But they had done it once, by accident, and nothing had happened. God had not cast His wrath upon the family. Life had gone on. When she was very young, Ada had only ever seen adults in her family respect Yom Kippur, the day of fasting (and even that was forgotten later on). Her father had explained to her that it was a very serious day, fearful in the life of man, because God held in His hands a great book, ‘like the big accounting book your grandfather has for the shop’, and He wrote on one side your good deeds and on the other side your sins. Ada had understood that you had to fast to touch God, but she didn’t have to fast because she was too young and too thin and anyway, children didn’t have that many sins on their conscience. They would acquire them later. She never actually knew whether her father’s religious beliefs ended there or if he simply kept the rest to himself since she was too young to really understand.

As for Aunt Raissa, her marriage had taken her into a social class that had evolved even further, one that was proud to distance itself as much as possible from the people they called (and with such scorn!) the simple Jews, the poor Jews.

And so it was that in the Sinner family, Judaism no longer brought any joy, but continued to bring many problems. How they would have liked to leave their fellow Jews to rot in their filth, their poverty and their superstitions. Unfortunately, they couldn’t completely forget them because of their horrible lodgings, the ground-floor shop, the street that wasn’t exactly the ghetto but was close enough to smell it and hear its screams, not to mention the other, more serious and sometimes tragic inconvenience: the pogroms.

At eight, Ada had never experienced a pogrom, but just as everyone knows about death, she knew there were two dangers – dangers that didn’t threaten the rest of humanity, but were directed specifically towards the people of her town, her neighbourhood. Everything could come crashing down on her at any moment, but she might also be spared: this margin of error was enough to reassure her. And the grown-ups she knew talked about this so often that their words no longer had much effect on her, just as a child born near a volcano never thinks about a possible eruption until the day he sees it happen with his very own eyes. The two dangers were pogroms and cholera.

They talked about them in the same way, Ada thought: voices lowered, slowly shaking their heads while sighing and raising their eyes towards heaven. When it was extremely hot and even more people died than usual in the lower town, where the mortality rate was already high; or in springtime, when pilgrims appeared with their vermin and diseases, or when there was a famine, or a drought, everyone would murmur: ‘We’re in for it this summer . . .’ And whenever any sort of political event happened in Russia, whether good or bad (peace, war, a victory, a defeat, the birth of a long-awaited Imperial heir, an assassination, a trial, revolutionary uprisings or a great need of money), the same anxious voices would whisper: ‘We’re in for it this year, or next month, or tomorrow, or this very night . . .’

Ada listened to them with so little attention that when the pogrom finally happened, she didn’t realise it; for over a week, they’d been talking about unrest, massacres, shops pillaged, women killed, young girls being . . . At this they bowed their heads, and Lilla put an extraordinarily innocent look on her face: ‘What are you talking about?’ it seemed to say. ‘I’m not listening to you, and besides, even if I was, I wouldn’t know what you meant.’ Lilla was getting prettier every day. She had started to wear her long curls in a chignon, low at the back of her neck; her hair softly billowed out over her temples and small forehead. The contrast between her pale skin and dark hair with its bluish sheen was eye-catching. Her hands were slender and delicate. Despite her secret rendezvous in the town’s various parks, despite the few kisses she’d bestowed, she was still a good girl, thought Aunt Raissa, who was experienced enough to know.

Aunt Raissa placed all her hopes in Lilla . . . Lilla was so sweet, so feminine, with her pale skin, her elegant walk and her innate desire to be loved, which made each of her soft, shy gestures graceful and appealing. Charming Lilla . . . Everyone loved her. ‘She’s a silly goose,’ Ben would say, ‘but a pretty little goose, sweet and innocent . . .’ Then he’d add, ‘a goose you’d happily eat up.’ At nine, Ben knew more about life than his sister, who was fifteen. Lilla inspired a kind of respect in her mother, mixed with anxiety, in the same way that the owner of a stable of racehorses feels kindness tinged with anxiety towards a pretty young filly who hasn’t yet shown what she’s capable of; one day she would doubtlessly fulfil the hopes placed in her – if she didn’t break her leg at the first hurdle, that is.

Aunt Raissa indulged in the most extravagant dreams when it came to her daughter. It wasn’t enough merely to think she’d find a good husband. No! Such things were good enough for other girls, but Lilla . . . a different destiny awaited Lilla. She would be an actress or a dancer . . . Or a great singer at the Opera House.