The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series)

by David Bergelson

  —After all, it would simply be a pleasure if Mirel would consent to take as much as she needed from him … First of all, she needed to go abroad on her own … to Italy, for example. Winter was coming on … She’d definitely have to rest after the summer she’d just lived through. But wait: how could one tell her this? How could one possibly propose this to her?

  By the time he’d shaken o. all this confusion, the streetcar had carried him to another side of the city and farther than he needed to go. He finally got off and started walking back home. But soon he was overcome by confusion once more. Some elegantly dressed young man, a merchant, delighted to have met him here in the street, dismissed those of his companions in whose company he was on his way to pass the evening and began discussing business with him:

  One contract here, another contract there.

  Montchik stood opposite him, biting his thumb and looking down at the pavement in a daze. The elegant young man was under the impression that Montchik couldn’t hear him over the incessant rattle of passing streetcars and droshkies, so he led him to the top end of a quiet street nearby and there began repeating everything from the beginning again. But Montchik stared at his interlocutor with glazed, staring eyes, finally took him by the arm, and made his position clear to him:

  —Man alive! You can go on talking to me as much as you want, but I can’t hear a single word you’re saying … What can’t you understand here? I’m dealing with a diffcult personal matter at the moment and I’m simply not capable …

  3.12

  The Zaydenovskis postponed the divorce until the following Wednesday week and decided to relocate it to a town downriver* where they weren’t well known.

  This notion originated with Miriam Lyubashits, who once unexpectedly remarked:

  —I don’t understand why a huge fuss has to be made about this divorce here in the city.

  Her aunt seized on her objection and took it o. to her husband in his study:

  —I beg you: Miriam’s quite right, after all …

  Of late, nothing generally got done in the house without Miriam’s advice and approval. Her aid was even enlisted when Shmulik locked himself up in his room for a whole day and refused to allow any food to be brought in to him. Toward nightfall, someone remarked:

  —Where’s Miriam, for heaven’s sake? Why shouldn’t she go into Shmulik’s room and see to it that he eats?

  And Miriam went in to him, and he ate.

  The younger Lyubashits, who wasn’t directly involved in any of this, observed it all with great amusement. He held his sides as his substantial frame doubled up with laughter:

  —Oh, Miriam, what’s become of you?

  Before her marriage, he recalled, she’d been a person of significance, and in political circles her name had continually cropped up in connection with even the most trivial activity. But now she’d been reduced to nothing more than a commonplace wet nurse. How could she possibly pretend otherwise? What great difference did it make whether she nursed her own child or someone else’s?

  Miriam was livid and glowered at him as if he’d gone mad.

  —Can anyone understand this Shoylik?

  Her baby started crying, so she took the child from Rikl who was holding her, glaring at the younger Lyubashits, her face flushed in fury. She was on the verge of saying something coarse to him, but her aunt heard the child’s crying and suddenly came up:

  —Listen, Miriam, have you done anything to soothe the little one’s stomach?

  Miriam immediately put Shoylik’s idiocy out of her mind and began complaining to her aunt:

  —She didn’t know what to do and was at her wits’ end. The child had been in distress all night and the warm compresses hadn’t helped at all.

  Little by little, its former tranquility returned to the house. In the silence that prevailed in the hushed, tidied rooms, the adults once again started taking naps during the day, and the noisy children were now confined to their own distant nursery. Shmulik alone still failed to sleep through the night, suffered from migraines, and strongly resented his mother for continually coming in to take his temperature:

  —Why was he continually being bothered with the thermometer? Why wasn’t he left alone? He had no temperature.

  That he looked worse from day to day, spoke to no one, and locked himself up in his room where he paced up and down for hours on end in his stocking feet, had all become familiar to the members of the household. But one night something wholly unexpected befell him and shocked them all just after they’d extinguished their lamps and retired to bed. From one room to another the sound of frantic shrieking ripped through the silent darkness:

  —What’s happened?

  —Who’s unwell?

  —Get a lamp lit immediately!

  Around the lamp that had been lit in Shmulik’s room, there was a rushed jostling of women’s bare shoulders, men’s uncovered arms, and glaringly white drawers. Someone raised Shmulik’s head, someone else sprinkled water on his face. He’d already slowly opened his eyes, staring bemusedly at the people who surrounded him and were informing one another:

  —It’s nothing, nothing … Shmulik suddenly felt unwell; he imagined he was going blind.

  He soon dozed off, started awake, then dozed off again. The doors of his room were opened wide and the lamp was left burning, a chair was placed next to his bed with a peeled orange on it, and all returned to their night’s rest. But some while later, Shmulik awoke once more and couldn’t fall asleep again. He began pacing about his room.

  This was about three o’clock in the morning. From all around came the sound of comfortable snoring. He strode back and forth, impatiently waiting for the dawn. When day came, he’d go in there, to Mirel’s wing, and would tell her:

  —Early on Wednesday morning—he’d tell her—they’d travel out for the divorce … Everything was over. He wished to ask only one thing of her: would she come in with him to take formal leave of his father and sit with him for a while, not more than fifteen minutes? … That quarter-hour would demonstrate that nothing untoward had occurred between them; that she’d simply come with him to visit his father.

  He wanted Mirel to give him a passing thought at the end:

  —Shmulik’s changed completely … He’s become a different person.

  The next day he went across to their wing several times but found no one there except the servant girl. He waited until fires had been kindled for the evening and went across again. This time Mirel was in. She’d only just returned from town. A lamp was burning in her room, and in front of the open wardrobes stood the large trousseau chest in which the maid had been helping to pack her things all morning. She lay in bed facing the door and her features, still flushed from the chill outdoors, expressed both curiosity and astonishment as he entered. He took fright and looked down.

  Later, in the same state of fright, he sat opposite her on the chair next to the bed and said something totally different from what he’d been preparing to say:

  —He’d thought that perhaps … perhaps she might still go in to take her formal leave—that’s what he’d thought.

  He didn’t look at her. Quite suddenly he felt her stroking his knee with her smooth, soft hand. He slowly raised his eyes and saw:

  Still lying on the bed, she’d moved closer to him. Leaning on her elbows, her head in her hand, she looked directly into his eyes.

  —Shmulik—she asked—have I done you harm?

  Shmulik’s heart pounded.

  —Harm? No … Who says so?

  Mirel was obliged to rise very early to finish packing what remained of her belongings. She had also to reserve a room in the quiet hotel opposite the Shpolianskis’ apartment and leave instructions for her luggage to be sent on there. The boat that traveled downriver to the city where the divorce was to be finalized left at ten in the morning. The proceedings would take place between five and six that afternoon after which, to avoid traveling with the Zaydenovskis, she’d return by train and Montchik wou
ld meet her at the station. He’d promised. By that evening she’d undoubtedly be exhausted. Even now she felt a great weariness throughout her body. But was this any excuse? Now she felt some compassion for Shmulik, and had given him her word. She’d have to put on her shawl and spend a few minutes in the big house.

  Her mother-in-law’s maid, who opened the back door for her, started back, so stunned was she by Mirel’s sudden entrance. Because of her arrival, the mood in the dining room suddenly tensed. The chair next to her mother-in-law was vacated for her, but no one dared start any conversation. Someone called aside the visiting out-of-town relative, a newly married young woman who was sitting at the table; Miriam Lyubashits began whispering in Rikl’s ear and soon went out into another room with her; and Mirel, feeling oppressed, began to regret having come. She thought:

  —She’d done her duty … Now she could go back.

  But her mother-in-law suddenly started blinking and leaned closer to her. During the last few days, she’d not been able to rid herself of a suspicion of an exclusively female kind. Now she had to question Mirel about it.

  At her first question, Mirel blushed violently. Without looking at her, she answered brusquely and irritably:

  —No.

  —I can’t remember.

  —For a long time.

  Suddenly her mother-in-law, looking like an astounded small-town grandmother, straightened her entire foolish frame:

  —Yes—her expression said—I’m content now.

  She looked around, but there was no one here except Mirel. So she turned to her once again and said with loud incredulity:

  —Mirele, you’re pregnant, you know!

  —What?

  She thought her mother-in-law had taken leave of her senses. She was simply speaking like an idiot.

  To spite her, she instantly rose from her place and demanded loudly:

  —She didn’t understand … And that apart, what had this to do with the divorce?

  But all around her the tumult in the room was now so great that no one was listening to what she said. Someone called Shmulik in. Someone else hurried off to the study to give Yankev-Yosl the news. And Miriam Lyubashits was already standing in the doorway again. As soon as the mother-in-law had rapidly imparted some information to her, she looked across at Mirel and nodded her head:

  —Of course; what a question!

  3.13

  That night, Mirel felt intensely nauseous and woke the servant girl twice. She made her take a note to Shmulik in which she wrote that she didn’t love him and reminded him that even before their wedding she’d stipulated in a clause in their betrothal contract that she reserved the right to leave him at any time; that she still didn’t believe she was pregnant but that in any case she couldn’t have a child with him; that if she was indeed pregnant, he alone was responsible and a remedy for the pregnancy had to be sought.

  Shmulik was persuaded to drive off to the distillery and wait there for a few days.

  With everyone standing around him, his mother comforted him in a private room before he left:

  —What was there to think about? Now the situation was very different. If Mirel were to bear a child, she’d become far more tractable.

  For three whole days, Mirel suffered alone in her room, was conscious all that time of the place below her breast, felt intense aversion to it, and finally began calling on her mother-in-law in the big house once again.

  On her way there, she kept reflecting that she ought to say something, and so put an end to something. But every time she went in, the will to speak deserted her, and her hatred toward that place below her breast intensified within her. Her patience was taxed by her mother-in-law’s repeated “Sit, Mirele,” by Miriam Lyubashits and her child, by the younger Lyubashits’s ruddy face and tedious intellectualizing. As the disgust within her grew, it seemed to her that it had become a physical thing that could literally be seized; that she might all at once rip it from her, and would then grow light and wholesome once again.

  Leaving her mother-in-law’s house, she went into town, called twice at her cousin Ida Shpolianski’s apartment but did not find her in, and returning home, lay down and tried hard to calm herself:

  —Who could tell? Perhaps it was easier to do nothing, and let things take their course. Perhaps it was better to endure without complaining for the rest of her life … lying in bed like this … suffering in silence.

  She didn’t love Shmulik. She loved no one. Sometimes she felt drawn to Nosn Heler, but she didn’t trust that feeling. And mothers loved their children, after all. Who could say? Perhaps she’d grow to love this child … She would be a mother.

  For several days she suffered in silence without leaving the house, imagining how she would be a mother.

  Some joker would certainly make fun of her as he had of Miriam Lyubashits:—What had become of her!—he’d say—She’d become nothing more than a wet nurse! But she’d take no notice and pretend not to hear. Bowed beneath her yoke she’d simply spend every minute following the child’s every footstep and fearing only one thing:

  —That, God forbid, the little one didn’t fall.

  Soon, though, a beautiful frosty Sunday dawned, and in its brilliant sunshine the intense whiteness of the snow dazzled the eyes for the first time that season, and all the shops were shut because of the Gentile holiday.

  Many sleighs both privately owned and publicly hired sped over the frosty whiteness of the city. And the tale that the revitalized outdoors told the surrounding stillness of the fields was wholly composed of the weakened peal of distant bells and the merry sneezing of horses that a sleigh speeding past had here and there mislaid.

  Mirel stood alone at the window. Her heart was void of resolution and her sorrow intense. Standing next to a coachman whose sleigh had just been vacated, she noticed, was a young couple keenly interested in both the sleigh and in its wet horse on which the new-fallen snow was slowly freezing. All three, the coachman and the young couple, laughed at the meager amount of small change that was all they could offer for a sleigh ride, and all three were delighted: the coachman from the little windfall that had come his way that day, and the couple from the first snowfall of the season and the fact that they were in love.

  Slowly Mirel began dressing to leave the house on some outing. From the closet she unhurriedly drew out her karakul jacket,* paused, lost herself in thought, pulled on the jacket, and again fell into a reverie. She’d even gone to the door, but stopped there to examine her own narrow hand and the long fingers with which she’d grasped the handle. Recently her hands had grown very weak, and greenish-blue veins were now clearly visible under the deathly pale skin. For a while she stood there looking at her hand. Then quite suddenly she reconsidered, returned to her bedroom, undressed, and threw herself back into bed. Now everything was so disgusting and oppressive; now it was no longer possible to endure the weakness and submissiveness of the last few days:

  —What did they want of her? … Why did they want to make a mother of her? … She couldn’t be a mother … She didn’t want to bear a child …

  That same day she spent some time with Ida from whom she learned that there were two obstetricians in town prepared to do “it.”

  —One was an old Christian: first he moralized for two hours, then he demanded nothing less than two hundred rubles for “it.” The second was much younger and a Jew. He took no more than a hundred rubles, and word had it that he did the job equally well.

  She went to consult the younger doctor, the Jew. Answering all his questions, she was conscious that he was insulting her through the way he looked at her, through his lewd thoughts, and through the tone in which he gave her to understand that although he undertook to do “it,” he regarded her as a sinner and morally far below himself, and therefore he repeated remarks he’d already made:

  —Perhaps she was still single and consequently didn’t want any members of her family to find out about this? It was all the same to him. He merely wanted to exp
lain that by doing the work here in his surgery he put himself at far greater risk of discovery, and therefore he required double the fee.

  He added:

  —In any case, we can wait for two weeks and try a few other methods that can do no harm.

  She was cruelly cut by his use of the word “we.” Abruptly interrupting him, she made him feel like a charlatan:

  —Good, he’d be paid double.

  Afterward she lay calmly by herself in the dining room counting the days that remained of these two weeks:

  —When was the appointed day? … Yes, the Monday after the next Sabbath …

  And now there was no one to confide in about herself, about the approaching danger that held no terror for her, and about that fact that her hopes for her future life were uncertain and slight. Yet her heart was still drawn to something, and various plans still drifted into her mind. She still thought about herself and about Nosn Heler’s penny newspaper which had recently started appearing and had even found its way into Shmulik’s study:

  —Now there was even Nosn Heler … Even he had succeeded in accomplishing something.

  Under the weight of his sufferings, Shmulik sat in his study with that very newspaper. Glancing into it like a mourner, he kept silent for hours at a time, thought constantly of Mirel, but dared not go in to speak with her. He looked like a man who was fasting intermittently. Most of the time he stayed in the distillery; when he returned home, he spent the night in his study, and rarely left it. When the younger Lyubashits, that incessantly chattering student, called on him on one occasion, he couldn’t endure that fact that he, Lyubashits, was prattling on so heartily and loudly while Mirel was lying on the sofa in the adjoining room, and he stopped him after his first few words: