Frieda had fallen shyly in love with her husband at first sight. She had never seen a poet before. Paul was thin and intellectual-looking, with pale myopic eyes and receding hair, and it was months before Frieda could believe that this handsome young man truly belonged to her. She had no illusions about her own looks. Her figure was lumpy, the shape of an oversized, uncooked potato kugel. Her best feature was her vivid blue eyes, the color of gentians, but the rest of her face seemed to belong to other people. Her nose was her grandfather’s, large and bulbous, her forehead was an uncle’s, high and sloping, and her chin was her father’s, square and grim. Somewhere inside Frieda was a beautiful young girl, trapped with a face and body that God had given her as some kind of cosmic joke. But people could see only the formidable exterior. Except for Paul. Her Paul. It was just as well that Frieda never knew that her attraction lay in her dowry, which Paul saw as an escape from the bloody sides of beef and hog brains. Paul’s dream had been to go into business for himself and make enough money so that he could devote himself to his beloved poetry.
Frieda and Paul went to an inn outside Salzburg for their honeymoon, a beautiful old castle on a lovely lake, surrounded by meadows and woods. Frieda had gone over the honeymoon-night scene a hundred times in her mind. Paul would lock the door and take her into his arms and murmur sweet endearments as he began to undress her. His lips would find hers and then slowly move down her naked body, the way they did it in all the little green books she had secretly read. His organ would be hard and erect and proud, like a German banner, and Paul would carry her to the bed (perhaps it would be safer if he walked her to it) and tenderly lay her down. Mein Gott, Frieda, he would say. I love your body. You are not like those skinny little girls. You have the body of a woman.
The actuality came as a shock. It was true that when they reached their room, Paul locked the door. After that, the reality was a stranger to the dream. As Frieda watched, Paul quickly stripped off his shirt, revealing a high, thin, hairless chest. Then he pulled down his pants. Between his legs lay a limp, tiny penis, hidden by a foreskin. It did not resemble in any way the exciting pictures Frieda had seen. Paul stretched out on the bed, waiting for her, Frieda realized that he expected her to undress herself. Slowly, she began to take off her clothes. Well, size is not everything, and Frieda thought. Paul will be a wonderful lover. Moments later, the trembling bride joined her groom on the marital bed. While she was waiting for him to say something romantic, Paul rolled over on top of her, made a few thrusts inside her, and rolled off again. For the stunned bride, it was finished before it began. As for Paul, his few previous sexual experience had been with the whores of Munich, and he was reaching for his wallet when he remembered that he no longer had to pay for it. From now on it was free. Long after Paul had fallen asleep, Frieda lay in bed, trying not to think about her disappointment. Sex is not everything, she told herself. My Paul will make a wonderful husband.
As it turned out, she was wrong again.
It was shortly after the honeymoon that Frieda began to see Paul in a more realistic light. Frieda had been reared in the German tradition of a Hausfrau, and so she obeyed her husband without question, but she was far from stupid. Paul had no interest in life except his poems, and Frieda began to realize that they were very bad. She could not help but observe that Paul left a great deal to be desired in almost every area she could think of. Where Paul was indecisive, Frieda was firm, where Paul was stupid about business, Frieda was clever. In the beginning, she had sat by, silently suffering, while the head of the family threw away her handsome dowry by his softhearted idiocies. By the time they moved to Detroit, Frieda could stand it no longer. She marched into her husband’s butcher shop one day and took over the cash register. The first thing she did was to put up a sign: No CREDIT. Her husband was appalled, but that was only the beginning. Frieda raised the prices of meat and began advertising, showering the neighborhood with pamphlets, and the business expanded overnight. From that moment on, it was Frieda who made all the important decisions, and Paul who followed them. Frieda’s disappointment had turned her into a tyrant. She found that she had a talent for running things and people, and she was inflexible. It was Frieda who decided how their money was to be invested, where they would live, where they would vacation, and when it was time to have a baby.