The Dogs and the Wolves Read Online Free

pictures, broken toys – the ones she loved most – and coloured pencils. The settee was worn out; the torn leather hung down in ribbons in places, the springs creaked. But she loved it. Now it was Ben’s bed; she felt ejected, cast out.
    She held her cup of tea in both hands and blew on it with such concentration that her little face seemed to disappear into the large cup and all you could see of her was her thick, dark-brown fringe.
    Her aunt looked at her and, wishing to be kind, said: ‘Come here, Adotchka. I’ll tie back your hair with a pretty ribbon, darling.’
    Ada obediently stood up, but she had to make her way through the narrow space left between people’s legs and the table, and it took her a long time. When she finally arrived, her aunt had forgotten all about her. Ada slipped on to her father’s lap and listened to the grown-ups talk, while trying to poke her finger through the smoke rings that came from her father’s cigarette; it made little bluish rings, light and moist, that disappeared as soon as she reached out to touch them.
    ‘We are the Sinner family,’ Aunt Raissa said with pride. ‘And who is the richest man in this town? Old Salomon Sinner. And in Europe?’
    She turned towards Ada’s grandfather. ‘You’ve travelled, Ezekiel Lvovich, have you ever seen the family’s mansions in London and Vienna?’
    ‘We’re not as closely related as that,’ Ada’s father said, laughing slightly in surprise.
    ‘Really? Not closely related? And just what makes you say that, if you please? Wasn’t your own grandmother the first cousin of old Sinner? Both of them ran barefoot through the mud. Then she married your grandfather who sold clothes and old furniture, in Berdichev.’
    ‘They’re called rag merchants,’ Ben said suddenly.
    ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ his mother said harshly, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about! Rag merchants carry bundles of old clothes on their backs and go door to door trying to sell them in the slums. Your grandfather had a shop and an assistant, two assistants, when things were going well. Back then, Salomon Sinner worked hard, made money, and his sons did well and made even more money, so much so that today their fortune is worth at least as much as the Rothschilds’.’
    But now, given the incredulous looks on their faces, she could sense she had gone too far.
    ‘They may have a few million less than the Rothschilds, two or three million less, I can’t remember, but they are hugely wealthy and we’re related to them. That’s what we mustn’t forget. If you were to put yourself forward a bit more, my poor Isa, and stop looking like a sad little dog – you’ve looked like that since the day you were born – as your brother always said, you could be someone in this town. Money is money, but blood is blood.’
    ‘Money . . .’ her father said quietly.
    He sighed, smiled slightly. Everyone fell silent. He poured a little tea into his saucer and drank it, nodding his head. Everyone thought money a good thing, but to a Jew, it was a necessity, like air or water. How could they live without money? How couldthey pay the bribes? How could they get their children into school when there were already too many students enrolled? How could they buy permission to go here or there, to sell this or that? How could they avoid military service? Oh, my God! Without money, how could they live?
    Her grandfather moved his lips slightly and tried to recall the quotation from a Psalm he needed for chapter XII, paragraph 7 of his book. His family’s chatter simply did not exist as far as he was concerned. The external world was only important to base creatures who didn’t know how to shut it out through spiritual meditation and intellectual thought.
    Aunt Raissa looked at the shabby, messy room, full of smoke from the kitchen, and could barely hide her disgust. The wallpaper, a dingy green decorated with silver leaves, was dirty and torn. The only plush