I.
L.
PERETZ
412
-Does one bring straw to Egypt? You don't need my sto–
ries...surely you can think up better ones on your own.
-Go on, friend, tell me...
-Is it that you write lies for others and want the truth for
yourself?
It
doesn't even occur to him that one might write the truth!
-Whatever you say...
* * *
Nu-my neighbor begins his story-it's nothing to be
ashamed of. We lived in a separate room. I was a young man,
more ready to talk about these things, so I asked her what was
troubling her. She began to sob..
.I
was filled with pity for her. Not
only is she my wife, may the Evil Eye have no power over her
and may she live, please God, for a hundred and twenty years,
but she is also an orphan ...far from home and lonesome.
-What do you mean lonesome?-! wonder out loud.
-You must understand that my mother, may God grant her
peace, died a year before I married, and my father, may God
grant him peace, never took another wife. My mother, may her
merits preserve us, was a pious woman, and my father could not
forget her. ..Nu, a young wife alone in the house ...my father with
never any time to spare ... he spent almost the entire week in the
villages; he dealt in produce, anything you might think of, eggs,
butter, old clothes, pig's bristles, canvas.
-And you?
-1 was always in the Yeshiva, studying Torah ...Nu, a young
wife alone, I figured she was frightened ...But how to account for
her crying? "No, it's not that," she says, "I am bored"...Bored? I
don't even know what that means..
.I
saw that she walked about
like in a trance. Sometimes when I talked to her she didn't hear
me, sometimes she looked at the wall, lost in thought, just staring
and staring...sometimes she moved her lips but not a sound came
out...What is it to be bored? Something for women only, no doubt.
A man is not bored...a man has no time to be bored. A man is
either hungry or full, he is involved in business affairs, or he is
