Pinchas was strangely troubled by what he had studied, and picked up the newspaper with a certain relief. He had no real interest in the reports on the debates in the Great Council or the number of cattle at Zurzach Market, but just enjoyed the simplicity and directness of the subjects. He had toiled his way up a steep mountain, and now he was enjoying a few paces on the plain. Usually this reading left him calm and relaxed, but this Monday everything was different. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and ran, in his slippers and still clutching the newspaper in his hand, out of the house, ‘like a meshugena’, commented his mother, who had been about to bring a piece of fresh honey-cake to his study table.
After a number of detours he found Mimi on the little slope above the bend in the road, where one could sit on a toppled tree trunk and look over the way to Baden as comfortably as if sitting on a garden bench. Not that Mimi had been waiting for Janki with any particular impatience, certainement pas, but a letter had arrived for him, a letter from Paris, and it might contain something urgent, something that could not be postponed. And besides, and that would probably be permitted, she had needed to take a short walk in the open air; it was always so terribly stuffy in the house, now that the days were getting warmer.
Pinchas half-ran, half-hobbled towards her. He had lost a slipper on the way, and in his almost bare foot he had stepped on a sharp stone. Unused to running, and breathing heavily, he bared his teeth, making the gap between them look even bigger than usual. ‘Miriam,’ he struggled to say, ‘you must… you absolutely must…’
Anne-Kathrin had always said as much. Shy men saved up their little bit of courage for years, and then wanted to spend all their savings in one go. Mimi sat up straight and held her head inclined slightly to the side, a gesture, she hoped, that would make her look at once incorruptible and unapproachable.
‘You absolutely must… talk to Janki,’ panted Pinchas.
‘Meshuga,’ thought Mimi, unaware that Pinchas’s mother had said the same thing a quarter of an hour before. ‘Does he think I need to request permission from something from Janki? Standing there with his slipper, waving his newspaper around in front of his face and talking nonsense.’
‘On no account must he…’
‘What?’
‘Open his shop. Here! Pinchas waved the paper still more violently. ‘Read!’ At first Mimi hadn’t a clue what slaughtered elephants and revolting rats might have to do with Janki’s drapery. Pinchas had to explain it to her, in a Talmudic singsong, with a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘thens’. And conclusions drawn from the general to the particular. ‘And that’s why Janki shouldn’t open his shop,’ he concluded his disquisition, having recovered his breath.
‘He’s already opened it. Today.’
‘Oh,’ said Pinchas.
‘His goods are clean, I know that for sure. They might come from Paris, but he ordered them from the best dealer, even though I’m sure there were cheaper ones, and…’
‘All goods from Paris are clean,’ said Pinchas. ‘At least so I assume.’
‘But it says here…’
‘If I wrote on a piece of paper, “Miriam is ugly”, would that make it true?’
‘Of course not,’ thought Mimi.
‘I could…’ Pinchas took a deep breath and then said every quickly, like someone who doesn’t want to pass up on his very last chance, ‘I could use up a whole sea of ink, and it would still be a lie.’
Mimi no longer understood anything at all.
‘Because you are fabulously beautiful,’ said Pinchas. Anne-Kathrin’s theory about shy and economical people wasn’t so wrong after all. ‘Like a herd of goats from the hill of Gilead.’
‘What sort of goats?’
‘Your hair. And your teeth… like sheep all of which bear twins. Besides, I’ve made some enquiries. The gap in my teeth can be got rid of. There’s a doctor in Baden, he puts something in, it’s called a pivot tooth, and then you can’t see it any more. It’s expensive, but my father would lend me the money, if you…’
‘If I what?’
‘If you…’ But Pinchas had already spent his small amount of capital, and his voice subsided again. ‘Most beautiful of all are the twin fawns grazing among the lilies.’
‘What kind of fawns?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Pinchas whispered and turned bright red.
‘You wanted to explain to me…’
‘Of course. I’m sorry. What they are writing here—’
‘Just sit down! You’re making me nervous.’
Pinchas squatted on the very edge of the tree trunk, where there was no danger of accidentally touching Mimi. But he could inhale her smell, of youth and sweat and something he couldn’t name. Pomeranzen — bitter oranges — must smell like that, a fruit that he had never tasted, but had looked up in the dictionary because of his name.
‘Nu?’ When Mimi grew impatient, she resembled her father more closely than she would have wished.
‘This article in the paper… Someone has put it there to damage Janki. So that no one buys from him.’
‘But if the rats…?’
‘Into fabrics they will creep.’ As soon as Pinchas was able to argue logically, he became noticeably more confident. ‘Which are so tightly rolled that they have to eat their way in. And you would see it in the fabric. No, no, the whole story is one big lie. Except: people will believe it.’
‘Why?’ There was something pleading in Mimi’s voice that touched Pinchas as if she had taken his hand.
‘They believe bad things about us. And: it’s a good story.’
‘You think that’s good?’
‘I’m sorry. I mean: a good invention. Do you love him?’ He hadn’t wanted to say that. It had escaped him like a bird, which one has thought long tamed, escaping from a cage.
‘Who?’
‘Janki.’
‘Certainement pas!’ said Mimi and made her sharp face. ‘He really is meshuga,’ she thought.
‘Because: if that’s the case, I would try to help him.’
‘You?’
‘Yes,’ said Pinchas and had to bend very low to examine his socks for holes. ‘Because I would also be helping you. And for you…’
‘Nu?’
Pinchas knew exactly how the sentence would have continued. But the last remains of his small courage were used up, and all that he could utter was: ‘My mother doesn’t like darning socks. She prefers baking cakes.’ Which, as he reproached himself again and again throughout a long, sleepless night, Solomon would doubtless have left out of his Song of Songs.
After such a sentence you can only get up, walk away and never come back. He left the newspaper on the ground and didn’t once look up when he, slouching along on a single slipper, set off on the endless journey home. Had his mother baked honey cakes? He would never be able to eat another honey cake as long as he lived.
When Janki came at last, it was almost dark. He moved as he had often done as a soldier, like an automaton, without a will of his own, impelled only by habit. His head was bowed and he walked straight ahead. Only sometimes, if a dandelion grew in the middle of the road, did he swerve to behead it with a kick. Mimi called him, and he stopped, as an exhausted army unit stops and waits for the next command: if it comes, you will carry it out, if not, you can stay like that until the end of time.
‘How was it?’ asked Mimi, although the back of his bent neck already told her the answer.
‘If no customers come tomorrow, that will be twice as much as today.’ He had thought of that sentence as a brave joke, but on the way from Baden to Endingen any humour had been stifled in the dust from the road.