The Dogs and the Wolves (11 page)

‘I’d like to paint this,’ she thought. ‘It’s not exactly my style . . . I prefer darker, more squalid scenes, but perhaps just once . . . those dresses the colour of flowers, dusk in summer, and the clear light, so pale against the trees . . . It’s all so beautiful!’

From her bag she took out the sketchbook and worn-down pencil she always had with her and quickly drew the pose of the young woman with the ribbons leaning over the balustrade. Behind her stood a young man, watching her. Was it Harry? Could it perhaps really be Harry? Near to Ada stood a group of chauffeurs who were also watching the dancers. They seemed only vaguely interested and looked slightly disapproving, the way that servants look upon their masters’ follies. She turned towards them and asked quickly, ‘Excuse me, does this house belong to the Sinners?’

Her heart was pounding. She wasn’t mistaken. This was Harry’s parents’ house.

‘Isn’t their son called Harry?’ she said.

‘That one?’ one of them replied, pointing to the young man on the balcony. ‘Yes, that’s him, that’s their son.’

She drank him in with her eyes, studied him with the deep, piercing gaze of a painter. He had dark hair, a finely chiselled face, alive and mocking, a thin nose and long neck. She was struck once again by his resemblance to Ben.

‘The classic Jewish man,’ she thought, ‘slight, intelligent and sad. Did these rosy-skinned, blonde girls find him attractive? Alas! That wasn’t the question; the question was whom
he
might find attractive . . .’

Suddenly, she closed her eyes, in the grip of a kind of dream, a fantasy, as she called it, in which scenes created in her mind became as clear and real as life itself.

She could see herself as a child, the day she went to Harry’s house. She imagined a different Ada, a more courageous one; she should have walked up to him and taken his hand. She didn’t know why, but she was certain he would have gone with her . . . And as for all those women jabbering around him . . . so what! Who cared about them? He would have gone with her.

‘I’ll never love anyone but you,’ she thought with a feeling of despair, the feeling you get when you realise you’re destined for poverty and unhappiness. ‘Even if I spend my whole life in Aunt Raissa’s workshop, become an old woman without ever saying a single word to you, or even end up marrying someone else, I’ll never forget you. I’ll never stop loving you, never. I’m more sure of that than of my life itself!’

She looked down at her dusty shoes with their misshapen heels, at her hands covered in pin pricks, and the bitter irony of her situation washed over her.

‘Dante and Beatrice,’ she thought. ‘How people would laugh
if they knew! But surely everyone carries such mad dreams deep within themselves . . . Or perhaps only the Jews are like that? We are such a hungry race, starving for so long that reality is not enough to satisfy us. We must have the impossible. And what about Harry? What does he desire? Something better than what he has, without a doubt, just as I do now? Something so vast, such an abundance of happiness that nothing can possibly satisfy him.’ She suddenly thought: ‘Oh! It’s so late. Aunt Raissa will make a fuss. But it’s so difficult to leave. They’re dancing again, so graceful, so carefree . . . Some servants are carrying platters . . . I bet they’re having ice cream . . . How wonderful to eat an ice cream on a hot evening like tonight . . . But I have to go. Adieu, Harry . . .’

She opened the door quietly, hoping to get inside without being seen, but Aunt Raissa started screaming at her the minute she walked into the hallway.

‘So it’s you! You’ve deigned to come back? You’ve deigned to remember that it’s eight o’clock and that you left at six? Do I feed you so you can go for a stroll like a princess? I thought you were dead, run over! Not that I would have shed any tears over you . . . Well, where were you? Who were you roaming around with?’

‘I went for a walk. Alone.’

‘Alone? I know you girls!’

‘You know your girl!’

‘Do you want a slap?’ Aunt Raissa hissed.

Her thin, hard hands often slapped them, and while Ada and Lilla didn’t like it, they put up with it without rebelling, just as you put up with bad weather. But the contrast now between the scene that Ada had witnessed a few moments before and this shouting, her threats, her brutality . . . It was too painful, too sinister . . .

‘I’m not eight years old any more,’ she said. ‘I’m stronger than you. I’ll hit back!’

Aunt Raissa drew back.

‘Give me the money for the dress. They paid you, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, of course they paid me. Here’s your money . . . here . . .’

She stopped dead, terrified. She realised that she didn’t have her bag. And the eight hundred francs paid by the client for the dress she’d delivered? What had happened to it? Had she dropped her bag in the street while hurrying, or had she left it on the bench near Harry’s house?

‘I took out my sketchbook and pencil,’ she thought feverishly, ‘and then . . . I put everything down to look at the one they said was Harry . . . I must have left everything on the bench . . .’

Losing the money was terrible, but her sketchbook, her precious drawings . . . She dissolved in tears.

‘I’ve lost everything . . .’

She didn’t even feel any pain when she was slapped. She forgot her determination to fight back. She took the blows without a word, gritting her teeth, as she had in the past.

‘Go back to where you were,’ shouted Aunt Raissa, shaking her by the shoulders. ‘You slut, go back to the street or your hotel room! Go on! Get out and don’t come back!’

They were still standing in the narrow entrance hall. Ada was leaning against the door. She opened it and ran out. She had so often dreamed of getting away from that house, but without ever having had the courage to face real solitude, poverty and hunger in this strange city. But this scene, after so many others, was more than she could bear. It was better to be out on the street, better to die; she didn’t care!

Blinded by tears, she started running, clutching on to the metal handrail along the street. She glanced at the cafés and cheap hotels, terrified, wondering if they would let her spend one night without paying, or whether it would be simpler just to throw herself in
front of the next passing car. The party at the Sinners’ must be finishing at this very moment, she thought. Why not rush over there and ask for help? She’d already done that once. No! What did she and those people have in common?

Suddenly, she heard someone walking quickly behind her. A hand grabbed her shoulder. She turned around, shaking with fear, still running, out of breath, and then she realised it was Ben. She hated him at that moment as much as she hated Aunt Raissa. She looked at him defiantly and shouted, ‘Let go of me! Go away! Leave me alone! I’ll never go back, never!’

‘Ada! That’s enough! Listen to me!’

They stopped. He held her firmly by both arms; she didn’t dare fight back because people were watching them from inside the café. But the street was empty.

‘Ada! Calm down. Do you want to end up spending the night in prison?’

She suddenly remembered that she was seventeen years old and what was at stake: arrest, reform school. She stood still and silent.

‘Ada, don’t look at me like that. I’ve never done you any harm, have I?’

He took her arm and forced her to walk.

‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. The whole street will be out. Come with me.’

‘Where?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Are you afraid? Don’t cry,’ he said quickly, squeezing her wrist so hard that she let out a little groan of pain. What could happen to them that was worse?

‘I’m not crying,’ she whispered.

‘Ada, we already found ourselves lost once, all alone like this. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, but we knew where to go. We had a home.’

‘Any shabby hotel, any hovel or bridge over the Seine would give us more protection than any of the so-called homes we’ve
had up until now. Even when your father was alive, it wasn’t a very safe house, sometimes even dangerous, Ada.’

‘Leave me alone, Ben, just go away!’

‘Do you dislike me as much as you did when we were children, Ada?’

Without replying, she turned a corner. They had no idea where they were going.

‘Remember the game?’

‘What game?’

‘The one you made up . . . Or was it me? Running away in the middle of the night, all alone, while all the grown-ups were fast asleep.’

‘Idiot. I was eight.’

‘So what?’ he said. ‘Do people really change?’

‘Of course they do.’

‘Well, I never stopped dreaming about it. We were alone, abandoned, poor, but there was no one else in sight, not the people you hated, not the ones you loved,’ he said finally, more softly.

She stopped, fell on to a bench.

‘Ben, what’s going to happen to me?’

‘Ada, where were you? Who were you with?’

‘What do you mean? Are you mad? You believe Aunt Raissa now?’

‘Where were you coming from? I’d never seen you like that. Your hair was all dishevelled. You were pale and shaking. You looked as if you had come back from another world,’ he said gently.

‘I
was
coming back from another world. But I can’t talk about it to you, Ben, not even to you . . .’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’d laugh at me, and you’d be right . . .’

‘Just tell me if you were with another man.’

‘A man? Me?’

Her naïve outburst made him smile. He leaned towards her, took her face in his long, rough hands, and with the same cruel yet sensual gesture he’d had since childhood, pinched her cheeks so hard that she cried out.

‘Ever since I was thirteen years old,’ he then said very softly, ‘I’ve dreamt about you every night . . .’

She pushed him away.

‘Are you mad?’ she hissed. ‘What do you expect from me? I’m not in love with you.’

‘Ada, listen to me. You’re going to go back home now. Let my mother shout or hit you. Say nothing. As for me, I’ll find some work, I’ll sort something out, get a little money, and in a few weeks, or a few months, one fine day, we’ll just leave, without saying a word to anyone, and we’ll get married, Ada.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll get married, do you hear?’ he shouted. ‘All I need is enough money to pay for a hotel for a few days. That’s why I’m asking you to wait.’

‘But I’m still a minor.’

He replied in the same quick, passionate tone of voice that had fascinated Ivanov in the past:

‘I’ll arrange everything. There’s always some way or other. Your father isn’t legally dead. We can pretend to have his written consent. It’s easy. I can fix it. Do you really think anyone will quibble about it? Who cares about us? Oh, if Harry Sinner were getting married you can be sure that everything would be done just the way it should be, properly, according to divine and human laws. But us? Who cares about us?’

‘And you really enjoy taking the most tortuous paths, don’t you Ben?’

‘Tortuous paths? What do you mean?’

‘I mean that given a choice between two roads, one of them
clean and bright, the other full of difficulties and secrets, where each step forward is earned by shady, shameful deals, you would never hesitate.’

‘And I’ll tell you why,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s because I’ve never come across those other roads. And again, who would care about us, who would cry over us if things turned out badly? We have no one.’

‘It’s true that no one would really care about us,’ said Ada, sarcastically. ‘They’d leave us to starve to death. Have you thought of that?’

‘Me? Starve to death? How?’ he shouted, teasingly. ‘Never, Ada! Never! Starve to death! Other people might. But if you only knew how many secret ways there are to survive – without stealing or killing, don’t worry! By trafficking, scheming, buying and selling, always being on the move, by lying!’

‘You’re just showing off,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘You never change, Ben. You think you’re stronger and more cunning than everyone else. They’d catch up with you and even on the gallows, you’d still be shouting, “Look at me! I’m better than you!”’

‘Idiot,’ he said, mocking and bitter, just as when they were children. ‘Haven’t you ever understood anything? Sure, I show off, I make things up, but when you start out by dreaming of all the things you can’t have, you end up getting more than you ever imagined, if you want it badly enough.’

‘Do you really think so?’ she murmured. ‘Really?’

She hid her face in her hands, then shook her head.

‘Sometimes I think you’re making fun of me and sometimes that you’re just mad.’

‘We ’re both a little crazy. We ’re not logical, we ’re not philosophers, we ’re not French, not us! Isn’t it just as crazy for a seventeen-year-old to dream of some mysterious man in the same way as when she was eight?’

‘Be quiet!’

‘I guessed right, then, didn’t I?’ he said quietly. He’d taken her hand in his and squeezed it hard. ‘Well, I’m not laughing, see? So don’t you laugh at me. Ada, I swear to you, in six weeks I’ll have found enough money to pay for the ring and the first few nights in a hotel. After that, we’ll get by. I can’t promise you anything else. We’ll get by.’

‘But I don’t need you,’ she cried, tears of rebellion in her eyes. ‘I can make my own living! I can live by myself. I don’t love you. I’d leave you one day.’

‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t give a damn about the future . . . I can’t think past the day when we’ll both go out, one at a time, after lunch, me to deliver a package and you to stock up on samples at Printemps department store, the day when we’ll come back as husband and wife!’

He burst out laughing. He laughed so loudly, so nervously, that tears streamed down his face.

‘Can you picture my mother’s face? Can you just see it? She’ll kick us both out right away, and by God, we’ll go! Don’t say that you can live alone, Ada. You’re still too young, too sensitive. And I’ll let you draw as much as you like.’

He helped her stand up.

‘Come on. Is there anything more wonderful than putting up with being treated badly, being humiliated and mocked, while slyly, secretly, planning our revenge? Because my mother will be absolutely furious! Come on, Ada . . . All my life I’ve been rejected and mocked, but I’ve kept on thinking, “One day I’ll get the better of you. One day, I’ll be the strongest.”’