11

Making Up

He was so handsome and looked so inspired singing “Lomir zikh iberbetn,” and he held my hand with such warmth that all my resentment vanished. In that moment, I felt I could forgive him everything! Goethe knew what he was talking about when he said, “True love is that which remains forever the same whether all that it asks is granted or refused.”

As it grew darker, many eyes began to shine. The picnic continued as it had begun, large groups separated out into small ones.

Rae, tired from forcing herself to “be happy,” and not as sure of herself as the others, stopped singing and lay next to me in the grass with one arm flung around my waist and the other above her head. She called out, gazing vaguely into the distant darkness, “This is the life!”

“Could it get any better than this?” A. asked. It seemed to me that he was quietly laughing at us, two lonely girls who were trying to act joyful but not succeeding.

I withdrew my hand from his. His hand lay alone in the grass as though it had been snubbed.

B. must have thought that the hand was mine as it lay there in the grass looking so pale and quiet. He bowed his head sneakily so his wife would not see and . . . kissed it! A. startled, threw a surprised glance at me, and, seeing that I was choking back laughter, understood B.’s blunder. He yanked his hand out of the grass and scowled.

In the meantime, A. decided to get back at me. He drew closer to Mrs. B. and gave her his full attention. He removed his jacket and handed it to her so she wouldn’t be cold. He offered to spread it out underneath her because “the grass is damp” and he didn’t want her to “catch a chill.” And was she comfortable sitting there like that? Perhaps she’d like to lean on him? He gave her his shoulder, so that she could get a little more comfortable.

“Oh, how nice,” sighed Mrs. B. happily. “It’s so nice to have a friend, isn’t it?” she asked her husband.

“I think so too,” her husband answered, and he inched closer to me until his head leaned on my shoulder.

I felt like crying so I started to giggle and act playfully instead, pulling out fistfuls of grass and throwing them at B. He pretended to nip at my fingers and I called him a cannibal and tattled to Rae that he was biting me.

“Watch out for rabies!” Rae laughed.

B. turned to Rae, joking, “What am I, a dog? What nerve!” He’d give us girls such a spanking we wouldn’t soon forget it.

Mrs. B. acted startled, like she’d just woken up from a sweet dream, and watched with astonishment as her husband flirted with us girls.

A. avoided my gaze. In the middle of all this gaiety, against my will, I let out a deep sigh.

“She’s in love!” B. cried out.

“Do you think so?” Rae asked. “Who’s the man?”

Mrs. B. answered pointedly, “These days you may never find out, because it usually turns out that the man has a wife.”

“The poor lover!” Rae cried, feigning a sigh, “I don’t envy him.”

“It’s the woman who loves him that you should worry about.”

“Hardly! After all, it’s possible to divorce a wife.”

“Would you like to sing something?” A. asked Rae, trying to change the subject.

“Sing? No. I much prefer to talk with clever people. And, if you must know, this topic is very interesting to me because I’m also on my way toward falling in love with a married man.”

“You could just fall in love with a bachelor instead,” said Mrs. B.

“A bachelor? There’s the rub. All the bachelors today are in love with married women.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why not? Probably it’s more convenient for them.”

I suggested we go for a walk. We’d been sitting in one spot for long enough. As I tried to stand up, B. pulled me back toward him. Finally I tore myself out of his hands and tried to get away from him, almost running. He chased after me.

The others joined us and we all left together, each of us preoccupied with our own thoughts.

“Can I tell you something?” I heard A.’s voice saying to me when the others had gone off ahead.

My heart pounded as I answered, “Go ahead . . .”

“I want to give you some advice.”

“Oh, thanks. What is it about?”

“You should keep your distance from B.”

“Why?”

“He’s a married man, you know.”

“I know.”

“He knows the art of love.”

“Is love really an art, then? I thought it was a kind of feeling.”

“It depends on who you’re talking to. For him, it is an art. A girl should be cautious with such a man. I’m telling you this as a—good friend.”

“As a good friend . . .” How noble of him, and how condescending. A good friend. Apparently there’s such a thing as a bad friend too. He came to me to tell me to be wary of—someone else. Not to be wary of him, no, but to be wary of someone else! And he only came to warn me as a “good friend.” How fine, how gracious of him!

“Is that everything you have to say to me?” I asked with unconcealed sarcasm.

“That’s all. No—there’s something else. I wanted to ask you something else. May I?”

“Ask away.”

“Let’s be friends, like we used to be,” he suggested with a guilty smile. “Let’s make up! Let’s be friends!”

“That’s all?”

At the thought of being friends, my heart filled up with a strange emptiness. How can you be friends, especially good friends, with the man you love?