Arthur didn’t dare knock on his father’s door again; Janki hadn’t recovered at all in the summer resort on Sylt, and had been constantly depressed since then. Being separated from his shop, with its smell of old spices, was harder for him than he had expected.
There was only one last possibility.
Arthur’s relationship with François had never been easy. As a child he had been unable to put into words the breathless admiration he felt for his big brother; even then he had found it hard to talk about emotions. Later, when he had perhaps found the words, the opportunity never arose, even though by now they both lived in Zurich. An ambitious businessman, who is already married and has a son, is worlds apart from a young medical student, and Arthur had felt as if the age difference between them was distancing them further and further; the more adult François seemed to him, the more immature he felt himself.
And then François had had himself baptised, and that had introduced such awkwardness into their relationship that nothing cordial could arise to combat it. One of Arthur’s teachers at grammar school had had a flaming red growth on his forehead that everyone had to ignore and yet couldn’t ignore, and that was exactly what he felt about François’s Christianity: the effort not to mention it all the time silenced all conversation.
But it was possible to talk to Mina.
François had had a villa built on the Zurichberg, in the new quarter near the university. The building was generous but lifeless, a mere stage, and Mina, who was supposed to be the mistress of the house, moved around the big rooms like an actress who hasn’t been given the script of her play. A janitor who looks after other people’s properties without having any claims to them herself.
‘No, Arthur, you aren’t a burden at all. This house is arranged for guests. We could have twenty-four people to dinner if there were twenty-four people who would accept an invitation from us.’ She said such things without bitterness, she was just establishing facts, and in her uncomplaining directness she resembled her mother-in-law Chanele.
A maid with a cap and apron served them tea. They had taken a seat at a little cast-iron table in the conservatory, where in spite of the cool autumn day it was almost too warm. Arthur admired a little orange tree with perfectly formed fruit hanging from its branches, and Mina followed his gaze and said, ‘As long as you don’t try to eat them…’
She thought it entirely possible that François could be persuaded to make a donation.
‘Even though…?’ Arthur couldn’t bring himself to ask the question, but Mina answered it anyway.
‘That’s why. François likes to stress that nothing has actually changed for him, that people are just too narrow-minded, too fixated on outward appearances to understand that he’s still the same person he was before… So why shouldn’t he support the Jewish Gymnastics Club?’
‘And? Is he still the same person?’
Mina poured a few drops of milk from the silver jug into her tea, added sugar, stirred it and drank. ‘Have a piece of cake,’ she said.
‘Is François still the same person?’
‘I fear so.’
‘Strange,’ thought Arthur, ‘that one can feel more closely related to a sister-in-law than to one’s own brother.’
When François came home he was in an excellent mood, and treated the presence of Arthur, even though he hadn’t seen him for months, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Good to see you here. I have something to show you. I’ve just got it.’ He waved a long green cardboard tube, a child proudly presenting a new toy, and in his enthusiasm almost knocked over one of the many flower-holders that turned the conservatory into a little civilised jungle.
He was in such a hurry that he didn’t even take the time to remove his jacket; he just threw his hat on one of the ornate wicker chairs. They had to follow him into the drawing-room, where he pushed the low table aside to make enough room on the floor. He knelt down, still in his coat, took a long parchment-coloured roll of paper out of the cardboard packaging and had Arthur pass him two heavy, polished ashtrays to fix one end of it down on the carpet. Then he unrolled the paper so carefully and almost tenderly that Arthur was reminded of the unrolling of the Torah in the service, although that comparison was more than out of place with François.
What François had brought was the plan of a store, a colourful architectural drawing, lovingly prepared down to the smallest details. Smiling mannequins, dressed in the latest fashions, already paraded in the window displays, and outside the double front door a line of carefully sketched customers waited impatiently to be allowed in.
The three-storey building was in the classical style, the wide shop windows separated from one another by half-relief Corinthian columns from whose capitals chiselled acanthus leaves flourished. On each of the two columns which, twice as broad as the others, flanked the entrance, there sat a stone lion with the crest of Zurich between its claws. On the upper storeys the windows were bigger than usual, which produced the idea of inviting, light-flooded spaces inside.
On either side of the plan a row of medallions was arranged, drawn window frames through which one could see as if through a window all the things that were actually going on in the store. A salesman was helping a customer in his shirt-sleeves into his new jacket, a woman was trying on a hat decorated with feathers, a young couple with a bashful expression considered a selection of cots.
‘This is it,’ François said proudly. ‘The most beautiful department store in Zurich.’ He looked so happy that Arthur felt closer to his brother than he had for ages.
‘You’re planning a new building?’ he asked.
‘Eventually. Eventually.’ François said it in such an exaggeratedly dismissive way that it was clear: he couldn’t wait to be asked about further details.
‘And where?’
‘Right beside the Paradeplatz.’ François rubbed his hands. He was still kneeling on the floor, and it looked as if he was praying.
‘So you got the land after all?’
‘Not yet,’ said François, his face radiant with anticipation. ‘But it can’t go on for much longer. I have it from an impeccable source that old Landolt is on his death-bed.’
They had to admire the drawing, and François couldn’t stop revealing more and more details to them: ‘the whole thing has three underground levels — the store-room on its own has more floor-space than the whole shop! A garage specially for home deliveries — all motorised vehicle, of course, and the chauffeurs in uniform! An annual catalogue with a mail order service covering the whole of Switzerland!’ In his enthusiasm he was, without knowing it, an exact copy of his father. Janki had once, when he was bargaining over Mimi’s dowry, described the planned Modern Emporium to old Salomon Meijer.
Arthur made the right noises, said, ‘really?’ and ‘impressive!’, but he might just as well have said nothing at all, because François was basically just talking to himself. Mina, as was her way and special talent, listened to her husband as attentively as if he hadn’t described his plans and ideas to her a hundred times.
‘The most modern steam heating that closes off the entrance with an air curtain, so that the doors to the street can stay invitingly open even in cold weather! A tea-room in the fabrics department, so that one can look at the swatch books as if in the comfort of one’s own sitting-room! Four paternoster lifts and also…’