Beyond the Pale: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

“As quick as they could, they sold me—believe me, I know what a dowry’s for, every odd-shaped girl knows—sold as an ox, along with a team of mules, some boy could plow his field with me. What do you think: Am I worth a pair of mules?”
    “Are mules like horses?”
    “Yes, darling,” she laughed.
    “You’re much more fun than a horse,” I said.
    “Flatterer. What a child. I only hope you will be spared being sold to fools. That fool they tethered me to was Benjamin, my first husband. The farm wasn’t good enough for him, and I was restless enough to agree to anything. These potatoes are coming along nicely. Salt, rosemary—maybe I’ll add some of last year’s olives. Where was I?” She rubbed her big hands on a corner of her apron.
    “Benjamin.”
    “Oh, Benjamin. We packed up and came to a big shtetl. He carried bricks. I learned to trade in the market. From two eggs, I got a fish. From a fish, five kopecks.” She took deep breaths, turning and cooking, humming between the sentences. “For five kopecks, some plain cloth. I knew plants from my childhood. A certain herb makes wonderful red. Would you like me to show you sometime?”
    I nodded, my mouth full of the fried potatoes she’d just given me.
    “If you and your mother work out, I’ll show you everything. Red shawls I wrung from the cloth, three of them. The women admired my work. At the end of a week I had six rubles, my husband, only two. This you may not believe, but it’s God’s truth. So angry he got, he fell down dead. Would you cry for a shlemil like that?”
    I shook my head no. She pinched my cheek. “Well, then I had eight rubles and it took four to bury him. I saved up every kopeck and finally traveled to the big city. To me, the sidewalks in Kishinev were an event—oh, and the balloons. Have you ever seen a balloon?”
    “A balloon?”
    “You and your mother really did come from the shtetl, didn’t you? Well, I remember how that feels. I got work in a tavern. People think a fat woman will know how to cook and give good portions. You’re lucky it’s true of me, though there are plenty of days I never want to see a chopping board again. And all that time, working, I still wanted—oh, who knows what? Want, what is it? The moon would fit in my hand if I could reach it. I always believed there was no great thing I could not do if I had a chance.”
    She sighed and added logs to the fire, then filled up a kettle bigger than me with water. “How did I end up here, you want to know? There was a widower. He liked how I cooked and organized. He had boys who needed a mother. I told him, I am not a mother. I had enough of children on my parents’ farm. ‘But it’s commanded,’ he said, as if that would convince me. They have their books, they can tell you anything is written. They think they’re very important because they know the secret language of God. If you ask me, God speaks in onions. But who asks? Now don’t tell Reb Kohn I said that. Turned out he owned the baths. A prosperous, respectable man, even if too pious for my taste.”
    Pesah lifted a basket of peaches onto the work table as if it were empty and started cutting up the fruit. Every once in a while she’d pop a sweet sliver in my mouth. I swung my legs back and forth and smiled at her.
    “We made a deal,” she said, adding some peaches to the boiling water. “I agreed to farm his sons. It was, after all, easier than plowing a field. And I managed the business. Plainly I’m a woman who can get things done. We arranged to live as man and wife—oh, what should a child know about these things? You know marriage allows the man to come into your bed, don’t you? But I made Reb Kohn agree that we could have separate rooms. I get satisfaction enough by working, cooking, taking care of the baths and the garden. He was always a little, fussy man; even you can see that, can’t you? My conditions suited him fine. It was really a business deal. The matchmaker says