Palenville.”
“Let’s dance!” Beatrix springs up from the grass.
“Absolutely not.” Cecil rejects her outstretched hands. “You know I never dance.”
“Oh, all right then.” Beatrix claps her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. Despite her protests that she doesn’t know how, Elizabeth finds herself twirling to the music with Beatrix, her skirt billowing between the mathematician’s bare legs.
“Oh, no, I can’t, I’ve never waltzed,” Elizabeth gasps as they waltz across the grass.
“I do think we’re corrupting her!” Beatrix calls out to Cecil.
Kerchief loosening, Elizabeth protests, “Oh no, it’s quite permissible for women to dance together.” And then, over Beatrix’s shoulder, she sees her children sitting under the tree, all looking at her. Five pairs of disapproving eyes.
4
N OISE fills Andras Melish’s house. Andras’s daughter, Renée, is practicing piano, banging away. His son, Alex, clatters up and down the stairs with the old fish tank he’s converted into a terrarium. Outside, the Curtis boy is mowing the lawn. Andras hides upstairs in the bedroom, reading about the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in the
Economist
, and hoping Nina won’t call him.
Often he avoids her. It makes him feel guilty, but he can’t help it. She is beautiful, his young wife. Her red hair, her Spanish accent—even her sharp temper—seem to him exotic, a remnant of her childhood in Buenos Aires. Andras still carries with him his first seventeen years in Budapest and the corresponding mystique of the tropical, the sun, the flaming colors, on the other side of the world. Nina is all that to his cool gray eyes. He likes to buy her clothes and jewelry. He bought her a square-cut emerald ring, and it sparkles as she gestures with her hands. You wouldn’t know she’s only five foot one, the way she moves, the way she lifts her chin to look you in the eye. She makes Andras smile, impresses him with her determined voice, her clear ideas about whom to see and how to educate the children. And he tells himself she’s sensible, insightful, about certain things. But always, after he tells himself, he comes to the fact no catalog of Nina’s virtues can change: he doesn’t take her seriously.
He’s known this for some time, and it disturbs him. He doesn’t really listen to her. She chatters and she sermonizes. She sounds sopompous, coupling her pronouncements, for example, about large cars and safety with her insistence that Andras should save gas by driving up with Isaac. She speaks the same way about religious rituals, insisting on minutiae like fish forks that Andras really doesn’t care to know about. Over time Nina has become more and more tenacious in her observance, so that while the family used to eat in unsupervised restaurants when the children were small, now Nina mistrusts such places entirely. Andras would be perfectly happy to stay home and sleep through services on Shabbat, but Nina insists that he set a good example for the children, and so he goes. Strictly speaking, morally, Nina is right to insist. Andras’s parents taught him that if you are going to be religious, you have to do it all, observing every holiday and law. They believed that when it comes to God you can’t do things by halves—which was why they did nothing. Andras humors Nina, lets her have her kosher food and synagogue services. To his skeptical mind they don’t mean much. That’s the problem, as he sees it: he allows her all the trivial, superfluous decisions. He defers to her judgment about car pooling and the brand of cheese they buy. In appearance Andras lets Nina rule and dictate every least little thing. And in fact, the things Nina determines are least and little to him.
There are moments when Andras looks at his wife and remembers how he first felt about her. But the memories themselves are embarrassing to him now. Even his first love for her, he thinks, was middle aged. He used to prize everything Nina said to
“Let’s dance!” Beatrix springs up from the grass.
“Absolutely not.” Cecil rejects her outstretched hands. “You know I never dance.”
“Oh, all right then.” Beatrix claps her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. Despite her protests that she doesn’t know how, Elizabeth finds herself twirling to the music with Beatrix, her skirt billowing between the mathematician’s bare legs.
“Oh, no, I can’t, I’ve never waltzed,” Elizabeth gasps as they waltz across the grass.
“I do think we’re corrupting her!” Beatrix calls out to Cecil.
Kerchief loosening, Elizabeth protests, “Oh no, it’s quite permissible for women to dance together.” And then, over Beatrix’s shoulder, she sees her children sitting under the tree, all looking at her. Five pairs of disapproving eyes.
4
N OISE fills Andras Melish’s house. Andras’s daughter, Renée, is practicing piano, banging away. His son, Alex, clatters up and down the stairs with the old fish tank he’s converted into a terrarium. Outside, the Curtis boy is mowing the lawn. Andras hides upstairs in the bedroom, reading about the Syrian invasion of Lebanon in the
Economist
, and hoping Nina won’t call him.
Often he avoids her. It makes him feel guilty, but he can’t help it. She is beautiful, his young wife. Her red hair, her Spanish accent—even her sharp temper—seem to him exotic, a remnant of her childhood in Buenos Aires. Andras still carries with him his first seventeen years in Budapest and the corresponding mystique of the tropical, the sun, the flaming colors, on the other side of the world. Nina is all that to his cool gray eyes. He likes to buy her clothes and jewelry. He bought her a square-cut emerald ring, and it sparkles as she gestures with her hands. You wouldn’t know she’s only five foot one, the way she moves, the way she lifts her chin to look you in the eye. She makes Andras smile, impresses him with her determined voice, her clear ideas about whom to see and how to educate the children. And he tells himself she’s sensible, insightful, about certain things. But always, after he tells himself, he comes to the fact no catalog of Nina’s virtues can change: he doesn’t take her seriously.
He’s known this for some time, and it disturbs him. He doesn’t really listen to her. She chatters and she sermonizes. She sounds sopompous, coupling her pronouncements, for example, about large cars and safety with her insistence that Andras should save gas by driving up with Isaac. She speaks the same way about religious rituals, insisting on minutiae like fish forks that Andras really doesn’t care to know about. Over time Nina has become more and more tenacious in her observance, so that while the family used to eat in unsupervised restaurants when the children were small, now Nina mistrusts such places entirely. Andras would be perfectly happy to stay home and sleep through services on Shabbat, but Nina insists that he set a good example for the children, and so he goes. Strictly speaking, morally, Nina is right to insist. Andras’s parents taught him that if you are going to be religious, you have to do it all, observing every holiday and law. They believed that when it comes to God you can’t do things by halves—which was why they did nothing. Andras humors Nina, lets her have her kosher food and synagogue services. To his skeptical mind they don’t mean much. That’s the problem, as he sees it: he allows her all the trivial, superfluous decisions. He defers to her judgment about car pooling and the brand of cheese they buy. In appearance Andras lets Nina rule and dictate every least little thing. And in fact, the things Nina determines are least and little to him.
There are moments when Andras looks at his wife and remembers how he first felt about her. But the memories themselves are embarrassing to him now. Even his first love for her, he thinks, was middle aged. He used to prize everything Nina said to
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