24

The Breakup

Now I really have to move. A man who used to board with my landlady inquired about staying with her again. She told him, “I’m very sorry,” and explained that I’m currently occupying his former room. He told her that he’d be willing to pay a few more dollars than before to have the room, so she agreed to rent it to him.

“So what will you do now?” my landlady asked me.

“Move, I guess. Since he’s going to pay you so much more.”

“And, what’s more, he’s a man,” she added. “You must understand that a man is not like a girl. He won’t be at home as often. He’ll go out and we won’t see him at all. And he’ll be paying a few more dollars. But of course I don’t want to make you move, unless you’re willing . . .”

I had to reassure her that I’m planning on moving anyway. Besides, she’s already promised the room to the man. In three days he’ll move in. So now I must move.

I’m worn out from looking for a place to live. And I didn’t find one. I returned home to hear a voice coming from my room: “As sure as I live, she’s as dear to me as my own child. Once I’m attached to someone, I can’t detach myself.”

“So it would seem.”

“Don’t they say I’m a good woman? Look! You, yourself, have a wife, may she be well, and a child too? So you must know what a shidukh means for a girl. Where are you from?”

“Where we’re all from.”

“I mean, where were you born?”

“In a bed.”

“Now you’re joking with me. It isn’t nice to laugh that way.”

I opened the door and went in the room. My landlady quickly explained that the man (B.) had come to call and I wasn’t home. She let him in to wait for me, since she knew his purpose. In the meantime, she entertained him, but now she had to see what was happening in the kitchen. Something was probably burning.

“Why was she going on with me about a shidukh?” B. asked after she’d left, laughing. “What am I, a shadkhn?”

“Yes, a shadkhn. That’s all I could think of to tell her. Why are you here?”

“To see you. I missed you. How tired you look!” He held my head in his hands and looked into my eyes. “Did you miss me? Tell me, please!”

His noticing my tiredness made me feel a strange sort of self-pity. I wanted to cry. I hid my face in my hands so he wouldn’t see my tears. In sorrowful moments like these, the touch of gentle hands can be so comforting.

“I am so sorry,” he said, softly kissing my hair, “that I caused an argument. You don’t know how I’ve suffered because of it. You are so lovely, so good, how could I cause you pain? Can you forgive me?”

I laughed and patted his hands. “B., don’t be so good to me. I’ll be just as bad to you as I was before. You must know that. I can’t be any different.”

“Why not? Your whole body seems to say with longing, ‘Kiss me, love me, take me,’ but you . . .”

How was I supposed to answer such a question? Was I supposed to explain to him that I was using him, expressing through him my love for A.? Or should I tell him that I was only with him to ease and silence the smarting pain of my loneliness? I silently, playfully freed myself from his embrace and buried him in kisses. He stood for a while, his head bowed over me, and stroked my hair. Then he walked away. I opened my eyes and found myself in the dark. He had turned out the lights.

“B.—”

“To be or not to be,” he said, grabbing me, “that is the question!”

“B.!” I cried, not knowing what to say. “The landlady will hear!”

“You’re moving soon anyway!”

“B.!”

“It will happen sooner or later, if not with me, then with some other man. I won’t be made a fool of. Enough already. Be what you are. You are a woman, not a child.”

In the darkness, I groped for his face with my fingernails.

“You wild creature! You could have blinded me! Calm down!”

I wanted to be “wild” but he brutally tried to civilize me. He angrily asked me why I wouldn’t let myself love him. He threatened never to see me again. He said it would have been better not to get started with someone like me. He’d never get anything out of it, even if he waited his whole life. And, after all, I’m not the only girl in the world, there are others who understand more about life. It’s just a shame he wasted so much time on me.

The sound of B. slamming the front door had barely died out when the landlady knocked on my door and entered, asking why I was sitting alone in the dark and why he’d gone away so quickly. She wanted to know what was going on with the shidukh. I told her that I wasn’t happy with it.

“To tell you the truth,” my landlady said, “I wasn’t happy with the shadkhn. He was full of jokes. What’s the saying? ‘A dog should not be a butcher’? He was always making light of everything. A girl should know to be on guard with men like that. They claim to be interested in you for a reason, a shidukh, for example, but they’re really after something else . . . Have you found another room?”

“Not yet. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“You’ll have to hurry. That man is moving in soon. I don’t want to return his deposit. I gave him my word. I don’t want to deceive a man like him.”

Since B. won’t be visiting me anymore I might have been able to live comfortably in that room, but I’ve already agreed to give it up and now I have to move. I’ll have to search for some other lonely corner.

So, B. and I broke up. But the certainty of a breakup is better than the doubt I felt before.