The corridor smelled of cheap scouring powder.
The visiting room wasn’t much bigger than their cell. A table, a chair for the visitor, a stool for the prisoner.
Headmaster Gerster stood by the window and looked through the bars at the courtyard.
‘Ten minutes,’ said the warder.
Ten minutes? Böhni had been away for much longer than that.
Or had it only seemed that way?
‘Grüezi, Herr Gerster.’
The headmaster turned towards him very slowly, looked at him as a doctor might look at a seriously ill patient who is beyond help, and then said, more in sorrow than in anger, ‘Why do you do such things?’
‘I’m sorry, Herr Gerster.’
‘Everyone’s sorry in retrospect. It’s not enough. You have a head on your shoulders, Rosenthal! What on earth were you doing at a Front meeting?’
‘I know, it was idiotic.’
‘“Idiotic,” he says.’ Herr Gerster didn’t even raise his voice, and that scared Hillel. After the box-cart journey, when Gerstli had given them a proper earful, he had felt better. ‘Behaves like the most unreasonable ragamuffin in the whole world and then says: “idiotic”. Is it true that it was about a bet?’
Hillel nodded.
‘Give a decent answer when I ask you a question! Was it about a bet?’
‘Yes, Herr Gerster.’
‘And who started this bet?’
‘He’ll be expelled, won’t he?’
Gerster didn’t reply. He just stood there, his arms behind his back, and clapped the back of his hand impatiently into his palm.
‘Who?’
‘Böhni will be finished if you throw him out,’ said Hillel.
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
‘They’ll finish him off in his village.’
Back of hand against palm.
‘His whole life will fall apart.’
‘I want to know who is to blame.’
On the wall there was a sign: ‘The passing over of objects is strictly forbidden.’
‘Who?’
A wooden hatch, like the one between kitchen and dining room at home, but higher up. Probably you could keep an eye on the visits from there.
‘I’m waiting.’
The sweetish taste of lunch rose up in Hillel’s throat. He swallowed.
Back of hand against palm.
‘Me,’ said Hillel. ‘I’m to blame for this.’
Gerster turned away as if he hadn’t heard him, and walked back over to the barred window as if he were about to deliver a speech to the courtyard.
‘Did you agree that in advance?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Herr Gerster.’
‘That each of you was to shoulder the blame?’
Even the visiting room smelled of cleaning fluids, but less sharply. They probably used a better product here.
‘Did Böhni say…?’
Gerster turned back towards him. If Hillel hadn’t known it wasn’t possible, he could have sworn that his headmaster was smiling.
‘Then I will have a great deal of difficulty discovering the true culprit. Tell Böhni, “In dubio pro reo.” He doesn’t understand Latin, but you can translate it for him.’
When the warder had left and closed the cell door, Hillel said, ‘You tried to save my skin, didn’t you, Böhni?’
Böhni was busy scratching a stick figure into the wall with the handle of his spoon, and couldn’t look up.
‘Do you know what, Rosenthal?’ he said. ‘You’re off your head.’
‘But you’re a dick,’ said Hillel.
‘At least I’m not a Jewish one.’
‘Gerster says I’m to tell you, “In dubio pro reo.”’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That I have to put up with your stupid face for another whole year of school.’
‘And I have to put up with yours,’ said Böhni. ‘That’s much worse.’
69
When Herr Grün had returned to health he went to the kosher clothes factory to quit his job.
He thanked Zalman, whom he had told, on the first day, about what had happened in the camp, and who had understood that you have to help such people.
‘If you need anything else…’ said Zalman.
‘I don’t need anything else.’
Herr Grün shook Rachel’s hand and said, ‘Without you I would never have got better.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Rachel.
‘I’m still wondering whether I should be grateful to you for that.’
He was always saying things like that.
‘Would you rather have died?’
‘It might have been better,’ said Herr Grün, ‘but now this is how things are.’
‘Where are you going to work from now on?’
‘I’ll send you free tickets,’ said Herr Grün. ‘You and Fräulein Pomeranz.’
He kept his word.
In the foyer of the Corso Theatre Rachel handed in her coat at the cloakroom and noticed very quickly that she had chosen too elegant a dress. Admittedly this was the premiere, but in a revue theatre like the one managed by Wladimir Rosenbaum, the word meant nothing more than all the ‘Sensationals!’, ‘Uniques!’ or ‘You’ll Weep With Laughters!’ that he splashed so liberally over his posters. There was a premiere here every few weeks, and Rachel was the only one wearing a proper evening ensemble for the occasion, in the bold, modern colour combination that Fräulein Bodmer, the directrice, had seen at Patou in Paris: skirt and jacket of red duvetine, green satin neckline. Stilclass="underline" the women looked at her enviously, and the men looked at her the way one likes men to look at one, so that one may assume an expression that suggests one hasn’t noticed their gaze at all.
She got there early and had to wait for Désirée. The people, it seemed to her, came to the Corso with stubbornly cheerful faces, they had decided to spend money on an enjoyable evening, and the investment was to pay itself back from the very start. The women laughed shrilly and held their fingertips, with their red lacquered nails, in front of their mouths; as they walked, the men bounced at the knee with an excess of vigour, and when they could be persuaded to buy cigarettes or a cuddly toy from the trays of the salesgirls with the page costumes, they tried to look as if they had planned the purchase from the outset.
At last Désirée arrived, right at the agreed time but much too late for Rachel’s impatience. Her hair was parted severely in the middle as always, and she was wearing a very simple brown dress with floral embroidery around the collar and the hem, ‘a young girl’s dress,’ Rachel thought, ‘and she isn’t — me neshuma — a young girl any more’. But she had to admit that Désirée, with her slender figure, could still carry off such a thing.
The usherettes were also dressed as pages, with a tight bodice that thrust out their bosoms, and flesh-coloured tights on their long legs. The peroxide blonde who showed Rachel and Désirée to their seats could have been a sister of Blandine Flückiger: a dress size of thirty-eight and a smile for every man in a ten-metre radius.
They were sitting in the expensive part of the theatre, where the seats were upholstered, and with a tiny table in front of each pair. There were also tables that sat four and six, and there the laughter and conversations were particularly noisy. Rachel saw only bottles standing on the tables and wondered whether it was also possible to order wine by the glass here. But then the waiter — a real water, not a fake page — was already bringing an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne to their table. ‘A little gift from Herr Grün,’ he said. ‘With best wishes for an enjoyable evening.’ He popped the cork and poured two glasses so precisely that the crown of foam rose over the edge and then settled back down without a single drop being wasted.