Unaccustomed to dealing with children, he was about to ruffle Arthur’s hair, but then shied away from the contact at the last moment. His outstretched hand hung in the air as if he were about to bless the boy.
His wife, taller and bonier than he, came from a farming village near Lucerne, and didn’t contribute a single word to the conversation. Ziltener had probably forbidden her to say anything apart from ‘Good evening’ and ‘Thank you for the invitation.’ They had both been invited only out of kindness, and were abandoned by Janki mid-greeting, when one of the two hired servants brought in the new guests.
Director Strähle, the owner of the Verenahof, had the engaging, eloquent manners of a hotelier who is used to saying exactly what the guest wants to hear. His voice, full of ostentatious cordiality, flowed from him as if freshly blended with oil, and seemed made for much larger spaces than the Meijers’ drawing room. On the breast of his shirt, which swelled like the bow of a ship, there shone silver buttons with the coat of arms that he had had designed specially for his hotel.
Frau Strähle was German, and people in Baden said she had, when she had fallen in love with the attractive director of her hotel during a spa cure, abandoned an extremely advantageous engagement in favour of her new union. Another rumour claimed that she had a different dress for every day of the season, all paid for from the tills of the Verenahof. Tody she was wearing a model in lime-green taffeta, which billowed with the suggestion of a bridal train each time she took a step.
Director Strähle kissed Chanele’s hand, chatted to François, joked with Arthur, and could not get over the pleasant surprise of finding the honoured Herr Meijer senior here too. He had — and this too was part of the rituals of these invitations — brought an outsized bottle of champagne, the special cuvée of the Verenahof, as he stressed several times, and very popular among his guests. Life, he added, was in the end too short, hahaha, only ever to drink water.
‘I didn’t knew you could drink water.’ Herr Rauhut, the editor of the Badener Tageblatt, liked to make little jokes about his own love of a decent drop of wine, and thus tried to gloss over the fact that he was generally drunk or at least slightly the worse for wear. He had come alone, and Chanele was already worrying that he had come without his wife and the seating arrangements would have to be changed all over again. But then Frau Rauhut was there after all, a sickly, reproachfully wheezing person with a bluish complexion. When her husband, as he inevitably tended to do after a few glasses, favoured the party with Schubert’s Lieder — he had a powerful if not very tuneful voice — his wife had to accompany him on the piano, and every time she did one wondered if she really had enough strength to press down the keys.
The editor drew the hotel manager into a corner and began to talk at him in a whisper. Chanele observed them keenly to see if they were casting secret glances at Shmul, but they seemed to be talking about something else. The conversation fell quickly silent again, because the arrival of the Schneggs was announced. The Schneggs were, if there could be such a thing in democratic Switzerland, almost aristocrats, admittedly without a title, but surrounded by the almost equally elegant aura of old money. Herr Laurenz Schnegg was the biggest property-owner in town; the House with the Red Shield, in which the Modern Emporium was installed, belonged to him. He and his wife were dressed in a deliberately old-fashioned style, as if to demonstrate that they didn’t need to adapt to the fashions or trends of the day. As they were welcomed into the house, Herr Schnegg held out his hand as devotedly to Chanele as if he expected that, in a reversal of the traditional roles of the sexes, she might kiss his; Frau Schnegg, with pursed lips and pointed chin, looked past her hostess and indicated to everyone that it was actually beneath her dignity to mingle with such society. She paid not the slightest attention to old Salomon Meijer.
Last of all, full of apologies and explanations, came Councillor Bugmann. Rauhut immediately wound himself around him as a loyal dog might his master, because alongside his many offices the councillor also had a seat on the board of the Tagblatt. A committee meeting had detained him for so long, and then there had been a case at his lawyer’s office, a stupid story, a young man, in need of financial support, whose official guardian he was, had suddenly taken it into his head to get married, without a rappen in his pocket, and when he, Bugmann, had refused his consent, had had to refuse on the grounds of his responsible position, the young man had made a scene, indescribable, and used words that one really couldn’t repeat in the presence of ladies — in short, it had taken a lot of time. He was sorry, really very sorry, to turn up late for such pleasant company, but he was sure Monsieur Meijer, as an equally busy man of the world, would have some understanding of the fact that the day sometimes needed to have twenty-five hours or even more. ‘You just mustn’t accept every honour offered to you,’ his wife always said. Bugmann shrugged. It was a debate that the two of them had every day.
The councillor was a red-faced man of the apoplectic type. With his frock coat he wore an ascot of a grey material interwoven with metallic threads. Not really good quality, thought Janki as he assured his guest how honoured he felt that a man in such demand had even found the time in his busy calendar to accept his invitation to a modest sandwich dinner.
This was the prompt for Louisli, who, after a discreet nod from Chanele, shyly announced that dinner was served.
The meal passed without incident. Arthur didn’t drop his cutlery and didn’t knock a glass over, and as, out of fear of doing something wrong, he only ate tiny portions, he won general praise for his well-behaved restraint. Salomon discovered that he shared with Councillor Bugmann, most of whose voters came from rural communities, an interest in cattle breeding. François was charming, talked with Frau Strähle about jewellery and with Frau Rauhut about music, and even managed to make Frau Schnegg nearly smile once or twice. Janki leaned far across the table and discussed business matters with Herr Schnegg. Ziltener remained submissively silent. The hired servants performed their duties. Herr Rauhut drank.
The food was a great success as well. Christine had already outdone herself with the salmon mayonnaise; when the chicken soup with dumplings arrived Director Strähle swore that he would absolutely have to send his cook for the recipe, and the veal cutlets were prepared with so much goose-fat that no one missed the butter sauce. They washed it down with excellent wines, a Gewürztraminer from Alsace with the fish, and then a heavy Burgundy that Janki had ordered specially from the Lévy cellar in Metz.
‘I have one question,’ said the editor, articulating each word with drunken concentration. ‘Only one question, Herr Meijer. Tell me now, what is kosher about this wine?’
‘That I hope it’s going down particularly well,’ Janki said evasively, waving to one of the hired waiters to refill Herr Rauhut’s glass.
But the editor would not be distracted. ‘No,’ he insisted, ‘I want to know now. A grape like that isn’t slaughtered through shechita, at least not in these parts…’
‘Hahaha, shechita, very good!’ As a hotel manager, Director Strähle had become used to laughing uproariously at every joke uttered within his hearing.