How long ago was it now? Uncle Salomon was only a memory now, and Aunt Golde not even that.
‘François and I are the last Meijers,’ thought Arthur. ‘There will be no more after us.’
Arthur’s little topolino had been just right for his new family. Irma and Moses were firmly convinced that the back seat, far too small for adults, had always been meant for them.
He had to concentrate on the road, and therefore couldn’t look across at Rosa. But precisely that gave him the courage to ask the question that had preoccupied him since he had received the news of his mother’s death. Many things were easier to say if you didn’t have to look other people in the eye as you did so. That had always been his experience.
‘Could you imagine…’ he began.
‘Yes?’
‘Could you imagine Irma and Moses… I mean, now that we’re… It wouldn’t have to be straight away. Could you imagine that?’
Later, when it had long been plain that they belonged together, he often said to her, ‘The fact that you understood me then, when I was stammering around — at that moment I knew our marriage wasn’t simply one of convenience.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosa, ‘I agree that the children should take your name. The Meijer line must continue.’
Even though it had not been directly discussed or decided, Zalman’s flat on Rotwandstrasse had become the place where the family met when there was something to celebrate or mourn. The last occasion had been the engagement between Rachel and Herr Grün, but the same room had also held the seder at which drunken Alfred had stumbled back into the family, and at the same table they had made the fateful decision to separate the lovers and send Alfred to Paris and thus in the end to his death.
When they arrived, Uncle Melnitz was already waiting impatiently for them. He was dressed in black as always, and yet in some inexplicable way he looked less old-fashioned than usual. Sometimes a style from days long gone imperceptibly becomes fashionable again, so that you can’t tell whether the old times have come back, or whether the new ones were always there.
As soon as each of them came in he shoved the low mourning stool towards them, an over-eager maître d’ already praising the specialities of the house before his guests have even taken their coats off. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said. ‘It’s time to start mourning.’
They tried not to notice him, they didn’t want be defined by him and stayed where they were.
Uncle Melnitz made a particularly low waiterly bow in front of François and even hummed the tune of the 133rd psalm for him: ‘Hine ma tov u ma nayim…’ — ‘Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.’
‘Now sit down, sit down!’
They had all agreed that François had to be present at that shiva. He had decided not to be a Jew any more, but he still belonged to the family. To spare him any embarrassment, they had even cancelled the daily minyan that is normally part of the mandatory prayer times at shivas.
‘Ruben can say the prayers,’ Hinda had said, but they hadn’t been able to get hold of him yet. Immediately after the funeral they tried again, and the helpful woman from the telephone exchange even asked her colleagues in Halberstadt specially. No, the number was correct, they said, and that was how it was listed in the directory, but it was coming up as temporarily disconnected.
Temporarily disconnected.
Herr Grün made his most expressionless face and said that didn’t sound good.
Rachel nudged her fiancé in the ribs. ‘What a prophet of doom you can be, Felix!’ She was the only one who used his first name. Everyone else called him ‘Herr Grün’, even if they were on familiar terms with him.
Ruben was temporarily disconnected.
It was a phrase, the lady from the exchange had said, that she had never heard before. It wasn’t internationally customary either.
Herr Grün nodded gloomily. In Germany at the moment lots of things were customary that were unknown in other countries.
‘Wrong,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘It’s known everywhere. It’s also customary everywhere. Because it’s been the custom everywhere. It sometimes falls out of fashion, for a century or two. But then it comes back in, and then they enjoy themselves again, yes.’
They didn’t have to listen to him, because he was dead, after all. Dead and many times buried. No one had to listen to him.
‘Now sit down! Sit down!’
No one had to start the shiva just because he urged them to.
Ruben was disconnected.
What could that mean?
Adolf Rosenthal tried to explain that the telephone network in Germany was particularly efficient, he had been reading an article about it in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung only the day before.
‘Oh, shut up!’ Lea interrupted him. She had never spoken to her husband like that before.
They were all much more keen to hear Rosa’s opinion. She had, after all, just arrived from Germany and must know what was going on there. What could that mean, ‘Temporarily disconnected?’
Rosa didn’t want to scare anyone, far from it, but since the Nazis had been in power there it was never a good sign if something was suddenly different from the norm.
‘It’s no different from the norm,’ said Uncle Melnitz. ‘It’s exactly as it always is, yes.’ He rubbed his hands, not like someone who is cold, but like someone who has been proved right. ‘It’s as it always is,’ he repeated, ‘Because it has always been like that. We just forget it sometimes. So sit down, sit down!’
His smell had changed too, as the smell of a cellar changes when you clear it out to make way for new things.
But he was dead and buried, he no longer existed, once and for all he had ceased to exist.
He could not exist any more.
At shivas you don’t close the door.
Anyone who wants to bring condolences to the mourners doesn’t ring the bell, he just steps in and joins them.
But now someone did ring. Twice.
‘Ruben’s getting back to us!’ cried Hinda and ran outside. It was just the reply from the post office, saying that it had not been possible for her message, addressed to Ruben Kamionker, 16 Lichtwerstrasse, Halberstadt, to be delivered as normal.
Not known at this address.
Which was of course nonsense. Complete nonsense. Ruben lived there, had lived there since taking the job at the Klaus, lived there with his wife Lieschen and their four children.
Three boys and a girl.
He lived there. Something must have happened.
‘So sit down, sit down!’ urged Uncle Melnitz. ‘And let’s start mourning at last.’
Epilogue
74
Every time he died, he came back.
His shoes were coated with dust, as if from a long and strenuous journey, but he walked weightlessly, light-footed, a dancer who hears the music even before the instruments have been tuned. He came in on tiptoe like someone who doesn’t want to disturb, and drew the door closed behind him as carefully as someone who has decided to stay for a long time. He still kept his eyes closed, not like a sleeping man, but like someone who has enough pictures inside him. He didn’t have to see the way to find his seat. His chair was waiting. They had expected him even when they thought he was never coming back.
When they still hoped.
He sat down and was there again.
Had always been there.
Every time he died, he came back.