"Aaron!" she said. "Haagott, such wicked talk you make!"
"Seen with Murnan eyes, have I not done just such a cursed thing?" Aaron demanded. "The Mother-god of this world is mit Kinndt, fat with the bounty of springtime. So tender is the swollen belly of the earth that the people here, simple folk with no more subtle God, strip the iron from the hoofs of their horses not to bruise her. They bare their feet in her honor, treat her with the tenderness I treat my beloved Martha. And to this Goddess, swollen earth, I took the plow! Martha, we are fortunate indeed that our neighbors are gentle people, or I would be hanged now, or stoned to death like the wicked in the old days. Ich hot iere Gotterin awgepockt: I raped their Goddess!"
Martha burst into tears. When Aaron stepped forward to comfort her, she struck his chest with her balled fists. "Stoltz, I wed you despite your beer-drinking from cans at the Singing, though you play a worldly guitar and sing the English songs, though people told me you drove your gay Uncle Amos' black-bumpered Ford before you membered to the district; still, house-Amish pure Old Order though my people are, I married you, from love and youngness and girlish ignorance. But I do not care, even in this wilderness you've brought us to in that big English ship, to hear such vileness spoke out boldly. Leave me alone."
"I'll not."
"You'd best," she said. "I'm sore offended in the lad I'm wifed to."
"Love, Ich bin sorry," Aaron said. "The Book, though, says just what our neighbors told me: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. I have found the truth, the truth of our dark-skinned friends. I did not want to wound the ears of da Oppel fuun mein Awk, apple-of-mine-eye sweet Martha; but I must speak out the truth."
"It is not good enough," Martha sobbed, "that you accept this brown-skinned, jewel-bedizzened woman-god; but you must make love to her; and I, wed to you by the Book, nine months gone with Kinndt, am to make no fuss."
"I loved the Mother-god with the plow, and accidentally," Aaron bellowed. "Haagott! woman; have you no funny?"
"I will birth our child in my lap from laughing," Martha said, weeping. "Aaron, do what you will. I can hardly walk home to my Mem to bear a son in my girlhood bedroom. We are like Awduum uuu Ayf, like you said; but the serpent in this Eden pleases me not."