LEAH HAD seen David twice before their wedding. He was a cousin of her sister’s husband, a handsome boy fresh off the boat and thoroughly confused about why he had bothered to come at all. The first time they met was at Rachel’s brother-in-law’s wedding, where he impressed all the male guests at the groom’s prewedding table with his commentary on the Talmud’s marital laws. After the wedding he became the talk of the town. No one so young and learned, at least no one they knew, had ever come to their neighborhood before. Usually, only the lesser students from the Jewish academies in Europe abandoned their studies to come to the land of silk and money across the sea; it often seemed that American Jews emerged straight from the bottom of the European Jewish barrel, the people who hadn’t managed to make it and therefore were better off running away. In a town of ignoramuses, David was a gem. And he knew it. Though he couldn’t speak a word of English, his Yiddish and Hebrew illuminated the squalid block like an unearthly light in an old dark painting.

David and Leah first met at the wedding reception, where the groom introduced them in the vague area near the back of the room where men and women hesitantly mingled with each other, the dancing, of course, being divided by gender. David congratulated her on being related to the groom.

Leah twitched nervously. She was not accustomed to speaking to men alone, and the groom had been distracted by another guest, leaving the two of them an island unto themselves in the noisy room. “I heard you spoke brilliantly earlier,” she said.

David was accustomed to receiving compliments, but he had not been trained to say thank you. “I see people have a lot to learn around here,” he proclaimed, glancing to the side as though someone far more interesting had appeared behind her. Then he looked at her, as if suddenly noticing that she was still there. “What’s your name again?”

“Leah,” she answered, smiling until her face ached.