Sanzo moved out of the hall into the windowless bedroom that had been his father's, and things went on as before, a little easier on Sara.
In January one of Eva's young men, a dyer at the Ferman mill, perhaps discouraged by the competition for Eva, began looking around and saw Lisha. If she saw him it was without fear and without interest; but when he asked her to walk out with him she agreed. She was as quiet and amenable as she had always been, there was no change in her, except that she and her mother were closer friends than they had been, talking together as equals, working together as partners. Her mother certainly saw the young man, but she said nothing about him to Lisha, nor did Lisha say anything except, occasionally, "I'll be walking out with Givan after supper."
Across one night of March the wind from the frozen eastern plains dropped and a humid wind rose up from the south. The rain turned warm and large. In the morning weeds were pushing up between the stones of the courtyard, the city's fountains ran full and noisy, voices carried further down the streets, the sky was dotted with small bluish clouds. That night Lisha and Givan followed one of the Rakava lovers' walks, out through the East Gate to the ruins of a guard tower; and there in the cold and starlight he asked her to marry him. She looked out to the great falling darkness of the Hill and plains, and back to the lights of the city half hidden by the broken outer wall. It took her a long time to answer. "I can't," she said.
"Why not, Lisha?"
She shook her head.
"You were in love with somebody, he went off, or he's already married, or something went wrong with it like that. I know that. I asked you knowing it."
"Why?" she said with anguish. He answered directly: "Because it's over, and it's my time now."
That shook her, and sensing it, he said, with sudden humbleness, "Think about it."
"I will. But – "
"Just think about it. It's the right thing to do, Lisha. I'm the one for you. And I'm not the kind that changes my mind."
That made her smile a little, because of Eva, but also because it was true. He was a shy, determined, holdfast fellow. What if I did? she thought, and at once felt herself become humble with his humility, protected, certain, safe.
"It's not fair to ask me now," she said with a flash of anger, so that he insisted no more than to ask her, as they parted at her entrance, to think about it. She said she would. And she did.
It was how long, five months now, since the day in the wild garden on the Hill; and she still woke in the night from a dream that the stiff dry grass of autumn was pushing against her back and she could not move or speak or see. Then as she woke from the dream she would see the sky suddenly, and rain falling straight from it on her. It was of that she had to think, only that.
She saw Sanzo oftener now that it was sunny. She always spoke to him. He would be sitting in the yard near the pump sometimes, as his father had used to do. When she came for water for the washing and pressing, she would greet him: "Afternoon, Sanzo."
"That you, Lisha?"
His skin was white and dull, and his hands looked too large on his wrists.
One day in early April she was ironing alone down in the cellar room which her mother rented as a laundry. Light came in through small windows set high in the wall, at ground level; sparse grass and weeds stirred in the sunlight just outside the dusty glass. A streak of sunshine fell across the shirt she was pressing, and the steam rose, smelling sharp of ozone. She began to sing aloud.
Two tattered beggars met on the street.
'Hey, little brother, give me bread to eat!'
'Go to the baker's house, ask him for the key,
If he won't hand it over, say you were sent by me!'
She had to go out for water for the sprinkling-bottle. After the dusk of the cellar, the sunlight filled her eyes with whorls and blots of black and gold. Still humming, she went to the pump.
Sanzo had just come out of the house. "Morning, Lisha."
"Morning, Sanzo."
He sat down on the bench, stretching out his long legs, raising his face to the sun. She stood silent by the pump and looked at him. She looked at him intently, judgingly.
"You still there?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"I never see you any more."
She took this in silence. Presently she came and sat down beside him, setting the jug of water down carefully under the bench. "Have you been feeling better?"
"Guess so."
"The sun, it's like we could all get out and live again. It's really spring now. Smell this." She picked the small white flower of a weed that had come up between the flagstones near the pump, and put it in his hand. "It's too little to feel it. Smell it. It smells like pancakes."
He dropped the flower and bowed his head as if looking down at it. "What have you been up to lately? Besides the laundry?"
"Oh, I don't know. Eva's getting married, next month. To Ventse Estay. They're going to move to Brailava, up north. He's a bricklayer, there's work up there."
"And how about you?"
"Oh, I'm staying here," she said, and then feeling the dull, cold condescension of his tone added, "I'm engaged."
"Who to?"
"Givan Fenne."
"What's he do?"
"Dyer at Ferman. He's secretary of the Union section."
Sanzo got up, strode across the yard to the archway, then turned and more hesitantly came back. He stood there a couple of yards from her, his hands hanging at his sides; he was not quite facing her. "Good for you, congratulations!" he said, and turned to go.
"Sanzo!"
He stopped and waited.
"Stay here a minute."
"What for?"
"Because I want you to."
He stood still.
"I wanted to tell you . . ." But she got stuck. He came back, felt for the bench, and sat down.
"Look, Lisha," he said in a cooler voice, "it doesn't make any difference."
"Yes it does, it makes a lot. I wanted to tell you that I'm not engaged. He did ask me, but I'm not."
He was listening, but without expression. "Then why'd you say you were?"
"I don't know. To make you mad."
"And so?"
"And so," said Lisha. "And so, I wanted to tell you that you may be blind but that's no excuse for being deaf, dumb, and stupid. I know you were sick and I'm very sorry, but you'd be sicker if I had anything to do with it."
Sanzo sat motionless. "What the hell?" he said. She did not answer; and after quite a while he turned, his hand reaching out and then stopping in mid-gesture, and said nervously, "Lisha?"
"I'm right here."
"Thought you'd gone."
"I'm not done yet."
"Well, go ahead. Nobody's stopping you."
"You are."
A pause.
"Look, Lisha, I have to. Don't you see that?"
"No, I don't. Sanzo, let me explain – "
"No. Don't. I'm not a stone wall, Lisha."
They sat side by side in the warmth a while.
"You'd better marry that fellow."
"I can't."
"Don't be a fool."
"I can't get around it. Around you."
He turned his face away. In a strained, stifled voice he said, "I wanted to apologise – " He made a vague gesture.
"No! Don't."
There was a silence again. Sanzo sat up straighter and rubbed his hands over his eyes and forehead, painfully. "Look, Lisha, it's no good. Honestly. There's your parents, what are they going to say, but that's not it, it's all the rest of it, living with my aunt and uncle, I can't … A man has to have something to offer."