I’m writing this letter to apologise to you and Aunt Mimi and Désirée. I behaved incredibly badly, and it didn’t just have to do with the drinking. Sometimes there are moments
The sentence ended there, without a full stop or a comma, and what came next had plainly been added later: the same handwriting, but in a hand much more angular and controlled.
I beg you to forgive me, and promise that I will never again trouble you with such a ridiculous performance.
Respectfully yours
Alfred Meijer
Pinchas carefully folded the letter as one folds a document that one is going to need for a trial. Arthur had taken off his glasses and was rubbing his nose. Désirée seemed to be counting the matzo crumbs on the tablecloth.
‘Scandaleux,’ said Mimi.
38
François had only employed his chauffeur because his name was Landolt. He had previously been his coachman, and François had bought him a chauffeur’s cap and a pair of leather gloves and organised driving lessons for him.
‘Where can they be, Landolt?’ he could say now, or, ‘Faster, Landolt’, and because it was a sour joke, pickled in vinegar, as it were, it stayed fresh for a long time. He could equally well have got himself a dog, some mutt off the street, and called it Landolt, but dogs just whine if you treat them badly, and put their tails between their legs.
A human being was better.
His Landolt had sticking-out ears. From the back seat it looked as if the grey cap was wedged in between them. The shaved back of the head above the collar of the dust coat was pimply and inflamed. He was an ugly person, this Landolt.
That was another reason why Janki had employed him.
‘Everything satisfactory, Landolt?’
‘Yes, Herr Meijer.’
If he leaned forward, he could see beyond the back of the driver’s seat how tightly Landolt had to grip the steering wheel. Sometimes, after a long journey, he had blisters on his hands.
Which was fine.
Of course it would have been more comfortable to take the train to Baden. One wouldn’t have got so dusty, and Mama would have picked him up at the station. She always enjoyed being on her own with him for a few minutes, even though they usually didn’t talk, but just walked along in silence side by side. Sometimes he thought, ‘One could explain to her how everything came about.’ But he owed no one an explanation.
No one.
The car was a Buchet, with a radiator that looked like a gaping mouth. French quality. François had never become Swiss, unlike Arthur, and he had no plans to do so, either. Why conform when you get nothing from it?
Once they had covered the journey from Zurich to Baden in three quarters of an hour. François loved those moments when the cloud of dust that you pulled behind you gave you a sense of speed. If necessary, the car with its heavy iron springs could also cope with potholes and bumps in the road. A car was something for people who refused to be held up. It was all about power. Twenty-five horsepower. François liked the thought of twenty-five horses having to strain to take him to Baden.
Buchet engines were even put in aeroplanes.
‘Faster, Landolt!’ he said, and had to repeat it in a louder voice because the engine was making such a racket. Landolt.
They had met twice, and on both occasions Landolt had been polite. He had got to his feet when François came in, had offered him a chair and held out his cigarette case. Dark brown leather with an engraved gold family crest. François hated him for it.
‘You have made me a very interesting proposal,’ he had said.
Landolt owned a plot of land — he owned a lot of them, but there was this one, this particular one — a plot of land that had always belonged to his family. ‘Always,’ he said, and it sounded almost like an apology, as if the Landolts had stood outside of history without having to do anything, once rich, always rich. There was a squat, elongated building on this particular plot, a former workshop or factory, with narrow windows, long obscured, and dirty green, moss-covered roof tiles. A ruin in a prime location, just a stone’s throw from the Paradeplatz. Forgotten and abandoned, because you didn’t need to do anything with it.
Not if you were a Landolt.
François had walked past this plot so often that it almost belonged to him. He knew exactly where the entrance to his new department store would be, two massive double doors that had to be open whenever the weather permitted, so that you had no option but to walk in, not just into a shop, but into a world where you could stroll around and gasp with amazement and buy lots of things. He had paced out the length of the shop windows, each one four and a half metres long, and had already envisioned the displays, not goods crammed together as if in a general store, but generous ensembles, designed by artists.
He had already counted the customers.
Business wasn’t going badly, far from it. None the less, it was all very limited. It was called a department store, but when it came down to it you were still standing behind the counter and had to bow and scrape each time you made a sale. That wasn’t what he wanted, he had other plans, he had always had, much bigger, and he would see to it that they were realised. One man walks on foot, another buys a Buchet. Eventually, he had firmly decided, he would get hold of the property near the Paradeplatz, regardless of the cost. Even then Landolt had been an old man, a sickly old man, and his inheritors would…
One of Landolt’s grandsons was in the same student fraternity as Alfred. They were getting closer to one another.
Once Alfred had his doctorate… Dr. jur. Alfred Meijer. He should have been given a second first name, as was the practice in America. Dr. jur. Alfred D. Meijer.
D for Department Store.
Our junior head, Dr Meijer.
Eventually.
For now Alfred was a freshman, and François was almost prouder of the term than his son was. And he didn’t mind if Alfred stayed up all night with his fraternity and couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. That was bound to happen. For now the important thing was that he was meeting people there. One had to belong.
That at least had been right.
That at least.
The Buchet had slowed down, and now came to a standstill on the main road, still pulsing and quivering as if the machine could sense François’s impatience. Two cows whose ribs could be counted blocked the way, and the farmer’s boy who was supposed to take them to the field, or to the butcher or the knacker, just stood there, switch in hand, and stared at the automobile as if he’d never seen one before.
François leaned out of the car and had to stretch until his hand reached the rubber bulb of the horn. The noise was too loud, half bleat and half groan. The cows didn’t even look up — as if their own horns were too heavy to lift, they were so thin — and then at last they set off, leisurely old ladies who stretched out each movement to fill as much of their empty days as they could with their few errands.
‘Now drive, Landolt!’
He had made a quite respectable offer. Nothing trivial. Mina’s dowry had not been inconsiderable, and had grown still further along with the business. Janki was also prepared to top up his silent partnership. Everything had been discussed with the bank, even though Herr Hildebrand there had said, ‘They won’t sell you the property; you’ll see.’
And then Landolt coughed into his handkerchief and said, ‘A very interesting proposal that you’ve made to me.’ And offered him a chair and held out his cigarette case.
How he hated that man.
‘You can do your sums, that much is obvious,’ said Landolt. ‘Everything you’ve written there makes sense. It’s almost a shame…’ He turned his cigar around in his fingers, puffed on it and had all the time in the world. Studied the glowing ember as if he had just invented fire.