Once again he thought that, as soon as he could, he would stop working and be able to live more in the country. Gardening, golf … Golf? He imagined feeling the wind stinging his face on a day like today, on a golf course … Of course he’d hate it! Of course he knew equally well that he hated country walks, sports, riding, cars, and hunting … He was happy only at home, alone or with his children, safe under his own roof, safe from human beings. He didn’t like people. He didn’t like society. Yet he had always been welcomed everywhere and greeted with friendship and goodwill. In his younger days, some charming women had loved him. Why? Why? It always seemed to him that he hadn’t shown enough affection, enough tenderness. How he had made Blanche suffer at the beginning of their marriage, asking her, “Are you happy? Not just in your heart but in your whole being? Do I make you happy?
Completely? Uniquely?” His own heart throbbed with frustration. The strangest thing was that everyone thought him so self-possessed, so calm. He sometimes used to think that only extraordinary good looks, fame, or genius could have made him happy, quenched his thirst for love. But he had no exceptional gifts. Nevertheless he was rich, comfortably settled in life, happy. Happy? How could anyone be happy without absolute peace of mind? And who could have peace of mind these days? The world was so unstable. Tomorrow might bring disaster, ruin, or poverty. He had never been poor. His father had been comfortably off, and he himself was rich. He had never known need or dread of what the next day would bring. Yet he had always had this fear and anguish inside him, always, always, taking the strangest and most grotesque forms … He would wake in the middle of the night, shaking, fearing that something was going to happen, had happened, that everything would be taken away from him, that his life was as unstable as scenery that was about to collapse and reveal he knew not what abyss.
When the last war began, he thought that was what he had been waiting for, had even expected. He had been a soldier, a conscientious one, carrying out his duties punctually and patiently, as he did everything. After a few months he had been sent back behind the lines; he had a weak heart. After the war, life was easy; his business affairs flourished. But there was still this anxiety, this latent worry that poisoned his life. Such anguish. His health wasn’t good, for a start, and then there were the children. Ah! The children. His elder daughter was married. Was she happy? He had no idea. Nobody ever told him anything. And then there was the financial crisis and ever-increasing taxes, business getting more difficult and surely soon disastrous? Political uncertainty? … He was one of those people who, after every speech given by this or that politician or dictator, would visualize war not in the next month or the following year, but tomorrow, immediately. Yet in conversation he never allowed himself to give in to panic, as his rich bourgeois colleagues did. However, it was all very odd: even while they predicted the most appalling disasters, they somehow appeared to remain in good health, stayed cheerful, and did not either lose a wink of sleep or forgo a single meal. He was the only one who was eaten up inside and worried sick. He was the only one to believe that misfortune could strike him personally, whereas for the others misfortune was a ghost without substance, a shadow. They referred to it all the time but didn’t believe in it. He was the only one who did! And everyone around him said, “Christian Rabinovitch? The steadiest and calmest of men.”
Now and again the wind was icy. The thought of this hunting party at the Sestres’ was hateful. But he had to go … He had to see his son, Jean-Claude, and the young Sestres girl with his own eyes. He sighed heavily. He was slow to admit what truly hurt him, what really pained him—it was one of his defining characteristics. As a result, when he was preoccupied by something he stayed awake for hours, his heart thumping, brooding about some unpleasant encounter or some tedious journey. He hated stations, ports, steamships … Better not to go anywhere, better to live and die in his own little corner of the world. Then, toward morning, it would be as if an invisible dam deep in his heart had finally given way, and a real wave of distress would unfold, rising to the surface, stifling him. Well … now … it was all about his son; it was always about him. How he loved him! He loved his two daughters: the elder married, a mother, the younger one still in short skirts. But this son of his, who had given him more sorrow than joy … so lightweight, anxious, and dissatisfied, a brilliant student, his studies soon abandoned. Frivolous? No. Dissatisfied, that was it … dissatisfied. And now he was in love. He wanted to marry the Count of Sestres’s daughter. Ah! How difficult. His race … “He won’t be happy, I know it. He won’t be happy.” In any case, would Sestres give his consent? Or insult Jean-Claude, and himself? His heart was bleeding already, but he would cut off his own two hands to prevent the marriage! They wouldn’t be happy, Jean-Claude and this girl. They could never truly understand each other. They would be united in the flesh, but each would have a solitary and an unfulfilled heart. But what could he do? He was sure that no one would listen to him. His children already thought of him as someone from another age, an old fogy. He was one of those men who aged quickly. No—were born older than their years, already burdened with experience. Ah, why did Jean-Claude want to get married? Wasn’t he happy? Not a moment’s peace on this earth!
He looked at the time. He had been brooding so much, yet only twenty minutes had elapsed. Such a gloomy autumn, such a wretched evening … It was then that he noticed that a man was sitting next to him on the bench: a badly dressed, thin, ill-shaven man with dirty hands. He was looking after a child. The child kept going to look at the rails, fascinated by them. He was wearing an ugly, worn-out little coat and a cap, and he had big ears, curved like French horns, on both sides of his head; his wrists and red hands stuck out of sleeves that were far too short for him. He moved about restlessly. Then he turned toward the bench; his huge, liquid black eyes, which dominated his thin face, seemed to jump from one object to another. He took a step forward and, even though the track was completely empty, the man leapt anxiously from his seat, picked him up, and came back to sit down, holding him tightly against his chest. He saw that the eyes of his prosperously dressed neighbor were on the child, and he immediately gave him a nervous smile.
“Could I ask you the time?”
He spoke with a hoarse, foreign accent, which distorted his words.
Rabinovitch, without replying, pointed out the clock above their heads.
“Oh yes, I’m so sorry! Only twenty past five? My God, my God! The train isn’t due until six thirty-eight. Forgive me … are you waiting for the Paris train, too?”
“No.”
Christian stood up; at once the man started muttering, “Monsieur, if you would be good enough … it’s the child. He’s been ill, and the third-class waiting room isn’t heated. Please, could you allow us to follow you into the first-class waiting room? If we go in with you, they’ll let us wait there.”
As he spoke, his features moved comically fast, so that he looked almost like a monkey. It wasn’t just his lips that moved, but his hands as well, and the lines in his face, and his shoulders. His black eyes, feverishly bright like the child’s, seemed to leap from one thing to another, turning away, searching anxiously for something they could not see, would never see.
“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!”
Dimanche and Other Stories (Vintage International) Page 10