‘I’ve no idea why,’ Hinda said.
Arthur was surprised. He had a fine ear for such things, and there was something in her voice that he didn’t know.
‘I’ll happily tell you,’ said Zalman Kamionker.
Hinda threw her head back; it wasn’t clear whether she did so in a gesture of rejection, or because it set off her hair.
‘This shoemaker,’ Kamionker continued, ‘Jochanan, is his name, by the way, like Rabbi Jochanan out of the Talmud who was also a shoemaker, so this shoemaker has his whole mishpocha in America. And he himself is sitting there in Vitebsk, where a socialist is as popular as a flea in a marriage bed. We know what a shoemaker earns: less than nothing, and from that he still has to make Shabbos. By the time he has enough money saved to go to America, he will have a beard to the ground. Although he has no beard. When he read Karl Marx for the first time, he cut it off. The same day, he told me.’
Kamionker told his story without haste, a man who is used to speaking in front of an audience and not expecting to be interrupted.
‘For ten days he moaned at me about how much he missed his brother, every day it was about this unnecessary Congress. His krechzening was unbearable in the end.’ The Meijers were Swiss Jews, and the word wasn’t familiar to them, but they all understood it anyway. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ asked Kamionker. ‘I had to shut him up somehow.’ He spread his arms as if to hug somebody. ‘So I gave him my ticket.’
The Jewish cloak-makers of New York had given money, each according to his ability, to send Zalman Kamionker as their delegate to the big Congress in Switzerland. A crossing — in the cheapest steerage class, of course, but a crossing is a crossing and you’re not handed it on a plate — and a ticket for the railway. Only in fourth class, obviously, but it still cost money. And what did he do with it? He gave it all to someone he’d only just met. To a shoemaker from Vitebsk.
‘He’s already on the way,’ said Kamionker. ‘Zurich-Paris. Paris-Le Havre. Le Havre-New York. Although, there, God knows, they have quite enough shoemakers already. Yes, Fräulein Hinda, that’s how it is.’
Hinda didn’t look at him, ignored him with all her might, as one can only do with a person who interests one more than anyone else does, and so it was Chanele who asked him. ‘And you?’
‘I’m staying in Switzerland,’ said Kamionker. ‘A tailor has it easy. He can starve anywhere.’
‘Then go ahead and starve!’ said François icily. ‘Just please don’t do it here.’
Kamionker gave him a friendly smile, as if he’d just been paid a compliment. He had delivered lots of speeches at lots of assembles and knew how to deal with hecklers.
‘That’s an interesting moustache you have there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know Purim was celebrated so late in Switzerland.’ Purim is the festival of ridiculous disguises.
If Chanele hadn’t laughed so loudly, François would doubtless have come up with a brilliant riposte.
Kamionker turned a contemptuous shoulder towards him, as one does to a defeated opponent upon whom one doesn’t even have to keep an eye, and turned to Janki. ‘And as I’m going to be staying here,’ he said, ‘I have something I’d like to talk to you about, Herr Meijer.’
‘He’s looking for a job,’ thought Janki. ‘He’s a tailor, and I have a clothes shop. But like hell am I going to put such a louse in my fur.’
‘I’m sorry…’ he began. But Kamionker cut in.
‘Perhaps you’d rather we withdrew to a different room?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Janki, and reached for his walking stick as if for a weapon.
‘That’s fine too.’ Kamionker struck his hands together, so loudly that Arthur gave a start, and stretched, making his joints crack.
‘He has strong hands,’ Hinda thought, and waited with bated breath to see what he would say next.’
‘Do you have a union in your company?’ said Zalman Kamionker.
A union? Was that why he had come?
‘Why do you want to know that?’ asked Janki.
‘Well,’ said Kamionker, ‘it would make things easier to understand.’
‘My employees don’t need a union.’
‘Maybe,’ said Kamionker, ‘or maybe not. We could argue about that. But another time. We’ll have other opportunities.’
‘The hell we will,’ thought Janki.
‘It’s like this,’ said Kamionker. ‘If you’d negotiated with unions, you would know that there are only two kinds of demands: the ones you can talk about, and the ones that are non-negotiable. Is that clear?’
‘The man is meshuga,’ thought Janki. ‘Simply meshuga.’
‘In our case, Herr Meijer: we can talk about anything.’ Kamionker held his open palms out in front of him, as chiefs did in Arthur’s books about Indians, when they wanted to show that they hadn’t unburied the hatchet. ‘I’ll go still further; you can determine how you want to have it done, and it will be done like that. I am a peaceful man. Only one thing is not negotiable.’
‘What’s he actually talking about?’ thought Hinda.
‘Absolutely non-negotiable,’ said Zalman Kamionker.
‘What are you actually talking about?’ asked Janki.
‘About Fräulein Hinda, of course. I’m going to marry her.’
Had he said ‘marry’?
Fat Christine had spent the whole evening in the kitchen consoling the weeping Louisli. The two girls knew nothing at all about what was going on in the dining room. And this time there really would have been something worth listening to at the door.
Janki said no, of course he said no. Here was a complete and total stranger, a man who was nothing and had nothing, and he just wanted… ‘Out of the question,’ said Janki, and because Kamionker who’d dropped in out of nowhere didn’t seem to hear it, he repeated it again, ‘Out of the question. Absolutely out of the question.’ One had heard a few things about Galician customs, that they were rougher than elsewhere, in the East such rag-and-bone-man behaviour might be common practice; he was unable to judge. That is: his judgement was firm, absolutely firm, and no further discussion was required for that reason. They were not in the Balkans, and certainly not in America, so the issue was not open for debate, it wasn’t open for debate, and there was an end to it, full stop, period. By the way it was probably the best for all if Kamionker took his leave forthwith.
Herr Kamionker smiled, quite peacefully, as he had once smiled quite peacefully at Simon Heller of the tallis-weaving mill in Heller’s office, and said Herr Meijer must not have heard him correctly, he had said quite clearly that this point was non-negotiable.
Janki raised his stick and was about to bring it down on the table, but lowered it again straight away, not out of fear, of course, after all, he’d been in the war, but he’d just had the lion’s-head handle glued back on, and if it happened again, they had warned him in the turner’s workshop, that fine piece of craftsmanship might no longer be reparable.
At that François leapt to his feet, the tips of his moustache on end, and grabbed Kamionker by the collar, grabbed the thick material of his jacket with his fist and was about to throw out this unruly guest, but Kamionker just sat there as if no one were tugging away at him, and it was only when François grabbed him with his other hand as well and tried to pull him up as a clumsy person might try to lift a heavy piece of luggage, that Kamionker flicked him away, there could be no better word for it, he just flicked him away, wearing an expression as if it were just a piece of high-spirited banter among friends.
That was exactly how he had smiled, with big white teeth, in the Palm Garden, when he had tripped over Hinda and landed right in her lap.