I took a gulp of my whiskey. She dropped down on the couch, leaned back, and shut her eyes. Suddenly she yawned, her beautiful mouth wide open. She yawned with a melodious cry that sounded like a happy weeping and that faded away in a sigh of utter relaxation, at the end of which she opened her eyes and said, “You are sweet. Now go downstairs to your grandma and sleep well.” She got up with an unexpected swiftness and went to her bedroom, already unbuttoning her dress in the back.
I stood still in bewilderment, not knowing what to think of all this, not even knowing whether I had imagined something else would happen or what — just simply not knowing how to put my glass down and say “Good night” and “See you soon.” She turned and looked at me, still fumbling with buttons at her back. “If you don’t want to go,” she said, “you can listen to a few more records, if you like. But don’t mind if I fall asleep. I’m dog-tired.”
I felt humiliated to the core. The situation was totally out of my control, and I wished I’d never accepted her invitation to come in for a nightcap. But, on the other hand, she was so kind, and sweet, and pretty. Her mouth had excited me.
She had turned round fully and stood watching me. Then she came toward me, smiling, and before I could say anything she took my head in both hands and kissed me softly and affectionately. Then she smiled again, close to me, under my eyes, and said, “What’s all this? Do you want to stay with me?” I didn’t answer. Still looking into my face, she said softly, “Then come!”
She very soon found out the full truth about my worldliness, and it seemed to touch her. She was all sweet understanding, treating me with a tenderness and intimacy I had never known before or even been able to imagine. If it had been possible for me to think such a monstrous thought, I should have called it gay and tender lovemaking with a sister.
I put “Star Dust” on the phonograph again, and we lay in the dark and listened till it came to an end. She laughed and said, “Won’t your grandma be upset when she finds out that you’ve been with me in the middle of the night?”
“She doesn’t necessarily need to know.”
“Well, certainly not. But she will find out sooner or later. I want to have you around, you are so cozy.”
I said, “May I put on that record once more?”
“You do like it, don’t you? Well, it’s yours. You can take it with you and play it till you can’t stand it anymore.”
“Thank you.”
“I wish I had a little more money, so I could buy you things you like. I have always longed for a little brother to spoil. What is your name?”
“Arnulf.”
“What?” she cried, with an outburst of her delightful laughter. “It can’t be true. Arnulf! Who ever thought of such a dreadful name?”
“My father,” I said, smiling against my will. “It comes from his mother’s family; they’re Bavarians. I think he thought it would oblige me to behave like a good knight.” I sighed. Yet I was very much amused myself.
“But you can’t possibly expect me to call you Arnulf,” she said.
“Well, I have a few more Christian names. I have about half a dozen. Other people I know have up to fifteen.”
“Don’t tell me. I expect your other names are even worse. No, I shall call you Brommy — that fits you very well.”
“Why, and how?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It simply fits you.”
“Did you have a pet dog with that name?”
“No. I don’t know where I got it from — there was an admiral, I think.”
“What have I to do with an admiral?”
“Lots. You are very much like a young cadet who will become an admiral someday. And you don’t want me to call you Wilhelm von Tegetthoff.”
I laughed. The totally illogical jump was typically Jewish. It sounded like one of the surrealistic jokes that were told in the Bukovina about the merry rabbis of the Hasidim and their shrewdly twisted logic. I could not help feeling very much at home with Minka.
“Now, come,” she said. “Be a good boy and let’s get some sleep.”
She did not send me away. She simply put her arms around me and curled close to me, and instantly fell into a deep and innocent sleep, smelling of well-groomed feminine hair and skin, good perfume, and a little whiskey. I lay for a while with open eyes, listening to the fading sounds of “Star Dust,” which was now mine, and thinking how funny it was that at the very moment you got mixed up with Jews you changed your name. Soon I, too, fell asleep, my arms around her.
I have often wondered since whether I had an affair with Minka. Whatever it was, it did not interfere in the slightest with her amorous life, and though it altered my life completely, there seemed not the faintest tie that would have given me the impression that I couldn’t do whatever I pleased. From that first morning — when I woke in her arms and watched her face, so fresh and well rested, and she opened her dark eyes and, with joyful laughter, said, “Now, who are you? Surely not the boy from downstairs?”—we were together day and night. “I am getting so accustomed to having him in my bed,” she would explain to her friends — among whom some were even a little more than friends. “Like a child with its teddy bear. He doesn’t kick or snore. He’s just sweet and appetizing.” And, turning to the nearest female in the circle, “If you really want a good night’s sleep, I’ll lend him to you.”
Of course, there were also moments when she said to me, “Listen, my dear Brommy, there is a certain gentleman who is arriving from Paris, so would you do me a great favor and go skiing with Bobby? He’s treating, so you needn’t spend your pocket money on that. And please don’t show up around here before next Friday.”
Bobby was her official lover — the fair, athletic chap who skied and played ice hockey and swam and rode horseback. We had become great friends. “You know, my boy,” he would explain to me, “if it were any other girl, you’d become jealous. But not with Minka. First, it would be pointless. Second, she wouldn’t let you. She makes it quite clear to you that it’s not you who possess her, it’s she who possesses you. Now, since she is not jealous of you, what right have you to be jealous of her? It’s as simple as that.”
There was no use trying to explain to him, or anybody else, that our relationship was, in fact, relatively — and even in great proportion — innocent. When Minka and I went to bed together, it was mainly to curl up in one another’s arms and fall asleep. It gave her comfort to have someone near. I have sometimes thought that it may have been an atavism or, let us say, a tradition that she had inherited, like the passion for hunting and shooting among our kind. After all, many of her ancestors must have slept six in one bed, like most of the poor Jews in Galicia and in the Bukovina. But certainly such an explanation would not have helped my grandmother or aunts to understand my affection for Minka; in their eyes it would have made things even worse. In fact, it was all rather scandalous, and I was afraid my father would hear about it — particularly as neither my grandmother nor my aunts gave the slightest sign of knowing what was going on. That they knew perfectly well I could detect from old Marie’s trembling resentment whenever I went up to Minka’s flat or came down from it, and the resentment increased when the hours I spent downstairs in my room became short intervals between the sojourns upstairs at Minka’s. I could only pray to God that the hatred of my mother’s relatives for my father would not allow them to give him the satisfaction of saying that it was not surprising I got involved with Jews while staying in their house. He had always warned my mother against her own family, and he would no doubt say that it was her fault for letting me go to Vienna, instead of — as he had wished — sending me to Graz, the capital of Styria, where there were fewer Jews.