They were still singing in the hall. ‘Standing like rocky cliffs,’ they sang, and so they did, upright and manly and swollen-chested. Ne’er did they peril shun, bold mortal risks did run, and they were happy because they had found something to defend, if only an animal protection league.
Some of them knew all the verses, others started again with the first one, until their voices became a jumble and finally fell silent. But they had sung enough now, and wanted to do something at last. There was no one on the stage now, and they weren’t surprised. That Jews are cowards and run away as soon as you put up any opposition, they had known for ever. But at the back of the hall, there was still that foreigner, that spy, and they wanted to show him what was what and how the land lay. No one needed to tell them what to do to him, they knew already. If someone like that thought he could just come from Lemberg and obstruct their freedom of speech, he could face the consequences.
The bouncers were waiting for an instruction from master butcher Gubser, but in the hall everyone was on their feet, they were even standing on the benches, so they had to take the initiative and do as they saw fit. With arms linked they blocked the people’s way, but weren’t able to hold them back for long. But it was long enough for Reb Tzvi Löwinger to get himself to safety, slam the hall door behind him and run across the floor of the tap-room and out into the street.
Then the charging crowd came to a standstill all by itself, because someone was lying on the floor right outside the hall door, legs twitching. It wasn’t the foreigner from Lemberg, but cattle trader Meijer, whom almost all of them knew, another Jew, but a decent fellow, and they knew the woman kneeling beside him as well, her name was Chanele and she had grown up here in Endingen.
No one had done anything to Salomon Meijer, certainly not with a fist or a beer mug. He had just fallen over all by himself, without anybody even touching him. Dr Reichlin, who was also in the animal-protection league, said it must have been a sudden stroke, as could happen to anyone at any time; it needn’t have anything to do with the excitement of the moment. He couldn’t supply a good prognosis, sorry though he was, he knew of cases that had gone on for months, but bringing such a patient back to life was beyond the medical art.
Then they carried him out to the back, carried the still heavy boy across the stage past the Swiss flag. The other way wouldn’t have been such a good idea, because there was a noisy post-meeting party on the go, and the people were singing again.
‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on,’ said the schoolmaster, and even the master butcher was very sorry about the whole affair. It was really an unfortunate coincidence, he said, that it had had to happen here of all places.
Chanele had run ahead to look for the coachman.
They laid the old cattle trader on a bed of fabric bales ready for delivery in the cart the following day. Salomon was still breathing, quite regularly, in fact, but eyes had rolled back in their sockets and his tongue hung out of his mouth.
When they were about to set off one of the bouncers came hurrying out of the Guggenheim, his black and blue armband still around his sleeve, and brought Salomon Meijer’s umbrella out after him.
They drove to Baden, where Janki had long offered his father-in-law a room in the big flat.
The last words of Salomon Meijer, beheimes dealer and gematria artist, had been these: ‘Why is the numerical value of “shachat” so much higher than “sabach”?’ Then he gave up the ghost.
On the train back to Zurich Pinchas shared his compartment with two men who talked about their culinary preferences throughout the whole of the journey. They didn’t recognise him as a Jew and tried to involve him in a conversation about the relative merits of brawn and calf’s head. He only answered in monosyllables, which prompted a sniffy reaction. It seemed that this gentleman was too refined to talk to them.
All along Löwenstrasse Pinchas drew out each step, and yet the way to the Sankt-Anna-Gasse seemed shorter than ever. Sometimes he even simply came to a standstill, out of pure cowardice, even though he excused himself by staying that he still had to find the right phrase. At the same time he was aware that there are no painless ways of telling a woman that her father is dying.
He had reached the house before he was ready, and rummaged awkwardly in his pocket for a key, even though the door could not have been locked at this time of day.
In the stairway the steps creaked far too loudly with each step he took.
When he stepped inside the flat, Mimi was already in the corridor waiting for him. She had hectic flushes all over her face, as she always did when she was agitated. She wanted to say something but couldn’t get a word out and started sobbing.
Chanele must have sent her a telegram.
Pinchas took his wife in his arms. Although it wasn’t really the moment for such thoughts, he was struck by how good she smelled. Under all the perfumes and eaux de Cologne that she liked to use, there was still the young girl that he had fallen in love with all those years ago.
Pomeranzes.
Gradually her sobbing subsided and faded away as a summer storm fades away, with one last gust and then one very last one. She sniffed like a child, and then, without freeing herself from his embrace, she opened her tear-filled eyes and looked up at him.
Her face was very soft.
‘It’s a miracle,’ Mimi said.
Pinchas stroked her back helplessly. At that moment he perceived everything with exaggerated clarity that he could hear the material of her dress rustling.
‘Un vrai miracle,’ Mimi said.
Her sheitel had gone slightly askew and sat crookedly on her head as if she had only donned it as a playful disguise.
‘In this state one has no pains,’ Pinchas said comfortingly. ‘I’m quite sure of that.’
Mimi took the tip of his nose between her fingers and slowly moved his head back and forth. That had once been a game between the two of them.
‘You men!’ Mimi said. ‘What do you know about these things?’
‘The doctor said…’
‘You’ve already talked to Dr Wertheim?’ Her tear-damp face was very disappointed.
‘Dr Reichlin. I don’t know if you know him. He was at that meeting too, and—’
‘I don’t want to hear a word about your stupid meeting,’ said Mimi. ‘Certainement pas. Dr Wertheim says there’s absolutely no doubt about it. Pinchas, I’m pregnant.’
34
Salomon Meijer died on 20 August 1893, the day of the plebiscite. His condition hadn’t changed during all those weeks. They had taken him to the little room that was called the sewing room even though no one ever sewed in it — if you own a business with its own tailor’s shop you don’t need such a thing — and he lay there on his back for all those days, breathing without apparent difficulty, was there and yet not there.
At first they still talked to him, or talked at him, thus keeping to the un-spoken agreement that this was still Uncle Salomon lying there and not just a lump of old meat. Very gradually, in imperceptible stages, the language that they used to the patient became increasingly childish, as if the old man were getting younger and younger with each day of his death throes, turning back into a baby, as if at the end of his journey he would not die, but would instead slip back into the warmth of the womb.