Twenty years’ difference.
You can overdo idealism.
But Irma would smile at him with her squinting eyes. And Moses would give all the cushions in the flat a perfect dimple with the edge of his hand.
He would have to buy a few cushions. Throw out the old leather armchairs and get a sofa. So that they could sit together in the evening like a real family.
At the weekend they would go to the zoo. Once a year to the Sechseläuten parade. They’d go on holiday.
Germans, go on holiday in Germany! Germans, go on holiday in Germany!
Why was that slogan rattling through his head, to the rhythm of the wheels?
Why was he suddenly alone in the compartment?
He must have gone to sleep, he didn’t know for how short or how long a time.
Outside the windows a happy landscape passed by as if in a propaganda film.
Germans, go on holiday in Germany!
In the fields, farmers were bringing in the last harvest under a cloudless sky. In the towns contented citizens went about their business. People waited with patient expressions at railway crossings.
Everything was so normal.
Normal?
Arthur was on his way to marry a complete stranger.
Perhaps he wouldn’t get there in time. Perhaps it would be impossible to get another appointment. Perhaps everything would already have been cancelled by the time he got there. What time was it anyway?
Eventually he would have to get a wrist-watch. Having to flip up a lid every time you wanted to tell the time was far too laborious. Nobody nowadays carried a watch on a heavy chain in their waistcoat pocket. He would have to change, become more mobile. Now that he had all these new obligations.
But perhaps he had missed everything anyway. Without being able to do anything about it. He had boarded the right train, the earliest one there was, but they’d taken him off that one, and the next one wasn’t until three hours later. What if the town hall wasn’t right next to the station?
No, said the conductor, long-distance trains stopped in Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe. To get into town he would have to change for the local train to the station or take a taxi if he was in a great hurry.
Was he in a great hurry?
When he was a little boy looking at the panopticon, he couldn’t wait to have all the mysteries revealed to him. ‘A youth there was, who, burning with a thirst for knowledge, to Egyptian Sais came.’ And the first time he had seen Joni…
What was it he had said by way of farewell? ‘A family would be the best thing even for you. You’d be a wonderful father.’
Meanwhile, whenever they approached a larger town, the train slowed down, almost to a standstill, and Arthur didn’t know if he should be pleased. But in the next station they set off precisely on time. As was only proper in a country that set such store by order.
The railway track now ran through a forest, and on either side the trees were lined up in order, presenting themselves in rank and file for the woodcutters.
Through villages that looked as if they’d been built from construction kits. The same village over and over again.
Past a barracks that looked like a factory, and lots of factories that looked like barracks.
And then, much too late, much too soon, the train stopped.
Only a single taxi was waiting outside the ornate station, and at first it didn’t want to take him. Broken suitcases don’t inspire confidence, and neither do shoes without heels. It was only the banknotes in his wallet that made the driver friendlier. Arthur paid in advance, and was probably short-changed. That didn’t matter any more either.
He couldn’t have said what he had expected, but irritatingly the town they were driving through struck him as all too ordinary. There shouldn’t, it seemed to him, have been such a thing as everyday life here. But there was nothing particularly striking. People, cars, shops. Like everywhere. It could have been Zurich. If it hadn’t been for all the flags with the crooked cross.
When Arthur told him he was in a hurry, the driver seemed delighted. He pushed back his cap and honked all the other cars out of the way.
‘You’re Swiss?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Another one of ours,’ said the driver, and nodded like someone who has secret information. ‘Just like Austria. You’ll see.’
In the course of the journey he became more and more talkative, treated Arthur as a rich uncle treats a poor relative, and with proprietorial pride explained to him the sights that they were passing, the regional museum and the Torwache.
Then they were turning into Königstrasse.
The same street where Rosa Pollack’s husband had been run over.
‘Here’s the town hall,’ said the driver. ‘Do you want to visit the mayor?’
And laughed and waved to Arthur, who stood forlornly on the pavement with his twined suitcase, once again as he drove off.
The big clock over the entrance — flanked by two stone lions, that too could have been in Zurich — showed him that he had arrived on time. Ten minutes early, in fact. Now he only had to find the right room.
Was there a porter with whom he could leave his suitcase?
And then a woman came out of the town hall door, a fat, agitated woman clutching a little bunch of flowers, looked searchingly around and then hurried towards Arthur. The closer she came the more slowly she walked, more and more hesitant, looked at him as one looks at a present one can tell one doesn’t like even from a distance, but about which one must pretend to be delighted, out of pure politeness.
Looked at his suitcase, the broken shoes, the jacket with its lining hanging out. He should have kept his coat on and not carried it over his arm.
‘Arthur Meijer?’ she asked. Plainly she hoped she was mistaken. ‘Are you Arthur Meijer?’
She was so ugly.
A bloated woman who had tried to powder a better colour on her face. A brightly coloured dress that bulged all over her body. The swollen, discoloured scar of an inexpert vaccination on her left upper arm.
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘I’m…’ He had first to put down his suitcase, that tied-up, unsightly relic of a suitcase, on the ground in order to doff his hat. ‘Doctor Arthur Meijer,’ he introduced himself, and involuntarily bowed slightly as he had seen little Moses do.
She shook her head in disbelief.
Hairs on her upper lip. Short, prickly hairs. Something he’d always found unbearable in a woman.
‘You’re not as I imagined,’ she said.
‘Nor you…’ but he had committed himself now, he had given his word without anyone asking him for it, he hadn’t given anyone the chance to talk him out of it, so it was only right that he should choke back the words on his lips right now. Instead he said, ‘Those people pulled my shoes apart.’
In her amazement she stuck out her tongue, which gave her face a babyishly stupid expression.
‘The border guards,’ he tried to explain. ‘They took me off the train and…’
‘We’ve got to hurry.’ She breathed out deeply, as one does before unpleasant or unavoidable decisions, and then, before he could do it himself, picked up his suitcase. Even though it wasn’t a very hot day, she had patches of sweat under her arms.
In silence, and without even checking that he was following her, she stamped her way up the stairs in front of him. ‘Legs like fat Christine,’ he thought. It was only when they got to the third floor that she stopped by a door, not even breathing heavily, as one might have expected given her weight, and told him, ‘In fact the smart wedding room is downstairs, all carved oak, but it’s only for Aryan marriages.’
‘Yes,’ he said resignedly, ‘then we’ll just have to get on with it,’ and was about to give her his arm. She looked at him, as she had been looking at him all the time, with disbelief and disappointment, and stepped aside. ‘Let’s hope it’s the right thing,’ she said. ‘Give me your coat and your hat. It’s better if your hands are free. And hurry up! Rosa’s already waiting in there.’