Their futile bantering got on my nerves. I knew Olschansky’s devious tricks and maneuvers all too well and wanted to put an end to them. The surest method had always been to cite one of my celebrated quotations, so I cried, “Give the masses what they want! Fifty million coprophile flies can’t be wrong: eat shit!”
It made a palpable hit, and nearly everyone laughed; even Dreher made a half-grudging, half-acknowledging gesture toward me. Miss Alvaro was the only one who looked at me in outrage; she was at the point of getting up and leaving. Her place at the table was such, however, that an exit to the right would have entailed asking the whole wrestling troupe to get up and let her out, whereas to the left the frail Mrs. Löwinger had collapsed in a heap. Mrs. Löwinger shook, moaned, and gulped, then grabbed Miss Alvaro’s arm and dug her fingers into it.
“What’s wrong, for heaven’s sake?” Miss Alvaro cried.
Iolanthe sprang to her feet. “God Almighty, she’s losing the baby!”
Unfortunately she was right. Mrs. Löwinger was rushed off to hospital, and the next day her mother, red-eyed, told us that all hopes of an addition to the Löwinger family could be buried. When I went to say a few words of compassion to Mr. Löwinger, he looked at me with chill pride in his eyes and said, “I have no regrets; members of our race have no business bringing children into this world.”
Soon after this episode, I was flabbergasted when Miss Alvaro stopped me in the passageway, looked over her shoulder in order to make sure that nobody was watching us, and then whispered that she would like to meet me at the Café Corso the next day. She was there before me when I arrived at the appointed time.
“May I invite you to have a drink or something today?” she asked. “I shall be very upset if you refuse.”
I accepted and, rather evilly thinking of Olschansky, asked for a marghiloman, or what the Italians call a caffè corretto—a small cup of mocha coffee with a shot of cognac.
“Do you recommend it?” Miss Alvaro asked. “The thing is, I’m going to ask another favor of you.” She smiled shyly, but the smile had a great deal of charm, for she was obviously sure of her ground. “First I must tell you a story,” she continued. “The ring you were good enough to help me have valued belonged to an uncle of mine. No blood relative …” She hesitated, then went on bravely. “He became critically ill a short time ago, and for this reason I returned from Jena — too late, unfortunately. We had been very close; he had been like a father to me ever since I was a small child. It was because of him that I was brought up an Armenian Christian.”
She paused a moment, as though thinking over something she was reluctant to say. “He was Armenian by birth, from a great family in Constantinople. When the persecution of the Armenians began in the twenties, he emigrated here. Of course he had to leave behind the greater part of his estate and arrived with very little, by his standards. But for my aunt, whom he met almost right away, what he had left was a vast fortune; I told you once, did I not, that I came from a very humble family?
“Would you like a little more brandy in your coffee? Or a brandy all by itself? I know I should.” She again smiled her small, shy smile. “I never drink, as you surely guessed, but I find myself unable to tell my story without a lift of some sort. I’ve never told it before, by the way ….
“My uncle first met my aunt when he was ordering new spectacles at an oculist’s; she was working there. We’re not Eastern Jews at all, not Ashkenazim, but Sephardim, as my name implies, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you when my ancestors moved to Bessarabia. Well, as you probably know, among Spanish and Portuguese Jews, especially those who came to Central Europe via Holland, there’s a long tradition in oculism, and one of my relatives had continued the practice. This gentleman wasn’t exactly a Spinoza, but he seemed to believe in the sovereign rights of the strong over the weak, for he used my poor aunt, who was still very young, quite shamelessly. When she and the Armenian met, it must have been love at first sight. He was probably well aware of her humble origins; he was a man of the world, not only on account of his wealth but through a long family history of intermarriage with the French and Italian aristocracy. However, that she might be Jewish most likely never occurred to him; as I said, their love was spontaneous and unqualified.
“My aunt gave up her job and moved in with him. She was a resourceful housewife and knew how to make life very comfortable, even on their limited means. They became completely self-sufficient and lived happily in splendid isolation for a number of years. Then, when quite unexpectedly both my parents died and there was no one else to look after me, they married in order to fulfill their roles as stepparents respectably.
“I must tell you that my aunt never found the courage to tell him she was Jewish. She knew of the Armenians’ general hatred of the Jews, not so much a matter of racial hatred — which would be quite absurd, of course — as a religious rivalry, though none the less fanatical for this. My aunt loved her husband so deeply that she would have done far more than just renounce her faith in order to keep him.
“When I joined them — I was not quite eight years old — she immediately instructed me never, ever to breathe a word that might betray our heritage. I was not with them long before I was sent to an Armenian convent; there, just as had been the case with my aunt vis-à-vis my uncle, my physical appearance aroused no curiosity or comment. Each of the Armenian nuns and the other girls — as indeed my uncle, too — had some facial feature or other that looked just as Semitic to the untrained eye as mine. The only sticky moment was when the teachers found out how ignorant I was in religious matters; they were appalled, but I worked hard and soon caught up with the others. Just as my aunt had done on meeting my uncle.
“I well remember the discussions she had with the priests who came to visit my uncle. They debated for hours the different doctrines of the Monophysites and the Nestorians with regard to the single, double, or composite natures of Christ, or the connection between the vows made for one at baptism and one’s own reassertion of them at confirmation. Armenians are extremely devout, and my uncle — who belonged to the United Armenians, the so-called Mechitarists, by the way — positively doted on his church. Can you imagine, he presented his father confessor with a complete first edition of Diderot’s Encyclopedia because the priest had maintained he daren’t possess it since it was on the Index?”
Miss Alvaro took a sip of cognac and then coughed discreetly. “My goodness, that’s strong. And I’m not used to it, although I must say I had opportunity enough to get accustomed to it at my uncle’s house. He was anything but frugal in that way, loved his food and drink. You know, of course, that Lucullus played an important part in Armenia’s history? My uncle jokingly used to say that it was every Armenian’s sacred duty to revere his cuisine and his wine cellar, and my aunt used all her considerable guile to make him forget that he could no longer afford to have his salmon sent from Scotland or his wine from Bordeaux…. I believe also that their sexual tastes were particularly compatible ….
“It broke him when she died last year; he had no desire to continue living without her. Naturally, as a practicing Christian, he did not think of suicide, but there was in any case no need to do so. Only a few months later, although just seventy and in robust health till then, he followed her. His heart simply stopped beating.”