“It’s perfect!” he proclaimed in the old language, and watched as her lips took the form of a smile. “You know you really didn’t need to do this. It would have served just as well with a little hole.”
“You couldn’t wear it like that. And besides, I enjoy sewing. It is my favorite pastime. I’ll just leave it on this chair for when you are finished with your meal.”
The girl bent down and placed the sweater neatly over the back of a side chair, her long dark hair, so long and thick, in fact, that, falling momentarily over the garment, it fairly covered it. She swept it back swiftly with one hand and disappeared into a bedroom off the hall.
A few minutes later, her sister, Anna, appeared carrying a platter filled with freshly baked honey and poppy seed muffins, which reminded Zalman of the treats he used to relish back home as a boy. Unlike her sister, Anna closely resembled her mother. Tall and sturdy, she carried herself with a certain awkwardness, as if unsure how to navigate her bulk. Her hair, light brown with tight curls, topped a face that faintly looked like the work of an amateur sculptor, upturned nose slightly askew, a brow that protruded over owlish eyes. Naturally shy among the brutish strangers who sat silently devouring their meals as if they were racing against the dusk, she dropped the sweets on the table with a clatter and ran out of the room.
Zalman allowed himself only one of the poppy seed muffins. He couldn’t risk another button off his coat. But then again, the possibility might offer him another encounter with the farmer’s eldest daughter. He bit into the soft cake, his nostrils filling with the distinct aroma of the poppy seeds.
He turned to Rozenstein, who was already wiping the cake crumbs from his chin, a signal for the others that it was time to go back to work.
“Do you think we have met our quota for the eggs this week?” he asked, again in Yiddish. It was a silly question, of little substance or purpose, but Zalman felt compelled to fill the silence. Ever since he had found himself a free man, Zalman had developed a fear of the quiet, even solitude. Perhaps now, he guessed, the fear had turned into a phobia hatched in the pirates’ room and the days when terror had replaced the sound of his own voice. And here, on this land in rural Minnesota, where he should feel closest to God Himself, there were times when sitting among his countrymen, each mulling over his own dark past, Zalman felt more terrified than ever.
“I’m sure we will meet that quota, and milk, too, thanks to the blessing of you fine men,” he said in English, placing his hand on Zalman’s shoulder and rising. As the men secured their coats, Zalman carefully removed the blue sweater from the chair and buttoned on the extra layers. As the screen door screeched plaintively behind him, he resolved to send Jacob his answer in the morning.
FIVE
Jacob
It was Uncle Abraham and Aunt Rose who walked Jacob down the aisle toward the chuppah. After each planted a kiss on his cheek, he stepped up on the bimah and turned. There were fewer than one hundred already seated, dressed in their finest; some remembered the day when they, too, had clasped hands and shared the cup of red wine, others dreaming of the moment when a holy bond, a sacred promise, would be shared. When Jacob turned to face the guests, he saw a multitude of beaming faces, each one like the other.
But he had little time to take heed of the guests, men who would soon lift the celebratory couple, women and girls who had removed their shoes as they joined in the joyous hora, because now she appeared before him. Jacob had heard others tell of that moment when you first saw her on the marriage day, the woman who would become your wife. And yet the words of his married friends had failed somehow to capture the feeling that overcame him.
Her parents, Boris and Sally, their arms linked with their child’s, seemed to melt into the crowd of onlookers until Esther was the only one Jacob saw. She was clothed in streams of white lace, ruffles gathered at the cuffs and neck. Her face was hidden by a veil, and yet her eyes, forever an azure blue, glimmered like two stars beneath. The veil, which sprouted from a crown of rhinestones and tulle, fell back like a cloak so that when she walked, or rather glided toward him, it was with the regal air of a princess.
A tap on his shoulder and Jacob woke as if from a dream, remembering that he needed to move his legs toward her now, that indeed she was not an ethereal being, something of another world, but his Esther, the girl he was about to marry.
The words that united the two, the customary sweet red wine, the seven brachas, the prayers for a happy future, the ring placed on her forefinger, the breaking of the glass. And then the cheers that erupted, shattering the solemnity of the occasion, seemed mechanical, forgettable, even. Clasping her hand, he sensed the smallness of it, the delicacy of her skin. It was just as it had been that first time, and Jacob felt as if he had awakened from an exceptionally long sleep. As if now, after all the years that had come before, his life was only just beginning. And when he looked into her blue eyes, which were now shining with tears, he knew that she, too, felt the same.