A Settled Account at the Dreidel Table

“Nobody is asking you to solve my life over apple cake.”

“You had no trouble inventing one over coffee.”

His face altered, the amusement gone. “Please not tonight.”

When Rebekka brought coffee, Miriam took out the tram ticket and wrote beneath the second entry: 3. Evasion is still an answer.

Natan read it without speaking.

“Three,” she said.

“You are counting a question.”

“I am counting what you did with it.”

“You are a demanding guest.”

“You offered me a bed and a false history.”

“Neither came with a full audit.”

“Then you should not have chosen a conservator.”

By half past midnight, the radiator in Miriam’s guest room had begun to hiss like a kettle denied its proper purpose. She had just set her washbag beside the basin when water gathered beneath the painted iron ribs and ran across the floorboards in a dark, steady sheet.

“Natan,” she called, lifting her suitcase onto the chair. “Your plumbing has revised the terms of our agreement.”

He arrived with Rebekka behind him. Natan crouched near the radiator, then stood at once when a thread of hot water struck his cuff. Rebekka surveyed the spreading pool with the resigned severity she had brought to the closure notices downstairs.

“Of course it waited until I had fed everyone,” she said. “Pipes enjoy company more than relatives do.”

“Can it be stopped?” Miriam asked.

“Not by us at this hour. The valve is old, the plumber is older, and both will answer in the morning.” Rebekka turned toward the hall. “You will take Natan’s old room.”

Natan made a brief protest. “Aunt Rebekka—”

“You will not put a guest beside a radiator making a private river. Carry her things.”

His old room occupied the back corner of the flat, overlooking the shuttered shop’s narrow courtyard. A broad brass bed filled most of it, its faded blue coverlet folded at the foot. At the window stood a worktable with a magnifying lamp, a chipped ruler, and three tins of pigment. The only alternative was a narrow brown sofa, plainly designed for reading rather than sleeping.

“I can take the sofa,” Miriam said.

“So can I,” Natan replied.

Rebekka looked from one to the other. “One of you may explain how a grown person will sleep there without becoming a question for an orthopedist.”

Natan sat down to demonstrate; his knees passed the end cushion by several inches. Miriam inspected the sofa and found no counterargument.

“Very well,” she said. “The bed is wide.”

“The bed is not an invitation,” Natan said quickly.

“No,” Rebekka replied. “It is furniture. You are both over thirty. Make use of it sensibly.”

Once Rebekka had brought extra pillows and closed the door, Miriam faced the bed with a practical dislike of imperfect solutions.

“Three pillows down the middle,” she said. “A border.”

“Four would be more secure.”

“Four would leave us each a shelf.”

“Three, then.”

“Bathroom from six-thirty until seven is mine. You may have it after.”

“You run a strict household for someone who arrived yesterday.”

“I prefer systems that survive questioning.” She set one pillow lengthwise across the coverlet. “One other rule: neither of us invents details the other cannot defend.”

“That removes nearly all the charm of our courtship.”

“Then we will rely on facts.”

“An alarming prospect.”

“No score for plumbing,” she added.

“Agreed. Emergency governance does not qualify as an argument.”

Later, Rebekka’s door closed at the end of the corridor, and the flat gave itself over to pipes, clockwork, and a tram crossing the street below. Miriam lay on her side beneath the coverlet, fully clothed, while the pale ridge of pillows divided the mattress.

“The train leaves at eight-oh-five on 2 January,” Natan said from the far side of it.

“From Hauptbahnhof?”

“Yes. Prague’s itinerary has me reporting by noon.”

“And after that?”

“The contract is still being discussed.”

“That answer has a familiar shape.”

“This time it is accurate,” he said. “I grant it does not improve the form.”

She considered the ceiling. “Why tell me now?”

“Because you were right to ask.”

Straightforwardness left her less prepared than another clever objection would have done.

“Why do dates matter so much to you?” he asked.

Miriam was quiet for a moment. Beyond the window, a shutter shifted in the wind. “Years ago, I was with someone who organized his future by postponing it. After the next promotion, after his lease expired, after summer. He asked me not to apply for a residency in Basel while he decided whether Berlin still suited him.”

“What did you do?”

“I waited.” The admission had lost its sting long ago, or so she had told herself. “He took a job in Copenhagen and called it temporary. I stayed in Berlin and called the relationship finished.”

“That was cowardly of him.”

“It was ordinary. That may be worse. People enjoy promises when they do not intend to make a timetable.”

“And contracts?”

“Name the work, the fee, the final day. If someone changes the arrangement, there is at least a record of it.”

He was quiet for several turns of the kitchen clock. “I am sorry.”

She did not require his apology, yet its simplicity gave her nothing to fend off. “It was useful training.”

“For lending laptops to men at airports?”

“For accepting beds with administrative attachments.”

His restrained laugh reached her across the pillows. “I will add that to the file.”

The tram ticket remained in her coat pocket on the chair. Miriam left it there, and Natan did not ask for a number. Neither account became an entry before sleep finally claimed the flat.

The plumber arrived at seven with a toolbox, a verdict, and the news that Miriam’s guest room would remain closed for three days. By late morning, she had carried her portfolio to the museum annex with Natan beside her, partly because he knew the quickest route and partly because Rebekka had sent them out with two apples and the instruction to return before the soup acquired ideas.

The curator was in a meeting, so Miriam arranged the six broadsides across the long examination table herself. Natan kept a respectful distance until she removed one from its archival sleeve.

“May I look?” he asked.

“You may look. You may not improve anything.”

“I restore signs, not manuscripts. I have professional limits.”

At the lower edge of the paper, almost concealed beneath an old repair, a printer’s device showed a small wheel within two angular letters. Natan came closer, then stopped.

“That mark,” he said. “I know it.”

Miriam looked from the broadside to him. “From where?”

“My grandfather’s old stock books.” He pointed without touching. “Before the shop became only paper goods, Weiss supplied paper to several printers in Leopoldstadt. There was a Hebrew press on Kleine Pfarrgasse. They used that wheel on invoices for sheets purchased from us.”

“That cannot be enough to establish provenance.”

“No,” he said. “But it may help establish the paper. My aunt has ledgers in the cellar, and I know where the sample books are stored.”

Miriam examined the mark again. Its black ink had softened into the fibers, but the tiny wheel remained clear. “You are certain?”

“I am never certain before coffee. After coffee, I become insufferable.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the beginning of one.”

She ought to have objected to his confidence. Instead, she felt the old professional pleasure of a possible source opening where none had existed an hour earlier. “The exhibition needs a support paper close to this stock. If your records identify it, that would be useful.”

His smile was brief and pleased. “Praise from a conservator. I shall record the date.”

At the Freyung market, a paper-maker displayed handmade sheets beneath a red awning. The square was busy with shoppers, brass music, chestnut sellers, and stalls crowded with ornaments that looked too polished to survive a family table. Miriam compared three sheets against a photograph of the broadside: one cream, one blue-grey, one with uneven deckled edges.

“The blue-grey,” Natan said. “The old ink will read more clearly against it.”

“Paper does not read.”

“People who repair it disagree.”

The maker agreed with him, which Miriam found irritating. She bought two sample sheets and accepted the maker’s card for a later order.

Their next task was Rebekka’s dreidel. Natan rejected the painted ones at the first stall because their corners were too blunt. At the second, he turned over a small square-sided dreidel carved from pale wood, its Hebrew letters cut cleanly and filled with blue pigment.

“This one,” Miriam said.

He set it spinning on the counter. It kept its circle, steady and dignified.

“Rebekka will say it cost too much,” he said.

“Did it?”

“No.”

“Then she will say it was too much anyway.”

“That is affection in my family. We prefer it with criticism.”