Leaning on her elbows, her head in her hand, she looked directly into his eyes.

—Shmulik—she asked—have I done you harm?

Shmulik’s heart pounded.

—Harm? No … Who says so?

Mirel was obliged to rise very early to finish packing what remained of her belongings. She had also to reserve a room in the quiet hotel opposite the Shpolianskis’ apartment and leave instructions for her luggage to be sent on there. The boat that traveled downriver to the city where the divorce was to be finalized left at ten in the morning. The proceedings would take place between five and six that afternoon after which, to avoid traveling with the Zaydenovskis, she’d return by train and Montchik would meet her at the station. He’d promised. By that evening she’d undoubtedly be exhausted. Even now she felt a great weariness throughout her body. But was this any excuse? Now she felt some compassion for Shmulik, and had given him her word. She’d have to put on her shawl and spend a few minutes in the big house.

Her mother-in-law’s maid, who opened the back door for her, started back, so stunned was she by Mirel’s sudden entrance. Because of her arrival, the mood in the dining room suddenly tensed. The chair next to her mother-in-law was vacated for her, but no one dared start any conversation. Someone called aside the visiting out-of-town relative, a newly married young woman who was sitting at the table; Miriam Lyubashits began whispering in Rikl’s ear and soon went out into another room with her; and Mirel, feeling oppressed, began to regret having come. She thought:

—She’d done her duty … Now she could go back.

But her mother-in-law suddenly started blinking and leaned closer to her. During the last few days, she’d not been able to rid herself of a suspicion of an exclusively female kind. Now she had to question Mirel about it.

At her first question, Mirel blushed violently. Without looking at her, she answered brusquely and irritably:

—No.

—I can’t remember.

—For a long time.

Suddenly her mother-in-law, looking like an astounded small-town grandmother, straightened her entire foolish frame:

—Yes—her expression said—I’m content now.

She looked around, but there was no one here except Mirel. So she turned to her once again and said with loud incredulity:

—Mirele, you’re pregnant, you know!

—What?

She thought her mother-in-law had taken leave of her senses. She was simply speaking like an idiot.

To spite her, she instantly rose from her place and demanded loudly:

—She didn’t understand … And that apart, what had this to do with the divorce?

But all around her the tumult in the room was now so great that no one was listening to what she said. Someone called Shmulik in. Someone else hurried off to the study to give Yankev-Yosl the news. And Miriam Lyubashits was already standing in the doorway again. As soon as the mother-in-law had rapidly imparted some information to her, she looked across at Mirel and nodded her head:

—Of course; what a question!

3.13

That night, Mirel felt intensely nauseous and woke the servant girl twice. She made her take a note to Shmulik in which she wrote that she didn’t love him and reminded him that even before their wedding she’d stipulated in a clause in their betrothal contract that she reserved the right to leave him at any time; that she still didn’t believe she was pregnant but that in any case she couldn’t have a child with him; that if she was indeed pregnant, he alone was responsible and a remedy for the pregnancy had to be sought.

Shmulik was persuaded to drive off to the distillery and wait there for a few days.

With everyone standing around him, his mother comforted him in a private room before he left:

—What was there to think about? Now the situation was very different. If Mirel were to bear a child, she’d become far more tractable.

For three whole days, Mirel suffered alone in her room, was conscious all that time of the place below her breast, felt intense aversion to it, and finally began calling on her mother-in-law in the big house once again.

On her way there, she kept reflecting that she ought to say something, and so put an end to something. But every time she went in, the will to speak deserted her, and her hatred toward that place below her breast intensified within her. Her patience was taxed by her mother-in-law’s repeated “Sit, Mirele,” by Miriam Lyubashits and her child, by the younger Lyubashits’s ruddy face and tedious intellectualizing. As the disgust within her grew, it seemed to her that it had become a physical thing that could literally be seized; that she might all at once rip it from her, and would then grow light and wholesome once again.

Leaving her mother-in-law’s house, she went into town, called twice at her cousin Ida Shpolianski’s apartment but did not find her in, and returning home, lay down and tried hard to calm herself:

—Who could tell? Perhaps it was easier to do nothing, and let things take their course. Perhaps it was better to endure without complaining for the rest of her life … lying in bed like this … suffering in silence.

She didn’t love Shmulik. She loved no one. Sometimes she felt drawn to Nosn Heler, but she didn’t trust that feeling.