“What? What?” muttered Josef from his cot in the hall where his mother-in-law had put him for the night. He struggled awake, hearing Bianka’s cries through the door. He frowned, wiped his eyes. The bricks that they’d placed at his feet were cold. There were no windows in the hall, and he hated closed places. Bianka called again. He cursed, not too softly, sat on the edge of the cot and held his head. Besides everything else, he had a hangover. And he missed his own bed. The women had put him out to make room for the cousins, and even his wife seemed to belong to them, or to the house, or to the baby that was supposed to be coming—to anyone, in short, but him.

He got out of bed, put his robe on over his nightgown, and opened Bianka’s door. The moonlight made a golden white path from the curtained window, reflecting on the kettles and pails that earlier had held boiling water. They sat on the floor by the cold fireplace now, with the light glittering on them; and the piles of rags and other cloths were neatly stacked and ready on the chair. Josef frowned; he’d decorated the chair himself, painted on the flower designs that Bianka wanted, and there it sat—blue and pink for the baby’s room—if the baby ever came. And the chair reminded him of his own painting, and of the time wasted on the rosebuds, and of the hours yet to come when he’d fail in one way or another to do what he kept telling himself he was determined to do—become a good artist.

“Josef?” said Bianka in small voice. She was on the side of the bed away from the moonlight, so he could hardly see her at all. His head throbbed and his feet hurt, but at the sound of her voice, he blushed deeply in the darkness, in shame at his part in her predicament, in anger—after all, women were supposed to know how to handle such things more easily—and at his own unexpected response to her half-crying voice: He was sexually aroused. He remembered how long it had been since they’d really bedded, and before he could stop himself, he saw her in his mind’s eyes as she had been: naked, and if not actually slim, well, not as fat as a pregnant cow. The comparison made him further ashamed of himself. He sat on the side of the bed.

“Here I am,” he said glumly.

“I dreamed I saw our baby, only she was about three years old.”