A Settled Account at the Dreidel Table

Later, alone in Natan’s room, Miriam found the tram ticket inside her coat pocket. Beneath six careful entries, she wrote:

7. Terms altered; courage deferred.

Across the flat, a floorboard sounded under Natan’s step, then quieted. She thought of six weeks, of spring, of an apartment that would be hers alone. None of it made losing him reasonable.

For the first time, that fact seemed more dangerous than any promise.

At ten, Gitta came upstairs with Miriam’s coat over one arm and Natan’s over the other.

“The market square has lights, mulled wine, and enough strangers to conceal your bad habits,” she said. “Go outside before I invoice you for emotional cleanup.”

“Do you invoice family?” Natan asked.

“Only family. Professionals pay in advance.”

Miriam took her coat. Natan did the same, and they reached the landing together.

“Before we go,” he said, “we should decide what we are doing.”

“The performance,” Miriam said.

“Yes.”

She looked down the stairwell toward the closed shop. “Before you leave on the second, we tell them it is over.”

“No more invented details. No more borrowing each other’s credibility for family occasions.”

“Agreed.”

It was a sensible decision, which gave it a particular kind of cruelty.

They might have parted at the street door. Instead, Natan asked whether the gallery extension required an apartment immediately. Miriam told him a broker had promised two viewings after New Year’s Day. A block later, she stopped beneath a crooked enamel sign and asked whether its lettering had been repaired badly on purpose. By the time they reached the market, he had bought her a paper cone of roasted chestnuts because she had eaten little at dinner.

At every pause, farewell remained available. Each time, one of them found a smaller subject.

The square was crowded with adults in dark coats and bright scarves. Paper lanterns moved above the stalls, and a brass quartet played near the fountain with more confidence than accuracy. From somewhere beyond the buildings came the regular report of fireworks tested too early.

Near the fountain, Natan reached inside his coat and took out the tram ticket.

“This belongs to you,” he said.

“It belongs to the transit authority.”

“They have shown little interest in collecting it.”

Seven careful entries covered the back. Miriam recognized her narrow handwriting, the orderly record of disputes that had ceased to feel amusing several arguments ago.

“I kept it after dinner,” he said. “I wanted to return it when I could give you a proper account.”

She waited.

“I shortened Prague because eleven months was not the life I wanted,” he said. “I had begun to treat distance as proof that I had made a choice. Six weeks is still work I want, and I will do it properly. It is not a sacrifice laid at your door.”

Miriam held the ticket between both hands.

“But I should have told you as soon as I knew,” he continued. “I want every future decision to include you plainly, if you will allow there to be future decisions. Before I sign anything. Before I turn fear into an argument for leaving.”

The market carried on around them: coins dropped into a vendor’s till, glasses struck together, someone calling for a friend near the tram stop.

“I accepted the extension because I want the work,” Miriam said. “The exhibition deserves it, and so do I. That does not require you to surrender Prague, or me to surrender Berlin.”

“No.”

“It requires us to speak before fear chooses for us.”

Natan considered that. “A demanding arrangement.”

“It is not an arrangement.”

“No,” he said. “It is better than one.”

She folded the ticket along its old crease. “If either of us needs something difficult, we say it first.”

“Before anyone else hears it?”

“Especially before anyone else hears it.”

A public clock gave the quarter before midnight. Natan held out his hand.

“Not for Gitta,” he said.

Miriam placed her hand in his.

They returned through the square without hurrying, though the minutes had become few. At Weiss Paper Goods, Rebekka had relit the menorah on the cleared dinner table. Gitta sat beside her with the champagne ready, while the remaining relatives watched the door with undisguised interest.

Natan stopped at the table.

“Miriam and I have something to correct,” he said.

Miriam looked at Rebekka, then at Gitta, who had already reached for the tram ticket.

“We are together,” Miriam said. “It is not an arrangement.”

Rebekka’s stern face eased. She poured champagne into two waiting glasses.

“Then sit down,” she said. “The year will arrive whether any of you are prepared or not.”

At midnight, cheers rose from the street. Natan turned to Miriam.

“May I?”

“Yes.”

He kissed her once beneath the menorah.

Gitta tore the scorecard into narrow pieces and let them fall onto the cleared table.

“Peace negotiations have finally begun.”

On the morning of 2 January, Miriam helped Rebekka list the presses for sale in the stripped room below Weiss Paper Goods. Pale rectangles remained on the walls where display racks had stood, and the counter showed scratches from decades of parcels, ink bottles, and impatient elbows.

Rebekka read measurements from a ledger while Miriam recorded maker’s stamps, condition, and the work each press would require. The smaller machine had a cracked handle; the larger carried its maker’s mark beneath old polish.

“Do not write ‘beloved family press,’” Rebekka said when Miriam paused. “Sentiment lowers the price unless it belongs to someone famous.”

“I had not intended to.”

“Good. It is an iron press, not a widower.”

Miriam entered: cast iron, working platen, suitable for restoration. The phrasing pleased her. It acknowledged damage without calling it failure.

Natan came downstairs with his case and Prague folder. His six-week survey began that afternoon among municipal façades and faded lettering. A month earlier, Miriam might have treated the length of it as a warning. Now it was a departure matched by a ticket home.

Rebekka shut the ledger. “Go, both of you. If you miss that train, I shall list him with the presses.”

“He would cost more to maintain,” Miriam said.

“Then someone else may have him.”

Natan laughed, and leaving did not become easier. It did become possible.

At the Hauptbahnhof, travellers passed beneath departure boards with luggage, paper cups, and the private urgency of winter journeys. Natan’s Prague train waited beyond the glass barriers. Miriam had always disliked platforms. They turned affection into a timetable and expected everyone to call that orderly.

Natan showed her his phone. “Return journey: 13 February, arriving at eighteen twelve.”

“Six weeks exactly.”

“Not an approximate sentiment. An actual ticket.” He put the phone away. “Would you have dinner with me that Friday? Half past seven. There is a restaurant near your new apartment.”

She considered him. “You are asking.”

“I am asking.”

The distinction mattered. “Then yes. I would.”

“A genuine Friday date,” he said.

“Not a family dinner. Not an office party.”

“And no scorecard.”

That afternoon, she would collect keys to two rooms on Taborstraße: a high kitchen window, a desk facing a courtyard, and rent covered by her work at the gallery. It had no borrowed status in it, no arrangement to explain.

“The apartment is yours today?” Natan asked.

“Mine.”

“May I see it when I return?”

“After dinner,” she said. “I refuse to make a flat viewing our first date.”

“Sensible.”

The boarding call sounded. Natan set down his case and held out both hands.

“May I?”

“Yes.”

He kissed her once, careful and sure. When it ended, he kept hold of her hands.

“Call when you arrive,” she said.

“And before any future contract,” he replied. “We speak first.”

“First.”

He boarded at the final warning. Miriam remained beside the carriage until the train moved, then lifted her hand. Natan answered from the window before Prague carried him from view.

She did not pretend she was pleased to see him leave. She did not pretend his work ought to shrink so she could avoid missing him. Both facts belonged to the life they had chosen.

By the following week, her Vienna extension had claimed the desk in her own apartment with condition reports, lecture notes, and gallery schedules. The rent was paid by her work, and the key owed no one a favour.

An envelope arrived addressed to Miriam Fuchs and Natan Weiss, followed by Gitta’s addition in parentheses: one of you is temporarily in Prague, obviously.

Inside lay the flattened tram ticket. Its torn strips had been carefully reunited beneath transparent paper, every numbered argument preserved. Gitta’s note, written in red ink, read: “Seven arguments, one sensible decision.”

Miriam laughed and sent Natan a photograph.

His reply arrived a minute later. “Keep it until Friday. Then we retire the record together.”

She set the ticket beside her exhibition papers. Seven arguments had been enough accounting. Their future began with a return journey, a Friday reservation, and neither of them pretending that departure meant an ending.