Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  He hurried to his wife. Zahara followed him. He looked at them with concealed anger and said with open reproach, “Won’t you say…Won’t you tell me what happened.” Zahara answered, “Nothing, Father. Honestly. Nothing. I came to Jerusalem and I dropped in to see how you are.” Henrietta looked at her with affection and good cheer, and said to her husband, “But wait till you hear what brings her here.” Herbst said to Zahara, “Do I have permission to ask what brings you here?” Zahara said, “Honestly, you are strange.” Herbst said, “I’m strange? In what way?” Zahara said, “Isn’t that right, Mother?” Henrietta said, “When a special guest makes a statement, the host must agree.” Herbst said, “Nonetheless, I would like to know in what way I’m strange.” Zahara said, “You’re not strange now, Father.” Although at that moment he was actually stranger than ever, she repeated, “Honestly, you’re not strange now.”

  Henrietta asked her husband, “Have you eaten?” Manfred was afraid to say, “I ate but I’m hungry,” since that might lead his wife to further questions. He answered, “I had tea with Taglicht.” Henrietta said, “Poor thing, you had tea, but nothing to eat.” He said, “Tea with some dry cake.” Henrietta said, “I’m getting right up to bring you something to eat.” Zahara said, “Stay where you are, Mother. I’ll fix something for Father.” Henrietta said, “Aren’t you tired from the trip?” Zahara answered, “Did I walk here? I came in a car, of course. And what a car, a very special one, like a deer with wings. It was quite a trip. Eighty kilometers an hour. If you promise not to report me, I’ll confess that we even hit a hundred kilometers an hour. Avraham-and-a-half says such speed causes cars to die an untimely death.”

  Herbst asked his daughter, “What brings you here?” Zahara said, “Mother, I see Father isn’t pleased that I came.” Herbst said, “I’m pleased. I’m pleased, and all I’m asking is why.” Zahara said, “I came for the workshops. Out of the entire kvutza, two of us were chosen.” “And who is the other girl?” Zahara said, “Allow me to correct you, Father, dear. You ask about the other girl when you ought to ask about the other person.” Herbst smiled and asked, “Then who is the other person?” Zahara said, “If I tell you, will you know? You have a habit of switching people’s names, Father.” Herbst said, “Yes, child, I never remember the names of all the boys who surround you.” As he spoke, he noticed how ripe she was. He lowered his eyes and thought: She is with young men who have rejected the authority of their fathers. She has come here with one of them, and I’m too preoccupied to look after her. But look at Lisbet Neu – of course, she is older, but she is in constant contact with all kinds of people, clerks as well as customers, and she has an invalid mother and no father. Nevertheless, she behaves impeccably. He stroked his daughter’s head and said with concealed emotion, “It’s a great privilege to have been chosen to attend these workshops and to have an opportunity to hear things that are probably worth hearing. Did you see your little sister? Isn’t she a fine baby? Who will be lecturing?” As he asked this question, he felt a twinge of pain, for he had not been invited to participate. Several years earlier, there was not an intellectual event that didn’t include him. Now they were having these workshops, and he wasn’t asked to lecture even once. Manfred Herbst was on the way out. He used to be invited to participate in every cultural event, and those who arranged them didn’t make a move without consulting him. New people had come, bringing new wisdom. Herbst felt sorry for himself, sad that it had come to this. Yet he justified these omissions, for he had not published anything in several years, except for two or three trifles in Kiryat Sefer and Tarbitz. His great book on burial customs of the poor in Byzantium was still a bundle of notes, references, and preliminary drafts.

  Whose fault is it that the book lies curled up in a box, like an embryo dead in the womb. This country is at fault; it is not a scholarly environment. Here in the Land of Israel, everyone makes do with the minimum. This applies to spiritual needs as well as physical ones. Whatever is not essential to sustain body or soul is a luxury this poor country cannot afford. Our colleagues – those young scholars who came from Germany only yesterday, because they were relieved of their positions there – are amazed that in all these years we have contributed absolutely nothing. They don’t realize that this place is unlike any other. In other places, scholarship justifies itself. Not so here, where, unless a scholarly study can be related to Israel’s national destiny or to the ethic of the prophets, it is immediately discredited. Those innocents still pretend to be living in a German environment. Give them two or three years and they’ll be like the rest of us, making do with articles in jubilee volumes. The ambitious ones will join the bureaucracy, which is the seat of power. In other countries, the bureaucracy serves the needs of the people and the state; here, the bureaucracy itself is primary, and it takes precedence over the needs of the people and the state. Among those who came in the early days of the university, there were some true scholars. Years passed, and they didn’t achieve anything important. This being the case, they began to regard their minor achievements as major ones. When Julian Weltfremdt and his cronies remark scornfully, “See what those professors are up to,” the professors answer, “Their words have the ring of envy; they resent us because they weren’t appointed to the faculty.” What these malcontents say about the professors, most of the professors say about their own colleagues. In fact, most of them agree that Bachlam is no scholar, while he says they have small minds and deal entirely with trivia.

  Zahara brought her father his meal. Herbst glanced at his beloved daughter, who was forfeiting sleep for his sake. He picked up a knife and fork to eat what she had prepared, but they remained idle. Zahara peered at him and said, “Father, you’re not eating.” Herbst answered, “I’m eating.” Zahara laughed gaily and said, “I see you deep in thought, but I don’t see you eating.”

  Many thoughts troubled Herbst. He dismissed them, one after another, thanks to his beloved daughter. As long as she was in his mind, he felt relaxed. But he was sorry she hadn’t followed his advice. She hadn’t enrolled in the university, and her education was incomplete. Dr. Herbst had many opinions, among them that one cannot acquire an education outside of a university. Since settling in the Land of Israel, some of his opinions had changed, but he remained convinced that one could not be educated outside of a university, even by reading widely, listening to lectures, devouring the wisdom of the world. In the end, such knowledge is incomplete. He applied this rule to everyone, including his daughters.

  Father Manfred doesn’t really know his daughters. This is surely true of Tamara, whose character no one really knows. But it is also true of Zahara, who is attached to her father and whose soul is as transparent as water from a spring; one can’t really say that her father knows her. Were we to summarize all of Father Manfred’s information about Zahara, it would add up roughly to this: Zahara belongs to a kvutza called Ahinoam, which foreign correspondents with Zionist sympathies mention often and journalists rush in to write about in many languages, as if it were there that humanity will be renewed – to the extent that one can barely find a kvutza member or even a shrub that hasn’t been photographed for one of these publications. Zahara is a member of this kvutza and is accepted by one and all. Its ways are congenial to her, and there is no activity in which she doesn’t participate wholeheartedly: the vegetable garden, the kindergarten, the kitchen, the dining room. Wherever she works, there are people helping her. It is the way of young men to be helpful to young women who enjoy their work, by lending a hand, giving good advice, or simply looking on. She occasionally comes to Jerusalem from the kvutza, sometimes with this young man, sometimes with that one. Today, too, she came with one of them. The early days were good, before Herbst met Shira. He used to see his daughter and her friends without being subjected to afterthoughts.

  Father Herbst sits eating what his daughter serves him, straining to ward off suspicious thoughts. In the good days, before he knew Shira, he wouldn’t have entertained even the trace of
a suspicion. Father Herbst raises his head so he can look at his daughter and lowers it without looking at her. He raises it again as if to say, “Go to bed, my child, you must be tired.” He also wants to ask for news of Ahinoam. The words are formed and need only to be uttered. A cough disperses them. Father Manfred lowers his head again and eats without tasting the food. Shame and regret are a harsh condiment.

  Chapter twenty-four

  In the morning, Herbst made a firm decision to clear his mind of all unessential business and devote himself to his major work, to check his pads, notebooks, and file cards, and determine what was new material – i.e., quotations and summaries distilled from documents unnoticed by other researchers. Caution is crucial to scholarship, and careful verification is crucial to caution. Not once, but constantly, for without frequent verification, material already presented by others could be copied into your book. Many times Wechsler had boasted to him that he had discovered a document no one had seen before; a simple document, one would assume. But not so. Were he to publish it, it would fly in the face of all our historians and reveal that they were, one and all, a band of illiterates. Herbst showed him half a dozen books citing that very document and basing theories on it; finally, he showed him a small volume that dismissed it with a curt phrase from which its fraudulence was obvious.

  After eating and drinking, he returned to his study. He took out his pads, his notes, his index cards. Though his notebooks were full, with writing on both sides of the paper, and the box was stuffed with cards, he wasn’t arrogant, like those who presume that their book is done if they have enough notes.

  Herbst sat at his desk for about two hours, arranging notes by subject, discarding duplicates and triplicates, for sometimes one sees an item and imagines it is new, not remembering he has already copied it two, three, four times. Although he found several new items in his notes, he didn’t delude himself into thinking he had achieved his goal. Nor did he err in the direction of despair, like those who feel helpless when they see they have failed to achieve their goal and say, “Why struggle, when it’s clear I’ll never finish?” One should know that every beginning has an end. Day after day, one does what he does, until finally the beginnings add up to a conclusion.

  There were several articles that were similar in subject and in good shape. If he had retained his youthful vigor, he would not have stirred before finding additional material and combining the fragments into a book. But Herbst’s youth was over. This was not the Herbst who used to work so diligently that nothing could distract him. Now some frivolous woman could appear, disrupt him, and turn him on end.

  Now that he was thinking of that woman, he began to scrutinize her actions. She sometimes sought distance, sometimes closeness, behaving at times as if there had never been anything between them. If she had allowed him to approach her yesterday, it was only after many rejections. Herbst leaned his head to the left, pondering: Maybe I myself am the guilty one. Had I gone back to her right then, after I was first close to her, she might have offered me her love. Did I think I was so attractive that I could stay away and she would still leap up and shower me with affection whenever I showed my face? She was, no doubt, deeply drawn to me at first, withholding nothing. But I didn’t show up again for several months, and when I did, I ran off because of the curfew and didn’t come back for a month and a half. Meanwhile, someone else found her. Why did Shira decide to tell me the story of the whip? Did she mean to make me jealous? Does she imagine I’m fool enough to think she keeps herself for me? Anyway, the engineer’s behavior was a disgrace. Shira herself is even more of a disgrace, since her behavior provokes insolence, even violence. It’s a fact: any woman who invites a man home after one conversation deserves what she gets. She deserves to be beaten, not loved. The man who beat her was wielding his charm, to take revenge, to make her pay for her misbehavior. “What do you want from me?” Herbst cried out, as if Shira were there, torturing him. “My God, my God,” he cried out, and as he cried out he was overcome with wonder, like a man in trouble who sees help and salvation.

  The night they walked along the road to Beit Yisrael, Shira had asked Herbst, “Are you Orthodox?” She had told him, “I’m not Orthodox, and I don’t care for the Orthodox.” When she said this, he hadn’t given it a second thought. Now that he was alone, thinking of her and her behavior, an undefined question began to form in his mind. It could be articulated in these terms: It’s true, isn’t it, that, when one rejects religion, spiritual restraints are also suspended, that the soul casts off its restraints, and actions are no longer examined? Herbst was neither a believer nor an atheist. His research never led him to consider questions of faith. Not many of those who studied Byzantium were as familiar as Herbst with the endless strife, disputes, intrigues, conspiracies, murders, and massacres in the name of religion that occupied Christian sects in Byzantium from the time of Christianity’s early triumphs to Islam’s conquests. Still, his erudition did not compel him to reflect on the nature of his own faith. Now that he was invoking heaven because of his distress, a spark flared up for him and died as soon as it was lit. A spark that goes out immediately gives no light; it doubles the darkness. Out of anger, out of anguish, out of foolish self-pity, out of a need to act, he picked up a book and banged it on the table. With the exception of a cloud of dust, the act achieved nothing.

  I don’t know how you relate to the contemplative process. When Manfred Herbst has an issue to contemplate, he begins by turning it over, abandoning it midway to consider matters that are tangential but not part of the issue, and ending up where he started. So, at this point, involved as he was with Shira, he moved on to Lisbet Neu. Along with these two, he considered several others – women he had been with at the university, women he had met later at scholarly events. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with the realization that some of these women were working in the very fields he was working in, although they were very different from him. And it was this difference that unsettled and disturbed his soul. After visualizing their beauty, their coiffures, their fragrance, their manners, he fixed his mind on Lisbet Neu, hoping she would save him from them and from Shira. But the One who was created only to trouble us said derisively: What’s it to me if this fool doubles his trouble?

  Suddenly, Zahara’s cheerful voice was heard calling him to lunch. Herbst answered, “I’ll be right there.” Zahara called again, “Father, the food is getting cold.” Herbst called out, “I’m on my way.” He picked up two or three stones from the bunch he had collected on an archeological dig and placed them on his papers, so they wouldn’t blow in the wind, arranged his pads and notebooks, and took a quick inventory – not like those scholars who estimate how many pages they can make out of a given amount of material, but like a builder amassing lumber and stone for construction.

  Manfred Herbst was sitting there; his wife, Henrietta, was sitting there; Zahara, their daughter, was sitting there. They were eating together. The table was covered with a heavy cloth made of coarse fabric Henrietta had bought from the husband of Sarini the wetnurse. Henrietta was saving the things she had brought from her mother’s house for her daughters, with the idea of dividing them between them when they had homes of their own. She did this with the silver cutlery, substituting cheap metal utensils, as well as with the linen tablecloths, which she replaced with this coarse fabric. Now, the Herbsts were sitting together. Papa Herbst and Mama Herbst and Zahara, their eldest daughter, were sitting and eating lunch. Though it was an ordinary day and the food was ordinary, there was something exceptional about this lunch. Not only for her father and mother, but even for Zahara. The vegetables Zahara’s mother cooked were not her ordinary fare, though they came from the kvutza and she herself had brought them. The quality produce grown in the fields of Ahinoam is sent to market, and the kvutza eats only what fails to make the grade. Zahara took a double helping, feeling love for her mother, for whatever her mother did, and it seemed to her that she had never loved her mother as she did at that moment, though she knew
, clearly, that she loved her mother then as always. This was true of the table, the dishes, everything in the house: in its rooms, which were dearer to her today than ever before; in the vegetable garden, whose beauty was displayed between every furrow. Only her mother could dig those little holes so they hugged the seedlings that were at rest there, saturated with rich water, pleased with the brown earth, content with the fertilizer and with the sun above, welcoming the grasshoppers that leaped over them, circled around, jumped, flew, and finally landed on their long legs. Not to mention the wondrous air that stretched between grasshopper and garden row, and was sometimes endowed with a color known as Berlin blue. Her heart expanded to include love upon love. This love augmented itself and engulfed her father. Zahara knew her father well, every line, every mark on his face. Still, she stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Zahara studied him, his forehead, his hair, his person – this precious human being whom she never tired of watching, not realizing her eyes were closed and what she saw of her father was in her own mind. This was her father, and she could barely begin to describe to her friends in Ahi-noam even a particle of what she found in him. In truth, no one in Ahinoam had asked about her father, not even in jest; for example: What sort of individual is your venerable progenitor? And no one there seemed interested in such things, not even Avraham-and-a-half or Heinz the Berliner. They didn’t ask about her father either. Just because no one there asked about her father, she found herself thinking about him, even now that she was with him and her thoughts were not colored by the magic of distance. Only good sense kept her from reaching out and wrapping her arms around his neck, for she wouldn’t have wanted to be considered sentimental.