François, convinced that most problems can be solved with money, gave Monsieur Charpentier plein pouvoir to buy Alfred out, but in France patriotism had broken out along with the war, and the traditional little channel of corruption no longer worked.
Training wasn’t all that bad, Alfred wrote to his family; so far in the general chaos they hadn’t even found rifles for the new recruits, and exercises with broom-handles had an almost comical character. The French had as little a chance against the well-organised Germans, this was his firm conviction, as they had in 1870–71, and the war would be over long before he himself got to the front.
Janki travelled unannounced to Zurich to talk to François. When he didn’t find him in his office, he looked for him all around the department store and in the end made a scene in front of him in the middle of the fabric department. He wasn’t doing enough to solve the problem, he told him, not every soldier was as fortunate as he, Janki, had been in his own day, and if Alfred had to go to the front and died there, it was all François’s fault. When François tried to calm him down — one doesn’t discuss family problems in front of other people — Janki lost control and started hitting his son with his lion’s-head stick. For the first time, François was glad that business hadn’t been good since the outbreak of war, which meant that only a few customers were able to observe the embarrassing scene.
Meanwhile Chanele had gone to see her daughter-in-law Mina, and the two women were trying to give one another encouragement. But try as she might to conceal her own anxiety, Chanele could not suppress the thought that Mina had only ever been unlucky all her life. Why should it be any different with her son?
Mina, the only member of the family council to vote against Alfred’s banishment, gave no outward sign of what was going on within. Only once, when she met Parson Widmer in town, did she spit on the ground in front of him, and then had to struggle to resist the urge to apologise to him. The misfortune had begun not with him, but with that plot of land for which François was prepared to do anything.
François, in the meantime, in his attempt to change the situation, had abandoned his lifelong resistance and decided to become Swiss. There were several communes which were known to like refurbishing their coffers with increased fees for — mostly Jewish — new citizens; he opted for Wülflingen near Winterthur, where they declared themselves willing to speed up the procedure for an acceptance fee of five thousand francs above the usual amount. As at his baptism, Alfred was involved in this too, without having been asked first. But at first the argument of his new citizenship did not persuade the French authorities to free him from military service.
Désirée did nothing but cry now, and Mimi dragged her to see Dr Wertheim. He diagnosed anaemia and general nerves and prescribed a strengthening diet. But one doesn’t heal broken hearts with beef broth, even if it’s made according to the recipe of Grandmother Golde.
Pinchas said Tehillim every morning and even, without making much fuss about it, had several personal fast days. There was much to be asked for during those days, because prayer had to be said for Ruben too.
Immediately after the events in Sarajevo, Zalman and Hinda had urged their son to come home straight away. He had written back to say that he only wanted to stay the few days until Siyum, the traditional feast that is always celebrated when the students of the yeshiva have finished studying a section of the Talmud. Then the war broke out, and all connections with Eastern Galicia were suddenly interrupted. At the Post Office they were told only that telegrams could unfortunately no longer be accepted for regions where battles were being fought.
Hinda did not moan or complain, but became very quiet, and did her work mechanically. Lea and Rachel had only ever known their mother to be cheerful, and found it hard to accept the change. During this time they were more hard-working and helpful than anyone had known them before. It was the only way they could show their concern for their brother.
With Pinchas’s support Zalman set up a fund for refugees from Galicia, more and more of whom arrived in Zurich in the course of September. He asked each one of them who registered with him whether he had heard anything of the yeshiva in Kolomea, but the new arrivals were all too preoccupied with their own fates. The invading Russian troops, they said, treated the Ruthenian inhabitants with perfect correctness; the Galician Jews, on the other hand, were generally suspected of collaboration with the Austrians, which constantly gave the Cossacks new excuses for acts of violence and looting.
Even though Switzerland was neutral, even here the war changed life from the bottom up. It was shocking how quickly one got used to it.
Arthur, the most unmilitary member of the whole family, volunteered for the emergency medical services, but was not taken because of his weak eyes. Joni Leibowitz was in active service as an infantryman with Fusilier Company IV/59, where he quickly rose to the rank of corporal. As a quartermaster, Sally Steigrad finally had the adventures he had always yearned for.
Alfred reported from Paris that they had by now received their guns, but they still lacked ammunition, which is why, ludicrously, they were only being trained in bayonet fighting. The German victory at Tannenberg confirmed him in his conviction that the war would not last long, and he was already making plans for the time that came after. ‘If they still want to part us,’ he wrote poste restante to Désirée, ‘I will win you back with my bayonet.’
On Erev Shabbos and on the eve of the feast days, all the Jewish refugees, whether they were religious or not, turned up for service at one of the two congregations. Because of the mitzvah, but also out of genuine pity, people tripped over themselves to invite them to dinner, and it even turned into a real competition over the most pitiful figures. On Erev Sukkot, Pinchas Pomeranz brought a whole family home, a couple with a grown-up daughter, all three of whom had to be kitted out from the various wardrobes before they could sit down at the table reasonably yontevdik. They had fled full pelt from the Russians, and spent the whole of Yom Kippur on a train, crammed tight into a cattle truck with many fellows in misery. ‘Even the treyfest among them fasted,’ the man said bitterly, when he climbed the stairs to the attic behind his host, ‘because there was nothing to eat or drink.’
Pinchas had set up his tabernacle on the roof, where the washing was normally hung. Its board walls were decorated with faded pictures of famous rabbonim, and chains of wrinkled chestnuts and now colourless paper garlands crossed above the solemnly laid table. Where there are no children in the house, no one makes new decorations. The October evening was cool, but at least it wasn’t raining, which was why, in accordance with the rules, they were able to open the solid roof to eat, and see the stars. Arthur too was invited into the sukkah every year, and Mimi complained to Pinchas — in French, as one should when discretion is called for — that it would be very cramped in there with seven people. Basically, however, she was very proud to be able to demonstrate that they didn’t need to economise in her household, and were entirely capable of entertaining even unexpected guests. The bean soup, so full of sausage and smoked meat that a spoon would have stood up in it, would have fed twenty people.
Quite contrary to his normal habits, Arthur was late and nearly missed the kiddush. He had been called out to an emergency at the last minute, he apologised, to tend to an elderly Galician who had, while escaping, received a serious wound in the foot that was now beginning to fester dangerously.