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By Root 3193 0

away for the months I was in the army, but I also stayed away from her when I got back, though not for long. (She would have done me a favor to have got married while I was gone.) Anyway, she was a pretty girl, intelligent and dissatisfied, with even then a sad face. At least the right eye was sad; the left was neutral, it reflected me. I saw her many times in the market before I got up the nerve to talk to her. She scared me, I wasn’t sure I had what she wanted. I was afraid she would rub my nose in my future. Anyway I saw the other young men looking at her and I looked too. She was a thin lanky girl with small breasts. I remember her dark hair in braids, deep eyes, and a long neck. She wore in the morning what she had washed out at night; sometimes the clothes were damp. The father wanted her to work as a servant girl but she wouldn’t. She bought a few eggs from a peasant woman and set up a little stall in the market. Whenever I could I bought an egg from her. She lived with Shmuel in a hut off the road near the bathhouse stream. When I came for a visit they seemed glad to see me, especially the father. He was looking for a husband for her and a dowry didn’t exist. If it existed it was a cherry pit. But he knew my type, that I wouldn’t ask questions and he wouldn’t mention it.

We walked together in the woods by the water, she and I. I showed her my tools and once cut down a small tree with my saw. I fixed up their hut a little, made a bench, a cupboard, and a few shelves out of some boards I was saving. If there was a little chicken to eat I came also on Friday nights. Raisl blessed the candles and served the food, it was very nice. We liked each other but both had doubts. I think she thought, He won’t move, he isn’t ambitious, he’ll stay here forever. What kind of future is that? I thought to myself, She’s a complicated girl and won’t be easy to satisfy. What she wants she’ll drive me wild to get. Still, I liked to be with her. One day in the woods we became man and wife. She said no but took a chance. Later it bothered her. She was afraid for her child once she had one, that it would be born crippled or with seven fingers. “Don’t be superstitious,” I said. “If you want to be free, first be free in your mind.” Instead she began to cry. After a while I said, “All right, you’ve cried enough, so before it happens again let’s get married. I need a wife and you need a husband.” At this her eyes got big and once again were full of tears. She didn’t answer me. “Why don’t you talk?” I said. “Say yes or no.” “Why don’t you say love?” she said. “Who talks about love in the shtetl?” I asked her. “What are we, millionaires?” I didn’t say so but it’s a word that makes me nervous. What does a man like me know about love? “If you don’t love me I can’t marry you,” she answered me. But by then the father had his nose in my ear. “She’s a doll, a marvelous girl, you can’t go wrong. She’ll work hard and both together you’ll make a living.” So I said love and she said yes. Maybe my poor future looked better than her own.

After we were married, all she talked about was we must get out of Russia, including the father, because things were getting worse, not better. Worse for us and worse for the Russians. “Let’s sell everything and leave while we can.” I answered her, “Even if we sell everything we’ll have nothing. Believe me, there’s no shortage of places to go to in this wide world, but first I’ll work hard and we’ll save a few rubles, and in that case who knows where we’ll get to. Maybe it’ll take a year or two and then we’ll leave.” She looked at me with a tight face. “After another year you’ll never go; you’re afraid to leave.” Maybe she was right but I said, “Your father changed places every time he breathed and all he’s collected is air. I’ll stay in one place and build up a little capital, and then I’ll think of leaving.” That wasn’t strictly the truth. I was in no hurry to run to another country. Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It