While the incident with the cow and the needle was a personal triumph for David, it did nothing to advance the cause of obtaining wages from Chaim. Eve could see that, if anything, it had only made things worse as far as that matter was concerned. By stealing Chaim’s thunder she and David had most likely only strengthened Chaim’s resolve to see them thoroughly brought to heel. Eve didn’t doubt for a moment that if it was at all possible, her father-in-law would have liked nothing better than to have her broken body splayed on the ground before him so he could grind his mud-spattered boot into her face.
It always seemed to be two steps forward and then one back, she reflected. Or maybe it was one step forward and then two back. One way or another, they weren’t making any progress. When she questioned her sisters-in-law about how they were doing in their efforts to persuade their husbands not to go back to work for Chaim, she got very little back in the way of answers. Miriam only smiled, shrugged her shoulders as if to say: Who knows? And Dora had her mind on only one thing—conceiving. As for Hannah, she was only concerned with what there was to put on the table to eat. She thought of nothing else.
Only Ruth, who had stopped nursing Gershon, had anything of consequence to say. “A little loving means they’ll say ‘yes’ today but then tomorrow they’re just as likely to say ‘no.’ ” Eve realized that she was probably right.
The one ruble from her original three that had gone to buy provisions had hardly helped to alleviate the grumbling at the table. They weren’t eating much more than potatoes and salted herring with black bread, most of the ruble having gone for the flour so that they could at least count on having the bread. There had been a tiny amount left over to buy a small quantity of tea, but not enough to buy the cracked sugar to sip the tea through. As for the ruble she had given David to treat his brothers at the tavern, it went in a single afternoon since the brothers shared both a lack of restraint and a huge capacity. The only visible result of that afternoon was the teasing the brothers gave David about where he had obtained the ruble.
At this point they had only one weapon left—the twenty rubles she had secreted away, the Wonder Rabbi’s money. It had seemed such a fortune to her then but she saw it as woefully inadequate now. How long could twenty rubles last against the resources of Chaim, who most likely had a small fortune salted away and enough venom and spite to enable him to hold out for years against his sons’ defection?
Eve could see that the biggest obstacle to her scheme was that the brothers were men without imagination, without vision. They knew that on the day they started working with Chaim again, rich and plentiful foods would reappear on their table and the money jar would be filled. They’d start eating like kings again, and drinking like lords once more. No, she could see they wouldn’t be willing to chance doing without again. She was just fooling herself if she thought it would be any different.
In the meantime there were signs that the long winter was finally coming to an end. The snow that had remained frozen hard to the ground, seemingly impenetrable to any stray ray of sunshine, was finally softening under foot. Soon it would be spring in Russia as it was already all over the world. It was hard for her to believe that she had been married so short a time, that she and David had come so far in that short a time. It was even hard for her to realize that she hadn’t even been pregnant for that long a time, only a matter of weeks. She had been married in winter, had conceived in winter, and yet, it was not quite spring.
Any day now Chaim would return home from his stay at the Widow’s and roar for his sons to mount their horses, to hitch up the wagon, and they’d be off. And everything would be the same as it had always been. No, she wouldn’t get the chance to spend the twenty rubles on food to prolong the strike against Chaim because there would never be a strike! Their only chance was to spend the twenty rubles on something else, something that offered a very real and practical alternative option for the brothers Markoff.
She pondered this alternative option for a couple of days. Then, as they lay in their bed in that very special time before sleep overtook them, the best time for good and sweet pillow talk, Eve said, “David, I think the time has come for us to make a move . . . into our own home and our own business. . . .”
David said nothing, only placed his hand there where their baby was growing almost imperceptibly as yet, but growing just the same. It was his assent and again Eve was reminded of how far they, she and David, had come in so short a time.
They rented a house of four fairly large rooms with a bam and a well and enough of a yard to keep chickens and raise some vegetables. It was only a street away from the Markoff household. Looking around at the small quarters and the roughhewn floors, Eve told David, “When I didn’t want to marry you everyone kept telling me what a lucky girl I was because the Markoffs were a prosperous family with many horses. Then when I came to live in Chaim’s house which is without the refinements I expected a prosperous family would enjoy—lace tablecloths, satin comforters, brocade chairs—I thought everyone had lied about your family being well—off. But now, comparing this house to your father’s—Well, I guess he’s a rich man, after all.”
“No. He’s not. I’m the rich one.” David said, putting his arms around her. “Sometimes I think I must be the richest man in the world.”
The first thing David wanted to do in the new house was to sand the dirt-stained splintered flooring. “You’re the Princess Eve,” he proclaimed, “and as such, you deserve to walk only on the finest, smooth-as-satin floors.”
“That’s sweet, David, and I appreciate the thought, but since we’re short on time and money we’ll just clean the floors for now. The quicker we’re finished fixing up, the sooner you can get started looking for livestock. That way you can get the jump on your father. It’s not going to be easy.”
“Oh, I know. But I’m not going to be too particular about what I buy. I intend to buy anything that moves.”
The sisters-in-law couldn’t have been more shocked to hear that David and Eve were moving into their own house than if Eve had announced they were leaving for America. Hannah immediately wanted to know how they proposed to pay the rent on the new house. “With the money David earns trading in livestock. He’s going to do just what Chaim and his brothers do. Only now he’s going to keep all the profits from his labors.” She let the words sink in before she added, “Just as all your husbands will if they decide to join him.”
The women couldn’t believe their ears! Now Eve wasn’t talking about a work strike anymore. This was a whole other story. She was talking about all of them having their own business directly in competition with Chaim!
Eve knew better than to expect an immediate response, especially an affirmative one. She knew by now that it took them a little time to get used to an idea.
“Tell me,” Hannah said, musing. “Where will David get the money to pay for what he buys before he sells it?”
“That’s simple. He’ll buy one chicken and sell it. With the money he gets he’ll buy two chickens and sell them. And so on . . . That’s how it works.”
“Yes,” Hannah agreed. “That sounds simple. But what isn’t simple is where will he find the money to buy that first chicken?”
Eve wasn’t ready yet to discuss the twenty rubles from the Vilno trip. That would entail a big discussion about whether it was strictly kosher to keep that money and use it against Chaim. Besides, neither she nor Dora had divulged that they had visited a doctor rather than the Wonder Rabbi.
“I still have a ruble left from the money I came here with—”
“That will buy a chicken surely.” Hannah nodded. “But the rent? How will you pay rent until David gets started buying and selling?”
“That’s simple. By sewing. I’m going to take in sewing.”
“Oh, Eve!” Dora wailed. “I’m going to miss you so. It’s hard to think of not seeing you every day.”
“And how about the lessons?” Ruth wanted to know. She was the one who had taken to the lessons avidly. “You started teaching and now when I’m first beginning to learn you’re going to stop—”
“Hold on! All of you! You’re missing the point. We’re moving into the new house because David is going to work on his own. But the whole idea is that if the brothers will refuse to work for Chaim, they can work with David. It will be their business as well as David’s, and the profits will be equally divided. Since it would be difficult for all of you to live in Chaim’s house while refusing to work for him, we’re fixing up the new house to accommodate as many of you who choose to join us.”
“And this house you’ve rented? It’s big enough for all of us?”
“The house is not big. It’s the old Kazinsky house. You know it. But it will do. We’re going to partition the rooms. It will do for a while, at least. Until we all decide to buy it if we can and make it bigger, or until we make enough money for everyone to have his own house. That will be up to each individual family. We’ll be a democracy.”
“And if we don’t move in with you, there’ll be no more lessons I take it,” Ruth said bitterly.
“Oh Ruthie! Do you think I’d do that? There will always be lessons for whoever wants them. Whether she lives with us or not. And that goes for visiting too, Dora. You’ll always be welcome no matter what.”
“But I want to come live with you,” Dora cried. “It would be so much fun!”
“Yes. And I want you to come live with us. You’re going to have to try and talk Yacob into coming in with us.” She looked at the others as she spoke. “Tell Yacob that now he’s no more than a peasant working in the fields of Chaim Markoff. Tell him to come work for the Brothers Markoff and he’ll be his own master.”
They partitioned the house to afford a kitchen large enough to hold an extralong dining table, which they’d need if everyone came to live with them. The remainder of the house was divided up into six tiny bedrooms—one for each couple, and one left over which, with the built-in benches lined up against the walls, would sleep the children. Then David built the dining table, fashioned rudimentary chairs, and over Eve’s objections, several bookcases.
At first she had protested. “We can’t spare either the time or the lumber for extra refinements.” But David said, “I married a princess and I’ve never given her earbobs for her shell-like ears or bangles for her lily-white arms, not even a tiara to rest on her flowing tresses. The least I can do is give her a damned bookcase.”
She giggled. “Where did you learn those fancy words? Shell-like ears?” She scoffed but she was pleased.
She sewed curtains, fashioned mattresses and pillows out of straw, stuffed perinas with feathers and even began hooking rugs out of rags although that was a task that would stretch on for months. They bought only what they couldn’t possibly make themselves.
“I guess we’ll have to buy a wagon, whatever it costs, because I just know you’re going to find so many chickens, you’ll need one that will hold hundreds—”
“From your mouth to God’s ear,” David said. He was more concerned about getting a horse. He could do nothing without a horse. And a horse cost a fortune. “What do you think?” he asked Eve. “Does my mare Chessie belong to me or does she belong to Father?”
“Are the trousers you’re wearing yours or your father’s?”
“I’d say they were mine.”
“How long have you worn them?”
“Almost a year.”
“And how long have you been riding Chessie?”
“Going on three years.”
“Then Chessie is yours.”
When the house was as warm and as hospitable as they could make it, Eve invited the whole family, including the children, for Sabbath dinner. If there weren’t quite enough chairs to seat all the children there was a lace cloth on the table, there were candles in brass sticks, and the samovar gleamed. The children could double up or sit on a parent’s lap. The sisters-in-law were overcome with admiration for what David and Eve had done with the small house. “Lovely!” Miriam said and Ruth acknowledged, “Cozy!”
“Cozy?” Dora gushed. “It’s beautiful! Oh Yacob! Please! Let’s come live here. It’s like a dollhouse . . .”
“No, not a dollhouse,” Eve smiled. “The women who live here will have to be flesh and blood and work like horses.” She looked at Hannah who hadn’t said a word.
Finally she did. “Very nice,” she said thoughtfully. She turned to her husband. “Isn’t it?” She wondered if he could consider coming here to live. Would he consider throwing in his lot with his youngest brother, defying his father at the same time?
Abraham seemed bemused and bewildered. He scratched at his beard, crinkled up his soft blue eyes which were not as dark a blue as any of his brothers’. “Nice?” he asked. “It’s more than nice. My little brother seems to have gotten farther along in life than his big brother. I would say David has made himself a real home.”
“Isn’t that just like a man?” Ruth snickered. “David and Eve have made themselves a real home.”
“It was never our intention to make a home simply for ourselves. This house is for all of us . . .” Eve felt she had to make that clear. “For whoever will come here to live and join with us in making our living.” She was talking more to the brothers now than the sisters-in-law, but Miriam wanted to know if they couldn’t talk about all this later. “We were invited for dinner and it’s already past sundown.”
“There she goes again,” Ruth laughed. “She’s interested in only one thing—food.” Then she added, “Well, almost one thing. We all know what the other thing is,” she leered and everyone laughed.
David said the prayer over the challah. Each adult and child had a piece of the egg bread and wished each other a “good Shabbes.” There was a bottle of vodka on the table and a decanter of a ruby-colored wine. The meal began with stuffed fish and Miriam and Hannah exchanged raised eyebrows. A delicacy yet! The fish was followed by a steaming tureen of cabbage soup with slivers of beef floating on top. What an aroma! Then came a huge bowl of broad egg noodles flecked with bits of fried onion and a tsimmes of burnt-orange sweet potatoes and sliced yellow carrots studded with dark purple prunes. Good to look at too! Finally, Eve brought to the table her crowning triumph—four crisp-skinned, fat and succulent capons surrounded by delicately browned whole potatoes.
“Oh my God!” Miriam breathed. “It’s been so long since we’ve had a piece of chicken I can barely remember what it tastes like.”
The brothers were no less enthralled.
“Where did you get them?”
“How did you buy them?”
“Where do you think I got them? How do you think I bought them?” David exulted. “I’m not a chicken thief yet.”
“They’re the very first purchase of the new business,” Eve said proudly.
“The very first purchase of the new business and we’re eating them up instead of you selling them and making your profit. What do you call that?” Hannah demanded.
“It’s called eating up the profits,” Ruth offered.
“No. It’s called a celebration.” Eve was thrilled that things were going so splendidly. “A hard-won celebration. Those capons weren’t easy to find, as you can imagine. David had to search hard and long. For hours and hours. Things would go easier, of course, if he had some help. A lot more ground could be covered naturally . . .” she said, affecting an ingenuous air.
“Oh, naturally,” Hannah chuckled. “What else? But tell me one thing, Evele—how come when you make a statement it’s never simply a statement? There’s always a point hanging from it, like a horse’s tail.”
Eve smiled demurely. “Perhaps the problem is your ears, Hannah darling. Perhaps you don’t hear things simply.”
“I’ve never had complaints about my ears before.” She picked up the large carving knife and began sectioning a capon, forgetting that she wasn’t in charge of the kitchen. “But speaking of ears, I think it’s time they heard a toast. Abraham!” she pointed the knife at him. “You’re the oldest. I say you make a toast to the new house and the new business.”
Abraham smiled expansively, got to his feet, held out his glass. “To the new house, to the new business, to this excellent vodka and to the four beautiful capons!”
Everyone laughed as if he had said something very funny and Dora gave Yacob a gentle shove. He looked at her questioningly and she nodded her head up and down, encouraging him.
So he got to his feet as Abraham sat. He cleared his throat noisily, unused to the floor. “I have a toast too. To the new house, to the new business, and to my new son!” he shouted. “Dora’s finally going to have a baby!”
There were cheers and congratulations while Eve quietly exulted. Then Dora rose from her chair, her cheeks bright pink. “I would like to make a toast too. To my darling Eve who is re–”
Quickly Eve cut her off. “I think we should toast the Wonder Rabbi of Vilno—”
Dora sat down and Shlomo stood up. “If you ask me, I think it’s Yacob we should toast. The rabbi maybe made a miracle but it was Yacob who did all the hard work.”
They all roared in appreciation of the sally and Hannah cautioned, “Sha! Little pitchers . . .”
The children were temporarily put to sleep in the different rooms while the women cleared the table and started washing up. The men stayed at the table finishing off the wine and vodka. “And what’s Father said to you about all this?” Hershel asked, spreading his hands to indicate the house but meaning the new business too.
“Nothing,” David said. “How could he? I haven’t spoken to him. I haven’t seen him. Has he come home or is he still at the Widow’s?”
“As far as we know he’s at the Widow’s. But I did see him at the Inn. He says we’ll be riding out in a few days.”
“And he didn’t say anything about me and Eve?”
“Not a word.”
“Still he must have heard,” Abraham said. “All Slobodka knows you’ve moved in here. Someone must have said something to him—”
“Without a doubt,” Shlomo added. “He must be burning. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he came calling on you one of these days.”
“No!” Hershel shook his head vehemently. “More likely he’ll act as if he never heard of you.”
“Or that he heard of you but that you were dead,” Yacob added.
Shlomo laughed. “Maybe not so much David as Eve. I’m sure he’d like to think of Eve as dead . . .”
Everyone laughed but David. He wasn’t amused.
“On the other hand,” Hershel said speculatively, “maybe he doesn’t care that you and Eve moved out. Maybe he’s even happy about it, considering . . . Maybe he’ll only get mad when he learns that you’re riding around buying up livestock, cutting into our business.”
“Yes,” Shlomo agreed. “He probably won’t like that, especially since you’re already working and getting a jump on us.”
“Us?” David demanded. “You said getting a jump on us, Shlomo. And you, Hershel, you said I was cutting into our business, meaning yours and Father’s. So that’s the way it is. You’re all staying with him. I offer you a way out and still you’re all sticking with him.” His voice was rising. “Well, if that’s it, you can all go to hell! You’re all so chicken-livered you make me sick! You’re all scared to death of him, scared to death of your own weak-bellied shadows! Not one of you is a man!”
It occurred to David to throw them out of his house. If it weren’t for the children asleep, he’d do just that. He was sick to death of the lot of them. Big, strong men and terrified of Chaim! As he himself had been, but at least he had found his courage. He would throw them out of his house and the children could stay!
Abraham put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, David, easy. You’ve got to give a man a chance to think.”
“God damn it, you’ve had a chance to think for twenty years! How long does it take to decide that you’re tired of being shitted on?”
But the moment of extreme passion, of near violence had passed and he slumped back in his chair. “Just let him come here . . .” David muttered. “I’ll spit in his face.”
“Just think of the pleasure it must be for once in your life to sit down at a table and afterwards not to have to wash up . . .” Ruth complained, fiercely scrubbing at an encrusted roasting pan.
“Maybe if our business goes well, we’ll all have that pleasure one day. We’ll get dressed up and go eat at the Inn in Kovno, or at a café there,” Eve said, trying to get David’s attention, to indicate that he shouldn’t lose his temper. “The Jews who live in the big cities do it all the time, I understand. In Moscow. They say they’re forever eating in restaurants there, drinking at cafés.” But her mind wasn’t on what she was saying. She was more interested in what the brothers were saying at the table.
“In the meantime, we ate up the first merchandise,” Hannah said regretfully. “Now what will David use for money to buy with the next time? How long can a couple of rubles stretch? Have you gotten any orders for sewing yet?”
“Monday I’m going to the Squire’s. I hear that the Countess Makowski’s pregnant. I’m going to offer my services as a seamstress to make her a wardrobe for her pregnancy. I should be able to earn quite a few rubles from her . . .”
“Are you completely out of your head?” Hannah was angry. “Why do you want to start up with them? If the gentry doesn’t bother you, don’t bother them! The less you have to do with them the better!”
“It’s that kind of thinking that’s kept us on the outside. Maybe we have to mix more with the gentiles so they’ll learn to like us better. Or at least they’d find out we don’t wear horns, and that we can be trusted not to drain their children’s blood for our matzohs.”
Hannah made a derogatory sound. “What makes you think she’ll like you enough to trust you enough to hire you in the first place?”
“Because I have a new idea for a dress to be worn during pregnancy. Now, women just wear big dresses, and they just keep wearing bigger and bigger dresses as they go along—if they can afford it. But even these bigger dresses don’t fit them otherwise. They’re uncomfortable and make a woman look her worst. Now I think the Squire’s wife, the Countess, will be interested in this dress that I’ve made for myself. See—” She lifted her bodice to show the top of her skirt. “The waistband’s gathered on a drawstring and as my waist grows so does the waistband and the skirt is made extra full so there will be no problem when my stomach gets bigger.”
The women marveled and Eve went on to explain. “What I did was take an old dress and made it into a two-piece outfit. But if the Countess orders a dress, I’ll sew an outfit that’s designed in two pieces to begin with—a skirt and a bodice, or a jacket.”
“Oh, I wish I could have one of those too,” Dora said wistfully. “But if you’re going to be sewing for the Squire’s lady I guess you won’t have time to . . .” her voice trailed off.
“No, she won’t!” Hannah said. “You can’t expect that—”
“Yes, she can, Hannah. She can expect. She’s my sister so she can expect. And I will. I’ll find time for Dora, always. As I would for any of you.”
“Oh, Eve . . . You know what color I would love. Yellow. Like sunflowers that cover the earth . . .”
“Then yellow it will be.”
“Not one of them said he was coming in with us,” David told Eve after everyone had departed. “I don’t give a damn anymore. I’m sick to death of them. Scared of their own shadows. I’m just sorry we spent all that time fixing up the house to accommodate them.”
“It’s not over yet, David. I have a feeling that at least one of them will come over to our side. Maybe even two or three. Now, at least, they have a place to go. I think that makes all the difference, having a place to go.”