The Garden of the Finzi-Continis Read Online Free PDF Page B

facing backwards. There were the two Finzi-Continis and the two Herreras, in a row in their seats, not much more than a yard away, yet terribly far, quite intangible, as if protected by a wall of glass around them. They were not alike. Tall, thin, bald, with long pale bearded faces, always in blue or black, and, apart from that, putting an intensity, a fanatical ardour into their devotions which their brother-in-law and nephew-all you need do was look at them to see it-would never be capable of, the relations from Venice seemed to belong to a civilization completely foreign to that of Alberto’s tobacco-coloured sweaters and thick, sporty socks, or Professor Ermanno’s scholarly, country gentlemen’s clothes-English wool, yellowish linen. All the same, in spite of their differences, I felt their profound solidarity. What was there in common- all fourofthem seemed to say-between them and the distracted,whispering, Italian rank and file, that, even in the synagogue, before the wide open Ark of the Lord, was still taken up with all the trivial cares of everyday life, business, politics, even sport, but never with the soul or with God? I was a child in those days, it was true, between ten and twelve years old, yet I felt a confused but searing scorn and humiliation at my equally confused but basically accurate guess that I belonged there in the rank and file myself, among those vulgar folk to be kept at a distance. And what about my father? Up against the glass wall behind which the Finzi-Continis and the Herreras, always pleasant but remote, continued to all intents and purposes to ignore him, he behaved in a wayjust the opposite from mine. Instead oftrying to approach them, as I did, I saw him in reaction against them; with his medical degree, freethinker, war volunteer, fascist whose membership went back to 1919, sports enthusiast, in fact modern Jew-he exaggerated his own healthy intolerance of any overservile and obvious exhibition of faith.
    When the gay procession of the sefarim passed by the seats (wrapped in their rich mantles of embroidered silk, silver crowns askew and small bells tinkling, the sacred scrolls of the Torah seemed like a series of royal infants shown to the populace to bolster some tottering monarchy), the Herreras were all agog to leap out of their seats and kiss whatever scarlet bits of mantle they could get hold of, with practically indecent greed. True, professor Ermanno, followed by his son, simply covered his eyes with a piece of the taled, and softly whispered a prayer, but even so !
    “What mawkishness, what haltud !”* my father would comment later at the table, disgustedly: not that this prevented him-quite the contrary, in fact-from returning straight afterwards, yet again, to the question of the Finzi-Continis’ hereditary pride, to the absurd isolation they lived in, or even to their persistent, subterranean, aristocratic-type anti-semitism. But while we were there, having no one on which to vent himself, he took it out on me.
    As usual, I had turned round to look.
    “Will you please shut up and behave yourself?” he whispered through clenched teeth, his angry blue eyes glaring exasperatedly at me. “Even in the synagogue you can’t behave. Look at your brother here: he’s four years younger than you, and could certainly teach you manners !”
    But I never listened. Soon afterwards, his orders quite forgotten, I had turned again, my back to Dr. Levi singing the psalms.
    Now, if he wanted to have me under his control for a few minutes-his physical control, of course, nothing more-all my father could do was wait for the solemn benediction, when all the sons were gathered under the fathers’ taletod, as if inside as many tents. And here at last (Carpanetti, the verger, had finished going round with his rod, lighting up the thirty silver and gilt bronze candelabra one after the other: the room was blazing with lights) here,