10
Let’s Make Up
Sunday. I was sitting by my window watching the life passing by and imagining my future alone when Rae, a friend who’s as lonely as I am—but with less patience for it—came to ask me to go to a picnic with her.
“It’s no use waiting for some man to swoop in and take you out,” she said with a cynical smirk. “You just have to go out alone. It’s good to go out and meet people. If you don’t, you’ll never make new friends. If you end up running into people you know, that’s fine, and if not, you meet new people.”
“You want me to go out and meet people on my own?”
“Well, why not? Why shouldn’t you go out alone? Can’t we act like people too, even though we’re girls? How come they can do everything, while we can’t do anything?”
“That’s a timeless question.”
“Yes, it’s an old one, and it should’ve been answered a long time ago. It’s getting tiresome acting like old fashioned, well-mannered girls just waiting to receive a declaration of love and a marriage proposal. The whole notion is absurd. If you want something, if you have something to say and you know how—you should just say it!”
“Nevertheless, would you really be the first to approach a man you didn’t know?”
“I wouldn’t approach him the way a man would go up to a woman, but I would do something to make him approach me.”
I laughed. She realized that I’d caught her out and said angrily, “This isn’t a joke! Let’s get to the point. Would you like to go to the picnic with me? Come on, let’s go, if you want to. If not . . .”
“If not?”
“I’ll go by myself!”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone. I’m not going to shut myself up in my room and wait for nothing. I want to get away from my own company, I want to be with people, I want to—be happy!”
“I’ll go too. I also want to be happy,” I answered.
It occurred to me that maybe I’d see A. there with some other woman, young and pretty as an angel. If that happened I’d have to pretend to “be happy.”
When we got to the park the picnic was already underway. Large and small groups of people sat and lay in the grass. I felt a familiar, instinctive fear that I’d see him with someone like the woman I kept picturing in spite of myself. I noticed a secluded spot where I’d be able to see everything but wouldn’t be noticed, so I asked Rae to sit there with me and help me think about how to begin to be happy.
“Wait a second! Just look who’s sitting over there!,” she said, squinting her near-sighted eyes at one of the larger groups. “Isn’t that the famous B.—surrounded by two, four, six, seven women?”
“Yes, that’s B.,” I acknowledged, my heart pounding as I strained to see who else was with him.
“Do you see? Seven women around one man!” Rae laughed mockingly.
“Either the Messiah has come or they’re at war.”
“His wife’s there too. Tell me, is she really such a beauty?”
“Yes, she’s beautiful.”
“But what a fool!”
“You might say that a woman who’s that pretty can afford to be a fool.”
“Maybe. See how they all laugh whenever B. says something witty? He’s so lively and cheerful, certainly no fool. But there’s someone else behind the tree. I can’t see who it is. Can you?”
I looked and felt as though the park and all of the people lurched before my eyes. He was there. He was with them, next to Mrs. B. I wished that I hadn’t come, but—could I really run away now? No. There was only one thing I could do: appear to “be happy.”
Rae wanted to go over to them but I refused, saying, “Did we come here to add two more people to the seven already hovering around B.? They should come looking for us. Let’s go where people are singing and playing guitar instead.”
We went over to the singing group and found some acquaintances. They welcomed us warmly and invited us to sit with them and sing. We sat down. I sat a little further away from the group than Rae did. Rae protested against their Russian songs and started to sing her favorite Yiddish folk songs. People gathered around, which made her want to sing even more. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my head. I looked up and saw B. bending over me. He knelt in the grass and quietly asked me how I was, what I meant by running away from him, and why I was avoiding people.
“Because I like them better from a distance,” I said, smiling.
“Do you also prefer me from a distance?”
“Aren’t you a person?”
“But I like you when you’re close.”
“Thank you!”
“It would be better to say: if you like it, it’s yours.”
“I have no reason to say that.”
He laughed and squeezed my hand, and I let out a quiet yelp. The others from B.’s entourage came and joined us. A. kept his distance. We barely greeted each other, nodding.
“I want to see you at your place, alone,” B. whispered in my ear. “I’ll come to visit you one of these days. Tomorrow, or the day after.”
Mrs. B. sat down next to her husband, resting her hand on his shoulder. A. searched for a place to sit and found one between me and Mrs. B.
“Why aren’t you singing?” he asked.
“When I hear others who sing better than I do, I prefer to stay quiet,” I replied.
“I don’t like these folk songs. They’re too primitive.”
“If you sing them with feeling they’re beautiful, precisely because they’re primitive. She sings them very well,” I commented, gesturing toward Rae.
He shrugged his shoulders indifferently and looked away, annoyed. Rae finished singing “Afn pripetshik” and started singing a popular song with lyrics by Sholem Aleichem called “Lomir zikh iberbetn”:
Let’s make up
Have pity on me
Let’s make up
I love you dangerously
Let’s make up
I beg you to forgive me
Let’s make up
Give me a smile
Let’s make up
Quickly don’t be scared
Let’s make up
It’s wrong to take too long.
“This is a nice song!” he exclaimed. “I like this one! ‘Let’s make up, it’s wrong to take too long!’” He sang along and asked Rae to repeat it for him until he’d learned the song himself. In his enthusiasm for the song he clasped my hand.
“Let’s make up! Let’s make up!” he sang and looked at me until my whole attitude toward him, all of the anger that I felt for him, vanished. In my mind I sang out, “Let’s make up, let’s make up!” It was as though everyone was singing it just for us. “Let’s make up, let’s make up!”