The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman Read Free Book Online Page B

together;

    Sally held her close and sang her all the nursery rhymes they could remember, and then offered to play a special game Harriet played with Bruin, but only Jim could play that properly; so Sally blew out the candle and lay on the bed in the dark while Harriet snuggled down beside her, and made up a story about Jim and Uncle Webster in the jungle. It was a poor, thin thing; she knew she hadn't a tenth of Jim's imagination. But it seemed to make Harriet happy as they lay in the dark together.

    The Tax Collectors
    Before she went, Margaret had said to Sally, 'There was one thing. It's probably meaningless. But there are two offices at Parrish's, an inner one where he works and an outer one you go through to get to him. There were two clerks in the outer one and a lot of files and reference books and all the sort of clutter you might expect—except that it wasn't clutter, you know, it was almost crazily tidy. Well, as I came out there was a third man in there with the two clerks—he looked like a rent collector; he had a little leather bag. I was so furious with myself that I didn't really take in what they said, and they stopped talking when I went through, anyway, but I thought I heard the rent collector man say 'That'll do for the bleeding Jews, then, eh.^*' or else 'That'll bleed the Jews, then, eh?' That's all I heard. I've only just remembered."
    It meant nothing to Sally. The men could have been discussing anything from a win in a horse race that would cost Jewish bookmakers a lot of money to something far more sinister, and in all probability it had nothing to do with her trouble. But she came back to it when Harriet was asleep. Searching around for something to take her mind off the problem, she picked up a copy of the Illustrated London News and flicked through it.
    The word Jews in a headline caught her eye, and she looked at the article with it. There was an illustration of a riot in Kiev, and the article told vividly of how the Russian Jews, particularly those in Kiev, had been persecuted by mobs of

    townspeople, their shops ransacked and their houses looted. It didn't seem to be a case of random attacks or mindless violence, because there was some controlling organization behind it; signals were given by whistle, she read, and the rioters stopped their looting and beating when the whistle was blown, and vanished instantly into the crowd. The soldiers in the local garrison did nothing to protect the Jews. Some of them had stood and watched as an elderly Jew was taunted and beaten in the street.
    Sally had read elsewhere that the Russian government had adopted a policy of anti-Semitism since the new czar had come to the throne. The old czar had been assassinated earlier that year, and obviously the government was trying to blame the Jews in some way, but she hadn't realized things had gone this far. Could this have been what the men in Parrish's office had been talking about.'* There was no way of knowing.
    Elsewhere in the same journal there was an article on political economy, and she delved into that to try and distract her mind. But it merely irritated her. Someone was trying to revive an international workingmen's association, which had split into a socialist half and an anarchist half, and a man called Goldberg was calling for a common front against capitalism.
    Since Sally considered herself a capitalist, this wasn't likely to appeal to her. She knew very little about socialism and cared less. Plainly, the economic relations between people weren't perfect, but there was little that agitation and propaganda and cheap journalism—she gathered that this Goldberg was some kind of journalist—could do to make them better.
    She threw the magazine to the floor.
    Oh, this helplessness. ... A spy in the kitchen, a faked marriage register—what was going on.^* Why.'' The end of it all was that chilling line in the petition: someone wanted Harriet. They wanted to take her child away from her.
    She went