Date: 1980-08-14T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; General; Literary Criticism; Jewish
Description: It is spring 1939 in the age of anxiety. In months Europe will be Hitler's. And Badenheim, a resort town vaguely in the orbit of Vienna, is preparing for its summer season. The vacationers arrive as they always have, a sampling of Jewish middle-class life: the impresario Dr. Pappenheim, his musicians, and their conductor; the gay Frau Tsauberblit; the historian, Dr. Fussholdt, and his much younger wife; the "readers," twins whose passion for Rilke is featured on their program; a child prodigy; a commercial traveler; a rabbi. The list waxes as the summer wanes. To receive them in the town are t
Publisher: D. R. Godine

Badenheim 1939

Badenheim 19 3 9

Aharon Appelfeld

Translated by Daly a Bilu

D A VI D R. G 0 D I N E Publisher

·

BosTON

First English edition published in 1980 by

David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

3o6 Dartmouth Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02116

Copyright© 1980 by Aharon Appelfeld

Illustration© 198o by Nancy Lawton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Appelfeld, Aharon.

Badenheim 1939.

Translation Badenhaim, 'ir nofesh.

I. Title.

PJ5054.A755B2813 1980

ISBN 0-87923-342-7

Second printing: December tgSo

Manufactured in the United States of America

Badenheim 1939

1

SPRING returned to Badenheim. In the country church next to the town the bells rang. The shadows of the forest retreated to the trees. The sun scattered the remnants of the darkness and
its light filled the main street from square to square.

It was a moment of transition. The town was about
to be invaded by the vacationers. Two inspectors
passed through an alley, examining the flow of
the sewage in the pipes. The town, which had
changed its inhabitants many times in the course
of the years, had kept its modest beauty.

The pharmacist's sick wife, Trude, stood by the
window. She looked around her listlessly with
the gaze of a woman chronically ill. The light fell
kindly on her pale face and she smiled. It had
been a strange, hard winter. Storms had swept
through the town and tom the roofs off the houses.

Rumors were rife. Trude lay in a delirious sleep.

Martin never left her bedside. She spoke constantly

1
of her married daughter, and Martin reassured her that everything was all right. Now the winter was
over. She stood by the window as if she had been
resurrected from the dead.

The small, well-kept houses put on their tranquil looks again. White islands in a sea of green.

'Has the mail come?'

'Today's Monday. The mail only comes in the
afternoon.'

The carriage of the impresario, Dr. Pappenheim,
suddenly emerged from the forest and came to a
stop in the main street. The doctor stepped out of
the carriage and waved. No one answered his
wave. The street lay in silence.

'Who's arrrived?' asked Trude.

'Dr. Pappenheim.'

Dr. Pappenheim brought the moist breath of
the big city with him, the smell of excitement and
anxiety. He would spend his time at the Post Office. Telegrams and express letters would be sent.

Apart from Dr. Pappenheim's arrival, nothing
happened. The spring light streamed forth serenely, as it did every year. In the afternoon people gathered in the cafe and devoured pink ice cream.

'Has the mail come yet?' asked Trude again.

'Yes, but there's nothing for us.'

'Nothing.' Now you could hear the sickness in
her voice. She went back to bed, her forehead
burning. Martin took off his coat and sat down
beside her.

2

'Don't worry/ he said. 'There was a letter only last week. Everything's all right.'

But her hallucinations would not leave her:

'Why does he beat her?'

'No one beats her. Leopold is a good man and
he loves her. What are you thinking of?'

She fell silent, chastised. Martin was tired. He
put his head on the pillow and fell asleep.

The next morning the first guests arrived. The
front window of the pastry shop was decorated
with flowers. In the hotel gardens the following
people appeared: Dr. Shutz, Professor Fussholdt
and his young wife, and Frau Zauberblit. To Trude
they looked not like the familiar vacationers, but
like patients in a sanitorium.

'Don't you recognize Professor Fussholdt?'

asked Martin.

'They look very pale to me.'

'They've just come from the city/ said Martin,
trying to distract her. Now Martin knew that his
wife was very ill. The drugs would not help. The
whole world looked transparent to her. It was
poisoned and diseased; their married daughter,
captive and abused. His attempts to reassure her
were in vain. She had stopped listening. That
night Martin sat down and wrote a letter to his
daughter Helena. Spring in Badenheim was delightful. The first guests had arrived. But her mother missed her very much.

Trude's illness seeped into his soul drop by drop.

3

He too began to see patches of paleness on people's faces. Since Helena's marriage everything in the
house had changed. For a whole year they had
tried to stop her, but nothing had helped. She
was, as they say, head over heels in love. In the
end, a hasty marriage had been arranged.

Spring rose in a dark green haze from the gardens. The two local prostitutes, Sally and Gertie, put on summer dresses and strolled down the avenue. In the beginning the inhabitants of the
town had tried to get them thrown out, but the
campaign, which began many years ago, had
come to nothing in the end. The town had grown
used to them, as it had grown used to Dr. Pappenheim's eccentricities and to the foreigners who had insinuated themselves like diseased roots. Only the pastry shop owner was adamant. He would
not allow them to cross his threshold, and they
were thus deprived of the best cream cakes in the
world. The boyish Dr. Shutz, who had a soft spot
for Sally, once took some cakes out to them in the
avenue. The pastry owner found out, and there
was a scandal. But his battle too was in vain.

'And how are the ladies?' asked Dr. Pappenheim gallantly.

In the course of time they had lost their city
airs, bought themselves a little house, and begun
to dress like the local girls. At the beginning they
gave wild parties. But the years and the mistresses
from the city had pushed them aside. Without

4
their savings they would have been in a bad way.

All they had left were their memories, and like
widows on long winter nights they would bring
them up from their graves.

'What's happened this year?'

'Nothing out of the ordinary,' said Dr. Pappenheim cheerfully.

'A strange winter, wasn't it?'

They were fond of Dr. Pappenheim and over
the years they had even begun to take an interest
in his strange artists. In their long exile they
clutched at any straw that offered itself.

'Not to worry, not to worry! The Festival program's full of surprises this year!'

'Who's it going to be this time?'

'A yanuka, a child prodigy. I discovered him in

Vienna in the winter.'

'A yanuka,' said Sally in a maternal voice.

By the next day Badenheim was already flooded
with vacationers. The hotel was a hive of activity.

The spring light and the laughter of the people
filled the streets, and in the hotel gardens the
porters once more carried the brightly colored
baggage. Dr. Pappenheim seemed to shrink. His
timetable was in a muddle. He rushed from place
to place. For years the artists had been driving
him crazy and now they wanted to ruin him altogether.

The people left their baggage in the hotel and
streamed toward the forest. Professor Fussholdt

5
and his young wife. A tall man ceremoniously leading Frau Zauberblit. ' Why don't we go left?'

said Frau Zauberblit, and everybody turned to the
left. Dr. Shutz followed them as if spellbound.

'Why do they walk so slowly?' asked Trude.

'Why, because they're on vacation, of course,'

said Martin, as if nothing could be simpler.

'Who's the man walking next to Frau Zauberblit? Isn't it her brother?'

'No, my dear. Her brother's been dead for years.'

2

THAT night the band arrived. Dr. Pappenheim
was as happy as if a miracle had taken place. The
porters unloaded the trumpets and drums. The
musicians stood by the gate like tame birds on a
stick. Dr. Pappenheim distributed candy. The van
driver urged the porters on, and the musicians
ate and said nothing.

'Why are you late?' asked Dr. Pappenheim, with
a certain feeling of relief.

'The van came late.'

The conductor, who was wearing a tailored
cloak, stood to one side as if it all had nothing to
do with him. During the past year he had been
waging a bitter struggle with Dr. Pappenheim.

6

Pappenheim had considered firing him, but the senior musicians took their conductor's side and
nothing carne of it. The conductor demanded a
detailed three-year contract on the usual terms.

In the end, they reached a compromise.

�reviously Dr. Pappenheim had housed the
musicians in small, dark rooms on the ground
floor of the hotel. The new contract held a clause
specifying that they were entitled to decent living
quarters. Now they were all waiting to see their
rooms. Pappenheim went up to the conductor
and whispered in his ear: 'The rooms are ready.

Spacious, airy rooms on the top floor.'

'Sheets?' asked the conductor.

'Sheets too.'

Pappenheim had kept his promise. The rooms
were fine. At the sight of the rooms the musicians
hastily took off their clothes and put on their blue
uniforms. Dr. Pappenheim stood to one side and
made no attempt to hurry them. In one of the
rooms a little quarrel broke out, a quarrel about
a bed. The conductor reprimanded them: such
fine rooms demanded quiet. And before they went
down they must put all their things away.

At ten o'clock everything was ready. The musicians stood in threes with their instruments in their hands. But Pappenheim could not contain his indignation. If only he had the money he
would pay them off and tell them to go to hell.

More than anything they reminded him of his

7
failures. Thirty years. Always late. Never rehearsed.

All they knew how to do was make a noise. And
every year new demands.

The evening began. The people buzzed around
the band like bees. The musicians blew their horns
and beat their drums as if they would have liked
to drive them all away. Dr. Pappenheim sat in the
gallery and downed stein after stein of beer.

The next day everything was quiet and relaxed.

Martin rose early, swept the entrance, wiped the
shelves, and drew up a detailed stock order. He
had had a hard night. Trude would not be pacified.

She refused to take her medicine, and in the end
he was obliged to deceive her and slip her a sleeping pill on the sly.

At about ten o'clock an inspector from the Sanitation Department appeared with orders to carry out an inspection. He wanted to know all kinds of peculiar details. The ownership of the business,
if Martin had inherited it, when and from whom
he had acquired it, how much it was worth.

Martin, surprised, explained that everything had
been whitewashed and thoroughly disinfected.

The inspector took out a yardstick and measured.

He left abruptly without apologizing or thanking

Martin.

Martin was upset by the visit. He believed in
the authorities and blamed himself as a matter of
course. Perhaps the back entrance had been neglected. The abrupt visit spoiled his morning.

8

He stood on the lawn. A morning like any other.

The milkman made his way down the street with
his heavy peasant's walk, the musicians came out
into the garden. Pappenheim did not bother them
and they lay about sunbathing on the lawn. The
conductor sat in a comer dealing cards to himself. In the afternoon Frau Zauberblit appeared in the pharmacy and announced that there was nothing like a holiday in Badenheim. She was
wearing a polka-dot poplin dress. But to Martin
it seemed that her dead brother was standing just
behind her.

'Isn't it strange?' he asked.

'Everything's possible; she said, as if she understood his question.

Martin was angry; it was all Trude's fault.

The musicians spent the whole afternoon lying
around in the garden. Without their uniforms
they looked unimpressive. For years they had
been arguing with Pappenheim. Now they argued
among themselves. The conductor did not interfere. He laid out the cards and looked at them.

One of the musicians, with a very tough expression
on his face, took a pay slip out of his vest pocket
and showed it to his friends. The other musicians
demonstrated to him that he was wrong. From

Martin's garden it all looked like a mirage, perhaps
because of the fading light and the lengthening
shadows falling one after another onto the green
grass.

9

When it grew dark the conductor gestured to
the musicians to go upstairs and put on their uniforms. They moved off slowly, like soldiers worn out by long service. The conductor exchanged a few words with Pappenheim. Dr. Pappenheim
expounded on the Festival program at length.

'I heard that Mandelbaum's coming too. An extraordinary achievement. How did you manage it?'

' I worked like a horse,' said Dr. Pappenheim,
and turned toward the dining room.

The guests were already guzzling. The waitress
kept looking sharply in the direction of the kitchen:

the orders were not arriving in time. But the older
waiters praised the food cynically with an affected
air of self-importance.

Trude's condition did not improve. Martin talked
and talked, but his words did not help. Everything
looked transparent and diseased to her. Helena
was a captive on Leopold's estate and every evening
when he returned from the barracks he beat her.

'Can't you see it for yourself?' she asked.

'No, I can't.'

'So it's all my delusions then.'

Martin was irritated. Trude was always talking
about her parents, about the little house on the
banks of the Vistula. Her parents were dead. The
connection with her brothers had been broken.

Martin said that she was still stuck in that world,
in the mountains among the Jews. And, in a sense,
he was right. She was haunted by a hidden fear,

10
not her own, and Martin felt that he was becoming infected by her hallucinations.

3

THE next day the public was informed that the
jurisdiction of the Sanitation Department had
been extended, and that it had been authorized
to conduct independent investigations. A modest
announcement to this effect was posted on the
municipal notice board. With the publication of
the announcement, the inspectors spread out and,
without ceremony, began investigating the places
marked on their maps. The investigations were
carried out scrupulously, in accordance with questionnaires that had arrived from the district office.

One of the musicians, who bore his Polish name
with a peculiar pride, said that the inspectors
reminded him of marionettes in a play. His name
was Leon Samitzky. Fifty years ago, when he was
a child, his parents had emigrated from Poland.

He remembered the scenes of his childhood with
a surreptitious affection. Sometimes, when the
spirit moved him, he would sit and talk about

Poland. And Dr. Pappenheim, who enjoyed his
stories, would sit and listen like one of the musicians.

1 1

The clouds melted and the spring sunlight
poured forth its warmth. A secret worry crept
over the faces of the aging musicians. They sat
together without speaking.

Suddenly Samitzky broke the silence and said,

'I'm homesick for Poland.'

'Why?' asked Pappenheim.

'I don't know,' said Samitzky. 'When I left Poland I was seven years old, and now it seems to me that it was only a year ago.'

'The people are very poor there,' said someone
in a whisper.

'They may be poor, but they're not afraid of
death.'

That evening nothing happened in Badenheim.

Dr. Pappenheim was sunk in melancholy. He could
not take his eyes off Samitzky. He too remembered
the rare visits of his grandmother from the Carpathians. She was a big, broad woman and when she came to Vienna she brought with her the smell of forests and millet fields. His father hated her.

Rumors were rife. Some said that it was nothing
but a health hazard, which the inspectors were
trying to locate; others thought they were the

Income Tax collectors in disguise. The musicians
traded guesses. The town itself remained calm
and cooperated with the authorities, giving the

Sanitation Department whatever it asked for. Even
the proud pastry shop owner filled out the questionnaire without making a fuss. In the meantime 12
the pale vacationers invaded the pastry shop. The owner could not keep up with the demand. This
year their hunger knew no bounds. They snapped
up whatever they could get. The owner goaded
the pastry cook. The oven roared all day long.

The cakes were snatched up while they were still
hot. 'Have another one . . . . Why don't you have
another one? . . . Wild horses couldn't drag me
out of here . . . .' For hours the intoxicated words
flew through the air. The people stayed until after
midnight.

The pastry shop owner tried to calm them down,
but it was beyond his power. Appetite and energy
conspired against him. The year before, a tall,
slender, good-looking woman had appeared in

Badenheim. After a few days she had disappeared
into the forest. When she returned she put on a
bathing suit and went out onto the balcony crying,

' I'm free! Free forever!' She no longer belonged
to the people but to the scents of the forest, and
there was a cold light of madness burning in her
eyes.

Such was spring in Badenheim. There was a
secret intoxication in the air. Respectable businessmen did not bring their wives here, but anyone who had breathed the air and been infected could not keep away. Every spring they came back like
horses to the stable. Here you could find a schoolgirl who had run away from school, a man with a jaunty manner and a haggard face whose mind 13

was worn out with books, and tall women to whose
brows vague secrets clung like skin.

'Is it possible to send a letter from here?' asked
a woman.

'Of course,' said Dr. Pappenheim.

'That's strange,' said the woman. ' I thought the
place was completely isolated .'

The musicians went down to the bar to have a
beer. Years in the service of Dr. Pappenheim at
holiday resorts had sucked them dry. Without
drink their lives weren't worth living. At the beginning the conductor had deprived them of this little pleasure, but in recent years he had taken to urging them to go down to the bar and have a
drink. The beer made them more cheerful. Of
rehearsals, he had quite despaired. Even Pappenheim had almost ceased demanding rehearsals.

The year before, the band had suddenly broken
into Jewish melodies, to the annoyance of the
regular guests. They themselves apparently did
not know what they were playing. Perhaps they
remembered the tunes from long ago, or perhaps
they had heard them somewhere. The beer was
ruining them. They grew fat, guzzled without
stopping, and at the end of the season they were
always in debt.

'They're incorrigible,' said Pappenheim .

The waitress, who was only half Jewish, was
kind to them and called them 'children.' When
the headwaiter was resting or had the day off,
she would ply them with delicacies .

4

THE inspectors of the Sanitation Department
were now spread all over the town. They took
measurements, put up fences, and planted flags.

Porters unloaded rolls of barbed wire, cement
pillars, and all kinds of appliances suggestive of
preparations for a public celebration .

'There'll be fun and games this year.'

'How do you know?'

'The Festival's probably going to be a big affair
this year; otherwise why would the Sanitation

Department be going to all this trouble?'

'You're right, I didn't realize.'

The south gate was closed and another gate,
which had been shut for generations, was opened
for pedestrians. The officials of the Sanitation

Deparbnent worked day and night, with a tapping
of hammers and a glare of projectors. 'Dr. Pappenheim's making a name for himself at last; said one of the old-timers, who had once expressed doubts about Pappenheim's abilities as an impresario.

Mild, temperate breezes began to blow making
everyone feel healthy and restored. Hammocks
went up in the gardens and nets in the tennis
courts. People took off their winter clothes and
put on sport shirts. Martin withdrew into himself.

People bought everything they could lay their

hands on. The cosmetic counter was empty. The
new orders came late . If it hadn't been for his
stocks he would have had nothing to sell. The
town, which had been through a long winter
with hard rains, now throbbed with a hectic,
feverish gaiety.

All day long the impresario sat by the telephone.

The artists did not contact him, did not reply to
his letters, did not keep their promises. How
would he keep to his schedule? The patrons would
demand their money back, and rightly. For the
moment, it was his worry. The people were caught
up in their own rejoicing and in the spring, which
drew them deep into the thick forests . But Dr.

Pappenheim knew that after this enthusiasm they
would fall on him and demand their money's worth.

'The artists, the artists!' they would cry. He stood
in the Post Office and sent one telegram after
another: save me, rescue me, you can't leave me
in the lurch like this. The telegrams went off into
the distance, but there were no replies.

And in the pastry shop they drank coffee and
devoured cakes. One of the musicians, a wit, calculated that the pastry shop owner would make a fortune this year. The guests were investing their money in strawberry tarts. The pastry shop owner
was pleased, but his satisfaction was not complete.

The pastry cook was lazy, a malingerer, and he
himself had to work all night long to keep up with
the demand.

After midnight Dr. Pappenheim arrived in the
pastry shop. The people were already half asleep.

One of the old musicians, who was afraid of losing
his job, sat down next to him and said that the
vacationers were very impressed by the extent of
the preparations this year. He was sure that they
were in for a lot of surprises. No one would dare
laugh at Badenheim anymore. Pappenheim knew
this was only the flattery of an old musician afraid
of losing his job, but he did not snub him. He
was tired and hungry. The man's voice dripped
into him like raindrops pattering into an empty
barrel.

5

AT the end of April the two readers arrived.

Dr. Pappenheim put on his blue suit in their
honor. They were tall and thin and had a monkish
look. Rilke was their passion. Dr. Pappenheim,
who had discovered them in Vienna, immediately
sensed the morbid melody throbbing in their
voices and was fascinated. This was seven years
ago, maybe even more, and ever since then he
had been unable to do without them. At first the
response to their reading was not enthusiastic,
but once the people had discovered the hidden
melody in their voices they were intoxicated.

Now Frau Zauberblit breathed a sigh of relief:

they had arrived.

The readers were twin brothers who during the
course of the years had become indistinguishable.

But the way they read was different; it was as if
their sickness had two voices. The voice of the
first was soft and conciliatory; it was less a voice
than the remnants of a voice. The second's voice
was clear and sharp. Frau Zauberblit said that if
it hadn't been for their double voice, her life
would be pointless. She loved their reading. It
was like a healing potion to her, and in the empty
spring nights she whispered Rilke to herself.

The musicians, who played in dance halls in
the winter and holiday resorts in the summer,
could not understand what the people found in
these morbid voices. Pappenheim tried in vain to
explain their fascination. Only Samitzky said that
their voices touched his infected cells. The conductor hated them and called them 'the clowns of the modem age.'

And in the meantime the spring worked its
magic. Dr. Shutz followed the schoolgirl around
like a lovesick boy. Frau Zauberblit was deep in
long discussions with Samitzky, and Professor

Fussholdt's young wife put on a bathing suit and
sunbathed on the lawn.

The twins rehearsed all the time. Apparently
they couldn't manage without rehearsal. 'And I
t8

in my innocence thought that with them it all just
came out,' said Frau Zauberblit.

'Practicing, practicing,' said Samitzky. 'If only

I'd practiced like them in my youth I wouldn't
have landed up in this pathetic outfit. I w:tsn't
born here. I was born in Poland, and my parents
didn't provide me with a musical education.' After
midnight Dr. Pappenheim received a telegram
saying that Mandelbaum had been taken ill and
would not be able to keep his engagement. Dr.

Pappenheim stood up, shook his head, and said,

'A catastrophe.'

'Mandelbaum!' said Frau Zauberblit.

'The artistic Festival is falling apart,' said Pappenheim. Samitzky tried to console them, but Pappenheim said, 'Mandelbaum was the crowning event.' He sunk into his sorrow like a stone.

Frau Zauberblit ordered the French wine that

Pappenheim liked but he didn't touch it, and all
night long he lamented, 'Mandelbaum, Mandelbaum.'

6

AND the investigations showed what reality
was. From now on nobody would be able to say
that the Sanitation Department was inefficient.

19

Estrangement, suspicion, and mistrust began to invade the town. But the people were still preoccupied with their own affairs-the guests with their pleasures and the townspeople with their troubles. Dr. Pappenheim could not stop lamenting
the loss of Mandelbaum. Ever since the telegram
his life wasn't worth living. Professor Fussholdt's
young wife announced that something had changed
in Badenheim. Professor Fussholdt did not leave
his room. His crowning work was about to be
published and he was busy working on the proofs.

His young wife, whom he pampered like a kitten,
understood nothing about his work. Her only interests were clothes and cosmetics. In the hotel they called her Mitzi.

In the middle of May a modest announcement
appeared on the notice board saying that all citizens
who were Jews had to register with the Sanitation

Department no later than the end of the month.

'That means me,' said Samitzky.

'And me,' said Pappenheim. ' Surely you don't
want to deny me my Jewishness?'

' I'd like to,' said Samitzky, 'but your nose testifies to the fact that you're no Austrian.'

The conductor, who had grown accustomed
over the years to blaming Pappenheim for everything that went wrong, said, ' Because of him I had to go and get mixed up in this bureaucratic mess. The officials have gone out of their minds
and I have to suffer.'

20

People began avoiding Dr. Pappenheim like the
plague, but he did not sense their hostility and
went on rushing back and forth as usual between
the hotel and the Post Office.

Over the past two weeks Trude's illness had
grown worse. She spoke about death all the time,
no longer in fear but with a kind of intimacy. The
strong drugs she continued to take carried her from
sleep to sleep, and to Martin it seemed that she
was wandering through other phases of her life.

People began unburdening themselves to each
other as if they were speaking of an old illness
which there was no longer any point in hiding,
and their reactions were different: shame and
pride. Frau Zauberblit said nothing and asked no
questions, maintaining a pose of deliberate indifference. In the end she approached Samitzky and asked, 'Have you registered?'

'Not yet,' said Samitzky. 'I'm waiting for the
right opportunity. Do I have the honor of addressing an Austrian citizen of Jewish origin?'

'You do, sir.'

'In that case we shall soon be able to hold a
family celebration.'

'Did you ever doubt it?'

The headwaiter himself served the cherries of
the season, white cherries. The lilac bushes climbed
the verandah railings and the bees greedily devoured the blue flowers. Frau Zauberblit tied a silk scarf around her straw hat. The cherries had 21
come straight from Waldenheim that very morning; they had ripened early this year. 'Isn't that wonderful!' said Frau Zauberblit. She adored these rustic touches.

'What are you thinking about?' asked Samitzky.

'I'm thinking about my grandfather's house.

He was the rabbi of Kirchenhaus, a man of God.

I used to spend my summer holidays with him.

He used to go out in the evenings to walk by the
river. He loved nature.'

Samitzky drank heavily. 'Don't worry, children.

We'll be going to Poland soon. Just imagine Poland.'

Dr. Shutz ran around like a madman. The schoolgirl was driving him crazy. 'Dr. Shutz, why don't you join intelligent company for some intelligent conversation?' said Frau Zauberblit. In academic
circles he was considered a·genius, although something of an enfant terrible.

'Have you registered?' asked Samitzky.

'What?' said Shutz, surprised.

'You have to register. Haven't you heard?

According to the regulations of the Sanitation

Department. A fine department, a government
department whose jurisdiction has been extended
in recent months-this department earnestly requests the registration of Dr. Shutz.'

'It's no joke, my dear,' said Frau Zauberblit.

'Is that so?' said Shutz, completely at a loss. He
was the spoiled darling of Badenheim. Everybody

22
loved him. Pappenheim never stopped bewailing
his wasted musical talents. He was an incorrigible
wastrel whose rich old mother paid his debts at
the end of every season.

A distant dread settled in the eyes of the musicians. 'What's there to worry about?' said Dr.

Pappenheim bracingly. 'Enough of this gloom.'

'We're visitors here, aren't we? Do we have to
register too?' asked one of the musicians.

' I should say: said Dr. Pappenheim impressively,

'that the Sanitation Department wants to boast
of its important guests and is thus writing their
names down in its Golden Book. Isn't that handsome of them?'

'Maybe it's all because of the Ostjuden,' said
one of the musicians.

At this point Samitzky stood up and proclaimed:

'What's the matter, don't you like me? I'm an Ostjude, in the full sense of the word. Have you got anything against me?'

7

BADENHEIM'S intoxicating spring was playing havoc with the vacationers again. Dr. Shutz was left without a penny to his name and sent two express letters to his mother. The schoolgirl

23

was apparently costing him a fortune. Frau Zauberblit sat with Samitzky all day long. It seemed that this man was all that was left her in the world.

Dr. Pappenheim was sunk in gloom; the spring
always made him sad. Frau Zauberblit scolded him
and said: 'I'll cover the losses. Just make out an
account. If Mandelbaum keeps on playing tricks
on you, I'll get Kraus's chamber ensemble.' The
twins wandered about the town, a secret branded
on their brows. In the hotel they were spoken of
as invalids, in whispers. They ate nothing, and
drank coffee all day long.

The headwaiter said: 'If I could serve them

Rilke's Death Sonnets maybe they would eat. It
seems they can't digest any other kind of food.'

After breakfast Frau Zauberblit, Dr. Pappenheim, and Samitzky made up their minds to go and register at the Sanitation Department. The official did not bat an eye at Zauberblit's declarations. She praised the department and said there was nothing like it for order and beauty. No wonder they had been promoted. Samitzky announced that his parents had arrived here fifty years ago and he had never since stopped feeling homesick.

The official wrote down the required information
expressionlessly like a stenographer.

That night Samitzky did not wear his uniform.

The band played. And everyone saw plainly that

Frau Zauberblit had a new admirer. She was radiant, like a woman in love. Professor Fussholdt's young wife was going out of her mind. Her hus-

band was immersed in his new book and did not
stir from his desk. She was sick of the people in

Badenheim. What was there to do here? Poetry
readings again. They put her into a depression.

One of the musicians, a cynic, told her not to
upset herself. In Poland everything was beautiful,
everything was interesting.

The next day Trude roused the street with her
screams. The hotel guests stood on the verandah
and watched the desperate struggle. No one went
down to help. Poor Martin, helpless, knelt at her
feet and implored her: 'Calm yourself, Trude,
calm yourself. There's no forest here. There are
no wolves here.'

A strange night descended on Badenheim. The
cafes were deserted and the people walked the
streets silently. There was something unthinking
about their movements, as if they were being led.

It was as if some alien spirit had descended on
the town. Dr. Shutz led the tall schoolgirl as if he
would have liked to chain her to him. Sally and

Gertie walked hand in hand, like young girls.

The dewy light of spring nights settled softly
on the pavements. The musicians sat on the verandah and surveyed the town with sharp, nervous looks. The solitary Dr. Pappenheim sat in a corner and calculated sadly to himself: the trio had betrayed him. The people would never forgive him. And they would be right. If only he had
known, he would have designed the whole program differently.

8

ONcE more the month of May played havoc
with the trees. The pavements were covered with
a snowfall of blossoms. The sun shone down from
its skied highway and strayed in the alleys. The
shadows of the forest retreated and left the town
to the light. The first intoxication died down.

A woman remembered that far from here she had
left a home. What was she doing here? Who had
seduced her?

'The local line passes not far from here; explained

Martin, pointing out the direction to her. 'It stops
at night.'

'Is there no direct bus, no direct train?' the
woman asked despairingly.

Dr. Pappenheirn cajoled, explained: all he needed
was a little time. The artists would show up in
the end. They always did. But what good were
words? The first fear, the fear that always came
with the scents of spring, had struck at the hearts.

of the people.

'Stay here; a man's voice said.

The woman listened for a moment, and then
she said: 'What's there to keep me here? I can't
understand what's so wonderful about this place.'

'The Festival, the Festival. Surely you don't want
to miss the Festival?'

At the sound of the magic word she inclined
her head as if she were listening not to the seductive words of a man, but to a voice coming to her from far away.

'Where does it take place?' she asked, and immediately regretted the question, which might be interpreted as some kind of agreement on her part.

'In the hall, the big hall.'

'I'm not staying here,' said the woman and
began walking away.

'You can't imagine how wonderful it is. The
great artists who come here, the atmosphere . . .'

'Show me the way to the train. I'm not asking
you for anything. Just show me the way to the
train.'

'But it's night. Everything's dark.'

'Why did you bring me here?'

'Believe me,' said the man in an imploring tone
of voice, 'I had no evil intentions. I wanted to
give you an artistic experience.'

'I don't need any artistic experiences. I want to
go back to town.'

'I'd advise you to stay and hear just one artist.

You can go back after that. It would be a pity to
miss such an impressive experience.'

Strangely enough, the last sentence convinced
her. She turned to look at him and said not a word.

'Believe me; he repeated and said no more.

They went into the pastry shop. The cakes, the
rustic furniture, the steam of the coffee were more
effective than words. He told her about the artists,
about Mandelbaum, about the wonderful impresario Dr. Pappenheim, the patron of aspiring artists.

His name was Karl; hers Lotte. Lotte's husband
had been the head agent for a big firm. He had
lost his life in the mountains. Karl was divorced.

His children lived with their grandfather, a retired
general, in Berlin. Every day he made them run
on the lawn. He wanted to send them to a military
academy. The oldest, said Karl, was a sensitive,
melancholy lad. How would he be able to stand
it? What would he do there? 'What can I do?

Their mother's a Prussian, born and bred.'

Lotte listened silently. Karl was a little sorry
that he had unburdened these sad thoughts to her.

He looked for other words, but for some reason
he could not find them. After a few moments of
silence he said, 'You can't imagine the feeling of
vitality that a stay in Badenheim gives you. I'm
very glad that you decided to stay. It's an event
not to be missed.'

An event?' said Lotte.

'

'I can't think of a better word. You're sensitive
to words, I see.'

Outside there was a new wave of blossoming,
purple blossoms which fell slowly to the ground
and gave off a pungent scent. The dogs broke out
of the bushes and Lotte recoiled with a scream.

Karl hugged her and laughed. 'Don't be afraid,'

he said, 'they're big dogs but very quiet. They
must have been hunting dogs once, but now they're
absolutely tame. They're very friendly and they
like to be petted.'

'I've never seen so many dogs together,' said

Lotte.

'Only four. They're quite tame, there's no trace
of their former life left in them.'

Suddenly Lotte knew that everything in her life
up to now was dead and gone forever. She was
not happy. A dull sorrow choked her.

'Go to sleep now,' said Karl and the dogs slunk
back into the bushes.

The musicians were already drumming rhythmically in the hall. The people were waltzing with sweeping movements. Karl took Lotte by the arm and led her in without ceremony, like a man leading
a woman he has known for a long time.

9

THE Sanitation Department now resembled a
travel agency festooned with posters: LABoR Is

OuR LIFE . . . THE AIR IN PoLAND I s FRESHER

. SAIL ON THE VISTULA . . THE DEVELOP-

.

.

.

29

MENT AREAS NEED Y ou . . . GET T o KNow

THE SLAVI C CuLTURE. These and other sloga_ns
adorned the walls.

Frau Zauberblit was as gay as a young girl in
love. She laughed at Samitzky's accent and said
that from now on he would be their guide. A few
weeks before she had escaped from the sanitorium.

It was in the afternoon, after the doctors had made
their rounds, taken her temperature, measured
the amount of blood in her phlegm, and written
everything down on her chart. The guards on the
ground floor had fallen asleep and death, Death
himself, plain and undisguised, appeared and
stood in the corridor next to the basin. For a
moment she looked at him, like a woman looking
at an old lover suddenly reappearing on her doorstep. Then she stood up, got dressed, made up her face, put on her straw hat, and went to the railway station. During the journey she already
felt that everything was changing. And when the
train stopped in Badenheim and she met her old
acquaintances and saw the familiar carriages,
death suddenly left her. And she was no longer
in pain.

Every year a few patients ran away and every
year they came back again. The sanitorium would
not let them go. It was an old sanitorium, very
formal. The regime was strict but not unpleasant.

They held receptions for new patients, once a week
the priest came to hear confession, there were

JO
friendships and hostilities just like everywhere else. The sanitorium grounds were like a spacious
seashore. Death strolled there freely, in the rose
garden and the lounge, and they spoke to him as
if they were speaking to a tame animal, laughingly
and cajoling. And when their time came they
departed from the world, some screaming and
some silent.

Frau Zauberblit felt laughter, appetite, the desire
to wander in the woods returning to her as of old.

Samitzky did not understand what she was talking
about. The long years in the band had blunted his
feelings. He had learned to drink, sleep, and beat
the drums. He was always in debt. And now the
illustrious Frau Zauberblit called him her prince,
and laughed at his broken German, and said that

Poland was the most beautiful country of all, and
that Yiddish was a lovely, melodious language.

The Sanitation Department was open at night
too. Its doors were framed with lights; inside
there were journals, posters, and leaflets about
agriculture and industry, art and entertainment
scattered about on the low tables. You could sit in
an armchair, listen to music, leaf through a journal,
and dream of Poland. The remote, alien Poland
began to seem an idyllic, pastoral place.

'Wouldn't you like to come with us to Poland?'

asked Karl.

Lotte's sad look softened. She looked at him
fondly and said, 'If you like.'

31

The waitress stood at the hotel door urging at
the top of her voice: 'Why don't you come to us?

There aren't too many guests this year and we'll
spoil you like orphans.' She called the people

'esteemed ladies and gentlemen, illustrious guests
of Badenheim,' and when Dr. Pappenheim appeared she curtsied down to the ground and said, 'the impresario in person.' The impresario was
not as cheerful as the waitress, but he would wipe
his worries from his face for a moment and pinch
her cheek. And she would cry, 'Oh!' The afternoons were spent in the bar or the pastry shop. If it hadn't been for the musicians guzzling themselves sick and then sinking into heavy gloom and melancholy, things would have been more pleasant. But the musicians had seen a lot in their
lives and they were braided to what they knew

·
like roots in heavy soil.

10

THREE special investigators from the district
office turned up at the Sanitation Department.

The conductor had an interesting document in
his vest pocket. His parents' baptismal certificates.

Dr. Pappenheim, surprised, said, 'I would never
have believed it.' Strangely enough, the conductor
did not seem happy.

J2

'If the conductor so desires, he could join the Jewish Order, a very fine order indeed,' said Pappenheim.

'I don't believe in religion.'

'If the conductor so desires, he could be a Jew
without religion.'

'Who said so? The Sanitation Department?'

In the afternoon it poured. The people gathered
in the lobby. Later on they served hot wine, as if
it were autumn. Dr. Pappenheim was immersed
in a game of chess with Samitzky. In the evening

Frau Zauberblit's daughter arrived. From her
father, General Von Schmidt, she had inherited
a straight back, flaxen hair, pink cheeks, and a
harsh voice. She attended a girls' lycee far from
her mother.

General Von Schmidt was still remembered in

Badenheim. They had come here together the
first year after their marriage. But Von Schmidt
couldn't stand the place and called it Pappenheim,
after the impresario. He thought it was a place for
sick people, not healthy ones. There were no horses,
no hunting, and even the beer wasn't real beer.

After this they had stopped coming. Their memory
faded. They had a daughter. The years went by
and Von Schmidt, who had begun his army career
as a junior officer, climbed steadily up the military
hierarchy. The divorce was not slow to follow.

After the divorce Frau Zauberblit appeared in

Badenheim alone-tall, thin, and suffering. And
that was the end of the affair.

33

The daughter announced immediately that she
had brought a document. It was a legal form renouncing what were referred to as 'maternal rights.'

Frau Zauberblit examined the form and asked, 'Is
this what you want, too?'

'What my father wants and what I want, too,'

she replied, as if she were repeating something
she had learned by heart. Frau Zauberblit sighed.

The parting was hard and cold. ' Excuse me, I'm
in a hurry,' said the girl and left abruptly. The
hotel was struck dumb by the daughter's appearance. Frau Zauberblit sat in a corner without uttering a word. At that moment a new kind of pride seemed to be growing on her face.

In the hotel and its wings a secret seemed to be
drawing the people together. The conductor appeared ill at ease and went to sit with the musicians.

That evening the twins we�e to perform. The hotel
owner had made the small hall ready. They had
not been seen on the verandah for two days. They
were in seclusion. 'What are they doing up there?'

someone asked. The headwaiter confirmed that
for two days they had eaten nothing. The people
stood next to the windows and the evening light
flickered on their faces.

Pappenheim said in a stage whisper, 'They're
rehearsing. They're fantastic.'

In the evening the small hall filled with a worshipful silence. The people came early and Pappenheim rushed from door to door as if it were in his power 34
to bring the performers down before they were due. At eight o'clock they came downstairs and
took up their positions by the little table. Pappenheim retired and stood by the door like a sentinel.

For two hours they sat and spoke of death. Their
voices were dispassionate. They were like people
who had visited hell and were no longer afraid
of it. When the reading was over they stood up.

The people sat with downcast eyes. There was
no applause. Pappenheim approached from the
doorway and took off his hat. He looked as if he
were about to kneel.

11

IN the afternoon apple strudel was served. Frau

Zauberblit put on her straw hat, Samitzky wore
short tennis pants, and Dr. Pappenheim stood in
the doorway like an out-of-work actor. It seemed
that the old times had returned and all was calm
again.

The day before, at midnight, the yanuka had
arrived. The doorman would not let him in on the
grounds that his name did not appear on the hotel
register. Dr. Pappenheim, who was in a jocular
mood, said, 'Can't you see that he's a Jew?'

Frau Zauberblit overheard and said, 'Everything's
going according to plan. Isn't it wonderful?'

35

'You'll all love him too,' said Pappenheim in a
low voice.

'The impresario is honoring his obligations.

By the way, what language will he sing in?'

'What a question! In Yiddish, of course, in

Yiddish!'

Later on, when the yanuka was introduced, the
people saw a half-baby, half-boy. There were red
patches on his cheeks. His new suit was too big
for him.

'What's your name?' Frau Zauberblit approached
and asked.

'His name is Nahum Slotzker. And speak slowly,'

Pappenheim interrupted, 'he doesn't understand

German.'

Suddenly they saw adult lines trembling at the
comers of his eyes, but the face was the face of a
child. The grown-ups embarrassed him.

'Where are you from? Lodz?' asked Samitzky
in Polish.

The boy smiled and said, 'From Kalashin.'

It was a strange evening. Frau Zauberblit was
as gay as a young girl in love. Samitzky paced up
and down the corridor like a retired gym teacher.

The conductor dealt cards to himself and joked
with the waitress, who served him fresh poppyseed cakes. She was half Jewish and her parents had died when she was young. For a few years she had been the mistress of the Graf Shutzheim.

Then the Graf died.

'Will I be allowed to come with you?' she asked
slyly.

'What a question! Who'll wait on us in the

North if not you?'

'But I'm not fully Jewish.'

'And me, am I fully Jewish?'

'Both your parents were Jewish, weren't they?'

'Yes, my dear, they were born Jews, but they
converted to Christianity.'

The next day Frau Milbaum, the patroness of
the twins, arrived. She was a tall, elegant woman
with a majestic air. Dr. Pappenheirn was overjoyed.

Whenever anyone returned it made him happy.

The secret was gradually encompassing the people
and there was a vague anxiety in the air, born of a
new understanding. They walked softly and spoke
in whispers. The waiters served strawberries and
cream. The summer cast its dark green shade full
of intoxicating madness onto the broad verandah.

The twins sat blushing by the side of their patroness and did not open their mouths. In company they were like children. Dr. Pappenheirn had prepared a full program and the people lived in a strange expectation. Between one investigation and the next the old people died. The town was
suffused with strong alcohol fumes. The night
before Herr Furst had dropped dead in the cafe.

For years he had strolled the streets, immaculately
dressed. And next door, in the casino, another
man died next to the roulette wheel. There was a

37

different quality in the air, a sharp clarity which
did not come from the local forests.

And in the Sanitation Department the investigations continued quietly. This was now the center, and from the center the net spread out in all directions. In the Sanitation Department they knew everything. They had a large collection of maps, journals, a library. You could drop in whenever
you liked and look things up. The conductor went
to register and came back happy. They showed
him a whole cupboard full of contracts, licenses,
and documents. Strange, his old father had written
a book about arithmetic in Hebrew. They knew
everything, and they were glad to show a man
his past, the conductor said.

A barrier was placed at the entrance to the town.

No one came in or went out. But the isolation
wasn't total. The milkman brought milk in the
morning and the fruit truck unloaded its cartons
at the hotel. Both cafes remained open and the
band played every night, but it still seemed that
some other time, from some other place, had invaded the town and was silently establishing itself.

12

AND life changed its course: no more forests,
walks, picnics, spontaneous or organized excursions. Life was now confined to the hotel, the pastry shop and the swimming pool. The water improved the schoolgirl's figure. She dived expertly and
quietly. Dr. Shutz's swimming was noisy and
a little heavy. But she did not mock him; she
was too absorbed in herself. Sally and Gertie also
spent the late morning hours in the swimming
pool. At one time this comer had been out of
bounds to them, but then the old Graf, who remained loyal, presented each with full membership rights to the pool and the tennis courts. At first the other guests were indignant, but in the end their resentment faded. Sally and Gertie learned
to swim, to throw balls in the air, and to enjoy
water sports.

In the afternoon people began dropping in at
the Sanitation Department. In the souvenir shop
a map of Poland was already on sale. The adventurous, full of enthusiasm, spoke of the Vistula and the Carpathian mountains. The first shock was already over. Even the musicians were no
longer afraid of asking questions. Only Dr. Langmann was angry: 'You must admit, Dr. Pappen-39

heim has really succeeded in waking all the old
ghosts from their slumbers.'

'What on earth is he talking about?' whispered

Karl.

'Is there really any need for explanations now?'

'Perhaps Dr. Langmann would like us to send
our children to military academies?'

'What's wrong with young boys engaging in
sports?'

'Physical exercise revolts me.'

'In that case, why don't you go to Poland, to

Lodz, to the Ostjuden? Sports revolt them too.

They're too busy with their little shops.'

'For myself, I can't see anything wrong with
little shopkeepers. In my opinion they are far finer
than army cadets. At least they don't eat cabbage.'

'Just as I said, Pappenheim has awakened the
ghosts from their slumbers.'

'If you are referring to those little shopkeepers
again, let me tell you that I would like to be one of
them. I detest sports, hunting makes me sick, my
muscles are flabby, my face is pale, I don't eat
like a pig, I don't drink beer. Tell me, have you
got anything against my way of life?'

'Yes.'

'In that case why register here?'

Lotte took no· part in the dispute. As if it weren't

Karl, whom she had so recently met, talking, but
a husband whose idiosyncrasies she knew like
the back of her hand.

In the past they had registered in this same
courtyard for organized excursions. In the courtyard next door riding lessons were available. From here too the carriages would set out for the opera, for Karlsheim. Some years ago a man had appeared
in the courtyard who afterwards became known
by the nickname of 'the Bluebird.' He was a gaunt
man with the face of a monk who preached a

Russian version of the Return to Nature. He found
a few disciples who went with him to seclude
themselves in the mountains. When they returned
they told everyone how they had learned to breathe
and exercise. They had read passages from the
works of Hermann Hesse together. The man evidently knew them by heart.

Over the years this pleasant courtyard had attracted its share of rogues, magicians, and charlatans displaying diplomas of various kinds. Every year had its scandal, and since the appointment of Dr. Pappenheim the scandals had multiplied.

A few years before this very courtyard had witnessed the appearance of a short man dressed in a cheap suit who looked like a traveling salesman.

It soon came out, however, that he was not a
traveling salesman, but a man traveling with a
message. For a few days he stood in the courtyard
shouting at passers-by, 'Save your souls while
there is still time!' He too found a few disciples.

But the affair ended scandalously. The man took
up with a beautiful schoolgirl and apparently

seduced her. Her parents, who came to look for
her, sued Dr. Pappenheim and charged him with
corrupting the morals of minors.

Now in this same courtyard the people were
registering for Poland. The details were obscure.

Pappenheim said jokingly, 'What does it matter?

What's the difference, here or there? Perhaps our
true place really is there.' Samitzky was as happy
as a boy. The smell of Poland gave him back his
childhood. But the others did all they could to
escape. The Post Office was flooded with telegrams and express letters and everyone cursed Dr. Pappenheim.

But it soon became clear that there was little to
be done. In the hotel they were serving light spring
dishes again: cheese dumplings and fresh borscht
with sour cream. The headwaiter was cheerful
and merry. The half-Jewish waitress pulled the
wool over his eyes; at night she plied the hungry
musicians with sandwiches and wine.

13

THE banquet in honor of the yanuka started
late. The people wandered from corridor to corridor and the electric light poured onto their faces.

The darkness on the carpets was soft and fuzzy.

The waitress served iced coffee. In the hall they set out long tables and covered them with white
tablecloths. A few musicians gathered in a comer
and played to themselves. Tongues of darkness
lapped at the high, narrow windows.

Frau Milbaum sat enthroned in her armchair and
her green eyes shot green sparks. People avoided
her looks. 'Where are my twins?' she murmured.

No one answered her. The people were ensnared
as if in a net. The twins were chatting to Sally.

Sally was wearing a long, flowered dress and
gesticulating like a singer. The twins, who were
not used to talking to women, laughed in embarrassment.

Sally told them about the first festivals. Gertie
appeared and said, 'Here you are.'

'Allow me to present you to two real gentlemen:

said Sally.

The twins held out their long, white hands. The
yanuka sat in a comer and did not utter a word.

Dr. Pappenheim explained to him in broken Yiddish that the banquet would start soon. The people were waiting to hear his voice.

Everyone was drinking heavily. Frau Milbaum
did not stir from her royal throne. Her green eyes
were now seething with hate. Her life was full
of complications everywhere, and now it was
becoming complicated here too. It seemed to her
that there was a conspiracy against her. That
morning she had registered at the Sanitation

43

Department. The clerk had taken no notice of the
aristocratic titles bestowed on her by her first
husband, nor had he mentioned her second husband, a nobleman of royal blood. Apart from the name of her father, there was nothing at all on her form.

Sitting on the armchair next to her, Sarnitzky
was chattering away in broken Polish as gaily as
a boy. And in his expansiveness he turned to Frau

Milbaum and said, 'Why don't you join our circle,

Madame? You'll find it entertaining, I think.'

A steely film covered her eyes. 'Thank you,' she
said.

'Decent company, Jewish aristocracy: he pressed
her.

'I understand,' she said without looking at him.

'Your company would be an honor; Sarnitzky

-
pressed her again.

'Don't worry, the Duchess will get used to us;
whispered the musician Zimbelman.

'She registered, didn't she? So why so aloof?'

someone put in from the comer.

Frau Milbaum surveyed him with her green
eyes. 'Riffraff!' She finally flung the word out
like a stone.

'She's calling us riffraff,' said Zimbelman. 'Riffraff, she's calling us.'

The waitress served cheese and Bordeaux wine.

Dr. Pappenheim sat next to the yanuka and encouraged him. 'There's nothing to be afraid of.

44

The people are very friendly. You'll stand on the
stage and sing.'

'I'm afraid,' said the child.

'There's nothing to be afraid of; the people are
very friendly.'

The conductor downed glass after glass. His face
grew flushed. 'We're going to our native land,

Sarnitzky, we'll have to learn to drink.'

'There they drink real alcohol, not beer soup.'

'And what will they do there to a goy like me?'

'Don't worry, you've got nothing to fear but
circumcision,' said Zimbelman, and felt that he
had gone a bit too far. ' Don't worry, the Jews
aren't barbarians, in spite of everything.'

Dr. Langmann approached Frau Milbaum and
said, 'Tomorrow I'm getting out of here.'

'Aren't you registered with the Sanitation Department?'

'I still regard myself as a free Austrian citizen.

Let them send the Polish Jews to Poland; they
deserve their country. I landed in this mess by
mistake. Can't a man make an occasional mistake?

And the same applies to you. Are we to be deprived
of our right to freedom of movement because of a
mistake?'

Her look now took in Sally and Gertie. They
were pulling the twins after them into a comer.

'Whores,' hissed the Duchess. The twins were as
happy and excited as a pair of adolescents invited
to an orgy.

45

After midnight they put the child on the stage.

Ht! was shaking. Dr. Pappenheim stood next to
him with a paternal air. The child sang about the
dark forests where the wolf dwelt. It was a kind
of lullaby. The musicians surrounded the stage
and stared stupidly. Their world was collapsing
around them. 'Wonderful,' said someone.

Sarnitzky wept drunken tears. Frau Zauberblit
went up to him and said, 'What is it?'

At the same time Sally was overcome by a hidden
fear. She approached Dr. Pappenheim and said,

'Dear Dr. Pappenheim, will we too be allowed to
go? Will there be room for us too?'

'What are you talking about?' he scolded her.

'There's room in our kingdom for all the Jews and
for everyone who wants to be a Jew too. Ours is
a vast kingdom.'

'I'm afraid.'

'There's nothing to be afraid of, my dear, we'll
all be leaving soon.'

Gertie stood to one side and asked no questions,
as if she had no right to ask.

14

THE summer was at the height of its radiance.

Wild roses spread through the drunken gardens
and climbed over the fences. Dr. Shutz skipped
about like a boy, evoking the schoolgirl's laughter.

Lately she had been moody, because of the pool.

Swimming in the pool gave her the kind of happiness that only animals know. And now this happiness had been snatched from her. The Sanitation Department had closed the water supply.

The schoolgirl pined. Shutz bought her boxes of
candy, promised her a tour of the Alps, a trip to

Paris, a weekend in Majorca, a sail on the Baltic

Sea. He tried everything to make her happy.

When he saw that words were useless he skipped
like a child, danced like a bear.

Sally and Gertie put on their red skirts and
straw hats and set off in the direction of the hotel.

Dr. Pappenheim was standing at the door.

'We're being deprived of the pleasures of life,'

declared Sally.

'What are you talking about?' asked Dr. Pappenheim, surprised.

'They've closed the swimming pool.'

'In that case,' said Dr. Pappenheim, 'we'll have
time to study.'

47

They laughed. 'Won't you come down to the
bar with us? Wouldn't you like a little Malaga?'

said Sally.

'I'm ready for anything.'

In the bar everyone was having a good time.

The musicians had brought the waitress down
with them, the half-Jewish waitress. She was
cavorting on the stage like a dancer, exposing her
legs and saying that her thighs had not been
registered at the Sanitation Department: they
were made of Austrian flesh.

The bartender was watering the flowerpots on
the windowsill. He was unaffected by the merrymaking. He knew their madness inside out, but this year they had gone beyond everything. He had already ejected the waitress a number of times,
but in the end, after the musicians threatened to
boycott the bar, he gave fn. Business was not too
good this year. There was competition from the
pastry shop : those irresistible strawberry tarts.

After her dance the waitress imitated the twins,
played an imaginary violin like Mandelbaum,
made herself small like the yanuka. Everyone was
hilarious. Pappenheim said that he anticipated a
wonderful season. A number of artists had let
him down, of course, failed to reply to his telegrams - no doubt it was all because of the bureaucratic disorder.

'And if we have to emigrate?' asked Sally.

'Then we'll emigrate; said Pappenheim. 'There are wonderful places in Poland.'

The smell of the bar worked wonders on Dr.

Pappenheim's mood. His worries left him. The
waitress was irrepressible. She told jokes, cursed
the Austrian cabbage, and swore an oath of loyalty
to Dr. Pappenheim's Jewish Order.

Suddenly a silence fell on the bar, a silence
mingled with darkness. The words lay crushed.

Dr. Pappenheim took off his straw cap. It seemed
that he was about to introduce a famous new artist.

'What shall we order?' asked Sally.

'Something strong; said Gertie without consulting Dr. Pappenheim.

Suddenly, the waitress stood up, took off her
stockings, and announced that all the guzzlers and
gluttons were hereby invited to feast themselves
on this Austrian meat. She was blind drunk.

They tried to take her down to the cellar, but the
bartender refused on the grounds that it was full
of bottles.

'Isn't my meat tasty?' She made a beeline for

Pappenheim.

'Certainly; he said.

'So why don't you take this knife and cut yourself a slice?'

'Do I look like a butcher?'

Sally said : 'What do you want of him? Do you
really think he's capable of it?'

49

'In that case, I'll cut it myself,' she said and
started sawing at her thigh.

There was an uproar. They ran to fetch Martin.

Blood splashed onto the floor. 'You won't leave me
here,' she screamed. 'I'm coming too!' The clumsy
musicians stood there helplessly. The terror curdled
in their eyes.

Then Pappenheirn stood up and said: 'What did
you imagine? Wherever we go you will go too.'

But she was beyond hearing.

After Martin had dressed her wound they took
her up to the lobby and wrapped her in a green
woolen blanket. A shiver passed through the hotel:

despair had driven her out of her mind.

The next day the hotel was sunk in a frozen
silence. The waitress slept, and gray shadows
hovered over her sleep. The musicians huddled
together on the lawn like a frightened herd. The
church tower cast a long shadow over the Imperial

Gardens. Shutz did not stir from the schoolgirl's
side. He was now afraid of her dear-eyed gaze.

Her eyes seemed to absorb everything. Shutz
told her that the waitress, the half-Jewess, was
a very nice woman, but it was a pity that some
kind of restlessness seemed to be disturbing her
peace of mind.

'And the wound?' she asked abruptly. Shutz
tried to play the whole thing down and said that
despite everything the wound was very superficial.

Karl sat in an armchair and looked at the illumi-

nated aquarium. The headwaiter approached and
told him about the terrible catastrophe that had
taken place in the aquarium the year before.

A nature lover had brought some blue Cambium
fishes and persuaded the hotel owner to put them
in with the other fish. The hotel owner was a little
apprehensive about these blue fish, but in the end
he agreed. For the first few days the blue Cambium
fish disported themselves gaily in the water, but
one night they suddenly fell on the other fish and
massacred them horribly. In the morning the floor
of the aquarium was full of corpses.

'And are these the descendants of the murderers?' asked Karl.

'No. The hotel owner sentenced the murderers
to death.'

'So these are other fishes then?'

'Yes, new ones. I'm very fond of them. Look
how grandly they sweep through the water.

There's something magnificent about them, don't
you think?'

'Do they live in peace among themselves?' asked

Karl.

'I think so,' said the headwaiter. 'The green ones
are very modest and retiring, not at all belligerent.'

'Don't you think they should be separated?'

'Perhaps they should,' said the headwaiter.

15

TRANQUIL, temperate nights returned to Badenheim. They wrapped the yanuka in two blankets and seated him on the verandah. The hotel guests looked after him like an adopted child. From time
to time an express letter found its way into the
town and caused a small commotion: some deal
that had not gone through. A traveling salesman
who had not heard about the restrictions arrived
on a business trip. He could not understand:

in the villages everything was quiet. What was
going on?

'So it's back to Poland !' he laughed. 'And I once
ran away from there!' ·

'We all lived in Poland once, and we're all going
back there; said Pappenheim.

'What's the point in going back there now? I
represent a well-known firm. The idea of going
back there now doesn't appeal to me in the least.'

If it hadn't been for these distant greetings
from the outside world, it would probably have
been easier to get used to the isolation. But the
occasional stray letter that found its way through
disturbed the quiet and stirred up a momentary
commotion.

'What do they write?'

'I've already learned to do without letters and
newspapers.'

'And I, unfortunately, have not learned to do
without them; said Dr. Pappenheim.

Letters and newspapers. The rustle of paper
was no longer heard in the hotel. The silence was
dense, and from day to day it grew denser.

'I'm not worried,' the traveling salesman said,
recovering his spirits. 'Everything's at the firm's
expense, let them worry. I've kept my part of the
bargain. They can foot the bill for anything that
goes wrong. They've exploited me enough all these
years. Let them pay my expenses now.'

'You're a lucky fellow to have landed up here
on your business travels.'

'Once years ago I was trapped in a country
village by a spring snowfall. For a whole month

I slept there. And all at the firm's expense.'

'You won't go to Poland though?'

'If they're prepared to foot the bill for such a
long journey I don't mind going.'

The next day the salesman put on a white suit
and seated himself at the entrance to the pastry
shop. He was like a soldier taught by long years
of army service to get the most out of every opportunity for rest that came his way. At the end of the week he would get the sentries at the gate to sign for him. It wasn't his fault that he had
been held up here.

Since one day ran into the next and the sentries

53

at the gate informed him that there was no intention at present of opening it to free traffic, he came to the conclusion that there was no point in living like a thief in the back quarters of the hotel,
and he took himself a proper room, as befitting
the representative of a well-known firm. The other
guests were as delighted with him as if he were
a messenger bringing glad tidings from afar. He
dressed with great care and announced loudly
from time to time: 'Salo will now take a rest at the
firm's expense. A rest at the firm's expense is worth
its weight in gold.' Afterwards he would go for
a walk in the gardens, that too at the expense of
the firm. Whatever he did now was strictly in
accordance with company regulations. The firm
required him to rest so that he would be healthy,
and so that when the time came he would retire
healthy too.

Finally the letters stopped altogether. The musicians sat conferring together in low voices: what about next season?

'Rehearsals, children, rehearsals: urged Pappenheim. 'Soon we'll be on our way to Poland and you're not rehearsing? Artistic standards in Poland are high.'

The next day Dr. Pappenheim informed them
that they had been promoted, and from now on
he would pay them according to the highest scale
for musicians. They were very pleased. The conductor took the opportunity to reprove them for 54
their laziness and said that the impresario's generosity was extraordinary. He himself would not have promoted them. Everyone was suddenly behaving with strange generosity. The headwaiter would often appear in the dining room and ask the guests if they were satisfied with the food.

Apparently it was the hotel owner who had sent
him-or perhaps he himself felt that it was part of
his duty.

'Isn't it nice here?' asked Karl.

'Very nice; said Lotte.

'It takes a little time to get used to the local
pleasures.'

Karl never stopped talking about his two sons
who had been imprisoned in a barracks by the

General. 'They must be exercising now,' he would
say. 'They must be running.'

16

THE days slipped by. A cold light broke out of
the north and spread through the long corridor.

It seemed not like light but needles cutting the
carpet into squares. The people hugged the walls
like shadows.

The schoolgirl had grown very tall. Her tightfitting leather jacket suited her slender figure but 55

her cheeks, her pampered pink cheeks, had lost
their bloom. Dr. Shutz tried to wrap her in his
own coat, but she would not let him.

A laugh like the breaking of delicate glass was
heard in the lobby. 'Aren't we going to see you
anymore?' asked a high-pitched woman's voice.

There was no reply, and for a moment it seemed
as if the voice were questioning itself.

The schoolgirl stood up and said, 'Come, Shutzi,
let's go out. What are we sitting here for?' There
was a strange assertiveness in her voice which
did not suit her delicate, fragile appearance at all.

'In a little while they'll serve ice cream; said

Shutz, in an attempt to curb her impulsiveness.

She sat down again and looked sharply around
her with her big green eyes, as if she wanted to
silence the whispering voices with her looks.

They had been sitting there for hours. The fading
light caught the bush of yellow broom growing
next to the window. The lobby darkened, and
there was a moment of relief.

The people exchanged glances. The schoolgirl
did not take her hands from her knees. Her fingers
now looked somewhat transparent, and longer
than usual.

'Ice cream will soon be served,' announced the
baritone voice of the headwaiter. Even before the
announcement was over he and his retinue were
standing in the doorway like puppets on a stage.

For a moment they stood there, showing off the

dish in all its splendor before it was devoured:

pineapples and ice cream.

'There, what did I tell you?' said Shutz, in the
tone of a father speaking to his adolescent daughter. The schoolgirl raised her eyes and gave him a cold, reproving look.

The people ate silently, absorbed in their little
pleasure. Flakes of darkness now filled the comers
of the room, and the space grew more confined.

Karl and Lotte sat secluded in a comer.

'The fish in the aquarium, what's happened to
the fish in the aquarium?' Karl suddenly whispered.

'Nothing, they're swimming as usual.'

'I mean the green ones ; where have the green
ones disappeared to?'

'How strange,' she said. 'You watch them all
the time.'

Karl took the little dish and raised it to his lips,
but before tasting the ice cream he said, 'The green
ones, the prettiest fish in the aquarium, have disappeared without anyone even noticing.' He tasted the ice cream and carefully replaced the dish on the low table.

The coffee soon arrived-rich, aromatic coffee.

Frau Zauberblit remarked, 'The headwaiter is
plying us with delicacies and we'll have to thank
him for it for the rest of our lives.'

'He's trying to deny us the pleasures of the
world to come,' said Samitzky.

'How do you mean?'

57

'This isn't coffee, it's myrrh.'

The headwaiter apologized, saying it was Brazilian coffee from the stocks.

Darkness fell. The glowing fireplace illuminated
the people sitting around it and the silent, familiar
music settled on the room again. The schoolgirl
was absorbed in her own reflections. Shutz lit his
pipe, crossed his legs, and sat back as if he had
surrendered himself to the soft hands of the twilight; and while they were all sitting there in the silence Dr. Langmann appeared, leaning on his stick.

He stood in the doorway and announced: 'I
went to the Department, to see the director, and
demanded a re-examination.'

'A re-examination of what?' Shutz opened his
eyes.

'Of my case, my specific case.'

'And how can we help you?'

'I'm not asking for help.'

It was, of course, a delayed anger that was
oppressing him, seeking an outlet. He stood in
the doorway waiting for someone to start an argument, but the people weren't angry with him.

'My opinion, in any case, is the same as ever,' he
declared.

'And what is your opinion?'

'I am an Austrian born and bred, and the laws
of Austria apply to me as long as I live.'

'But you also happen to be a Jew, if I'm not
mistaken.'

'A Jew. What does that mean? Perhaps you
would be so kind as to tell me what it means?'

'As far as we're concerned,' said Frau Zauberblit, 'you can renounce the connection any time you like.'

'That is my argument precisely.'

'So why are you angry with us?'

'But Pappenheim, what about Pappenheim?

Haven't you heard him calling us the Order of

Jewish Nobility?'

'I never knew: said Shutz, 'that Dr. Pappenheirn
had such a developed sense of humor.'

'Such declarations should not be taken lightly,'

said Dr. Langmann sternly.

Shutz went out to fetch some coals to feed the
fire. The schoolgirl's face changed color. Shutz
did not approach her. He concentrated his gaze
more and more on the sparks flying from the fire.

A strange intimacy descended on the dark lobby,
an intimacy without words. Dr. Langmann lit his
pipe and the tobacco smoke spread its sweet aroma.

Suddenly the schoolgirl stood up and said:

'Why don't you take me out of here? Can't you
see that I can't stand it any longer?' Shutz rose
and stood panic-stricken by her side, but even
as he held out his hand she fell to the ground in
a faint.

'The child is unwell,' cried Frau Zauberblit.

'Bring some brandy.'

Thus the twilight hour was shattered. Shutz
knelt down and lifted her onto the sofa. The people

59

stood around her looking chastised, as if the facts
of life had suddenly given them a slap in the face.

The secret was out. The schoolgirl was three
months pregnant. Dr. Shutz was embarrassed and
confused. He sat down to write a long letter to his
mother, informing her that an important change
had taken place in his life. He was about to be
married to a fine woman; he was sure that she
would be pleased by his choice. For the moment,
however, he had been left without a penny to his
name. If she could send him some money by express or special delivery he would be very grateful.

He folded the letter and put it in an envelope, but
on the way to post it he remembered that everything was shut, including the Post Office.

17

TRUDE'S hallucinations disappeared. Once
again she stood by the open window. Martin
watered the garden and painted the back entrance.

The neglected back entrance had been a weight
on his mind ever since the inspector's visit. He
had already registered himself and Trude. The
procedure was brief.

'Jew?'

'Jew.'

6o

'Jewess?'

'Jewess.'

'And Helena?' asked the clerk.

'She is no longer a Jewess; smiled Martin.

The clerk asked many questions, especially about

Helena. Martin was confused and did not know
how to reply: when he returned and told Trude
she looked at him with eyes full of affection, as if
he had brought her a message from a different
world. She was now given over entirely to the
memories of her childhood. A number of Polish
words surfaced in her memory, and whenever
they came back to her she smiled. Helena did not
write. Very few letters arrived, and the ones that
did only brought disruption in their wake. The
people who were accustomed to swimming in the
pool now stood on the tennis court. The conductor
spent a lot of time doing exercises.

Trude no longer said, 'How transparent they
are, how thin.' She spoke of her childhood in

Poland. She had run away from home on a silly
impulse. Her parents had never forgiven her. For
years she had not spoken of it.

When she began to speak at last Martin said,

'You're still living there in the mountains.' Now
he sat and wondered: there was a melody in her
voice, as if some distant music was animating
her face.

Trude also said: 'If God wills it, a person returns
to the land of his birth.'

61

'Will they forgive me?' This question now came
up regularly, between one meal and the next. Then

Trude would go back to the window or leaf through
a magazine. And once she even said, 'Helena will
come back. I'm sure that she'll come back.'

Professor Fussholdt read the proofs of his book.

At one time his lectures had given rise to quite
a controversy in academic circles. It was he who
had called Theodore Herzl 'a hack writer with
messianic pretensions,' and his associates 'petty
functionaries who jumped on the golden bandwagon.' Martin Buber too did not escape his barbs.

It was Fussholdt who had said that Buber couldn't
make up his mind if he was a prophet or a professor. If anyone deserved the title of a great Jew, according to Fussholdt, it was Karl Kraus: he had revived satire. And now the professor was sitting
and proofreading his latest book. Who was he attacking now? The journalists, the hacks, so-called 'Jewish art'? Perhaps his book was about Hans

Herzl, Theodore's son who had converted to Christianity. Or perhaps it was a book about satire, the only art form appropriate to our lives.

Frau Zauberblit sat in her room. The thermometer
read 101. 2, and the threads of blood in her phlegm
were as thick as worms. The pains grew worse
and shifted from rib to rib. To die sane and never
to return to the sanitorium-this was her firm
resolution. Death had ceased to preoccupy her.

She now believed, quite simply and literally, in
the world to come.

She loved the flowers in the Luxembourg Gardens, the short walks, everything called 'Badenheim': the looks and the words. Samitzky drank steadily. He spoke German mixed with Polish, and told stories about the town of his birth all the time.

The night before, Frau Zauberblit had written
an outline of her will:

1) Jewelry - to the yanuka, for his musical education;

2) Cash - to the twins;

3) Clothes - to Sally and Gertie;

4) Household effects - to the headwaiter;

5) Her body was not to be cremated. Dr. Pappenheim was to say Kaddish.

She put the piece of paper away in a drawer.

Her temperature climbed slowly. The habit of
writing down every fluctuation in her temperature, a habit to which she had grown accustomed in the sanitorium and which she detested, was now a secret she shared only with herself. She
would write it down and laugh, as if she were
laughing at herself for a silly habit she could not
shed.

She wrote a lot of letters. She remembered her
old nurse and sent her money, but above all it
was Samitzky and his sick melody that she loved.

It was as if their friendship were not a matter of
days but of years without number. Many of the
old regulars had not come this year. She felt affection for them all, even Mitzi.

'If Mandelbaum lets us down we'll invite Kraus,

at my expense-only don't be sad, Dr. Pappenheim,
don't be sad.' Samitzky drank and she did not tell
him to stop. She loved him and his drunkenness.

18

THE light stood still. There was a frozen kind of
attentiveness in the air. An alien orange shadow
gnawed stealthily at the geranium leaves. The
creepers absorbed the bitter, furtive damp. Pappenheim spoiled the musicians and bought them chocolates and cream cakes. The musicians were submissive, full of gratitude. The quarrels were
over. And the strange new·light filtered through
the clouds and illuminated the broad verandah.

Dr. Shutz's love was no longer lighthearted as in
days gone by. The orange shadow now lay on
him and his beloved. The schoolgirl huddled into
his summer coat as if afraid of a sudden separation.

The Post Office was locked. Cold lights caressed
the smooth marble steps. The portals with their
gothic carvings were somehow reminiscent of a
ruined monument. The night before Dr. Pappenheim stood next to the closed Post Office and laughed. 'Everything's been shut down.'

While Dr. Pappenheim was standing next to the

Post Office a desperate struggle was going on

in the pharmacy. Two strangers had forced their
way in and were looting the 'toxica' cupboard.

Martin fought them off, took the vials away from
them and shouted, I won't allow it!' They were

'

two haggard men who had arrived a few days
before. On their faces was an icy despair.

Mandelbaum and his trio arrived like thieves
in the night. Pappenheim took them down to the
ground floor and gave them tea.

·

'What happened?'

'We received a transfer,' said Mandelbaum.

'Did you ask for it?'

'Of course we did. A young man, a junior officer,
has already transferred our papers. We explained
that we had to get to the Festival. He laughed and
gave his permission. What do you say, we're in
for it, eh?'

'It's wonderful,' said Pappenheim. 'I thought
you'd never make it. You must rest now.'

The net had caught up with them in the holiday town of Reizenbach. At first the whole thing seemed like a joke, but it soon became clear that the Austrians were no less efficient than the Germans. The locals were sent home and the Jewsyes sir, plain and simple and without any beating about the bush-the Jews were put into quarantine! Mandelbaum had sent letters to the Academy but there was no reply. But for that young officer he would never have escaped. 'A little enterprise.

The Jews have always been famous for their enter-
prise, isn't that so, Dr. Pappenheim?' joked Mandelbaum.

Dr. Pappenheim ran joyfully to fetch the headwaiter. The headwaiter came and stood there overcome with awe, as if it was the Emperor Franz Josef himself he had been called upon to serve.

For years Dr. Pappenheim had been trying to
entice Mandelbaum to Badenheim. But year followed year and he never arrived. Pappenheim often boasted of his promises, seeing them as signs of affection and of hope for the future-and
last year he had actually succeeded in breaching
the wall and had been received in the great man's
office in the Academy. And Mandelbaum had
promised him that this s
er he would come.

umm

Dr. Pappenheim had not been able to believe his
ears. And now the great artist was finally here.

It was doubtful if he had really wanted to come.

But in any case he was here now, there was no
denying the fact that he was here.

'Are we all Jews here?' inquired Mandelbaum
lightly, as if he weren't the great Mandelbaum at
all. 'The servants ran away, but the headwaiter
himself is a Jew born and bred, thank God, and
one other waitress too.'

'So everything is kosher then; the great man
joked.

The headwaiter allowed himself to say, 'Here
in Badenheim the maestro has many admirers.'

66

Later they went on a comprehensive tour. Mandelbaum expressed his admiration. He said that Badenheim was far more beautiful than Reizenbach. If he had known he would have come long ago. A man never knew where true beauty lay hidden or where his true admirers were. After the
tour they sat in the lounge and Mandelbaum suddenly laughed out loud: 'The Academy doesn't answer my letters! You hear, the Academy ignores its President, it denies its Founder! Isn't that food
for thought?'

'They'll be sorry one day,' said Dr. Pappenheim.

He sat and explained: 'The guests here are an
extremely pleasant lot. And this year, due to the
restrictions, the atmosphere is intimate. If the
maestro agrees to appear, it will be the experience
of our lives.'

'Me? I'm just a Jew, a number, a file. If not for
the junior officer I would still be rotting in Reizenbach. What do you need me for? Am I a rabbi, a cantor?'

'You are our maestro, our one and only maestro
and the only one we want.'

Mandelbaum turned to his trio and said: 'We'll
play for you like a band of Jewish minstrels. The

Academy refuses to reply to its President, it ignores
registered letters, it ignores express letters. We'll
be your Jewish minstrels.'

The heavy, clumsy musicians stood to one side
and did not open their mouths. The great artist

inspired them with awe. They sat huddled together
like tame birds, following his every move. The
conductor too watched him as if hypnotized. The

Princess Milbaum, who knew all the famous artists
in Vienna and had heard the news of his arrival,
descended from her royal throne and said: 'Professor Mandelbaum! So Professor Mandelbaum too is amongst us!'

Mandelbaum rose and kissed her hand. He said,

'At last my disgrace has been exposed in public.'

'And what does the Royal Academy have to say?'

'They ignore my letters.'

'I would break off all connection with them,
once and for all. That would teach them a lesson,
that would teach them some manners.'

Dr. Pappenheim felt uneasy, as if greater powers
than he had intervened.

Mandelbaum told her about Reizenbach. The

Princess listened to the grotesque tale and said:

'They'll pay for it.' Proud lightning flashed from
her eyes.

'And here?' Mandelbaum inquired.

'Rotten to the core,' she declared.

That very night Mandelbaum shut himself up
in his room; the clean, polished notes cut through
the silence. Now a new fear fell on the people:

Mandelbaum.

68

19

THE leaden sun hung heavily over the cold
horizon.

'How far is it from here to Vienna?' someone
asked aimlessly.

'About two hundred kilometers, I should imagine,
or even less.' The words floated in the void like
tired, dispirited birds. Downstairs, in the kitchen,
they were making the beloved apple strudel. The
sweet smell wafted over the verandah.

'Why shouldn't we go and apply for a visa?'

said one of the musicians, who had been a bit of
a wanderer in his youth.

'And if you had a visa, where would you go?'

The man fell silent, as if he had been asked an
embarrassing question.

The conductor put down his cards and said,

'For my part, I'm ready to go anywhere.'

Martin took out the winter clothes and the smell
of mothballs spread through the house. The dream
of Poland had quieted Trude. Martin would sit
by her side and promise that everything would
be all right. 'We came from Poland and now we
have to go back to Poland. Whoever was born
there has to go back there,' he would repeat in a
kind of singsong.

A group of angry people stood by the telephone
and cursed the bureaucracy that had suddenly,
without any advance warning, cut them off from
their loved ones. 'Order!' they cried bitterly.

'Order!' A few even bestirred themselves to write
long, detailed letters complaining of all the inconvenience that had been caused them by the disconnection. They demanded compensation from travel agencies, from the authorities who
were detaining them here. All these complaints
were, of course, in vain. The lines had all been
cut, the Post Office was shut. The maids had flown
as if the houses were on fire. The town had begun
to live its life inside itself.

'What will they do with us there in Poland?'

asked one of the musicians.

'What do you mean? You'll be a musician, just
as you've always been,' said the friend sitting
half asleep next to him.

'In that case why send us there at all?'

The friend sought an impressive formula. 'Historical necessity,' he said.

'Kill me, I don't understand it. Ordinary common sense can't comprehend it.'

'In that case, kill your ordinary common sense
and maybe you'll begin to understand.'

The houses slowly filled with silence. The straggly
creepers grew wild. The acacias bloomed without
stopping. Autumn and spring mingled strangely.

At night there was no air to breathe. Samitzky

was drinking heavily. He drank like a peasant,
and spoke a mixture of Polish and Yiddish. Of all
the languages he knew it seemed that the only
one that remained was this language of his youth.

'Why do you drink so much, my dear?' asked

Frau Zauberblit gently.

'When a man goes home he should be happy.'

'It's cold there, really cold.'

'Yes, but it's a healthy cold, a clear cold, a cold
with hope for the future.'

The registration was over. The officials now sat
in the Sanitation Department drinking tea. They
had done what they had been told to do. Now
they were waiting for instructions.

But in the streets there were still surprises. A
few days before a man had stood next to the Post

Office, a citizen of Badenheim and a major in the

First World War, and asked, in the tone which he
had no doubt been accustomed to using in the
army, why the Post Office was closed. And Dr.

Pappenheim, who could not rid himself of the
habit of visiting the closed Post Office every day,
replied, perhaps incautiously, that the town was
in quarantine.

'I don't understand,' said the major. 'Is there
an epidemic?'

'A Jewish epidemic.'

'Is that supposed to be a joke?'

'It's no joking matter-try to leave and see.'

The man turned his head and his narrow, steely

look, the look of a man used to scanning maps
and open expanses, focused on the short figure of

Dr. Pappenheim as if he were about to reprimand
him or dismiss him from his presence.

'Is the major not yet registered with the Sanitation Department?' Dr. Pappenheim continued, in a provocative tone of voice.

For two days the major fought the Sanitation

Department. He cursed the Jews and the bureaucracy and terrorized the deserted streets of the town. In the end he shot himself in the head. Dr.

Langmann, who did not stir from his place at the
window, remarked to himself: 'You must admit
that the Jews are an ugly people. I can't see that
they're any use to anyone.'

The conductor put down his cards and said,

'Do you remember anything from home?'

'What home?' said the musician Blumenthal, a
naive man who seemed to go through life in a
kind of daze. At the beginning, in the early days
of the band, the conductor had treated him harshly
and mocked him. But nothing had helped. He had
remained as dreamy as ever.

'Your Jewish home.'

'Nothing.'

'My parents,' said the conductor, 'converted to

Christianity, damn it all.'

'In that case, why don't you leave everything
here and go back to Vienna?'

'My dear friend, my name appears in a place of

72

honor on the lists of the Sanitation Department.'

'What do they want of us?'

'It's hard to understand,' said the conductor, as
if he had been given a complicated score to read.

'If the rumor that we're being transferred to Poland
is right, we'll have to start studying. I don't know
anything.'

'At our age we're a little past it already, aren't
we?'

'There's no help for it. We'll have to learn Polish.'

'Do you really think so?'

20

THE following days were quiet. The pastry shop
was closed down, and the creepers grew untrammeled over the green shutters. In the bar they stopped serving drinks. The fish in the aquarium flourished and grew fat. If it hadn't been for the
pungent smell of tobacco lingering in the air, the
bar would have resembled a modest debating club.

Dr. Pappenheim decided to put his papers in
order and tore up one after the other: files, old
letters, contracts, advertisements, and all kinds
of other papers that filled the room to overflowing.

After he had finished clearing everything out he
went for a walk with Sally and Gertie. Sally was

73
wearing a lace dress which the old Grafhad brought her from Venice and Gertie was wearing something
short.

'Let's go out,' said Dr. Pappenheim. 'I've already
done my work for today.'

At the entrance to the pastry shop stood the old
pastry cook wearing a blue suit. After the years
he had spent with the pastry shop owner he had
no will of his own left. A dumb helplessness stared
from his long face.

'Getting ready, are we?' asked Dr. Pappenheim.

At this question the old man approached them
and said, 'I'm ready.'

'There's no hurry, there's still time.'

'I wanted to ask the doctor,' said the pastry
cook very respectfully, 'how the transfer will take
place?'

'By train. Train journeys· are nice, aren't they?'

The long years in the confined bakery had not
bowed the old man's peasant's body. He looked
like a peasant who had married his daughters off
long ago and had nothing left now but leisure and
memories.

'May I be permitted to ask a personal question?'

said the pastry cook. 'I've been working here for
thirty years on end. Will my pension be recognized
there too?'

'Everything will be transferred there,' said Dr.

Pappenheim. 'No one will be deprived:'

'That's what I thought,' said the pastry cook.

74

They walked on. The chestnut trees were shedding their leaves. A gaping emptiness stared mutely from the square. All these years in Badenheim. Never a moment to himself. A slave to the caprices of the artists. Pappenheim now felt for the first time that his time was his own. 'I would
like to go back to research,' he suddenly said
without any connection to anything.

'And what will we do?' said Sally. 'What would
you suggest, Dr. Pappenheim? I imagine that in
the evenings we might be able to attend a course
of lectures. What's your opinion? All large cities
have lecture courses in the evenings. In Vienna I
remember there used to be advertisements about
evening courses.'

'Of course; said Dr. Pappenheim.

In Princess Salpina's garden the roses grew
riotously, as if they were being fed on rotten beets.

The house stood empty. At the gate, the wooden
gate, there was no barking dog. In recent years
the Princess had not taken part in the busy life of

Badenheim, preferring to live in Vienna. And the
neat little house had lost its glory, but not its
secret. At first she too had been enthusiastic about
the twins, but one evening, without any apparent
reason, she had abandoned Badenheim. Later on
she had written a long letter, full of anger, in
which she set forth all her complaints against the
twins. Dr. · Pappenheim had replied and defended
their honor.

75

'Why is she angry with us?' asked Sally.

'I don't know. If only I did,' said Pappenheim,
shrugging his shoulders.

'We could have left together. Wouldn't it have
been nice if we could all have left together?'

'Princess Salpina is very fond of Slavic art. She
studied it in Berlin,' said Gertie, and immediately
fell silent in embarrassment at having produced
this remark.

'Her knowledge of Slavic art is, indeed, very
thorough,' said Dr. Pappenheim.

'Couldn't we write to her?'

'I wrote her a long letter: said Dr. Pappenheim,

'but she never replied.'

They walked for a long time. Pappenheim was
in a good mood and he told them about his student
days in Dresden. Dresden was a pretty town but

Vienna was even better. It was hard for anyone
born in Vienna to live anywhere else. When they
returned to the hotel they found the yanuka crying

' I want to go home.'

Sally bought him a pink box of candy, but the
child would not stop crying. When she saw that
the sweets had not helped, Gertie stood up and
announced : 'I'm going to buy you an electric train
with real rails.'

The child calmed down. Gertie sat with him and
told him that Warsaw was a big city with lots of
toy stores. As soon as they arrived in Warsaw,
she would buy him an electric train. The boy asked
a lot of questions and Gertie answered at leng�h: Warsaw was the capital of Poland and i t had everything that anyone could possibly want.

2 1

ONCE more a few stray letters filtered through,
raising a forgotten world from oblivion. One of

Mitzi's old lovers sent her a picture postcard with
a complimentary message. Mitzi cried. Salo stood
by her side and consoled her, saying that one
shouldn't attach too much importance to the written word, but his consolations were of no avail.

She cried like a little girl.

The conductor received his bank statement. He
shut himself up in his room and studied it. His
shares had gone up .

Karl too received a letter, from his oldest son.

The boy wrote at length, with much sensitivity,
of his experiences at his new school, the military
academy. He had registered, passed the entrance
exams, and now he was taking his first steps in
the new school . As far as his studies were concerned he had already obtained two high marks, and in the practical training too he was making progr�ss. He ate a lot of cabbage and sausages,
drank beer, did exercises . Soon they would be

77

going on their first forced march. The boy had an
athletic build and he had already picked up some
of the slang expressions popular in the school. He
had a nickname, 'Adam's Apple,' and he had
cleared all the hurdles in the obstacle course without a single slip. Karl showed the letter to Lotte.

Lotte read it and said that the boy's style was
flawless . And for a moment the father forgot his
wrath. His heart filled with pride.

'He's a very sensitive boy. How can he stand
all that brutality?'

'Can't you see? The boy is already capable of
forming his own judgements.' This sentence,
which was pronounced in a calm, matter-of-fact
tone, suddenly gave Karl back the faith that his
beloved son was not lost to him .

Shutz did not receive a letter. The schoolgirl
spent all her time lying on the verandah and
soaking up the mild sun. She was absorbed in
herself and the fetus inside her. Shutz tried in
vain to make her talk. It seemed that everything
between them had been exhausted. She loved the
sun more than anything. Shutz was now outside
her, the words between them fewer and fewer.

Strangely enough, he seemed not to notice.

And the isolated letters gave rise to a kind of
chilly despair. Only now, it seemed, did the people
realize what was happening here. 'The telephone,
the telephone! ' some cried aloud.

The pharmacy was a hive of activity. People

bought drugs indiscriminately. At first Martin
was pleased, until he realized what they were
up to. They were building up private stocks of
poisonous drugs and narcotics. He took fright and
locked the door. The people begged, 'Open up,
open up !' When they saw that their pleading led
nowhere a conspiracy of wordless looks was set
afoot and in the end the pharmacy was broken into.

The people were being driven out of their minds
by their longings. They stood by the gates and
asked : 'When will we leave? When?'

'What have you got to complain about?' said
the sentry. 'You don't have drill or guard duty,
do you?'

They were like sick people asking about their
illness. If the doctor refused to explain, maybe
they could get something out of the nurse?

No more artists came. Dr. Pappenheim went to
the gate every day. As long as the ensemble was
not complete there would be no redemption . We
complement one another, and as long as one of us
is missing we will not be saved - this was the
source of his despair.

At the very moment when despair had almost
taken over, Frau Zauberblit stood up and announced
that that evening the twins would perform.

The twins had grown taller and looked like two
emaciated boys, athletes or dancers. The moment
they ascended the stage their emaciation took on
a compelling power. Their mastery was such that

79
the words did not seem like words at all : they were as pure and abstract as if they had never
been touched by human mouths.

For a whole hour they stood there on the stage
in total concentration. And by the end of the hour
the words did their work alone, flying through
the air like birds on fire.

'They've done it, I told you they'd do it ! ' said

Dr. Pappenheim . There were tears in his eyes.

Sally hurried to bring lemonade. After the performance the seriousness left the twins' faces.

Now they seemed like two boys who had just
come home after winning a race, pleased with
themselves but a little empty. They told jokes and
the people laughed. Princess Milbaum did not
come down to see the miracle. Her hostility was
venomous. A few days befo:r:e she suddenly stood
up and announced that she still intended to expose
a few ugly affairs. She called Pappenheim an international criminal. Then she shut herself up in her room and wrote long, detailed letters about those clowns, the Ostjuden, who had taken over Badenheim and were dragging every bit of true culture through the dirt.

So

22

THE food supplies did not arrive and the hotel
owner opened up the stores. The headwaiter stood
at the storeroom door and illuminated the darkness with a flashlight. His fingers trembled, as if the treasures of the world to come had suddenly been revealed to him. It was a big room full of
antique furniture. The kind of silence only found
in sealed-off places hung congealed in the air.

'From here?' asked the headwaiter reverentially.

'Yes,' said the hotel owner, smiling as if there
were nothing left to regret.

The headwaiter was as happy as if he had been
promoted. The hotel was now full of the fragrant
aromas of liqueurs, Swiss chocolate, French wine,
pecans, and fine peach preserves. The people sat
at the tables and ate with quiet enjoyment.

'This is a time we'll remember forever,' exulted
the musician Zimbelman.

'Don't worry, we'll have to pay for it in hard
cash,' said the conductor.

The twins too descended from their seclusion
to taste the new delicacies. They had grown very
thin . Their white coats were too wide for their
narrow shoulders. How alike they were !

Sally asked: 'How are the artists?'

81

And the headwaiter said happily, 'It's good to
see the artists among us .'

The twins now looked like two well brought up
young boys of good family. They laughed and
asked for details, and the headwaiter took time
off to give them a lesson in French gastronomy.

He was an ardent disciple of French cooking and
had been trying for years to banish the heavy

Austrian smells from the hotel kitchen.

Evening fell. The yanuka sang the famous lullaby

'Rozinkes mit Mandleh.' Recently he had been
sunk in melancholy and refused to sing. Pappenheim had spoken to him a number of times but the child would not be consoled; he was angry and sad. It was the headwaiter's finest hour. He
pronounced the French names as if he were caressing the syllables with his t!Jngue, as if he were speaking not of food but of living creatures who needed to be treated with affection.

The old, familiar expression returned to Gertie's
and Sally's faces, the expression they had worn
when they were elegant young women, soliciting
discreetly for customers. The end of the summer
was astonishingly beautiful, and from the verandah Badenheim looked like a carpet studded with golden lights. There were no new announcements on the notice board. The conductor left the musicians to their own devices . The half-Jewish waitress sat with the guests, wearing a blue dress.

There was a skeptical smile on her lips. Martin had

cared for her devotedly and she had recovered.

The headwaiter pampered her with delicacies and
warm words.

And there was a strange lull. People spent a lot
of time dozing in the armchairs. Salo sat next to
the conductor and said that he was enjoying his
stay here very much. There was no point in trying
to hurry things up. And it wouldn't break the
hotel owner either. The conductor was annoyed
and said that it wasn't fair of Salo. But Salo went
on teasing him and said that he was really enjoying all this disorder, it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good. Prices had gone up in recent years. The firm was getting rich and he was always
in debt. Here he lacked for nothing, he had shelter,
music, pleasant company. What did he care? Let
them put everything onto the bill. The conductor
was indignant at Salo's words and tone but said
nothing.

Suddenly a kind of trance seemed to take hold of
the people. The headwaiter went from table to table
saying, 'Who knows if I'll ever be able to offer you
such delicacies again?' There were tears in his eyes.

But the people had lost their appetites. They sat
staring at the aquarium and the oil painting on
the wall next to it. The hotel owner stood silently
in the doorway.

Mandelbaum bullied his trio mercilessly. He
raged, threatened, and banged on the table with
his fists. In the silent lobby it sounded as if some-

thing terrible was happening upstairs. Suddenly
the schoolgirl said, 'Someone should go upstairs
and rescue them. Mandelbaum's torturing them
like a sadist.' But no one stood up. They all went
on staring into space and nobody moved. Even
the appearance of the little coffee cups did not
arouse them . The schoolgirl stood up and said
that she was sick and tired of the company here.

Upstairs a sadist was torturing innocent people,
and here everybody just went on sitting as if
nothing was happening.

23

T 0 round off the season they served golden
cider, a subtle drink that always gave rise to a
certain delicate melancholy. The headwaiter was
proud of this drink, which was made from his
own special recipe. Usually at this hour the people
would have been busy packing, saying good-by
to their friends, and taking a last look at Badenheim from the verandah before leaving the next morning.

This time the cider, which the headwaiter served
with great deliberation, had a pungent, slightly
intoxicating taste. The people sipped slowly from
the rustic steins, with a strange, stealthy enjoyment.

Usually at this hour Dr. Pappenheim would sit down and sum up what he called 'the lessons of the
season': the irresponsible musicians, the eternal
deficit, and all the troubles, big and small, that
ruined his happiness. But this year all his aggravation vanished. He felt no resentment against anyone. He wanted to stand up and thank the people for their confidence, their friendship, their
cooperation, to mention the artists who had failed
to tum up by name and to say a few words of
praise in their honor; to explain that from now on
there would be no difference, either in place or
time, between Badenheim and Vienna, between
the local residents and summer guests. From now
on it would all be Badenheim, here or in some
other place, it made no difference.

While these words were galloping through Dr.

Pappenheim's head, the hotel owner appeared in
the doorway and said that he wanted to beg the
pardon of everyone present for the irregularities perhaps he too had something to blame himself for, and for this at any rate he begged their pardon.

He spoke as calmly and quietly as if he were
measuring his words with a ruler.

A momentary commotion broke out on the
verandah. Frau Zauberblit rose from her place
and said that on no account was the hotel owner
to blame himself for anything. Every year in

Badenheim was a celebration, and this year was
no exception.

85

The headwaiter went on pouring out the cider.

It was chilly on the verandah, and the people
wrapped their legs in woolen blankets. The old
familiar warmth settled on the verandah again.

The hotel owner joined the guests. He looked a
little shy. It seemed that at any moment now
someone would stand up and say, as someone said
every year, 'Come, children - to your packing, to
your packing! ' But no one stood up. The moment
seemed frozen in time.

The sunlight illuminated the verandah and the
faces of the people. Martin sat outside in an armchair, with Trude beside him . They sat without speaking, as if nothing had happened . The musicians lounged about on the lawn. At any moment now, it seemed, the conductor would call out, 'Upstairs, boys, upstairs and get into your uniforms ! ' But nobody moved. The headwaiter went on pouring the cider into the rustic steins, which now seemed curiously heavy, as if they were made
of metal. Shutz wrapped the schoolgirl in two
extra blankets. The sun sank gradually, leaving
behind it long, cold rays of light.

'Why won't you have a drink?' Shutz urged the
schoolgirl. 'You're hurting the headwaiter's feelings . The cider is his pride and joy.' The schoolgirl sat up unwillingly and took a long gulp. Her face was so transparent that you could see her jaws moving.

Sally and Gertie joined the party and sat next to

86

the yanuka. The yanuka was in a good mood and
asked their names. Pappenheim said that the
yanuka spoke no German, but he seemed to understand. They begged him to sing : he asked them if they were students at the university and they burst out laughing.

Even Karl was cahn. He downed glass after glass,
but the cider did not make him drunk. He seemed
content: 'Isn't it nice here?' he asked Lotte as he
had in the beginning.

'Very nice,' said Lotte.

Darkness fell and the words died away. The
schoolgirl's face grew more and more transparent.

There was no fear or regret in her eyes. It was
as if she weren't a girl who had run away from
school, but a young woman who had known both
pleasures and disappointments in her life: she
curled up in the blankets like an experienced
woman who knew the value of inanimate objects.

'What's come over the child?' The people exchanged glances . And the very same question seemed to stare from the eyes of the lover himself.

For a long time they went on looking at her. But
her face gave nothing away. A sickly light seemed
to shine from it. And then this light too died away
and her face grew cold.

'Shall we go out for a walk this evening?' asked

Shutz.

'Where to?' she said, and the words sounded
less like a question than a harsh statement of fact.

24

THE nights were now high and transparent.

The hotel throbbed to the sounds of music. Even
the laziest of musicians practiced. No one could
say anymore: 'Why don't you rehearse?' Never
before had Badenheim heard such a concentration
of sounds .

'Isn't that a feast for the ear ! ' exclaimed Dr.

Pappenheim.

'They're driving me crazy: grumbled Mitzi.

'You wouldn't like us to appear in Poland unrehearsed, would you? What would people say?'

The summer had not sm!led on Mitzi . No suitor,
no friend. This one busy practicing, that one in
love, that one adding up his savings . Even the
dull, heavy musicians had suddenly taken it into
their heads to rehearse. Fussholdt was completely
absorbed in his proofreading. Mitzi wept. Her
petty vanity, cultivated with so much femininity,
lay in ruins around her - and without this little
vanity what did she have in the world? Fussholdt
again, Fussholdt and his eternal proofs. And that
was all there would ever be. So what difference
did it make to her if they were here or in Poland?

Her tears were bitter. All the years seemed tied
together in one painful knot.

88

'In a few days' time everything will change .

We are on the threshold of a radical change,'

said Pappenheim, choosing his words with great
deliberation.

Ten years ago Fussholdt had been a brilliant
young lecturer, a friendly fellow who played
ping-pong. Mitzi had not been faithful to him
even then, but then his fame had made up for
everything. He sunk deeper and deeper into his
researches, and in Badenheim he applied himself
to his books like a drunk to the bottle. Ten years
with Fussholdt had left her without a spark of
hope. Only an eternity of desolation .

'The idea of the journey frightens me very much,'

said Mitzi .

'There's nothing to be afraid of,' said Dr. Pappenheim. 'There are many Jews living in Poland.

In the last analysis, a man has to return to his
origins.'

The pastry shop owner stood outside and gave
vent to his indignation : 'They're driving the
whole town crazy. Let Pappenheim emigrate,
not us. What harm have we ever done anyone?

We never brought any rotten artists here, we
never encouraged perversity.'

'Don't you take any interest in music?' Pappenheim asked Mitzi .

She stood there like an empty vessel, and in her
narrow eyes was a fear beyond hope or remedy:

what was going to happen in Poland? The same

Bg

thing all over again. Fussholdt with his books and

Mitzi alone with herself.

'It will be completely different/ said Pappenheim.

'You can't imagine how different it will be.'

Samitzky put his instrument down and came to
stand beside them. 'If only we'd practiced all these
years the way we're practicing now.'

'And Mandelbaum? He didn't practice, I suppose?'

Tm not talking about great artists. But what
about the rest of us? We'll roast in hell.'

'The trio?' said Pappenheim . ' It seems to me
we have nothing to be ashamed of in that quarter.

And the twins too have done fine work in recent
months.'

All the delicacies were finished. Strangely enough,
the people weren't hungry. All they wanted were
cigarettes. If only they had Cigarettes they would
be all right. But without cigarettes it was hell.

And wonder of wonders, Sally found a packet of
cigarettes. Everyone gathered round to see for
themselves and Sally gave them one cigarette each.

It was a high, clear night. The music wafted down
from the upper floor. The people sat in the armchairs and sucked in the smoke.

'Don't they smoke?' someone asked.

'No. They used to, but Mandelbaum forbade it.'

'So they overcame that too, did they?'

The headwaiter put on an impeccable black suit
and sat with the guests. There was no need for
formality any longer. Now he could allow himself

to sit among the guests and listen to the music.

Salo puffed deliberately on his cigarette. Two days
had already gone by without cigarettes, and what
was life without a cigarette?

'I'd give all the money owing me on my expense
account for one pack of cigarettes,' said Salo.

'What do you mean?' exclaimed the conductor.

'It must be a fortune ! '

'And my little lust, my little lust for a cigarette,
is that so insignificant in your eyes?'

'Can't you control yourself?'

'I'm not a slave to the firm anymore. My little
caprices are more important to me than the firm.

Expense accounts won't dazzle me ! But for my
caprices I'd be a rich man, but I won't give them
up for anyone. Let them fire me if they like ! '

'Compose yourself, sir, compose yourself,' said
the conductor severely.

Sally told everyone : 'I went through all the
cupboards, there were so many bottles I could
open a perfumery, but not a cigarette to be seen,
and then all of a sudden in the middle of all those
bottles, a whole packet full of cigarettes ! '

Salo had apparently had too much to drink. He
cursed the firm and all its works and swore an oath
that he would never be a slave to anyone or anything again except for his own little caprices . This said, he removed all his receipts from his vest pocket and scattered them on the ground. The
conductor bent down to pick them up muttering,

'The man has gone quite mad.'

25

WHY not go outside? If not for the angry people
it would have been possible to take a stroll to the
square and enjoy the coolness in the air. The sun
was still shining, but the angry people clung
stubbornly to the old words, hoarding them like
antiquated gadgets that had gone out of use. Since
they were unable to liberate themselves from the
old words and the fear, they prowled the streets
and cast their angry shadows.

'Sport he preaches . Sport! ' muttered Karl, referring to Dr. Langmann . The word sport had_
not crossed Dr. Langmann's lips, but Karl had
evidently not forgotten the argument in the courtyard next to the Sanitation Department. It seemed that he would take this hostility with him wherever he went, to whatever place of exile.

Old arguments and forgotten conversations and
slips of the tongue - nothing seemed to disappear.

They were all still there, clear as the day they were
uttered. People avoided one another like enemies.

The square stood empty and desolate .

The major's brother put on his dead brother's
uniform and prowled the main street. When he
came close to the hotel entrance he shouted:

'Come out for inspection ! I'm counting up to ten.

Sergeant, take them to the parade ground . Two hours of drill, and then the obstacle course. There's
a CO's inspection this week.'

Salo teased him : 'But officer, the men are at the
front.'

'Stand to attention, you cheeky fellow, stand to
attention ! '

'Officer,' said Salo, 'we've got sick call. We've
been excused from morning inspection.'

'Morning inspection takes first priority.'

'So we're not excused then? Just a minute, I'll
go and tell the men that they're not excused.'

' I'm counting to ten.'

'Count slowly, sir.'

Karl tried to free himself from Lotte's gentle
grasp. She pleaded with him: 'Leave him alone,

Karl, please. Can't you see that he's not really
serious? He's insane.'

One evening the sentries came from the gate
and arrested the major's brother. He shouted and
threatened, but all the old honors could not help
him now. The sentries pushed him roughly. He
walked off holding himself very erect, like a soldier.

Heavy, dense nights descended on Badenheim.

The word sport was taboo. Karl stood at the doors
eavesdropping. Dr. Langmann had shut himself
up in his room, afraid of Karl's stares. In the circle
of his stares there burned a sapphire flame.

Hard lights, lights without the soft blue of the
sky, climbed the heavy bars of the windows.

93

Words without bodies floated in the lobby.

'Are you coming?'

'In a minute, I'm coming.'

'Take your coat, I'll wait outside.'

The words did not seem to belong to the present.

They were the words of the spring which had
somehow lingered on, suspended in the void.

'The program? Have you got the Festival program?'

asked a woman's voice, but when she encountered

Karl's angry glare she beat a hasty retreat, and the
silence, the loaded silence that kept the people
apart, descended on the lobby again .

'If only the front verandah could be opened . . .

couldn't we get the front verandah <?Pened?' The
front verandah was overgrown with creepers. The
geraniums flourished like weeds. It was dark in
the daytime and no sound p_enetrated.

' Let's go out,' said Lotte.

'And what about the fish? The fish in the aquarium - shall we abandon them to their fate?'

'No, God forbid,' said Lotte.

'We're not Junkers, and we're not Prussians. We
feel sorry for the little fish in the aquarium. As
long as we live we'll feel sorry for the little fish in
the aquarium.'

'Of course we will,' said Lotte.

'In that case, how can you suggest going out?'

The musicians too were afraid to leave their
rooms. Karl was terrorizing everyone. Only Lotte
was not afraid of him . She spoke to him softly and

94
gently and gathered crumbs in the kitchen for the fish in the aquarium. At night Karl illuminated the
water with a flashlight.

Trude's madness was now quiet and powerful.

The fear had left her. She slept peacefully and her
voice was calm.

'Soon we'll go to Poland and all will be well.'

'And Helena will come back to us too.'

'Of course.'

Martin asked his wife about Poland as if she
were an oracle. Ever since the pharmacy had been
looted his world had collapsed . He sat in the room
and never went out. Trude sometimes said, 'Why
don't you go out? Aren't you interested in the
outside world anymore?' When she spoke about

Poland her eyes lit up, and the sorrow was erased
from her brow. A new, young skin seemed to be
growing over her face. She laughed.

Martin asked many questions. 'Are the rivers in

Poland beautiful?'

And Trude spared no details . There was no
country as beautiful as Poland, no air as pure as

Polish air.

'And Yiddish? You know I don't speak Yiddish.'

'There's nothing easier than learning Yiddish.

It's a simple, beautiful language, and Polish too
is a beautiful language.'

There was strength in her voice and strength in
her eyes . Martin stood feebly at her side. He had
absorbed her sickness, but in him it was without

95

power, without roots. Sadness gripped him like a
vise. Trude berated him and said: 'If you had any
faith, you would be happy.'

And when evening fell and the air grew dusky,
she drew the busy streets of Lodz into the room,
and her mother, and her brothers and sisters; she
spoke Yiddish and Polish alternately. Martin sat
and listened to the many voices. And when the
voices had exhausted her she said goodnight as if
she were parting from people who were about to
fall asleep.

26

THE town was full of strangers. The shadows of
the forest returned to the town and spread themselves over the paving stones of the Imperial Square.

Mountain breezes blew in the alleys and there was
a smell of moss. Sally and Gertie stood at their gate
and offered the strangers mugs of soup.

'What is this place?' someone asked, as if waking
from a troubled sleep.

'The holiday resort of Badenheim, the Music

Festival city.'

'Where do the concerts take place?'

'In the hall.'

g6

At the sound of these words the man seemed to
come alive again.

In the late afternoon the people would gather
next to the hotel entrance and Dr. Pappenheim
would speak to them . How his face had changed
over the past few months! He would tell them about

Poland. About the wonderful world to which they
were going. 'Here we have no life left/ he would
say. 'Here everything has become empty.'

Only a few days before, they had been sitting in
their warm houses, busy with their flourishing
practices . Now they were sitting here, without
shelter. Everything had been taken from them;
it was like a bad dream. Someone asked for details
about housing conditions, employment, transferring foreign currency, and a man who had lost his wife on the way asked if she had perhaps gone on ahead and was already in Poland.

'Will we have a chance to hear the twins?' someone asked in the dissolving darkness.

Salo was happy. His stay here would cost the
company a fortune. Everything was at their expense, even the journey to Poland. The musicians liked him and called him 'the agent.' And Salo, used to words and soliciting for trade, sat in the
armchair and held forth : a man should broaden
his horizons. Ever since he was a boy he had loved
traveling. 'You should make Dr. Pappenheim sign

Form 101 . He's sure to have it, every employer

97

does. Travel by all means, but like me, at the
company's expense.'

'Form 101, what's that? I've never heard of it,'

said one of the musicians.

'I've been using it for years, it's an official form.

I discovered it immediately. It's brought me a
good bit of indirect income, I can tell you.'

One of the strangers invaded the hotel and
threatened to murder the owner. 'Ostjuden, you're
to blame!'

'I'm not to blame for anything.' The hotel owner
stood next to the stranger like a prisoner.

The man shouted and waved his fists, and since
he was in the grip of madness people approached
him and tried to explain that things weren't as
bad as they looked. A board of appeals would
surely exempt him.

Every committee had a board of appeals, that
was a well-known fact. No committee could simply
do as it pleased. There was a question of procedure,
after all. And if the lower courts made a mistake,
then the higher courts were always there to remedy
it. There was no need to get upset.

.

'If you're right, where does the board of appeals
sit?' asked the man, a little appeased.

'They'll probably make an announcement soon.'

'I don't understand,' said the man. 'Am I a
criminal to be thrown out of my house? You tell
me, please.'

'It's not a question of crime, but of a misunder-

standing. We too, to a certain extent, are the victims
of a misunderstanding.'

The words procedure and appeal seemed to satisfy
him. He had apparently once studied law. He
calmed down a little. The contact with the old
words restored him to his sanity.

Since the hotel owner saw that the old words
had a good effect on the agitated soul of the
stranger, he continued to use the same tone with
him . The board of appeals would surely start
hearing the appeals soon. They would be sure to
discover plenty of flaws in these hasty procedures.

Someone had probably made a mistake. There
were empty beds upstairs. He could rest a little.

Tomorrow they would probably know more.

The man was embarrassed, ashamed. 'I didn't
know; he said. 'I'm sorry. Suddenly everything
was taken away from me. They drove me here on
the grounds that I'm a Jew. They must have meant
the Ostjuden . And I'm like you, an Austrian. My
forefathers? I don't know. Maybe, who knows.

What does it matter who my forefathers were?'

Then he turned to the hotel owner and said
loudly: ' Please accept my apologies.' The latter
hurried to assist him as if he were an honored
guest. They went upstairs.

'Why don't you sleep? You've been through a
hard time,' said the hotel owner. 'Here are some
pajamas, a towel.'

The stranger, chastened, took off his sweater

99

and shoes and said - as he was perhaps accustomed
to saying to his wife - ' Please wake me early in
the morning.'

27

GRAY days settled on the town. In the hotel
they stopped serving meals. Everyone stood in
line to get their lunch - barley soup and dry bread.

The musicians opened their suitcases. A smell of
sawdust and open roads swept through the long
corridors.

Suddenly the old rabbi appeared in the street.

Many years ago they had brought him to Badenheirn from the east. For a few years he had officiated in the local synagogue - or to tell the truth, the old-age home . When the old men died the place
was left empty. The rabbi had a paralytic stroke.

In the town they were sure that he had died along
with the other old men.

The hotel owner stood in the doorway and said,

'Come in, sir; as if he were not the owner but the
doorman. Two musicians lifted the wheelchair.

The rabbi shaded his eyes and a blue vein throbbed
on his white forehead.

'Jews?' asked the rabbi .

'Jews,' said the hotel owner.

100

'And who is your rabbi?' asked the rabbi .

'You, you are our rabbi.'

The rabbi's face expressed a grim astonishment.

His old memory tried to discover if they were
making fun of him.

'Perhaps you will allow us to offer you something to drink?'

The rabbi frowned. 'Kosher?' he asked.

The hotel owner dropped his eyes and did not
reply.

'Are you all Jews here?' The old man recovered
and a distant spark of cunning glinted in his eyes.

'All, I think.'

'And what do you do?'

'Nothing,' smiled the hotel owner.

Samitzky came to the rescue and said : 'We're
getting ready to return to Poland.'

'What?' said the rabbi, straining to hear.

'To return to Poland,' Samitzky repeated.

The next day the mystery cleared up a little.

A Christian woman, a good woman, had looked
after him all these years, but suddenly she had
abandoned him. The rabbi spent a few days trying to move the wheelchair, and in the end he succeeded.

The rabbi asked questions and the people answered . The many years of isolation had made him forget the language, and he spoke a mixture of Yiddish and Hebrew. A number of musicians
appeared in the doorway, suitcases in their hands.

101

'Who are they?' asked the rabbi.

'The musicians.'

'Are they preparing to play?'

'No. They want to go home but the roads are
blocked.'

'Let them stay and spend the Sabbath with us,
let them stay and spend the Sabbath.'

'What did he say?' asked the musicians in surprise.

The leaden autumn light now ruled the town.

The hotel owner stood in the kitchen like one
of the servants dishing out the soup . No new
supplies arrived. Stocks were running out. The
dining room looked like a charity soup kitchen.

And in the evening long shadows crept over the
tables. A dumb awkwardness stared from the
musicians' eyes. A few days ago they were still
indignant. And now all their desires seemed to
have been quenched. They understood : there
was no more going back. Even Dr. Pappenheim's
optimism faded. The pastry shop owner waved
his fists in the direction of the hotel, in fact in the
direction of Pappenheim, and vowed to kill him.

'What is the rabbi saying?' asked Frau Zauberblit.

'He's sleeping,' whispered the hotel owner.

The musicians had no pity on the hotel owner
and stuffed china dishes and silver cutlery into
their bags. Samitzky reproached them: 'What do
you think you're doing? In Poland people don't
eat from china plates.'

102

'We're not doing anything wrong/ said one of them, like a person caught stealing for the first
time. 'If we ever return, we'll give it all back.'

The luxuriant creepers had crept inside and were
now filling the verandah in a last burst of growth
before the winter. The abandoned chairs stood
dumbly in their places. The shade lay heavily on
the geranium pots and the flowers were as red as
rotten beets.

'What happened to the major?' asked someone.

'He shot himself.'

Next to the closed shutters of the pastry shop
stood Bertha Shtumglantz. She had been brought
back to the town the day before. Her parents had
died many years ago and the house had been
transferred to the town council.

'Do you remember me?' asked Sally.

'I think so. Didn't we study together in the

Gymnasium?'

'No, my dear, we didn't. My name is Sally and
this is Gertie.'

'I must be mistaken then,' said Bertha apologetically.

'My name is Sally. This is Gertie.'

Bertha did not remember. It was evident that
her memory had abandoned her. Her eyes wandered about aimlessly.

'Why is everything closed?'

'The town is getting ready to be transferred.

Dr. Pappenheim says that everyone is being transferred to Poland - us too.'

103

'Dr. Pappenheim?'

'The impresario, don't you remember him?'

Strange people were brought in from the gates.

Dr. Pappenheim stood at the hotel doorway like a
doorman.

'Why have you come here?' asked someone.

'They were born here and they have to return
here.'

'It's not so bad here,' intervened Pappenheim .

'Mandelbaum is with us and so are the twins .'

'The twins? Who are the twins?'

'Where are you from, Jews?' asked the rabbi as
people used to ask in the old days. An ancient
grief glazed his eyes.

'This is our rabbi,' boasted Dr. Pappenheim.

'A real rabbi of the old school.'

The rabbi asked questions all the time. The hotel
owner put on a skullcap and gave him cold water
to drink.

Every day new people arrived, the descendants
of old Badenheim families. The curse of the town
had pursued them all these years and now it had
finally caught up with them. They wandered about
in the paralyzed void of the town like lost souls.

In the middle of all this Dr. Pappenheirn received a
letter from the Sanitation Department demanding
that he place all the artists registered with him
at their disposal. Pappenheim was delighted :

'A comprehensive concert tour awaits us! '

The autumn grew gray. The wind muttered in

104
the empty s treets. Mandelbaum tortured his trio mercilessly. He polished every note. The twins
went into seclusion again . A grim atmosphere
settled on the hotel. Pappenheim walked on tiptoe
and whispered, 'Shush, don't disturb the music.'

The musicians ate their bread silently. 'Rehearsing
won't help us anymore. What you failed to do
when you were young you can't make up for later.'

Pappenheim was consoling : where they were
going they would have lots of time, they would be
able to practice. He too intended to get down to
some serious research.

Dr. Pappenheim made constant attemp ts to
communicate with the pastry shop owner. 'Why
are you angry with us? What have we done? We
haven't done anything wrong. Tell us what we've
done wrong. In Poland you'll be able to open a
bigger pastry shop than this one. A man must
broaden his horizons.' But words were useless.

The pastry shop owner stood next to the shuttered
window and cursed. If it wasn't for the hotel, for
the corruption, the authorities wouldn't have closed
off the town. It was all because of Pappenheim.

He ought to be arrested. Only at night did he fall
silent.

Mandelbaum seemed better pleased. The trio
filled him with enthusiasm. He himself was getting
new sounds out of the violin .

'When are we leaving?' he asked Pappenheim,
in the tone he sometimes used with his own agent.

105

'Soon,' said Dr. Pappenheim, as if he had some
secret information.

'We're improving you know, we're improving.'

On Saturday night there was a heavy rainfall.

The rabbi prayed aloud. The people hugged the
walls like shadows. The hotel owner brought wine
and candles and the rabbi made the blessing.

Straight after the blessing the musicians went
upstairs to pack. Their suitcases were big and
swollen. Dr. Pappenheim was surprised at all the
commotion. 'I'm going just as I am/ he said,

'without anything. If they want me they'll take
me just as I am, without anything.'

28

THE last days of Badenheim were illuminated
by a dult yellow light. There were no more cigarettes. People fed in secret on the stolen drugs .

Some were gay and others sunk into depression.

The people stood by the windows or climbed to
the upper floors. The recent rains had brought the
autumn leaves in the Luxembourg Gardens to life.

It was a splendid sight. And the hotel resembled
a place of worship in which you could cry out or
be silent and no one would ask you why.

The headwaiter was learning Yiddish. Samitzky

106
wrote long lists of words down in his notebook and sat and studied them . He had started to walk
with a stoop and stare into space. His Austrian
accent clung to him like a leech but he tried his
best to overcome this obstacle too. Salo consoled
him, saying that in Poland it would be easy to
learn. Everyone spoke Yiddish there.

' I find the language very interesting,' said the
headwaiter.

Martin was bowed down with grief. The pharmacy had been cleaned out by the looters . Cosmetics were strewn all over the floor, a testimony to the violence. All his pleas were in vain. The people avoided him as though he were a policeman.

The rabbi recovered. There was a look of cold
sanity on his pale face. Pappenheim sat next to
him and spoke eloquently: the people were going
gladly to Poland. They were happy, looking forward to it eagerly.

'And what will you do there?'

'What do you mean?'

'Do the people intend to keep the commandments?' The rabbi smiled shrewdly, as if he knew that his question was indiscreet.

'The headwaiter is studying hard and I myself
am now reading Buber's great work.'

'Buber. At one time there was a lot of talk about
him. So his books are still read?'

'I can promise you that the hostility toward
the Ostjuden is a thing of the past.' There was

107

a pleading note in Dr. Pappenheim's voice, as
if he were seeking the rabbi's blessing for the
journey. But the rabbi was unbending.

'And how will you make a living?' he asked.

'There are great artists among us,' said Dr. Pappenheim, his tongue coming back to life again, 'artists of world stature. Dr. Shutz is a young mathematician of genius. Dr. Fussholdt is a famous historian.'

Gaiety again gained the upper hand. Sally and

Gertie put on their best clothes. Salo made jokes
all the time. Even the wretched Mitzi laughed to
split her sides. Martin's pills succeeded where
the artists had failed. Only Martin's sorrow knew
no bounds. He recited all the drugs of death by
their Latin and German names. But his was a voice
calling in the wilderness.

On Karl the drugs apparently had a bad effect.

He was angry. His eyes flickered with a strange
flame. Lotte did not stir from his side, but he could
not control himself and all his anger was directed
against Dr. Langmann. 'Sport he wants to introduce. Sport! '

'What does the rabbi say?' the people asked.

'A wonderful man,' said Pappenheim proudly.

The musicians were miserable now. They had
robbed the hotel, packed their bags, accumulated
fortunes; now they lay in bed at night munching
chocolate. But these secret feasts did not bring
them any joy. They seemed like thieves in their
loS
own eyes and they were afraid, simply afraid.

Samitzky remembered a song people had sung in

Poland when he was a child, and the tune took
hold of him like fire. It spread with a kind of fierce
intensity. Gertie rolled on the floor like a ball and
nobody seemed surprised.

The drugs ran out and the people sank into
themselves, into their sadness. Despair now stared
from every wall. The kitchen was dark, the tea
tables were deserted, and the two chandeliers
hung askew, like the morning after a wild party.

What could be done? What could be remedied?

If only the Festival could be revived ! Was there
no chance of reviving the Festival? Mandelbaum
tyrannized his musicians and refused to leave his
room. The twins said that they would appear in

Warsaw when they reached Poland. The yanuka
was behaving like a spoiled child. He would only
sing for boxes of candy. His cheeks grew pale.

He grew fat. He had apparently lost his voice.

Without music and with no means of breathing
life into the people, the performers withdrew into
themselves.

Dr. Pappenheim stood at the hotel gates and
held forth to the strangers. Someone asked for information about the Festival. Pappenheim apologized for the confusion in the schedule. He had done everything in his power, but what could he do if this year other matters had taken precedence?

If only the Festival could be revived ! Was there
l<>g

no way in which the Festival could be revived?

The people now dogged Dr. Pappenheim's footsteps not with demands but with pleas. The drug they had become accustomed to over the years, it was this drug they now craved above all . Dr.

Pappenheim stood by the great artist's door and
begged : 'Just one concert, just one, have mercy
on us . . . . '

29

THERE was no end to surprises: Helena returned.

She stood at the gate in a long dress with a shawl
over her head, like a peasant woman turned out
by her husband. She entered the town and the
sentries did not ask her where she was going.

She walked slowly down the street like someone
returning without joy or desire to an old home.

For a moment she stood outside the looted pharmacy, and then she went inside.

'Helena,' said Trude without any particular surprise, as if Helena had just come home from school.

Helena drew up a chair and sat down.

The night before Trude had sat in the armchair
murmuring to herself: 'When will Helena return?

Tomorrow or the day after. She is already on her
way to us.' Martin no longer questioned her. Her

1 10
disease had filled him completely. She spoke about the town of her birth in Poland as if she had left it
only a few weeks before, and once she had even
approached Samitzky and spoken to him in Polish.

Samitzky was overjoyed to hear his native tongue
and he struck up an animated conversation with
her. Frau Zauberblit stood to one side and marveled at the fondness they felt for their native tongue.

Helena sat without speaking. Trude asked neither
how nor why. Martin went down on his knees
and kissed her hands and in his embarrassment
he said, 'Mother keeps on saying, Helena's on her
way, Helena's on her way . . . . '

'Father is excited,' said Trude. 'See how excited
he is.'

Now Martin knew that everything Trude said
was true. And the sorrow he had borne within
him for many days melted into tears.

'What was it like?' asked Martin, as if he were
asking about some excursion or exam. 'We were
a little worried.'

'I was not worried,' said Trude.

'Your mother is very glad to be returning to the
town of her birth in Poland.'

And in the evening Martin gave them tea and
cookies. It was like old times. Helena took the
peasant shawl off her head and her high forehead
transmitted a kind of dry sorrow. She stirred her
tea and the sounds died down one after another.

1 11

'We're leaving; said Trude. 'Your father has already wound up his affairs.'

Helena raised her eyes and gave them a long,
caressing look.

'A goy will always be a goy. And your goy too
is a goy. I'm not sorry: said Trude.

Helena dropped her eyes.

'I am right, yes?' said Trude. The subject was
an old one that had never been discussed openly
in the house.

30

THE dogs tried to jump over the walls but they
did not have the strength. The sentries drove
them back in. They grew very gaunt and hostile
to people . The headwaiter patted them gently
and said that if they behaved themselves and
were obedient he would take them to Poland. It
all depended on them. The dogs could not understand what was happening. The angry glare in their eyes shone like polished metal.

And at night they tore the silence to shreds.

The people had nightmares. Mitzi said that she
had never had such terrible nightmares in all her
life. Salo interpreted her dreams favorably and
said that it was all because of the dogs - if it

112
weren't for the dogs they could all sleep in peace, the mild autumn air was good for sleep.

Dr. Langmann was no longer indignant. He sat
in an armchair and looked at the people, putting
a word in every now and then. The people did
not bother him . Even Karl no longer seemed to
feel hostility toward him . But Mandelbaum was
very angry with the dogs. He kept emerging from
his room and thundering, 'Quiet, barbarians !

They should be destroyed.' The pastry shop owner
had shut himself up. The old pastry cook stood in
the doorway in his pressed suit and stared into
space. The long years by the ovens had left him
with no will of his own . Salo explained to him
that it was necessary to improve economic and
social conditions. The worker was exploited. In

Poland there was a militant proletariat which
fought for its place in industry. It needed courage
of course, but once you overcame your initial fear
you could see how stupid you had been in the
past. When the pastry shop owner overheard he
told the old pastry cook not to pay any attention
to clowns. All that was needed was to send the

Ostjuden back to the east. In recent years they had
been flooding Austria.

'What about the hotel owner?' asked the old man.

'The hotel owner is an Austrian, that's true, but
he was weak and opened the door to that buffoon,

Dr. Pappenheim, the arch Ostjude and source of
all our troubles. Who invented the Festival if not

113

Pappenheim? Who filled the town with morbid
artists and decadent vacationers?'

'And what about me?' asked the pastry cook.

'You were born here; your parents were born
here. You are of the Jewish faith but not an Ostjude.'

The pastry cook was happy. The pastry shop
owner had never taken the trouble to talk to him
before . All these years he had treated him harshly
and in the summer season he had worked him
like a slave. But now he sat and talked to him like
a human being.

'And who brought Sally and Gertie here?' inquired the pastry cook.

'What do you mean who brought them? Pappenheim of course ! Don't you remember, he tried to pass them off as singers. I at any rate never allowed them to cross the threshold of my shop.'

The headwaiter could no longer control the dogs.

Their hostility toward the people grew more bitter
by the day. They fell on Lotte and tore her dress.

Karl swore to himself that he would poison them.

The headwaiter implored them : 'After all, you
aren't wild animals . If you keep on behaving like
this I won't be able to take you to Poland. All these
years I've been feeding you and now, when I have
no food to give you, you don't want to listen to
me anymore.'

'What can I do?' the headwaiter said in despair
to the people .

'The pastry shop owner will look after them .

He's staying, isn't he?'

'He hates them.'

The autumn flowers were already filling the air
with their pungent scents and the leaden sun
shone steadily above the high windows, climbing
slowly and sucking the shade up into itself. The
tennis court was covered with yellow leaves and
looked like an abandoned field.

'What can I do? I can't control them anymore,'

muttered the headwaiter to himself. 'If only I had
some fresh meat perhaps I'd be able to influence
them - they're only dogs, after all.'

And when the sun sank and the light of the
night fell on the street the pastry shop owner stuck
his head out of the window and shouted loudly:

'It's all Dr. Pappenheim's fault. I would never
have let him in in the first place. Let him go east the east is the right place for him. We haven't done anyone any harm.' There was a stubborn rhythm in his voice and from the hotel lobby it sounded
like someone shouting slogans over a loudspeaker.

In the end he withdrew his head and a heavy
silence descended with the darkness and enfolded
the people huddled in the comers of the lobby.

31

AND there was no end to surprises. One night
two guards from the sanitorium appeared to take

Frau Zauberblit back to the institution. They had
searched for a long time and now that they had
found her they were happy. Frau Zauberblit was
not surprised : like an escaped convict she was
prepared for anything, and for this bitter possibility too.

The two aged guards looked healthy and robust
in their sanitorium uniforms. One was carrying a
leather briefcase which held a search warrant and
an order for administrative arrest.

'How did you find me in this Godforsaken hole?'

she laughed.

'We searched for a long time; they said without
anger.

In recent days her cough had grown worse,
there was more blood in her phlegm, and the
pains in her back were very bad. Her medicines
were running out, and Death came back to her in
exactly the same guise he had worn in the sanitorium.

'Why don't you sit down? It's such a long time
since we've seen each other,' said Frau Zauberblit,
as if she were talking to old friends.

116

' Our sanitorium is emigrating too.'

'The Jewish patients.'

When she was first hospitalized the guards were
still young men. The female patients used to flirt
with them. They liked the peasant in them . The
years passed and they too grew old, but their
robust health did not leave them. Their faces
were ruddy with sausages and beer.

' I'm already registered here, you know, with
the esteemed Sanitation Department.'

'Why not come with everyone else?' they said
in kind, fatherly tones.

Dr. Pappenheim rushed to her aid, but the aged
guards, who looked like two men of God on a
religious mission, explained calmly that all the

Jewish patients had already been assembled and
only Frau Zauberblit was missing. The transport
could not leave without her.

'Only I am missing?' she exclaimed. ' In that
case, let's go. They say that the air in Poland is
purer. I need pure air.'

'That's what our doctors say, too.'

'If so, let's go,' said Frau Zauberblit. ' Let's go
back to the sanitorium. People have to go back to
where they came from. So they say, if I'm not
mistaken.'

'Have you no suitcase?' asked the guards. ' It's
chilly in the evening.'

'What's the hurry?' Dr. Pappenheim tried to delay
the departure. 'We're all going to the same place.'

1 17

'The sanitorium patients are traveling under medical supervision,' said one of them gently.

'You're leaving us then?' There was an imploring
note in Dr. Pappenheim's voice.

'Not for long.'

Frau Zauberblit put on her summer dress and
said, 'I'm ready.'

'Isn't that dress too thin?' one of them asked
again in the voice of a concerned old friend.

'I can't endure heavy clothes. Did a lot of people
run away this year?'

'Only five . We've brought them all back. They
have to go to Poland too.'

Samitzky was asleep in the Luxembourg Gardens. All night long he had been drinking and quarrelling with the pastry cook, cursing Karl and threatening to break the aquarium. In the
morning he fell exhausted onto a bench in the
park. All attempts to wake him were in vain. He
slept deeply.

'Let's go then,' she said. 'Why should we stand
here doing nothing?' A sick beauty bloomed on
her face. The people accompanied her to the gate.

She kissed the yanuka on the forehead and said,

'I expect great things of you.' No carriage stood
waiting. They walked off in the direction of the
station. The autumn light, the leaden light, dominated the fields. The effects of the rain were already apparent in the town pasture. Here and there a horse or cow grazed. And the river was like a

118
ribbon of silver. 'Isn't it beautiful?' Frau Zauberblit asked the guards.

When Sarnitzky woke and they told him, he said
nothing . In the evening he smashed the glass of
the back door. The splinters were scattered everywhere. The hotel owner did not hurry to the scene.

The people knew that the man's pain was greater
than he was, and that there was no consolation.

The old pastry cook had freed himself of the
yoke of the pastry shop owner. At night he buried
the dead in the back of the Luxembourg Gardens .

There was a kind of calm detachment in his movements, as if he had been a gravedigger all his life.

Every day more people were crowded in . The
new people were so feeble and withdrawn, they
were like birds who had lost contact with the sky.

They died silently, without crying out. The old
pastry cook prepared them for burial and buried
them at night.

32

ON the last night they celebrated Gertie's fortieth birthday. Sally and Gertie decorated their house in honor of their guests. It was an oldfashioned country cottage, well preserved and adorned with rose bushes . Inside a feminine

1 19
softness reigned. Here counts, Grafs, industrialists, and various tired intellectuals had found a lodging
for the night. True, the house was no longer what
it had been . They did their best to give the parlor
the air of feminine softness they liked. But to no
avail. The house now looked like a shabby roadside inn. A gray light poured from the lamps and spilled onto the floor. The heavy carpet looked very worn.

Dr. Pappenheim came first. He kissed Gertie's
cheeks and said in a festive tone, 'It's been a long
time since I was last here.'

They were as pleased as if it were not the familiar

Dr. Pappenheim but a visitor from far away. 'I
am the bearer of important news today: he added.

'The emigration procedures have already been
posted on the notice boards.'

'What do you say ! ' said Gertie.

Dr. Shutz and the schoolgirl arrived next. The
schoolgirl wore a long blue dress in honor of the
occasion. She was taller than Shutz by a head.

There was a quiet authority in her bearing. Shutz
drew up a chair for her and she sat down. Sally
and Gertie withdrew a little, as from a stranger.

On the low table they had spread an embroidered
cloth. In the comer was a vase with dried flowers.

A delicate scent of feminine perfumes pervaded
the air.

'Have you heard?' said Gertie. 'The emigration
procedures have been posted on the notice boards.'

120

Dr. Langmann came in stooping from the back
entrance. Karl's stares pursued him all the time.

Perhaps here he would be free of them. He had
found a big bottle of liqueur and brought it to the
party. He kissed Gertie's hand and said, 'How
nice it is here. Karl refuses to budge from the
aquarium . What does he want of the fish? What
harm have they done anyone?'

'He changes the water and feeds them bread
crumbs,' said the schoolgirl in a cool, grave voice.

Dr. Langmann looked at her suspiciously.

Dr. Pappenheim had done his best to persuade

Mandelbaum to come to the party, but his pleas
had fallen on deaf ears. The great artist was making
his last effort, he explained . But the twins had
agreed to come. They had dressed the yanuka in
a new suit, and he sat in an armchair like an adult.

Gertie was very embarrassed and kept on saying,

'Excuse me.' Sally, who was two years older, for
some reason now seemed like Gertie's aunt. Sally's
legs had swollen and were ravaged by varicose
veins.

Salo came too. He said that Karl was preparing
to take the fish with him. He kept poking about
in the aquarium. Nobody laughed . Gertie's embarrassment continued to embarrass her guests until Dr. Pappenheim rose and said that the time had come to drink a toast in honor of the occasion.

Salo approached Dr. Langmann and whispered,

'There's no help for it, everyone has to go.'

121

Dr. Langmann did not reply.

'There's nothing to be afraid of. In Poland
there are lots of Jews. The Jews help each other,
you know.'

Dr. Langmann again ignored his whispers, but

Salo would not leave him alone. ' I come from
there,' he went on in the same whisper. 'I spent
my childhood and youth in Poland. I know them
well. A year or two among them and you'll forget
everything. You'll get up in the morning and go
to synagogue. Is that bad? You'll pray. Is that bad?

Is it a sin to pray? And if you're lucky enough to
have a shop in the center of town you'll earn a
good living too. Even the peddlers make a living.

My father was a peddler and my mother had a
stall in the marketplace. We were a lot of kids
at home. Too many. I was the seventh. Are you
listening to me?'

'No; said Dr. Langmann with loathing.

'Don't put on airs. You're going to my birthplace and motherland . All I'm trying to do is give you a little information. I'd advise you to leave your arrogant ways behind you. In Poland people
treat each other with respect.'

Sally approached the twins and said, ' How can
we gladden the hearts of the artists?' The twins
now looked like monks . Their hair grew wildly
on their heads. They sat in a comer and did not
open their mouths. Mitzi laughed. Every word
that was said aroused her laughter. 'Why are you
laughing?' asked Sally.

122

'For no reason. Just because people make me laugh.'

But the liqueur did not bring gaiety. The people
sank deeper into the armchairs. The light from
the lamps poured onto the floor as from a broken
tube. The colored wall, adorned with reproductions, seemed to come alive: it was as if dormant veins had started to throb in it. Nocturnal shadows slunk against the windows and a fat fly beat against
the screen . If there were any words left they belonged to Salo. But Salo did not speak. A kind of smile split open on his forehead. An evil smile, smeared there with poisonous paint.

The lights grew dimmer, and delicate sounds
invaded the room from outside. It seemed that
the country parlor was already living a life of its
own, a life without people.

'The emigration procedures seem very efficient very efficient indeed, if I may say so,' said Dr.

Pappenheim.

'In that case, our expectations were not in vain;
said Dr. Shutz.

'Very efficient indeed,' repeated Pappenheim.

'You'll be able to teach in the mathematics department,' said Salo to Dr. Shutz. 'Poland is a cultured country.'

'Are they connected to the University ofVienna?'

inquired Dr. Shutz.

'I imagine so,' said Salo. 'All centers of culture
are connected to Vienna or Berlin.'

They had another drink. The liqueur was sweet

123

and had a cloying, disagreeable taste. Old words
came floating to the surface, and old faces . 'The

Bluebird,' for example, and the deceiver who had
stood in the courtyard proclaiming at the top of
his voice, 'Save your souls before it's too late ! '

'Tell me, Dr. Pappenheim, how did it all end,
that strange affair?' asked Gertie, with an affectation of interest, in the same manner in which she had probably once �sked counts about their business affairs.

'What do you mean?' said Dr. Pappenheim. ' I
asked Professor Fussholdt to testify on my behalf.

He made a brilliant speech.'

'How interesting; said Gertie in the same affected tone. 'And you were acquitted, of course.'

'I, to tell the truth, suspected him all along,'

said Sally.

'An engaging rogue, a prophet and lecher at
one and the same time ! ' said Dr. Pappenheim.

The headwaiter sat in a comer, elegant in his
black suit. He wore this black suit rarely, keeping
it for special oc�asions. For some reason he looked
like a man in whom the fire of life has died down.

He looked ill at ease, and from time to time he
wiped his high red forehead with a folded handkerchief. He listened to the conversation without taking part in it, as if they were speaking of matters too weighty for him.

Gertie stood in the kitchen doorway and apologized . 'I feel so ashamed. We have nothing to offer you.'

124

'Never mind,' said Pappenheim. 'We'll take a raincheck for a party in Warsaw, a lavish party.'

'I promise,' said Gertie.

Pappenheim sipped the liqueur and returned
to his theme. 'In Poland we'll be able to diversify
our Festival. There's a wealth of folklore there,
authentic folklore.'

'Of course,' interrupted Salo, 'I myself once saw
a wonderful play in Yiddish, Bontze the Silent

I think it was called. My father took me.'

'What do you say, Dr. Langmann? East and West
will be as one ! ' said Dr. Pappenheim.

Dr. Langmann removed his empty pipe from
his mouth and spat out, 'Cheap romanticism ! '

They sat and chatted. Their voices mingled .

The main speaker was Salo and all he wanted
was to annoy Dr. Langmann, but Dr. Langmann
seemed indifferent to his taunts.

It was late. Dr. Pappenheim rose and said:

'Good-by, house; au revoir, house. You're staying here and we're setting off on our travels .

Au revoir, maidens, until tomorrow morning at
seven o'clock sharp on the hotel steps.'

The damp night air struck them in the face. In

Mandelbaum's window the lights were off. The
music was stilled. Karl stood poring over the
aquarium as if he were registering every delicate
vibration in the green water. Lotte sat in the armchair and watched him . The people walked slowly down the street. There was dew on the paving stones and the air was dense with the mossy smell

125

of the autumn forests. No one mentioned the
name of Frau Milbaum. For two weeks now she
had not been seen in the lobby. The thought that
she was sitting enthroned in her room - a body
without a soul - this thought was too terrible to
put into words.

The looted pharmacy looked like a dark, gaping
cave. The ripped-out shutter lying in the gutter
turned its ragged edge, all bent out of shape, toward the street with the grim expression peculiar to metal. Trude sat in an armchair and leafed through a magazine. Helena's homecoming had revived
in her the familiar movements of the past. Her
happiness was drugged and expressionless.

'The musicians, my musicians, have looted the
hotel,' recalled Dr. Pappenheim and burst out
laughing.

The pastry shop was overgrown with creepers.

The streetlight illuminated the bushes and the
fallen leaves. The house itself was sunk in total
darkness.

'What do you say to a strawberry tart and a cup
of coffee?' said Mitzi .

Td give the world for them,' said Salo.

They walked on toward the Luxembourg Gardens. The dogs stood next to the streetlight. They stood without moving. There was a kind of yearning in their silent gaze. They had grown thinner than the people. The headwaiter crushed stale bread in water for them, but they could not digest

126

it. They had tried to break out of the town several
times, but the sentries had stopped them . Two
had been shot, and the two survivors seemed to
understand that their own fate would be no different from that of their fellows. You could see that they wanted to die, but Death did not seem to want them yet. Ever since the death of their
friends they had stopped begging and fawning;
they had retreated into the bushes and waited for

Death, and because Death did not come for them
they came out and stood under the light.

The headwaiter approached the bushes. For a
moment his eyes met theirs and he cried : 'Who
wants to come with me to Poland?' The dogs did
not stir.

'I'm giving you one more chance,' said the headwaiter in a thin but very clear voice. 'Who wants to come with me to Poland?'

'I see that you prefer to stay here then,' he said
and turned his back on them.

' Ingrates,' whispered Pappenheim. 'They're
only dogs, after all.'

'I'm not angry with them; said the headwaiter.

'They're in mourning.'

There was a wind blowing in the Luxembourg

Gardens and delicate shadows, forest shadows,
netted the ancient cobblestones. Behind the park,
in the nebulous darkness, a number of figures
crowded together. They looked as insubstantial
as the shadows dancing by their sides . 'We must

127

get some sleep,' said Dr. Pappenheim. 'It's a long
trip to Poland.' They went in through the back
door so as not to encounter Karl's glare. Karl was
sitting in an armchair with Lotte, not far from the
aquarium.

Sally and Gertie stood watching their guests
walk away. They were afraid of being alone in
their house. In the bedrooms everything was upside down.

'I think we should just leave everything as it is.

What have we got anyway? A lot of old party
dresses and nighties,' said Gertie, who was exhausted.

'We'd better take a look first.' Sally attempted a
practical tone.

' I've got no more feeling left for this house at
all. Did you notice that the -schoolgirl didn't utter
a word all night? She hates us .'

'Pregnant women are always spiteful .'

' Poor Shutz looks so crushed next to her. You
can't imagine how crushed he is. And he used to
be such a high-spirited boy.'

'Yes, I noticed. She rules him with a rod of iron.'

The cases were not packed. The room filled up
again with the heavy female perfumes. Gertie sank
onto the sofa and fell asleep and Sally covered her
with a woolen blanket. Sally was afraid to sleep
alone in the untidy bedroom. She opened the
folding bed and pulled it up to the sofa. Gertie's
sleep was profound and completely detached from

128
the outside world. 'Everything's over,' said Sally to herself, and passed her hand over Gertie's cool
forehead.

33

THE next day was clear and cold. Mandelbaum
rose early and stood with his trio on the smooth
hotel steps. His white suit gave him a casual,
sporty air, but the weeks he had spent shut up
in his room had left their mark. His face looked
drained . There was a darting, nervous look in his
eyes, as if he were suffering from an attack of the
jitters before an important performance. The trio,
also dressed in white suits, stood silently by his
side. In the course of the years they had spent
with Mandelbaum they had lost their freedom of
movement. They stood and looked at the view.

The morning was fine and feathery plumes of light
covered the roof tiles. The air was cool and fresh.

'Where's the carriage?' Mandelbaum cried suddenly.

Dr. Pappenheim, who was used to responding
to the artists' every caprice, came out immediately
and said, 'The emigration arrangements are evidently not yet complete.'

'In that case we'll have to waste our time here

129
doing nothing,' said Mandelbaum. There was no anger in his voice. He seemed quite content.

The trio had accomplished the possible and even
the impossible. ' And the pastry shop, what's happened to the pastry shop?'

'Everything has been closed down in readiness
for the emigration,' explained Dr. Pappenheim.

' In that case, we'll have to wait for coffee until
we get to Warsaw,' said Mandelbaum and turned
back to his trio.

'Has the maestro already appeared in Warsaw?'

inquired Dr. Pappenheim.

'A couple of times. An enthusiastic and sensitive
audience, more so than the Austrians, I should
say.'

' I'm glad to hear it,' said Dr. Pappenheim.

While they were talking Dr: Shutz and the schoolgirl appeared . The schoolgirl was wearing the same long dress she had worn the night before.

Her whole bearing bespoke pride, the pride of a
woman who has taken her fate into her own hands
and has no regrets. Shutz looked weak and feeble
next to her. The last bloom of youth had vanished
from his face. A network of wrinkles lined his
temples. He was still slender, but he had started
walking with a slight stoop. He wore a heavy
winter coat.

'Allow me to introduce Dr. Shutz,' said Dr.

Pappenheim.

'Honored,' said Mandelbaum; and Shutz, who

130
was carrying a wicker basket on his ann, fumbled awkwardly over the handshake.

'This is my wife,' he said in embarrassment.

The schoolgirl turned away with an angry, reproving expression on her face.

For a moment it seemed that the light carriages,
the splendid opera carriages, were about to appear. What a festive hour that always was ! The feathery frost glittered on the roofs in a last burst of radiance. The low houses seemed a little bowed,
as if someone had draped them in an old fishing
net. There was nobody standing at the gates and
in Sally and Gertie's house a window hung open.

All night long Karl had struggled to uproot the
aquarium, but the accursed screws had rusted. In
the end, after the old saw too had failed him, he
took the fish out and put them in a bottle. It
wasn't an easy job. Lotte helped him. Now he too
stood on the smooth steps holding the bottle
wrapped in a green sweater. He cradled it in his
arms like a sleeping baby. Lotte stationed herself
by his side, ready to humor him . 'Perhaps you
should bring an extra bottle of water,' he said to
her. It was evident that she had now surrendered
completely to his madness. She went back inside
and Karl removed the sweater and scrutinized
the fish.

'Dr. Pappenheim, so we're late as usual,' said

Mandelbaum. The word late was always on his
lips. Sometimes it was he himself who was late

131
and sometimes it was the carriage that was late in coming for him. Even though Mandelbaum knew
that this time their departure was not dependent
on the impresario the words escaped him as if by
force of habit.

Mitzi was wearing a green flowered dress . She
had spent the whole night making her face up.

The disappointments of the season had been somewhat erased from her face, and a new expectation had taken their place. Her husband, Professor Fussholdt, was still busy packing the proofs of
his book. Dr. Pappenheim introduced her to

Mandelbaum. Mandelbaum said in great surprise,

'Professor Fussholdt! So Professor Fussholdt is
with us too! '

'Professor Fussholdt has been busy this season
proofreading his latest book,' said Dr. Pappenheim, 'a massive work.'

'What a shame that I didn't know,' said Mandelbaum regretfully.

Mitzi was silent. The mention of her husband's
name by Mandelbaum, and with such reverence,
was not particularly pleasing to her. Then she said,

'He'll be down in a little while. He's busy packing
his proofs.'

The hotel owner stood in the doorway. All that
was left of his impressive appearance was his silver
hair, and that was very striking now. There was a
quiet sadness in his green eyes. The musicians
emerged from the lower floor. They were dragging

132
their heavy bags, their loot. Dr. Pappenheim had spoken to them at length, but their greed was
stronger than they were. The conductor had broken
off relations with them. But the hotel owner himself was not angry with them. He stood at the door and his sad eyes were full of resignation.

The headwaiter came out with a dog. That night
the third dog had died, and in the morning the
solitary survivor had responded at last to his
blandishments. The musicians, who had accumulated large stocks of food, gave him a tin of sardines. The starving dog did not want to eat, he only drank. And the headwaiter packed a suitcase.

At first he had thought of setting out without any
luggage, but the sudden coming of the dog had
made him change his mind. He decided to pack a
medium-sized suitcase. He also managed to wash
and comb the dog, who now looked thin but neat.

'I see the dog agreed to come in the end,' said

Mitzi.

'He was left all alone.'

'But there were two dogs last night, weren't
there?'

'Yes, but one of them was shot.'

'You don't say so ! What's this one's name?'

'Lutzi .'

' I could never tell them apart. Lutzi, you say?'

'Each of them had his own personality. They
were all different. Lutzi was always the quietest
of them all. A dog with a lot of complexes, if

133

I may be permitted to use the expression. Am I right, Lutzi?'

The dog did not react.

'And so Lutzi decided to come to Poland. Strange.

He must have decided this morning then?'

'For my part,' said the headwaiter, 'I would
have been quite prepared to take them all, but
they apparently couldn't face the move.'

'What a pity; said Mitzi insincerely.

Salo too had not slept all night. He was wearing
his old suit, his traveling-salesman's suit with
the faded label of his finn. On his cap there was
a 'W' made of metal. Once he had looked very
young in this uniform, but now he looked stooped
and worn out. 'When are we leaving?' he asked,
but no one answered him. He put his suitcase
down on one side. It was a rather battered old
case which had recently been stamped with the
letter 'W' and a serial number. Salo rushed frantically to and fro like a mole exposed to the light of day. In the end he went and stood at the entrance to the bottom floor, next to the musicians. The
musicians were sitting on the floor leaning against
their bulging luggage.

Sally and Gertie dressed the yanuka. The hotel
owner had found a child's suit of winter clothing
for him in the stores. The suit fitted him. They
even found a hat, a hat with a feather. 'Why,
you're a prince, a fairy prince ! ' said Gertie. The
time he had spent in Badenheim had changed

134
him. The flickering fear had disappeared from his eyes. He had grown fat, his cheeks had grown
pink, and he had learned to understand German.

His voice had apparently been lost altogether,
and the few things he remembered about his
home, his parents, and the orphanage in Vienna
were quite gone. He was already speaking with
an Austrian accent and behaving like a spoiled
child. Sally found shoe polish and polished his
shoes. The yanuka did not say thank you or laugh.

He was too busy devouring chocolates. Ever since
he had discovered the taste of candy, he had not
stopped gorging. The people brought him presents
to placate him and he had become used to accepting
these presents as his due. Any innocence he might
once have had was quite gone now. He understood that Sally and Gertie had never studied at the university, and that the schoolgirl was carrying Dr. Shutz's child and was really not his wife. Salo
appeared and the yanuka cried, 'Salo, what do
you think of my clothes? Sally and Gertie say that

I look like a fairy prince.'

'They're quite right.'

' In that case; said the yanuka, 'the prince commands you to give him the box of candy he sees sticking out of your pocket.'

'That's not a box of candy, my dear,' said Salo
in surprise. 'It's only a pair of stockings, women's
stockings - I'm the agent for a well-known firm.'

At that moment the rabbi's voice was heard.

135

'Are you leaving me here?'

Dr. Pappenheim, who was absorbed in his conversation with Mandelbaum, nevertheless hurried to the door and said, 'We're all here still, we're all here . It's cold outside.'

' Please be good enough to take me out of here,'

said the rabbi, taking no notice at all of Dr. Pappenheim's excuses. There was a secret suspicion in the old man's heart. He seemed alert, with the alertness of a sick man already past feeling pain.

Dr. Pappenheim took hold of the handles of the
wheelchair and pushed him to the doorway.

The sun came down from the trees and spread
itself over the paving stones of the Luxembourg

Gardens. The fountains, which had not been
working for a long time, suddenly began spurting
jets of water. The sunlit water rose high in the air
and fell with a heavy noise. Perhaps the taps of
the pool had been opened too, for the schoolgirl
turned her head - or more precisely her nose - to
the right, in the direction of the pool, as if she
smelled water.

The headwaiter stroked Lutzi and tried to feed
him dry biscuits, but the dog refused to eat. Karl
approached the headwaiter, removed the sweater
from the bottle, and asked him for his advice. The
headwaiter expressed the opinion that if the journey was not too long it might be possible to save the fish. 'I've got an extra bottle of water,' said Karl. And while they were all busy talking, the
hotel owner descended the steps and walked over to the pastry shop. He stopped by the drawn shutter and called, 'Peter, aren't you coming with us?'

Everyone froze in their places. Nobody had
expected a gesture of this nature from the hotel
owner. There was no reply from inside the house.

The hotel owner repeated, more loudly than before,

'Peter, you're contravening a municipal ordinance.

You're taking a heavy responsibility on yourself.'

After a moment of silence the voice of the pastry
shop owner was heard. 'I'm not coming. Not with

Pappenheim anyway.'

'You're an intelligent man: the hotel owner called
again, as calmly as he could. 'How can you take
such. a heavy responsibility on yourself?'

' I'm staying here.'

'If you'll take my advice,' said the hotel owner
very gently, ' I'd advise you to join us . You know
very well that I only want your own good. We
have a rabbi with us. He's coming too. If he has
agreed to join us, why don't you come too?'

'I'm not religious: stated the voice from within.

There was a silence. The hotel owner started
back toward the steps.

'Why is he always picking on me? What have

I ever done to him ? I've never harmed him,'

mumbled Dr. Pappenheim.

'He's angry,' said Mandelbaum. It was obvious
that he was thinking about something else. His
body was full of music again. His feet tapped

137

lightly on the steps, as if of their own accord .

The trio also tapped silently with their feet. The
same tune had evidently begun to play in their
heads too.

'What does he want of me?' Dr. Pappenheim
repeated, but his voice was so quiet that nobody
heard him.

It was eight o'clock already but there did not
seem to be any movement at the gates. The empty
houses exuded silence and morning vapors rose
from the patches of light. There were many shadows, and they crowded round the comers of the houses, cowering together. The water from the fountains rose high into the air. Nobody ever saw
the morning hours in Badenheim, especially at
this season of the year. They were all asleep.

'Aren't you taking any luggage?' Salo asked Dr.

Pappenheim.

It was already eight o'clock and nothing was
happening. It reminded Salo of the army. You lay
in the dugouts for hours at a time. The regimental
officers went to parties in town and the junior
officers sat in the staff headquarters drinking beer.

The NCOs were only too happy to have nothing
to do, and the troops lay in the dugouts.

'Is that what it was like in the First World War?'

' Yes, exactly. And it seems to me that that's
what it's going to be like now too. We'll have to
get used to the new way of life.'

34

AT last the signal was given. Mandelbaum ran
lightly down the steps, like an athlete, and stood
at the head. Strangely enough, there were no traces
of his weeks of strict seclusion left now. The trio
stationed themselves next to him, haggard and
obedient. After them came the twins, and Sally
and Gertie with the yanuka between them. Dr.

Langmann stood in a row by himself. The heavy
musicians, burdened with their clumsy bundles,
hung back, afraid of being in the front rows. The
conductor ignored them. He was now completely
absorbed in conversation with the half-Jewish
waitress. The waitress walked leaning on a wooden
cane, holding herself erect.

'It's a pretty view, isn't it?' said the conductor.

He had always been a man of few words, and now
the ones he wanted seemed to be evading him
out of spite.

The wet green fields lay spread around them.

A delicate morning mist rose languidly in the air.

How easy the transition was - they hardly felt it.

The hotel owner pushed the rabbi's wheelchair as
if he had been born to the task. No one offered to
help him .

139

In the dull confusion of the last days a strange
relationship had grown up between the waitress
and the conductor. When she was ill the conductor
had been to visit her and they had exchanged a
few words. Ever since then they had not stopped
thinking of each other. The night before, when
everyone was celebrating at Sally and Gertie's,
they sat together in the Luxembourg Gardens . He
was as shy as a child and she laughed. He told
her about his inheritance and savings, all the
confidential details that had accumulated in his
systematic mind.

'So you're a rich man,' she said.

After years of living inside himself, nagging
his musicians and balancing his petty accounts,
he now felt for the first time that the chains had
fallen from his hands . She·spoke of the journey,
the new way of life. Of her Austrian father she
spoke with a kind of contempt, as if he were not
a man but a beast.

Now they walked together. The fields rolled
away into the distance. There was no sound but
the whispering footsteps. The policemen walked
a little distance behind, without urging them on.

Professor Fussholdt was happy. He had finished
proofreading his new book. The pages were tied
in a bundle with thick string. Mandelbaum walked
by his side and asked him questions. Professor

Fussholdt imitated the rhetoric of the Jewish functionaries who imagined that they were bringing 140

the Messiah with their speeches. His hostility to
everything considered Jewish culture, Jewish art,
was lighter now. The bitterness and mockery had
been buried in his book. Mitzi walked behind
him like a stranger. The longer they walked the
more his eloquence flowed, full of ingenious puns,
witticisms, and plays on words. For months he
had not spoken to a soul and now the words poured
out of him.

The rabbi dozed in his wheelchair. The column of
people approached the country cottages. The smell
of morning milk and manure mingled in the air.

Next to the oak tree the nature lovers had once
paused to listen to the bird calls. Here 'the Bluebird' once stood and made his inspiring speeches.

Salo did not seem at home on the open road he
was so used to . For years he had traversed these
fields with his medium-sized suitcase. The farmers,
to tell the truth, did not like him. They always
bought on credit and never paid their debts. His
nonchalance suddenly deserted him. He huddled
up to the musicians. The musicians sheltered him.

'The conductor hates us. What harm have we
ever done him ?' said the musician Zimbelman .

'Don't pay him any attention,' said Salo.

'Even the hotel owner doesn't hate us.'

'He'll come round. He won't have any alternative. You're his musicians after all, and he hasn't got any others besides you. By the way, did you get Pappenheim to sign Form 101 ?'

' No,' said Zimbelman, 'we forgot.'

'That's a pity. Form 101's a good form, it gives
you a lot of benefits.'

'Dr. Pappenheim's always been very good to
us. He even promoted us. We didn't dare ask.'

'That's very important,' said Salo. 'In the end,
salary scales are the same everywhere. He promoted
you to Musicians, eleventh grade, didn't he?

A very decent grade.'

'For myself,' said Zimbelman, ' I would like to
work fewer hours . The drums drive me out of my
mind. I'd be glad to take a year or two's leave.

Believe me, I need it.'

'I believe you. But the years on the threshold of
retirement are critical. It's better to keep your
rights. For my part I'd also take an early pension
if it was up to me, but my firm's very strict, they
suck the workers dry. I've already collected twenty
years of seniority without missing a day. I've got
a month's annual leave coming to me. I promised
my wife a holiday in Majorca. Believe me, I deserve it.'

'Majorca?' said Zimbelman. 'I've never heard
of it.'

'A warm, wonderful island. I owe it to her. She
brought the children up. Wonderful children.'

'Do you think we'll be able to save something
in Poland?' asked Zimbelman.

'Of course. Prices there are much lower, and if
we go on getting our salaries in Austrian currency,
we'll be able to save a lot.'

The fields grew greener and greener. The pasture
was cut into squares; they looked as if they had
been measured with a ruler. A horse grazed in
the field and a farmer's wife stood at her door.

That was the way it had always been and that was
the way it was now too.

'How strange it is,' said the waitress, and tears
came into her eyes .

'What do you mean?' said the conductor. 'This
is only a transition. Soon we'll arrive in Poland.

New sights, new people. A man must broaden
his horizons, no?'

'And I feel so bad, so like nothing at all.'

'It's only a transition, only a transition. Soon
we'll reach the station, the kiosk. I'm very partial
to the lemonade, it's a local brand, very tasty.'

The words that had been buried in him for years
suddenly blossomed. He wanted to lavish words
on her. But the ones that he had in his possession
did not seem able, for some reason, to combine
into coherent sentences.

The rabbi woke from his slumbers and said
aloud : 'What do they want? All these years they
haven't paid any attention to the Torah. Me they
locked away in an old-age home. They didn't
want to have anything to do with me. Now they
want to go to Poland . There is no atonement
without asking forgiveness first.'

The rabbi's voice took the column of people by
surprise. He spoke in a jumble of Hebrew and

Yiddish. The people could not understand a word
he said, but his anger was obvious. The hotel owner did not stop pushing the wheelchair. He
pushed it as if he had been doing so for years .

Mitzi approached Dr. Langmann, who was
walking absorbed in himself, and told him that
the night before she had dreamed a very vivid
dream. Dr. Langmann, who could not abide idle
chatter, averted his long, bald head and said that
he too had been unable to sleep because of the
dogs . Mitzi told him how when she was still a
little girl of five or six her father had taken her to

Vienna, to the Prater: it was a wonderful autumn
day but her father, a busy, troubled man, only
wanted to tire her out before taking her to the
hospital to have her tonsils out. When they reached
the hospital she sensed the impending catastrophe
and tried to escape. All tfie hospital staff came
running . The operation was performed. 'And I
dreamt it all last night, exactly as it happened.'

'The station, the station ! ' a woman's voice
exclaimed. The policemen at the station signaled
to the policemen escorting the people.

'We've arrived, we've arrived at last! ' cried Mitzi .

144

35

FRoM the station they could still see Badenheim:

a low hill cut like a cone, with the roofs of the
houses like little pieces of folded cardboard . Only
the hotel and bell tower seemed real. The kiosk
owner was delighted to see all the people, and
their eyes lit up at the sight of the lemonade, the
newspapers, and journals - a testimony to the life
that was still going on around them. Dr. Langmann
bought the financial weekly and studied it like
a man returning to a beloved city after years of
absence. His eye fell on some ridiculous item and
he laughed out loud. Sally and Gertie equipped
themselves with two big parcels - one of cigarettes
and one of sweets. The yanuka dirtied his suit
and they busied themselves with cleaning it.

The skeptical bitterness did not leave the rabbi's
lips. He placed no faith in these delusions. He
had seen much in his life and all that was left in
him was suspicion, and in this transition too his
suspicions did not cease but only grew more intense . The headwaiter bought sausages. The dog liked sausages. The headwaiter's happiness knew no bounds.

The musicians crowded together in a corner, in

145

the shade. Some of the plates had been broken on
the way, and they had to unpack their cases and
pack them again . This annoying necessity, which
gave rise to anger and mutual recriminations,
marred the festive atmosphere a little. Strangely
enough, Mandelbaum did not despise them. He
asked them how they were and inquired about
the resorts they played in. His questions relaxed
the tension a little.

The people did not forget Samitzky and bought
him some bottles of vodka. Samitzky sat on a be_nch
and did not utter a word. 'When are we leaving?'

asked a woman's voice. Another woman stood
next to the closed ticket office and made herself
up . Salo put on his old expression again, his
traveling salesman's expression. At any moment,
it seemed, he would open his medium-sized suitcase and offer his samples for sale. From here the carriages would pick the people up and there was always the same fragrance in the air, the fragrance
of the transition from the town to the country,
and from the station to the enchanted Badenheim.

There were no carriages now, but the fragrance
still lingered in the air, mingled with an intoxicating
dampness.

And suddenly the sky opened and light broke
out of the heavens . The valley in all its glory and
the hills scattered about filled with the abundance,
and even the trembling, leafless trees standing
wretchedly at the edge of the station seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

'What did I tell you?' exclaimed Dr. Pappenheim,
opening his arms in an expansive gesture that
seemed too big for him. Tears of joy came into his
eyes. All the misery of the days in confinement
suddenly burst inside him.

Sally and Gertie wrapped the yanuka up warmly.

Karl took the sweater off the bottle : two little fish
were already dead and the rest floated limply and
listlessly in the water. 'Can no one help me?' cried

Karl despairingly.

The light poured from the low hills directly onto
the station platform. There was nowhere to hide.

'Come and see, everybody! ' Mitzi suddenly cried,
in an affected feminine voice. A little distance
away, as if on an illuminated tray, a man was
walking with two armed policemen behind him .

They came closer as if they were being borne on
the light.

'Peter, Peter!' shouted the hotel owner in relief.

Peter. ·

But their amazement was cut short. An engine, an
engine coupled to four filthy freight cars, emerged
from the hills and stopped at the station. Its appearance was as sudden as if it had risen from a pit in the ground . 'Get in! ' yelled invisible voices .

And the people were sucked in. Even those who
were standing with a bottle of lemonade in their

147

hands, a bar of chocolate, the headwaiter with
his dog - they were all sucked in as easily as
grains of wheat poured into a funnel. Nevertheless

Dr. Pappenheim found time to make the following
remark: 'If the coaches are so dirty it must mean
that we have not far to go.'

AHARO N APPELFELD was born in Czernovitz, Bukovina, in 1932. In the Nazi sweep east, his mother was killed and he was deported to the labor camp at Transnistria, from which he soon escaped . He was eight years old. For the next three years he wandered the forests . Sometime
in 1944 he was picked up by the Red Army,
served in field kitchens in the Ukraine,
and thence made his way to Italy. He
reached Palestine in 1946. A veteran of
the Israeli Army, married, and the father
of three children, he teaches Hebrew
literature at Ben-Gurion University at

Beer Sheva . He is the author of several
novels and books of short stories in

Hebrew. BAD E N H E I M 1939 is his first
book to appear in English.

BAD E N H E I M 1939
was designed by Edward Foss and set by

Bob McCoy/Booktypes in Mergenthaler

Linoterm Palatino, a typeface designed
by Hermann Zap£. Named after Giovanbattista Palatino, a Renaissance writing master, Palatino was the first of Zapf's typefaces to be introduced to America.

The designs were made in 1948 and the
fonts for the complete face were issued
between 1950 and 1952. The book has
been printed and bound by the Inter Collegiate Press. The paper is Plainwell's

Natural Neutral, an acid-free sheet.

Document Outline

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright

- Badenheim 1939

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35

Table of Contents

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright

- Badenheim 1939

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35

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