Dimanche and Other Stories (13 page)

“If you like,” Rabinovitch said, with an effort.

“Oh, thank you, monsieur, thank you! Come, Iacha.” He took the child’s hand in one of his and with the other picked up Christian’s bag, although Christian tried to stop him, embarrassed.

“Leave it, for goodness’ sake.”

“Let me, monsieur, what does it matter?”

They went into the first-class waiting room, where a central light with three gas lamps was now lit, shedding a pale, flickering glow. Christian sat down in one of the velvet chairs, and the man sat gingerly on the edge of a bench; he still had the child on his lap.

A melancholy little bell jingled interminably in the silence.

“Your son has been ill?” Christian finally asked absentmindedly.

“He’s my grandson, monsieur,” the man said, as he looked at the child. “My son’s just left. I went with him to the boat. He’s going to live in England, in Liverpool. He’s been promised a job, but he’s left the boy with me until he’s sure.”

He sighed deeply.

“He used to live in Germany. Then for four years I had him with me in Paris. Now we’re separated once again …”

“England,” said Christian with a smile, “is not that far away.”

“For people like us, monsieur, whether it’s England, Spain, or America, it’s one and the same. You need money to travel; you need a passport, a visa, a work permit. It’s a long separation.”

He fell silent, but it was clear that talking soothed his distress. He started again at once. “You were asking if the child had been ill? Oh, he’s sturdy, but he catches
colds easily, and then he has a cough for months. But he’s strong. All the Rabinovitches are strong.”

Christian started.

“What’s your name?”

“Rabinovitch, monsieur.”

In spite of himself, Christian replied in a low voice, “My name’s the same as yours …”

“Ah!
Jid?”
the man said slowly. He said a few more words in Yiddish. Christian had recovered himself and murmured curtly, “I don’t understand.”

The man gently shrugged his shoulders, with an inimitable expression of disbelief and mockery, mixed with affection and even some tenderness, as if he were thinking, “If he wants to show off, he can please himself … but to be called Rabinovitch and not understand Yiddish!”

“A Jew?” he repeated in French. “Left a long time ago?”

“Left?”

“Well, yes! From Russia? Crimea? The Ukraine?”

“I was born here.”

“Ah, so it was your father?”

“My father was French.”

“So it was before your father. All the Rabinovitches come from over there.”

“Possibly,” Christian said coldly.

The short-lived emotion he had experienced on hearing his name spoken by this man had now evaporated.
He felt awkward. What did he have in common with this poor Jew?

“Do you know England, monsieur? Yes, of course you do. And Liverpool, this city where my children are going to live?”

“I’ve passed through it.”

“Is the climate good?”

“Certainly.”

The man let out a long, inflected sigh, ending it with a plaintive
oy-oy-oy
. He gripped the child more tightly between his knees.

Christian looked at him more closely. How old was he? Between forty and sixty, that’s all one could say! Probably no more than fifty, like him. His narrow chest seemed compressed, crushed by a heavy and invisible burden that weighed on his shoulders, dragging them forward. Occasionally, if there was an unexpected noise, he shrank back against the bench; yet, frail and thin though he was, he seemed to possess an unquenchable spark. He was like a candle alight in the wind, barely protected by the glass of a lantern. The flame beats against the glass, the light flickers, fades, almost goes out, but then the wind dies down, and it shines again, humble but tenacious.

“I worry so much,” the man said quietly. “You spend your life worrying. I had seven children but five died. They seemed sturdy at birth, but they had weak chests. I’ve brought up two. Two boys. I loved them as much as
my own two eyes. Do you have children, monsieur? Yes? Ah! You see, I look at you and I can’t help comparing myself to you. It’s a consolation, in some ways. You’re rich, you must be a successful businessman, but if you have children you’ll understand me! We give them everything and they’re never happy. That’s how Jews are. My younger son … it started when he was fifteen: “Papa, I don’t want to be a tailor … Papa, I want to be a student.” You can imagine how easy that was in Russia at the time! “Papa, I want to leave home”—“Now what do you want, you miserable child?”—“Papa, I want to go to Palestine. That’s the only country where a Jew can live in dignity. That’s the Jewish homeland.” Well, I said to him, ‘I respect you, Solomon, you’ve studied, you’re better educated than your father. Go, but here you could have a decent job, a gentleman’s occupation; you could be a dentist or a businessman one day. Over there you’ll be clearing land like a peasant. As for Palestine,’ I said to him, ‘the day you can catch all the herrings in the sea and put them back in their mothers’ bellies will be the day Palestine can be called the Jewish homeland. Until then … but go, go … if you think that will make you happy.’ So finally he left. He got married. ‘Papa, send money for the wedding … Papa, send money for the baby … Papa, send money for the doctors, the debts, the rent.’ One day, he started to cough up blood. The work was too hard. Then he died. Now I’m left with the elder, the father of this one. But as soon as he was grown
up, he left me, too. He went to Constantinople, then to Germany. He had begun to earn a living as a photographer.

“Then along comes Hitler! I’d left Russia because at the time of the revolution—that’s the luck of the Jew!—for the first time in my life I made a bit of money. I was scared, so I left. Life is worth more than riches alone. I’ve lived in Paris for fifteen years. That’ll last as long as it lasts … And now there’s my son in England! Where does God not cast the Jew? Lord, if only we could have a quiet life! But never, never can we settle! No sooner have we achieved, by the sweat of our brows, a bit of stale bread, four walls, and a roof over our heads, then there’s a war, a revolution, a pogrom, or something else, and it’s good-bye! ‘Pack your bags, clear off. Go and live in another town, in another country. Learn another language—that’s no problem at your age, is it?’ No, but you just get so tired. Sometimes I say to myself, ‘You’ll get some rest when you die. Until then, carry on with your dog’s life! You can rest later.’ Well, God is the master!”

“What is your occupation?”

“My occupation? I do a bit of everything, of course. For now, I’m working in the hat trade. As long as I have a work permit, you see. When they take it away from me, I’ll start selling again. Sell this, sell that, wholesale furs, automatic cameras, whatever turns up. I stay alive because I sell at a tiny profit. But to have had the luck to
be born here! Just by looking at you, I can see how rich it’s possible to become. And probably your grandfather came from Odessa, or Berdichev, like me. He would have been a poor man … Those who were rich or happy didn’t leave, you can be sure of that! Yes, he was poor. And you … maybe this one, one day …”

He looked tenderly at the child, who was listening without saying a word, his face twitching with nervous spasms, his eyes glittering.

Ill at ease, Christian said, “I think I can hear my train.”

The man immediately stood up. “Yes, monsieur. Allow me to help you. Don’t call a porter. What’s the point! No, really, monsieur, it’s nothing! Come, Iacha, don’t run off! He’s like quicksilver, that child! We have to cross the tracks.”

The train did not arrive for another ten minutes. Christian walked silently along the platform, the man following behind, carrying his suitcase. They did not speak but, in spite of themselves, Christian and the Jew could not help looking at each other as they walked beneath the station lamps, and Christian, with a strange, painful feeling, thought that this was how they understood each other best. Yes, like this … with no words, but by their expression, the movement of their shoulders, or the nervous twist of their lips. At last they heard the sound of the approaching train.

“You just get in, monsieur. Don’t worry about the
case. I’ll pass it to you through the window,” said the Jew as he lifted the English gun in its deerskin sheath.

Christian slipped a twenty-franc coin into the man’s hand. He looked embarrassed and quickly put it into his pocket, then waved and grabbed the child’s hand; the train left. Christian at once turned away and went into the empty compartment; with a sigh he threw his things into the luggage rack and sat down. It was completely dark outside. The small ceiling lamp shed hardly any light; it was impossible for him to read. The train was now speeding through the bleak countryside; the sky was cold, almost wintry. It would be nearly eight o’clock when he got to the Sestres.’ He thought of the old Jew, standing on that icy station platform, holding the child’s hand. What a wretched creature! Was it possible that he was of the same flesh and blood as that man? Once more he thought, “What do we have in common? There is no more resemblance between that Jew and me than there is between Sestres and the lackeys who serve him! The contrast is impossible, grotesque! There’s an abyss, a gulf between us! He touched me because he was quaint, a relic of a bygone age. Yes, that’s how, that’s why he affected me, because he’s so far removed from me, so very far … There’s nothing to connect us, nothing.”

As if trying to convince an invisible companion, he repeated in a low murmur, “Nothing, there’s nothing. Is there?”

Now he felt outraged and resentful. There was certainly
no common ground between him and that … that other Rabinovitch (in spite of himself, he made an irritable gesture).

“By education and by culture I’m closer to a man like Sestres; in my habits, my tastes, my way of life, I’m much further away from that Jew than I am from an oriental peddler. Three, or even four, generations have elapsed. I’m a different man, not just spiritually, but physically as well. My nose and mouth don’t matter, they are nothing. Only the soul matters!”

He did not realize it but, carried away by his thoughts, he was swaying forward and backward on the seat in a slow, strange rhythm, in time with the motion of the train; and so it was that, in moments of fatigue or stress, his body found itself repeating the rocking movement that had soothed earlier generations of rabbis bent over the holy book, money changers over their gold coins, and tailors over their workbenches.

He looked up and caught sight of himself in the mirror. He sighed and gently put his hand to his forehead. Then it came to him in a flash: “That’s what I’m suffering from … that’s what’s making me pay with my body and my spirit. Centuries of misery, sickness, and oppression … millions of poor, feeble, tired bones have gone toward creating mine.”

He suddenly remembered one or two friends who had died, nobody quite knew why, after retiring to a life in the country and playing golf; they felt uncomfortable
being rich and idle. The familiar yeast of worries started fermenting, poisoning his blood. Yes, for the moment, at any rate, he was free from exile, poverty, and need, but their indelible mark remained. No, no! It was humiliating, impossible … He was a rich French bourgeois, pure and simple! And what about his children? Ah! His children … “They’ll be happier than I’ve been,” he thought, with deep and passionate hope. “They’ll be happy!”

As he listened to the train rumbling through the sleeping countryside he gradually dozed off. Then, at last, he was there.

The train pulled into the little station at Texin, the stop for the Sestres’ château. He had asked his driver to send a telegram to tell them when he was arriving. Three of his friends were there: Louis Geoffroy, Robert de Sestres, and Jean Sicard. They gathered around him.

“You poor man! How appalling! You could have been killed!”

He walked among them, smilingly answering their questions; they all spoke the same language, they dressed in the same way, they had the same habits and the same tastes. As they approached the car together, he began to feel happier and more confident. The painful impression left by his meeting with the Jew began to fade. Only his body, shivering with cold in spite of his warm English clothes, and his oversensitive nerves acknowledged their ancient inheritance.

Robert de Sestres sighed deeply. “What fine weather!”

“Isn’t it?” said Christian Rabinovitch. “Isn’t it? A bit cold, but so bracing …”

And surreptitiously he covered his icy ears with his hands and got into the car.

La femme de don Juan

[  DON JUAN’S WIFE  ]

August 2, 1938

Mademoiselle,

I hope that Mademoiselle will forgive her old servant for addressing her in this way. I know that she’s married, and I saw in
Le Figaro
the happy news of the birth of little Jean-Marie and his sister. I respectfully congratulate Mademoiselle. The babies must be two and four years old now. I’m sure they are very sweet! It’s the nicest age, when children belong entirely to their mothers.

To me, however, she will always be Mademoiselle Monique, as I haven’t seen her since she was twelve, when I was in service with her parents. I apologize again for taking this liberty.

Mademoiselle, I have hesitated for a long time before deciding to write this letter. The things I have to say are so serious and so important to the Family that it would certainly be better to say them in person. But Mademoiselle lives in Strasbourg and has two small children. It’s a difficult time for everyone, and I don’t think she would leave Strasbourg for Paris in order to go and see an old servant she’s probably forgotten, even if I do have things of the utmost seriousness to tell her about her Parents. After all, the dead are well and truly dead, and one couldn’t expect anyone to make such a long and expensive journey to listen to old stories that may not affect Mademoiselle anymore. She can rest assured that I don’t blame her. Life is life, and everyone has their own to live.

As for coming to visit Mademoiselle, I cannot, as I am ill in the hospital. In a few days I am to have an operation on a nasty tumor, which I do not think I will survive. I was very upset about it at first. I’m fifty-two. I’d put some money aside and have a little house in my native village, Souprosse, in the Landes. I always thought I would work until I was fifty-five and then live quietly at home. You get tired of living in other people’s houses in the end, especially when you’re no longer young. But, as they say, Man proposes and God disposes, and that’s so true.