An Ermine in Czernopol (28 page)

Solly paused, changed back into himself, and looked Herr Tarangolian right in the eyes with inimitable self-assurance. “Not good enough?”

“Excellent, Solly, absolutely excellent,” said the prefect.

Solly pulled his head into his shoulders and wrinkled his face to look like a red-haired man who'd spent his whole life peering at burning embers. Then he marched up to the prefect, as if Herr Tarangolian were Solly's older brother, Bubi.

“For this I have davened every day, so that something like that should become of you? A dandy, a bon vivant, a fashion fop and
aesthetnik
, instead of a regular, decent hardworking honest man! For you to lounge around the ball fields instead of standing on the shop floor like your father and your mother and your little sister and working! For you to sit watching the ballerinas”—Solly was standing right in front of Herr Tarangolian—“the little children twelve and thirteen years old in their tricots …”

“That's fine, Solly!” said Herr Tarangolian, wiping his eyes and so delighted he was incapable of laughing. “You're a genius. But stick to your father and Bubi.”

“Deal!” Solly said and jumped, with the dancer's agility he owed to Madame Aritonovich's instruction, to the place he had designated for Bubi. “Now I'll be Bubi.”

He took on an expression of bored superiority and at once Solly disappeared and in his place we saw the snooty upstart Bubi Brill, wearing tennis shorts, quarreling with his hoarsely rasping father, who vented his spleen in rage—no, not just them: with a single gesture he also conjured his fat mother on her throne behind the cash register, unmoving as a sphinx, his sister Riffke lurking in the background, and the blasé, condescending salesmen of Brill's large department store, leaning over tables covered with samples and receipt ledgers. The scene took place in the atmosphere of relaxed and unstinting openness Jews create with one another—the intimacy of an Oriental people deeply acquainted with life.

Bubi (bored and supercilious): “All right, Papa. We know this record by heart. Please, give me part of the business so I have something to do.”

Old Man Brill: “
Here
is where I do my business, here on the shop floor,
bokher
, and if you want to do business, then get to it! It's nine o'clock. Customers will be walking in at any moment. Get out of your foppish rags, and hop to it!

Bubi (haughtily): “Excuse me, Papa, but this is a
nebekhdike
way to do business, with aprons and garter straps. Forgive me if I laugh.”

Old Brill (his voice cracking): “
Ja
, in this shop that's exactly how we do business, with aprons and garter straps! He can't sell half a garter, the scab, but he wants to make big deals, ten wagonloads of hazelnuts from Constantinople to Lemberg, perhaps—or hustle jewels! A lazy lounging nobody who gets drunk with officers and whores like a
goy
, with women and furs and champagne and Paris in his head. Mass-man in an automobile. He lets his old father with a hernia sell garter straps, while he wants to do big business. The swastika-louts that paint up on my shutters, this is how I live, they know why I have worked myself to the bone my whole life long, they know. For the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
—that's what they say. For domination over the earth, that's what they believe. But I know the real reason why I've slaved away—
dos iz emmes
—I know. For a cavalryman, a playboy with film stars in his head. A man for whom the shop floor isn't good enough, and the city isn't big enough, not elegant enough, and the business isn't profitable enough, and the whores don't cost enough. That's why I'm standing today on the floor here with my rheumatism, so that the swastika-men just need to wait for him to take over, the fop, for that the business should go bankrupt, and for me I should wind up a poor man and in debt. And for that I—I, Usher Brill, an old man with a bad diabetes—for that I'm supposed to put up an entire fortune and risk my neck? For the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and for domination over the earth, when the young gentlemen will no longer be around—that's what for.”

Bubi: “Excuse me, Papa, what's all this about investing? All I hear about is investing. What investments, may I ask? As far as I'm concerned you don't have to invest a thing with this deal.”

Old Brill: “You think I'm going to tell it to you,
bokher
! Your little sister is a good girl, you understand. If she wants to get married, I'll tell it to her, you understand, but not you. You can go look for your deals somewhere else, that's what you can do.”

Bubi: “God knows, you don't have to get so worked up, Papa. Anyway, Mama told me everything already. So I'm asking you: What investments are you talking about? First of all, isn't old Paşcanu good for the few million? Permit me to say that the way I see it it's purely a matter of brokering a deal. The profit is enough, at least for me. I leave it up to you. If you don't want to do it, then I will. Or don't you think Paşcanu is good for the money?”

Old Brill (with mock cheerfulness): “Listen to him ask the questions, the freeloader. He'll broker a deal! He'll leave it up to me! Look here, old Paşcanu's fortune is in lumber, you
meshuggener
. Here—do you ever look at a newspaper? You studied abroad. Figure it out. Old Paşcanu is as broke as—as broke as a
goy
can possibly be. That's what old Paşcanu is, you understand. I spend good money to send you abroad so that you can ask questions like a simple peasant? Old Paşcanu, I tell you, is finished, that's what old Paşcanu is.”

Bubi: “Why are you getting so upset, Papa? In terms of psychology, that's very interesting. If old Paşcanu is broke, then you don't need to do the deal, right? I leave it to you.”

Old Brill: “Deal! What kind of deal is that, I'd like to know? It's a better deal to go caca in the Volodiak, you understand, you
goylem
? That would be a better deal.”

Bubi: “Why are you getting so riled up over nothing, Papa? In terms of psychology, that's very interesting, so why is nobody supposed to know anything if it's already dead in the cradle? By the way, there's something I want to tell you: I, too, have my information, you'll permit me—you understand. I, too, have my information, and I, too, glance at the papers now and then. Old Paşcanu isn't standing in his smock and selling garter straps—not him. Old Paşcanu is a businessman of class. He doesn't need to perform any schemes for credit or any other
shmontses
. But, as I said, I leave it to you. If you don't want to, then I will.”

Old Brill: “With my money, you think? You scoundrel! I am supposed to stand here and sell garter straps, with my ailing heart, while you go do business with old Paşcanu …”

Bubi: “As I said, it's no more than brokering a deal. Pure and simple. Again: I leave it to you. By the way, with your permission, I have to go to the club. Anyway, I find it psychologically extremely interesting that you are getting so worked up over this.”

Bubi—or, rather, little Solly, because he was once more himself—took his leave with an inimitably nonchalant wave. We were entranced and delighted, and, sparked by Madame Aritonovich's example, we applauded enthusiastically.

Solly went up to Herr Tarangolian. “The show is over. Curtain. That's all for this season.” Turning to us, he said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the theater is closed.”

Madame Aritonovich shooed us to work. “
Allons!
Go back to your work! To the barre!”

Herr Tarangolian gave Solly a ten-leo coin. Solly looked it over carefully.

“I'll bet you know what deal your brother Bubi was talking about, don't you? Or didn't your Mama mention anything about it?”

Solly blinked at him through his carrot-colored eyelids: “Not for just a tenner, Herr Coco.”

Years later, when we paid Madame Aritonovich a friendly visit, we tried to compliment her by saying that the most beautiful thing that we had learned at her school, in the woefully short time we were there, was candor. Then we attempted to double the effect of this acknowledgment by explaining what we meant—an approach that is always prone to backfire—and added that she masterfully understood how to remove the sting and thus the embarrassment from any type of indiscretion, intended as well as unintended, by taking the matter in hand and immediately making it everybody's business, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

“How can you be so indiscreet as to tell me that!” she said to us, indignantly.

A
LTHOUGH
Widow Morar had attached herself so closely to Madame Tildy that she was living with her and hardly moved from her side, she was still not entirely lost to us.

Of course all the furniture in the Tildys' house had been pawned, and the house had been acquired by another owner, but Madame Tildy kept living there for the time being. So Widow Morar stayed in our neighborhood and visited us—meaning, us children, and no one else—when Tamara Tildy was taking a nap, or when she had been sent by Madame Tildy on a mission that brought her to our house.

“I'm coming to you, my little ones,” she said, with closed eyes and a golden smile, “to no one but you, because you have no part in their disgraceful behavior, trampling on my mistress and slinging mud on her and laughing cruelly because she's suffered such a fate. In all other faces I see scorn, but not in yours. We are living in an empty room, and no one will take her. She doesn't have a blanket, and she's always cold, she can't help being cold, even with the sun at its warmest, that's how refined and delicate she is. I have to take her in my arms to warm her up; I hold her like my own child. They took away her brushes, they were made of gold with the finest marten bristles, she can't use any other, her hair is as delicate as a spiderweb and any other kind of bristle tears it out and makes it stand on end and spark and burn with every stroke. This makes her cry—is her hair supposed to mat away into elflocks? So I comb it with my fingers, I put each hair in order. But my fingers are hard and tough from all the hard work I've done my entire life, a widow all alone with three sons, mouths forever hungry, a challenge for a poor woman to fill. My hands are heavy and clumsy; she frequently loses her patience and hits me. She flies into a rage and throws herself on the floor and curses the major, who plunged her into misfortune, or else she's perfectly still and holds her head at an angle as if she were listening closely and says to me: What do you think, is it nice where he is? I sense that it's a nice place, she says, that he's happy, yes I can feel that he is happy. Why does he get to go where I belong? Why is he in a place where there is peace and not me? Don't you see that he betrayed me? Now he is where I should be, among all the others who are allowed to dream, who smile at each other and don't even realize they are speaking, because they don't need any answer, they don't see whether a face returns their laughter or not, they don't see any face at all. After all, they have themselves, they enjoy hearing their own voices, as if someone else were speaking to them, and they're happy to hear that this other person says exactly what they want to hear and how they want to hear it; they have this person say happy things and bad things, let him curse and rage and are happy that he does exactly what they want; they are delighted. They ask him something and hear him ask the same question and they already know the answer, but they don't want him to know their questions and answers, and so they ask faster and faster, and still he's always quicker than they are, and they hate him and they get angry and shout and throw themselves on the floor to escape and roll around on the ground to shake him off—like your husband, Morar, when he wanted to drink death from his rifle. But you suck and suck at the cold iron muzzle and death doesn't come; in order to die you have to let go a shot that erases your face, and this is what I am afraid of—so she tells me—I don't want to be without a face, you hear, I don't even want to be dead without a face, I am afraid, you hear, it's horrible to destroy your face, even dead people need a face. I am afraid … And she clings to me and whines and yammers. That's what I came to tell you, because you asked me what it meant to lose face. She doesn't want to be without a face. I'm telling you this as a great secret, I won't talk about her with anyone else, because the others spit on her, they're full of scorn because of her misfortune, but you, you know better. I just rushed over to tell you that, because I have to get back to her, she sent me to fetch poison for the dogs she can't feed anymore and who whimper for him all day long. No other man is to have them, and because they're going crazy with worry we're going to kill them, we'll mix the poison in some ground meat and feed it to them—here, you see? The very best meat, almost four pounds. They almost chased me out at Dobrowolski's when I told them we needed it for the dogs. Nothing to eat themselves and she cheats people so she can feed her dogs with roast meat, they cried. That's the way they are—they don't know a thing. They don't know that this is the last blessing this earth has for the poor animals, and they curse you for giving it to creatures who are marked to die, because people are cruel and don't understand anything. But they go on bathing their arms in blood up to their elbows and hacking the smoking flesh into pieces. They don't know. That's what I came to tell you, not the others, who don't understand a thing.”

“And what about him?” we asked. “Is it true that he is happy?”

“If she feels it then it must be true,” said Widow Morar, smiling with her gold mouth. And he was. We later found out that it was true.

“You are surprised, even indignant, because they didn't release Tildy long ago,” said Herr Tarangolian. “Permit me to say that for the moment it's best for him to stay where he is. You can be assured he is being treated with the utmost consideration, with great courtesy and tact. The head of the institution, Dr. Kobylanski, is an unusually reliable man. And he has found in Dr. Schlesinger someone who can attend to Tildy with great sensitivity …”