We turned off the main street and stopped in front of the Institute. Solly Brill pounced on us, very excited: “Haveyouheardanything? Anynews? What’s the score at halftime? A stroke you can get from all this worrying, on account of this stupid ballet! Mama brought me here but she left right away to tell Riffke to stay away from all the passions running high and such what a nebekh—what’s it going to hurt her if Jacky Seligmann gets a bump on the nose. Oy, am I sad that Bubi’s in jail! He’d have a good chance of losing his spleen — they’d sooner slap him as look at him. I can’t tell you how worried I am, really.”
Aunt Elvira remarked pointedly to Madame Aritonovich: “This young man seems to regret missing the opportunity to see his family killed.”
“Not exactly,” replied Madame. “He’s merely behaving like the farmer who prays for a few drops of rain to fall on his field when he sees it’s pouring at the neighbors’.”
“Very well put, since we come from the country,” said Aunt Elvira, with an alkaline smile.
“Really!” said Madame Aritonovich. “I know some very charming people from the country.”
Our mother looked at Dr. Salzmann. Madame Aritonovich introduced him. Mama spoke a few half-friendly words about how she hoped our inadvertent participation in his course had not wounded the sensitivities of any of the other pupils’ parents.
“Absolutely not, gnädige Frau. Jewish parvenus are usually quite tolerant.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” said our mother, nodding to Dr. Salzmann.
“Not for me,” he replied, ignoring her gesture of parting. “Among the better-off members of the Mosaic faith, at most sixty percent still believe in a personal god — the remaining forty percent do not. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, as usual. Those of us with convictions would prefer to see a better proportion.”
He reached below his mighty stomach into his waistband pocket, pulled out his thick watch, glanced at the face, wound it, held it to his ear, knocked it against the back edge of an armchair, and listened once again. His jocund, awe-inspiring face was redder than usual, and his thick mustache bristled warlike over his scarlet lips.
We were shooed into the bedroom that had been designated as our dressing room. A few latecomers arrived and reported that the soccer match had been broken off because a tumult had erupted just as the second half was beginning — at which point the game was tied four to four. The fighting was still going on and had spread into the city. Reinforced squads of police and gendarmes were trying to restore the peace.
They started getting us into costume and applying makeup. The theater barber and his assistant applied scented creams to our foreheads and cheeks, dusted us with powder that tickled our noses, and under the careful supervision of Madame Aritonovich, shaped Tanya’s and Blanche’s eyebrows into the wingtips of demonic butterflies. We were enjoying ourselves immensely, and performing every conceivable nonsense. In fact, Solly had to be reined in; he had fashioned a ball out of a bundle of stockings in order to show how Moishe Eisenstein, the center-forward for Makkabi, dribbled.
Meanwhile, more disquieting news continued to filter in about what was going on in the streets. Evidently the police, heavily reinforced by the gendarmerie, had managed to restore order outside the playing field. However, it was time for the daily promenade, which usually filled Iancu Topor Avenue — and, at least on Sundays, the paths in the Volksgarten as well — with alarming masses of people. But today it was positively frightening to find out how many inhabitants Czernopol really possessed — and what kind of people they were. Apparently the entire rabble from the outlying districts had formed a mob. The matchyorniks from around the train station, accompanied by hordes of streetwalkers, the burlaks from the settlements around Kalitschankabach, the huligans from Klokuczka, and whatever the other particular groups might be called, roamed across the avenue so that even the spacious Volksgarten was practically overflowing. Even the fashionable patchkas of young flaneurs had armed themselves with sticks; individual groups of Junimea had taken important strategic positions at specific corners and intersections; the ethnic German fraternity Germania — wearing the colors of their club, with ribbons and caps and provocative glances — approached anyone coming their way, and the Jahn Athletic Club was in the beer cellar of the Deutsches Haus, ready to spring to action as a man to the cry “Brothers, come out!” And finally it was impossible to overlook the throngs of young Jews — including some who were practically children — who were streaming in from all sides. The police had been ordered to disperse groups of more than three people, and performed this task — at least the older watchmen among them who recalled their “German” from the Austrian days — by saying the words: “Either go where it is you’re going or stay where it is you’re staying but don’t be making any kupkis!” which, in their mix of Polish, German, and Ukrainian, meant, quite simply, “Either move on or stay where you are, but do not defecate.”
Mama Brill hadn’t returned to the institute. “What do I care if she runs after Riffke,” said Solly. “What I want most of all is to be out on the street myself — but no, it’s a snowflake I have to be playing, the one time something fun is going on outside.”
We asked Blanche about her mother. “I don’t have a mother anymore,” she said. “You couldn’t have known. She died two years ago.”
“And your father? Is he here?”
“No, he wanted to come, but he was called to the asylum. I’m all by myself.”
We began to grow apprehensive. Report after unsettling report alarmed us to the point where we lost our joyful anticipation of the ballet. Seven o’clock came but Madame Aritonovich gave no sign to begin: Herr Tarangolian had yet to appear, and she didn’t want to start without him.
Uncle Sergei arrived late and unaccompanied — Aunt Paulette had turned back when she saw the seething crowd in the Volksgarten. Giving his most charming smile, he said: “The mood on the streets is just like before a revolution. I saw someone almost beaten into mincemeat.”
At seven-thirty, Madame Aritonovich asked Dr. Salzmann to go to the corner apothecary and telephone to see if the prefect would be able to attend — unlike today, back then it wasn’t a given that a private school would have its own phone connection. Dr. Salzmann set off with eyes ablaze and martial mustache twitching — and never came back. Frau Dr. Biro (née Wurfbaum), who had laid out the cold buffet and was chewing on the remnants, set off to find out what had happened to him. After a very long while she came back and informed us that Dr. Salzmann had been to the apothecary — which incidentally was hastily closing its shutters despite the official after-hours service — but had disappeared in the direction of downtown. In any event, Herr Tarangolian could not be reached; she herself had tried, in vain. Nevertheless, her trip wasn’t entirely for naught, because she was sucking on a gumdrop with great relish and satisfaction.
“So we’ll start without him,” said Madame Aritonovich. “All right, then, children, to your places!”
But the parents had already decided to put off the performance to another day. The way things were, it was time to get the children home as quickly as possible.
“Please,” said Madame, “consider the fact that right now is the worst possible time to be driving through the city. At least wait till after the promenade. Besides, I don’t believe that anything serious is going to happen. There’s no reason for …” She interrupted herself.