—Hush! … Quieter, please … What’s making you so cheerful?
3.14
And the Monday came.
Around eleven o’clock in the morning, Shmulik arrived back from town on the streetcar and saw in the distance:
Wearing her karakul jacket, Mirel stood at the streetcar stop opposite one of the Gentile city messengers with whom she was sending a letter to someone, and the messenger nodded his head in its red cap as he listened to the identifying characteristics of the person into whose hands he was being instructed to deliver it.
For some reason, Shmulik returned to town. When he finally returned home at around three in the afternoon, Mirel still wasn’t back. For a while he drifted about alone over there, then went out into the courtyard and ordered the britzka harnessed. When someone reported to his father in the big house that Shmulik was driving out to the distillery yet again, his mother felt decidedly uneasy. Going across to his wing to investigate, she found him ready and wearing the fur coat he used for traveling.
—Shmulik—she asked him—you got back from the distillery only yesterday?
Shmulik looked down.
—Tomorrow evening—he said—is Christmas Eve; the workmen all have to be paid before then.
And turning to face the window, he began waiting in silence for his harnessed britzka to leave the courtyard as quickly as possible.
The same day, when lamps were being kindled at nightfall in the dark houses of the suburb, a hired sleigh drawn by two horses drew up before the front door of Shmulik’s wing and a Gentile city messenger, having helped Mirel descend, took her arm and assisted her into the house. Mirel was deathly pale and barely able to walk. With the help of the messenger in his red cap she dragged herself to her bedroom and had hardly strength enough to fall into her bed. The terrified servant girl, the only person left in charge of the house, wanted to raise the alarm and hurry off to seek help from the mother-in-law in the big house, but summoning what strength she had, Mirel stopped her and called her over to the bed:
—It wasn’t necessary … It wasn’t necessary … The girl was to take her purse and pay the messenger and not dare to speak a word of any of this to anyone.
Dozing in weakness and pain, her features somewhat contorted, she lay in bed with her eyes shut and passed a restless night, her thoughts jumbling together the numerous morbid events of the day through which she’d just passed. She remembered the hours of waiting in the doctor’s reception room, the young woman in mourning who’d sat there silently, the agitated, small-town young wife who was continually scurrying about the room in terror, the foolish, embarrassed giggling of the unmarried young woman with the intelligent face who’d been escorted by an elderly Jewish midwife. All this seemed to merge with the frosty sunshine that peered in through the double-glazed windows, and all of it ceased to exist the very moment the door of the surgery closed behind her. Afterward something happened to Mirel outside. She was feeling as though her legs might give way beneath her and she might collapse at any moment, and her head was spinning when she recognized the Gentile city messenger in the distance. But now everything was over. Outside, night had fallen, and she lay in her own bed, suffering a little pain but remembering only one thing:
—The danger of pregnancy had passed, but now a new danger lay before her. It was possible … highly possible that she would never get down off this bed …
Three days later, when Shmulik returned from the distillery in the morning, her face was aflame with fever for the second day in succession. Although her lips were dry, not a single bottle of medication was to be found in the whole room.
Mirel clutched his hand and begged that everything be kept secret:
—I had to do it, Shmulik. We’d both have been unhappy for ever otherwise.
Standing at her bedside with downcast head and an expression of utter desolation, he nevertheless nodded:
—Good … No one will know of this.
Of late, Shmulik had changed completely. That afternoon, when his mother called him aside in a private room and started saying something about Mirel, he was greatly offended and even responded in some anger:
—What did everyone want of Mirel? Everyone had some or other complaint against Mirel.
Subsequently he spent hours pacing over his house, thinking over the new plan he intended to propose to Mirel and about the possibility of traveling somewhere with her for a few days and starting a rumor that he’d divorced her.
—Come what may, he’d never marry again. He had no use for his life and for the huge sums of money he was earning—at least he’d know one thing: Mirel was settled somewhere and he was able to send her the means on which to live … He was also prepared to send her the bill of divorcement at a moment’s notice, whenever she might need it.
Meanwhile at the elder Zaydenovski’s house a great many telegramaddressed to Mirel kept arriving from somewhere. Each time Shmulik was summoned to the big house and secret conferences about these cables were held with him. Shmulik was scared, read every newly arrived telegram with a pounding heart, and finally rushed off in great haste on the express train. He returned a few days later with an ashen face and very red eyes. He’d apparently spent hours weeping somewhere. Mirel, her face haggard but no longer feverish, was sitting up in bed by then. Lost in thought, she stared through the window and asked him nothing. And fearful of something, he stood opposite her in a state of utter dejection with a carefully prepared lie ready to hand:
—I’ve been visiting Aunt Pearl, that’s where I’ve been. Sadly, she’s just lost a son.
That evening the tall young doctor with the light brown hair called at the house. He was anxious to keep a very low profile, this doctor, which was why he called at night, looked carefully around him like a thief as he went in at the front door, and stayed in Mirel’s room no longer than few minutes.
—Everything is as it should be—he said.—Mirel could get up the next day.
He made haste to leave and was soon gone. Taking a lamp from his study, Shmulik saw him out as though he were a wonder-working rabbi, but the doctor, appraising him with a shrewd glance, bade him put the lamp down:
—She’s got a proper blockhead for a husband—he thought, in regard to Mirel.—Evidently he’s got very few brains.
Shmulik, however, was in a state of confusion and held ready a full twenty-five rubles so, snatching the banknotes with one hand the doctor placed his other hand on Shmulik’s shoulder:
—You’ve a fine young wife—he flattered Shmulik hastily.—She’s very strong … May the same be said of all Jews.
Only one small matter remained:
Shmulik had to be approached in his study, interrupted for a moment in going through his accounts, and abruptly told what had to be done:
—Shmulik, tomorrow we’re going to the town downriver.
But Mirel herself was still very weak from her ordeal and Shmulik unexpectedly set off for Warsaw before dawn, leaving with the maid a letter for her in which he outlined his new plan. He’d stayed up all night preparing this letter, had rewritten and re-read it many times. Eventually he was satisfied with it, though as a result he’d been unable to fall asleep before he left. But Mirel had glanced through no more than the first few lines before she asked the maid in astonishment.
—What?
Then she replaced the letter in its envelope and returned it to the maid, all of which she did very slowly. On the whole she felt very composed, and after her illness she was more patient than usual. Steadily her strength returned, and she waited calmly for the second week when she’d feel completely well and Shmulik would return from Warsaw.
Every afternoon she put on her jacket and her black scarf. Since she was still too weak to go into town, she stood outside next to the steps leading up to her front door, unhurriedly pacing to and fro and awakening wishful thoughts in the well-to-do young businessmen passing by in their own or in hired droshkies on the road outside. All turned their heads toward her, unable to te
ar their eyes away, and at the same time all of them felt very odd, as though none of them had ever sinned before and she had for many years been the unknown bride of their dreams.
In her father-in-law’s house, what she’d done during the past two weeks was already known. Her mother-in-law was often to be found closeted with her husband at all times of the working day, sitting opposite him, her face red with anger and her nostrils tightly pinched, beside herself with vexation and powerlessness:
—I’m telling you: such a despicable person is rarely to be found even among Gentiles.
And Mirel pottered about in her room, thought back to the pregnancy she’d escaped, and continued to have little faith in the new life that lay before her. With nothing else to do, she once more started going into town and disappearing there for whole evenings at a time. At first no one knew where she went and with whom she passed the time, but in due course she met one of her husband’s relatives in the street on which Nosn Heler had his lodgings and in her mother-in-law’s house this was discussed fully and frankly:
—What possible question could there be? That woman was despicable … She’d been in love with that young man before she was married, and now she spent evening after evening in his company.
During this period Shmulik returned from Warsaw, gave orders for his bed to be carried into the study, stopped going across to his father’s house, and generally started living like a recluse. His quiet conduct and crestfallen demeanor bespoke something mute and stubborn and it seemed that even while he was pacing about in his room, he found himself somewhere far, far away across a distance of a hundred miles and more. Meeting him in town on one occasion, Ida Shpolianski asked him about the divorce and he answered her coldly and quietly:
—Who knows? … Quite possibly the whole situation might reverse itself.
Then Ida had summoned Mirel by telephone,* wandered through the quiet streets with her until nightfall, and reported this:
—Now you’ll see … Now Shmulik won’t grant you the divorce.
Exactly the same thing had happened with her Abram four years before. During all that time he’d been prepared to give her a divorce, but when matters came to a head, he’d left home for an entire month and informed her through his younger brother Ziame:†
—At present Ida doesn’t need the divorce papers, but as soon as she finds she must have them, I’ll provide them within two hours.
That evening, looking distressed and exhausted, Mirel called on Heler, lay on his sofa longer than was her custom, and was more than usually pensive. Clearly she’d been coming here not for Heler’s sake but for the sake of his quiet room where she could calmly reflect on her future life. Here she rarely broke the silence, had her white kerchief spread over the pillow because Heler’s pillowcase was far from clean, lay back, and repeated what she always said:
—She felt comfortable here in this room … She’d never felt as comfortable anywhere else.
The chief reason she felt so comfortable here, it seemed, was that Heler had finally come to his senses and no longer spoke to her about marriage.
She related:
—She wasn’t in the slightest concerned about what Ida had just told her.
She had merely to speak the word and Shmulik would immediately grant her a divorce. There was nothing more.
A month and a half before, she’d known very clearly why she’d needed the divorce; now she lay thinking about every action she’d taken until now:
Everything she’d done up to this point hadn’t come about through acts of her own will but as a result of curiosity and compassion.
She’d derived so little pleasure from her life that she might as well still be eighteen years old. But were she indeed still eighteen, no new step in life would lie before her, and nothing would be left for her but once more to feel compassion for her father and for herself, to marry Shmulik all over again, to divorce him, and to be left lying here thinking:
—Well, good: she’d divorced him. Now what would she do?
Heler thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and began pacing across the room, barely able to contain his pent-up indignation:
—He was nothing to her … She came here not for his sake but for the sake of his sofa and his quiet room in which she could calmly think about herself. He was convinced that no woman had ever behaved in this way toward a man.
He observed her as she donned her outdoor garments, as she made ready to leave, and as he accompanied her out. He respected her silent pensiveness.
Every evening afterward, in this quiet room suffused with the greenish light that seeped from under its lampshades, he continued to await her coming, longing for her as one longed for a wife with whom one had recently entered into a sanctified and long-awaited marriage. The very air here in his room was redolent of her. He was drawn to the place where she’d lain, to her sorrowful, remote expression, to the thought that on her account he’d once given up preparing for his university entrance examinations; that here in the city his former fiancée had by now hastily married some young jurist who was a widower; that his financial investment in his penny newspaper was going steadily downhill and that this was the common talk of the town:
—Only a miracle’s keeping that penny paper going; it’ll collapse very soon.
But all in all Mirel came to see him only once more, and then only for a few minutes. She’d been left oppressed and disconsolate after a highly unpleasant scene that had taken place a little earlier between her and her husband in regard to the divorce, and hadn’t wanted to discuss it. All she did was to pace briefly through the room deep in thought.
She said nothing, did not remove her coat or her overshoes and found difficulty in swallowing, like someone who was fasting. Without looking round at him, she left almost immediately. When he made as though to accompany her, she bade him stay indoors, but he followed her outside nevertheless, pursued her to the next intersection, and said a few words to her that he himself didn’t believe:
—Someone wanted to buy his penny newspaper and had offered him five thousand rubles … They’d be able to travel abroad … This might be sufficient until he could qualify as an engineer over there.
Again she did not look round at him, quickened her pace, and merely shrugged her shoulders. In the end he was left standing where he was, and from a distance saw her seat herself in a streetcar and return to the house she hated.
On a second occasion he met her in the street near the huge, luxurious house in which lived her husband’s relative Montchik. She was walking with a dark-haired young woman who looked some five or six years older than she; apparently this was her cousin Ida Shpolianski. He stopped and doffed his hat. She noticed him but, as previously, looked at the young woman accompanying her, said something to her, and passed by very close to him. Wordlessly, her severe and unbending carriage revealed much about her, this unhappy only child: she truly could find no place for herself in this life, but she clung obstinately to some notion of her own and had compassion neither for herself nor for anyone else.
She turned at the next corner and disappeared with her companion. Still standing where she’d passed him, he sighed, replaced his hat, and strode on his way.
He was obliged to call on Montchik Zaydenovski, to feel uncomfortable in his company as one of her husband’s relatives, and to ask him:
—Perhaps after all he might be able to find someone with money prepared to come into partnership with him on the penny newspaper? …
3.15
Montchik’s desk was low, heavy, and wide. On it, apart from various ponderous objects, also stood photographs of his late father and of Mirel, each in its own leather frame, directly facing this young entrepreneur. From time to time, leaning his head on his hand, Montchik gazed at the latter, his eyes huge:
—Something’s going on with Mirel …
Since the last time he’d met her in the street and escorted her over the chain bridge, a city messenger had brought him a letter in which she asked h
im to lend her two hundred rubles. Then the two hundred rubles had been returned to him together with a formal note in Hebrew from Shmulik:
—My dear kinsman, our teacher and master Montchik! Thanks and thanks again for the generous loan you made to my dear wife Mirele, long may she live.
As his younger eleven-year-old brother came in from the dining room, he greeted him warmly and loudly:
—Ah, Reb Liolia* … What does a Jew have to say for himself, Reb Liolia?
Like him, Liolia disliked the Gentile youths who called on his sister the singer, and like him could also not endure her shrieking. Montchik loved him because he was a tough, wiry boy with good understanding who often exposed his sister’s lies, and above all because he’d certainly make something of himself. He also loved him because Mirel had seen him once, had said that she liked him, and had caressed his head. Taking Liolia by the hand, he asked him a question, glancing sideways at Mirel’s photograph, his mind still preoccupied with his earlier thought:
—Something’s going on with Mirel …
About three o’clock one afternoon Montchik was sitting lost in thought at this desk, responding wearily to the parting greetings of the last of numerous clients who’d been coming and going in his office from early morning on.
His mind was numb, filled with the chaotic events he’d lived through the day before. There in the suburb, in his uncle Yankev-Yosl’s house, the entire Zaydenovski family had been in total uproar, because for the second day in succession Mirel had been living in the hotel on the quiet street with its long central island of trees. At eleven o’clock at night his mother, Aunt Esther, had been summoned, frenzied information having been given her over the telephone about what was taking place in that overcrowded, panic-stricken house:
—Shmulik had disappeared … He’d not been seen since the evening of the day before … A search had been instituted for him … He’d been looked for everywhere in town. Eh? … In the distillery? Yes, in the distillery as well.
The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) Page 30