The Glatstein Chronicles (31 page)

Bronski bowed solemnly, standing by the table where he had been sitting alone. Then he walked back to the table where the singing had just stopped and addressed one of the group in elegant Polish. “In ancient Egypt the mummies used to make a terrible racket,” he said. “The only way to calm them down was to show great kindness, unusual friendliness.”

The man whom Bronski had addressed frowned, as though the words caused him intense pain. Bronski stood, waiting for a reply. His face was oddly flushed, as though with momentary embarrassment. But the flush did not go away. He had large blue eyes, but they were veiled like blue glass covered with a mist, like a sky overcast with clouds. He seemed to be looking straight at the man he had addressed, but actually his line of vision went slightly past him.

The man at the table felt ill at ease. He squirmed in his chair. His companions seemed somewhat puzzled. The man in the skullcap picked at crumbs on the table, conveying them to his mouth.

The tall man who had been watching Bronski now came up to the group. He took hold of Bronski’s arm. Very firmly he turned him around to lead him out of the dining room.

“All right, I’m coming,” Bronski said. He meekly let himself be guided.

“That’s a real tragedy, a tragic tragedy.” Buchlerner was the first to speak. He spoke at all only to relieve the embarrassment of his guests. Addressing the man to whom Bronski had spoken, and who was obviously uncomfortable, he added: “Such a pity. He is a wealthy man, but it would have been better for him if he had never been born.” He raised his voice so that everyone in the room could still hear him, but he was only reassuring new guests who had been subjected to a scene. “His sister is staying here, too, and that big man never leaves him for a minute, though he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Still, you can never be sure about a lunatic,” said the man to whom Bronski had spoken. He had recovered his composure now. “They can be gentle as a lamb one minute, and then take a bite out of you the next.”

“Oh, he won’t do any biting, never fear. I wouldn’t let him stay here for a minute if he were dangerous.” The proprietor was very convincing: he was not going to lose a customer. “He has been here for six weeks, and, thank God, no one has been bitten yet.”

But the other was not so easily appeased. “We were in higher regions, and then he has come barging in with his crazy talk about Egypt. Why did he have to pick on me? Lunatics shouldn’t be allowed in the community, any more than the dead. When the light of reason goes out, a man is dead.”

“And what about charity? Is that dead, too?” Buchlerner retorted. “If a man loses his mind, should we shoot him down like a mad dog?”

“Who said anything about shooting? I was just thinking aloud. What I mean is that it’s a terrible thing. A bright light has gone out of the world.”

The man in the skullcap had tried several times to get up without being noticed, but he always sat down again, aware that he was not too steady on his feet. He kept humming a little tune, although by now half his companions had left the table.

“How about it, Mr. Steinman?” said one of the group who realized that he needed help. “Shall we go now?”

“Aren’t you being a bit impertinent? You’re hinting that I can’t walk under my own power. Well, I’ll show you.” He got up suddenly, stood still for a moment, and then walked to the door.

“What a man! He is truly remarkable!” said the last guest at the table. “No, Mr. Buchlerner, you don’t often meet men like that. He isn’t one of your invalids.”

The proprietor looked off into the distance, his nose distinctly in the air. After a few moments, when he felt he had made the right impression, he put as much distaste in his voice as he dared without actually offending a guest.

“You’re very much mistaken, sir,” he said, “if you think this is a hotel for invalids only. I want you to know that this is a place for healthy people, for anyone looking for rest and relaxation.”

The other was not to be challenged. “I have the impression that nearly all the guests in this resort are sick. I’d say nine out of ten are sick.”

“That is a dreadful exaggeration. People who are a bit on edge, a bit tired, come here for a rest, and the fact is, the air here is really invigorating.” Buchlerner shot out his arm in the air, closed his hand as though catching a fly. A moment later, opening his fist, he extended a bony hand as though presenting some precious stone. “Can’t you feel the fresh air? I’m sure you do—after all, you’re from the city. What we have here is not just ordinary air, like anywhere else. Not on your life! You have to come here to breathe air like this. Just drink it in—it’s like champagne! It’s not just refreshing—it revives the dead.”

The two girls clearing the table were the proprietor’s daughters. They moved as silently and efficiently as when they served dinner. Buchlerner occasionally said something to them, but they never as much as looked at him, and it was impossible to say whether they were following orders or ignoring him. They did not even speak to each other.

A young Gentile girl came in to help them. She was tall and slender in her bare feet, and a smile flickered in her eyes. It was difficult to guess what the smile said. There was mockery in it, arrogance, and provocation, plus a good deal of peasant shrewdness. Her feet were dirty, and though she wore no shoes, when she moved the house shook. Glasses on the tables danced, but she moved around all the more vigorously, as though enjoying the stir she created.

When I went out, I found that there was indeed a little breeze. While far from champagne, as Mr. Buchlerner had claimed, it was refreshing. Guests peacefully digesting their supper sat on a large porch that ran around the building. They had moved from the table to the porch, apparently too lazy even to walk down the few steps from the porch to the small strip of lawn. The narrow walk from the hotel to the street was lined with recently planted trees. Even that was occupied by rocking chairs—very much in action, as though agitated by the same breeze. Many of the men and women on the chairs were corpulent, and it was something of a surprise to see them rocking so delicately. A low trellised gate served as entrance to the three-story hotel from the street.

Steinman, the man who had been at the head of the table, was pacing back and forth on the porch, followed by several women. He had taken off his skullcap. His thick gray hair was mussed, but as he walked, the breeze blew it back into place. He held his head proudly, setting off his well-groomed silvery beard. His coat was thrown over his shoulder like a cape, and he carried a stick. With the women following him, he looked like a sultan. When he spoke everyone in the hotel could hear him.

“Father is letting himself go,” said a stout middle-aged woman with a sad face.

The woman next to her rocked a little faster. “He is a handsome man,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to look at him.”

“All in all he’s not too healthy. He has kidney trouble, and rheumatism, too,” Steinman’s daughter said.

The other woman stopped rocking for a moment. “Is that so? You’re supposed to be able to tell from the way they look, but he looks perfectly fine.”

“He’s a sick man. I have to look after him, and see that he gets his sleep. Let me tell you, I have my hands full at night, when my own back is aching too. He has to take his pills and he never wants to go to bed. If he had his own way, he’d be on his feet forty-eight hours a day.”

“Oh my, he is a handsome man,” the other went on. “Old people should always look like that,” she added wistfully.

“Papa!” Steinman’s daughter called.

“At me to go to bed already?”

“Not yet, Papa, but soon.” Then, turning to her acquaintance: “He took one drink too many tonight, and he’ll pay for it, too. The trouble with him is that he gives everyone else sunshine, while I get the clouds and the rain.” She spoke as though to herself, with a note of reproach.

Steinman stopped in front of his daughter and raised his stick as if to strike her. “I’ll use this on you, if you try to send me to bed with the chickens again. Tonight I mean to go to the park, listen to the music, and look at the pretty girls. Do you want me to spend my time with these old women?”

“That’s not very chivalrous, Mr. Steinman,” said the youngest female present, coquettishly.

“Papa, what’s the matter with you? What are you celebrating?”

“Today’s a holiday, didn’t you know? Sabbath is only two days away: just think—only two days away, our ‘lovely Queen.’” He turned to me. “Let’s go, young man. My name is Steinman. What’s yours? I think I saw you arrive about lunch time, didn’t I?” He took my arm and suggested a stroll in the park, only a short walk from the hotel.

“Don’t forget, Papa, I’m right here. You’re not on the loose for long.”

“I’ll turn you over on my knee and spank you, if you try to keep your old father from talking to another person.” Again, he threatened his middle-aged daughter with his stick, and then leaned down and kissed her.

He readjusted his overcoat, putting one arm into the sleeve, and wrapped the rest of it around him. His free right arm now looked younger, and the stick was given a rakish twirl. As he walked along, with me in tow, he turned his head to speak to his daughter, who was trailing us. “Let me have half an hour, Frania dear, just half an hour. Don’t shadow me, like a detective.”

People were streaming toward the park from every direction. They walked with controlled impatience, as though restrained by propriety from actually running. They were just able to keep from bumping into each other.

Past the gate, where the guard inspected us casually, we were enveloped by the wholesome smell of the thick foliage lining both sides of the paths. Most people kept to the dusty main avenue. The last colors of sunset were beginning to blur and fade away. The water in the little lake around which the main promenade divided was blue black.

From a bandstand partly hidden by the trees came the brassy music of a small but vigorous group of musicians. A card with a large number five was posted on the bandstand, indicating that the orchestra had reached that piece on the program. It was
L’Arlésienne,
and it was almost over. The newcomers, as they closed in, seemed to fall in step with the music. Even had one been obsessed with one’s private thoughts, the music must surely have penetrated them. And when the music stopped, everything slipped from memory—the thoughts with the music.

People were wandering around the little lake and all over the park. Even on the other side of the lake you could hear the band. From over there the music served as a bridge, a guarantee that you were not striking out on your own, but still at one with the community.

Just opposite the leafy bandstand was a wooden structure built out of logs, but not exactly a log cabin. You went up a few steps and found yourself on a shaky floor, only a scaffolding, really, where people sat in pairs or alone, doubtless dreaming the same musical dreams—dreams that a single note of the trumpet dispels or a drumbeat frightens away. This was the outdoor café. Just to walk past was to taste the cookies. Couples sat at tables looking into each other’s eyes. Around the little lake, more like a pond, were elaborate flower beds, severely patterned with respect to both color and shape. Little clumps of flowers sprung up every few steps as you walked, but they had begun to lose their vivid reds, yellows, and greens. In the twilight all colors were blending into a common color, a dormant, latent color. The flowers now looked like wildflowers, there was dew on them, and they were losing their sharp, shrill, carefully cultivated individualities. The surface of the water was settling to a jelly—a thin film over a dense darkness.

The band was playing the “Blue Danube” waltz. The electric lights in the trees were turned on, and the whole area was drenched with a brightness that made the side paths look darker still. As the waltz played on, it more than ever seemed that those who walked around were dancing. And indeed, in the café couples actually got up to dance, leaving only a few solitary drinkers at the tables. It was the end of August, and these melancholy men were probably the first to become aware, in the midst of summer pleasures, that winter was on the way.

“If I were Rothschild, do you know what I’d do?” my companion said, interrupting my private train of thought. “I’d arrange for the entire Jewish people to spend a month or two in this atmosphere. This is just what our people needs to restore its shattered nerves.”

We had taken one of the side paths and come to a little bridge. Under it couples were scooping up water in tin cups and drinking.

“This is the Fountain of Love,” Steinman said. “I tried the water, too, but it gave me a stomachache. I am too old, I guess; it seems to agree with the young people.”

A smallish man wearing a rabbi’s velvet hat came up. “Good evening, Mr. Steinman,” he said.

“Good evening. How are you?”

“All goes well with me, praise the Lord. How are things in the higher spheres?”

“So-so. And there you have it in a nutshell.”

The other walked away perfectly happy, as though this reply had solved all problems for him.

He was followed by a slightly taller man, also in a rabbi’s hat, which, however, shone less in the artificial light. It was rather battered, in fact. A little boy the man was leading by the hand was squirming to get away from him.

“No, you don’t, Zalman,” the man said with feeling. “Have you forgotten what happened yesterday when you ran away and got lost?”

The boy still struggled to get free. In a hoarse voice like that of a grown-up he protested: “So what? Nothing happened, did it? Wild animals didn’t tear me to pieces.” He shook his head vigorously, revealing long earlocks. His little velvet cap slipped, and we could see that there was no danger he would ever go bareheaded. Under the velvet cap he was wearing a skullcap. He could have been no more than six or seven, but his face looked much older.

At some distance beyond them was another wearer of a rabbi’s hat. It was hard to say how old this stroller was—he might have been seventeen, but he might also have been no more than thirteen. He was alone, and his feet were encased in white socks and patent-leather low-cut shoes. From the absorbed way he walked, you could suppose he was performing a rite, an Old Testament patriarch.