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forget his jaundiced complexion:
    —He’s so unhappy—she repeated quietly to herself.—Obviously no one’s ever loved him, and now his small capital’s been reduced by more than two thousand rubles.
2.2
    From abroad, meanwhile, new letters kept arriving from Reb Gedalye.
    Wholly preoccupied, he was unable to relax at his sister’s, and he wanted to return as soon as possible to the tumult of his trading affairs and begged for mercy, as though from bandits:
    —They’d taken and buried him alive.
    Both his wife Gitele and his devoted relative the bookkeeper replied, taking trouble to set his mind at rest:
    —Everything was sorting itself out, thank God. Little by little they were coming to terms with his creditors; because of good sleigh roads, the income from the Kashperivke woods had greatly improved; the bank had extended credit for three thousand rubles on the Count’s note of hand; and Mirele, long might she live, was well, all praise to God. The stock of winter wheat in the Ternov mill was still registered in the name of the landowner, and the price of flour was rising daily. With God’s help, Reb Gedalye would soon be able to return home; meanwhile, his wishes were being carried out and both the Kuzari and the first volume of Abravanel’s commentaries were being sent to him by post. *
    Meanwhile, for days at a time all was hushed and serene indoors; often all that could be heard was the bookkeeper scratching his pen over the accounts in the study, and the regular ticking of the pendulum on the great wall clock in the dining room as it counted off the minutes of the short, darkly overcast winter’s day.
    For days at a time no one now called at the house apart from one or another tardy creditor and Libke, the rabbi’s young wife, a tall, freckled, half-masculine redhead who regarded herself and her husband as Reb Gedalye’s closest friends and who always wore a half smile to irritate her enemies.
    With needlework in hand, she could sit for hours here in the dining room next to the polite and uncommunicative Gitele, and with merciless slowness relate details of her husband’s communal affairs:
    —She argued with him, with her Avreml: What’s it to you that the town doesn’t want the assistant rabbi Shloyme’s son as their ritual slaughterer?
    She smiled far too much every time Lipkis inquired after Mirele in the hallway, while Gitele examined her fingernails far too closely whenever the rabbi’s wife scratched her ritual wig with a blunt knitting needle and was plainly eager to ask her:
    —Long life to you, but are you really not bothered at all that this fellow—to say nothing worse about him—keeps creeping into your house?
    In the same silence that filled the unheated salon Mirele lay in her own room, did not so much as glance at Lipkis as he came in and didn’t even change her position to acknowledge him. With sorrow in her blue eyes, she stared for a morosely long time into the corner of the ceiling directly opposite and found herself totally under the influence of the brand-new book that lay open beside her.
    —Did he think—she merely asked him—that she’d ever fall in love with anyone again?
    This question immediately filled Lipkis with profound regret that he’d come at all, so he went over to the window and angrily took to staring out into the winter landscape. He was even prepared to answer her question by assuring her that she’d never fall in love, and was on the point of beginning, venomously:
    —Generally speaking … we really ought to examine the true meaning of this phrase, “fall in love.”
    But Mirel was already standing next to the furious young man in a frivolously lighthearted mood, gently pulling his hair:
    —You’re such a fool, such a fool—she whispered softly into his ear through childishly clenched teeth.
    Soon she started putting on her outdoor winter garments and swearing all manner of oaths:
    —If that red-haired dummy—she meant the rabbi’s