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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
'Margot's is an exceptional voice, illuminating a section of society rarely seen in a refreshingly frank manner... Any reader interested in the central questions of our time will find enlightenment here' Deborah Feldman, author of Unorthodox When 20-year-old student J. S. Margot took a tutoring job, little did she know it would open up an entire world. In the family's Orthodox Jewish household, she would encounter endless rules - 'never come on a Friday, never shake hands with a man' - and quirks she had not seen before: tiny tubes on the doorposts, separate fridges for meat and dairy products. Her initial response was puzzlement and occasionally anger, but as she taught the children and fiercely debated with the family, she also began to learn from them. Full of funny misunderstandings and unexpected connections, Mazel Tov is a heartwarming, provocative and disarmingly honest memoir of clashing cultures and unusual friendships - and of how, where adults build walls, sometimes only children can tear them down. J.S. Margot (b. 1967) is a journalist and freelance writer based in Antwerp. An award-winning contributor to leading national newspapers De Standaard and De Morgen, she has also written five novels and lectures regularly in both the Netherlands and Belgium. In 2017 she was awarded the E. du Perronprijs and the Prize for the best Religious book from the VUKPP for Mazel Tov, which was also highly acclaimed in the Dutch and Belgian press. Mazel Tov has been translated into German, French and Polish and won the Best Book Award in Poland; it is her first book to be translated into English.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Contents
PART I
1987–1993
8
One
It must have been the beginning of the month. The new academic year hadn’t yet begun and I was heading for the canteen, feeling relieved, having just resat the Spanish grammar exam. To get there, I had to walk through the hall of the university building, past benches where dozens of students sat chatting and smoking. The route to the canteen was more exciting than most lectures.
Noticeboards lined the walls, full of intriguing announcements: “Who wants to swap my landlord for theirs?”, “Feel like coming to Barcelona with us? Room for one more person. Conditions apply. Call me” and “Free sleeping bag for anyone who’ll join me in it.”
A single corner was reserved for the university’s job agency.
If one of the jobs displayed in a lockable, plastic showcase looked interesting, you’d note down the number of the vacancy and go to the little social services office a bit farther along. There a lady with a long-suffering expression would tell you the details, which usually boiled down to her giving you the name, address and telephone number of the employer. Then, sighing under the weight of her boring job, she’d wish you good luck with your application.
The agency had provided me with a lot of temporary jobs in the previous two years, from chambermaiding to dishing out detergent samples, from headhunter’s assistant to museum attendant.
When I came across a handwritten job vacancy: “Student (M/F) required to tutor four children (aged between eight and sixteen) every day after school and coach them with their homework”, I 10immediately wrote the number on my palm. An hour later the lady from the job agency gave me the contact details of the family in question. I will call them the Schneiders, which is not their real name, though their name also sounded German, or German-ish.
The Schneiders, the lady said, were Jewish, but that shouldn’t be a problem, and if it was a problem, I could always come back and she’d try to see if we could work something out, but she couldn’t guarantee anything, because you never knew with people like that—which she apparently did know, just as she knew that the Schneiders would pay me 60 Belgian francs an hour, which wasn’t a lot, but could have been worse. When it came to money, she informed me, Jews were a bit like the Dutch.
When I stared at her in surprise, she seemed taken aback by my ignorance. “Why do you think so many Dutch people come here to study interpreting? Because it’s a good course and it’s cheap. As soon as they’ve got their diploma, they whizz off back to their country. So we’re basically training our biggest competitors. Luckily the university gets a subsidy for foreign students, so it’s not all bad. What I want to say is: don’t let yourself get pushed around. Don’t accept an unpaid trial period. Even if you decide to stop after the first week, they have to pay you for the hours you’ve worked.” I did quick sums in my head as she babbled on, calculating that I could earn 600 Belgian francs a week: 2,500 a month. Back then, when the rent of a small flat was about 6,000 francs a month, it all added up.
Two
“Hello Mevrouw. Could I please speak to Mr or Mrs Schneider?”
“Mrs Schneider speaking.”
“Good afternoon. I believe you’re looking for a student who can help your children with their homework?”
“We have been looking for such a person for un certain time.”
“I only saw the vacancy this week.”
“Last year we had six students. They gave up after a few evenings.”
“Why did they give up?”
“Tcha, why. Why not, n’est-ce pas? They did not do a good job, I can tell you.”
“You have four children.”
“Two sons and two daughters.”
“How old are they?”
“Between eight and sixteen. It says so in the vacancy. You call me for what reason, if you have not read it? You are how old?”
“Twenty…”
“That is only four years older than our oldest child. You are studying at which university?”
“Antwerp University. The Higher Institute of Interpreting and Translation Studies.”
“That is not a university, it is a higher institute.”
“In Belgium it’s technically part of the university.”
“Belgium is bizarre.”
“I’m studying French and Spanish.” 12
“French is good. Your Spanish is of no use to us. At home we speak French with the children. But their yeshiva, school, is Flemish, or I should say ‘Dutch-language’, n’est-ce pas? My husband is not at home now. You need to speak to my husband.”
“I’d like to come over and introduce myself. When would suit you?”
“You have experience with children?”
“I really like children. And I like teaching. Shall I come on Friday?”
“You never come to us on a Friday. You have experience with teaching?”
“I sometimes helped my cousins with their homework. And my sister, and my friends.”
“Then you cannot know whether you like teaching, n’est-ce pas.”
“I think I like it.”
“Friday our holiday begins already, the preparations for it. That day, the children never have school in the afternoon. But on Wednesday afternoon they do. Shabbat lasts, simply explained, from Friday when the sun goes down to Saturday when the sun goes down. Saturdays you therefore cannot come, as we devote the day to rest. But it is the intention that you also come to us each Sunday forenoon. To help the girls. You think that this you can do?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You think you can respect us?”
“What do you mean?”
“We are not like everyone, n’est-ce pas. We will explain that to you later. I would first like to know: students have the habit to go out on Saturday evenings. And they would rather not get up on Sundays.”
“I’m an early bird,” I lied.
“When you can come to introduce yourself?”
“Would Wednesday afternoon suit you, Mevrouw Schneider?” 13
“I just said: the children have lessons on Wednesday afternoons. And it is better you see the children.”
“In the late afternoon I mean,” I corrected myself. “At five o’clock? I have your address.”
“What is your name, please?”
Three
You’d think no one could possibly remember what the weather was like, say, thirty years ago, but that Wednesday in September the sun shone and the sky was bright blue—the kind of warm blue that heralds cold autumn weather—as I walked down Belgiëlei, the wide, busy avenue that cuts the Jewish neighbourhood in two, terminating in the handsome masonry of the railway embankment that runs between Zurenborg and the imposing edifice of Antwerp Central Station.
I never came to this side of the city. The only street I knew here was Pelikaanstraat, crammed with little jewellers’ shops, where, on Sundays especially, people flocked to shop or just browse.
I was amused to see hordes of immaculately dressed infants on scooters. Girls and boys—with or without side curls—raced recklessly but alertly along the pavement, nearly taking off my toes as they shot past. Outside some buildings—schools and crèches?—there were clusters of over a dozen scooters and as many children’s bikes. Very few were locked or chained.
Men with big white, grey or black beards strode along, seemingly in a tearing hurry. They had the air of people who knew where they were going; they didn’t look at me, but turned their gaze the other way. Their beards and sidelocks, reaching from the tops of their ears to their shoulders, were blown around not by the wind, but by the speed with which they walked. Like funeral directors late for an appointment. Some wore white stockings under black 15breeches. Their jet-black coats (silk, satin or polyester?) all looked identical. Though they hung below the knee, not a single one was unbuttoned. Mustn’t these men be stiflingly hot and sweating under their black top hats?
Practically all the women I saw had the same hairstyle: a sort of pageboy cut that just cleared their shoulders. The same colour too, pretty much: chestnut brown or black. It was obvious that some were wearing cheap wigs. Others had tucked their hair under a kerchief—the kind my mother and grandmother wore during spring cleaning, when they repainted their ceilings. Blondes appeared to be a rarity in this neighbourhood. Skirts and dresses were nearly all ankle length. Despite the warm weather, many of the women wore tights: black, dusky pink or brown, occasionally white. Garments were buttoned up to the neck. The only woman I saw in a colourful outfit was a passing cyclist with earphones on her head, listening to a Walkman.
I spoke into the intercom of a town house with a broad facade, gleaming as if newly renovated. A many-branched candelabrum stood on the window ledge next to the door, in front of the net curtain. Above the doorbell hung a transparent tube in which there seemed to be a piece of rolled-up paper. I took it to be a kind of fortune cookie, a note with a thought-provoking saying to cheer up your day. It struck me as a nice idea.
A female voice repeated my name—it resonated through the intercom—and asked me to “look at the eye”. It was the same voice as on the phone a few days earlier.
It took a while before I realized that the doorbell was linked to a security camera, and that I was being filmed. In the late 1980s, a camera system like that was a high-tech gadget, something you’d only expect to see at the entrance to a jeweller’s or a big corporation; certainly not at the door of a town house surrounded on all sides by other houses. My parents, who lived in a detached house in the 16countryside, only locked the back door in the evening, after the dog had been fed. During the day it was left open. When visitors rang the door of my flat in Antwerp, I would throw my keys out of the window, knotted up in a tea towel.
“Could you please go a bit lower? You are too high for the eye,” the voice said. The “too high for the eye” made me smile.
I bent my knees slightly and looked into the protruding eye. For at least five minutes, things went silent on the other side.
I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do as I waited. Every now and then I would look at the camera, smiling awkwardly. It was irritating, but when you’re applying for a job you don’t want to mess up. They might get annoyed, I thought, if I rang again too soon. Then I thought perhaps they’d already opened the door for me via the intercom and I just hadn’t realized it; perhaps I should have pushed harder against the door, have pressed my whole weight against it…
I gazed at the houses and apartments on the other side of the street. There, too, I saw many-branched candelabras, each one bigger than the last. I counted the arms: seven, occasionally nine.
The neighbours opposite seemed to have the same little tubes on their doorposts. A man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat entered a house. Rummaging in his satchel for his keys, he turned towards the street, where the light was better. I gave him a friendly nod, but he feigned not to see me. Before he and his hat disappeared behind the door, he briefly touched the tube.
Two women appeared at one of the windows of the building that he’d entered, pretending not to look at me, but inspecting me carefully. They didn’t press curious noses against the windowpane; they belonged to the other kind of spies: the ones who stand a few paces back from the window, because they think that from there they can watch without being seen. Which isn’t true.
Just as I was about to ring the bell a second time, chains began to rattle behind the heavy wooden door. I heard the shove and clink 17of bolts, both at the top and bottom of the door, the click of keys, a bleeping—the intercom, presumably.
Two pale, giggling girls with blue skirts and white, long-sleeved blouses buttoned up to the neck looked at me, amused and curious, and I looked back at them with the same eager curiosity. One was a larger version of the other.
“Entrez, please, entrez,” said Little, who had a little voice.
“Our parents are expecting you,” Large added. Her voice was little too.
Four
For the first half-hour I sat opposite Mr Schneider in a room that was called “the office”, on the far side of the ground floor, just past the lift.
The lift! That such decadence existed was new to me: that there were people living in the city, people without physical disabilities, who had a lift in their house.
Another thing that greatly impressed me was the thick white carpet: your feet sank right into it. My mother believed in tiles: you could throw a bucket of soapsuds over them and scrub them clean in a trice. In this house, people had lined the access routes with deep-pile white carpet.
The CCTV images flickered on the wall of the corridor, showing the street from various angles. A hazy passer-by walked past. Someone stuffed leaflets into letterboxes.
In the office stood a desk and a bookcase, only a single shelf of which was filled. I recognized a French grammar book and a French dictionary. The other books were Hebrew works, I assumed: fat tomes whose leather spines were embossed with gold lettering and curlicues.
The windows stretched from floor to ceiling and overlooked the courtyard garden whose main feature—in the middle of the city!—was a pond with a footbridge. On the edge of the big marble terrace was a basketball stand and hoop, and farther down the garden, a swing hung from a shiny red metal frame. The lawn was immaculate: bright-green grass, freshly mown. 19
Mr Schneider turned out to be a tall, thin man in a white shirt, dark suit and dark-blue yarmulke. He didn’t have sidelocks and his black beard, speckled with grey, was fluffy and didn’t hang down like a bib between his chin and his chest.
Mr Schneider had a powerful voice, and his French accent was less marked than his wife’s. He looked a bit like my father, but a Jewish version, and with somewhat deeper grooves in his forehead and around his eyes. Some people’s cheeks are never red, and Mr Schneider appeared to me to be such a person. His skin looked to be permanently pale grey. His moustache and beard framed his mouth, lending colour to his face.
“We’ll do this just once, shall we?” Mr Schneider asked after we’d shaken hands. I didn’t know what he meant. He took off his jacket and draped it slowly over his chair, taking care to align the shoulders exactly with the corners of the chair back, then asked me to take a seat.
“If you hold out your hand to me, I will shake it, juffrouw,” he said, having apparently read the confusion on my face. “Because I respect you and your customs, n’est-ce pas? But as a precaution we, Orthodox Jews, do not shake women’s hands. It has to do with ritual cleanliness and suchlike. But we will not speak of that now. It would be nice if you could respect our tradition.”
I smiled at him. Sheepishly, I imagine. I looked at my right hand and wondered how it could be unclean. Though admittedly, my fingers did bear traces of Tipp-Ex.
On a wide shelf of the bookcase, surrounded by three round hatboxes, lay a black hat with a broad, stiff brim. I’d once snapped up a similar hatbox at a flea market; in it I stored all the personal letters I’d received in my life.
Mr Schneider started on a long monologue. He did not leave any space for interruption, and when I attempted to ask him a question he responded like politicians in chat shows, suffering the intervention and then continuing unperturbed. 20
“I have four wonderful children,” he said, “two exemplary sons and two equally exemplary daughters. All four of them are different, which is logical, and I shall try to shed some light on that.”
My heart sank. I couldn’t stand exemplary children. Never got along with them, could spot them a mile off: by their shoes, by the way they walked, the way they looked at you. I could measure their obedience just by the angle of their chins.
“Simon is our eldest,” Mr Schneider began. “He is now sixteen. He is most like—in terms of character I mean—his mother, my spouse. He is gentle and tough at the same time, vous comprenez? You will understand when you meet my spouse. A hard worker who prefers to be silent than to talk, that’s his way. But you should not underestimate him; both his heart and his tongue are well cut.” As if he were talking about a diamond. It made me smile.
“If Simon opens his mouth, juffrouw, it is not to talk, but because he has something to say, if you know what I mean. N’importe: you will not have much to do with him, he is studying maths and science. His subjects are too difficult and too specialized for you; you have a flair for languages, I understand, you have a different type of brain, n’est-ce pas, you can only help our Simon with French and Dutch, perhaps also with history and geography. Our elder son will himself indicate when he has need of you. But if he does, we want him to be able to count on you, n’est-ce pas.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Jakov is our second oldest,” he went on. “We had two boys, one after the other, and two girls. It could not have been better. First the sons. Then the daughters. We are blessed, my spouse and I. Jakov is thirteen, he will turn fourteen next month. He is the spitting image of me at that age: a scamp who is very popular with his schoolmates. Jakov has many friends, just like I did. He connects very easily with others. A sociable boy. We have to take care that he does not connect too quickly, also with 21girls, if you get my meaning. When I was young, I was content to wait. But my spouse and I married in the 1970s. Since then everything has changed, the world is moving too fast, and Jakov likes speed. He is very bright. He always wants to try out new things and he likes excitement. So he will push boundaries, challenge rules. I don’t know if Jakov will have need of you. He is wilful. Nevertheless, we would like you to test him regularly on his study materials. He needs to be taught discipline. You will have to be strict with him, but not too strict—you need to find the golden mean.”
I nodded, somewhat bored. I would rather see his sons, those exemplary boys, than listen to him singing their praises, but I didn’t dare say so.
“You have already met Elzira and Sara,” Mr Schneider continued.
I realized that I was nodding again.
“Elzira is our elder daughter; Sara—the little rascal—our younger. Elzira turned twelve in August. She’s just two years younger than Jakov. And I would never say this in their hearing, but Elzira is cleverer than her two brothers put together. It’s just that she can’t concentrate—she has fits of nerves, and that worries us.”
He paused briefly. A tall boy walked across the garden.
“At school they recommended that we have some psychological tests carried out, which we did. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just a bit different.”
Once again he paused.
“Most of your time will be spent with Elzira; our daughter lacks self-confidence, you know, like all teenage girls, of course. She’s very uncertain, and Simon and Jakov undermine what self-confidence she has, even though we tell our garçons they shouldn’t, n’est-ce pas. I can give you an example: Jakov refuses to play chess with Elzira, even though they are well matched. He doesn’t want to play with her because he knows she will knock over half the chess pieces…” 22He stared silently into space for at least half a minute. Those thirty seconds seemed very long.
“I will, in the strictest confidence, tell you that Elzira has dyspraxia. The diagnosis is official. I do not know if you are aware of that condition. Her handicap—although we never refer to her condition in that way when she is present—has nothing to do with her intelligence, n’est-ce pas. Her motor skills regularly go haywire, c’est tout. She loses dexterity and has difficulty with balance and coordination. She has a tremor, like people who suffer from Parkinson’s. Sometimes her hands shake, she can’t control her muscles, she often drops things and therefore can appear clumsy. One part of her brain doesn’t always communicate smoothly with the other, that’s how you have to imagine it, like a short circuit, but that clumsiness has nothing to do with her intelligence, n’est-ce pas, I say it again, I would like to say it all the time, there is nothing wrong with her intelligence.”
I’d sat up straighter, because Mr Schneider had started to talk faster and faster, and because he was saying “n’est-ce pas” more and more often.
“You know, of course, juffrouw, that to develop, a person must have self-confidence, motivation and ambition. Well, we are worried that our daughter, because of this so-called defect, will become withdrawn and fearful. She must not lag behind the other pupils in her class. That would not do her justice. We do not want her to suffer. We do not want her to become the subject of discussion. That is your main task: be patient with Elzira, enable her to excel.”
His eyes had become damp, and he coughed between sentences, but he did not slow down.
“And then last but not least: Sara, without an ‘h’. Sara is only eight. She is a champion gymnast, as agile as a snake. We do not know from whom she has inherited this bizarre and useless talent, not from me at any rate, and my spouse has many talents, but agility of body is not one of them. If it were left to Sara, sport would be her 23only occupation. That is of course out of the question for people like us. We do not wish to encourage her at all in that direction. Not even if she had the potential to be a world-class gymnast. We want her to train her brain. Now she is only eight. But soon she will be eighteen, you understand—I take it you understand me.”
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
“Just to make sure, I shall summarize what we expect from each other, juffrouw: we from you, our children from you, all of us from each other,” he continued. “We give our sons and daughters to you. And you give them attention. You help them with their schoolwork. You are their tutor. You follow their lesson timetable and stick to it. You ensure that they pass with flying colours, n’est-ce pas. And we recompense you for all your efforts. You keep a list on which you write the hours that you have worked, and you also describe, using mots clés, keywords, how you spent those hours with them, is that agreed? Can my spouse and I count on you?”
I was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. As I sat listening to Mr Schneider’s litany, I longed for some fresh air. The little room had grown stuffy. Through the window I could see an upper balcony, where a woman was shaking out a tea towel. It occurred to me that Mr Schneider had always said “my spouse” and never “my wife”.
I fidgeted in my chair. I was eager to meet the four children. To talk to Little and Large. And see those fantastic sons in person. I also wished that Mr Schneider would ask me some questions. It wasn’t for nothing that I’d rehearsed a series of answers to imaginary queries: do you think the pay is reasonable, what are your strengths and weaknesses, how good are your language skills, explain why you think you’re the right person for our children…
Mr Schneider began talking again. It was apparent from what he said that I’d already got the job, and could start immediately. His assumption that I was okay with this—without asking whether I wanted it—made me rebellious. I decided it was time to go home. 24Before I could get up, there was a knock at the door. A woman entered the room. Her hair was concealed under a chequered kerchief and she wore an apron round her plump middle. After putting two steaming cups of coffee and two wedges of cheesecake down in front of us she disappeared again without a word.
“Do you know the joke about Moshe, who’s dying, and who calls his business partner Abe to his side?” Mr Schneider asked. And he began to tell the story. About Moshe, who doesn’t want to die before asking Abe forgiveness for certain wrongdoings.
“Do you remember when our first business went bust? That was my fault, Abe, and I’m sorry. I embezzled money and falsified the accounts.”
“I forgive you, Moshe,” Abe reassures him.
Moshe: “And that night when that car got totalled. That was me, Abe, I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I’d had too much to drink…”
“Let’s forget that,” says Abe.
“That time that 100,000 francs went missing from the safe: it was me who took the money, I had to pay off my son’s gambling debts.”
“Ach,” says Abe, “don’t worry about it, Moshe, I forgive you everything. Because, you know, I’m the one who put that arsenic in your coffee.”
After telling the joke, Mr Schneider cracked up laughing. Because he kept on looking at me expectantly, I pretended to laugh too.
“I will leave you now,” he said as abruptly as he had launched into the joke. He hadn’t touched his cheesecake.
He stood up, adjusted his yarmulke—attached to his curly crown with a hairpin—and put his jacket back on. Fresh underarm sweat stains marked his shirt.
“My spouse will come and speak with you in a moment. I wish you every success.”
I automatically stuck out a hand, which he shook heartily.
I could have kicked myself.
Five
Mrs Schneider, whose first name turned out to be Moriel, was younger than I am now. When she introduced herself to me she had just turned forty. Which made her exactly twice as old as me.
My grandmother had once explained to me—and working out she was right kept me quiet for a week—that you can only be twice someone else’s age for a single year of your life. Once past that date (in the best-case scenario) the years gradually creep towards each other. People move closer together as if, like trees, they’re collecting annual rings that make them stronger, plant them more firmly in the ground, make their crowns broader so that others can shelter under them better. The twenty years that separate a fifty-year-old from a seventy-year-old are nothing compared to the twenty-year gulf between a ten-year-old and a thirty-year-old.
Mrs Schneider was of average height and somewhere between fat and thin. Her appearance was chic, almost intimidatingly so. You could see she set high standards for herself and others. Her movements, her voice, her jewellery, her clothes—her entire presence—radiated distinction.
She wore a classic, dark-blue suit with a skirt that reached below the knee: discreet with a modern twist. Her hairstyle—shoulder-length and bouffant—reminded me of Pam Ewing’s in Dallas. When she moved, her skirt rustled.
She didn’t look motherly, more ladylike. Her skin, too, was pale, with a faint tinge of blue, the colour of her blouse. 26
Once again I held out a hand. Once again the gesture was returned. Once again I could have kicked myself: this reflex was more ingrained than I’d realized. Though maybe it was okay; perhaps women were allowed to touch each other and this rule only applied to the opposite sex.
“You are studying,” she said, sitting down on the chair that her husband had just been using, though not before first carefully smoothing down the back of her skirt.
“To become a translator.”
“Your exam results, you have them with, n’est-ce pas?”
“No… you didn’t ask me to bring them…”
“That you are a good student we cannot know, if you have not your results with you. Aaron says you speak French.”
I answered that my knowledge of French was passive, rather than active. “Dutch will always be my mother tongue. I only translate from French into Dutch, never the other way—I’d make a real mess of that!”
“Then the language you do not know.”
“Oh but I do. I understand the language, how it’s constructed. I read French literature. And I really like grammar,” I said. That wasn’t a fib. The more irregular the better.
“Our children you can help with their French home tasks.”
Mrs Schneider appraised me like an insurance agent assessing damage to a building. A gap here, a split there, two or three cracks that cannot be overlooked. She spoke all her sentences as if they were conclusions, without any upward intonation. Never a trace of a question. I wasn’t sure whether her manner of speaking was deliberate or due to her shaky command of Dutch. She clearly wasn’t a native speaker, though this hadn’t seemed so obvious during our phone conversation. Perhaps she didn’t know the rules about word order. Or perhaps, like many of the French-speaking bourgeoisie in Flanders, she just didn’t care. I was happy to teach her too. 27
“Of course I can help them with their homework.”
“You speak beautiful Dutch.”
“Thank you.”
“You have a beautiful name.”
“So do you.”
“Thank you. For my name, Moriel, I cannot take credit. I have my parents to thank for it.” She smiled tentatively. “Many people think I am called Murielle. But it is Moriel, with o and without double l and an e at the end.”
Now it was my turn to smile tentatively.
“On weekdays at five or five thirty you come, and stay until eight, at least. On Sunday mornings you come at ten and leave when our daughters you have helped. Our sons need you not help, on Sundays they go to Bible class. My husband, Aaron, or I, we pay you each week.”
She did call her husband by his first name. And just like her husband, she had decided, without bothering to check with me, that I would enter into their service.
“You have hobbies, n’est-ce pas.”
“Reading. Going to the cinema or the theatre. Travelling as often as possible to countries whose language I’m learning. Having friends round.”
“You have many hobbies, but none is to children connected.”
“I think children are great.”
“You have no experience with children.”
“I did a lot of babysitting when I was younger. I’d read the children stories. And then we’d act them out. Or we’d make up a sequel, or add another character to the story.”
“That you here need not do.”
“Babysit?”
“Make up stories. That we do not want you to do. School is not a game. And tutoring is not the same thing as babysitting. You are good at keeping silent?” 28
“Uh…”
“We do not want that you speak with the children about your personal life—about your world, I mean to say. The idea is you work with their learning materials.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Your life is your life and stays your life. You are seule, single?”
“I’m a student.”
“You are not married.”
“I live with my boyfriend.”
“Your parents approve.”
I nodded and had to bite my tongue so as not to blurt out that my parents had given up trying to interfere with my life and as a result approved of everything I did.
“Your parents, they are still together?”
“You mean, are they divorced? No.”
“With how many children are you at home?”
“Three.”
“All three healthy?”
“Yes, as far as I know.”
“Your husband works.”
“He’s looking for a job.”
“He has graduated, n’est-ce pas.”
“No, he did one year of law.”
“So he is younger than you…” Now her voice did go up at the end of the sentence, by a good few centimetres.
“No, he’s seven years older. My boyfriend’s a political refugee. He faced persecution in his country, so he fled. He might go back to university, study industrial engineering, he’s not sure yet. It depends on other factors and on his linguistic ability. Dutch isn’t an easy language to…”
I was at it again. The least suspicion that someone looked down on Nima and I’d get defensive, would stress that he was a political, 29not an economic refugee. As if I myself needed confirmation that someone who fled for political reasons was superior to someone who fled to escape poverty and a lack of prospects.
“Donc, he no longer studies law.”
“He could only study law in a language he spoke really well. That’s difficult here.”
“Your husband, he is from another country.”
“From Iran,” I said, all too familiar with the reactions this could trigger.
“Iraaaannn,” she repeated, ruminatively.
“Tehran,” I added.
“Your husband is Muslim, n’est-ce pas,” she said.
“He’s not my husband, he’s my boyfriend. And he’s not a practising Muslim,” I said. That, too, I had learnt since I’d been with Nima. That it could be helpful to say as soon as possible that although my boyfriend was a Muslim, he did not practise his religion actively: he did not pray three to five times a day, he did not observe Ramadan, and sharing his life with a non-Muslim didn’t bother him at all.
He was, in short, too left-wing to be religious. Just like the label of political refugee, that of “non-practising Muslim” was considered meritorious, a medal on his lapel, a passport in my circle of friends and acquaintances.
Sometimes, but not now, I lied that his parents were Zoroastrians. Some of Nima’s friends were Zoroastrians, and I knew a little bit about their faith, which was based not on the Bible or the Koran but the Avesta. Zoroastrianism usually met with a sympathetic response, especially if you explained that the term came from Zarathustra, meaning you could link the religion to Nietzsche, who in certain circles was revered more than any deity.
“You are a young and sensible woman. And your husband lives in the country of the ayatollahs…” 30
Another reaction I’d got tired of hearing. I gave it short shrift: “Mevrouw, my boyfriend lives in Belgium precisely because he has fled from the likes of Khomeini.”
I didn’t tell her that Nima, who had come to Belgium with his older sister, was from an affluent family, nor that his resistance to the Islamic regime had been limited; unlike many of his friends, his ideological battle had cost him no more than a blacklisting and few nights in jail, after which he very soon left the country.
His parents were worried he’d be called up to fight in the war against Iraq. It was one of the factors that prompted them, like many other middle-class Iranian families, to send their son to the West, along with their daughter. Under the Shah’s regime they had enjoyed considerable freedom, including freedom of thought. Tehran, to them, was the Paris of the Middle East. They had abhorred the authoritarian, dictatorial Shah, but they abhorred the reactionary Islamic state even more. They wanted their children to savour the taste of Paris, rather than the bitterness of a Shiite dictatorship, if needs be in another country.
Mrs Schneider did not ask my friend’s name.
“You live with someone of a different faith.”
“Yes.”
“You are not a Muslim.”
“I was brought up as a Catholic.”
“You do not intend to covert.”
“I’m not religious. Any more. If I ever was…”
“And your parents…”
“My parents were churchgoers. They observed all the main Catholic traditions. Easter. All Saints. Christmas. Now that we children are more or less grown up, they no longer attach such importance to church services or belief…”
She toyed with her bracelet, as delicate as the two rings she was wearing: fine silver with a minuscule gemstone. You have jewellery 31that whispers and jewellery that shouts; Mrs Schneider’s jewellery whispered so clearly as to drown out any shout.
“Your husband fled his religion.”
“He fled a religious state.”
“And his parents?”
“Are still there.”
“Your husband, he is an Arab.”
Oh no, I thought, not this again too. “The people of Iran are not Arabs but Persians. He doesn’t speak Arabic, he speaks Persian.” The word “Persian” worked its usual magic, thanks to the association with handwoven carpets. They were seen as a good investment, especially in Belgium, where house ownership is a national obsession. So much so that Belgians are said to be “born with a brick in their stomachs”.
“Our children, Aaron has told you about them.”
“About all four.”
“My husband didn’t ask you anything.”
“He talked the whole time,” I said. And it was a relief to be able to say it.
“I thank you,” she said, all of a sudden. “I will ring for the maid. Krystina will show you out. I wish you a pleasant day. Merci et bonne journée.”
She pressed a button under the desktop and with a brief nod left me sitting there, somewhat bemused, in a fine cloud of her perfume, which I couldn’t identify. Anaïs Anaïs was the only scent I knew, as I occasionally sprinkled it on my neck and wrists. Not so much because I liked its heavy, floral fragrance, but because I wanted to spread the aura of the writer Anaïs Nin.
Krystina was not the woman who had served me the delicious cheesecake.
Six
A good three weeks later I was rung by Mrs Schneider. After a few evenings of tutoring, the three students who had passed the Schneiders’ application procedure had stopped coming. Mrs Schneider didn’t give me any details, and I didn’t trouble to find out whether they’d been fired or had left of their own accord. Clearly, the departure of the third student had made emergency measures necessary. That was where I came in.
During the call, Mrs Schneider made no mention of my failed job interview. Speaking to me as if for the first time, she stressed the need for her children to receive the best possible education. There was no time to waste, she said, every day and evening needed to be spent profitably, n’est-ce pas?
Would I consider coming, she wanted to know.
“My boyfriend’s still from Iran, you know,” I couldn’t help saying.
“Aaron will continue the conversation,” she responded. Her husband would prefer to receive me in his office near Pelikaanstraat, she added. As soon as possible: would tomorrow at four be convenient? Did I need picking up, or a taxi to be sent, peut-être?
After the chicness of the Schneider home, the un-chicness of Mr Schneider’s workplace was startling. Housed in a building along with—to judge by the number of doorbells and letterboxes—dozens of other businesses, his office contained little more than 33a cluttered black metal desk and four chairs. It was stuffy, as if the only window, streaked with dirty rainwater, hadn’t been opened in years, and as if the concrete decay visible from the outside was seeping through the walls. The building’s secretaries, as unstylish as the interior, were common property, just like certain office equipment: the typewriters, photocopiers and IBM computers. Through the dirty window I could see the dome of Antwerp Central Station.
All kinds of magnifying glasses, pincers and tweezers lay on a table against the wall, along with prehistoric-looking microscopes. The harsh fluorescent lighting over the centre of the table, banishing all shadow, made everything even uglier than it already was.
“I am a diamond merchant,” Mr Schneider said.
I could not suppress a smile.
“This amuses you?”
“I was just reminded of that scene in Cheese where the main character says ‘I am a cheese merchant’.”
Mr Schneider looked a little blank.
“Do you know the book I mean? We studied it at school. It’s by Elsschot.”
“Elsschot?”
“A Flemish author, it doesn’t matter,” I mumbled.
“Oh, I’ve read Elsschot’s books, you know! And Simon, our elder boy, chose Elsschot in his Dutch literature classes. I suspect that Jakov will too. It’s not that the pupils choose this writer because they love his work so much, of course, but because Elsschot wrote thin books in language that is easy to understand!”
Mr Schneider laughed, his whole body shaking.
“Elsschot came from Antwerp, n’est-ce pas,” he continued. “He was a gifted chess player. Sapira, a Polish Jew, was for a while a family friend of the De Rudders—Elsschot’s real name, if I’m not mistaken.” 34
