Gerdy spoke nonstop. She would almost always stay in the center of the room, a cup of tea in one hand and a slice of thinly buttered toast in the other. Conversations and huddles came and went around her. She circulated. She had a word for everyone and laughed tirelessly, saying whatever she felt like to whomever. Sometimes general hilarity or a real din struck up around her that turned every head at the party. It was precisely on one afternoon when Boca the baritone had bought Frau Schoen to the house — it was her first time — that Gerdy sparked one of those tremendous hullabaloos she was famed for. Frau Schoen blanched and we were afraid there’d be a violent scene. We were greatly surprised when she countered in a distraught, though almost familiar, tone of voice. Standing straight-backed in a corner of the room, she grimaced and replied loftily: “You know, Gerdy, I’ve a terrible headache. I simply must take an aspirin this very minute.”
The Pole would then take a rest, what Maties Boca, called her feline interlude. She asked the maid to bring her the cat of the house and lay beside it on a sofa. She opened its mouth with great difficulty and fed it a few drops of lemon tea. The animal bristled, performed extraordinary routines, looked to be in a rage, sneezed, wiped its whiskers with a paw, and capered over the carpet. Gerdy found all that most entertaining, and it would climax with the cat scratching her face.
Gerdy had a soft spot for a life of glitter and her dream would have been to be filthy rich and live in Paris.
“If Ragutini promised to take you there, would you marry him?” I asked her jokingly.
“Quite possibly … I would so love to be in Paris!”
“Why do you say that?” Gregori Tomski the Russian sociologist and moralist would then ask. “You are so gracious, why would you want to experience firsthand the vile madness of the Western world? Gerdy, why does it appeal to you? Isn’t Germany bad enough?”
Gregori Tomski was a chronic Russian émigré who maintained that everything outside the frontiers of the Slav world was perverse, sinful and anti-human. Tiny and bald, he looked perpetually crestfallen with his huge mouth, protruding pale ivory cheeks and glassy, almost green eyes. He always wore a bowler hat with a broad mourning band and dark shabby suits with shiny, baggy knees. His angelical, tender-hearted demeanor came as a real surprise. He spoke in soft, elusive tones, and silently came and went, like a weightless shadow, as if floating imperceptibly through the air. It wasn’t at all hard to imagine him traveling the world, mouth agape, arms open to welcome someone, his cheeks ever expecting a slap and his heart permanently on his sleeve. Later, his politeness, sinuous charms and all-around lightweight presence seemed rather disturbing. You realized that his angelic ways were different from what you’d observed in other men. You found a subtle undercurrent, an almost invisible thread of sarcasm, a tiny, chill tremor, a hidden, slippery je ne sais quoi that alerted you to a psyche one couldn’t quite fathom. The deadpan mask of his face was disconcerting, but even in his warmer moments, you felt you could see a tail waving like a miniature snake’s, its triangular head erect, in his glassy eyes. Who was he really? A hapless wretch? An impostor with a dark, tragic history? Who knows?
That sociologist was a source of argument and several people were visibly repelled by him. Nobody knew what he did or what he lived on. Some said he translated sociology books from German to Russian, but nobody could vouchsafe such serious endeavors. Others maintained that his wife, who was a dentist, ran a renowned practice in a working-class area and that allowed him to lead a somewhat idle, whimsical life. Malicious gossips pointed to him being a wily, undercover agent for police of every kind. Others, on the contrary, reckoned he was a sad maniac on the loose. I heard people say strange things about him: they said you could find him in the oddest of places and that when you were least expecting it, he’d tap you on the back in that oblique, elusive way he had. I experienced that myself and was really shocked. One morning I had to pay a business call on a gentleman who lived in a distant neighborhood and I passed the émigré Russian sociologist on the stairs. Another day, when waiting for lady friend in an out-of-the-way corner of an empty park, I saw him walk by under the trees, holding a newspaper; he showily doffed his hat at me. If I’d been at all superstitious, that fellow would have had me worried.
A Catalan led the field against Tomski, a Sr Coberta, a cultured merchant and semi-artist, the son of the distinguished Sr Coberta from the Ampurdan who went bankrupt a few years ago, as is well known, trying to make a quick buck. Sr Coberta was voluble and shameless, prone to astonishing bursts of heart-on-sleeve sincerity. He was a warmhearted fellow easily swept along by an endless flow of words and the pleasure of chatter for chatter’s sake. He’d say of himself that his heart was “open like a barn door.” I can testify to seeing him wipe away tears in the cinema during a scene when children made it up with their father. He was a man of average build, with a freckled face, reddish hair, and rather coarse features behind large American-style spectacles. He was a partner in a large Berlin fruit store and owned a suburban movie theater.
Coberta never argued in an ad hominem, specific way against the Russian. Nevertheless, he had a mania: a boundless hatred of Russia and all things Russian. He couldn’t bear the slightest mention of the place.
“The Slavic soul!” he’d snort with a snarl. “You can speak as much as you like about the Slavic soul, its profound mysteries and ethereal charms … Stuff and nonsense! There are no such mysteries, ethereal delights, or depths. They are fantastically brutish and that’s all there is to it.”
One wanted to ask him what devious paths he’d taken to reach such a conclusion. You’d feel that for a second and then you’d look at him and find him to be so full of life and so typical of our country that you understood him perfectly. The most extreme opinions seemed perfectly natural coming from his lips. One can always rely on a Catalan to come out with the most extraordinary, flabbergasting ideas.
Coberta holding forth on Russia and the Russians always reminded me of Disraeli’s dictum on the same topic: “The Russians will always be first-rate as long as they wear their shirts outside their trousers. However, the day they look more civilized, they won’t be nearly so likeable.”
When the conversation turned to Russia, Tomski slipped off and disappeared out of sight. Gerdy backed Sr Coberta, and Ragutini also seemed to rally to the same cry, despite his taciturn silence.
“They are so brutish!” said Gerdy, incensed. “What really riles them most is not being able to pick their noses with their fingers or drink their tea from their saucers …”
“Absolutely!” chimed Coberta, brandishing his fists and launching off. “They are barbarians. Go into a Russian restaurant and see for yourselves. Look at the way they eat. They mix everything up: fruit with meat and coffee, fish with dessert and cheese; milk with vegetables and 70° proof alcohol. Their combinations make no sense, are straight out of the lunatic asylum. We invented rice and chicken, they invented steak with sugar. They are polar opposites. And what about Russian women? Have you ever seen the like? The most aristocratic among them act as if they were chamber maids only yesterday. Snobs will say that sensually they are complex, literary and fascinating. Wrong. They only seem complex because to a woman they wave a fishtail behind and are all glitter and no gold …”
“You’re right!” agreed Gerdy passionately. “We Polish women …”