshoim. Malka never wished harm on anyone, but if a flood came and washed the whole pile of sand into the sea, she at least wouldn’t weep a tear for it, and when she passed the graves of the people, she would dance on them, yes, she would dance.
On Borkum the following had happened…
But now Malka had been so busy telling her stories that she had forgotten the time, and she had only left the spa concert very quickly to go in search of Hersch and Chaje Sore, she had thought that her Motti — ‘Put that down, Motti, who knows who else might have picked it up!’ — was playing peacefully with the other children, you never had a moment’s peace, and why people went on holiday for pleasure she would never know, even if she were to live, touch wood, to a hundred and twenty.
They would absolutely have to meet again, her husband would want to thank Chanele for her kindness in person, and who knows, perhaps Chanele might even know someone who… How old had she said her youngest was, the latecomer? Thirty-three? Then it was high time he thought of getting married. ‘Being alone puts stupid ideas in your head!’ Yes, they would certainly see each other again, tomorrow would be best of all, but now Malka had to go and look for her husband and her daughter. They had wanted to sit down in the patisserie garden, where you could see and be seen, but all the tables there had been occupied, they must have gone somewhere else and were bound to be wondering where she’d got to, she would really have to go. ‘Shake hands with the lady like a good boy, Mottele! You must be moichel to him, he’s all over the place today, normally he’s quite well-behaved.’
When Chanele came back to the hotel room, Janki was lying on the bed with his dirty shoes on, fast asleep. He was snoring and smelled of beer.
43
Janki didn’t mind Chanele leaving him alone; in fact it suited him. His new friends — by now he also knew their names: Hofmeister, Neuberth, Kessler and von Stetten — took up all his time, almost around the clock. They expected him at eleven o’clock in the morning, when one had barely struggled out of bed, for a buffet breakfast, where one had to eat smoked eel — treyf, but not at all bad — and other fatty things because it was traditionally believed that they more than anything else helped to absorb the alcohol from the previous evening, and then, to clear their heads, they went for a healthy walk along the beach, but they never got any further than the Strandcafé, where they were already expected and their beers were served without them even asking for them. There, over the course of the next few hours, they became first patriotic and then emotional, they sang under the direction of Neuberth, who was a member of a men’s singing club, romantic songs so mellifluous that they were moved to tears: ‘In the tower at Sedan a Frenchman stands, clutching his rifle in his hands.’ But they were never again as drunk as they had been on the first day; they saved that up for the evening. They said their goodbyes at the door of their hotels, none of which were nearly as smart as the Atlantic, as elaborately as if they weren’t going to see each other again for years, when in fact they were only parting for the duration of the table d’hôte where, each in his own price category, they lined their stomachs ready for a night spent drinking in Tacke Blecken’s Cellar. The place was otherwise avoided by the spa guests, because in this drinking den, the last refuge of locals and sailors, one occasionally came across ladies whose faded charms might only have seduced a seafarer who hadn’t set foot on dry land for many months. They had commandeered the round table for the duration, right under Tacke Blecken’s celebrated chandelier consisting of an old model galleon and a set of elk antlers. Tacke, who was said once to have been a captain, until he had run his cutter aground on a reef while three sheets to the wind, poured a drink that might have been called grog, but which contained, along with rum, sugar and water, other ingredients that made one seriously philosophical after the first glass.
Apart from a few hasty adventures on business trips, Janki’s life had never presented him with the opportunity to let his hair down properly like this. All the greater then was his enjoyment of his late-blossoming bachelor life, he called for one round after another, and was in the meantime able to give such a detailed account of his experiences at Sedan that the battle would have had to last three days to include them all. So he thought he remembered — and each glass of grog made the memory clearer — how he had rescued an injured comrade from enemy fire at great risk to his own life, and from whom he had later received the walking stick with the lion’s-head handle by way of thanks, a distinction, he claimed, that was far more precious to him than any medal that the state might have been able to award him.
Of course the others noticed that he was exaggerating, but they weren’t bothered; they were doing exactly the same thing themselves. The Wound Badge awarded to Hofmeister, for example, which he always wore proudly on the lapel of his coat on Sedan Day, a picture of King Karl of Württemberg with the caption ‘For loyal duty in war’, was really a simple silver medal of the kind that was generously distributed at a time of general triumph. Hofmeister, a cosy innkeeper from Nürtingen, had been part of a supply unit in the war, and as he stood over his cooking pots had heard nothing more of the whole battle than the distant roar of cannon. Why should he have doubted other people’s accounts of the battle, as long as they didn’t call his own heroism into question?