“It is yours?” she asked me as I came out the door, my arms filled with the wood I used in my trade.
I stopped, astonished to see her staring at me, unable to believe that she’d actually addressed her question to me.
“No,” I said. “It belongs to one of my customers.”
She returned her attention to the horse, drawing her fingers down the side of its neck, twining her fingers in its long brown mane. “He must be very rich to have a horse like this.” She looked at the wood still gathered in my arms. “What do you do for him?”
“Build things. Tables. Chairs. Whatever he wants.”
She offered a quick smile, patted the horse a final time, then retrieved her basket from the street and sauntered slowly away, her brown arms swinging girlishly in the afternoon light, her whole manner so casual and lighthearted that only a sudden burst of air from my mouth made me realise that during the time I’d watched her stroll away from me, I had not released a breath.
I didn’t talk to her again for almost three months, though I saw her in the street no less often than before. A young man sometimes joined her now, as beautifully tanned as she was, with curly black hair. He was tall and slender, and his step was firm, assured, the walk of a boy who had never wanted for anything, who’d inherited good looks and would inherit lots of money, the sort whose bright future is entirely assured. He would marry her, I knew, for he seemed to have the beauty and advantage that would inevitably attract her. For days I watched as they came and went from the market together, holding hands as young lovers do, while I stood alone, shrunken and insubstantial, a husk the smallest breeze could send skittering down the dusty street.
Then, just as suddenly, the boy disappeared, and she was alone again. There were other changes too. Her walk struck me as less lively than it had been before, her head lowered slightly, as I had never seen it, her eyes cast toward the paving stones.
That anyone, even a spoiled, wealthy youth, might cast off such a girl as she seemed inconceivable to me. Instead, I imagined that he’d died or been sent away for some reason, that she had fallen under the veil of his loss, and might well be doomed to dwell within its shadows forever, a fate in one so young and beautiful that struck me as inestimably forlorn.
And so I acted, stationing myself on the little wooden bench outside my shop, waiting for her hour after hour, day after day, until she finally appeared again, her hair draped over her shoulders like shimmering black wings.
“Hello,” I said.
She stopped and turned toward me. “Hello.”
“I have something for you.”
She looked at me quizzically, but did not draw back as I approached her.
“I made this for you,” I said as I handed it to her.
It was a horse I’d carved from an olive branch.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, smiling quietly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said and, like one who truly loves, asked nothing in return.
We met often after that. She sometimes came into my shop, and over time I taught her to build and mend, feel the textures and qualities of wood. She worked well with her hands, and I enjoyed my new role of craftsman and teacher. The real payment was in her presence, however-the tenderness in her voice, the light in her eyes, the smell of her hair-how it lingered long after she’d returned to her home on the other side of town.
Soon, we began to walk the streets together, then along the outskirts of the village. For a time she seemed happy, and it struck me that I had succeeded in lifting her out of the melancholy I had found her in.
Then, rather suddenly, it fell upon her once again. Her mood darkened and she grew more silent and inward. I could see that some old trouble had descended upon her, or some new one that I had not anticipated and which she felt it necessary to conceal. Finally, late one afternoon when we found ourselves on a hill outside the village, I put it to her bluntly.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She shook her head, and gave no answer.
“You seem very worried,” I added. “You’re too young to have so much care.”
She glanced away from me, let her eyes settle upon the far fields. The evening shade was falling. Soon it would be night.
“Some people are singled out to bear a certain burden,” she said.
“All people feel singled out for the burdens they bear.”
“But people who feel chosen. For some special suffering, I mean. Do you think they ever wonder why it was them, why it wasn’t someone else?”
“They all do, I’m sure.”
“What do you think your burden is?”
Never to be loved by you, I thought, then said, “I don’t think I have one burden in particular.” I shrugged. “Just to live. That’s all.”
She said nothing more on the subject. For a time, she was silent, but her eyes moved about restlessly. It was clear that much was going on in her mind.
At last she seemed to come to a conclusion, turned to me, and said, “Do you want to marry me?”
I felt the whole vast world close around my throat, so that I only stared at her silently until, at last, the word broke from me. “Yes.” I should have stopped, but instead I began to stammer. “But I know that you could not possibly… that I’m not the one who can… that you must be…”
She pressed a single finger against my lips.
“Stop,” she said. Then she let her body drift backward, pressing herself against the earth, her arms lifting toward me, open and outstretched and welcoming.
Any other man would have leapt at such an opportunity, but fear seized me and I couldn’t move.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That I wouldn’t be able to…”
I could see that she understood me, recognised the source of my disabling panic. There seemed no point in not stating it directly. “I’m a virgin,” I told her.
She reached out and drew me down to her. “So am I,” she said.
I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel, but after a time she grew so warm and moist, my pleasure in her rising and deepening with each offer and acceptance, that I finally felt my whole body release itself to her, quaking and shivering as she gathered me more tightly into her arms. I had never known such happiness, nor ever would again, since to make love to the one you love is the greatest joy there is.
For a moment we lay together, she beneath me, breathing quietly, the side of her face pressed against mine.
“I love you,” I told her, then lifted myself from her so that I could see her face.
She was not looking at me, nor even in my direction. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the sky that hung above us, the bright coin of the moon, the scattered stars, glistening with tears as she peered upward to where I knew her thoughts had flown. Away from me. Away. Away. Toward the one she truly loved and still longed for, the boy whose beauty was equal to her own, and for whom I could serve as nothing more than a base and unworthy substitute.
And yet I loved her, married her, then watched in growing astonishment as her belly grew day by day until our son was born.
Our son. So the townspeople called him. So she called him and I called him. But I knew that he was not mine. His skin had a different shade, his hair a different texture. He was tall and narrow at the waist, I was short and stocky. There could be no doubt that he was the fruit of other loins than mine. Not my child, at all, but rather the son of that handsome young boy she’d strolled the town streets with, and whose disappearance, whether by death or desertion, had left her so bereft and downcast that I’d tried to cheer her with a carved horse, walked the streets and byways with her, soothed and consoled her, sat with her on the far hillside, even made love to her there, and later married her, and in consequence of all that now found myself the parent and support of a child who was clearly not my own.