One afternoon they wound down a steep embankment and came to a small tributary of the Buh River where several women were washing their clothes on the rocks. The women stood in the shallows with their skirts hoisted up and tucked into their waistbands, their brown arms glistening in the sunlight, their hair tied up under white kerchiefs. They beat the clothes against the rocks while they laughed and gossiped, oblivious to the approaching potato cart.
When Fichmann saw the women he pulled Esther up and announced, “It’s Shabbes. We’re stopping here.”
“Can’t we go a little farther?” Berta asked. “It’s early. The weather is fine. The roads are drying out. We can make some real progress today.”
“Travel on Shabbes? But it’s against God’s will.”
“It’s only noon. Sunset is hours away.”
“Still, no sense in pushing it. We might as well call it a day. We’ll stop with Froy Katzenberg, lovely woman, and such a cook as you never saw.”
Berta and Samuil exchanged a look. It had become apparent that Reb Fichmann was not fond of pushing it. It didn’t matter to him if their journey took an extra day or an extra week as long as there were plenty of widows along the way to make him a hot meal and give him a place in their bed.
Before long they came to a little townlet on the river. The town had only one road running through it, so it wasn’t too difficult to find Froy Katzenberg’s house, a cobbled-together structure that was only standing because there were two other ramshackle houses on either side holding it up. Even before he had a chance to get down from the cart, the front door flew open and a shapely woman came running out to greet him. She had a thick dark braid twisted into a bun at the base of her neck and two bright spots of color on her cheeks where she had just pinched them. Her chin had a deep cleft like a fist and her round head stood straight and firm on a long stalk of neck.
“Gut Shabbes!” he cried, opening his arms and encircling her in his sheepskin coat, tenderly kissing her cheek, her neck, and her lips.
“I didn’t think you were coming.”
“Not coming? Of course I’m coming. Why wouldn’t I come to see my little swallow?” He called all his widows this, indulging them, flattering them, and, most of all, giving them the affection and attention they sorely needed.
When the widow noticed Berta and Samuil, she cooled visibly until Fichmann introduced them as his paying fares. After that she relaxed and invited them all in for tea. They sat in her front room, on rickety chairs, eating stale poppy seed cake with their fingers and drinking glasses of hot tea. The widow was talking about her late husband, whose hand-tinted photograph hung over the chimneypiece and showed him in the uniform of the infantry.
“Killed at Brest,” she said with a sigh. “Or at least he was shot there. They wouldn’t treat him at the front, because he was a Jew. He had to be transported to another hospital and they said he died on the way. Such a genius with a violin. Such a gentle man.” Her eyes misted over as she stared up at his photograph.
Seeing how his widow had suddenly turned glum, the potato merchant jumped in and in a hearty voice that was more peasant than Jew, he asked, “So, my little sunshine, what have you got for me today? I’m in the mood for work.”
“Oh, Mottel,” she said, looking at him with tender affection. Then, like a general in the field addressing her troops, she rose and announced to the assembled that first they’ll clean and then they’ll cook.
Berta could see that a timely departure was impossible. The widow was determined to make this a special Shabbes and soon she had Fichmann carrying the front door, the armoire, and the kitchen table down to the river so she could clean them properly. When she wasn’t scrubbing furniture, she was cooking soup or baking a pie. She put everybody to work. Samuil gutted and scaled the fish. Berta plucked the chicken until her fingers bled.
During dinner, the potato merchant was especially attentive to his widow. He touched her lightly on the arm to make a point. He kissed the back of her neck when he thought no one was looking and held her hand under the table. The widow soaked it up and her cheeks flamed with pleasure. After dinner, the Shabbes goy came to set the kitchen right and the four of them sat by the stove and listened to Fichmann’s stories about his travels and how he outsmarted the Cossacks by pretending to be a deaf mute peasant so he wouldn’t give himself away with his thick Yiddish accent.
When it got late, the widow gave Berta a few mats and some blankets and said she and Samuil could sleep by the stove. Then she and the potato merchant climbed the stairs and closed their door. Samuil was asleep before the sounds of their lovemaking drifted down from above. Despite Berta’s attempt to drown them out by pulling a blanket over her head, she could still hear, quite plainly, that Fichmann was making his widow very happy. This was unfortunate. She thought if the widow didn’t sound so enthusiastic maybe they wouldn’t have to spend all of Shabbes with her. Fichmann wasn’t particularly religious. Berta could persuade him to travel on Shabbes provided there was a monetary incentive or better yet a fresh widow at journey’s end. But this current one sounded so passionate, so ecstatic and grateful, that Berta thought it was very possible they could be stuck there for weeks.
To drown out the widow’s pleasure, Berta pulled her coat over her head on top of the blanket. Still she could hear the moans, which were worse than annoying—they were arousing. They reminded her of her own drought, of the steady metronome of loneliness, a sparse existence, where her needs went unmet year after year. It had been so long since she had been with Hershel that she had nearly forgotten what it was like. She put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to remember, not now, not in this way.
By Sunday morning, Froy Katzenberg was hinting at a more permanent situation for her and Reb Fichmann. She was serving him breakfast at the little table in the kitchen, kasha and eggs, his favorite. Berta was out on the porch with Samuil, sitting on the steps, soaking up the sun, and pretending not to listen to the conversation going on inside.
The widow was saying that she thought it might be a good idea if he started keeping some things with her, a change of clothes perhaps or an extra harness for Esther. Just in case. Maybe they should make plans, have a few set visits when she could expect him. That way she could have his supper waiting for him when he arrived home. She tossed off the word home as if it had already been decided that he lived there.
The potato merchant paused for a moment to appear that he was giving it some thought. “Let me sleep on that, my love,” he said, pouring milk over his kasha. “I love the way you cook the little kernels. The way the little hard bits are mixed in with the softer ones.”
As soon as the widow mentioned set plans, Berta knew they would be off soon. Right after breakfast, the potato merchant announced that there were hungry people waiting for his potatoes and he couldn’t, in good conscience, keep them waiting another minute. As much as he wanted to spend his days with his beautiful peach blossom, he had to say good-bye and get back on the road, even though he knew it would break his heart.
After a tearful good-bye, he turned Esther around and soon they were heading out of town under a pale sky. They made good time that day because the roads were dry and Fichmann was tired and not in the mood for widows. They stopped several times for Esther’s benefit, but mostly they plodded on in the fine spring weather, keeping an eye out for Hryhoriiv’s army and Directory troops. Fortunately Fichmann knew all the roads and kept to the less traveled ones, the ones that were little more than cart tracks and wouldn’t have been passable even a week ago.