‘So what was it?’
‘Yiddish,’ said Monsieur Fleur-Vallée.
‘Seid mir moichel,’ the man had said, ‘Forgive me.’ He had spoken not the Yiddish that was customary hereabouts, but the Eastern European variant that served the Jews as a lingua franca from the Baltic down to Bessarabia. There were many Jews from different countries among the delegates at the socialist congress, said Monsieur Fleur-Vallée, which was hardly a surprise, after all, Karl Marx, who had invented the whole thing, if you liked, had himself not been a goy.
‘Herr Blumental’, Mimi displayed her newly acquired knowledge later over dinner, ‘has even met Karl Marx’s daughter in person. She is an interpreter at the congress. And August Bebel, the top socialist, has a son-in-law in Zurich. A doctor. And you, Pinchas? Did you even know that there was such a congress here?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Pinchas, ‘I kind of suspected as much. Because of all the articles that have been appearing in all the newspapers for weeks.’
‘As a housewife one has no time to sit around for half the day reading newspapers.’
‘Of course not, my dear,’ said Pinchas, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of irony in his voice. He loved his wife as she was, and happily allowed her all her superficiality and little vanities, although without ignoring them. He didn’t disapprove of her spending too much money on clothes. After more than two decades Pinchas still felt it was his greatest good fortune that Mimi had married him and not Janki; sometimes when he thought of her, he had to interrupt his work for a few seconds and just stand still and rejoice.
Pinchas had changed a lot since the Endingen days, not just because he had got that pivot tooth. He had grown into himself, physically, too, his gangling frame had become rounder, and his movements less agitated. Only his beard was still thin, but that was no longer so striking since it was cut and trimmed into shape once a month. At dinner he wore a soft brown housecoat in whose pockets — how many times Mimi had complained, but the man wouldn’t listen! — he carried far too much paraphernalia. He had covered his head with a small black silk cap.
‘You two had a real adventure today,’ he said. Mimi started in alarm, because she was thinking of Madame Rosa, but her husband was bent over a slice of cold meat with such concentration that he didn’t notice.
‘At least I’ll have something to talk about at home in Baden,’ laughed Hinda.
‘But don’t exaggerate too much!’ For Mimi it was unimaginable that someone could pass on an experience without embellishments. ‘Otherwise they’ll stop you coming to see me.’
‘I hardly think Hinda lets people stop her doing anything very much,’ Pinchas said.
‘It really looked very dangerous. Imagine: our little Hinda and that huge man—’
‘He wasn’t that big,’ Hinda said.
‘—comes charging at us as if he’s about to rob us, with his hair dishevelled and those black, black eyes—’
‘Green eyes,’ said Hinda.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I know,’ said Hinda.
‘Perhaps I should go along to this congress as well,’ Pinchas considered. ‘Talk to a few people and write an article about it.’
‘Are you a shochet or a journalist?’
‘Both.’
‘Can I come along?’ asked Hinda.
‘To the congress?’
‘It might be quite interesting.’
‘Certainement pas!’ said Mimi. ‘That’s absolutely out of the question! I would reproach myself for the rest of my life if anything…’
The front doorbell rang in the corridor. Not twice, which according to local minhag would have meant a customer turning up when the shop was shut, after remembering something he absolutely needed from the butcher’s shop, but just once.
‘At this time of the evening?’ said Mimi.
‘Maybe Guttermann wants to know something. Or else it’s someone from the community.’ Pinchas who, say what one liked, was far too easily persuaded to perform his duty, had been elected to various committees, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that someone had dropped in unexpectedly at an inconvenient time to discuss a problem with him.
From outside came the sound of the maid thundering down the stairs to open the front door. The staff changed often in the Pomeranz household. Mimi wasn’t terribly successful at dealing with the staff, one day treating the young things like best friends, and then being unnecessarily strict with them the day after. The ‘speciality of the month’, as Pinchas called each incumbent, was called Regula, and was of rather limited intelligence.
‘Frau Pomeranz,’ she said, when she came into the dining room — and Mimi had dinned it into her a thousand times! — without knocking. ‘There’s a man here.’
‘What sort of man?’
‘I don’t know him,’ Regula said as if that was an end to the matter.
‘Then please ask him his name.’
‘As you wish, Frau Pomeranz.’ Pinchas had only to dart a glance at his wife to know that Regula too would not remain long in her job.
‘It’s so hard to find good staff,’ said Mimi. ‘You have no idea, Hinda.’
‘I’ve asked him now,’ said Regula, coming back into the room.
‘And?’
‘I didn’t catch his name,’ Regula said. ‘It’s something foreign.’
‘Then please ask the gentleman for his visiting card.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if I just…’ said Pinchas and was about to get to his feet. But Mimi wouldn’t let him.
‘How is she to learn if we always do her job for her?’
‘He says he hasn’t got a visiting card,’ Regula said a few moments later.
‘Then give him a sheet of paper, and tell him to write his name on it.’ Things were never as complicated as this in the social novels that Mimi always liked to read.
After a further short exchange — Regula asked in all seriousness where she could find some paper, when she dusted in the study every day! — the improvised visiting card lay on the table in front of Pinchas. ‘It’s not even such a difficult name,’ he said.
‘But it is foreign,’ Regula insisted. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’
‘Zalman Kamionker,’ Pinchas read. ‘Do you know who that is?
‘Probably a shnorrer. Regula, does he look like a shnorrer?’
Regula didn’t know what a shnorrer was.
‘We can play this out all evening,’ said Pinchas and stood up. ‘But perhaps there’s another, easier way. Regula, bring the gentleman in.’
‘I don’t think he is a gentleman,’ Regula said. ‘He looks more like a man.’ And she went out to fetch the gentleman, or the man.
‘Kamionker,’ Pinchas repeated thoughtfully. ‘Where can I have heard that name before?’
‘In Galicia.’
It certainly wasn’t a gentleman who had come into the room. He wasn’t even holding a hat, just a greasy leather cap.
‘That’s him!’ said Mimi, pointing an accusatory hand. ‘The man from the Palm Garden.’
‘Yes,’ said Hinda. ‘That’s him.’
21
‘The musician gave me the address,’ Zalman Kamionker explained, without the slightest embarrassment. He spoke German in a curious Swabian accent, mixed with scraps of Yiddish. ‘The klezmer, you know the one. The one who was standing by your table. He didn’t want to let me have it, but I shook him. I didn’t really shake him, don’t worry, I just told him I would shake him. I’m a peaceful person.’
‘That’s not how it looked this afternoon,’ Mimi said severely.