The Dogs and the Wolves (18 page)

‘Where’s Ada?’

She was wearing a silk dressing gown with leaves on it over her nightclothes; she modestly closed it around her thin legs. She would never have agreed, not for anything in the world, to be seen in her nightdress; even her curlers were artistically arranged and set with little orange ribbons.

‘You gave me quite a shock, my dear boy,’ she sighed. Her eyes, which age had begun to cloud over but which were still often very perceptive, studied Ben with a look that was simultaneously shrewd and uncertain, as if she were reluctant to speak before she had read his expression.

‘Are you sleeping here now?’

‘Yes. Is that all right with you? Ada was all alone . . .’

‘Where is she?’

Madame Mimi stood up and switched on the lamp.

‘Have you had any dinner? I’m afraid there isn’t much here . . .’

‘I asked you where Ada is.’

‘At a concert, my dear.’

He didn’t ask ‘With whom?’ He threw his hat on to a chair and sat down.

‘Have you had any dinner?’ Madame Mimi asked again.

‘I had a sandwich and a beer.’

‘Ah, you never change, not you . . . Always being chased by the devil! I’ll heat up some soup for you.’

‘All right . . . no, I’m not hungry . . . if you want to,’ he murmured.

She went out. He noticed that the room was filled with the smell of roses. He turned around: yes, there was a bouquet. Never had he seen such beautiful flowers. He tried to find the card that must have come with the delivery. Nothing. A look of savage, painful irony came across his face. Such cruel mockery, directed inwards: no one could inflict it better than he himself. It mixed with his insol-ence and pride in a strange way. In a flash, he could call up a thousand poisoned arrows that ripped through him, one by one. He walked over to the flowers and touched them shyly; they fascinated him. Such an intoxicating perfume! He leaned his burning cheek in towards one of them and sighed with pleasure at the feel of the tightly closed, firm little rose against his skin.

Madame Mimi came into the room carrying a tray. ‘Leave the flowers alone, Ben,’ she cried.

He moved away, looking at her with a sly, stubborn expression, like a child who’s been beaten.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he grunted.

‘Then go to bed.’

He sat down again without replying.

She took the soup he hadn’t touched and began slowly to drink it, peering over the top of the cup and flashing him a look that was as quick and piercing as a dart.

‘They’re beautiful flowers, aren’t they? In the past, deep red roses were my favourites. In the past, the Prince . . . But what am I saying? All that is so long ago, forgotten . . . Where are those rose gardens now where I used to pick flowers to pin on my dresses? Roses like those. You know, I even decorated my horses with them, in Cannes . . . Yes, at the flower show, I had roses sewn on to my parasol and on to the horses’ blinkers . . . What are you going to do? Do you intend to sit there opposite me all night, without moving?’

‘Go to bed!’

‘In front of a young man! Well, I never! Hand me the cards.’

He automatically shuffled them and dealt them out for a game. They played for a while in silence.

‘Are you jealous?’ she asked at last.

He said nothing.

‘I thought you were above all such fine feelings, Ben . . .’

‘Do you know what she wants to do now? Is she going to leave me?’

He was speaking quietly, without looking at her. He seemed calm, but drops of sweat were running down his cheeks; he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

‘I can’t breathe in here,’ he said suddenly, throwing down his cards.

It was true that the small room was stifling. The windows must not have been opened all day and the radiators were burning hot. It meant that Ada hadn’t spent a single hour there since yesterday: she could only bear living in rooms that were icy cold.

‘Does she want to leave me, Madame Mimi?’

‘She hasn’t spoken to me about you.’

‘So she’s finally got what she wanted,’ he said softly, sounding bitter.

Madame Mimi crossed her hands over her chest, and like an old soothsayer entering into a trance, she began speaking in a deep voice, one that scarcely resembled her usual lively, sharp tone. It was always startling to hear it, just as a certain cooing of doves is surprising in its harshness:

‘Oh, how alike you two are . . . Neither of you can calmly walk past a closed door without cunningly, or forcefully, trying to get in where God has forbidden you to go. You remain patient! You wait for an opportunity, or you bang on the door even harder until someone opens it . . . You’ve always been like that, Ben, and your wife is just the same. That’s how you got
her
, and that’s how she . . .’

Ben closed his eyes. The old woman’s words sounded like bees buzzing in the distance. He had never experienced that.

‘Is she going to leave me?’

‘Listen to me,’ said Madame Mimi, leaning towards him and taking his hands in hers – they were as dry and light as a bird’s – ‘You have always known that she didn’t love you. She’s not the right girl for you. Ada is special . . .’

‘I’m special too,’ he said with bitter pride. ‘Just give me a few years and I’ll be in charge of many things and many people who now treat me like the mud on their shoes.’

‘She doesn’t love you.’

‘She’s as cold as stone,’ he whispered.

‘No, Ben.’

‘If she would only . . . stay with me . . . I wouldn’t ask anything else . . . I would let her . . . be with Harry . . . The way these sophisticated people behave sometimes has its uses,’ he said, sounding pained and sarcastic, ‘but it’s the idea of losing her that’s . . . unbearable. She’s always been with me. You know that’s true . . . We even used to sleep in the same room. I used to wake up and look at her black hair while she was in bed . . . We used to walk through the streets of the lower town together . . . I never really felt unhappy or alone because I knew that she was with me. She can’t leave me.’

‘Be quiet,’ said Madame Mimi. ‘They’re home.’

Ada had come in with Harry. They were both talking loudly and laughing. It was the laughter that both angered Ben and astonished him: he had so rarely heard Ada laugh. She was always silent and distant, lost in her daydreams. She was back down on earth now, thought Ben, watching her. She was dressed as simply as ever, almost shabbily, but she seemed happy, younger and more feminine, her face illuminated by an intense yet soft light that disappeared the moment she saw Ben.

The two men eyed each other contemptuously, in silence.

‘I’m back now,’ said Ben. ‘Get out.’

Harry took Ada by the shoulder.

‘Let’s go, Ada. It’s better to get this over with, once and for all.’

Until now, Ben had remained calm. When he heard the way Harry said ‘Ada’, he flew into a rage. It was the French pronunciation, with the accent on the last letter, which Ben found affected and almost insulting. He shouted out his fury in curses and insults; the words he spoke were interspersed with Yiddish and Russian: Harry barely understood them. To Harry, there was something repugnant and grotesque in the way he swore, gesticulating wildly in an outburst of hatred. He immediately thought of the expression of horror there had been on Laurence’s face when she’d
called him hysterical. These howls of passion, these frenzied calls to a vengeful god came from a different world.

‘I want to watch you die!’ shouted Ben. ‘I hope your body is ripped to shreds! I hope you have no peace, no rest, no easy death! I curse you and all your descendants! I curse all your sons!’

‘Be quiet!’ Harry shouted harshly. ‘We’re not in a ghetto in the Ukraine any more!’

‘But you came out of that ghetto just like I did, just like her! If you only knew how much I hate you! You who look down on us from on high, who despise us, who refuse to have anything in common with the Jewish scum. Wait a bit! Just wait! You’ll be considered part of that scum again one day. And you’ll be dragged back into it, you who got out, you who thought you’d escaped. I’ve always hated you so much. For all the reasons that made Ada love you. Because you were rich! Because you wore clean clothes! Because you were happy! But just you wait. We’ll see which one of us ends up happier, which one of us has more money: you, rich and spoiled ever since you were a child, or me, a poor, miserable Jew. Perhaps one day, Ada, you’ll realise what you lost in me. Millions! I could have given you millions, if you’d only been patient enough to wait.’

‘Be quiet now, you dirty little opportunist,’ shouted Harry. ‘How can you not understand how horrible it is to talk about money, to bring money into this?’

‘Oh how I hate all your European pretensions! What you call success, victory, love, hatred, is what I call money. It’s just a different word for the same things. Both our ancestors talked this way. It’s our own language. You know very well why she fell in love with you. Because you had a clean collar and cuffs that day we went to your house for the first time, for our sins, while I, I was splattered with dust and blood. And it was money that made the difference. It’s not as if you were from a different bloodline, a different race . . . Well, in those days I would have said to myself:
“Ben, my poor boy, you’re nothing but mud, you are, but him, he’s a prince. Better get out.” But you’re not a prince! Look at yourself. You have my hooked nose, my frizzy hair, you’re weak and frail, as hungry and miserable as I am . . . Hungry for other things, perhaps, but hungry all the same and not fulfilled and satisfied like other people . . . I could have been you and you could have been me. Ada! Why do you prefer him to me? Take a good look. Look at us carefully. Him and me, me and him, we’re cut from the same cloth. We’re brothers.’

‘No, no, it isn’t true,’ said Harry, hiding his face in his hands.

‘Look, just look at him! Is that the kind of gesture a European would make? He’s afraid to look at me. He’s afraid of seeing his own reflection. Ada, stay with me! I don’t care about wounded pride or any of your sophisticated stupidity. I understand what it means to long for something, to nurture a passion within you since childhood. Good for you if you’ve managed to get what you want for once.’

‘Ben, I’ve never loved you. You think that we are like you, Ben, but you’re the one who sees yourself wherever you look. I don’t need money, Ben; I don’t even need happiness. I want to live in a different way, can you understand that? I want to experience a kind of life that is not just work and longing, but tranquillity, tenderness, quiet pleasures. You shout, you curse, you’re full of spite and bitterness; you hurt other people more than you hurt yourself. Poor Ben, let me go. Don’t be stubborn. Oh, Ben, listen to me . . .’

Harry crossed his arms and said nothing; he left them alone together. In spite of everything, the two of them spoke the same language. Ada had sat down next to Ben; she’d put her arm around his long, frail neck; it was too long, too frail. Harry couldn’t hear what she was whispering in Ben’s ear. Their cheeks were touching. Their hair merged into a single mass. Anxiously Harry touched his own face. He knew that he looked like Ben, yet (and this was
the snag) they had very few features in common; his other features were as different from Ben as from Laurence herself. But no one would ever believe it. Never. He would be forever rejected by both sides, endlessly snubbed by each, continually paying for the sins that Ben might commit. But his bitterness, his angry resignation could have been Ben’s. He felt as if some stranger’s body had been attached to his own and that he would never succeed in tearing it away without destroying his own flesh.

‘I’m begging you,’ he cried in anguish, ‘leave him be. Come on, Ada, let’s go!’

She stood up. Ben grabbed her by the shoulders. Harry thought he was going to hit her; he leapt forward, but all Ben did was take Ada’s face in his hands and stare at her the way you stare at someone who has died before closing the cover of the casket. Then he pushed her away, ran out of the room and disappeared.

One May morning, two years later, Isaac and Salomon Sinner, the current owners of the bank, were expecting their nephew Harry. They got up late, bathed and scrubbed their old, delicate bodies. They had their nails done by their private manicurists, beautiful young women whom they could no longer embrace: they simply watched them from a distance with a sense of pleasure mixed with annoyance and regret, the way you look at flowers behind a window. They dressed meticulously, with infinite care, and finally swathed their dry carcasses in dressing gowns which, through the richness of their colours and the perfection of their cut, were the triumph of two combined arts: the art of the Orient and the art of London. This had always been the more or less conscious goal of their ambition: to offer through their appearance a subtle combination of propriety and luxury. Up until now, everything about them had been impeccably proper, but with a hint of foreignness, like the perfume given off by certain tropical hardwoods. They were extraordinarily alike: thin and slight of frame with curly white hair, dark circles under their eyes and complexions that age had changed from swarthy to yellowish.

They had worked very hard. They were born at a time when their father, the famous elderly Sinner, idol and role model of
the Ukrainian Jews, had not yet built up his formidable fortune. They were the two eldest sons, the ones who had to be taught to work hard early on – the younger ones were shown some indulgence, but the older ones were there before anyone could be spoiled, before anyone had been softened by extreme security and luxury. They were the heirs apparent, destined only for responsibilities in life and none of its privileges. They had left Russia with limited means, for the money earned by their father had been endlessly speculated, constantly jeopardised, gambled with time and time again with infinite good fortune but also extremely dangerously. They knew almost as well as their father that they could count on no one if they failed. Of course, they could always go back to the Ukraine where they would have food and a roof over their heads, but they would have no active participation in the company business: the elderly Sinner refused to die.