Singer’s attacks of laughter were so well known that you could even make jokes about them, like the one comparing him to the famous Frankfur Cantor Lachmann. ‘What’s the difference between Lachmann and Singer? Lachmann sings, and Singer laughs.’ Nonetheless, Sarah and Nafali had never seen him as he was now, sitting there wiggling his little legs with uncontrollable delight. And he seemed to want something important from them; he had insisted, not directly, of course, that wasn’t his way, but with unmistakable hints, that Naftali be fetched from the butcher’s shop to join them. And now that Naftali was there, he was doing nothing but laughing.
At last Singer calmed down, only little squeaks emerged from him from time to time, bubbles from a sunken ship, he wiped his brow with his huge handkerchief, which still had cake crumbs stuck to it, and at last said in a very weak voice: ‘Forgive me, please. Be moichel. But the story is… You will laugh with me. Or cry. It’s the same song, just with a different tune.’
‘What story?’ Sarah Pomeranz was a polite and hospitable woman, but if she ever became impatient it was not a good idea to keep her waiting.
Abraham nodded up at her and said, ‘You will remember’ — as if they wouldn’t remember! — ‘that you sent me, not sent me exactly, don’t let me tell a lie, but neither did you forbid me to talk about it, that I told you about a shidduch that might interest you…’
‘Nothing came of it,’ said Sarah, ‘and you kept your fee.’
‘Fee?’ Singer pulled himself up to his very modest height. ‘Am I a shadchen? You gave me a present, your rewards will be in that other world, and I may have talked about the matter, here or there, the way one does when one travels around a lot.’
‘I was opposed to the idea from the outset! Anyone with eyes in their head must surely see that Miriam and Pinchas are not made for one another.’
Sarah looked at her husband with surprise. It wasn’t usual for him to say much in the Pomeranz house. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Is our Pinchas perhaps not good enough for her? Just because she dolls herself up like Schippe Malke? Or is a beheimes trader something better than a shochet?’
Abraham Singer was already giggling again. He even had to bite into his handkerchief to control himself.
‘Forget this shidduch. I have a better one for you. A much better one.’ And already he was laughing again.
‘I bet it’s a good one!’ Sarah Pomeranz didn’t quite catch the right dismissive tone. A mother who offers a bride for her son has a lot of trouble feigning a lack of interest.
‘A good family,’ said Singer. ‘And a nedinye — that any Jewish child would be pleased with. Twelve thousand francs.’
If Naftali had had a daughter, he couldn’t have given her half of that as a dowry. ‘And the parents are sending you to us?’
For some reason Abraham Singer had found that question irresistibly comical. ‘No,’ he giggled. ‘The parents aren’t sending me. The parents have no idea.’
‘Who then? The Prophet Elijah?’
‘The kalleh! The kalleh speaks to me in the street, offers me money — am I a shadchen? — and says to me, more or less like this, “Go to the Pomeranzes and inform them…” — am I a town crier with a drum? — “inform them,” she says, and I’m thinking, why is she being so elegant? “Inform them!”’
‘Who?’ asked Sarah.
‘I’m a polite man,’ said Singer, ‘please don’t consider it arrogance on my part. If I am asked — why should I say no? So!’ His hands were, in contrast to the rest of his body, a normal size, so they looked enormous. He hammered out a town-crier’s drumroll on the table-top, and looked as if he would happily have climbed onto the chair to play his part to perfection.
‘Hear ye, hear ye!’ he crowed. ‘I am informing you all!’
‘He’s drunk,’ said Sarah.
‘It’s just a good thing that I’m a discreet person,’ said Singer. ‘Anyone else would want to tell the whole world.’
‘You tell it!’ Sarah Pomeranz was wringing her hands with impatience.
‘Well then. A shidduch for your Pinchas. A very good shidduch. But with two conditions.’
‘Conditions?’
‘First of all,’ said Singer, and beat the next drumroll, ‘first he has to get a pivot tooth.’
‘What does his tooth…?’
‘I’ll tell you. And secondly…’ — drum roll — ‘secondly he is to move away from Endingen.’
‘The woman must be meshuga.’
‘No,’ said Singer, and now he wasn’t laughing any more, ‘she isn’t meshuga. More and more Jews, as you know, are living in Zurich, and they have no butcher’s shop of their own. Not only could a shochet find a parnassah there… he would need staff.’
‘Zurich?’ Sarah repeated the name as pitifully as if it were a city in America, unreachably far away at the other end of the world.
‘Nowadays you just have to take the train from Baden. You’ll be there in three quarters of an hour.’
‘He’s too young for a butcher’s shop of his own.’
‘What can I teach him?’
‘Not nearly independent enough!’
‘He slaughters a cow better than I do.’
‘A dreamer is what he is.’
‘Don’t you have any questions for me?’ said Singer, breaking into the argument.
‘What?’
‘Who the kalleh is.’
‘Yes,’ said Naftali, ‘of course. Who…?’
‘Leave him alone!’ said Sarah and got up. ‘He’s a discreet person, he’s not going to tell us. And besides, it’s just occurred to me…’ She rapped her husband on the top of the head, as the teacher does at cheder when a pupil doesn’t know the simplest answer. ‘It’s just occurred to me: I urgently need to pay a visit. To Golde Meijer. I imagine that the two of us have a lot to talk about.’
14
Anyone who suddenly makes the seamstress sew different monograms into the trousseau linen might as well book the drummer and announce his news in the village square. In Endingen, where people liked to spice the dry bread of everyday life with other people’s excitements, everyone knew that. But they did Mimi the favour of playing along when she shook her curls with pearly laughter and said she still couldn’t believe it, people had actually believed, her and Janki — and they were cousins, of course, he was like a brother to her, while Pinchas, well, now that the date for the chassene was set, she could admit it, she’d been wild about him ever since she was a little girl. And the meshugena was, said Mimi, with a yet more pearly laugh, that she herself had known nothing about the misunderstanding for a long time, people everywhere had congratulated her on her betrothed, on the lucky fellow, and it had never occurred to her — never occurred to her! — that someone might mean Janki, Janki of all people, who presumably wasn’t interested in getting married yet, when he was only interested in his shop and nothing else at all. But that came from these old-fashioned customs, she had begged her father, practically begged him, to make the engagement as public as was customary amongst civilised people, with printed cards, but he’d refused to have anything to do with it, and so this crazy misunderstanding had come about, that she and Janki, of all people — you must forgive her for laughing out loud.