Gaslight by Joachim Kalka

Author:Joachim Kalka
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781681371191
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2017-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

Archers, be on your guard!

Watch without rest, without sound.

And then, after a few adroit questions on points of detail, he would call out “On guard! on guard,” or, if it were the victim himself who had already arrived, and had been unwittingly obliged, by subtle interrogation, to admit his origins, then my grandfather, to show us that he had no longer any doubts, would merely look at us, humming under his breath the air of

What! do you hither guide the feet

Of this timid Israelite?

(The little leitmotif of what one might call old-fashioned jovial anti-Semitism makes it clear, in passing, why someone like Bloch would have a brusque and clumsy manner.)

In a famous scene, comical, yet somehow also moving in its depiction of a minor humiliation, Bloch commits a faux pas at the salon of the Marquise de Villeparisis.

Bloch rose, and in his turn came over to look at the flowers which Mme de Villeparisis was painting. . . . [He] wanted to express his admiration in an appropriate gesture, but only succeeded in knocking over the glass containing the spray of apple blossom with his elbow, and all the water was spilled on the carpet.

“You really have a fairy’s touch,” the historian said to the Marquise; having his back turned to me at that moment, he had not noticed Bloch’s clumsiness.

But Bloch took the remark as a jibe at him, and to cover his shame with a piece of insolence, retorted: “It’s not of the slightest importance; I’m not wet.”

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