4
One afternoon I stopped in to see her. At that hour she was free from her work with the patients and was sitting in her room sewing a new dress. I took the dress by the hem and let my hand glide over it. Then I lifted my eyes toward her. She looked straight into my eyes and said, “I was once involved with somebody else.” She saw that I didn’t realize what she meant, so she made her meaning more explicit. A chill ran through me and I went weak inside. I sat without saying a word. After a few moments I told her, “Such a thing would have never even occurred to me.” Once I had spoken, I sat wondering and amazed, wondering over my own calmness and amazed at her for having done a thing so much beneath her. Nevertheless, I treated her just as before, as though she had in no way fallen in esteem. And, in fact, at that moment she had not fallen in my esteem and was as dear to me as always. Once she saw that, a smile appeared on her lips again. But her eyes were veiled, like someone moving out of one darkness into another.
I asked her, “Who was this fellow who left you without marrying you?” She evaded the question. “Don’t you see, Dinah,” I pursued, “that I bear no ill feelings toward you. It’s only curiosity that leads me to ask such a question. So tell me, darling, who was he?” “What difference does it make to you what his name is?” Dinah asked. “Even so,” I persisted, “I would like to know.” She told me his name. “Is he a lecturer or a professor?” I asked. Dinah said, “He is an official.” I reflected silently that important officials worked for her relatives, men of knowledge and scholars and inventors. Undoubtedly it was to the most important of them that she gave her heart. Actually, it made no difference who the man was to whom this woman more dear to me than all the world gave her love, but to delude myself I imagined that he was a great man, superior to all his fellows. “He’s an official?” I said to her. “What is his job?” Dinah answered, “He is a clerk in the legislature.” “I am amazed at you, Dinah,” I told her, “that a minor official, a clerk, was able to sweep you off your feet like that. And, besides, he left you, which goes to show that he wasn’t good enough for you in the first place.” She lowered her eyes and was silent.
From then on I did not remind her of her past, just as I would not have reminded her what dress she had worn the day before. And if I thought of it, I banished the thought from my mind. And so we were married.
5
Our wedding was like most weddings in these times, private, without pomp and ceremony. For I had no family, with the possible exception of the relative who once hit my father in the eye. And Dinah, ever since she became close to me, had grown away from her relatives. During that period, moreover, it was not customary to have parties and public rejoicing. Governments came and governments went, and between one and the next there was panic and confusion, turmoil and dismay. People who one day were rulers the next day were chained in prisons or hiding in exile.
And so our wedding took place with neither relatives nor invited guests, except for a bare quorum summoned by the beadle, miserable creatures who an hour or two ago were called for a funeral and now were summoned for my wedding. How pitiful were their borrowed clothes, how comic their towering high hats, how audacious their greedy eyes that looked forward to the conclusion of the ceremony when they could go into a bar with the money they had gotten through my wedding. I was in high spirits, and as strange as the thing seemed to me, my joy was not diminished. Let others be led under the bridal canopy by renowned and wealthy wedding guests. I would be married in the presence of poor people who, with what they would earn for their trouble, could buy bread. The children we would have wouldn’t ask me, “Father, who was at your wedding?” just as I never asked my father who was at his wedding.
I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out several shillings which I handed to the beadle to give to the men over and above the agreed price. The beadle took the money and said nothing. I was afraid they would overwhelm me with thanks and praise, and I prepared myself to demur modestly. But not one of them came up to me. Instead, one fellow bent over, leaning on his cane, another stretched himself in order to appear tall, and a third looked at the bride in a way that was not decent. I asked the beadle about him. “That one, the beadle replied, and he bore down emphatically on the “th” sound, “that one was an official who got fired.” I nodded and said, “Well, well,” as though with two well’s I had concluded all the fellow’s affairs. Mean while, the beadle chose four of his quorum, put a pole in the hand of each of the four, stretched a canopy over the poles, and, in doing that, pushed one man who bent forward and thus brought the canopy tumbling down.
Afterward, while standing under the bridal canopy, I recalled the story of a man whose mistress forced him to marry her. He went and gathered for the ceremony all her lovers who had lived with her before her marriage, both to remind her of her shame and to punish himself for agreeing to marry such a woman. What a contemptible fellow and what a contemptible act! Yet I found that man to my liking, and I thought well of what he had done. And when the rabbi stood and read the marriage contract, I looked at the wedding guests and tried to imagine what the woman was like and what her lovers were like at that moment. And in the same way, just before, when my wife put out her finger for the wedding ring and I said to her, “Behold thou art consecrated unto me,” I knew without anyone’s telling me what that man was like at that moment.
6
After the wedding we left for a certain village to spend our honeymoon. I won’t tell you everything that happened to us on the way and in the station and on the train; and, accordingly, I won’t describe every mountain and hill we saw, nor the brooks and springs in the valleys and mountains, as tellers of tales are accustomed to do when they set about describing the trip of a bride and groom. Undoubtedly there were mountains and hills and springs and brooks, and several things did happen to us on the way, but everything else has escaped me and been forgotten because of one incident which occurred on the first night. If you’re not tired yet, I’ll tell you about it.
We arrived at the village and registered at a little hotel situated among gardens and surrounded by mountains and rivers. We had supper and went up to the room that the hotel had set aside for us, for I had telegraphed our reservation before the wedding. Examining the room, my wife let her eyes dwell on the red roses that had been put there. “Who was so nice,” I said jokingly, “to send us these lovely roses?” “Who?” asked my wife with genuine wonder, as though she thought there were someone here besides the hotel people who knew about us. “In any case,” I said, “I’m taking them away, because their fragrance will make it hard to sleep. Or perhaps we should leave them in honor of the occasion.” “Oh, yes,” my wife answered after me in the voice of a person who speaks without hearing his own words. I said to her, “And don’t you want to smell them?”—“Oh, yes, I want to.” But she forgot to smell them. This forgetfulness was strange for Dinah, who loved flowers so much. I reminded her that she hadn’t yet smelled the flowers. She bent her head over them. “Why are you bending down,” I asked her, “when you can hold them up to you?” She looked at me as though she had just heard something novel. The blue-black in her eyes darkened, and she said, “You are very observant, my darling.” I gave her a long kiss; then with closed eyes I said to her, “Now, Dinah, we are alone.”