The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series)

by David Bergelson

  —Take her fiancé, for instance … Her fiancé, it’s said, knew Hebrew very well.

  She had no wish for him to feel superior to her, and it irritated her that he reiterated his question of the night before and continued to speak in the same flippant tone. For a while she said nothing and heard him apologize:

  —He’d certainly meant nothing with his question of the night before …

  She brusquely interrupted what he was saying and began telling him that here in the shtetl was a pharmacist named Safyan.

  —He was fond of belles lettres, this Safyan; he’d also read Herz’s little story about “The Dead City” and had remarked that the image of the doll was too superficial and crude, and entirely lacked poetry.

  By now they were standing near the verandah of Reb Gedalye’s house. Herz turned rapidly to look at her. His face turned very red and he began smiling in embarrassment:

  —Listen to that!—he began, wanting with the same smile to resume his frivolous banter.

  But she’d already stretched out her hand to him in parting and, without a backward glance, had mounted the steps of her father’s verandah.

  A little Gentile boy from the town later brought her a note signed jointly by the midwife and by Herz, inviting her to tea. She sent the boy away without any reply and spent the whole day at home. That evening, returning alone from the local haberdashery store where she’d failed to find the merchandise she needed, she noticed that far, far in the distance one entire area of the sky was reddening above the roofs of the peasant cottages and that approaching along the road that stretched into the shtetl from beneath that ruddy glow were the midwife and Herz. Unwilling to think about them, she lay for a long time alone in her room, turning over in her mind the engagement contract she had to break:

  —How would she be able to annul this contract before Passover?

  A little while later, however, the midwife came into her room to ask:

  —Wouldn’t Mirel consider going for a little walk?

  The midwife smiled far too much, either because Herz was waiting outside for her or because he’d nagged her almost to death to go in and fetch Mirel. Because Mirel responded coldly that she had no wish to come, the midwife felt awkward, lingered on a little while, and started prattling about herself and about Herz who’d suddenly remembered Mirel when he’d awakened from his afternoon nap and had remarked smilingly about her:

  —He longed for her company … What did they call her? Yes, he longed for the company of “the provincial tragedy.”

  Mirel paled; astounded, she stared at the midwife without replying, but later, when Schatz was no longer with her, she thought for a long time about that Hebrew poet Herz, and his remark about her still echoed in her ears:

  —A “provincial tragedy.”

  She couldn’t tell where the barb of this insult, and the resentment she felt at it, really lay: whether in the fact that Herz couldn’t be bothered to remember her name or in the phrase itself that he’d coined about her:

  —“A provincial tragedy.”

  She thought that both he and his remark were of no concern to her, wished to shake both off, and decided in regard to Herz:

  —Whatever the case, the whole incident was ridiculous. And she, Mirel … She had other matters on her mind and would certainly never see him again.

  The next morning, however, Herz spent far too much time wandering all over the shtetl, and several times passed very close to Reb Gedalye Hurvits’s verandah. Through the window, Mirel noticed the way he turned his head in the direction of the house every time he went by and couldn’t understand why he did this. Once, indeed, she even shrugged her shoulders and mused:

  —What could he possibly want?

  That night, though, she wrapped herself in her shawl and, seemingly for no specific reason, went out on to the verandah. Noticing her from a distance, he approached, looking serious:

  —He absolutely had to say a few words to her. Nothing more than a few words. Would she put on her coat and walk with him a little while?

  Feeling even as she did so that to do as he asked was foolish, she went inside, put on her coat and set out with him across the shtetl.

  —This sort of thing was more appropriate for a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl than for her, Mirel, who had other things on her mind.

  For a while they walked through the shtetl in this way, were silent, and avoided looking at each other. In the end, turning her infuriated face toward him, she was the first to start speaking:

  —“A provincial tragedy”—that was how he’d described her yesterday, apparently.

  Herz reddened in embarrassment, but the green glint in his eyes began twinkling again. His voice took on the same frivolously bantering tone as the day before:

  —But Mirel needed to understand what he meant by that …

  Mirel turned pale and stared at him: no, this person was poisoned with the same taste for ridicule as the midwife and her aged grandmother. He had to be kept firmly in check, otherwise he was quite capable of mocking himself all day for the sake of mocking someone else for a single moment.

  —He, Herz himself … he too was nothing more than “a provincial tragedy.”

  She no longer wished to hear what he had to say and interrupted him:

  —Listen! What’s your name? Are you willing to make the acquaintance of your critic?

  And no longer looking round at him, she began calling to the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan whom she saw in the distance.

  On Sunday afternoon, a day before the eve of Passover, because of the domestic upheaval occasioned by the imminence of the festival Mirel left the house and wandered about for several hours somewhere far outside the shtetl. At dusk, when she returned home, she was informed:

  —Herz had sat in her room for two hours waiting for her.

  A note from him lay on her dressing table:

  —He was leaving that day. A pity he’d missed her and been unable to wait any longer. If he were ever to return to the shtetl here, it would be exclusively for her sake, for Mirel.

  Underneath he’d scribbled his address.

  So he’d concluded even this little note with a piece of banter—banter that was ambiguous and might perhaps resolve itself into a truth.

  —If he were ever to return to the shtetl here, it would be exclusively for her sake, for Mirel.

  No longer thinking about what she was doing, she put on her outdoor clothes again, went off to the midwife Schatz and stopped in front of her front door which was padlocked from the outside.

  —Did this mean that Herz had already left, then?

  In the darkness of early evening she walked home by herself, oppressed by the emptiness of the approaching days so soon to start dragging by again:

  —Did this mean that Herz had already left, then?

  And after this, there was no longer anyone in the shtetl with whom to exchange a word, and the night during which the ritual search for leaven had traditionally to take place enfolded the dimly lit houses.* And she remembered Herz, whose train was already carrying him off in the direction of the border somewhere:

  —If he were still here … if she were to meet him now, for instance, returning home …

  Such a meeting certainly wouldn’t have pleased her, but then perhaps her loneliness wouldn’t have been so great either. Herz was perfectly capable of understanding her and so of lightening her burden somewhat. But this was absolutely unimportant to him, and he’d made a flippant remark about her:

  —He’d called her “a provincial tragedy.”

  The whole business was probably childish, but was distressing all the same: he was capable of understanding her but hadn’t wanted to do so and had joked instead:

  —She needed to understand what he meant by that …

  For a time she lay alone in her darkened room thinking this through. At length she rose, lit the lamp, and sat down to write him a letter:

  —“The provincial tragedy” disliked people who did nothi
ng but joke. Throw aside this frivolous banter for a while and listen: in eight weeks’ time I am to be married.

  The house was chilly and quiet because the windows had been left open all day, and tethered next to a shop outside, someone’s saddle horse whinnied. Several of the adjacent rooms, cleansed for Passover, were kept in darkness so that no one might accidentally carry any leaven into them. Reb Gedalye, with candle in hand, could be heard visiting each of these rooms in turn to make the ritual search for leaven, stopping after the recitation of the prescribed blessing to say something to Gitele in Hebrew about a feather duster and bread crumbs. Farther off in the dining room, the stove was being heated for some reason, and across the silent house its inner little cast-iron door could be heard thumping as it was sucked rapidly backward and forward over the flame:

  —Pakh-pakh-pakh … pakh-pakh-pakh …

  Pen in hand, Mirel paused for thought, staring into the lamp flame:

  —Quite possibly she’d have no strength left to fight off this marriage.

  She’d have no more strength, not because she needed this marriage, and not because someone else needed it, but because all of it was a matter of indifference to her, and she felt strong aversion every time she thought about canceling this second engagement contract.

  And yet from time to time, because she still felt such a great yearning for love, she lay on her bed and reflected:

  —While she was lying here alone on the margins of life, other people were living fully. From a distance she saw the way they lived.

  For a long time now, it seemed, they’d known that love wasn’t the most essential concern in life. Everyone knew this, but no one ever said so. But then where was the most essential concern in life? Did life perhaps offer some hidden corner where a few words about it might be heard?

  When she’d finished writing, it was about ten o’clock at night. She took up the letter, read it through again, paced across her room once or twice, stopped for a second time at her desk, took up the letter once more and pensively ripped it into tiny pieces:

  —What a foolish letter! And of what importance was Herz to her that she should write to him?

  Distractedly, she noticed on the dressing table several letters that had come from Shmulik while she’d been away from home. There were four thick packets, all addressed to her. She opened one and saw:

  The first half had been written in Hebrew and the second half in Yiddish; it began with the florid Hebrew phrase, “Beloved of my soul” and ended with two blank, dotted lines.

  Resealing the letter, she left it on the dressing table and went off to the dining room. There she found the bookkeeper sitting at the table, and in the presence of Reb Gedalye and Gitele she said quite openly:

  —What had she wanted to ask of him? Several letters from Shmulik had come for her. Would he be so good as to write to Shmulik in reply: she, Mirel, disliked writing letters, and on the whole … on the whole, she begged him not to send her so many packets in future.

  2.12

  For the last two days of Passover, Shmulik came down.

  He arrived suddenly, virtually uninvited, attended services in the Sadagura prayer house with Reb Gedalye, and felt relaxed and at home in the house, like a newly minted son-in-law in the first month of being supported by his wife’s father.*

  In the shtetl he was regarded as a fine young man. Women smartly dressed in honor of the holy days discussed him:

  —He’s so good-natured … He’s totally without malice.

  Mirel, however, did not even find him sexually attractive, and already regarded him with apathy and indifference. His big face had grown more familiar and sallower in color than before, his small, soft, evenly trimmed beard redder, his mustache scantier and longer, and his fleshy nose made uglier by the fact that it broadened out stupidly around the nostrils and had retained from childhood a barely noticeable but ineradicable sniff.

  It was soon evident that he spoke Russian badly, yet insisted on speaking it to the midwife Schatz; that he enjoyed taking naps during the day; and was fond of telling long, tedious worldly stories that made his listeners break into cold sweats.

  In the salon on one occasion he was recounting one such long-winded story yet again to the midwife when he suddenly noticed a barely concealed smile flit across her face, lost the thread of what he was saying, and didn’t know how to end his narrative. Sitting to one side, Mirel was revolted by him, by his shallow, one-dimensional soul, and by the rambling, wearisome tale he was now repeating for the second time. Unwilling to go on listening to it, she began inquiring about Herz from the midwife:

  —What did the midwife think? Would Herz really never come back here?

  But hearing this name, well known in literary circles, Shmulik joined in the conversation:

  —Ah, yes: he’d read his books; he even knew his cousin, a rabbi who’d lost his faith.

  Mirel was incensed by his participation. She wanted to tell him that he was lying, that he hadn’t understood a word of what he’d read, but she restrained herself, went over to the window and, filled with suppressed rage, stood there until she’d calmed herself.

  She thought:

  —Velvl Burnes—he was certainly more ignorant than Shmulik, yet all the same … he certainly didn’t inspire the same disgust.

  A few days later, when Shmulik was dogging her footsteps on a walk through the shtetl, she saw Velvl’s buggy waiting in front of Avrom-Moyshe Burnes’s house. She stopped, and without looking at Shmulik, remarked:

  —Was her former fiancé really back in the shtetl at present? If his parents weren’t so repellent, she’d call on him with great pleasure.

  This was extremely exasperating.

  Nothing of her remark made the slightest impression on Shmulik—so insipid was he, possessed of such a cold, one-dimensional soul. Sniffling slightly, he soon went on explaining that he and Mirel wouldn’t be living with his father in the big old house, but in the smaller, newly completed wing at the end of the orchard, the front windows of which overlooked the quiet street of the suburb.

  Chatting on in this way, he felt completely at ease with her and took her arm. Without looking at him, however, she disengaged herself, drawing back a little with an expression of displeasure on her face.

  —She disliked being taken by the arm … She’d always disliked it and had told him so several times.

  The whole way back she was silent and refused to look at him.

  At home she reminded herself that Shmulik would certainly be leaving very soon, and immediately felt lighter in both mind and heart. A while later she stood in the early evening darkness that filled her room, peering through the shadowy window and thinking about this:

  —Reb Gedalye, too, would undoubtedly soon go off for weeks on end to the new Kashperivke woods.

  The tranquility that had reigned before Passover would return to the house, and she, Mirel …

  —Soon she’d be able to live here alone once more … whatever else, alone at least.

  From dawn onward on a truly hot summer morning, the glowing heat of the scorching, newly risen sun had shimmered before the open windows at the front of the house, heating both panes and frames and playing along floors and walls.

  In Reb Gedalye’s house, everyone had risen earlier than usual to prepare Shmulik for his journey. In her darkened bedroom, Mirel caught the sound of people drinking tea with milk in the dining room, of Gitele asking Shmulik where she should pack the butter pastries which had been prepared for him, of the arrival of Avreml the rabbi who’d popped in before morning prayers and was loudly remarking about Shmulik:

  —Even if he were to leave at noon, he’d still get to the train in time.

  In the courtyard the britzka* was being washed, oats were being fed to the horses, and a driver was engaged to take Reb Gedalye to the Kashperivke woods immediately after Shmulik’s departure.

  When Mirel rose, it was already late, around ten o’clock. One side of the house was already trapped in the shor
t shade that came with deepening morning, while a light, barely perceptible breeze made its way into the house through the open windows and tugged feebly at the long drapes.

  Mirel drank her tea at the table in the dining room around which sat Reb Gedalye and Avreml the rabbi. Still wearing his phylacteries, Shmulik pottered about for a long time. He recalled that during the last two days Mirel hadn’t spoken a single word to him and so was feeling upset and insulted, and he looked down at his own feet treading over the floor. He stole a sideways glance at her no more than once, only to see that she was looking not at him but at the dignified German mechanic who was present, and heard Reb Gedalye say to the bookkeeper:

  —He insists that the sawing machinery is better set up near the small ravine, over there … eighty-six desyatins into the woods.

  A while later, without his phylacteries, Shmulik went to see Mirel in her room. There he found her alone at the open window.

  Standing with her back to him, she did not turn around, and he was overwhelmed with desolation. His face grew sallower by the minute; he was waiting for something.

  Abruptly Mirel turned to face him, taking the last two days as an illustration:

  —He could expect to have very many such days from her … He’d be unhappy with her for the rest of his life.

  What else was there to say? She didn’t love him and couldn’t marry him … She’d no idea what need he had of her. He could certainly still make a good match for himself. She didn’t know very clearly what kind of wife he wanted, but here in the shtetl were Burnes’s two daughters, for example:

  —He’d be better off marrying either of them than marrying her.

  After an inordinately long pause, when she turned back to face him there were tears in his eyes. Two teardrops overflowed and ran slowly down the sides of his nose, and feeling them, his nose responded to their damp creep with a quiet sni..

  Mirel suddenly felt free and at ease, and a thought about his weeping flashed into her mind:

  —This means he’s resigned himself to what’s unavoidable …