6
The Jews who lived in the lower town were religious and fanatically attached to their customs; the Jews in the wealthy areas were strict observers of tradition. To the poor Jews, their religion was so completely engrained in them that it would have been just as impossible to extricate themselves from it as to live without their beating hearts. To the rich Jews, loyalty to the rites of their forefathers seemed in good taste, dignified, morally honourable, as much as – perhaps more than – true belief. Between these two classes, each observant in their own fashion, the lower middle classes lived in yet another way. They called upon God to bless their business dealings, heal a relative, a spouse, a child, then forgot about Him straight away, or, if they did think about Him, it was with a mixture of superstitious fear and contained resentment: God never fully granted anything that was asked of Him.
Ada’s father went to Synagogue from time to time, in the same way someone might go and see an investor who could help you in business – that is, if he wanted to. He even had the power to drag you once and for all out of the poverty trap, except he had too many protégés, too many people asking favours, and was actually too rich, too great, too powerful to spare a thought for you, a humble earthly creature. But you could always turn up where you knew He would be . . . Why not? Perhaps He might notice you? Or when things were going badly, you could remind Him of your existence with a whisper, a sigh: ‘Ah! Bozhe, Bozhenka! (Ah, my God, my dear sweet God!)’, with just a glimmer of hope, with a sad, resigned reproach: why have You abandoned me?
But religious laws were really too complicated, too strict to be followed faithfully; you took your pick: some were observed and some weren’t. People fasted one day a year, and during Passover they ate unleavened bread – but with ordinary Russian bread on the same plate, which was a great sin. But they had done it once, by accident, and nothing had happened. God had not cast His wrath upon the family. Life had gone on. When she was very young, Ada had only ever seen adults in her family respect Yom Kippur, the day of fasting (and even that was forgotten later on). Her father had explained to her that it was a very serious day, fearful in the life of man, because God held in His hands a great book, ‘like the big accounting book your grandfather has for the shop’, and He wrote on one side your good deeds and on the other side your sins. Ada had understood that you had to fast to touch God, but she didn’t have to fast because she was too young and too thin and anyway, children didn’t have that many sins on their conscience. They would acquire them later. She never actually knew whether her father’s religious beliefs ended there or if he simply kept the rest to himself since she was too young to really understand.
As for Aunt Raissa, her marriage had taken her into a social class that had evolved even further, one that was proud to distance itself as much as possible from the people they called (and with such scorn!) the simple Jews, the poor Jews.
And so it was that in the Sinner family, Judaism no longer brought any joy, but continued to bring many problems. How they would have liked to leave their fellow Jews to rot in their filth, their poverty and their superstitions. Unfortunately, they couldn’t completely forget them because of their horrible lodgings, the ground-floor shop, the street that wasn’t exactly the ghetto but was close enough to smell it and hear its screams, not to mention the other, more serious and sometimes tragic inconvenience: the pogroms.
At eight, Ada had never experienced a pogrom, but just as everyone knows about death, she knew there were two dangers – dangers that didn’t threaten the rest of humanity, but were directed specifically towards the people of her town, her neighbourhood. Everything could come crashing down on her at any moment, but she might also be spared: this margin of error was enough to reassure her. And the grown-ups she knew talked about this so often that their words no longer had much effect on her, just as a child born near a volcano never thinks about a possible eruption until the day he sees it happen with his very own eyes. The two dangers were pogroms and cholera.
They talked about them in the same way, Ada thought: voices lowered, slowly shaking their heads while sighing and raising their eyes towards heaven. When it was extremely hot and even more people died than usual in the lower town, where the mortality rate was already high; or in springtime, when pilgrims appeared with their vermin and diseases, or when there was a famine, or a drought, everyone would murmur: ‘We’re in for it this summer . . .’ And whenever any sort of political event happened in Russia, whether good or bad (peace, war, a victory, a defeat, the birth of a long-awaited Imperial heir, an assassination, a trial, revolutionary uprisings or a great need of money), the same anxious voices would whisper: ‘We’re in for it this year, or next month, or tomorrow, or this very night . . .’
Ada listened to them with so little attention that when the pogrom finally happened, she didn’t realise it; for over a week, they’d been talking about unrest, massacres, shops pillaged, women killed, young girls being . . . At this they bowed their heads, and Lilla put an extraordinarily innocent look on her face: ‘What are you talking about?’ it seemed to say. ‘I’m not listening to you, and besides, even if I was, I wouldn’t know what you meant.’ Lilla was getting prettier every day. She had started to wear her long curls in a chignon, low at the back of her neck; her hair softly billowed out over her temples and small forehead. The contrast between her pale skin and dark hair with its bluish sheen was eye-catching. Her hands were slender and delicate. Despite her secret rendezvous in the town’s various parks, despite the few kisses she’d bestowed, she was still a good girl, thought Aunt Raissa, who was experienced enough to know.
Aunt Raissa placed all her hopes in Lilla . . . Lilla was so sweet, so feminine, with her pale skin, her elegant walk and her innate desire to be loved, which made each of her soft, shy gestures graceful and appealing. Charming Lilla . . . Everyone loved her. ‘She’s a silly goose,’ Ben would say, ‘but a pretty little goose, sweet and innocent . . .’ Then he’d add, ‘a goose you’d happily eat up.’ At nine, Ben knew more about life than his sister, who was fifteen. Lilla inspired a kind of respect in her mother, mixed with anxiety, in the same way that the owner of a stable of racehorses feels kindness tinged with anxiety towards a pretty young filly who hasn’t yet shown what she’s capable of; one day she would doubtlessly fulfil the hopes placed in her – if she didn’t break her leg at the first hurdle, that is.
Aunt Raissa indulged in the most extravagant dreams when it came to her daughter. It wasn’t enough merely to think she’d find a good husband. No! Such things were good enough for other girls, but Lilla . . . a different destiny awaited Lilla. She would be an actress or a dancer . . . Or a great singer at the Opera House. She was so docile, so malleable. Her mother could shape her as she wished. It wasn’t as if Ada was going to fulfil any expectations. What a child! Taciturn and insolent by turns, rebellious, her head always in the clouds . . . No, she couldn’t worry about Ada. She had enough to think about with her own children. As one of her favourite Russian sayings went: ‘The shirt you own is closer to your body than your neighbour’s suit.’ But when Aunt Raissa said, ‘The children . . . my children . . .’, she was really thinking only of Lilla. And so when the trouble started, Lilla was sent to stay with the family of one of her classmates. They were Russian Orthodox, so their home was safe. As for Ada and Ben, they would have to see.
That year, Ada discovered her grandfather’s books for the first time. She hadn’t yet started high school as she’d been ill when the admission tests were held, but a first-year student gave her lessons in exchange for lunch and two pairs of shoes per year. She was a good student; she even displayed a quick, insightful mind, less critical or assertive than Ben’s, but which nonetheless annoyed Aunt Raissa.
‘Why,’ she would ask bitterly, ‘are Jewish children either too dim or too intelligent? Lilla thinks like an eight-year-old and Ben replies to the slightest observation like an old man. And now Ada’s copying him. Why can’t they just be like everyone else, not smarter an
d not more stupid?’
But no one had an answer to that.
Her grandfather’s books were works in Russian and translations of English, German and French classics. An entire universe, hitherto unknown, opened before Ada, a world whose colours were so dazzling that reality paled in comparison and faded away. Boris Godunov, Satan, Athalia, King Lear: they all spoke words charged with meaning; every syllable was inexpressively precious. How could the inane, monotonous words her relatives spoke be of any interest whatsoever, those bits of information Ada found so insignificant as they spread from one person to another: ‘I heard that the Governor General has received death threats . . . They’re saying that the Chief of Police has been wounded . . . I heard some Jews were arrested . . . What if it’s true . . . how awful . . . But even if it isn’t true . . . God will protect us . . .’
One evening, just as Ada had put down her book and was about to go to bed, she heard strange, muffled noises coming from the streets below, usually so calm at this time of year. It was February, a time of year that was not very cold but when there was heavy snow and strong winds. What could anyone be doing outside? She walked over to the window, blew on it to melt the ice and saw a crowd of people rushing about the street; every now and again they shouted and blew whistles. Ada stood there, watching, not understanding what was happening, when suddenly Aunt Raissa rushed into the room. Red blotches covered her face, as always when she was angry or in the grip of some violent emotion. She grabbed Ada by the arm and yanked her away from the window.
‘What are you doing? You horrible child!’ she shouted. (She was clearly happy to have her niece there, so she could take out all her fear and anger on her.) ‘You’re never around when you’re needed, but you manage to get in the way at the worst possible time! . . . You have to be careful, my darling,’ she said, her voice changing completely as Ada’s father came into the room.
Ada wasn’t surprised at this sudden change in tone; she’d already learned that her aunt had two voices and two faces and could glide from abuse to sweetness with unbelievable ease and rapidity. She was doing it now: the anger that hissed from her lips had become as soft and plaintive as the sound of a flute.
‘Be sensible, my dear. Shouldn’t you have gone to bed ages ago? It’s ten o’clock. Come on, Adotchka, go to bed, my darling, but . . .’
She and her brother-in-law glanced furtively at each other.
‘Only take off your dress and your shoes.’
‘Why?’
The adults said nothing.
‘Nothing will happen tonight,’ her grandfather said as he too came into the room. ‘They’ll break a few windows and go home to bed. But when the soldiers come, then . . .’
He said no more. All three of them went cautiously over to the window. The room was lit only by a lamp in the adjoining room, but Ada’s father took it and lowered the wick until it was so low that it only gave off a dim, almost imperceptible light, reddish and smoky. Ada looked at them, puzzled. They huddled together in the shadows, whispering, taking turns blowing against the dark glass. But she was at an age when the need to sleep overcomes the body with a sudden, imperative force, like drunkenness. She yawned loudly several times, made her way upstairs to bed in the darkness. She took off only her dress and shoes, as they’d told her to. She slipped in between the sheets, smiling – it was lovely and warm in her old bed – and she fell asleep to the sound of the first stones breaking windows down in the lower town.
7
For a few days the damage was limited to shouting, curses, broken windows as night began to fall. Then everything would calm down. The days were quiet. Nevertheless, the children were no longer allowed to go out, and they spent hours sitting side by side on the old settee, playing the game they’d invented, but which became more embellished, a veritable epic with a cast of thousands, with wars, defeats, sieges, victories. Every evening, new stories emerged from their original invention, like branches sprouting from the trunk of an old tree. Their game left them breathless, excited, mouths dry, dark circles beneath their eyes. As soon as dusk fell, they had nothing else to do, for they were forbidden to light the lamps. No one in the lower town dared breathe, crouched behind closed windows and shutters, in narrow rooms that were dark and hot.
But the day finally came when the real world proved more powerful than their dreams. Ben and Ada had attained such a state of hallucination that neither of them was even listening to what the other was saying. They were both talking at the same time in quiet, steady voices, banging their feet against the wood of the settee, when suddenly the murmuring they had stopped listening to was replaced by a savage, unearthly clamour, so close by that they thought it was coming from their own house, from their walls and old floors. At that moment, the door flew open and someone – they didn’t recognise who it was because the face was so disfigured with fear – someone rushed in, grabbed them, pushed them and dragged them out. Ben had lost a shoe and was shouting that he wanted to go back and get it, but no one was listening to him. They were taken through the building, out through the kitchen door and thrown, pushed, pulled by their wrists, their hands, their legs, and finally hoisted up a ladder to an attic.
They fell on to the floor, felt the corner of a trunk and an old candelabra, as they fumbled in the darkness. They were in a junk room in the eaves. Ada’s father – they could now recognise his rasping, rapid breathing behind the door – sounded as if his heart was about to burst under the strain of his mad rush and terror.
‘Don’t move. Don’t cry. Hide,’ he whispered through the keyhole.
Then he added, even more quietly: ‘Don’t be afraid . . .’
‘But I don’t want to stay here!’ cried Ada.
‘Be quiet, my poor darling! Don’t move. Don’t say a word. Keep still.’
‘But, Papa, we’re not going to sleep here!’
‘But we’re hungry, Uncle!’
They beat the locked door with all the strength their little fists could muster. But her father had hurried back down the ladder and they could hear him pulling it away. As soon as they were alone, Ben calmed down.
‘There’s no point in shouting. It’s no use. He’s gone.’
The attic looked out over an indoor courtyard, high and narrow, a deep pit between two large walls. Every now and again, the terrifying noise quietened down; the crowd moved off, and they thought they could hear the sea, risen as if by some miracle into the old street, beating its waves against the house. Sometimes soldiers, tramps, professional looters, hysterical Jews would meet at the entrance to the ghetto, and whatever happened then – Ben and Ada had absolutely no idea what it might be – took place inside the doorways of their own house, on their own doorstep. Then the crowds roared like wild animals. They seemed to hurl themselves like rams against the walls, hitting them, backing off, furiously battering them again to try to knock them down, striking them again and again, in vain.
The children sat on top of the trunk, huddled close together, too stunned even to cry. Little by little, they could make out one or two sounds that rose from the steady din of a thousand voices. Listening attentively, their hands shaking, they eagerly picked out the sounds that frightened them less than the others, because they could recognise them.
‘Hear that? That’s a window being broken. Can you hear the glass shattering? That’s stones being thrown against the walls and the iron shutters of the shop. That’s everyone laughing. And there’s a woman screaming as if her insides are being ripped out. What’s going on? . . . And that, that’s soldiers singing. And that . . .’
They fell silent, trying to understand the deep, rhythmic wave of sound rising towards them.
‘That’s prayers,’ said Ben.
Patriotic hymns, prayers from the Russian Church, bells ringing – they were almost glad to hear such familiar sounds . . .
Hours passed. The children were less afraid, but they were becoming more aware of how uncomfortable they were: they were cold; the corners of the trunk hurt. The
y were hungry.
Ben had the idea of opening the trunk; it looked as if it was full of old papers and rags. Feeling about in the dark, they spread them out and made a bed in the trunk where they could finally lie down, groaning, arguing, each one pulling the softest bits of cloth to their own side, leaving the other the newspapers that lined the bottom. It all smelled of dust and moth balls. They couldn’t stop sneezing. Finally, they snuggled up to each other. They were safe, they were warm like this, but afraid that the cover might slam shut and suffocate them. They looked at it, straining their eyes in the darkness, and gradually they managed to make out the gleam of the metal fittings.
Outside, the frenzy continued. Suddenly, Ada sat up and shouted in a voice that was unlike her normal voice: it was shriller, deeper, as if someone else was crying out for help through her. ‘I can’t stand it any more! I’ll die if it doesn’t stop.’
‘It won’t stop,’ said Ben angrily, ‘and I’ll tell you something else – you can shout, groan, pray and cry all night long and it won’t make a bit of difference!’
‘I . . . I don’t care,’ Ada stammered, sobbing. ‘I don’t care if I never eat again, if only they would be quiet!’
‘And that won’t make any of them shut up either,’ said Ben.
This seemed so obvious to Ada that she calmed down and suddenly felt quite happy.
‘Come on. Let’s play.’
‘Play what?’
‘There’s a boat,’ said Ada excitedly, ‘a boat caught in a storm. Can you hear it? The wind is blowing. The waves are crashing.’
‘Yes! And we’re pirates,’ shouted Ben, jumping up and down on the floor of the trunk, making it creak and groan like the hull of a ship in distress. ‘Ship ahoy! Raise the jib, the topsail and the flag! I see land! Land! Land!’