Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  Chapter thirteen

  While she was telling her story, Herbst was haunted by this question: What sort of people did Shira know between the time she ran away from her husband and the present? Since she was silent, Herbst asked in a whisper, “After you were rid of your husband, you must have known other men?” Shira bit her lip and said, “I’m not someone who answers unwelcome questions. Not that I mean to cover up my past, but an unwelcome question makes me tight-lipped. Will the eminent professor please say if he grasps my meaning.” Herbst was silent, and Shira too was silent.

  Finally she laughed and said, “I’ve upset you, now I’m ready to make up. What were you asking? If I knew other men. Is that it? You should say so without embarrassment.” Herbst nodded and said, “That’s roughly what I asked.” Shira said, “Yes, I did know some men.” Herbst asked in a whisper, “And you didn’t run away from them?” She laughed and said, “A big question. In the interim, Shira grew up. I beg of you, dear professor, a mature woman of ample years – and you ask such a question? Now, on a more appropriate subject: Wasn’t it a good idea to walk here? It’s restful, quiet, with a fresh breeze. The moon has even come up. Too bad we didn’t see it rise. How delightful it is here. The moon and stars are in the sky, and we’re alone on the earth.” Herbst peered at her and saw her face inundated with moonlight and smiling, like someone who smiles at himself for wanting what he can never have. He took her hand and was about to kiss her on the mouth. Shira said, “When I said we’re alone here, I didn’t mean to suggest that sort of nonsense.” Herbst was offended and responded with a growl, “Good, good.” Shira said, “What’s good?” Herbst said, “Shira’s mouth, for example.” Shira said, “If so, you should be good too and not do anything that displeases Shira. If there is no man here, then you should try to act like a man, not a boy. If it weren’t so far away, I would find myself a room in this neighborhood.”

  “So she wants to move?” Herbst asked. Shira said, “Whether I want to or not, I won’t change my place. And any night, whenever I’m not working, you can find me in my room.” “And tonight?” “Tonight, as you can see, I am walking with Dr. Herbst in this new neighborhood.” “And then?” “Then we’ll go to a restaurant, where you will eat your fill, as Mrs. Herbst requested.” “And after we eat, what then?” “After we eat, the eminent professor will return home, climb into bed, and have good dreams about his good wife.” Herbst asked Shira, “Why did you mention my wife?” Shira said, “Why shouldn’t I? I might as well tell you that I am fond of Mrs. Herbst, and I don’t intend to cause her grief. Now let’s get back to town, go to a restaurant, and eat.” “Good, good,” Herbst answered, irritated. Shira said, “After a good meal, you’ll cheer up, and when you say, ‘Good, good,’ it will be from the goodness of your heart. Why so silent?” Herbst said, “Not at all.” Shira said, “But, you’re not talking.” Herbst said, “You talk like a logic teacher.” Shira asked, “What is logic?” Herbst said, “You did go to school, and you studied logic.” Shira said, “Since the day I left school, I’ve managed to forget everything they taught me. You want to know how many years I’ve been out of school. That I won’t tell. If I did, you’d know my age.” Herbst said, “Even if you don’t tell me, I can figure it out.” “How?” “You were about seventeen when you married, after which, you didn’t return to school. But I don’t know how long it was between the divorce and your second arrival in this country.” Shira laughed and said, “So – despite all your calculations, you aren’t sure.” Herbst said, “You are dear to me even if you’re forty.” Shira said, “I’m not yet forty.” Herbst said, “I didn’t mean to provoke you.” Shira said, “What do you gain by provoking me?” Herbst said, “Forgive me, Shira, far be it from me to provoke you.”

  From here on, whenever the two of them were alone, Herbst and Shira addressed each other in the familiar second person.

  Shira said, “We’re already at Jaffa Road. Where would you like to eat?” Herbst said, “As long as it’s not where I ate this afternoon.” “Why? Didn’t you like the food?” Herbst said, “Not only did I find good food, but I also found a lovely waitress.” Shira said, “Then let’s go there.” Herbst said, “Aren’t you jealous?” Shira said, “It’s not time for jealousy yet.” Herbst took her hand in his and said, “Forgive me, Shira. Forgive me.” Shira slipped her hand away and took out some powder, which she sprinkled on the tip of her nose. When she returned the powder to her purse, she straightened her eyeglasses and held on to her necklace with her left hand. The moon was bright, and Shira’s face was melancholy.

  Chapter fourteen

  Henrietta came home from the hospital, bringing an additional daughter. The little one occupied minimal space, but her presence filled the house. Herbst tried to get back to work and to prepare lectures for the winter term.

  He was busy preparing his lectures, and his wife was busy with her child and with the wetnurse. The Fashioner of All Things creates many needy souls with a symmetry that maintains life, giving this one a daughter and that one a daughter. One has no milk for her child; the other has no way to support her family. He brings them together. One nurses the other’s child and is paid for the service, so that each one lives off the other’s flaw. One is from Kurdistan, the other from Germany. Kurdistan and Germany being far from each other, what does He do? He brings them both to Jerusalem, for a Jew’s eyes look to Jerusalem.

  Sarini, the Kurdish wetnurse, is a handsome, healthy woman. Her face is dark brown, her hair dark gray. Her shiny eyes are green, her teeth like peeled garlic cloves and harder than rock. She is always laughing, and every year she gives birth. She has already produced eight male children, apart from the daughter we mentioned, all of them alive and healthy. They are no trouble during pregnancy or birth, being aware that none of them is an only child, that, should she wish to, she can produce many more. They don’t trouble her for another reason: it is she who supports them. Their father – which is to say, their mother’s husband – has many trades, none of which provides much income. There are times when he is a scholar in the yeshiva, times when he ties a rope around his waist to be a porter, times when he sells books, times when he does magic. He can look into a glass of clear water and tell if a particular woman was a virgin when she married. And, whispering gently over a pinch of salt and a sugar cube, he can cause you to forget to say the prayer for the new moon. He has many other accomplishments, foremost among them the fact that he is the husband of this prolific, powerful, shrewd woman who supports a houseful of children, besides two sets of parents, and is at war with the Mandate government for obstructing immigration. And, of course, she does her bit at home, so that the seed of our father Abraham will not vanish from the earth. Although Sarini has intelligence and good deeds to her credit, Henrietta has to exert considerable effort to get her to bathe and wear clean clothes, and to provide her with a wholesome diet, since she comes from a neighborhood of tin huts and lives in a dingy room with straw mats for bedding, coarse food, and foul water.

  Henrietta is busy with other matters, apart from the wetnurse and the kitchen, such as driving away the goats the Arab shepherds send into the garden. While in the garden, she picks three or four flowers to put in a vase. If they are especially nice, she brings them to Manfred and sets them on his desk. She tiptoes in and tiptoes out again, going back to her pots and her stove until lunch is ready. After lunch, she has a short nap and tends to the remaining tasks, such as mending, ironing, and collecting milk so the baby won’t be hungry when the wetnurse is gone. Since Sarini can’t support her family on what Herbst can pay she has to supplement her income elsewhere. When Henrietta has an extra bit of energy, she goes into town on other business, such as obtaining certificates for her relatives in Germany, and making bank payments. On the way, she stops at the doctor to consult about the baby, at the dentist to have her teeth checked, at the tinsmith to have the kettle repaired, and at Krautmeir, the gynecologist. With all this business to attend to, Henrietta has no time for her husband. S
imilarly, he, with all his business, has no time for Henrietta. New students from Germany cannot be offered the usual fare; you have to be well prepared, for they come from German schools, where scholarship is serious. They each go their own way: Manfred doesn’t intrude on Henrietta’s domain, and Henrietta doesn’t intrude on Manfred’s.

  Herbst is at his desk, which is filled with open books, reading a page here and a page there, writing, copying, adding to the pile of notes and comments, to the series of lectures on such-and-such an emperor – a Byzantine whose name I forget, a very short fellow who required that all his ministers stoop to a level below his shoulders. Herbst takes no shortcuts. He consults every book in Jerusalem pertaining to his field and orders books and photographs from abroad. Though the books are numerous and there is no shortage of scholars, there is room for innovation. If he had more books, he would make more discoveries, for it is in the nature of books that each one offers a different theory, and a reader with the capacity to innovate adds his own opinion. If his wisdom is significant, what he adds is significant. Whether you know it or not, Dr. Manfred Herbst is an expert on the Byzantine period, and, when Byzantine scholars are mentioned, his name is always included. So he has reason to be pleased with himself.

  But this is not the case. Often Herbst shoves away his books, photographs, index cards, and notes, rests his left arm on the desk, and leans his head on his arm. This pose, if I am not mistaken, is hardly the one in which painters portray learned men. When he sits in this position, he resembles a man trying to dismiss his worries. Which of them did he succeed in dismissing, and which did he fail to dismiss? He succeeded in dismissing Lisbet Neu from his mind, but he failed to dismiss Shira.

  Shira displays herself in an array of guises, and every one of her guises compels his eyes and heart. But he does not move from his spot or run to her, and he is surprised at himself for not running to her. A single verse he read by chance remains fixed in his mouth, and he mumbles, “Flesh such as yours / Will not soon be forgotten.” He determines to go to her. When night comes, he finds an excuse and doesn’t go. He looks for Henrietta and insists on helping her in the kitchen, even though she has told him he doesn’t belong among the pots. This sometimes becomes a quarrel. And when she hears his footsteps, she locks the door. What does he do? He takes Sarah out of her crib, carries her in his arms, knocks on the door, and says, “I think the baby needs you.” Henrietta comes out, takes the baby, and walks Manfred to his room and to his desk, saying, “This is where you belong, Fred. Sit down and do your work.” What does he do? He remembers there is no butter in the house. Since there is no dairy in Baka, he goes to Talpiot to buy butter. In Talpiot, he meets up with some of his students, who are protecting the neighborhood from Arab snipers. Herbst does another thing: he writes letters to friends abroad, as well as to his two daughters who are in the same country, for a father is required to educate his daughters. If he didn’t educate them when they were at home, he is educating them now, from a distance. He also occupies himself with a matter that occupies few of his Jerusalem colleagues: he is engaged in clarifying and establishing just who deserves to be considered a Church Father. As Vincent of Lerins has already noted, not all the early Church writers should be considered Church Fathers, since God was testing the Christians through these great teachers, et cetera.

  This is how Herbst spent those of his nights that seemed to be seeking Shira. When a night passed and he hadn’t gone to Shira, he felt he was in control.

  A contradiction: If it was Shira he was seeking, why didn’t he go to her? But Herbst had a wife; he was the husband of an intelligent, attractive woman. He was the father of three daughters and a lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Whether or not the Hebrew University is required to uphold the teachings of the prophets and the Jewish moral code, whether or not it is a university like all others, university faculty should not behave frivolously. And, needless to say, they should not waste time indulging the body at the expense of the soul. There was a further reason: Herbst was a reticent man, attached to his wife. She was his first love, and it was with her that his love matured, which is to say that, until he knew Henrietta, he didn’t know a woman’s love.

  So, if the night passed and he hadn’t gone to Shira, he considered himself in control. Even more so on a night when he knew she was at home. There were nights when he knew she wasn’t working and would be at home; when she told him this, it was quite deliberate, so he would know when he could find her in.

  Herbst stayed away from Shira’s house. Shira didn’t stay away from Herbst’s house. She showed herself in seventy forms: her little feet escaping to the forest on a snowy night, the wolf pelt her husband flung over her on their wedding night when he took her to the house in the woods, the blanket wrapped around her in her husband’s room, the feet the old servant woman wanted to kiss, the slippers he slid off her feet and she replaced. When she appeared to him, her voice sounded as it did that night when they walked as one in the new neighborhood. And he was engulfed in the same stillness, not finding the courage to reach out and caress her. When, after a few weeks, the same face continued to impel him to run to her, he began summoning up her other face, the one he had seen the day the entire city was mourning a young Jerusalem boy who was killed and Shira appeared with that defiant cigarette in her mouth. When that face began to blur, he pictured her sitting with the women in the waiting room of the maternity section, her limbs expanding, encircling the blind Turk and reaching to embrace him. These things are certainly ugly, so reason would cause him to pluck her from his heart and avert his eyes from her. He did just this, pressing his eyes into their sockets so he wouldn’t see her. What did that Turk do? Believe it or not, he sneered from his blind eyes into Herbst’s tightly clenched eyes, chirping, “Flesh such as yours / Will not soon be forgotten.”

  Chapter fifteen

  Manfred was having a hard morning. His head was heavy, and his shoulders were as inert as rocks. He was utterly debilitated. His bed annoyed him so, he couldn’t lie in it. He got up, settled his feet in his slippers, and began shuffling back and forth from one end of the room to the other.

  Henrietta bathed and oiled Sarah, and put her on the scale to check her weight. The baby wriggled her round feet and raised them high, upsetting the scale, so no one could tell how much she had gained. Henrietta laughed and spoke as if to an adult, “I don’t have time for your mischief, Sarah. Father is awake, and I haven’t made his coffee yet.” Even if the child had understood Henrietta, it would have been impossible to find out her weight, as the scale wasn’t working because of a missing screw. When Henrietta realized this, she began searching the house. She remembered that a neighbor had come to weigh her son, and all his brothers had come along; they had played with the scale and, undoubtedly, broken it. Henrietta was irritated with herself. Why did I have to teach the Arab women what they and all their sisters never knew? Now that I need to weigh my daughter, the scale is broken.

  Henrietta heard Manfred’s footsteps. They didn’t sound right to her. She handed the baby to Sarini and went to Manfred. His face looked strange. She assumed he had been awake all night with his books. She looked at the lamp and noted that it was still full of kerosene. It occurred to her that his stomach might be upset. Since she knew there were no spoiled ingredients in her cooking, she attributed this to some vegetarian dish, such as a radish he might have pulled up and eaten. Manfred tended to fill up on fruits and vegetables, on the misguided premise that live vegetation gives life. She looked at him again and saw that his eyes were red, his face somber. His shoulders drooped, and his entire body was dejected. Feeling sorry for him, she said, “Fred, I’m taking a chair out to the garden for you. I’ll bring out your coffee. Waste one day in the garden rather than several days in bed. If we were in Germany, wouldn’t we spend two or three months in a summer house? It’s about four years since you took a vacation. You surely deserve a day off.” Henrietta had forgotten that he once went abroad to a conference of Byzanti
ne scholars and spent a few days at the seashore.

  Manfred went out to the garden, and Henrietta brought him a lounge chair. She went to bring him coffee and milk, toast, butter, and honey, and to tell Sarini she could go home early, since it was a holiday for her – her brother Ovadiah was being released from jail for the fifth time. Not because of any crime, God forbid, but because he had no luck with women. When Sarini’s father and mother and their entire clan came to the holy city of Jerusalem, they brought Ovadiah along. He was like a brother, having nursed at her mother’s breast. On the way, Ovadiah went to the well for a drink. There was a large rock there in the shape of a wicked woman. She stared at him, and he forgot to come back. They went on to Jerusalem without him. There was a man in Jerusalem, strong as an ox, who said, “I’ll bring him back.” He went and brought him back. Seeing that he was a good boy, he gave him his daughter as a wife. Ovadiah was fifteen years old, and the girl they gave him for a wife was thirty-five. Ovadiah stayed with her a year and half and gave her two children. He lost interest in her and left. Some women’s organization came and said, “You are required to give her ten lirot a month.” Ovadiah went to a rabbinical court and proved to the wise men that the woman couldn’t become pregnant again, while he wanted more children. The wise men said, “Give her a get, and take another wife.” He threw a get at her and took a young wife. The first woman came to grief and died. Ovadiah had no life with the child-wife because he had no luck with women. So he left her. There was an outcry from the women’s organization: “If you don’t want her, you don’t want her, but you must give her ten lirot a month.” Ovadiah said, “Ten lashes, yes, but not ten lirot. In the name of Moses, I myself never had ten lirot.” The women’s organization maligned and slandered him. They sent a policeman to arrest him. This happened once, twice, three times – again and again, making five. His prison term was now up. Sarini was eager to see him, so Mrs. Herbst gave her permission to leave early.