The Little Bride by Anna Solomon

.”
    “Nein.”
    “But I must.”
    “Nein.” Otto held up his palms, turned to Jacob, and said something else. If he was aggravated, he hid it well inside his clipped, clean voice. He stood, as Minna’s father had, with his legs set a bit farther apart than necessary, as if he might be called upon at any moment to hold up a falling rock. Her father, Minna realized, had been younger than Max was now.
    “Here, please . . .” Max reached into his pockets, stammering.
    “Don’t be stupid,” Jacob said, climbing down at last. He let out a sigh of resignation. “That’s what he’s saying, in a word. Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t want your money.”
    Max continued to protest, but Otto had already leaped back into the wagon. He called good night, the wheels creaked into motion. Minna looked up at the house, straining her eyes to see it more clearly, but there were only stars, dim with their own crowding, and the bouncing glow of the wagon. She felt a wretched envy.
    Suddenly Max called again. “Wait! Her trunk!” But he didn’t run anywhere. He turned to Jacob. “He left her with nothing.”
    “It’s right here,” Jacob said, holding up Minna’s bundle.
    Max eyed it suspiciously. “I thought you’d bought flour.”
    Jacob smiled. “That would have been smart.”
    Max stiffened. “Yes. That would have been smart.”
    The night blared its excruciating silence. Then a groan broke through: Minna’s stomach, announcing hunger. She waited for her face to burn, for her mouth to say zayt moykhl— yet neither happened. She couldn’t locate any desire to impress Max. Instead a belligerence welled up in her. She took the bundle from Jacob and turned to Max. “They told you I would arrive with luggage? You thought I was rich?”
    “No. If you were rich, you wouldn’t come here.”
    “What did they tell you?”
    “Almost nothing.”
    Minna was suddenly sorry. But this wasn’t remorse, or even pity. It was closer, perhaps, to sorrow. She wondered if Max was as disappointed by her youth as she was by his age. She wondered with what money he’d paid for her crossing. And the Rosenfeld’s examination? Did he have any idea what he’d paid for? She tried to find his eyes in the dark, then thought it better that she couldn’t.
    “Then we are even,” she said.
    Max’s outline seemed to melt slightly. He turned. She could see his lips now: thick for a man, and alarmingly pink. “This is a discussion for another time,” he said. “You are hungry. My love.”
     
     
     
    I NSIDE, the house—the room—felt even smaller than it looked, the scale almost miniature, as if built for dwarves. There was a short table. Three shipping crates for chairs. One bed, a small stove, a bench lined with buckets. The floor was dirt, the walls were dirt. In one corner, a hole had been dug out: here she saw, emerging from a blanket, curly black hair. The other one, Samuel, asleep. Or pretending to sleep, she thought. More likely he just didn’t want to meet her. Which was fine. Minna did not particularly want to meet him. It was enough, for one night, to meet a husband. Better to leave something still unknown—though she wished, instead of a stepson, that it might be a second room. The air smelled of breath and smoke, and something richer, ranker—a pile of horse dung, she saw, by the stove. Their fuel, she realized.
    “Please,” said Max, and handed her a steaming plate.
    What kind of meat she’d been served, Minna couldn’t tell, but it tasted sweet and was warm. When she offered some to Jacob, he looked to his father, then shook his head. She didn’t offer again. She felt greedy and light, and though the baseness of her hunger disturbed her, along with the baser baseness of how simple it was to ease, she had a sense that her future called for a certain hoarding, and ate the rest without stopping even to say thank you.

TEN

    T HE men were gone. Minna felt it before she saw. An earthen stillness in the room. She rolled