The Little Bride (30 page)

O
N the second day of Max’s sickness, two wagons appeared across the prairie, and behind them, a thing so unrecognizable they might all have been struck by fever. As it came closer, they saw that it was an exceedingly tall penny-farthing, with a man riding on top, and that the wagons were papered with brightly colored posters—so much color, suddenly, that the ground seemed to tremble. Jacob ran to greet the front wagon and a man hopped down. By the time they reached the house, they were talking like old friends.

“Wild Whippersnapper Willy,” said the man, doffing his hat with a great bow—“Howdeedoo”—and Jacob fell into such a huge, hysterical laughter that Minna and Samuel found themselves laughing, too. Willy laughed back at them, and though his was the kind of laugh that didn’t involve the eyes, it was professional and long-lasting and it satisfied. He wore trousers that ballooned at his knees and cinched tight at his ankles, and a black satin vest, and a white scarf, and the sad effort around his eyes, along with the vest, reminded Minna of the magician. With him were other performers: one very fat man, one dressed as a cowboy, two dressed as Indians, and one with three eyes. This man was impossible not to look at, for he stood no more than twenty feet away, doing nothing but being himself and looking back at them. He seemed unbothered, almost happy, as if nothing in fact was wrong with him, which struck Minna as wrong in itself until she realized that the longer you looked on him, the more normal he started to appear: the longer you stared, his three eyes were not what struck you as odd, but the fact that he only had one mouth, and two feet.

Willy clapped, to get their attention. “Stragglers of the Whippersnapper Circus at your service,” he said. “Not Barnum, I’ll admit, but you don’t look particularly famous yourselves!” They were bound for Mitchell, he said, where they’d meet the rest of the band. They needed a place to rest the night, and Jacob had told them yes, of course, stay here!

“We’ve little food,” Samuel said, and Willy said they carried their own. If they could only wash in the creek, they would be grateful.

“Yes!” Jacob cried. “Yes! And perhaps we’ll come see the circus! Perhaps you’ll admit us free of charge! Where are you headed after Mitchell?”

“As far as the roads will take us, I suppose!”

Jacob pulled spoons out of his pocket and began to play. Willy whistled along. So much noise so suddenly, Minna’s ears began to hurt. Max stumbled out in his nightshirt. He looked at the scene with disbelief, then anger. “I’m not crazy,” he said to Willy, as if he knew him as someone else, and could see through his disguise.

“Come back to bed,” Minna said, taking Max’s arm. “You’re shivering.”

She tugged him gently, but Max had spotted the three-eyed man. He slapped Minna’s hand away, then pulled her to him, grabbing her hair in one hand and covering her eyes with the other, so that her head was squeezed between his sweating palms. “Don’t look!” he cried. “The child!” And Minna, unable to see and smelling fever on Max’s skin, remembered not only the village dwarf, with the egg in his neck, but his mother, an average woman who was blamed for the dwarf’s being a dwarf because she’d looked on another dwarf as she carried him. Minna remembered her confusion, as a child. The woman was old by then, and people ignored her, and patted her poor son on the head, and went to
shul
. It was as bewildering as the circus posters, the penny-farthing, the entire spectacle behind Max’s hands. She wrestled free of him—not gently—not trying to seem weaker than she was—until they stood facing each other, their breath coming fast, and Minna said, “I’m not with child,” loudly enough so that even the freak would hear.

 

 

C
LOSE to dawn, she woke to gunshots. One. Two. She ran outside, but there was only a poster on the ground, and in the distance, the uppermost reaches of the penny-farthing rolling away. A third shot rang out.

“Cowards.” Samuel stood in the doorway behind her, hastily buttoning his trousers beneath his night shirt. You could hear the excitement in his breath, his desire to fight somebody, his disappointment at finding only Minna there.

“What do you mean cowards?” she asked.

Samuel shrugged. He’d woken from some dream, she guessed, where he was a hero.

“They were only getting an early start,” she said.

“But why the shots?”

“To say good-bye.”

“Or they stole something.”

“Don’t be like your father. There’s nothing to steal.”

Samuel said nothing. In the gray, blooming light, his bare feet glowed. The ground was cold. She was alert. She wondered, if she kissed him, what would happen. She wished she had a blanket to cover her shoulders, to calm her. She should go inside. But the gunshots were in her stomach still, beating like warm wings.

“They were amateurs anyway,” said Samuel.

“I don’t know.”

“They were.”

“Fine.”

“You just don’t remember the real world.”

Minna looked at his face. It was blue-shadowed, almost soft. In Minna’s life, she’d rarely talked just to talk, the way she and Samuel seemed to be doing now, without any clear purpose other than to make words out loud and see how they landed. It was pleasant, and silly, and also very serious, for you could not admit that anything you said might in fact mean something.

“What if this is real?” she asked.

Samuel crossed his arms, and looked back at the house. She guessed that he was thinking of Max, alone in bed, out of his mind. She guessed she should be thinking of Max, too. When Max came back from his fever, she decided, she would stop letting herself think these thoughts, like how Samuel was tall but she could find a way around his shoulders, or how, if he turned back right now and took her hand and kissed her, then it wouldn’t be her fault.

He half turned, and took her hand. His had been in his armpit, and was warm. Minna felt a sudden panic. Of course it would be her fault. Whatever happened would be her fault. In Beltsy there had been a girl named Libi, who had breasts like a grown woman, which made the boys silent and the girls mean, until one day she cornered the rabbi’s son behind the
shul
and made him touch them. After that the girls were still mean, but the boys followed her and Libi was called a
nafke
.Then the Russians came, and took Libi’s brothers away, and that was blamed on Libi, too.

Samuel drew her to him. He wrapped his arms around her. She could hear his blood, in his chest. She leaned into him. But what if Max should wake and call for her, and run outside?

“Samuel,” she whispered.

He rested his head on hers. His arms were warm, and heavy. The sum weight of his embrace surprised her; it seemed to demand that she hold him back. She did. She waited. When Samuel finally spoke, it was into her hair.

“Jacob,” he said. “They took Jacob.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She pulled away—embarrassed, disbelieving. Cool air crept into the space between them. They stood, watching the imprint of the wagon in their minds, until the instant the first birds called out of the near grass and the pink sun rimmed up above the far grass, which was the same instant, as if the birds and the sun knew how to be together far more easily than any people. And when it was light, they went inside, and saw that it was true.

 

 

M
AX wept until his fever broke, then he wept again, with understanding. It was terrifying to see a man sob in such a way, on his knees beating the floor, on his back hugging his knees. There was an ecstasy, almost, to his weeping. His beard ran over with saliva and tears. Minna stared. She couldn’t help it. She wondered if he’d cried like this when Lina left. And if Minna left, would he do the same? How could you leave a man knowing it would make him do this? But how could you stay having seen it? She watched until he gave in to a quieter moaning, then she drew him a tin of water and knelt at his side.

“Please. Motke.”

Max drank, wiped his nose with his sleeve, looked up, and started to cry again. He wasn’t looking at Minna, but behind her, where Samuel stood with folded arms.

“He’ll be back,” Samuel said nonchalantly. “He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know anything about anything.” You could hear that Samuel wanted to believe this, from the lazy way he dropped the words. But when he began to pace, his outrage was visible. “Those people won’t even want him. They’ll drag him along for a while, make him carry props, toss him off.”

Max shook his head. “You wish you’d gone.”

Samuel guffawed. “And be a circus act?”

“You’re covetous.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But he’d stopped pacing. “Don’t say stupid things.”

“If I were Otto, he wouldn’t have left me.”

“Perhaps.” Samuel looked away. In his face was a sudden satisfaction. “But then you’d be dead.”

“I don’t understand,” Max cried. “Was he so miserable?”

Neither Samuel nor Minna answered. Yes, she supposed, Jacob was so miserable. Now that he’d left, you could tell. He’d belonged here less than any of them, perhaps. He’d wanted to be happy.

Max said to Samuel, “You’ll go away now, too.”

“Yes. But only to the colony.”

“You’ll leave me.”

Samuel squinted. “Yes.” He spoke with the measured slowness of one beginning a long calculation. “But then I’ll return.”

“If you had other plans, you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I’ll return.” Samuel’s voice was quiet, almost intimate, but he didn’t lower himself down next to Max. He shoved his hands into his pockets, and composed his face into its blankest, hardest, most handsome expression. “I’m your son,” he said.

“How do I know?”

The question hung, unfurling itself.

“I’ll go with him,” Minna said. “I’ll see that he returns.”

Max looked at her. His eyes were bright from crying, his mouth open and soft. She wondered if he could see the heat bloom up her neck.

“You won’t go anywhere,” he said. He took her hand. “The child.”

“I told you,” Minna said, recognizing as she said it that in his fever he must have confused her confession with the circus, or the circus with her confession, that she could choose, again, to keep it from him. But she was exhausted, suddenly, by making him a fool. “There is no child,” she said.

Max stared, his eyes so wide she could see veins in the corners. He swallowed, hard, and threw her hand into her lap.

“I never said there was,” she said.

“You never said there wasn’t.” His eyes filled again with tears. Minna looked away. Would it have been so bad, she thought, to endure him? Then he said, to the side of her head, “You pretended to pray. You pretended to respect me. You’re a liar,” and his naming turned her shame to courage. She felt Samuel, watching her. Yes, it would have been so bad. No, she did not want Max. She’d never been able to want, or think, or believe what she was meant to. Why had she imagined it could be another way?

“If you want the truth,” she said, “in Odessa, they inspected me like a horse.”

“Minna.”

“Everywhere. They went everywhere.”

“This is not necessary.”

“You paid them, yes?”

Silence.

“And what money did you use? What food could you have bought instead? If you could do it again, would you choose the food, or the barren wife?”

“Minna . . .”

“They froze my fingertips.”

“This is enough.”

“I forgive them. I forgive you. You’re only people, doing what you must. It’s the most common thing to do.”

“But—”

“They wanted to know if I was brave, and if I could stand the cold. They tested my patience and my obedience and everything else you must have wanted.”

“Minna.”

“But see, Motke.” Minna turned her palms up. She stretched her fingers into a gesture of supplication, but they were pale, and looked naked. They were naked, she supposed. She folded them. “They never asked if I was honest.”