He exhorts the shivering ones. There will be a wedding.
He will give his daughter in marriage. There will be feasting. The dead
are dead. The duty of the living ones is to live. Let the old women
prepare food and the men will sing. Life will begin over and a new village
will be built up.
But the daughter hangs back. She talks of the young man whom she married
and who went away to war.
"He is dead, poor child," the father says.
"No, no, he isn't dead. I dreamed he was still alive," she answers.
But the festival starts. The starving ones sing in the broken synagogue.
There will be a wedding. Life will begin. But there is something in the
ruined doorway. A uniform stands in the doorway. A dark, waxen-faced young
man who seems asleep, whose arms hang limp, whose fingers curl in. He
comes forward and stands, a terribly idle figure. He is the young man.
* * * * *
They greet him. His bride weeps with joy. His aged mother presses his
hands and weeps and murmurs in a whisper: "Oh, how changed he is!" The
synagogue shouts and cries its welcome. But the young man's eyes stare and
it would seem almost that he is dead. Then he talks. His voice has a
lifeless sound, his words are like a child reciting sleepily.
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