Like great beasts, houses hunkered down ponderously under their heavy, snow-covered roofs and dozed in an unending reverie.

It seemed:

These houses had ears, hidden, highly attentive ears, continually listening to the great silence that bore down on everything around both from close by and from far away.

It seemed:

They were ready, in response to the slightest, most remote rustle from the fields, to spring up and in great rage and haste rush to confront it, like those starving dogs that race forward to challenge some alien intruder of their own species, an unwelcome guest.

Smoke puffed from the chimney of one of the houses, but instead of rising up into the sky it sank downward, feebly described circles in the air, and finally spread itself over the snow.

In the empty marketplace, several people with nothing to do stood around a sleigh that had brought reeds to sell as fuel. They mocked the stubborn peasant with his exorbitant prices and exasperated him with their sharp-tongued witticisms. And the shopkeepers, muffled up in winter clothing and lounging in boredom at the entranceways of their shops, watched all this from a distance, took pleasure in it, and laughed.

The marketplace was filled with vacancy, and only on the small square in front of the house of Avrom-Moyshe Burnes, the man who would’ve been Mirele’s father-in-law, stood five or six expensive sleighs, fully harnessed and waiting for their owners who had business indoors. These sleighs were attended by their energetic, fur-clad drivers who, having nothing else to do, examined one another’s horses and passed judgment on them:

—Just look at this one—it’ll go blind in its left eye.

—And what about that one? … Even at rest it can’t put weight on its hind leg.

And the horses stood where they were and did what came naturally to them; from time to time they shook themselves, trying to throw off the congealed sweat while numerous small bells tinkled on their necks, telling the outside world everything that was taking place within the house:

—Rich landowners were visiting, arranging loans for themselves in the smoke-filled study.

—Worldly merchants were there, speculators who weren’t afraid to make purchases a year in advance, and the spacious, half-lit entrance hall was packed with estate stewards and couriers prepared at any moment to appear before their departing employers, ready to receive their instructions and drive out in all directions.

Whenever he had occasion to pass this house with Mirele, Lipkis did not feel entirely comfortable.

He tried in every possible way to forget about it, and to this end had even made strenuous efforts to fix his mind on serious thoughts:

—In two years’ time he’d complete his studies in the faculty of medicine …

As though out of spite, however, Mirele insisted on staring at this house every time they passed and refused to leave him in peace:

—Could he explain it? Why on earth had they painted the outer shutters blue? That was so garish to look at.*

Or:

—All of them: Avrom-Moyshe Burnes, Brokhe and Feyge, her former fiancé’s sisters … they were all such refined people … she’d once loved them very much. Even now she sometimes had a strong desire to see them.

Lipkis was outraged and could no longer restrain himself:

—He had absolutely no idea to whom she was referring in such exalted terms.

—And anyway, creatures were generally divided into only two categories: human beings and animals.

Thus, the next question followed logically:

—If these pigs were human beings, then what was he, Lipkis? …

Mirele turned to him with a strange look:

—Milostivi gosudar, most gracious sir, would you be so kind as to keep your philosophical speculations in check until tomorrow?

After this, he did not speak again the whole way, walked beside her in great anger, and tormented himself:

—What was there to say? … If every serious thought he had seemed foolish to her …

She didn’t turn to look at him, even after they’d left the long main street behind and had stopped on the deserted, snow-covered promenade outside the town.

Gazing somewhere along the road that even a short distance ahead disappeared into the mist and led to the farm of her former fiancé, she merely remarked, softly and pensively:

—Listen, Lipkis, if I were as nasty as you, I’d certainly strangle myself with my own hands.

And she stood like that for a long time, unable to tear her mournful eyes from the road.

Was she waiting for that speck, the sleigh that had pulled out of the distant mist and was making its way along the road in this direction, and was she curious to know who was seated in it?

Or perhaps at that moment she was simply dispirited and overcome by the vanity of all things and was unwilling to leave this deserted, snow-covered place?

Yet in town, several women still continued to maintain that her heart still yearned for her former fiancé, that handsome young man who had the patience to pass the long winter months on his productive but now fallow farm, and that there was nothing more to it:

—She’d always been pampered at home, and couldn’t bring herself to marry such an ordinary young man.

Often the two of them, Mirel and Lipkis, wandered for long distances over the snow-covered fields, looked behind them, and noticed:

Far in the distance, the entire shtetl had sunk down into the valley between the two bare mountains, and had left no trace of itself in the misty air.

Lipkis was delighted that he was all alone with her here in the wintry silence of the deserted fields, that the uncommunicative Gitele was nowhere near him, and that Libke, the rabbi’s young wife, wasn’t scratching her wig with the blunt end of a knitting needle thinking about him. For sheer joy, clever philosophical thoughts even came flooding into his mind one after another, and he was ready at any moment to pose such clever questions as, for example:

—He couldn’t begin to understand why human beings had built houses for themselves instead of wandering about in couples over this huge frozen world?

But Mirel looked sad and abstracted, and was quite capable of regarding every one of his thoughts as foolishness, so he thought better of speaking and walked on in silence at her side. They skirted the knoll with its heavily wooded copse and crossed the low, narrow wooden bridge under which, from the time of the first frosts, a silent frozen brook had lain in repose as though passing a long, wintry Sabbath. From there they ascended the easy incline of another hill and finally reached the level railway lines bordered by telegraph poles that stretched out into the distance like a long black stripe and divided the snowy whiteness of the fields in two. At this place every day three long passenger trains crept out of the distant horizon in the east, carried their great noisy clamor swiftly past as they disappeared into the misty remoteness of the west, and left behind in the surrounding silence of the fields the mournful echo of many unhappy tales begun but not concluded:

A tale of a beautiful young wife who’d deceived her husband for a long time and from somewhere near here had finally fled abroad with her lover.

A tale of a devout and observant Jew who passed through here, desecrating the Sabbath with his rabbi’s permission, hastening to the great distant city so he might bend over the body of his dead son and rend his garments in mourning.

Slowly and impotently, in the air close by and farther off, these unfinished little tales floated about, lost themselves in the distant sleeping wood, and faded yearningly away. As they went, the silence all around deepened, and everything began gazing in the direction from which the train had emerged and into which it had disappeared, gazed for a long, long time, until from one of those mist-shrouded routes a new wisp of black smoke appeared and a long new train began rapidly snaking its way down.

Then Mirel snatched off Lipkis’s student cap, set it on the hood that swathed her own head, and positioned herself close to the railway lines to await this long train.

—Among a whole trainload of passengers—she added quietly and dejectedly—there’ll certainly be at least one unhappy person looking very disheartened who won’t move from the window all journey long and will press his brow to the cold windowpane.

And if she did indeed catch sight of someone with that kind of unhappy expression at the window of one of the carriages, she bowed for a long time, waved the cap, and monotonously and mockingly repeated several times:

—We’re also unhappy … also unhappy … also unhappy …

On one occasion, returning from the railway line to the shtetl and emerging on to the snow-covered, deserted promenade, Mirele recognized her former fiancé’s sleigh in the distance, and stopped to wait for him.

Lipkis gave her a very odd look, as though he wanted to murder her, and she blushed deeply and even raised her voice at him:

—Why was he looking at her so strangely?

And this was only because she didn’t want him to notice that her mood of desolation had unpredictably evaporated. She even added, in Russian:

—Ty glupyi—You’re a fool.

And before long, with joyful abandon, she began throwing snowballs at him, hurling them and laughing, leaping about and laughing, once again snatching up whole handfuls of snow, throwing them and laughing again, finally forcing him to limp some distance away from her, hunch himself up, and cover his scowling face with both hands.

The conveyance with its new black horses drew nearer, so hiding her hands behind her back, filled as they were with snowballs, and smiling a little, she looked into her former fiancé’s face with wide-open, inquiring eyes.

Clad in a wide, aristocratic sheepskin coat the outside of which was covered in blond fur, he sat deep within his highly polished sleigh, from time to time saying a few words to the driver in a manner appropriate to a landowner.

In truth he failed to look round the whole time either at her or at Lipkis, and for a long while, as though turned to stone, she stood where she was, following his sleigh with her eyes and watching it disappear with him among the first houses of the shtetl.

—He’s grown handsomer—she observed quietly, as though to herself, and was soon lost in thought.

Only when they neared the shtetl did she grow a little more cheerful, acquire a strangely triumphant expression, and add:

—And his beard, Lipkis … he’s shaved off his beard, after all.

Lipkis was furious and said nothing. He felt oddly bitter at heart, and never stopped thinking angrily:

—Who could believe the kind of rubbish this woman forced him to get involved with? … What possible difference could it make to him whether or not this oaf shaved his beard?

Mirel too kept silent all the way back, once again sank into deep melancholy and despondent pensiveness, and stared down at her slow steps with eyes too wide.

Suddenly she stopped and asked, without raising her bowed head:

—Didn’t Lipkis feel the same as she did? … People were all far too old and far too clever to go on living. Perhaps now was the time for them all to die out, and for new ones to be born in their place.

With wistful sorrow in her blue eyes she stared vaguely ahead in the direction of the mist-covered fields for a while longer, unexpectedly twisted her lips into a grimace, and glanced round at Lipkis.

—It makes no difference now … —she indicated the deep darkness all around—so they’d better go straight from here to drink tea with the midwife Schatz.

Apparently she was also more than a little depressed, and in such a mood evidently had no desire to return home and pass the entire evening alone there.

In silence they crossed the left side of the deserted promenade on the outskirts of the shtetl and followed the well-worn, snow-covered footpath that led diagonally across to the peasant houses at the farthest end of the town, to those same peasant houses that encircled the northwestern corner of the town where they stood like sentries protecting it from the night and from the vacant fields that opened up immediately behind their unseeing rear walls.

Night had fallen, and in the pale gloom the snow dazzled the eye too greatly. Far, far away in the village a great many dogs met the approaching darkness with suspicious barking and recounted fearful primordial tales about the vast surrounding vacancy of fields:

—The Angel of Death lurks in the darkness over there … Death awaits whomsoever dares leave the shtetl to come here at nightfall.

Now, through the darkness, the last peasant cottage came into view, the semidetached dwelling in the left half of which, for the past two years, the Lithuanian midwife Schatz had dwelt peaceably with her peasant landlady. From the yellow ochre–smeared wall at the rear, her sole illuminated window now shed a ruddy glow deep, deep into the vast expanse of fields, glanced out at the sledges sliding silently home to bed from somewhere far away, and awakened in them lingering, cheerless, weary thoughts:

—There are certainly many unhappy people, all troubled and discontented. But as for living … in one way or another one can still go on living in a deserted and distant corner of a village, all alone and out of sight, smiling ironically, as the twenty-seven-year-old Lithuanian midwife Schatz did behind this window’s ruddy glow.

2.3

In a long, dark wool peignoir fastened with two blue ribbons tied diagonally in a broad bow above her breast, the midwife Schatz lay on her bed smoking a cigarette and thinking about something with an ironical smile.

She was always smoking a cigarette and thinking about something with an ironical smile, the midwife Schatz. At the little table that held the lamp sat the short pharmacist’s assistant* Safyan, his normally pale face drained of even more color, staring with great resentment into the flame of the lamp with his bulging, colorless eyes.

Under the table his knee twitched nervously. Not long before, with great seriousness, he’d voiced an opinion he held:

—Whenever he saw a woman smoking, his first thought was that here was an individual dependent on liquor.

Even for a moment the midwife Schatz ought to have given some thought to what he’d said and made some reply. But all she did was to listen attentively to the courtyard where the dog was harassing someone, rise from the bed and, without removing the cigarette from her lips, smile at Mirel and Lipkis who were coming in. So why did he need to sit there with his knee twitching under the table?

He actually rose from the chair wanting to take his leave, but Mirel had already cast an astonished glance first at the midwife and then at him, delayed taking off her overcoat, and from a distance demanded of him:

—What was he doing here? Was he really so afraid of the priest’s son-in-law, the pharmacist?

So he, the neurotic, stayed on a little longer and, still feeling insulted, was obliged to listen to the way the midwife Schatz, without looking at him and blowing her cigarette smoke toward the low ceiling, joked with Mirele about her own life:

—To tell the truth, it wasn’t only her present guests who said so … All of her acquaintances who called on her looked around and remarked that she certainly lived well. But she knew this far better than anyone else. What more was there to say? She regarded herself as supremely fortunate …

Each time Mirel paid some attention to the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan on the other side of the room, the midwife, seated on the bed, moved the whole of her bulky frame closer to Lipkis and, staring at the wall, nudged him in the ribs with her elbow:

—Lipkis! … Too bad for you, Lipkis!

In this way, clearly, she was hinting that she knew everything that was going on between him and Mirele, chuckling inwardly and soundlessly as she did so. The infuriated Lipkis almost burst with vexation and finally bellowed:

—Who gave you the right? … How dare you pry into my most intimate feelings?

In response, the young pharmacist’s assistant Safyan found his knee starting to twitch even more violently under the table, so that he finally announced nervously:

—He had to leave … Eventually he’d have to go back to the pharmacy, after all.

And off he went, alone with his nervous, bulging eyes. It seemed as though the slightest movement of a finger near those eyes would instantly make them pop from their sockets.

Of him the midwife Schatz remarked:

—A foolish young man … all in all, a foolish young man.

And she immediately forgot about him and went on talking about herself:

—Earlier that week, at the sickbed of someone she knew, she’d met the extremely busy Dr. Kraszewski and told him: I’ll marry you, doctor, if you’ll come with me now to one of my poor women in childbed.

Such was the nature of this bulky young woman with her smoothly combed hair and mobile, cheerful features: she could tell ironic stories about herself for hours without ever touching on her innermost life by so much as a single word. She’d probably inherited this disposition from her Lithuanian kin, so that, looking at her and thinking about this unknown family, what came hazily to mind was her eighty-two-year-old grandmother, a diminutive old woman as scrawny as a bird who’d come on a visit the previous summer and spent two successive months living in this room.

For long hot days on end, this little old creature lay propped up high on the pillows of the bed with her eyes shut, expiring from afar, like some harried and exhausted foreign parrot which, no longer able to endure the longing for its old home, constantly dreamed about the distant country across the seas where it had been born. It seemed as though she dozed for weeks in one long birdlike reverie, heard nothing of what took place around her, and didn’t even notice the young people from the shtetl who called on her granddaughter and discussed a variety of interests. Some of them were even certain that the old woman was deaf and senile and hadn’t spoken for a great many years.

On one occasion, however, a number of young people had been sitting here, theorizing at great length about themselves and their lives, and had then fallen silent for some time. Quite suddenly, all were greatly startled and clutched at their hearts in alarm.

Behind them, the little old woman had opened her sunken mouth, and her hollow voice could be heard across the entire room, a lethargic, plaintive voice materializing from some distant, crumbling ruin:

—Daughter of my daughter! Whoever talks less about herself talks less foolishness.

How odd that even now this little old woman also wanted to crack jokes. Her daughter’s daughter, the midwife Schatz, was neither surprised nor incredulous.