I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits Read Free Book Online Page B

with sidecurls and long skirts was the loudest the Luxembourg had ever heard.
    “Why so much joy in the wilderness?” Zalman reprimanded when the children clambered up the flights home, cheeks flushed with play. “Where do you think the Jewish children are, who lived here before you? Which of our neighbors handed them over? ”
    In Sibiu, Zalman had tolerated that his sons toss marbles in the yard, but he no longer permitted it in Paris. “Bitul z’man” (
waste of time
), he scolded the boys who followed him to his study, ears crimson from his angry clip. Girls were permitted to jump rope or play hopscotch when Hannah did not need help, but boys old enough to read were to sit in front of the holy books.
    Mila and Atara could sense that Zalman, so valiant in the desolation of back there, was afraid of Paris. They wanted to reassure him. They vowed that their piety would console the ilui who had lost his world. At the close of the Sabbath, when women were not expected to attend services, they accompanied him to synagogue. Like Zalman, they stepped down the curb to avoid coming near a place of idol worship, a church. Like him, they turned their eyes from the graven images that adorned façades and fountains—had God saved their bodies so their souls might perish? Zalman seized the girls’ hands before crossing the street, that is, he wrapped his palms around their wrists, slowed them with a tighter clasp. Zalman touched his children so rarely that his firm hold circling their wrists filled the girls with an exquisite sense of protectedness.Sometimes Zalman forgot to let go when they reached the opposite sidewalk and then it did not matter if people stared and knew he was their father, the Jew with the untrimmed beard who would not shake women’s hands; it did not matter if someone snickered
sales juifs
, dirty Jews. Zalman leaned toward the girls. “The same clothes that point us out to the hatred of the Goyim also point us out to Him who dwells in Heaven.”
    Swish … the knives skimmed the whetstone.
    Swish … the girls’ jump rope whisked the corridor’s floorboards.
    Zalman stepped out of the kitchen, the blades’ gleam secure behind felt cloth. Pressed against the wallpaper, Mila and Atara knew not to upset his course. When the door of his study closed, their skipping resumed, solemn, as the ancient desert threat cast its shadow and flew past.
    T HE CHILDREN were in the entryway, preparing to leave for their first day of school, when Zalman emerged from his study. The girls bit their lips, afraid to be late.
    “You will watch over yourselves,” he instructed, “and you will watch over one another. If the puppets of Satan gather tocelebrate their new mirage, their
State
of Israel, you will stand apart, separate. Blimela, you are the eldest”—Zalman always called Mila by her Yiddish name—“you will watch over the younger ones.” Mila nodded. “Remember, Blimela, when you observe HaShem’s commandments, your parents’ souls, up there, come nearer to His presence, but when you stray, they are banished to a cold desert where souls freeze and shatter.”
    Mila closed her eyes to better see her parents depending on her for warmth.
    “The children will be late,” Hannah whispered to Zalman.
    “The Lord is giving us one more chance. May He free us from the enemies that surround us, may He deliver us from exile, Amen.”
    “Amen,” the children echoed, adjusting the shoulder straps of their schoolbags.
    The bell was ringing when they entered the yard. Mila and Atara dropped off their younger siblings with the nursery-school teacher and ran to join the line already disappearing into the main building. They marveled at being in the same grade even though Mila was almost one year older and had finished first grade in Sibiu, but Zalman could obtain only one segregated class; the school of heretics permitted that boys and girls study together.
    Tall windows took up one wall of the bright room. The