Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  As it happened, after he took leave of the barber, it happened that he was needlessly delayed once again. How did this come about? I won’t refrain from telling all about it, though it compounds the delay.

  For about half a generation, most of Jerusalem’s porters have had their headquarters on Hasollel Street, because most of the stores and businesses in the city are located on Jaffa Road. Hasollel Street cuts into the center of Jaffa Road, which is why the porters chose Hasollel. When they are needed to transport something, they are accessible.

  Here they are, our redeemed brethren from Persia and its environs. The younger ones sit at the upper end of the street, the old-timers at the lower end, a scheme that predates the houses and the road, going back to a time when the entire street, as well as the section of Jaffa Road that faces Nahlat Shiva, was a heap of rubble, and it didn’t occur to anyone that houses would be built there and stores would open. The older men sit cross-legged, with colorful turbans on their heads. Their beards are black, with a glint of silver that inspires respect. Their trousers are floppy; their waists are girdled with heavy ropes; and on their backs is a small pillow. Their faces are like the face of some ancient king. On any given workday, they are there, many or a few, depending on the volume of business in town. And they offer their backs – lovingly, willingly, happily, skillfully, in heat, chill, rain, wind – to carry any burden. No load is too heavy, even if it has to be transported from one end of Jerusalem to the other. Why did our brethren from Persia elect this particular line of work? Because they derive from the tribe of Dan, and it was the Danites who carried Micah’s idol on their shoulders and worshiped it, though God’s house was in Shiloh. David, king of Israel, and his son Solomon rooted out the idol, but only temporarily, for the people continued to transgress and behave corruptly until the first exile. Now that the era of Israel’s redemption has arrived, and David’s son, the Messiah, will not appear until all the exiles are gathered together in Jerusalem, our people pour in from all over. They have come too, ready to shoulder any burden, because of the sins of their fathers, who were weighted down with idolatry until the first exile. Now that they do their job lovingly and willingly, they are hastening the final redemption.

  Our brethren, who are the porters in Jerusalem, take on any load, yet they themselves are totally self-effacing when they work. You find a large oak chest with three heavy doors, the sort of chest one uses for clothes and linens, ambling from yard to yard, from alley to alley, from street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood. Its three mirrors are smiling. All this is unnatural, for the chest is made of wood and glass, both of which are inanimate. How is it possible for a lifeless and inanimate object to amble from place to place? If you look very, very carefully, you see that the chest is balanced on someone’s back, that a man is under the chest, transporting it, that he is bowed by its weight and effaced because he is so small in proportion to this mammoth object. This is also true of barrels, lumber, rocks, and other movable goods that are several times broader and larger than a person. When a porter has no work, he sits among his ropes. If he is a contemplative sort, he begins to contemplate, taking delight in his wife, his sons, his daughters, his home and sleeping mat, the foods and beverages that give strength to those who eat and life to those who drink. And if, because of sins, the Angel of Death should take charge and bring on untimely death to someone, he has the good sense to deal with the orphans and raise them, so they don’t fall into the clutches of secularists who would steer them away from the laws that express the will of our holy Torah, which was brought down from God by our teacher Moses, peace be unto him, with thunder and lightning, at Mount Sinai. When these thoughts begin to spill over, he shares them with a neighbor. Not everything that is on your mind can be conveyed. We can convey some of our thoughts, and, because the subject is timely, we can discuss the Arabs – how misguided they are to be making trouble, for they, too, are in exile under English rule. As for us, our king, the Messiah, is on the way, and every single one of us will rule one hundred and twenty-seven realms, like old Ahasuerus. As for the Arabs, if one of them is ever king, he will be a minor king, enthroned by us, by our Herbert Samuel, who called in Abdullah and told him, “I’m giving you a thousand pounds a year to rule the Bedouin in the desert. Be clever and crafty, so Weissman, the head of the Zionists, has no pretext to cast you out and overthrow your kingdom.” Among these porters, there are those whose minds reach no further than their eyes can see. They reflect on the Ashkenazim, who spend their days running around in an agitated state, trading apartments, trading possessions, casual with money, as if it showers down from heaven, many of them as cruel as the idols Gentiles worship. If a porter asks two or three pennies more than what was agreed, the Ashkenazim roll their eyes in anger, curse, and abuse him as if his offense were on the scale of the golden calf. The porters’ leader, Moshe, is unique. He knows how to get along with all the Ashkenazim. With a smile on his lips, a hand on his heart, he can deal with them. Even those who come from the land of Hitler, that depraved son of a she-devil – they also seek out Moshe.

  There is a special relationship between Moshe and Herbst. Since their consultation about the books – transporting, organizing, packing them, et cetera – Moshe has remained fond of him, even devoted to him. As soon as he saw Herbst, he approached him and asked if he was now ready to have his books transported. Moshe stationed himself in front of Herbst and stuck his hands back into the ropes on his hip. Herbst realized he was expected to say something to him. Meaning to be polite, he asked him how he was doing. Moshe extricated his right hand, placed it on his heart, and began relating some of the troubles that had befallen him, some of the troubles he had been involved in because of bad luck, some of the troubles he was subjected to as a test, and yet other troubles whose nature was still unclear, for there are troubles that turn out to be for the good. As he listed each and every trouble, Moshe either turned his face to heaven and then closed his eyes or closed his eyes and then turned his face to heaven, saying, “May the Lord have mercy.” It was strange to Herbst that this mighty man was so tormented. And what torments! A chronically ill wife, who, because of her condition, was constantly bearing children only to bury them, bearing and burying, so that, after the last of her children was buried and she didn’t give birth again, they adopted two orphans, a boy and a girl. The boy was one of those children whose parents had died en route from Persia to Jerusalem; the girl was the daughter of a relative who was crushed under a safe he was carrying to a bank. They raised the orphans, indulged them with fine food and clothes, bought them shoes to fit their feet, even toys like those the Ashkenazim buy, making no distinction between the two orphans, though the girl was a relative and the boy was not. Moshe and his wife were contented, and they didn’t ask themselves, “Where are our own children?” It was decided that, when the two orphans grew up and were of age, they would marry each other. The boy suddenly took sick. He recovered, but he was unable to walk, because he had infantile paralysis. They carried him from Jerusalem to Tiberias for the holiday of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker, and from Tiberias to Meron on the festival of Lag Ba’omer. He was brought to the cave there and placed next to the resting place of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. Three wise men were hired to stay with him and recite the Zohar. After they recited the entire Zohar, he was taken back to Jerusalem to be married, so the demons would realize he was no longer a child and it was time to release him from that illness, which was, after all, an illness of childhood. Wedding clothes were ordered for him and for the girl. The girl went outside in her finest dress and new shoes. A vile and loathsome Yemenite saw her. That villain cast a spell on her, and, on the Shabbat of Lamentations – three weeks before the Shabbat of Compassion, when the wedding was to take place – he carried her off to one of the new settlements, where they were married. The boy remained crippled. An elderly divorcée appeared – actually, she was not so old – and said, “I’m willing to marry him.” Moshe’s wife said, “Go marry the Angel of Death.” She h
ad a grudge against her because, when they were both girls, that witch had poured bird bile on her, which arrests childbirth. If she hadn’t washed herself with the urine of a woman giving birth for the first time, she wouldn’t have been able to bear children at all. Even so, all her children had died.

  The boy lay in the house, on his mat, with no one to lift him and carry him outside to warm up in the sun. When they came back from Meron, Moshe’s wife was stricken with yet another disease, compounding her ills, so that now she herself had to be tended. This is roughly what Moshe told Herbst. If Moshe’s fellow workers hadn’t come to tell him he was needed to move a piano, Moshe would still be talking. A man’s troubles give him eloquence, and Herbst, who was anxious about the books, would have stood there listening.

  Chapter fifteen

  It took Herbst half a minute to get where he was going. By the time he got there, he had forgotten about all the delays and was reminded of Ernst Weltfremdt’s book. He peered in the bookstore window and saw the book there, open. Weltfremdt was a lucky man. In these troubled times, when books by Jews were being publicly burned all over Germany, he had found a respected Swiss publisher, who put out a splendid edition of his book. Neither of them will suffer. All over the world, scholars who read German will welcome the book. Even in Germany, scholars will not ignore Weltfremdt’s theories. They will take his book into their homes, if not openly, because of government intimidation, then discreetly. Zealots in the Land of Israel shriek that we ought to do unto Germany as it has done to us – that, just as Germany has issued a ban on Jewish books, so should we ban all German books, without recognizing or realizing that whoever deprives himself of intellectual discourse jeopardizes his own soul.

  Herbst stood and studied Ernst Weltfremdt’s book, thinking: What about my own book? In Germany, they probably burned it. And here, in this country? I never once saw it in a bookstore here, and, if I hadn’t contributed it to the National Library and to some of my colleagues, I doubt they would know I wrote a book. Some authors put their books in the parlor, so whoever comes in will see them, and they do the same with offprints. That’s not my way. True, I haven’t produced many books, but I have published a great many articles, and they could be made into a bound volume and placed on the bookshelf. Why haven’t I done this? Why not? Herbstlein, Herbstlein, Herbst said, using Julian Weltfremdt’s language. From the depths of my heart, I wish you get a full professorship.

  Manfred Herbst was not like Julian Weltfremdt. Julian Weltfremdt disparaged Ernst Weltfremdt’s scholarship; Herbst did not. Many of Ernst Weltfremdt’s qualities were distasteful to him. Those we might call Prussian were particularly ridiculous in this country, yet he admired Weltfremdt’s research. In every single study he undertook, he came up with something new; if not actually new, then at least illuminating. Now that a new book of his was out, Herbst wanted to see what was in it.

  What he wanted to see, he didn’t see. What he didn’t want to see is what he saw. He wanted to see the book, but he saw the author. He wore a summer suit of the whitest white silk. His heavy walking stick – yellowish brown, shiny, and heavily knotted – and his soft gray hat were lying on a stack of music books. Of all the well-dressed people in Jerusalem, Ernst Weltfremdt alone knew that hats are in a class of their own and should not be expected to match the rest of one’s outfit. He was standing next to a skinny, long-legged old man wearing colorful clothes and an altogether festive air. He was the painter who had attracted attention at the artists’ Winter Exhibit with a not very large oil painting: a portrait of Weltfremdt’s grandchild, the son of Professor Weltfremdt’s daughter. Now that the painter had run into the professor in the bookstore, he took the opportunity to convey in words what he hoped to convey in paint. The painter described to the professor, in painterly terms, his own image of the professor holding his little grandson on his lap, with the professor’s hand on the baby’s head. In an even lovelier scene, the baby is on the lap of his grandfather, the professor; they are seated at the professor’s desk; the professor’s book is open; the baby’s little hands are fingering the book, and his angelic eyes are fixed on it. Professor Weltfremdt listened, studying the scene in his mind’s eye as the painter formed it in his imagination. He didn’t interrupt. On the contrary, he gave him every chance to embellish the picture. Influenced by the expression on the professor’s face and by his eloquent silence, the painter took on something of the professor’s expression, looking back at him with visionary eyes. All of a sudden, he stepped back, ever so slightly, turned his head to the left, lowered his eyelids halfway, leaned over, and gazed at the professor with eyes that dismissed what they had previously seen and were enthralled by a new vision.

  While the painter was standing with the professor, an old woman who had emigrated from Germany was in the store too, in a corner. She was dressed in faded finery, and her entire presence bespoke onetime splendor. Her mouth was agape, either to express reproach, as she had learned in her former life, or to ask for pity, as she had learned more recently, for she was sorely grieved by the fact that a hat and walking stick had been placed on top of her vocal scores. Her circumstances were such that she was forced to sell them, and she had come to see if a buyer had been found. They used to be kept in her mansion, in an ebony case with hinges, locks, bolts, and pegs made of pure silver. It had been crafted by a skilled artist commissioned by the bishop of Mainz and was originally designed to contain a sacred bone of the Christian saint known as the Miracle Worker of Gaza. The bishop had sent this case, with the bone in it, to one of the German princes as a gift. The case, as well as the bone, remained in the prince’s bedroom and performed many miracles. In time, dissension took its toll, and the ideas of the Reformation prevailed. The bone refused to perform for an unworthy generation. It lay idle and forgotten, until, finally, it vanished. The case was then used for cosmetics and jewelry. Eight generations later, it fell into the hands of a singer famed for her beauty and remarkable voice. In it, she placed a vocal score given to her by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who had been her teacher, as well as letters from Schleiermacher, who had converted her to Christianity. This singer’s grandson had Zionist friends and was attracted to a Jewish girl, whom he married, abandoning his parents’ religion and returning to the religion of his forefathers. His wife gave birth to a daughter, who also became a celebrated singer – the old woman now standing in the corner of the store, noting the ravages of time in the form of a walking stick and a hat deposited on top of a vocal score handwritten by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

  Professor Weltfremdt was engaged in conversation with the painter and didn’t notice that Manfred Herbst had entered the store. But Herbst noticed him and slipped away, so as not to intrude on Weltfremdt and the painter.

  Herbst went upstairs to the inner rooms. He inhaled the scent of old books – dust, aging paper, leather, linen – with the added smell of all those generations that had handled the books. He was overcome, like any booklover entering a store full of old books, with an emotion akin to yearning, a yearning that turns into a passion all the books in the world can never satisfy. He closed his eyes, tightening his eyelids so that they pressed down on his cheeks to the point of pain. He groped in his pocket and took out a crushed cigarette that had fallen out of the case. He lit the cigarette, took a puff, and made an effort to collect himself. Little by little, he began to feel more composed, and his anxiety receded. Since he woke up, he hadn’t been as comfortable as he was at that moment. In the presence of these ancient volumes that dominate the heart, he assumed a blank expression, so no one would recognize how much he coveted the book whose price he was asking. Herbst flung the cigarette in the ashtray, took out his case, and offered a cigarette to the clerk who was standing by to serve him. The clerk noticed that the cigarette was brown and longer than most cigarettes in the country. He began to discuss the various types of cigarettes he had smoked, arriving at the subject of wartime smoking. Many times, when he was at the front and couldn’t find a cigarette, he used
to wrap grass in newspaper and smoke it. He moved on from newspaper to books. Soldiers used to tear out a page, wrap some grass in it, and make cigarettes. He once saw a soldier tearing up a book to use as toilet paper. He looked and saw that it was a first edition of Schiller’s The Mission of Moses. He scolded him and yelled, “You idiot, how can you be that scornful of our great poet Schiller!” The soldier said, “I thought it was one of those Jew books, written by one of their little rabbis.” Herbst suddenly lost his composure. His face turned pale, and his nerves were on edge. Could it be that, even as he was dealing with those German classics for the sake of their fine bindings, he was losing out on first editions of rare books? Hadn’t it already happened to him once that bibliographers denied the existence of a book even though it was mentioned by its author? Why did they deny its existence? Either because they thought the author was exaggerating or because they were trying to outsmart everyone – to show that they trusted only what they saw with their own eyes. Three hundred years later, the book was discovered here in Jerusalem, by a tourist who acquired it, along with considerable fame, for some paltry sum. The ludicrous, perhaps even tragic, part was that, only an hour before, it had been in Herbst’s hand. Why hadn’t he bought it? Because he had never opened it. Why hadn’t he opened it? Because it was bound with another book whose title was displayed on the cover. He, however, knew very well that the volume was too thick for its title, and he should have realized that there must be another book in the same binding. Nine years had passed, but there was hardly a day when he didn’t think about that event. It remained unresolved in his mind, like a wound that doesn’t heal. He took out another cigarette and reviewed the entire incident: how he himself brought the tourist to the bookstore, how he led him to the special room rare books were kept in, how he praised this man to the owner and arranged to have the clerks show him all their treasures. And, finally, it happened – a book that he himself had been holding only an hour earlier fell into another’s hands, making Herbst’s loss his gain. Herbst was not a grudging person, nor did he make a pretense of friendship. It is no exaggeration to say that, among the scholars we know, there are few as generous as Herbst, as ready to enjoy a colleague’s success. Nevertheless, he remained haunted by the saga of that book.