by Agnon, S. Y.
Since the day Herbst visited Anita Brik, he has noticed that his mind sometimes wanders in realms that were previously alien to him. True, the first time he saw her, in the restaurant, when she gave him paper on which to write to his daughters and inform them of their sister’s birth, he gave some thought to the factors that had led such a girl to leave her home and come to the Land of Israel, where she worked as a waitress. When he found her in a dingy room, on a sickbed, his soul was stirred by her plight, by the plight of German Jews, whose glory was stripped away, who were now displaced and forced to hire themselves out for a crust of bread. When the Jews of Germany were first beset by trouble, when they began to be oppressed and lose their footing, all of Israel was alarmed and asked, “Can it be that the world will stand by in silence?” The world was silent, as it had been silent in the face of Jewish misfortune in Russia and other countries. What is more, the world granted the villains recognition, making it possible for them to thrive. The Jewish community in Germany lamented and cried out. What did the Jews in other countries do? They went about their business and said, “A regime such as Hitler’s cannot possibly last.” It lasted. Seeing its increasingly disastrous effects, they tried to reassure themselves, saying, “New conditions will arise that it will be possible to live with.” The new conditions were more difficult than the previous ones. They were followed by conditions cruel and severe beyond what could be grasped or imagined. Yet most Jews still sat tight, reassuring themselves, saying, “When were we ever without trouble, and when was Israel unable to withstand it?” But whoever could, sought refuge beyond the range of the disaster, waiting for its force to be spent, which is to say, they took flight, intending to return. The Jewish dispersion in Germany dispersed itself to many countries. Some went up to the Land of Israel, bringing with them remnants of their wealth, and some of these were lucky, in that their money was not lost by benefactors who invited them to invest in flimsy ventures. This is a story that should be told. Many immigrants from Germany were innocent about the people in the Land of Israel, trusting them much as brothers would trust one another. But these brothers were worse than enemies, involving them in enterprises that were shady, dubious, or nonexistent. In some cases, this was done in all innocence by individuals who had faith in their business acumen and believed that, given some capital, they could make a profit for themselves as well as for the investors. Others acted with less conviction, on the chance that they might succeed; and, if not, what was there to lose, since the money wasn’t theirs? Still others acted deliberately – to get their hands on other people’s money. When the good Lord wants to degrade someone, not only does He strike out through some cruel and vile Gentile, but He degrades him through his own people as well. This was demonstrated in the case of the German refugees and, some years earlier, in that of refugees from Russia, who escaped the pogroms and came to the Land of Israel. Here, they were beset by unscrupulous individuals who took their money deceitfully, advising them to buy land and, when they were about to buy it, persuading the Arab landowners to raise the price, because, in the meanwhile, they had found other buyers who offered more. Though one shouldn’t mix misfortunes, I must note, in this context, that the people of Israel, forgetting how these swindlers had behaved, began to regard some of them as builders of the yishuv. Although their ill-gotten fortunes, which were left to the next generation, stemmed from an ignoble source, their children saw how much the yishuv valued and respected them, and did what they could to have them proclaimed founding fathers.
Dr. Manfred Herbst, as we know, had the good fortune to come to the country a few years earlier. He had the good fortune to arrive with his books and belongings, and to find a respected position that enabled him to support himself and his family, and to continue to devote himself to scholarship in the field he had chosen. Professor Neu had done well to recommend that he be appointed a lecturer, for Herbst was well suited to the job. And if he still hasn’t been appointed a professor, this is due to the laziness of the university trustees, who never bother to open their eyes and see who he is. It is also Herbst’s fault for not pulling strings.
When refugees began to arrive from Germany, among them several of his acquaintances, Herbst sought them out as best he could, insofar as his schedule allowed, for a proper schedule determines one’s capacity to work, and, what is more, a proper schedule determines the quality of everything a man produces. There is a big difference between work undertaken at intervals and work that is uninterrupted. This is evident in the product. The one is flawed by gaps and excesses; the other is correct and thorough. There are famous professors in the great European universities who go to the library between lectures, watching the clock as they browse for a given number of minutes. In the end, they too produce books. Herbst was convinced from the start that such books, which he called “watched books,” do not amount to anything. Academic work requires concentration, which brooks neither interruption nor distraction. I will repeat what I said: Herbst, knowing that his work requires concentration and order, doesn’t devote much time to immigrants from Germany, though he fulfills his obligations. He does as much as a man such as himself can do. What he does may be minimal; in any case, his acquaintances ask no more of him. People from Germany are not accustomed to being needy. Whatever help is offered they consider extraordinary, and are grateful for what they get. Herbst’s wife tends to overdo. Without regard for herself, she would take immigrants into her home and provide them with food and drink. She would often sacrifice her own routines, and, when a guest arrived at mealtime, she would insist that he sit at the table and eat. She puts up countless newcomers in her home and searches for apartments with them, rather than let them fall into the hands of agents who wear out their customers and then charge for the wear and tear. All this was in addition to Henrietta’s efforts on behalf of relatives she was trying to deliver from their suffering in Germany. Had it not been for those heartless officials in the immigration office, several members of her family would have been with us here. The country would have benefited from their presence, since most of them were intellectuals, active individuals who did useful work in Germany. In fact, many German Gentiles were whispering among themselves, “Too bad that these good people were relieved of their jobs.” When Henrietta sees the sloppiness of officials in this country, her heart begins to cry out: If this or that relative of mine were here, he would teach them not to be idle; he would teach them that clerks were not invented to waste the public’s time. The plight of his brethren in Germany did not disrupt Dr. Herbst’s routines. I don’t mean to suggest that a photostat of some Byzantine document or the discovery of some trivial Byzantine practice was more important to him than the fate of his brethren. Nonetheless, he gave more thought to Byzantium than to Israel. He was certainly pained by the plight of his relatives, acquaintances, and fellow scholars who lost their positions, yet these heartfelt sentiments did not alter his preoccupations. The day he saw Anita Brik lying on a broken bed in a dingy room and reaching out for the flowers Shira brought her, he was suddenly confronted with an embodiment of the calamity. Herbst was not one of those who delude themselves with the thought that they can change anything. He therefore turned from what he couldn’t do anything about to something he could affect: his academic pursuits, his book. Between chapters, he filled his notebook with phrases and snatches of dialogue for the tragedy he planned to write. Herbst was planning to write a great tragedy about Antonia, woman of the court, and Yohanan the nobleman, which I mentioned earlier in this book.
Herbst took comfort in the tragedy, especially on sleepless nights when he was unable to read – because of ambivalence, because of emotional discord, because the text seemed to dissolve before he could grasp it – and drugs no longer brought sleep. He lay in bed picturing the lives of Antonia and Yohanan, of everyone else close to them in time and place, pondering, considering, plotting, arranging for them to meet. At times, it was all so sharp and clear that it could be written down and put in a book. Whether or not yo
u believe it, Herbst sometimes saw the actual image of an image. Whether or not you believe it, he sometimes felt the tiniest trace of what a poet feels when he sees the character he has fashioned in his mind begin to take on flesh and blood. However, as joy is tinged with sadness in all of life’s pursuits, Herbst’s joy was tinged with sadness too, on his own account and on account of an imaginary character he had added to the tragedy, though the character was neither necessary to the tragedy nor validated by history. Who is it that Herbst invented from his imagination? A slave he called Basileios, whose soul was bound to his mistress and who suffered his love in silence. Needless to say, his mistress was unaware of this; nor did it ever occur to her that a slave would dare to covet her, for such a sentiment on the part of a slave would be offensive to his mistress. It was Schiller’s mistake, in his play about Mary Stuart, to allow young Mortimer to fall in love with her. Schiller, who knew only German duchesses and princesses, was misguided. Had he known a real queen, he would never have made such an error. In this connection, Herbst applauded the Scandinavian mythmakers who tell about a Norwegian queen who had several kings tortured and put to death for daring to seek her hand in marriage.
Let me return to Basileios clarifying and explaining how he interfered with Herbst’s happiness. Herbst didn’t know what to do with this slave who had sprung out of his imagination, much to his delight. He didn’t know what to do with him, yet he didn’t want to give him up, because, of all the characters in the tragedy, he alone was his creation. And, having created him without knowing what to do with him, he became a bother – so much so that Herbst was in despair and considered abandoning the tragedy altogether. After some manipulation, Herbst was able to deal with Basileios in such a way that his absence would not be a problem; that is, he found a way to account for his sudden disappearance.
I will reveal what he did and where he hid him. He made him a leper and hid him in a leper colony. Actually, in terms of the tragedy, this was a mistake, because Herbst was afraid to immerse himself in that disease, and explore it, to picture various aspects of leprosy, such as how do lepers relate to each other or how they function in conjugal terms. But, unless the mind becomes immersed in a subject, that subject remains vague. This is especially true in the realms of poetry and imagination, which require that the soul expand, and this expansion occurs only if two souls merge, giving life to a new soul, which the Creator deems worthy and endows with breath, as much breath as it can hold. Herbst didn’t achieve this, because he didn’t immerse his mind in the subject, for he was sensitive and found it difficult to tolerate infected blood. Despite the fact that he had been knee-deep in blood and pus when he fought for Germany in the last war, now that he was in Jerusalem, in peacetime, he avoided the whiff of a whiff of blood, the trace of a trace of pus – even more so leprosy, whose very name arouses metaphysical terror. So how was he to immerse his mind in a man with leprosy? I won’t be so ridiculous as to suggest that Herbst was afraid the leper would appear and display his leprous state. Nevertheless, he resisted thinking about him.
Most of all, Herbst was terrified of moving. Since the night he had heard gunfire at first hand, close to his ear, he recognized, understood, knew that he should move. But moving a household with three thousand books – apart from journals, offprints, and pamphlets – would involve giving up work for weeks, months, a year, even longer. Such an interruption, at a time when he was deeply involved in his work, would be emotional suicide.
I said three thousand books, but it’s not necessarily so, because books are sometimes counted by title, sometimes by volume. And sometimes, as a sign of affection, one includes a pamphlet or a booklet. So don’t be surprised if, in another context, I cite another figure in accounting for Herbst’s books.
His terror of moving led him to think about transporting the books from one apartment to another and arranging them in a new place, for he really must leave this apartment in Baka, where he has lived since he arrived in Jerusalem. Books that stand on shelves for many years are sedentary citizens, who prefer order and permanence to wandering. Even if they are sometimes willing to step out, to visit in another home, they have no desire to leave their place forever. True, years ago they were accustomed to wandering, but they were young then and few in number. Some of Manfred Herbst’s books remember being able to make do with two planks hung from four tightly woven wires on the wall opposite his bed. How charming Manfred was in those days. He was extremely appealing, with his chestnut hair, a lively devil who fingered those books constantly, covering them in colorful paper and showing them all manner of affection. He spread silver paper over the planks and fastened the paper with tacks that gleamed like gold. Some of the books are not very old, but their contents are ancient. They like to recall how and when they were acquired by Manfred. It happened at Manfred’s bar mitzvah. Some of his friends and relations, knowing there was nothing he cherished so much as books, brought them as gifts. How dear they are to Manfred. Though he has read them many times and actually knows some of them by heart, he still treats them graciously. Other books here are also not very old, but their discourse is like that of an aged relative. Were it not for the fact that they are scholarly books, which don’t deal in legend, they would have recounted the number of nights he did without sleep on their behalf, struggling to uncover their secrets, for the deep secrets they contain are disclosed only through great effort. There are still other books, four, five, six generations old, though they have been with Dr. Herbst not longer than half a generation. Although the authors of some of these volumes were mortal enemies, they live together in peace on Herbst’s shelf, clinging to each other in filial harmony, content with their situation, with the dim green light shining on them from the windows and garden, and with little Firadeus, who brushes them with a soft towel and sweeps off their dust. They don’t complain about the odd smell Dr. Herbst inflicts with a gadget that breathes smoke, to which they are unaccustomed. And now, my good people, lovers of peace, enemies of war, isn’t it criminal to uproot such books and crowd them into a tight city apartment? True, Henrietta is capable and conscientious, guided by good taste and intelligence, but her youthful vigor has been spent. Much as she would try to make the new apartment attractive, it wouldn’t be like this one. Surely not for the books.
Now let’s look at the state of the books in the homes of Herbst’s friends who live in town and in the new neighborhoods, beginning with those of Julian Weltfremdt. Julian Weltfremdt arrived in Jerusalem laden with books. He spent half the money he brought with him on import taxes, brokers, and porters; the other half, on shelves and the construction of a book shed, since there wasn’t enough space in his apartment. He didn’t arrive in proper style; he shipped his possessions, as well as his wife Mimi’s piano, in assorted crates. His books had been scattered in the towns and cities of Germany, for he had wandered from place to place, and, wherever he settled, he left some of his belongings and some of his books, until he arrived in the Land of Israel, where everything came together. When he went up to Jerusalem, he brought all his books along and built bookcases for them, as well as simple shelves. The books that were in the house, he placed in bookcases; those in the shed, he placed on simple shelves. He was so busy arranging his books that he didn’t concern himself with his livelihood, assuming that whoever had any use for someone such as him would take the trouble to find him. But those who might have had use for him didn’t bother to look, settling for those who took the trouble to make themselves available. Mimi shopped on credit, while Julian occupied himself with his books, climbing up and down the ladder, taking out a book, putting it back, cursing and deploring the villainy of inanimate objects, for the books he was looking for eluded his fingers, while the ones he had no interest in jumped into his hand. He kept running between the house and the shed, climbing up the ladder and down again. Once the books were arranged by subject and ordered in terms of his needs, he gave some thought to a job. What he had in mind was to teach at the university, but those jobs were
already taken. What was true of the university was true of all the other educational institutions. When he agreed, for the time being, to consider a position in a secondary school, someone else had preceded him. At first, he laughed at the educational administrators for not knowing what sort of teachers the younger generation needed. Then he began cursing them, as well as the teachers who had taken all the jobs – above all, his relative Ernst Weltfremdt, who didn’t lift a finger on his behalf, out of snobbishness masked by a cloak of self-righteousness. Be that as it may, I didn’t mean to discuss Julian Weltfremdt; I meant to discuss matters that pertain to books.
And so, Julian Weltfremdt’s extensive collection of books was in good order. Those that were not in frequent use were put in the shed in his yard; those used more often stood upright in bookcases in his house. Consequently, he spent his days running from the house to the yard, from the yard to the house, sometimes to get a book, sometimes to catch a mouse, sometimes to dispose of a mouse stuck in the trap. It would have been a good idea to keep a cat in the shed. Not only did he fail to get a cat, he chased cats from the premises, because Mimi used to leave the milk and the meat on the table while she was at the piano. The cats would take over, leaving only scraps. He therefore decided to do without a cat and trap the mice instead. Mousetraps are more hazardous than mice. For example, when he found a mouse in the trap and tried to remove it, the spring would snap on his finger. And when he found a live mouse in the trap, he didn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t just kill it, because he was squeamish; he couldn’t burn it alive, because that would have been too cruel.
