She wanted to know exactly what was going on her here, right now, on the spot. She had no intention, not the slightest intention did she have, of simply being sent away and fobbed off, after all, she was the director of the home, and bore the responsibility, almost twenty children more than usual and most of them from Germany, and they couldn’t even pay for their expenses. And if an epidemic broke out now, who was going to take the blame? So what was going on?
Arthur was a man who was rather impressed by authorities and superiors, and if she had asked a little more politely, he would probably have told her the truth.
No, not even then. Even though he couldn’t have said when exactly he made his decision, he had switched entirely to Irma’s side.
‘On one point I can reassure you, Fräulein Württemberger,’ he said therefore. ‘The girl is not infectious.’
Irma lowered her head, and put an arm around her brother, ready to draw him comfortingly to her.
‘But she does have a serious, dangerous illness that requires a great deal of treatment.’
Irma raised her head again and looked at him. Big, brown, slightly squinting eyes. No one had ever looked at him so trustingly before.
‘Attentive and loving care,’ he repeated.
‘She can get that in Kassel. She’s going home next week.’
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘She isn’t going. From a medical viewpoint I cannot allow that under any circumstances. The child is not capable of travelling. Far too dangerous.’
Once one has started lying, exaggeration isn’t difficult.
‘But the boy can’t travel on his…’
‘I couldn’t allow that either. Given the girl’s debilitated condition, such abrupt separation could lead to a shock.’
Now a stray tendril actually had escaped from the bun, and Fräulein Württemberger couldn’t stuff it back into place.
‘Of course,’ said Arthur, ‘of course I will issue the appropriate certificates, to be delivered to the relevant authorities.’
‘But what’s wrong with her?’ Fräulein Württemberger asked the question so loudly that her voice broke, and she tried to conceal the fact behind a cough.
‘It isn’t so simple to explain to a non-professional. Let me put it this way: I suspect a very rare and protracted pulmonary illness. Not infectious, as I say, but grave.’
Little Moses gripped his sister’s hand tightly. ‘Is Irma going to die?’ he asked in his little voice.
‘Of course not.’ Arthur comfortingly ran his hand over the boy’s short hair. ‘She will get better. Because she’ll be looked after very, very well here. Isn’t that right, Fräulein Württemberger?’
‘We are not a hospital. They need too many staff and—’
‘I have no doubt,’ said Arthur, ‘that a woman of your famous diligence would find a solution even for this problem. A lot of care isn’t needed. Just particularly rich food. The child seems a little undernourished to me.’
Everyone in the Wartheim got enough to eat, Fräulein Württemberger snapped agitatedly, she wouldn’t hear such accusations, and in any case, who would cover the costs? But it was only a parting skirmish, and in her mind she was already formulating the letter in which she could complain to the Women’s Association about this Dr Meijer. Oh, she would find the right words all right.
‘And there is one other thing that I would urgently advise,’ said Arthur. ‘Give Irma a room of her own. Ideally with her brother. Because of the calming effect.’
Fräulein Württemberger hesitated and then decided at least to do of her own accord what she was in any case being forced to do. ‘I have been thinking the very same thing myself,’ she lied, and almost believed it herself. ‘We will get you well again, won’t we, little Irma?’ And she left the room as proudly as if she had just emerged triumphant from a difficult philosophical debate.
Irma shook his hand quite formally as he left, even gave a little curtsey, as one learned to do in Germany, and pressed her little brother’s head down in a proper bow. Arthur would have liked to hug her, had even spread his arms, and then lowered them again because it felt too officious. She looked at him as if she had guessed his thoughts, and said, ‘You’re a good doctor, Dr Meijer.’ And she suddenly winked and laughed, the first time he had heard her laugh, lifted her brother, who was almost as big as she was, and ran from the room with him.
On the way back to Zurich Arthur picked up a hitch-hiker who was standing at the side of the road with his thumb in the air. He was an old man, dressed in black, and when he sat down in the passenger seat he filled the beautiful new car with the smell of unaired cellars.
‘Bravo, Arthur,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘Now you’re proud of yourself. You’re slapping your own back and you think you’re terrific, yes.’
The road down towards the lowlands, it seemed to Arthur, had more bends in it than usual.
‘You’ve given a sick note to a girl who isn’t really sick,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘And of course that makes you a hero. You’ve defeated National Socialism, and the Swiss immigration authorities as well, yes.’
‘I can do no more than that,’ said Arthur.
‘Of course not. No one can.’ Uncle Melnitz coughed and spat blood into a big white handkerchief. ‘No one can ask more than that. Open their wallets when there’s a collection. Pull a serious face at protest meetings. Perhaps even write a letter to the papers. Signed bravely with your own name. Bravo, Arthur, yes.’
The steering wheel was hard to move today, and Arthur couldn’t take his eyes off the road for a moment.
‘It’s started like that every time,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘With everyone persuading themselves that there’s nothing more they can do, and that things aren’t going to get any worse. That it will stop of its own accord because it can’t go on like that.’
Both sides of the street were lined with strangers, who had to be carefully avoided.
‘But it does go on,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘It goes on like this every time.’
‘We’re living in the twentieth century.’
‘Of course that’s something else.’ Uncle Melnitz laughed and coughed and spat. ‘Something very, very different, yes. We live in the wonderful twentieth century. Not in the bad nineteenth or the wicked eighteenth or the terrible seventeenth.’
‘It’s not the same thing!’
The old man laughed so hard that little flecks of blood sprayed the windscreen. Bright red, foaming flecks of blood. Sherbet powder. ‘The present is always different. And never has it been as different as in the oh-so-wonderful twentieth century. When there is electric light. And aeroplanes. And radio. And only good people. Such things can’t happen again. Never, ever again, isn’t that right, Arthur?’
‘So what are we to do?’
‘You can’t ask me,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘I’m dead and buried.’
60
‘There must be a special word for it,’ thought Hillel. If you’re definitely not really friends with someone, but you aren’t really enemies with him either, because you’re far too indifferent about him, if you still somehow belong together, in the eyes of the others and, whether you like it or not, in your own as well — what would you call such a person? Mate? No, that smacked of grey shirts and army boots. Comrade? Böhni would have bridled at that one, it would have meant the Comintern and orders from Moscow. And he certainly wasn’t a chaver, as they said in Ivrit.