Ignat Shepkin bows to Fanny and turns the painting around for her to look at. She is not accustomed to seeing herself in the mirror, and certainly not on a canvas, not to mention in the presence of someone else. Indeed, she recognises her moon-shaped face, light-coloured hair, and bright eyes that the artist has left blurred. She thinks her nose is out of proportion, however, and the wrinkle between the eyebrows is only hinted at. Fanny cannot say that this is a faithful portrait, she rather thinks that Ignat Shepkin has failed to follow his father’s advice to limit himself to drawing a single theme. The face on the canvas is sad, the puffy bags under the eyes suppress any sign of vitality they might have had. Wait a minute . . .
Fanny touches her cheeks, feeling the skin and fat they have acquired of late. Impossible! She notices that her eyes in the painting have dark circles around them, and her chin even has a small, sharp dimple.
“What is this?” Fanny says. “Who did you paint?”
Shepkin smiles and folds his canvas.
“Give it to me!” She tries to snatch the painting from him.
“Absolutely not.” He pushes her arm away.
Her thoughts turn fleetingly to her knife.
“A deal is a deal,” the painter says, now upset, and jumps off the wagon. “What is wrong with you? Clearly, you’re not his niece,” he says as he disappears into the dark.
What is happening to her? She cannot stop thinking about the portrait. The painting showed submissive eyes, which are everything her eyes are not. They were the eyes of Malka Schechter. How could Shepkin have known about her mother who died more than ten years ago, in Grodno? Could he have discerned in Fanny the resignation that consumed her mother? Impossible. Unlike her mother, even as a child Fanny forbade herself to play if-then games and took her fate into her own hands. She decided to hunt down Zvi-Meir herself, instead of praying like the rabbis for the release of husbandless wives from wedlock. How can a stupid artist confuse frivolity with vigour, or weakness with resolve?
Pent-up rage ignites Fanny’s face, and her fingers slide towards the knife on her thigh. Touching the blade calms her, but this quickly turns to fear and in her distress she struggles to breath. She claws at her own neck as if trying to free it from someone else’s grip. Fanny is impelled to draw her knife: who’s there? Who dares try to strangle her?
Placid and indifferent, the night gives nothing away. The moon is shrivelled like a dried pear, the landscape dissolves, and Fanny listens to the snores teeming in the tents. Now that she is finally her own master, the prospect of losing control of her life terrifies her. Her mother’s old if-then thoughts creep back in. If she falls asleep here in the field, she’ll be captured by dawn. If she stares into the eyes of Zizek’s old horse she’ll be sent to Siberia. But if she gets off the wagon with her right foot first, the four of them will certainly be saved. And if she lets go of the knife, this whole mess will be forgotten. What is she to do?
She descends from the wagon and hurries back to the tent. In the lantern’s dim light, she can tell that Adamsky and the Cantor are not there. Only Zizek is in the tent, lying across the bed with his back to her. She steps over some boxes to see if he is awake. His eyes, the eyes of a dead carp, are heedless of her presence. She gently taps his shoulder.
“Zizek,” she whispers, “I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t mean to . . . But what made you help me in the first place?”
Zizek does not turn but his eyelids flutter. His refusal to look at her, like a stubborn child, stabs her directly in the heart. His spurned body, which has never been touched, is rigid to the point of prickliness. His anguished look projects a lucidity she recognises from her children: the look of a scolded boy pleading for forgiveness. If a woman touched him he would beg for a mother; if a mother touched him he would withdraw into himself. His body has never been necessary; the only affirmations of its existence have been the imaginings he dictated to his comrades. The act of love with Mina Gorfinkel is as implausible now as it was when he was a young boy.
And yet Fanny touches him: first she touches his scarred mouth, then she runs her fingers across his lips, strokes his cheek and brushes aside the hair on his forehead. This touch, even if forbidden, does not feel like an act of infidelity, because it is not in the least arousing.
A sigh of pain escapes from Zizek’s lips. How far did her touch reach? She cannot tell, but as she strokes his forehead, she notices that his shoulders grow stiff and he arches his back as if shrinking away from her. She lies down next to him, presses her body against his, and wraps her arm around his belly. Zizek lies without uttering a syllable, but his breathing grows softer. Now she cannot move away from him, and she cannot say whether it’s for his sake or her own.