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There was nobody to talk to. They were all so irritating in their fanatic adherence to Jewish law and custom, so stubborn and unchanging, without the least appreciation or understanding of culture. No one spoke Russian. They only read Yiddish newspapers and penny dreadfuls. They all dressed badly and bathed infrequently—this being particularly noticeable on hot summer days. No one had ever heard of Balzac, Stendhal, or Goethe or read poetry or listened to a symphony or even a piano sonata.
    On some days she would only speak French, even though no one else in town could. On other days she wouldn’t speak at all and addressed everybody with a sullen look of disapproval. She often wore her Muscovite silks for no reason, looking especially out of place among the plain head scarves and dusty black skirts. But her worst crime, the one that had won her the enmity of nearly the entire population, was sitting out in the town square under a horse chestnut tree reading a book on Saturday afternoons.
    Saturdays were always reserved for the parade of marriageable girls and boys around the town square. There were the girls in their muslin dresses walking arm in arm and the boys standing on the sideline in groups of twos and threes, watching the show and whispering to one another. It was a subtle performance involving ancient social cues: a flick of the eyes past a freshly scrubbed face, a nervous giggle and lingering look from beneath the brim of a straw sailor hat. Because the girls had to look their best, money that had been laid aside for necessities or emergencies was now freely spent on yard goods, gloves,
hats, and spools of machine-made lace. It was an investment in the future and as necessary to a good match as a walk around the square, a veiled exchange of glances, and a visit from the matchmaker. It was how courtship was done in Mosny, how it had always been done, that is, until Berta Lorkis came home. Now the boys only wanted to look at her.
    Had Berta known the trouble she was causing, she would have picked another bench. She wasn’t interested in these boys. Half of them were yeshiva bocherim , students from the Talmudic academy in Bogitslav. The rest were apprentices to tradesmen or journeymen. What would she do with a boy like that, especially since they were all younger than she and beneath her in every way?
    The people of Mosny didn’t know how she felt. They thought she was having fun with them, torturing them by flirting with their boys. The mothers of the girls were incensed, as were the marriage brokers, the tailors, the dressmakers, and anyone else who made a ruble or two off the marriage trade. They all wanted her gone from her bench under the tree. But nobody said anything, so she continued to sit there week after week, unwittingly laying waste to the dreams of mothers and dressmakers.
    On this particular hot summer day the store was crowded with muzhiki, peasants who had come in for market day with their carts full of produce. They had lined them up in the town square, fruit here, vegetables there, dairy on one side, honey on the other, and the perimeter filled with livestock. The women left their daughters in charge of the stalls while they came into the grocery to buy staples. Jewish housewives tramped up and down the square, clutching the sweaty arm of a child, fingering the last kopeck, looking for the best potatoes, the firmest beets at the best price. Each side used bits and pieces of the other’s language, a price quoted, a counter offer, a sour look of mistrust. Nobody wanted to be cheated. Here there was a tenuous connection between town and country, Jew and gentile, a slender branch built on commerce. But it was also September 1904, exactly one year and five months after the bloody pogrom at Kishinev where forty-nine Jews were killed and more than five hundred injured. So it was no
wonder that the Jews were holding their breath, waiting for the branch to snap.
    Berta stayed in the grocery that day,