Leah's Journey by Gloria Goldreich Page A

almost forgotten tonight that the darkening sky meant the beginning of the Sabbath.
    In the kitchen Leah was adding salt to the soup and he noticed that her wrist bore a light streak of blue paint.
    “You had an art class today?” he asked.
    “With Ferguson.” She bent over the pot again, her face bright with the heat of the kitchen and the rush of preparing the large meal.
    Once, standing on the deck of the boat that had carried them across the Atlantic, he had watched her standing in the wind and marked the way the color slowly rose in her pale cheeks, the blood warring against the resistant pallor of the skin and settling finally with ruddy radiance across her upturned face, turning the small dimple in the corner of her mouth into a tender pink bud. She had been pregnant than, heavy with the weight of Aaron and the memory of Yaakov’s death. He had struggled against the unfamiliar stirring of longing and had gone below deck, leaving her to her solitary vigil above the endless waves. Now, in the cluttered kitchen, with her color so hauntingly bright, he was drawn to her and felt his weariness fade as he passed his fingers gently across her face.
    “Tired?” he asked and bent his head, his lips searching for the blue scar of paint that trailed against her wrist.
    Abruptly she withdrew her hand. A spoon clattered to the floor and she bent to retrieve it, calling too loudly for Sarah Ellenberg to come and help her. She did not turn as David walked from the room.
    After dinner that night, she read aloud a letter from her brother Moshe, in Palestine. David listened to her soft voice rising and falling in rhythmic Yiddish and realized that he was beginning to think more and more in English. He had to strain to understand one or two of Moshe’s references and he wondered whether this was because Moshe, too, had lost an easy grasp of the language of their childhood and was more at home now in Hebrew. David tried to concentrate on the letter now and not think about that brief scene in the kitchen. He and Leah had agreed upon a partnership when they married, a viable union against loneliness and despair. He had no right to demand more from her than he had offered that fall evening when they had talked without touching in the Odessa park, as the madwoman rushed off to meet a train that would never arrive.
    His feelings for Leah had changed since that evening. From the small roots of affection, from the need to somehow fill the great emptiness left by Chana Rivka’s death, a trembling love had grown. He knew, though, that Leah’s feelings had not altered. And so he struggled to withhold his love from the woman who was his wife.
    Rebecca scrambled onto David’s lap and Aaron remained in a corner, his bright hair glowing in the soft circle of lamplight which was left glowing throughout the Sabbath, his eyes rooted to the pages of the Blue Fairy Book. Aaron loved the sound of his mother’s voice but he did not listen to her words. Like David, Yiddish was becoming an unused language for him and Aaron allowed the words he understood but no longer spoke to flow over him as he read on in English.
    Leah heard Moshe’s deep voice behind the written words and in her mind’s eye conjured up Henia’s patient, loving face. She continued to read.
    “This letter will reach you after we here, and you there, have celebrated the New Year and observed the Day of Atonement. We wish you and all of Israel peace. Our spirits are high this year because at last we have managed to drain the swamp on the northern border of our settlement and we are certain that in the spring we can at last begin planting.
    “A thousand dunams will be given over to alfalfa which we can market and we will plant the rest with vegetables for our own use. Small Yaakov went with us to the market in Tel Aviv and returned full of excitement. Truly, we also were excited when we saw the new city built on the sands. There is so much to do here and so much to learn. Tonight