Enchantment by Orson Scott Card Page A

mission in life.” He kissed her. “Filling empty heads.”
    “And mine is filling empty stomachs,” she said. “Now that she’s gone, we can have supper. I only had two pork chops, I couldn’t have shared with her.”
    He looked at her sharply for a moment, then realized she was joking. “Really, what’s for dinner?”
    “Soup,” she said. “Can’t you smell it?”
    “The house always smells like good food,” said Piotr. “It’s the perfume of love.”
    Over supper, they talked of many things and, sometimes, talked not at all, enjoying the comfortable silence that comes from long friendship, from shared life. Only when she was rising from the table to carry dishes to the sink did Esther broach the subject that was most on her mind.
    “Do you think there’s any chance that Vanya’s lack of letters to Ruthie means that he doesn’t want to marry her after all?”
    “No,” said Piotr. “I think he isn’t thinking about her. He’s thinking about his work.”
    “And when you’re working, you don’t love me?” asked Esther.
    “We’re married,” he said, “and you’re here.”
    “And if you were in Russia like Vanya, you wouldn’t write to me either?”
    He thought for just a moment. “I wouldn’t go without you,” he finally said.
    “Very carefully chosen words,” she said.
    “I wouldn’t be without you,” he repeated. “Without you, I wouldn’t be.”
    She kissed him and then washed the dishes as he returned to reading and grading student papers.
     
    Cousin Marek was as good as his word, sitting there in one of the village trucks waiting for him. “Everyone’s glad you’re back,” he said. “All grown.” Marek laughed. “A Jewish scholar is supposed to have glasses and clutch a book.”
    “I do my share of book clutching. Can’t help it that my eyes are still good.”
    “I was teasing you. Because you have shoulders. Seeing you as a boy, who would have guessed?”
    The pole vault, the discus, the javelin, putting the shot, that’s what had given him shoulders like a blacksmith. Sprints and hurdles, those were the cause of his thighs. Mile after mile of endurance running, that was what kept him lithe and lean. And all of this would sound foolish, Ivan knew, to a man whose massive muscles all came from the labor of farming. Ivan’s body had been shaped by competition and meditation, Marek’s by making the earth produce something for other people to eat. It didn’t feel right to Ivan, to talk much about athletics. So he turned the subject back onto Marek himself. “You must still be carrying that calf up the stairs.”
    Marek looked puzzled.
    “American joke,” said Ivan. “A tall tale. The story is, a farmer carried a calf up the stairs every day. His wife asked him why, he says, ‘I want to be strong enough to carry him when he’s a bull.’ ”
    Marek thought for a moment. “Bull won’t let you carry him up the stairs, even if he’d fit.”
    “That’s why it’s a joke.”
    Marek burst out laughing and punched Ivan heavily on the arm. “You think I don’t get this joke? Only it’s a Ukrainian joke, Ukrainians must have carried this joke to America!”
    Ivan laughed and tried not to rub his arm. He might have muscles, but it wasn’t as if he’d ever boxed or wrestled or anything. He wasn’t used to getting punched. He wondered if Cousin Marek had punched Father a lot when he lived here. That would explain why Father wanted never to come back.
    It was after dark when they got to the farm. The place seemed strange, until Marek explained the differences. “New henhouses over there,” he said. “There’s more of a market for eggs now, so we grow them, ship them straight to L’viv in refrigerator cars. Capitalism! And everything looks so bright because we have enough electricity that you can turn on the lights in every room in the house at once.”
    “But you never actually do that,” said Ivan.
    “No, no, of course not,” said Marek. “There are two