Part 63 (2/2)
But there are no chairs in the kingdom. Treine sits on one of the beds, making a net to hold the onions which are lying beside her, scattered over the sheet. The soup for supper is keeping hot under the bed-clothes.
The door of the big room opens softly. Treine's cheeks flush, she lets the net fall out of her hands, and springs off the bed. But then she remains standing--it would never do before all the neighbors. One of them might wake, and she would never hear the last of it. The neighbors are bad enough as it is, especially Freude. Freude cannot understand a wife not beginning to scold her husband the very next day after the wedding. ”Just you wait,” she says, the old cat, ”you'll see the life he'll lead you--when it's too late.” Freude leaves her no peace.
”A husband,” she says, ”who is not led by the nose is worse than a wolf.
He sucks the marrow out of your bones, the blood out of your veins!”
It is ten years now since Freude had a husband, and she has not got her strength back yet. And Freude is a clever woman, she knows a lot.
”Anything that he has a right to,” she says, ”fling it out to him as you would a bone to a dog, and--”
Treine has time to recollect all this, because it is some minutes before Yossele manages to steal on tiptoe past all the beds. Every step he takes echoes at her heart, but as to going out to meet him--not for any money. There--he nearly fell! Now he is just outside the part.i.tion walls. She breathes again.
”Good evening!” he says in a low voice, with downcast eyes.
”A good year to you!” she answers lower still. Then: ”Are you hungry?”
she asks.
”Are _you_? Wait.”
He slips out between the part.i.tions and returns with washed and dripping hands.
She gives him a towel.
On a corner of the table there is some bread and some salt and the now uncovered soup.
He sits down on his bed, on the top of all the bed-clothes, she on hers, with the onions.
They eat slowly, talking with their eyes--what about, do you think?--and with their lips about the way to earn a living.
”Well, how are you getting on?”
”Oh,” he sighs, ”three pupils already!”
”And that is all we have to depend on?” she asks sadly.
”_Ma!_” he answers with gentle reproach.
”G.o.d be praised!” she is consoling herself and him together.
”G.o.d be praised; but that only makes one hundred and twenty rubles,” he sighs.
”Well, why do you sigh?”
”Add it up,” he answers; ”one ruble a week rent, that's twenty-six rubles a season. And then I'm in debt--there were wedding expenses.”
”What do you mean?” she asks astonished.
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