The mute kept his distance from Yael, as if he was afraid of her. He left her food on the kitchen table and occasionally brewed up strong sweet cups of tea, but beyond that, he seemed unwilling to acknowledge her existence. He spent his time outside, preparing the house and the sty at the bottom of the field where he kept a couple of pigs for the winter, splitting the last of the logs and storing them neatly beneath the tarpaulin against the side of the house. When he came in, he would open the door of the stove, build up the fire and sit by it, lost in one of his books.
When he had gone out one morning, Yael picked up the book he had been reading. It was a volume of Pushkin. One wall of the other room in the house was lined with crudely constructed shelves, tight with books. Russians mainly: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Lermontov and more recent volumes of Gumilyov and Akhmatova. There were translations of French poets and novelists in Russian and Polish along with Shakespeare and Byron.
Yael ran her finger along the dusty books, feeling the ribbing of the ornate spines, the gloss of the embossed lettering, the rough texture of the cloth on cheaper bound editions and the brittle smoothness of some newer paper-backed books. Her father had only a small number of books in the family home, but she recalled a visit to her grandfather’s home in Lomza; a three-storey building with a small cobbled yard. Her mother’s father had been pious and his shelves were heavy with books. Copies of the works of the Gaon, Holy books, books by Tsadiks; the Hebrew curious and exotic to Yael’s untutored eye. Sitting on the arm of a battered sofa, gazing across the shelves of books, Yael’s mind wandered back to the evenings of her childhood in her grandparents’ home. Wondering over her grandmother’s wigs, her grandfather’s shawls. The books in the library, leather-bound, polished with use, almost golden in the light of the kurnik, the small lamp stood on his table. In the early evenings small study groups met in his library, pouring over the Talmud, the Mishnah or the Chayei Adam.
She picked an ornate volume from among the books and opened it. Her eyes flicked down across the Cyrillic script, picking out words, her lips mouthing the beginnings of lines. She had studied Russian at school, and had listened often as Josef read aloud from his bed, but she still stumbled, unsure, not fully confident. Goodbye, my friend, she read, Goodbye, my dear one, you are in my breast.
The door opened and she heard the whisper of wind, the unsettling stillness of a snowstorm, a foot on the floorboards and the sound of the mute blowing against his fingers. The domesticity of it snagged her heart. She thought of her father, her mother, their home. A dry spasm tightened her throat and she felt her eyes burn. ‘My neshomeleh!’ her father would call as he entered the house.
When the mute came through the doorway she was crying. The book fell and landed with a thump on the bare boards. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed into them. Sobbed for the life that had gone. For her mother and father, for their home, for the wakening in the night and hearing the sound of her brother’s breathing, for the waking in the morning to hear her father humming a song, the swish of her mother’s brush on the stone flags of the threshold. For their scolding, for their love, for her doll which she had not long stopped playing with but which sat still beside her pillow. For the rhythm of life and its worn, familiar contours. For her life.
“Oh God, oh God,” she whispered, “Where have you gone?”
The mute bent by her feet and took up the volume of Yesenin’s poems. Closing it carefully, smoothing down the page that had creased, pressing it tight. He did not look at her. His movements were stiff and uncomfortable. Slowly he rose, and slotted the book back onto the shelf, lining it carefully, so that it did not stick out, nor stand indented more than its neighbours. For a moment he lingered, his finger on the spine of the book, and then he turned and walked slowly from the room.
Later Yael went through into the kitchen. Her eyes were sore and the skin of her cheeks felt tight from the tears that had dried on them. The mute was seated at the stove with his back to her, his head bent low over the poems of Pushkin, his feet, shoeless, on the tiled stove once again. She stood by the window and looked out. He turned and seemed about to move, but then shook his head and turned back to the book, allowing her to stay there.
It was snowing hard. The wind drove the heavy flakes against the window and already the ledge had been lost beneath a three-inch ribbon of it. The field was white and the hencoop indistinct. The trees were still dark. They danced erratically in the wind.
“Thank you,” she whispered, turning to face him.
She saw his head move, but he did not turn. It was little more than a twitch acknowledging she had spoken, then he bent low, his eyes fixed hard upon the lines of text, fiercely losing himself in Pushkin’s gypsies.
Yael turned from the window and leaning back against the frame of some cupboarding, regarded him. He was a large man, his skin dark, but smooth, closely, carefully shaven. His clothes were old and patched, but clean. The fingers, which rested upon the edge of the page, ready to turn, were blunt with short cut nails.
“I said ‘thank you’,” Yael said, a little louder, slightly irritated by his refusal to recognise her.
The mute flinched a little. For a few minutes longer he attempted to read, but then closed the book sharply and placed it on the table. Without looking at her he pushed his feet into his boots and laced them quickly. Rising from his chair, he went to fetch his coat from a peg close to the door. She reached out to touch his arm as he passed.
“My name is Yael,” she tried.
He shied away from her. Slipping his arms into the sleeves, he opened the door, fighting to hold the coat closed as a gust of icy wind blew in, sweeping snow across the wooden floorboards. The door closed sharply behind him. Yael watched through the window as he buttoned up the coat, pulling it tight to him. He stepped out into the snow, which already rose higher than the thick soles of his boots, and made his way down to the well. Drawing up the bucket he unhooked it and carried it back to the house.
In the corner of the kitchen was a large tin tub. Pushing through the door the mute placed the bucket on the floor and hauled the tub onto the top of the tiled stove. He poured the freezing water into it and went out, back into the snow. He repeated this journey a number of times, each time returning with a thicker layer of snow on his jacket, freezing in his hair, his bare hands scarlet, then blue and white. Yael sat on her stool and watched him. He was uncomfortable under her gaze, and hurried his task, slopping water onto the floor. Yael took a rag and wiped it dry. He glanced at her and for the briefest of moments their eyes met. She was not sure whether the look in his eyes was anger or fear.
When at last it seemed he had enough, he secured the latch on the door, pulled off his coat and sat watching as the water slowly warmed, occasionally placing small logs through the cast-iron door into the furnace.
The light had begun to fade when he thrust his hand into the water and seemed to think it warm enough. He laboured it down onto the floor, and lit a candle on the table. He searched around for a while and found at last a small wooden box which he placed carefully on the table. Disappearing into the other room, he came back with a rough cotton towel, faded in its pattern, but clean. He placed it on the table beside the wooden box, which was decorated with a delicate carving of a flower, painted once red and gold, though the paint had mainly flaked away now. At last he seemed content.
He glanced quickly at Yael, who had been watching his careful work with some bemusement. He indicated the water and the towel and box with a sharp, nervous waft of his hand. With that he walked from the kitchen and drew a thin curtain over the door, giving her privacy.