At that breakfast Arthur discovered a little foible of his wife’s: every time she took a bite she licked the corner of her mouth clean with the tip of her tongue. He stared at her with such fascination that she asked him, ‘What are you learning by heart this time?’
Afterwards the children explored the flat. Moses discovered the drawing that he had made for Arthur, and was very proud of it. Then he wanted to count the books on the shelf, but there were too many. ‘Are they all full of stories?’ he asked. His sister explained to him from the superiority of her twelve years that Arthur was a doctor, so he only had books that you could learn things from.
‘You can learn things from novels as well,’ said Arthur and winked at her. Irma would have liked to perform her trick again, but there was no sherbet powder left.
The children found the bronze-covered oak-leaf wreath particularly interesting. When Arthur announced that he had won it as a wrestler, Irma squinted at him dubiously, but it seemed quite straightforward to Moses that a Goliath should win every battle.
They also tried in vain to liberate the bottle locked in the Tantalus, in which a darkened residue of the golden fluid still sloshed back and forth. Irma refused to believe that no one had managed to drink a drop of it in nearly a hundred years. ‘I’d just have broken the lock,’ she said.
‘And what if the stuff didn’t taste nice?’
‘I wouldn’t care,’ said Irma. ‘At least I’d know.’
Arthur had decided not really to be there that day, and not to call anybody. Tomorrow or the day after it would still be soon enough to inform his family about all the surprising changes in his life. By tomorrow or the day after, he had tried to persuade himself, he could certainly have found the correct form for that communication.
But then there was a ring at the flat doorbell, and when he opened up, Hinda was standing there and handed him a big bouquet.
‘Where’s your wife?’ she asked.
He must have looked stupid, with his startled facial expression, because she said very pityingly, ‘Arthur!’ just as she had, as the older sister, always said ‘Arthur!’ when her little brother didn’t understand the world. ‘When someone from Zurich gets married, here or elsewhere, the banns are posted at the city hall for four weeks. Didn’t you think about that?’
No, he hadn’t thought about that.
‘The whole community’s talking about it. Zalman says, “If he wants to make a secret of it, then let him have his secret.” But now that it’s happened… I’m just too curious. Where is she?’
They knew everything.
They knew nothing at all, because there hadn’t been anything about the two children in the banns.
‘Otherwise I’d have brought presents for them!’ Hinda was very disappointed.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Irma. ‘We’ll take them later, too.’ Then they all talked at the same time, couldn’t find any words and therefore used a lot, had to look at each other and hug and look again, and Arthur for once didn’t stand aside, but was right in the middle, awkwardly proud and proudly awkward.
‘You’re a lucky chap,’ Hinda whispered in his ear. ‘Where did you actually meet her?’
‘At the register office, of course,’ said Arthur. ‘Where else does one meet one’s wife?’
73
Chanele’s death was as orderly as her life.
Even in her confusion, at the home she never forgot to lay out the things she needed for the next day; she had always done it, so that the following morning you could get dressed and go to the shop without wasting any time. But she didn’t get up, she just lay there and was no longer in a hurry. Her body displayed no unpleasant outward signs of death, as if she had given practical thought to that as well, and wanted to make the chevra’s work easier. Only her thin white hair lay tangled on the pillow, a disorderly sight that she would have not have allowed anyone to see during her lifetime. The dark sheitel by which she was known waited on its stand and was no longer needed.
The white line of the eyebrows ran through her face, a sum that’s been added up and is over and done with.
In an old people’s home dying is nothing unusual, no more than a final hurdle that everyone has to take. You expect it and are prepared for it. Routine. Most of the fuss is usually caused by the choice of who is next in line for the room, particularly this room, given that Chanele had had the best one in the whole house, the one with the view of the street from where you could see visitors arriving from a long way off, even if you didn’t recognise them any more.
On the telephone to François, Frau Olchev said what she always said to the bereaved: the worst had now really come to the worst, but she had seen to it that everything that needed to be done had been done, and all the preparations made. Herr Meijer could rely on her completely, she said, and needn’t worry about a thing. Even though she knew it couldn’t really be a comfort for him, of course not, it might do him good to hear that his mother — such a lovely person! — had gone to sleep quite peacefully, you might say, if he would allow her the image, that she had slipped through the gates of heaven without having to wait outside for long.
And as she said, everything had been organised. She, Frau Olchev, had just assumed that Herr Meijer would be happy if she ordered the chevra, so that everything would be done according to the old tradition, although he himself might…
And so on, and so on, even after François had long since stopped listening.
The funeral was held two days later. Canton regulations meant that it couldn’t be performed the same day, as Jewish customs would have dictated, but things went very quickly even so. No circulars had been sent out, but a surprising number of mourners still turned up. Such news spread even without mail. But only a few people were able to come from Zurich, because of course Chanele was buried next to Janki, in the old cemetery of the Aargau Jews, and it took at least half a day to get there and then travel back afterwards. Even though they would have liked to pay koved to the family in person, one can’t necessarily travel all the highways and byways to do so.
The kosher clothes factory had sent a delegation, and Sally Steigrad was there, who went to all his customers’ funerals. Wicked tongues said you could tell the extent of the life insurance from his facial expression by the graveside. In this case there was an additional, to some extent official reason for his presence: he had in the meantime become honorary chairman of the Jewish Gymnastics Association, and Janki had been flag sponsor after his big donation, and so Chanele effectively the co-sponsor.
Not many people came from Endingen, which was closest; since it had been possible to live anywhere, the old Jewish communities had shrunk. On the other hand, a whole busload arrived from Baden, mostly old women who wanted to take a look at the descendants of the Shmatte-Meijers. With a lot of significant nodding, they confirmed to each other how good the service had been in the Modern Emporium in Chanele’s day, much better than it was now the wealthy Schneggs were in charge, but then the Schneggs didn’t feel the need to encourage their employees to be polite.
They generally kept their distance from Frau Olchev and the other representatives of the old people’s home. Their presence was too potent a reminder that new rooms were always becoming available in Lengnau.
Very surprisingly, at the last minute, Siegfried Kahn arrived, Mina’s brother, whom Aunt Mimi had wanted to match up with Hinda many, many years previously. He stayed apart from the rest and didn’t say hello to anyone, to demonstrate that he was here only to pay his respects to Chanele, and not to the rest of the family. During the short ceremony he turned his owlish head, now grey, quite malevolently towards the place where François stood with his brother and sister. ‘A goy has no business at a Jewish funeral,’ his eyes said. ‘Whether he is the son or not.’ Still, François had been sensitive enough not to have a tear made in his jacket as a sign of mourning, as Arthur had done. That wouldn’t have been at all appropriate. François wore a black coat with a beaver-fur collar, and in the opinion of the old people from Baden he looked particularly un-Jewish.