The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) (28 page)

Now they were infinitely remote from here, with their sense of inferiority, with all the desolation of their little shtetl, and with their verandah, the door to which was always kept locked. If they did ever come to mind, it was exclusively as people who slept during the day, whose rooms were perpetually silent, and whose walls stretched up in boredom and mused: “Mirele’s been married o. by now, married off by now.”

Now she’d given herself to Shmulik, and went often into the city to visit her cousin Ida Shpolianski, an enormously rich, licentious woman-about-town who deceived her frequently absent husband. As Mirel had often passed the time right in the center of the provincial capital, it was not long before she’d encountered Nosn Heler, who was attempting to publish a penny newspaper here in the metropolis. On one occasion, returning home from visiting Ida late at night, she’d been walking down the central avenue when she recognized him from behind for the first time. In a broadly cut new autumn cloak, he was standing at a deserted intersection next to the tall upright of an electric lamp about to be extinguished, speaking to a respectable elderly Christian about his long-planned penny newspaper:

—
Ponimayete
—
you understand—but the first number must appear no later than the fifteenth.

Overcome with confusion, she was not fully conscious of what she was doing until she was close enough to recognize his oblong, oliveskinned, youthful face with its freshly shaven cheeks and whiskers that appeared intensely dark, like those of a Romanian.

—At last—he said excitedly, standing opposite her—at last they’d met each other again.

For a short while her heart pounded rapidly. What he’d said was plainly ridiculous, and made her think:

—He’s no cleverer than he was before, this Nosn.

But all around him the fragrance of the air called to mind those spring evenings in her shtetl two years before and the damp grass of the green hill near the peasant cottages on which they’d sat until late into the night.

In her sleep she dreamed that she was two years younger and was in love with Nosn. And in the early mornings thereafter she was drawn to the bustling city center and beyond, to that quiet, leafy street where Nosn was supposed to wait for her at the start of every evening.

During the day she reflected that she was foolish to be so drawn to him. She sat on the steps of the verandah, gazed out at her deserted end of the suburb, and mused that she herself had once despised this feeling and had sent this fellow Nosn packing. At that time she’d wanted something else, but now her life was empty and she’d given herself to Shmulik and had parted forever from Reb Gedalye and Gitele.

As twilight drew on, her sense of desolation intensified. Her reason and emotions seemed to be clouded with the burden of the day that had passed, and recollection came that somewhere people were happy. At almost the same time, the automatic gate to the left at the end of the iron fence that surrounded her father-in-law’s house seemed regularly to clang behind Shmulik’s very smartly dressed younger sister Rikl as she went out. She was a tall nineteen-year-old who’d completed her studies at the
gymnasium
only the previous summer, looked older than she actually was, imparted around herself an attitude of either weariness or apathy, and who with huge hat and coiffure—both angled to one side—seemed to have been manufactured according to big-city fashion. She stopped laboriously next to Mirel as though she were too tightly laced into her long corset and new big-city suit and explained that she was just about to take a streetcar into town:

—Was Mirel sure that she didn’t need anything from town?

Looking her up and down, Mirel evaluated her:

Tall and slender, she had a dark, lackluster face with dark, lackluster eyes to match, kept silent for the most part, and would hear no word about the matches that were proposed for her. She gave the impression of never saying anything clever only because she was too tired to do so. In reality, however, her mind, like her mother’s, was too dull and thoughts were rarely born there. But the suspicion persisted that in town this young woman had somehow been made aware of Mirel’s meetings with Heler and would expose them in her mother’s house one of these days.

In response to this last thought, Mirel’s heart pounded and seemed to die away within her. Having watched Rikl disappearing into the distance, she went inside and spent a long time dressing in her bedroom. She then walked over to that side of the suburb where the clanging of newly arrived streetcars could always be heard, seated herself in one that was already brightly lit, and traveled over the long iron bridge that led into the city.

With no moon visible, the late summer evening was silent and dark, its skies brilliant with stars. Below the bridge, placid, dimly illuminated boats glided here and there over the broad surface of the powerfully flowing river, stopped, whistled, drew back, and passed on mute greetings from those of their passengers who’d traveled down to the provincial capital during the day:

—Well, well, well! … They’ve all had a good afternoon nap, these people, so by now they must certainly be in the theater, in their clubs, or in the city parks.

On the hillside directly ahead twinkled the brightly illuminated city, its myriad fires, dense and sparse alike, glittering through the darkness as it flung out the clamor of its early evening tumult. Every time the streetcar stopped, this commotion made itself heard like the croaking of thousands of river frogs, calling to mind the distant, quiet street somewhere along which Nosn Heler was waiting.

This streetcar, its lights burning well before they were necessary, was always packed with people sitting politely and silently in their places. Through this silence, each attempted to suggest that he or she noticed no one else, yet each emerged as a comical figure who gave the impression of being nothing but a capricious being that had only just woken up in a bad mood.

For the most part Mirel hadn’t the faintest interest in any of these creatures, but somewhere behind her there always happened to be a couple of prominent suburban householders who leaned in toward each other and fell into whispered discussion about her:

—Isn’t that Yankev-Yosl Zaydenovski’s daughter-in-law?

At home they’d heard that Zaydenovski’s daughter-in-law was one of those women to whom young men were strongly attracted, so they wanted to see her with their own eyes and with a particular motive as well:

—The whole world says so; surely it’s worth learning what the world finds so fascinating?

On one occasion, an officer who was sitting opposite with his wife stared at her for a long time. He was apparently reminded of his first love and had begun to believe that he’d made a mistake in marrying the woman he had. Mirel was instinctively aware of his gaze and in glancing back at him she opened huge, sorrowful eyes that gazed out, deep and blue, from under the dark lashes of her abiding grief and told of how frustrated her own life had been. Both the officer and Mirel blushed, and, suddenly oppressed by the unyielding corset that stiffy encased her sides, she rose from her place and went to stand on the streetcar’s small open platform.

When she finally alighted where the city’s broad, tumultuous central avenue began, the brilliant white fires of the electric streetlamps had already started blazing everywhere, merging with the glow of the pale twilight and flowing into one festive surge of light. Far, far away in the depths of this arrow-straight road, this festival was apparently being celebrated. From a distance it resembled a candle-lit wedding procession that was drawing near, approaching from some enchanted, turbulent kingdom accompanied by the beating of innumerable unwieldy, deep-toned drums.

Encountering each other on the broad sidewalk opposite were elegantly dressed young men who stared boldly into women’s faces, expensively clad young wives who longed to deceive their husbands but didn’t know how, and crowds of precocious students of both sexes who always looked preoccupied and, finding themselves on one avenue, were continually under the impression that they were missing something on another.

The sidewalk was abruptly intersected by the quiet street with its long central island of trees on which her cousin Ida Shpolianski lived, but she walked straight on. Approaching from the opposite side were still many people festively attired in black evening dress, all of whom were unknown to her. But then the street began to grow quieter, fewer people made their appearance, and she’d already turned left into another hushed, leafy lane.

This lane was already far quieter, even more dense with foliage, and the fourth was illuminated only by simple, dimly burning gas lamps, next to one of which Nosn Heler had been awaiting her coming for some time and from which he now strode impatiently toward her.

Thinking she wouldn’t come, he’d barely been able to compose himself. Now he was afraid that she might be cold and was pleased that she permitted him to throw his broadly cut autumn cloak over both their shoulders. Under this cloak, the hand with which he encircled her waist, the waist of Shmulik Zaydenovski’s young wife, had even started trembling. Her hair, he said, smelled not of perfume but of a scent all its own, the scent that wholly enveloped this fastidious only child.

After all, he remembered her from her little shtetl.

And she kept silent, bearing in mind that whatever drew her to him and led her to wander about aimlessly in his company wouldn’t last long.

She glanced at two obviously wealthy young women approaching from the opposite direction. Both had evidently been born in the big city and knew what a handsome young bachelor signified; they stared at Heler and smiled, walked on for several paces, turned their heads to look behind them, and smiled again. Mirel, however, paid no attention to Heler’s self-absorbed chatter about his penny newspaper, reflecting that she had no use for all this aimless wandering about with him:

For them, for these two young women born in the big city, this might perhaps represent something significant, but for her, Mirel Hurvits …

She herself had sent this fellow Nosn packing once before.

Something else was missing from her life; even as a girl she’d started to develop some awareness of what this might be, but now she’d grown confused in this tumultuous provincial capital to which she’d recently relocated. But this confusion would soon pass …

Assuredly, it would soon pass.

From day to day, the Nosn Heler she’d known two years earlier revealed more and more of himself. He was still light-minded, and as always his shallowness called to mind a big-city high school student who’d been expelled.

Mirel wasn’t in the least interested in all his chatter about wanting to break off the engagement he’d contracted here in the metropolis four months before to a rich but sickly young woman who was an orphan.

But one evening he importunately began demanding that she should divorce Shmulik and marry him, Nosn Heler, who would make a great financial success of his penny newspaper and was respected here in the provincial capital.

She found this repugnant, and he complained that she wasn’t listening to what he was saying, but was thinking of something else:

—No one made him feel as small and foolish as Mirel did.

Making him no answer, she merely gave him an odd look and stopped coming to meet him in the quiet, leafy lane in the evenings.

From then on she once again passed days on end in utter boredom on the steps of her enclosed verandah, reflecting that of late she’d demeaned herself and dared not permit this to continue:

—After all, even as a girl she’d chosen a course of action for herself, and had only married Shmulik provisionally, for the time being.

She had to do something to free herself from her present situation, but didn’t know what.

This was intensely oppressive emotionally.

Moreover, the days themselves dragged by, gloomy, autumnal, and cheerless: every afternoon, overcast skies silently lowered over the deserted, sandy outskirts of the suburb, and every evening the passage of visitors, marked by the regular clang of the iron gate in her mother-in-law’s fence, sharpened awareness that something had to be done:

—Wait … Careful analysis and consideration were called for: what further needed to be done by a young woman who’d grown up as an only child in the home of Reb Gedalye Hurvits, who’d already acquired some glimmering of understanding, and who’d married only in jest and for the time being?

One Sabbath she received a letter from Heler declaring that he loved her and that his life without her was desolate; that on the previous Tuesday his fiancée, who’d been made aware of this, had without his knowledge taken herself off to her brother in Lodz and there demanded that new matchmakers be sent for; that this day was the Sabbath and during all the time that Mirel’s husband would be at home and the two of them would be entertaining guests, he himself would be wandering about all alone along the quiet lane as he did on every other evening because his home was repugnant to him, and while he was suffering unendurable torment, he would think:

—Perhaps … Perhaps she might feel drawn to him after all, and would come?

Unread, the letter drifted about next to her as she lay on the sofa face up, with her hands beneath her head.

Her whole encounter with Heler—a young man with no parents and no siblings, who for the past two years had been kicking his heels in a rented room in the center of the city—now seemed to her excessively wearisome and foolish. She visualized him tediously whiling away his time on that quiet, distant lane next to its only Jewish shop, now shut for the Sabbath; understood how he found everything there soul-deadening, and how dreary he found the rented room in which he couldn’t endure to spend much time. And she was astonished at herself:

—She, who was Mirel Hurvits … What had she needed them for, these trips she’d taken into town to see him day after day?

That Sabbath Shmulik yet again spent the whole afternoon in his white shirtsleeves sleeping in his small study, and yet again, just before sunset, one of his mother’s young relatives awakened him there by tickling him.