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, recognized 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.
He was born barely six months after our night of love. Born weighty and full bodied and with a great mass of black hair, so that it could not be doubted that he had lived out the full term of his nurture.
From the first moment, she adored him, coddled him, made him the apple of her eye. She read to him and sang to him, and wiped his soiled face and feet and hindquarters. He was her “dear one,” her “beloved,” her “treasure.”
But he was none of these things to me. Each time I saw him, I also saw his father, that lank and irresponsible youth who’d stolen my wife’s love at so early an age that it could never be recaptured by her or reinvested in me. He had taken the love she might have better spent elsewhere, and in doing that, he had left both of us impoverished. I hated him, and I yearned for vengeance. But he had fled to parts unknown, and so I had no throat to squeeze, no flesh to cut. In his stead, I had only his son. And thus, I took out my revenge on a boy who, as the years passed, looked more and more like his youthful father, who had the same limber gait and airy disposition, a boy who had little use for my craft, took no interest in my business, preferring to linger in the town square, talking idly to the old men who gathered there, or while away the hours by reading books on the very hillside where I’d made love to his mother, and who, even as I’d released myself to her, had slept in the warm depths of her flesh.
I often thought of that. The fact that my “son” had been inside her that night, that my own seed had labored to reach a womb already hardened against them. Sometimes, lost in such dreadful speculations I would strike out at him, using my tongue like a knife, hurling glances toward him like balls of flame.