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.