In France
Published in Issue #29 Translated from Yiddish by Daniel Kennedy subscribe to unlock the full storyEvery evening he comes home to his large, disquieting room and drinks tea and talks with his daughter.
He has a wife living in a small village somewhere whom he only thinks of when it’s time to send money. But his daughter, a girl of seventeen, lives with him in the city. He loves his little one very much, and they live together like intimate friends.
He usually comes home a little tired, a little dissatisfied. The disturbing expanse of the room, coupled with the fact that the girl is troubled and distracted, only serves to heighten his discontent.
“You should have made the tea; you know what time I usually come home,” he says, irritated.
She approaches, kisses him on the brow—her usual trick to lighten his mood—and sets to preparing tea.
In these moments he prefers not to speak. He looks over the newspapers indifferently, paces around the room, and softly hums an aria from Il Trovatore or La Traviata—he adores “good old Verdi,” as he calls him.
Afterward he turns to the cheap mirror that hangs on the wall and gazes at his reflection with long fascination.
“Another gray hair,” he invariably remarks.
The girl works sadly and absent-mindedly. At her father’s words an ironic smile flashes on her lips and then vanishes.
The conversation now turns around the same old themes as always: about his young years which flew by so quickly, and about cursed old age which draws ever closer.
“Little one.”
“Yes, Papa?”
“How is it that I’ve aged so much in the last few years?”
She looks attentively at his handsome but weary face, at his kindly eyes which...
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