In their embarrassment, and because they didn’t really understand their own behaviour, Mimi and Chanele dismissed it as a harmless squabble between friends, which Golde didn’t believe, but accepted for the sake of a bit of peace. Over breakfast the two of them even chatted together, but with empty courtesy, as the Prussian and French negotiators chatted when they interrupted the capitulation negotiations for a bite to eat. As is customary among diplomats, the actual subject was not once mentioned in the Meijer household.
Today the subject did not take the direct path via Ehrendingen, but instead came up through the forest, took a wide detour via the Nussbaumener Hörnli. The route was longer, but on the narrow path at least one did not risk becoming embroiled in a tiresome conversation by a bored market traveller. Today Janki wanted to be all alone, he wanted to savour the anticipation of his first day as a businessman, he just wanted to dream, as he seldom allowed himself to do. In his head he ran through all the polite and yet not submissive phrases with which he would welcome his customers from the very beginning. A first one, equipped with a great deal of taste and even more money, was stepping into the shop in his imagination and was greeted, as Monsieur Delormes had greeted all ladies who didn’t look too matronly, with ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle’, when a loud voice dragged him from his daydreams. ‘The early bird catches the worm!’ the voice blared.
It was the schoolmaster, Anne-Kathrin’s father, a well-fed, pot-bellied man with a bushy beard, the only one in the village to practise movement for movement’s sake, and who had set off at this early hour for a refreshing stroll through the forest. With his checked trousers and his jacket dangling over his shoulder — the walking stick hung in its arm-hole served as a counterweight — he might have been mistaken for an English summer visitor, had his unmistakeable Swiss not immediately destroyed that illusion.
‘Ah, mon cher Monsieur!’ said the schoolmaster. ‘You are the Frenchman who has moved in with the cattle-trader Meijer, are you not? Exactly. Seek and ye shall find! I had no idea that you Frenchies’ — he actually said ‘Frenchies’, a word that Janki had never heard before — ‘have learned a lot from Jahn, our father of gymnastics. Amidst the mountain dew! I take this path every day, only in fine weather, of course. If it rains, I stand at the open window with my Indian clubs. Every day! I wanted to found a gymnastics club in the village, but the people here are not very open to new ideas. So be it! The strong man is most powerful on his own.’
‘Don’t let me hold you up,’ said Janki, and pressed himself against a tree to let the other man pass.
‘Not at all, not at all! Let’s walk together! Anyone who loves walking in the open air is a good friend of mine!’
‘Unlike you, I am not on the road for pleasure…’ Janki began, but his objection was immediately washed away by the schoolmaster’s next torrent of words.
‘Pleasure? Well, perhaps it is that too. But above all it is a duty. To nurture your body like a sacred temple. That you may thrive here on earth. Fresh, pious, happy, free! You Frenchies haven’t been nearly fresh enough, and far from pious, or else at Sedan the Prussians wouldn’t just have… You were there, they tell me.’
‘No, I…’
‘You will have to tell is all about it! No buts! I’m thinking of setting up a local education association, for all social classes. It isn’t just the lungs that need fresh air, the mind does too. Mens sana in corpore sano! I will invite you and you will tell us all about the great day. A massacre it was and not a battle. But you will have to excuse me. Words were exchanged enough, now is the time for deeds!’ Elbows bent, the schoolmaster set off again and marched puffing up the mountain.
However hard Janki tried, his lovely dream of hordes of contented lady customers refused to come back to life, so he nodded quite crossly to the schoolmaster when, even before Janki had reached the summit, he came down towards him again in the winding gait recommended by Jahn, the father of gymnastics. ‘As soon as the association has been founded.’
Even though the other shopkeepers of Baden didn’t wait so long, Janki opened his shop at nine on the dot, in the Parisian style. With the chiming of the town bell he turned the key in the lock, left the door open so that the sunlight laid an inviting carpet on the wooden floor, and took his place behind the counter. From that position, since the salesroom was a few steps lower than the street, one could only see headless passers-by passing through the picture-frame of the door: black frock coats floating gravely over the cobbles, uniformed legs stamping as they marched past, once a whole colony of lace-up boots under identical dark brown coats. The only ones who stopped were the dogs. They sniffed after the new smell, and probably wanted to lift their legs to renew their claim to the territory, but were dragged away on their leashes by invisible hands and vanished from the field of vision.
The beam of sunlight on the floor wandered slowly from left to right, and anyone who had the time to concentrate on it could see its shape gradually changing, shortening the higher the sun rose, particles of dust floating above it, performing a gentle, courtly dance, disturbed by not a single draught of air.
You could rest both hands on the counter or just one, you could put your other hand in your pocket or shove it under your jacket like Napoleon, you could rest one forearm on the freshly painted wood, which conveyed an obliging and yet aristocratic impression, you could fold your arms in front of your chest or link your fingers behind your back and stretch inconspicuously, you could walk up and down, bob your knees or balance on one leg, you could open the glass doors over the shelves and arrange the bales of fabric yet more perfectly and enticingly, you could spot a dirty mark on the wall and rub away at it with your sleeve, you could polish your shoes again and, as you used the brush, think of Chanele’s clever precaution, you could push the red money bag, the only object in the drawer under the counter, from the right to the left and then back again to the right, you could clear your throat and check whether your own voice hadn’t lost all its power after such a long silence and, like the smell of cloves and peppercorns, crept into a dark corner, you could say ‘Why?’ out loud or shout or bring your fist down on the table, you could do whatever you liked, you were, after all, your own master in your own shop, and there was no one there that you could have disturbed by doing anything at all.
The chimes marking the hours or quarter hours seemed to be following one another more and more quickly, even though the time between them stretched out to infinity. The room, which had seemed so bright and inviting in the morning, now that the sun stood right over the house and no longer sent its rays through the open door, became more and more confined and oppressive. It was already almost midday, and the only visitor to Jean Meijer’s French Drapery had been a little boy whose hoop skipped down the steps, bumped into the counter and lay there as if dead. The boy apologised politely and then, at the shrill cry of a female voice, ran quickly out again. Janki would have liked to hold him back, because in the end somebody — dear God, somebody! — wanted something from him.