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 short 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 …

A short while later she threw on her black scarf, left the room and from the doorway glanced back at him for the last time:

—This meant that they’d go their separate ways … She wished him everything of the best, and wanted to ask only one last thing of him: not to make any kind of disturbance here in the house, but until he left to go on behaving as though they were still betrothed. She begged him not to mention this to anyone here at present. Her parents need be informed of it only later when he, Shmulik, was no longer staying with them … Personally she esteemed him as a decent person, and had every confidence that for her sake he would do as she asked.

Unobserved by the rest of the household, she hurried outside through the kitchen door and went o. to the midwife Schatz.

There she waited with great impatience until the time for boarding the train had passed, lying on the bed in the midwife’s home and thinking:

—Now there was finally an end to it … At last she was rid of Shmulik, and of the engagement contract that had bound her to him.

2.13

When Mirel returned home from the midwife’s it was around three o’clock in the afternoon. Next to the houses, short dark shadows lay everywhere, prolonging the tedium of the hot, boring day throughout the entire shtetl.

Deep quiet and peace lay all around Reb Gedalye Hurvits’s house. Behind, a pig dozed in the muddy ditch where the kitchen slops were thrown, and the gate on the front verandah was locked from within, as was the custom on the Sabbath. Apparently everyone inside was taking an afternoon nap.

Mirel entered the courtyard and looked around.