So he had put on his most goyish suit, grey virgin wool and actually far too hot for this time of year. He had taken the suit as settlement of an unpaid meat bill from tailor Turkawka, who had actually made the piece for a professor at the Confederate Technical College, who had wanted to wear it at his inaugural lecture. But then he hadn’t been appointed after all, and had never collected the suit. Mimi had told Pinchas off at the time for being too easy-going and allowing himself to be exploited, but basically she had been proud of him, he had seen that she was. Turkawka had adapted the suit for him; it fit perfectly, and Pinchas didn’t look at all Jewish in it. Apart from his little black silk cap, of course. Perhaps in the service of the good cause he should just…
Pinchas gave a start. He had been completely lost in his thoughts; that happened when you had the train compartment all to yourself. And on the journey he had planned to go through all the precautionary measures that were to be observed in a correct shechita; there could, he thought, be no more convincing proof of how much care was taken in shechita slaughtering to ensure that the animal was caused no unnecessary pain. First of all, he counted them off to himself, the blade was to be carefully checked, because even the tiniest nick on which anything could get caught or on which the tissue might tear would make the whole slaughtering process invalid and the meat unsellable. The cut itself must be carried out in one go, without pressure and only with the sharpness of the blade; the windpipe and the oesophagus had to be completely severed one after the other. ‘These are all precautionary measures,’ he would say, ‘to cause the animal as little pain as possible. So you see,’ he would say, ‘you may not be anti-Semites yourselves, but your vote would still confirm those people in their belief that things can be achieved with prejudice and harassment.’ Yes, that was what he would say.
But then his thoughts drifted away. What was he doing delivering speeches? Was he a politician? He would have been better off staying at home and looking after Mimi. What was wrong with her? She had always liked to complain and enjoyed her little ailments, she had turned every molehill into a mountain and every crisis into a drama. It was precisely because she was behaving differently this time that he was worried. Every time he asked her about her condition she evaded the issue, accused him of making her ill with all his endless questions, and one didn’t have to be constantly singing and dancing just to prove to one’s dear husband that one was feeling well. As long as it wasn’t anything dangerous! This evening, immediately after his return, he would talk to Dr Wertheim and refuse to be satisfied with the empty, comforting phrases that doctors were so good at. No, he would insist…
He had arrived in Baden without noticing.
To his surprise, it wasn’t Janki waiting for him at the station, but Chanele. Janki preferred not to come to Endingen, he had said to tell him, after mature consideration it seemed more correct to him as a Frenchman not to get involved in such purely Swiss matters. Chanele delivered the message in a tone which left no doubt that Janki really had different reasons. It was simply that he chose to avoid situations in which his role was not entirely clear.
She as a woman, Chanele said, was not a desirable presence at such political assemblies, but no one could prevent her from visiting her foster-father, and then to take him, if Salomon wanted to go, to the Guggenheim in the afternoon, he was an old man now, after all, and needed the support of an arm. The idea of a frail Salomon Meijer made Pinchas chuckle; in spite of his years, the cattle-trader went walking across country for a few hours every day, swinging his umbrella as he had long ago.
Chanele hadn’t ordered a coach for them, and instead waited with a box-wagon and pair. Gold letters on a green background sang the praises of the Modern Emporium and its comprehensive range. ‘At the weekend the carts are just parked in the shed,’ Chanele said by way of apology. ‘Why throw money out of the window to no good end?’
So the three of them squeezed onto the coach box. The coachman subserviently made himself very small and actually leaned over to the side to leave enough room for Chanele, and sometimes asked solicitously whether Madame Meijer was really sitting comfortably. He smelled of the stale smoke of his curly Virginia cigar, which had gone out when he was waiting and which he didn’t dare relight, and his presence made conversation impossible. Chanele inquired after Mimi’s health, and Pinchas shook his head dubiously. Then they fell silent again.
It was Sunday, and no one was working in the fields. The weather was calm, and the few clouds drifted slowly across the sky. One might have thought it wasn’t just human beings who were taking a break, but nature as well, a breather between blossom and fruit.
Chanele felt reminded of the time — was it really more than two decades ago — when she had worked in the newly founded French Drapery. Back then, too, they had often sat crammed in the coachman’s box, whenever a friendly driver stopped for her and Janki, early in the morning or on the way home to Endingen. Then Janki had tried not to touch her, but she had always been very aware of his body, so close to hers. She hadn’t been happy in those days — where does it say in the Shulchan Orech that you have to be happy? — but it had been a vivid unhappiness, a pulsating sadness, not the impersonal coexistence that had become her fate. Chanele would have liked to be properly sad once again, just to know that she hadn’t lost the ability.
The houses of Endingen came into view, and when he approached his parents’ house, where someone else had been running the butcher’s shop for a long time now, Pinchas armed himself against a surge of homesickness and melancholy. But when they drove past he saw that the place meant nothing more to him. He had grown out of Endingen once and for all.
The carts and coaches were parked so densely around the Guggenheim that there was no room for the broad box-wagon to get through. ‘As if there was anything for free,’ the coachman grumbled sullenly. He couldn’t force his way through to the entrance to the inn, but had to let Pinchas climb down first, and was quite disappointed when Chanele too decided to walk the few streets to the old double house. He would rather have driven his boss up like a princely postilion, with snorting steeds and a bright rosette on his top hat.
In the pub room there was hardly an empty chair to be found, even though the meeting was due to start at three o’clock. The wave of conversation, laughter and shouting swept over Pinchas so loudly that he took an involuntary step backwards and had to take a second run even to enter the room.