Batya wrapped her arms around herself. The passersby must all be able to read her shame. They were all so much taller than she, so imposing in their elegant garb. She pressed herself against the wall, her heart pounding, and watched men in top hats with big important bellies walk purposefully, graceful women in elegant costumes hanging on their arms. Across the street, two nurses wearing gleaming white caps pushed baby prams. Everyone was busy, yet no one seemed to be working—no peddler announcing his wares, no knife sharpener offering his service, no sound of a blacksmith hammering his iron.

That was the only moment Batya was unsupervised. She should have escaped, she’d realize later with regret. She was wearing good leather shoes that would have taken her as far as her legs could run. Yet, still a peasant child, disoriented and confused, she dared not even cross the street for fear of being trampled. Whatever courage she’d had had seeped out of her during the night, like milk from a bucket full of holes.

Then her future husband was at her side, his face as genial as before, an expression she later understood was a mask, not a sign of infatuation with his new bride-to-be.

Only in hindsight did she understand that this was the moment she said goodbye to her old life.

Chapter Nine

On the train, Batya lay curled on the seat in the private compartment. Just yesterday she would have felt awed to travel by train, let alone ensconced in the luxury of leather-upholstered seats and curtained windows. Now she didn’t care.

“Sit up,” Moskowitz said.

Batya shook her head.

“Look,” he said quietly. Nothing about his voice was menacing, nothing in its tone indicated the brutality he had displayed during the night. “You know about marital life, don’t you?”

She shook her head again. The seat beneath her cheek felt sticky, unclean, used. Like her.

He sighed. “Your mother should have instructed you. It’s in the Bible: The way a man and a wife are. It says, ‘He would cleave unto her.’”

Don’t quote the Bible to me, she wanted to scream. That was her father’s domain, and her father would never ever do such “cleaving” to her mother. Don’t tell me that God decreed such filth.

As if it were happening now, she felt Moskowitz’s naked body crushing hers, her private parts violated, his lips sucking her neck. She had seen dogs copulating, and once, when a neighbor brought a bull to impregnate his cow, heard the trumpeting sounds of the beast, even though her mother kept her inside until it was over. But dogs and cattle were animals. Humans had been created in God’s image and were therefore above such acts. It was implausible that her mother had conceived so many times in this disgraceful way.