23
The Argument
By now he’s become convinced that it isn’t worth wasting so much time on me. He has no more patience for wooing. It seems to me that rather than taking it slow because, as the saying goes, “If you want to fall asleep, first you need a pillow,” he wants me to hurry: “If you want to love, do it already, I don’t have time for this!”
He’s exasperated because I won’t allow myself to learn from him how to live in the world. Not just to live, but to enjoy life.
“Do you enjoy life?” he asked, shaking his head in concern.
“I enjoy . . . a head cold.” I quipped. He got irritated and called me a tease. He said I was trying to make him feel desires that I know I won’t fulfill. And he loves me so very much!
Love!
“And yet I still love myself too! I love you against my will. I beg you, try to understand what I’m saying—”
“I understand.”
“Tell me, how can you possibly understand?” he demanded.
“I don’t want to argue.”
“Are you trying to hurt me?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re only hurting yourself,” he accused me.
I responded stiffly, “If I’m fighting myself, I hope I’ll reach a détente soon.”
“Will you, really,” he asked, jokingly, “be a little girl forever?”
“No one lives forever.”
“Will you die a maiden?”
“Once you die, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. Before you died at least you could comfort yourself that you had lived. You won’t be able to say that, because you aren’t alive. Why won’t you live?”
“I’m alive.”
“Not like you want to be!”
“I don’t want to live like I want to.”
“You’ll suffer instead.”
“Who cares?”
“You’re as stubborn as a mule! The way you set yourself apart from life will only make everyone else around you upset.”
“Why should I care what others think?”
“You don’t like others?”
“Who, exactly, are others?” I asked.
“Others are real enough. They force you toward love and push you into marriage. If you were married already, like other women your age, it would be much easier to talk to you about this.”
“Oh, because then I would have their approval?”
“Then you would have someone to blame,” he retorted.
“Is that so?”
“That’s how it is. You’re speculating, like in business,” he explained.
“This is America, after all!”
“Aren’t you a woman? I’m starting to think you’re not.”
“I also doubt it.”
“Then what are you?”
“A girl.”
“And do you want to stay one forever?”
“Yes, sir!” I answered in English.
“Enjoy it!”
“Thank you!”
He left in a huff. My landlady entered.
“Tell me,” she demanded, “is it true what they say, that the man who just left your room has a wife?”
“Yes, and he has a child too. What’s the matter with that?”
“What’s his business with you?”
“His business? He was talking to me about a shidukh. He’s going to find me a marriage partner.”
“Is that so? That’s very considerate of him.”
“Very kind.”
“Then I hope it all works out for you.”
“Thank you!”
The landlady left, content with this news.
Nevertheless, I’m thinking that I’d better find myself another room.
Now I have to find myself another room. The landlady won’t stop talking to me about the shidukh. She says since she’s such a good friend, like a mother to me, she will inquire after the man that B. suggests for me. Because, “these days you have to be ten times as certain before you go and do anything. This is America, and you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Maybe your male acquaintance is familiar with the other man he’s proposing as a shidukh, but what does it matter if one man knows another? A man knows another man, who knows another man—who cares? It’s you who has to spend your life with him. You should find out who he really is. But since it isn’t suitable for a girl to ask after a strange man, and since you have no family here and are all alone . . .” My landlady told me she wanted to show me that there are good people in the world, and that’s why she was unable to hold back her generosity and burst out saying, “Well, I’ll dance at your wedding and I’ll take pride in you after all!”
The poor landlady! She won’t take pride in me, in the end. Her generosity will only make me move sooner. I could tell her that I don’t like the shidukh he proposed and keep on living there, but she’d ask why the shadkhn kept visiting me when I didn’t like the shidukh, and what could I say then?
I know he’ll come back. We’re having an argument, but we haven’t split up, and until he breaks it off with me entirely he’ll try, a few more times, to be “good friends.” He’s already invested so much time in this love affair, why would he give it up so quickly?
“When your shadkhn comes to call,” the landlady directed, “call me. I want to speak with him. I’m a married woman, you know, and I know better than you do about certain things. Making a shidukh isn’t as easy as eating a bagel.” I simply had to promise to call her, so that she can speak to him.