The Dogs and the Wolves Read Free

pitiful man, poor Jew: you can rest when you are deep beneath the ground . . .’
    That was how Ada learned of the existence and imminent arrival of her cousins. She tried to picture their faces. It was a game that kept her occupied for hours on end; she saw and heard nothing of what was happening around her, then seemed to wake up as if out of some dream. She heard her father say to Simon Arkadievich:
    ‘Someone told me about a shipment of raisins from Smyrna. Are you interested?’
    ‘Leave me in peace! What would I do with your raisins?’
    ‘Don’t get angry, don’t get angry . . . I could get you some cotton from Nijni cheap?’
    ‘To hell with your cotton!’
    ‘What would you say to a batch of ladies’ hats from Paris, just a tiny bit damaged after a railway accident? They’re still being held at the border and would cost half what they’re worth.’
    ‘Hmm . . . how much?’
    When they were in the street, Ada asked: ‘Are my aunt and cousins going to live with us?’
    ‘Yes.’
    They were walking down an enormous empty boulevard. As a result of ambitious planning, a number of new avenues intersected the town; they were wide enough for a squadron to march between the double row of lime trees, but only the wind rushed from one end to the other, swirling the dust around with a sharp,joyous whistle. It was a summer’s evening, beneath a clear, red sky.
    ‘There’ll be a woman in the house,’ Ada’s father finally said, looking sadly at her, ‘someone to take care of you . . .’
    ‘I don’t want anyone to take care of me.’
    He shook his head. ‘Someone to stop the servant from stealing, and I won’t have to drag you around with me all day . . .’
    ‘Don’t you like me coming with you?’ asked Ada, her little voice trembling.
    He stroked her hair gently: ‘Of course I do, but I have to walk slowly so your legs don’t get tired, and we brokers earn our living by running. The faster we run, the quicker we get to the rich people’s homes. Other brokers earn more than me because they run faster than me: they can leave their children at home, where it’s nice and warm.’
    ‘With their wives . . .’ he thought. But you weren’t supposed to speak of the dead, out of a superstitious fear of attracting the attention of disease or misfortune (demons were always lying in wait), and so as not to upset the child. She had plenty of time to learn how difficult life was, how uncertain, how it was always poised to steal the things you cherished most . . . And anyway, the past was the past. If you dwelt on it, you lost the strength you needed to keep going. That was why Ada had to grow up barely ever hearing her dead mother’s name, or anything about her or her brief life. There was a faded photograph in the house of a young girl in a school uniform with long dark hair spilling down over her shoulders. Half-hidden behind the heavy curtain, the portrait seemed to watch the living with a look of reproach: ‘I was also once like you’ those eyes seemed to say. ‘Why are you afraid of me?’ But no matter how shy, how sweet she may have been, she was still frightening, she who lived in a realm where there was no food, no sleep, no fear, no angry arguments, nothing, actually, that resembled the fate of humans on this earth.
    Ada’s father feared the arrival of his sister-in-law and her children, but really, the house was too neglected, too dirty, and his little girl needed a woman to look after her. As for himself, he was resigned to never being anything but a poor man, uneducated, even though he’d dreamt of better things when he’d got married . . . But his own desires, he himself, in the end, counted for little. You worked, you lived, you had hopes for your children. Weren’t they your flesh and blood? If Ada managed to have more than he had on this earth, he’d be happy. He imagined her wearing a beautiful embroidered dress with a bow in her hair, like the rich children. How could