Free The Dogs and the Wolves by Irène Némirovsky Page A

education and, most importantly, to have her learn French. At this time, there lived in the city an elderly Parisian woman who gave French lessons to children of the well-to-do classes. She was called Madame Mimi. No one ever found out her surname. She was vivacious, elegantly slim, with bulging eyes and a small hooked nose like the beak of a bird, a bird that was losing its feathers but was still rather charming. She had thin, stiff legs, for she suffered from rheumatism, but that didn’t stop her from dancing at the Christmas parties, gracefully raising her taffeta petticoat, which was fashionably longer than her full skirt, or from drinking ‘one finger of champagne’ to toast the health of her pupils. As well as the French language, she taught them Sully Prudhomme’s ‘La Petite Tonkinoise’ and ‘Le Vase brisé’. She had an optimistic, kindly, sweet and joyful outlook on life that the bitter Jews could not manage themselves. She hinted that in St Petersburg, where she had spent her youth, she’d had a secret affair with one of the princes (she then sighed as she mentioned the name of someone who had once been famous). This fact was not at all harmful to her reputation. Quite the contrary: there was no one who did not feel flattered to have someone so well-placed in high society under their roof, a woman about whom one could say with absolute certainty that she knew the correct way to eat asparagus (with a fork or with the fingers) and that she would only teach her pupils the very best French – its terribly difficult pronunciation and its amusing slang.
    She quickly became fond of Lilla and Ada.
    ‘Lilla is born to inspire love wherever she goes,’ she said.
    Then, with a swift, delightful movement of her long, dry fingers, as if she were scattering flowers from a bouquet, she seemed to evoke the spirits of the suitors whom Lilla would encounter on life’s journey.
    ‘As for little Ada . . . Ah! She knows her own mind . . . When she gives away her heart, it will be for ever.’
    Ada felt flattered: the Frenchwoman’s opinions where matters of the heart were concerned were indisputable; she was like a master chef stranded on some deserted island after a shipwreck, enthralling the silent and adoring natives with talk of recipes from his homeland. Madame Mimi was ignorant of and looked down upon anything to do with business, commissions, brokerage or even the hierarchy of quarrels in the town, that is to say, everything that had to do with the daily life of the Sinners and people like them. But when it came to the emotions, she was in her element. It was impossible not to believe her. And Aunt Raissa dreamed of Lilla at the Cannes Flower Festival, on a float decked with blooms, while Ada grew to love more and more a shadow, a ghost: the boy, Harry, whom she hadn’t seen again since the day of the pogrom and who lived constantly in her heart.
    Ada had only one other passion that rivalled her feelings for Harry: painting. She had always done sketches. But when she was about ten years old, she was given her first set of paints, and began tirelessly to copy the street covered in snow beneath her window, the greyish shades of the March sky and people’s faces. Whether it was Nastasia with her frightening, dark little eyes set in her reddish face, or Aunt Raissa, hands on hips, her bodice the shape of a mandolin, or Lilla in a smooth cotton petticoat, or the disdainful, elegant Madame Mimi who looked like an aging wagtail, she found everyone interesting, everyone pleased her. But, mainly, it was Harry’s face that she drew, over and over again, just as it was etched in her memory.
    She showed her drawings to Madame Mimi, who one day recognised Harry among them.
    ‘I can organise things so you get to play with that little boy,’ she said, giving Ada one of her bright, knowing looks.
    Ada went pale.
    ‘Do you . . . do you know him then?’
    ‘I’ve given lessons to his family and have excellent