Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/25

when her mother was no longer alive, and her father had tried to explain the riddle of Jewish destiny. He had smiled bitterly and said: "That, my daughter, is our Jewish fate." But his bitter smile and the despairing shrug of his shoulders had never appeased her rebellious nature, her passion to dig deep into the secret of her own and the world's sorrow.

One summer night some gentile hooligans of the village had set fire to her father's inn. Zosia and Hanya had laughed. Her father, careworn and defeated, had packed up the few things they could salvage, and he and his weeping daughter had gone to join his brother in the town, leading the cow and goat after them.

How she had longed for the village and for their garden! Even though the inn was burned down, was not the garden still there? The city had brought her no happiness. She had been quick to learn that it was not only by religion that the city was divided.

There was a difference in the streets, too. Some of the streets "belonged"; others were meant to be ashamed of. A girl from the Glavna Gasse wouldn't dream of being seen with a girl from the poorer sections. And she, Anna, lived on a "poor" street.

With an envy that she did her best to conceal, she would watch the young folks of the "better" sections parade through the streets singing the Hatikvah and chatting to each other in Polish. How could she hope to be one of them?

Her uncle Eli, in whose house she and her father lived, was a common tinsmith, travelling about among the villages and farms with a pack on his back, repairing roofs and patching pots and pans. All week long, from Monday through Friday, he managed on bread and milk; for the Sabbath he would bring home in his pack some sifted wheat, a few eggs, onions, potatoes and carrots. Later, when her father joined