Katerina Read Online Free Page B

some reason aroused my suspicion that they had belonged to dead Jews. The lady of the house apparently noticed my apprehension, opened the door, and showed me the apartment: three dingy, not very large rooms—a dining room and two bedrooms.
    “Have you ever seen Jews before?” she asked again.
    “They used to come to the village to sell their wares.”
    The work was simple but oppressive. My mother and father had taught me to work but not to be meticulous, and here I had to be careful about every single pot. The man of the house, a tall and reserved man, used to sit at the head of the table and, after saying the blessing, didn’t utter a word. The Jews’ religion, if you don’t know, is restrained.
    The lady of the house didn’t spoil me. With great rigor she taught me what was forbidden and what was permitted.
Kashrut
, that’s what they call the separation between milkand meat. For them, strict observance of
kashrut
is connected with a kind of continual concern, as though it weren’t a matter of household utensils and food but of feelings. For many years I tried to fathom that concern.
    Had it not been winter, I would have fled. Even wretched freedom is freedom, and here were nothing but prohibitions. But when I peeked out of the window, I saw snow piled on all the roofs, the traffic in the streets sparse, no one going in and out of the stores. I didn’t have the courage to leap into that frost.
    I haven’t mentioned the two boys, Abraham and Meir. The elder was seven and the younger, six. Two pinkish, merry creatures, like two old clowns, who would suddenly fall silent, fixing you with their big eyes, as though you were a creature from another world.
    The youngsters studied from early morning till late in the evening. That’s not the way to teach children; that’s how you train priests and monks. Among us, we scarcely studied for four hours. With them they stick a book in a baby’s hand before he opens his eyes; is it any wonder that their faces are puffy and pinkish? Among us, a child swims in the river, goes fishing, and catches a colt on the run. My entire being recoiled at the sight of those youngsters being led to their prison early each morning. At that time, I hated the Jews. There’s nothing easier than to hate the Jews.
    I used to spend Sundays with my own kind in the tavern. Most of them also worked for the Jews—some in their yards, some in their stores. Our impressions were identical. Our youth, the joy we took in life, made us hold the Jews in contempt—their height, their dress, their food, their language, the way they dressed and mated. Not a detail escapedour eyes. What we didn’t know, our imagination filled in, and imagination, after two or three drinks, flourished.
    We vied with each other in telling jokes. We used to sing and curse the children of Satan, amongst whom everything is accounts, money, investment, and interest. Everything done in measure—eating, drinking, and copulation. For hours on end we would bawl:
    The Jews have plenty of banknotes
,
But they only pay pennies to you
.
They take a bath on Thursday
,
And on Friday night they screw
.
    In the spring I knew I was pregnant. I was seventeen. I knew that pregnant girls get fired on the spot, so I didn’t say a word to the lady of the house. I made an effort to do the work attentively, not to cheat and not to steal, but as for the boy who had done what he did to me—I lay in wait for him. He made an odd movement with his head and said, “You should go back to the village. In the village no one pays attention to that.”
    “We’re not going to marry?”
    “I don’t have a penny.”
    “And what about the child?”
    “Leave him in a convent. That’s what everybody does.”
    I knew that words would do no good. Shouting would only make him angrier, but still, how could I not say anything? So, stupidly, I asked, “What about your promises?”
    “What promises are you talking about?” he said, and his face blushed with