Then at last it was day and time to put on the new suit that had had a kind of dress rehearsal at the big party. A white shirt went with it, with a very tight collar, and a tie with glittering silver threads woven into it. Janki stood behind Arthur to tie his tie, just as Arthur had often stood behind Chanele to button up her dress. It was almost an embrace, and Arthur would have liked to lean back into his father’s arms and be held tight by him. But of course that was impossible. At thirteen you’re ready to stand on your own, Uncle Salomon had said, because thirteen is, after all, the numerical value of Echod, or ‘one’.
Fat Christine, this had been agreed, would later help him unpack the presents, and in return he had had to promise to show himself to her before he went to the prayer hall, in his suit, tie and black hat. When he came into the kitchen in all his glory, she propped her arms on her hips the way she did at the market when offered a fish that she didn’t think was quite fresh, looked Arthur up and down and then said to Louisli, ‘Yes indeed, those young Meijers are good-looking men all right.’ Whereupon Louisli burst into tears; Arthur couldn’t tell why.
In shul, the prayer-hall at the Schlossberg that the community had rented from the Lang brothers who ran the factory, Arthur was definitely the focus of interest. When they came in, Janki and François and he, it was almost like when the Torah scroll is carried through the synagogue, when everyone throngs in on all sides to touch the velvet cover with the tzitzits of the prayer shawls. They clapped him on the shoulder or pushed him companionably and said, ‘Well? Very excited? Nu, you’ll be fine.’
In general Arthur liked ‘going to shul’, as attending synagogue was called. In his case it had nothing to do with piety, absolutely not. Arthur had even — during Kol Nidre, in fact — thought quite firmly, ‘Perhaps there is no God!’ He had done it very deliberately and thus called for a very severe punishment, but nothing had happened. No, he wasn’t even concerned about religion, he just liked the hubbub of the voices, the familiar tunes, the murmuring, that had something pleasantly soporific about it. If you only held the prayer book open in front of you and didn’t entirely forget to turn the pages, you could devote yourself to your thoughts here, wonderfully undisturbed. François — no, Shmul, of course, in religious context he was Shmul — always complained that the services went on too long, but as far as Arthur was concerned they could have been endless.
Today everything was different, uneasy and unfamiliar, not just because it was his bar mitzvah and he would soon have to show what he had learned, but also because of the suit and the tie and the tallis. The soft material smelled very slightly of tobacco, which was strange, because who puts on a tallis when he wants to smoke?
Shacharit passed quickly, and the repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei was over so suddenly that Arthur almost believed Cantor Würzburger had skipped something.
Already the Torah was being held aloft. François, as a relative, was allowed to hold it in his arms. The expression on his face suggested that the office was not an honour, but a punishment for him. He was already carrying the Torah scroll to the lectern, the men were already crowding around to touch and kiss it, its crown was already being removed, the silver shield and the embroidered cloak, it was already being unwrapped and unrolled, it was all happening so quickly, far too quickly. And then Herr Weinstock, the shammes, was already calling out in his thin, bleating voice for Herr Katz, who, as a priest, was the first to be summoned to the Torah, and then it was the turn of Cantor Würzburger, who was a Levi, and therefore second. It made perfect sense, people said at every bar mitzvah, because it meant that he was already on the almemor when it was the turn of the bar mitzvah boy, and could help him if he got stuck. Because now it was already Arthur’s turn, so quickly, far too quickly.
‘Chaim ben Yaakov, ha-bar mitzvah,’ bleated Shammes Weinstock, and Chaim ben Yaakov was him, it was his Jewish name. He was called Arthur every day, but in shul he was Chaim, which means life, and his father was Yaakov, or Jacob, but where the Lord is concerned there is no Janki and certain no Jean.
They all looked at him as he walked to the almemor, all the men in their white prayer shawls, and behind them in the women’s shul — he didn’t dare turn his head, but he could feel it very clearly — stood Chanele and Hinda and Mimi wearing her new hat with the black swan-feathers, they were all looking at him, and he knew his voice would fail, that he would get stuck in the middle of the sidra, that he would bring shame, terrible shame, on himself and the whole family.
But then when he started his first blessing it was as if he could hear his Uncle Salomon breathing beside him, steadily and regularly, and he was singing only for him, as he had sung for him again and again in the sewing room, he didn’t forget a single word or a single trill, and afterwards people said it was very rare for a bar mitzvah boy not to be agitated in the slightest.
At the reception, which they hadn’t been able to cancel because that would have looked mean, they stood side by side, son and father, and every time someone said ‘mazel tov!’ to Arthur and ‘you sang beautifully,’ Janki put his hand on his shoulder and was proud. Chanele stood there too and knew by heart all the gifts that Arthur had received but hadn’t yet been allowed to look at. When it was the turn of the people in question to shake hands, Chanele poked Arthur inconspicuously in the back and then he would say, ‘Thank you very much for the lovely present.’
There were little cakes and pastries, arranged on real silver dishes, which attracted a great deal of attention. The dishes had been provided by Herr Strähle from the hotel; when the sweets had all been eaten, the coat of arms of the Verenahof became visible. The women dank sweet wine and the men schnapps; they filled the little crystal glasses to the brim and raised them to Arthur. ‘L’chaim!’ they cried, and even the familiar Jewish toast sounded strange to Arthur today, because ‘l’chaim’ actually means ‘for life’, but today, which was his day after all, it could also have meant ‘for Chaim’. Arthur felt as if they had been keeping the word ready for generations, just to use it in his honour today.
Then the reception was over. They had all eaten far too many sweet things, but the seudah awaited them at home, it was simply a part of it.
As she had promised Arthur, fat Christine was already standing ready with a sharp knife, even though there was quite enough for her to be getting on with in the kitchen. All the parcels had been put in the sewing room, which smelled strangely of fir twigs. Arthur only knew the smell from school, when Christmas was celebrated in class every year and he had to sit there in silence at the side until the others had finished. The fir needles had been Louisli’s idea, because in spite of their assiduous attempts to air the room, a memory of Uncle Salomon’s rotting wounds had hung in the air. The bed had been moved out; instead there was a table in its place, with a whole mountain of presents on it, waiting for Arthur.