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examined Tzili’s legs. “She’s too young,” he said.
    “Don’t be a fool.”
    Tzili stood holding her dress fearfully in her hands.
    “I’ll come on Sunday,” said the peasant.
    “She’s got breasts already, can’t you see?”
    “I’ll come on Sunday,” repeated the peasant.
    “Go then. You’re a fool. Any other man would jump at the chance.”
    “I don’t feel like it today. I’ll come on Sunday.”
    But he lingered in the doorway, measuring the little girl with his eyes, and for a moment he seemed about to drag her into the scullery. In the end he recovered himself and repeated: “I’ll come on Sunday.”
    “You fool,” said Katerina with an offended air, as if she had offered him a tasty dish and he had refused to eat it. And to Tzili she said: “Don’t stand there like a lump of wood.”
    Tzili dropped her dress.
    For a moment longer Katerina surveyed the peasant with her bloodshot eyes. Then she picked up a wooden plate and threw it. The plate hit Tzili and she screamed.“What are you screaming about? At your age I was already keeping my father.”
    The peasant hesitated no longer. He picked up his heels and ran.
    Now Katerina gave her tongue free rein, abusing and cursing everyone, especially Maria. Tzili’s fears were concentrated on the sharp knife lying next to the bed. The knife sailed through the air and hit the door. Tzili fled.

9
    T HE NIGHT WAS full and starless. Tzili walked along the paths she now knew by heart. For some reason she kept close to the river. On either side, the cornfields stretched, broad and dark. “I’ll go on,” she said, without knowing what she was saying.
    She had learned many things during the past year: how to launder clothes, wash dishes, offer a man a drink, collect firewood, and pasture a cow, but above all she had learned the virtues of the wind and the water. She knew the north wind and the cold river water. They had kneaded her from within. She had grown taller and her arms had grown strong. The further she walked from Katerina’s hut the more closely she felt her presence. As if she were still standing in the scullery. She felt no resentment toward her.
    “I’ll go on,” she said, but her legs refused to move.
    She remembered the long, cozy nights at Katerina’s. Katerina lying in bed and weaving fantasies about heryouth in the city, parties and lovers. Her face calm and a smile on her lips. When she spoke about the Jews her smile narrowed and grew more modest, as if she were revealing some great secret. It seemed then as if she acquiesced in everything, even in the disease devouring her body. Such was life.
    Sometimes too she would speak of her beliefs, her fear of God and his Messiah, and at these moments a strange light seemed to touch her face. Her mother and father she could not forgive. And once she even said: “Pardon me for not being able to forgive you.”
    Tzili felt affection even for the old, used objects Katerina had collected over the years. Gilt powder boxes, bottles of eau de cologne, crumpled silk petticoats and dozens of lipsticks—these objects held an intimate kind of magic.
    And she remembered too: “Have you ever been to bed with a man?”
    “No.”
    “And don’t you feel the need?”
    Katerina’s face grew cunning and wanton.
    And on one of the last days Katerina asked: “You won’t desert me?”
    “No,” promised Tzili.
    “Swear by our Lord Saviour.”
    “I swear by our Lord Saviour.”
    Of the extent to which she had been changed by the months with Katerina, Tzili was unaware. Her feethad thickened and she now walked surely over the hard ground. And she had learned something else too: there were men and there were women and between them there was an eternal enmity. Women could not survive save by cunning.
    Sometimes she said to herself: I’ll go back to Katerina. She’ll forgive me. But when she turned around her legs froze. It was not the knife itself she feared but the glitter of the blade.
    Summer was