All of them—the midwife, Poliye, Safyan, and Lipkis—all were discontented with their lives, but none of them did anything to reconstruct those lives. There were many such people in the world, and all of them were now coming together to pass the evening in illuminated houses in various towns and villages, and afterward all of them returned to their homes where they went on doing those things they’d done the day before, things that had been repugnant to many people before them.

And in the end … now in this chill twilight that was enfolding the whole world …

—In the end, there had to be others who were trying to do something different.

When she went back indoors, the hanging lamp on its pulley had long been lit in the dining room, and Libke the rabbi’s wife had long been sitting there, smiling at the taciturn Gitele and making some worldly wise, married woman’s remark about Mirel’s condition:

—Is that so, indeed?

Disgusted and oppressed, Mirel went into what had formerly been her own room opposite the dark salon, stopped inside, and contemplated it by the light of the lamp she was carrying. Everything in there was so fusty: the tables uncovered, the air as chilly as though it were winter outdoors but the stove hadn’t been heated for a whole month; in the empty closet hung one of the dresses she’d left behind with a short, shabby autumn jacket padded with cotton-wool. The bed wasn’t made up, but loosely covered in such a way that the pillows and the featherbed poked out from under the blanket. And for some reason it seemed to her much easier to be eternally a homeless wanderer than ever to lie down in that bed again.

She found it difficult to remain in there. Returning to the dining room, she sat down at the table with her head in both hands, thought for a while, and then suddenly began inquiring about trains to the metropolis:

—Two trains used to go from here … She didn’t know which one would be more sensible for her to take in order to return home the next day—the one in the morning or the one in the evening?

With a smile, Gitele posed an astonished question. The rabbi’s wife added a remark. Mirel heard nothing; she was still staring straight ahead of her.

—So she’d be going back to the suburb of the metropolis the next day …

This journey of hers had been a total failure. She found it impossible to spend more time than was absolutely necessary here in this house. She had now to find some way to save her life entirely on her own. And if she were now returning to the suburb, it wouldn’t be for long, in any event … she was only going back for a short while.

3.8

Two days later she returned to the suburb, late at night when everyone was already asleep. She looked unwell, as though she were recovering from an illness, spoke to no one, lay fully clothed on her bed, and did not leave the house for several days. Some books in Shmulik’s study which she’d carried into her bedroom one by one were scattered around the bed on which she lay. Now she had nothing against Shmulik: he could make her neither better nor worse. She was simply firm in her determination to leave him as soon as possible. She could not endure his occasional lingering about in her room, however, never looked at him, and never replied if he spoke to her.

Shmulik knew that the doctors had despaired of her father’s life; Avreml the rabbi had communicated this information to him in a letter. In her own house, his mother was dumbfounded and wholly unable to comprehend:

—How can this be? When a father is dangerously ill, how can a daughter not bring herself to spend at least a few days with him?

When he tried to speak to Mirel about this for the third time, she grew agitated and interrupted him:

—She didn’t know … she didn’t know …

Tears rose to Shmulik’s eyes then, and he drifted over to the window in the dining room where he stood for some time, staring out with these tear-filled eyes at the overcast scene outdoors. He was deeply upset, and his mind was a blank. In this distracted state he went across to his father in the big house where something in his troubled expression excited comment, so his mother discreetly drew him aside:

—What’s the matter, Shmulik? Is there something new wrong again?

But downhearted as he was, he assumed the expression of a grave and serious-minded adult and even frowned in displeasure:

—No, who says that? … No … Nothing …

He went directly to his father’s study where three employees from different stables were discussing the possibilities of taking another drove of oxen to Warsaw. When his father sought his opinion, he had no idea what was being asked of him, and responded:

—Eh?

In the dining room of the mother-in-law’s house one afternoon during the intermediate days of Sukkot* the family had gathered to drink tea round the long table, covered with its white cloth. Because of the festival, almost all their relatives from the city were present, all cheerful and deliberately blocking out every thought of Mirel. It occurred only to his mother that all was not well with Shmulik, but she was so dull-witted that she soon forgot about this and began foolishly blinking her eyes.

Also seated at the table was the former student Miriam Lyubashits, cradling in her arms a six-month-old baby, a blonde little girl with uncovered head, eyes like bits of blue glass, and a damp, pouting upper lip. Only fifteen minutes before, almost the entire household had been fussing round this infant. Every member in turn had snatched her up to dance round with her and lift her high up into the air, and the frightened child had stared at all this with her eyes like bits of blue glass, frequently whimpering. The mother-in-law had then taken the baby in her arms and, blinking her eyes, had started talking to her, whereupon the child had wrinkled up her little snub nose, poked out her little tongue, and begun smiling merrily. Everyone had been utterly charmed, and Miriam Lyubashits had announced:

—Do you all see? … She loves her auntie already.

Now silence had descended on the dining room. All the relatives had moved into the salon and the child lay in Miriam’s arms. Dribbling, the little one raked her weak little fists over her mother’s face, emitting a piercing yell that carried across the hushed room, as though her mother’s face were a windowpane and the child were stubbornly determined to smash it. Turning her face to one side as though afraid of a blow from these little fists, the mother tried her best to answer her aunt’s question:

—What’s there to think about? Mirel certainly can’t be regarded as a normal person.

Almost all the chairs around the table were unoccupied and the children were playing noisily in an adjoining room. The mother-in-law peered round to check that no one could overhear what she said, asked someone to shut the door that led into the passage, and moved closer to Miriam:

—Who can speak of “normal” now?

And the former student listened in silence to the mother-in-law’s complaints and shared her opinion that there was no question of any normality here:

—Because, after all, take her, Miriam Lyubashits herself, for example.