Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  Herbst stayed at Weltfremdt’s, where he drank coffee that doesn’t keep one from sleeping and ate cake that doesn’t keep one’s middle from expanding. They talked about the university, its faculty, and many other matters. When Dr. Ernst Weltfremdt publishes his autobiography, we’ll have more details.

  To please his wife, Weltfremdt suggested that she show their guest the rhymes she had composed on the marriage of their eldest daughter. Professor Weltfremdt’s wife, Rikchen, poetized every family event. Her relatives in Germany were fond of her rhymes, but here in Jerusalem, where public events tended to overshadow personal ones and the Hebrew language was beginning to take over from German, she had no audience. If not for her husband, who sometimes told his guests about her rhymes, we would be unaware of Mrs. Weltfremdt’s talent.

  While she went to get her rhymes, Weltfremdt gave Herbst the galleys of his article for Bachlam’s jubilee volume. As Herbst leafed through the galleys, Weltfremdt began discussing other individuals who had been similarly honored. Typically, as they approached the age of fifty or sixty, these men would go from professor to professor, asking how to avoid the notoriety to which they were about to be subjected. They would confide that the most erudite scholars had already met and formed a jubilee committee – a committee of unprecedented distinction – which they nevertheless considered flawed, “because Ernst Weltfremdt’s name is not included.” “Whether I want to or not, I add my name. They press me to contribute an article to the jubilee volume to be published in honor of that academic pest. They press me to hand it in immediately and then delay my article, along with the entire book, so that, when it finally appears, my insights are outdated. A learned man once said wisely, ‘All those jubilee volumes are burial grounds for the written word.’ I would amend this – they’re burial grounds for mummies. Yes, for mummies!”

  Mrs. Weltfremdt returned, carrying a bunch of notebooks tied together with colorful string. She looked warmly at Professor Herbst, who had agreed to hear her verses, and imploringly at her husband, wishing he would stop talking and let her read. Her husband took no notice but went on talking to Herbst, explicating every new point in his article, for he gravely doubted that his colleagues would grasp it. “I’m not saying that all of our eminent colleagues are imbeciles. There are surely one or two – perhaps even three – who are capable of grasping my insights, but since they measure with their own yardsticks, they have the impression that my insights are no better than theirs. In any case, there’s nothing to stop them from claiming my insights as their own, with a change of language or an additional phrase, to the point where the sheer verbiage disguises the source.” If not for Lemner, who loved to disclose the sources authors use, none of them would realize that many of Weltfremdt’s insights were incorporated in their books. Mrs. Weltfremdt saw there was no end in sight and went off. In the interim, the sun set, the day darkened, and Herbst got up to go.

  Weltfremdt remembered his wife and her verses. He opened the door and called, “Dikchen, Dikchen, what’s going on? We have here one-third of one-half of one dozen distinguished gentlemen eager to bask in your delightful verse, and you withhold its light.”

  Mrs. Weltfremdt heard him and appeared. Professor Weltfremdt said, “It’s good you came, Dikchen. I was talking to our friend, Doctor Herbst, about our revered cousin, who never deigns to come to us, and I asked Doctor Herbst, if he should see our cousin, to tell him to be so kind as to come. What’s your opinion, Dikchen? Will he find a place to sit in our house? As for your verses, it’s good you brought them. Let me see if you brought the notebook with the humorous ones. Yes, yes. Here’s the notebook, and here are the verses. Bravo. What was I going to ask? Yes, yes…. Who’s that knocking? Isn’t there a bell in the house? Problems with the electricity again. Storrs may be right to keep everything modern out of Jerusalem. Even the electric lights go out most nights, leaving us in darkness. Dikchen, I see we won’t get to your verses tonight. I certainly won’t agree to let you ruin your eyes in the light of the kerosene lamp. I don’t know how anyone reads in that light. When I touch a kerosene lamp, I can’t get rid of the smell. Now, Doctor Herbst, it isn’t right to keep you here in this dark dungeon. Dikchen, allow me to go two or three steps with Doctor Herbst, and don’t be upset if I make it four or five. You know I’m no mathematician.”

  When they were outside, Weltfremdt said to Herbst, “Dear doctor, why is it that Julian finds it necessary to malign me everywhere? In any case, I can say, like King David in his time, my throne and I are pure. I don’t know if I’ve quoted the phrase correctly, but I’ve made my point. Incidentally, your article was very successful. I said this in so many words at the senate meeting. You ought to publish more articles like that one, doctor. Just like it. Yes, indeed. I have an important subject for you to investigate: when Athanasius went to Rome to seek support, why did the journey take a whole year? As for my cousin Julian, when he discredits Wechsler and Bachlam, we can say that, if he isn’t one hundred percent justified, he is surely fifty or sixty percent right. I’m not a mathematician, and I can’t formulate the precise percentage. But when he maligns me, he does himself harm, because everyone knows he’s not familiar with my field. All of Jerusalem has light, except for my house. My best to Mrs. Herbst and to you, too, doctor. Above all, let’s get together again. Really. Yes, yes. Back to the subject of Julian. When his little girl got sick and was taken to Hadassah Hospital, where she stayed many days, who was it who tried to get the bill canceled, if not me? And when the child died, who paid for her burial? I was the one who paid to have her buried. In Jerusalem, nothing is free. Now I have to go home too. I assume it was the printer’s messenger knocking at the door, coming for the galleys of my article for Bachlam’s jubilee volume. See you soon, doctor. I really mean it. I hope to see you soon.”

  Chapter seventeen

  How long did he keep himself at home, occupied with things he hadn’t done in years, for one purpose – so he wouldn’t go into town? If he were to go to town, his feet would run to Shira. How he agonized the night he visited Weltfremdt! And he triumphed. In the end, he didn’t go to Shira, though he knew she was at home, perhaps even expecting him. That witch, she never said, “I expect you to come.” Still, even someone inept in the realm of women’s wiles could sense it. So he kept himself at home, hanging around his wife while she worked. At this point, Henrietta even allowed him to do household chores without protesting. Sometimes she even asked him to relieve her, teasing, “If you had teats, we wouldn’t need a wetnurse.”

  Manfred is with Henrietta, arranging Sarah’s crib, spreading her rubber sheet, smoothing the wrinkles, while Henrietta plays with the baby, cooing at her like any mother with an infant daughter. Manfred watches them, thinking: If I didn’t know otherwise, I would think the baby was with her grandmother. Manfred looks furtively for some trace of youthful charm, but he sees an old woman. He starts to pity her and is overcome with renewed affection. He engraves its new form in his heart. He is warmed by this affection. The One who was created only to cause trouble asks: Isn’t she an obstacle in your path, the one that keeps you from living your life? Manfred sighs and reflects: Life…the life that seduces us is, perhaps, not really life. It may be the mission of our life to live with the wife we were given. If not for a man’s wife, he would sink from bad to worse.

  Those were good days. His evil thoughts lost their sting, and he began to cherish his wife, for it was through her that he avoided a reckless course. At first he kept himself at home, helping his wife just to prevent his feet from heading toward town; now he was helping her in order to ease her burdens. Henrietta would take note and say, “Thank you, thank you, my dear. You did such a good job. Now, dear, you can go back to your own work.” Manfred would take her advice, go to his room, and sit at his desk, editing lectures he had prepared for the winter term. Should you stop in he doesn’t behave as if you’ve kept him from discovering the symbol for zero, for example, or impeded him in his conquest of Mesopotamia. Should a student
stop in, Herbst receives him warmly, gives him a chair, hears his questions, provides advice as well as research data from the box of notes, gratis, without suggesting he has offered all the Indies as a gift. A student who arrives at teatime is served tea with a slice of cake, along with cordial conversation unrelated to scholarly work. Dr. Herbst doesn’t have many students, but if you combine all of them over his entire career, there are more than a few.

  We could dwell a bit on Dr. Herbst’s students without arresting the pace of our story. They came from various countries, where they roamed the roads for many years, sustaining themselves as porters. Even here, their sustenance doesn’t simply land in their mouths. Some of them deliver newspapers; others are teachers and accountants. Those privileged to deliver papers are up before dawn. After distributing the papers, they race up to class on Mount Scopus, on foot, since even those who do well can’t afford the busfare. Sometimes they are up early, but to no avail, because of a hand that tampers with the papers: censors appointed by the Mandate government often allow things to be printed, only to ban them suddenly. The Hebrew newspapers remain in their place and never reach their readers. Those who deliver them are demoralized by the wasted time and loss of income. The others – those who are accountants or teachers – are no better off. But those with a talent for writing fare worst. They hire themselves out to all sorts of operators, do-gooders, and ordinary people who wish to perpetuate themselves through memoirs, although they haven’t the ability to write two or three lines properly. They write what they write and hire a poor student to translate their words into civilized language. They pay by the hour and include proofreading in the price. Not only do the students invest their strength in others, whose business is of no interest to them, but they don’t get to do what is suited to their talents. There is even a young woman, the mother of a baby, among those who listen to Herbst’s lectures. She is in Jerusalem five days a week, cleaning office floors for a living. On Friday nights, she goes down to Tel Aviv to enjoy her husband and the small daughter she leaves with her mother-in-law. On Sunday mornings, she returns to Jerusalem, to her studies and her job. What moves them to learn about subjects such as the history of Byzantium? Perhaps they are eager for knowledge, and it is not the subject that is crucial, but the learning process. Herbst is a splendid teacher, the sort one can learn from. Even if you wanted to, how could you pursue the subject of your choice, when the university is small and in many areas there are no teachers, so that what you want to study may be taught by some imbecile who distorts the material?

  We have mentioned the students’ occupations; let us now mention their housing. They live in tin huts in Nahlat Achim, two or three to a room. Their beds are flimsy, their tables unsteady, their chairs lame. At night, they go out and learn to handle rifles. You, sir, lie in bed secure, get up the next morning, and sit at your lavish table reading the paper, assuming that mighty Britain is spreading a tabernacle of peace. Actually, it is a small band of fellows with empty tables and flimsy beds – they and other Haganah members – who protect you. Herbst isn’t one of them. He belongs to Brit Shalom, and he used to sit at Brit Shalom meetings devising plans to prevent Jews from victimizing the Arabs. Herbst once went to a friend’s home for a housewarming; he had built a new house in Rehavia. There was food, drink, conversation. Herbst noticed that his friend was sad and asked, “Did something happen to you?” He answered, “The same thing that happened to you, to me, to every Jew who lives in this country. Every Jew that lives here is driving out an Arab, since the land is his.”

  As soon as Herbst started to get close to his students, listening to their talk and watching their actions, he began observing the land and those living in it. His eyes were opened, and he saw what most of his friends did not see, for they had found there a place to rest their weary feet, a comfortable and painless livelihood, a place where their sons and daughters would be safe from those evil doctrines that lead to extinction. It was not because of the Arabs that they found what they found, but because of those who formed the yishuv, transforming desolate wilderness into habitable land. They built cities and established settlements, which they defend with body and soul against a desert sword that threatens annihilation. And even these predators exist because of those who built the land. Both sides are governed from above, so no one knows whether to build or destroy.

  For some time now, Herbst had in mind to put his views on paper. But he was concerned that his knowledge of the history of the land and its settlement would not provide an adequate base, and Herbst was a professional and a scholar, subject to a thousand research criteria, who would not make any work of his public until it was validated. Besides, this wasn’t the time for research and validation, since Ernst Weltfremdt had asked him to collaborate on a book about those terms in the writings of the contested Church Fathers that are not found in the writings of the true Church Fathers. Nonetheless, Herbst’s views were not wasted. He conveyed some of them in a letter to his elder daughter, Zahara, who belonged to a kvutza. Realizing that he was in accord with those engaged in building up the land, he began to be proud of his daughter, and she became an extension of his ideas about the land and its settlement.

  While Manfred arrived at this truth through conversation with his students, Henrietta arrived at it on her own. All those years, living in the Land of Israel, she watched the land being built and saw who its builders were; and that there were others who would destroy it, and who they were. This being the case, to whom does the land belong? To the builders, of course. She objected to those who were cloistered in their homes, buried in their own affairs as if eternal peace had been achieved, who in the event of trouble would be unable to defend themselves and would surely be slaughtered, as was the fate of Jews in Hebron and Safed during the massive slaughter of 1929. She even used to argue with Manfred: any man who volunteered to fight in Germany’s war, who can handle weapons, who wrote an article about the strategy of Emperor Valens – how could he not enlist in defense of his people and his land? This woman, who always fought to protect her husband from any task that might distract him from his work, was demanding this of him. But she didn’t press him. I will now add a small detail, from which one can learn about everything else. When Henrietta rented a house in Baka, it was a ruin filled with garbage rather than a house, and no one would have considered it suitable to live in. Henrietta cleared out the garbage, repaired the house, and made herself a garden with fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers. When the land began to be productive, Arab shepherds appeared with their sheep and cattle, and what she had been tending all year was consumed in two or three days. She hired workers to fence in the garden. What did the shepherds do? They poked a stick in the fence, made openings, and sent their flocks into the garden. Henrietta found an olive tree that wasn’t bearing fruit; she dug up the soil and fertilized it, and it flourished. What did the shepherds do? They sneaked into the garden and pulled off leaves, which they fed to their sheep, or brought in goats to demolish the olives.

  During one of those days when Manfred was keeping himself at home, sitting there for hours on end, this is what happened. That day he went out into the garden. The heat was past its peak, and the soil was fragrant. Above the earth, trees and bushes and grasses made a wreath of varied hues – some derived from innate power granted by God, others from His power being renewed all the time, at every moment. Just then, in fact, the skies were testing all the hues to determine which was most suited to the moment, shifting from hue to hue and back again.

  Manfred looked around and saw Henrietta getting up from the ground, a bunch of flowers in her hand. His senses drifted back to a time when they were both young. He, a student at the university, and she, a clerk in a music store, used to meet in the evening, among rows of flowers in a park in Berlin. Not that evenings there were like this one; nor were there flowers such as these. Still, the scents and after-scents of those flowers wafted from the shadows of those vanished evenings. Manfred’s heart began to throb, as it had in those days
of his youth when he used to run to those parks and see Henrietta walking through rows of flowers, waiting for him with a bouquet in hand. God-who-is-good-and-renders-good, man’s spirit lives not only in the present but in every good memory of days long past. His eyes were moved to tears, and he whispered, “Let’s sit a minute.” Henrietta heard him and said, “We can sit, if you like.” She repeated, “Yes, let’s sit.”