Work Text:
April 23rd, 1940
What are the testimonies, the statutes, and the laws that G-d, our G-d, has commanded to you?
There's never any argument over Jean being at the Seder table. Zahara's parents may never have quite accepted him as her brother, but they're hardly going to turn him away on Passover; so he's jammed in between Isaïe and Myriam, amiably making conversation with her father's coworker (across from him) and her mother's brother (clearing away dishes).
Lisette pours wine; Papa recites over it; Zahara drinks, and tries not to make a face. (Jean does a much better job at it, but he still signs a complaint to her; she rolls her eyes, and kicks him under the table.)
Stealing the afikomen is Jean's job -- no one's ever caught him at it, and by now they try. The four questions are Isaïe's, the little cousin being still too little to stumble through them; he grumbles about still qualifying as the baby of the family, but sings his way through the questions in his lovely clear voice nonetheless. Zahara answers, grateful she doesn't have to sing: we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L-rd, our G-d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm....
Two weeks and three days later, Germany invades.
April 12th, 1941
What is this service of yours?
Flour is rationed. Oil is rationed. Eggs are rationed.
Jean brings the wine, this year, and no one asks too many questions about whether it's kosher. No one asks too many questions about where he got it, either. They know better than to ask too many questions about anything Jean and Zahara do, these days. Safer not to know.
(It's good wine. Better than they've had any Passover before. Zahara doesn't know who Jean killed to get it, but she suspects it was someone.)
Papa's coworker wasn't invited this year. Mama's brother and his wife and the little cousin are absent, too, holding their seder somewhere in America. It should leave the table feeling empty -- but they're all packed in anyway, just around a smaller table in a smaller room, with the shutters closed.
Lisette recites the ten plagues, from the rivers running with blood to the death of the first-born. Zahara watches Jean the whole time. His face is pleasant, but when he puts his hand to his glass to remove a drop for each plague, his finger never touches the wine.
April 2nd, 1942
What is this celebration about?
Only the two of them, this year, and it breaks Zahara's heart, but it's safer, if anything can be safer -- she's doing dangerous things, these days, and her parents can't be known to associate with her. So Jean asks her, with a bitter twist in his smile, why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables, but on this night we eat bitter herbs?, and they take turns reciting the questions of the four sons.
(She still doesn't see Jean steal the afikomen. She doesn't know how he does it.)
They hold hands while they sing Dayenu, and Zahara doesn't know who's clinging to whom. If He had brought us out of Egypt, but not executed justice on the Egyptians -- if He had executed justice on the Egyptians, but not on their gods -- if He had given me my brother, but not the rest of my family -- please, please, just that, that would be enough...
April 20th, 1943
the one who knows not how to ask
"Think you've had enough," the bartender says, dubiously, and Jean snarls at him in French before remembering which language to use -- not four yet, give me my fourth damn drink -- just because he'd been drunk already when he came in didn't mean he's going to do it wrong.
Well. Wronger than he's already doing it.
“Finish the one you have ,” the man tries again, with increasing exasperation, gesturing to the untouched cup by Jean’s elbow. Jean hisses through his teeth in reply, and shoves more money at him.
They throw him out, eventually, though he's had rather more than four cups by then. Jean lies sprawled on his back and the pavement, and screams in French at a cloudless sky.
Pour out your wrath on the nations
that do not acknowledge you,
on the kingdoms
that do not call on your name;
for they have devoured Jacob
and devastated his homeland.