The Postcard
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Synopsis
A moving novel from the bestselling author of HOW TO BE PARISIAN WHEREVER YOU ARE "A deeply moving book." —LEILA SLIMANI *** "A powerful exploration of family trauma." —LAUREN ELKIN "A work of rare grace and importance."—THE GUARDIAN In January 2003, the Berest family receive a mysterious, unsigned postcard. On one side was an image of the Opéra Garnier; on the other, the names of their relatives who were killed in Auschwitz: Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie and Jacques. Years later, Anne sought to find the truth behind this postcard. She journeys 100 years into the past, tracing the lives of her ancestors from their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath. What emerges is a thrilling and sweeping tale based on true events that shatters her certainties about her family, her country, and herself. At once a gripping investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and an enthralling portrait of 20th-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, The Postcard tells the story of a family devastated by the Holocaust and yet somehow restored by love and the power of storytelling. READER REVIEWS "I am rarely moved to tears by books, but the Postcard had me twice. It is so intensely moving, so cleverly structured, and so gripping. This is one of the best books I have read in years." —Tom, Mr B's Emporium bookseller "One of the best books I've ever read." —Naomi, Netgalley "This extraordinary 'true novel' is a must-read." —Aoife, Netgalley "Powerful, painful, important... Highly recommend." —Stephen, Amazon "This book is more than the blurb, quotes and taglines. It is a feeling to felt, something to be passed on, something to be reflected and something to show the importance in remembering and reading." —Lucy, Waterstones bookseller "A beautiful masterpiece." —Beth, Amazon
Release date: May 16, 2023
Publisher: Europa Editions
Print pages: 487
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The Postcard
Anne Berest
CHAPTER 1
Just like in all the Russian novels,” my mother began, “it started with a pair of star-crossed lovers. Ephraïm Rabinovitch was in love with Anna Gavronsky, whose mother, Liba Gavronsky, born Yankelevich, was a cousin of the family. But the Gavronskys didn’t approve of Ephraïm and Anna’s love.”
Seeing that I was already completely lost, Lélia paused. Cigarette wedged in the corner of her mouth, squinting against the smoke, she began rummaging in the archive box.
“Hold on, let me read you this letter; it’ll make things clearer. It was written in Moscow in 1918, by Ephraïm’s older sister.”
Dear Vera,
My parents’ troubles continue to pile up. Have you heard about the mess between Ephraïm and our cousin Aniouta? If not, I can only tell you in complete confidence—even though it seems that some in the family are aware of it already. Simply put, An and our Fedya (he turned twenty-four two days ago) have fallen in love—they’ve gone utterly mad with it—and it’s upset us all terribly. Auntie doesn’t know about it, and it would be utterly catastrophic if she found out. They see her all the time, and they’re in agony. Our Ephraïm adores Aniouta, but I’ll admit, I’m not sure I believe her feelings are sincere. Well, that’s the news from us. Sometimes I’m completely fed up with the whole thing. Must stop writing now, my dear. I’m going to post this letter myself, to make sure it doesn’t go astray.
With love,
Sara
“So if I understand what’s going on here, Ephraïm was forced to give up his first love.”
“And another fiancée was quickly found for him: Emma Wolf.”
“The second name on the postcard.”
“Exactly.”
“Was she also a distant relative?”
“No. Emma came from Lodz. She was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Maurice Wolf, who owned several textile factories, and her mother was called Rebecca Trotsky—no relation to the revolutionary.”
“How did Ephraïm and Emma meet? Lodz must be a thousand kilometers from Moscow.”
“Far more than a thousand! Either the families used the services of the synagogue chadkhanit—the matchmaker—or Ephraïm’s family was Emma’s kest-eltern.”
“Her what?”
“Kest-eltern. It’s Yiddish. How can I explain it . . . Do you remember what I told you about the Inuktitut language?”
Lélia had taught me, when I was little, that the Inuits have fifty-two words for snow. Qanik is falling snow, aputi is fallen snow, aniou is snow they melt for water, and so on and so on.
“Well, in Yiddish, there are various terms that mean ‘family,’” my mother continued. “There’s one word for the nuclear family, and another for in-laws, and a third term that means ‘those who are considered to be like family’ even when there’s no blood tie. And then there’s a basically untranslatable term, something like ‘foster family’—di kest-eltern. ‘Host family,’ you might say, because traditionally, when parents sent a child away to university, they looked for a family who would provide lodging and meals for that child.”
“And the Rabinovitches were Emma’s kest-eltern.”
“Yes. Now relax. Just listen. It’ll all make sense in the end, don’t worry.”
Very early in his life, Ephraïm Rabinovitch broke away from his parents’ religion. As a teenager, he became a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and declared to his mother and father that he didn’t believe in God. Deliberately provocative, he made a point of doing everything forbidden to Jews on the holiday of Yom Kippur: smoking cigarettes, shaving, eating, and drinking.
In 1919, Ephraïm was twenty-five. He was a modern young man, slim and fine-featured. If his skin had been fairer and his mustache not so black, he could have passed for an ethnic Russian. A brilliant engineer, he’d just earned his degree despite the numerus clausus in effect, which limited the number of Jews admitted to university to 3% of total enrollment. He wanted to be part of the great wave of progress sweeping the nation and had great ambitions for his country—and for the Russian people, his people, whom he hoped to join in the Revolution.
Being Jewish meant nothing to Ephraïm. He considered himself a socialist, first and foremost. He lived in Moscow, led a Moscow lifestyle. He agreed to marry in the synagogue only because it was important to his future wife. But, he warned Emma, theirs would not be an observant household.
Tradition dictates that, on his wedding day, the groom must smash a glass with his right foot after the ceremony, a gesture representing the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. After this, he makes a vow. Ephraïm’s vow was to erase the memory of his cousin Aniouta from his mind forever. But, looking at the shards of glass littering the floor, he felt as if it were his heart lying there, broken into a thousand pieces.
CHAPTER 2
On Friday, April 18, 1919, the young newlyweds left Moscow and traveled to the dacha owned by Nachman and Esther Rabinovitch, Ephraïm’s parents, fifty kilometers from the capital. Ephraïm had agreed to celebrate Pesach, the Jewish Easter, only because his father had insisted with uncharacteristic vehemence and because his wife was pregnant. This was the perfect opportunity to announce the news to his brothers and sisters.
“Was Emma pregnant with Myriam?”
“Your grandmother. Yes.”
On the way, Ephraïm confided to his wife that Pesach had always been his favorite holiday. As a child he had loved its mystery, the strangeness of the bitter herbs and salt water and honeyed apples on a platter in the middle of the table. He’d loved it when his father explained to him that the sweetness of the apples was meant to remind Jews to be wary of ease and comfort.
“In Egypt,” Nachman insisted, “the Jews were slaves—meaning, they were fed and housed. They had a roof over their heads and food on the table. Do you understand? It’s freedom that is unreliable, that is gained through pain. The salt water we put on the table on the evening of Pesach represents the tears of those who broke loose from their chains. And the bitter herbs remind us that the life of a free man is inherently painful. Listen carefully, son—the instant you feel the touch of honey on your lips, ask yourself: of what, of whom, am I a slave?”
Ephraïm knew that his revolutionary soul had been born at that very moment, listening to his father’s words.
That evening, arriving at his parents’ dacha, he hurried to the kitchen to breathe in the bland but unique scent of the matzos, unleavened flatbreads baked by Katerina, the elderly cook. Suddenly emotional, he took her wrinkled hand and pressed it against his young wife’s belly.
“Look at our son,” Nachman said to Esther, watching the scene. “Proud as a chestnut-seller showing off his wares to everyone who passes.”
The parents had invited all the Rabinovitch cousins on Nachman’s side and all the Frant cousins on Esther’s. Why so many people? wondered Ephraïm, toying with a silver spoon that shone brightly from being scoured for hours with ashes from the fireplace.
“Have they invited the Gavronskys, too?” he asked his younger sister Bella, worriedly.
“No,” she assured him, carefully concealing the fact that both families had agreed to avoid a face-to-face meeting between Emma and Cousin Aniouta.
“But why are they having so many cousins over this year? Are they planning some sort of announcement?” pressed Ephraïm, lighting a cigarette to hide his anxiety.
“Yes, but don’t ask me. I can’t say anything about it until dinner.”
On the evening of Pesach, it’s traditional for the patriarch to read aloud from the Haggadah, the story of Moses leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt. When the prayers had concluded, Nachman rose and tapped his knife against his glass.
“I’ve chosen to read these final words from the Book,” he said, addressing the whole table: Rebuild Jerusalem, the holy city, speedily in our days, and bring us up into it. This is because, in my role as head of the family, I must warn you.”
“Warn us about what, Papa?”
“That it’s time to go. We must all leave the country. As quickly as possible.”
“Leave?” his sons repeated incredulously.
Nachman closed his eyes. How to convince his children? How to find the right words? It was as if there were an acrid tinge to the air, like a cold wind blowing to signal a coming freeze: invisible, almost nothing, and yet it was there. It had come to him in nightmares first, nightmares shot through with memories of his boyhood, when, on some Christmases, he’d been hidden behind the house with the other children from drunken men who’d come to punish the people who killed Christ. They’d gone into the houses and raped the women and killed the men.
The violence had calmed down somewhat when Tsar Alexander III, intensifying the state’s anti-Semitism, had enacted the May Laws, stripping Jews of most of their liberties. Nachman had been a young man when everything was suddenly forbidden to Jews—attending university, traveling from one region to another, giving Christian first names to their children, putting on theater productions. These humiliating measures had mollified the Russian people, and for some thirty years now, the bloodshed had lessened. Nachman’s children had never known the terror of Christmas Eve, of a mob rising from its dinner tables filled with the urge to kill.
But for the past few years now, Nachman had noticed a smell of sulfur and decay returning to the air. The Black Hundreds, an extreme-right monarchist group led by Vladimir Purishkevich, were gaining strength in the shadows, the Tsar’s former courtier spreading rumors of a Jewish conspiracy. He was only waiting for the right moment to come back. And Nachman didn’t believe for a moment that the new Revolution fomented by his children would banish old hatreds.
“Yes. Leave. Listen to me well, my children,” Nachman said calmly. “Es’shtinkt shlekht drek. It stinks of shit.”
His words caused the clinking of forks against plates to cease abruptly. The children stopped chattering. Silence fell. Finally, Nachman could speak.
“Most of you are young married people. Ephraïm, you will soon be a papa for the first time. You have spirit, bravery—your whole life ahead of you. Now is the time to pack your bags.”
Nachman turned to his wife and squeezed her hand. “Esther and I have decided to go to Palestine,” he continued. “We’ve bought a piece of land near Haifa, where we will grow oranges. Come with us. I’ll buy land for all of you there.”
“Nachman—you aren’t really going to settle in the land of Israel?”
The Rabinovitch children had never imagined that anything like this could be possible. Before the Revolution, their father had belonged to the first guild of merchants, which meant that he was among those rare Jews who had the right to travel freely around the country. It was an unheard-of privilege for Nachman to be able to live as a Russian in Russia. He had risen to an enviable position in society—and now he wanted to abandon it for exile on the other side of the world, in a desert country with a hostile climate, and grow oranges? What a bizarre idea! He couldn’t even peel a pear without the cook’s help.
Nachman picked up a small pencil and moistened its tip between his lips. His eyes still fixed on his children and grandchildren, he added, “Now, I’m going to go around the table. And I want each of you—every one of you, do you hear me?—to give me a destination. I will go and buy steamer tickets for everyone. You must leave the country within the next three months; is that understood? Bella, I’ll begin with you—it’s simple; you’re coming with us. I’ll write it down: Bella, Haifa, Palestine. Ephraïm?”
“I’ll wait to see what my brothers say.”
“I could picture myself in Paris,” piped up Emmanuel, the youngest brother, leaning back in his chair nonchalantly.
“Avoid Paris, Berlin, Prague,” Ephraïm advised seriously. “All the respectable places in society have been occupied for generations in cities like that. You’ll never establish yourself. You’ll be seen as either too clever or not clever enough.”
“I’m not worried; I’ve already got a fiancée waiting for me there,” retorted Emmanuel, to make the rest of the table laugh.
“My poor boy,” sighed Nachman, irritated. “You’ll lead the life of a pig. Stupid and brief.”
“I’d rather die in Paris than in the damned middle of nowhere, Papa!”
“Ach!” Nachman snapped, shaking a fist at his son. “Yeder nar iz klug un komish far zikh: Every idiot believes himself to be intelligent. I’m not joking here. Go. If you don’t want to follow me, try America,” he added, sighing. “That would be very good, too.”
Cowboys and Indians. America. No, thank you, thought the Rabinovitch children. Its landscapes were too remote, impossible to picture. At least they knew what Palestine looked like, because it was described in the Bible. A bunch of rocks.
“Look at them,” said Nachman to his wife, gesturing to their children. “Just a bunch of veal chops with eyes! Think for a moment! There is nothing for you in Europe. Nothing. Nothing good, at any rate. But in America, in Palestine, you’ll find work easily!”
“Papa, you always worry for nothing. The worst thing that can happen to you here is your tailor turning socialist!”
It was true that, looking at Nachman and Esther, sitting side by side like two plump little cakes in a pastry-shop window, it was hard to imagine them as farmers in a foreign land. Esther was still girlishly pretty despite her snow-white hair, which she wore in a low knot. Still stylish, with her dainty cameo brooches and pearl necklaces. Nachman still wore his trademark three-piece suits, custom-made by the best French couturiers in Moscow. His beard was white as cotton, his only whimsical touch the polka-dotted ties he matched to his pocket handkerchiefs.
Exasperated by his children, Nachman got up from the table now, the vein in the side of his neck throbbing so furiously that it seemed on the point of bursting all over Esther’s beautiful tablecloth. He would have to go and lie down to calm his racing heart. Before closing the dining-room door, Nachman asked them all to think carefully, concluding, “You must understand something. One day, they’ll want us all to disappear.”
After this dramatic exit, the conversation around the table resumed cheerfully, lasting until late into the night. Emma sat down at the piano, the stool pushed back slightly to accommodate her bulging belly. The young woman had been educated at the prestigious National Conservatory of Music. She had wanted to be a physicist, but the numerus clausus had put an end to that dream. It was her fervent hope that the baby she was carrying would live in a world where he, or she, would be able to study whatever they chose.
Lulled by the snippets of his wife’s music drifting in from the lounge, Ephraïm talked politics with his brothers and sisters at the fireside. The evening had been so pleasant, the siblings uniting in gentle mockery of their father. The Rabinovitches had no way of knowing that these were the last hours they would all spend together as a family.
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