by Agnon, S. Y.
But Manfred didn’t get back to the subject, not because of all the asides, but because they were home.
Chapter twenty-two
Sarah already knew that she had acquired a brother, but she wasn’t impressed – not by the little brother who was going to be a present from her mother and not by all the pet names bestowed on the newborn baby. None of what Ursula told her in broken Hebrew, none of what Firadeus told her had entered her ears. And if it entered her ears, it didn’t enter her heart. If it entered her heart, she showed no joy or excitement. Actually, the news did make an impression, but not the one the Herbst family had in mind. Attached as she was to her mother, she never asked where she was or even mentioned her. When they brought a message from her mother and told her that she had sent kisses, she didn’t offer her cheek, as she usually did when anyone asked to kiss her. On the other hand, she began to be affectionate to her father, clasping his knees, giving him presents – an eggshell, a bird’s feather, and the like. His heart was stirred to love her anew.
Again, I’ll do something similar to what I have done before. I’ll find words for Father Manfred’s thoughts about Sarah and her brother. They were roughly this: Until now, Sarah was the child of our old age, enjoying years of privilege. Now that she has a brother, Sarah is losing out. Her privileges will be passed on to her brother and multiplied because he is male. I don’t know if Henrietta will be able to restrain herself and keep from depriving the little girl out of fondness for the boy. In any case, as for me, I will do whatever I can to keep Sarah from feeling deprived by her brother. I have heard that, in such cases, people buy entertaining toys and say, “Your little brother sent you these things,” as a way to erase the rivalry. I don’t think that material objects buy love. When love is strong, there is no need for devices, such as presents. Herbst was suddenly in a panic. Though his mind had been totally occupied with his son and daughter, it began to grapple with an issue he should not have been considering now.
Again, I will do what I did before. I will find words for the thoughts he was grappling with, but I won’t dwell on them, for I find that the birth of a son is more important than anything, certainly another woman. This is roughly what was running through his mind about her, about that other woman, about Shira. All that time, when we loved each other, it never occurred to me to woo her with gifts. All the gifts in the world don’t draw hearts any closer. They don’t have the power to change anything. As for The Night Watch, I bought it to give her pleasure. The skull that hangs on her wall is there because she couldn’t find a good Rembrandt reproduction. In any case, she never received The Night Watch, because her door was locked. Once again, the visions and scenes I already mentioned were repeated, in which she drowned or was murdered. But this is no time to elaborate, for he must concern himself with the son his wife has borne for him.
I am now confronted with two separate matters, and I don’t know which to deal with first: his visit to Henrietta or his conversations with Tamara, also his friends and acquaintances, and how they responded to news of his son’s birth. I would like to add to this some reflections on education. It would have been better if these matters had come up separately, so I could take the time to give each one its due. But it is in the nature of events to occur in a disorderly fashion, and it would require considerable effort to isolate them and establish the importance of each one. I don’t presume that I could do this, but I count on them to find their rightful positions themselves; even if one of them is displaced in the process, it can surface elsewhere, nonchalant and essentially intact. First, I will recount his actions in general; then I will break them down, recounting each and every detail.
While Henrietta was in the hospital, Herbst never left home except to visit her, regarding himself as the center of a household that couldn’t be left without someone in charge. During this period, he put aside his central work and took on tasks he either hadn’t considered before or had considered and rejected. Having put aside his central work because of his son’s birth, his conscience no longer plagued him with guilt about wasted time, and he worked out of love and joy. Among other things, he was busy with his books, checking for duplications, discards, alternate possibilities; setting some aside to be read soon. Because he did all this voluntarily, and because he had put aside his work consciously, he was not plagued by guilt over wasted time, and he was utterly happy.
Now I will begin with his daily routine. He used to wake up an hour before the girls got out of bed, move to the kitchen, light the kerosene stove, put on the kettle, make himself coffee, turn off the fire, and go out to the garden to rake the soil and dig hollows around the seedlings, tending the plants until he heard Tamara calling him to the table. Breakfast, which was seemingly no different than ever, amused him now, because Tamara assumed her mother’s tone, urging him to eat an egg. And her responses to Sarah – when she rejected her cereal and left milk in her glass, only to be grabbed by Tamara and prevented from clasping Manfred’s knees with hands, still dirty from breakfast – were so like Henrietta’s. Ursula’s conversations with Sarah were most entertaining, one of them speaking Hebrew that isn’t quite Hebrew and the other answering in German that isn’t quite German – spicing it with Arabic, on the theory that since it, too, is a gentile language, Arabic must be like German.
After breakfast, sometimes during breakfast, Ursula rushes off to work. Tamara turns to her work, correcting the notebooks of her Mekor Hayim students, which serve as camouflage for writing proclamations and sending them out. Because of the proclamations, she didn’t go to Mekor Hayim. She said, “I’m taking time off to look after my little sister.” I don’t know what is involved in looking after her. As for dressing, Sarah dresses herself; as for bathing, Firadeus bathes her; as for looking after her, in the sense of protection, the good Lord protects her, and no other protection is needed. This little Jewish girl spends most of her time outside, surrounded by enemies, yet no harm comes to her. All this time, Herbst is busy in his room, taking books out, putting books in, cutting snips of paper to use as markers in the books he means to read. This would seem to be a simple task; actually, it is quite difficult. Having decided on a book he would like to read and placed a snip of paper in it as a sign, when he comes back to it, he no longer recalls why he had decided it was worth reading. He is about to put the book back on the shelf when he finds himself deliberating: So why do you need it at all? Just to gather dust or to add to your book count. While he is engaged with his books, a voice is heard. Firadeus appears, stands in the doorway, and says softly, “The table is set, and lunch is ready.” If Tamara fails to notice, Sarah jumps up, runs to clasp her father’s knees, and presents her cheek for him to kiss. Again, I should mention that, in this situation, offering a cheek to be kissed is equivalent to granting a kiss. And what about this? Herbst, who is fussy about cleanliness, doesn’t look to see if Sarah’s hands are clean. Even if her mouth is sticky from the colorful candies Firadeus brings her, it doesn’t prevent him from kissing her on the mouth. She asks, “Is it sweet?” and he answers, “Very sweet.” She runs to Firadeus and reports that her mouth is sweet. Then she comes back to her father, not for a hug and a kiss, for her love has been elevated. It is now spiritual love, and she is content to have her father near her. Father asks, “What would you like me to tell your mother? What should I say to your little brother?” She instantly becomes silent and doesn’t answer.
When he is finished eating, Herbst goes back to his room, stretches out on the couch, and reads a book. Not one of the books he had set aside to read, but a book that appeals to him at that moment. After reading for a while and dozing for a bit, he gets up, showers, has some coffee, and goes to visit his wife. If she is alone, he sits with her. He asks her questions, and she asks him questions. She asks what he ate, what he drank, how he slept, what Sarah said, what Tamara is doing, how the garden is doing, what Firadeus is doing, how they are treating Ursula in her office, and so on. He asks how she is, how the baby is, what name she wants to gi
ve the child – having already agreed not to name him after one of their relatives with long, old-fashioned German names and not to construct one of those modern names that will sound banal in no time. If he finds some woman friend is visiting, he makes a point of being brief, to give them a chance to talk.
One day, he found a woman there who told a story. Since her story is relevant to the event, namely, the birth of a little brother and a circumcision ceremony, I will repeat what she said, adding a word of my own. “I was six years old when my little brother was born. On the day of his brit, I said to my teacher, ‘Mrs. Foiese,’ which was her name, ‘please, Mrs. Foiese, may I go home an hour early?’ The teacher said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘I have a new brother.’ The teacher asked, ‘What do you people do when a baby boy is born?’ I told her, ‘We have a brit and the baby is circumcised.’ ‘What?’ the teacher asked. I repeated, ‘We have him circumcised.’ The teacher said, ‘What’s that? You mean baptized?’ I was terrified. I began to shake and tremble. I was overcome with fear. I knew baptism was a Christian term, and I was afraid that, God forbid, they intended to convert my little brother. The teacher saw my tears and said, ‘All right, all right, you can go home.’ Another thing happened. A girl of about twelve said to me, ‘You should be ashamed. You crucified the Christ child.’ I didn’t know who the Christ child was, nor did I know anything about crucifying. But I realized that my friend was connecting me with some dreadful event, an event I had nothing to do with. The teacher, trying to make amends, said, ‘She wasn’t the one who crucified the Christ child; it was her ancestors who did it.’ I went home crying and said I couldn’t stay in a gentile school. My parents sent me to a Jewish school. These events led me to Judaism, to Zionism, to the Land of Israel.”
I will mention one more woman who came to visit Henrietta: Mrs. Rika Weltfremdt, the wife of Professor Ernst Weltfremdt. I don’t remember if I have already said what she is like, and I don’t imagine she adds to the saga of Shira and Herbst. Though this is the case, I won’t neglect her. I’ll tell a little bit about her, as an act of charity toward this unfortunate soul, removed from her source of vitality, ending up here with us, where no one pays attention to her poems, and even her family ignores them. Through deception and insipid compliments, they avoid reading her poetry.
Rika Weltfremdt is a small, thin woman, graceful and delicate. Her eyes are kind and lovely, brown and direct, viewing the world with deep yearning that tempts others to abuse her sensitivity. Because of her size, she is overshadowed by her husband. His limbs are gross, his eyebrows heavy. He deals with words as if he were dealing out new provinces and adding them to the universe. She relates to her husband as she relates to everyone else, as she used to relate to her father, her brothers, her sisters. Her father, who owned two shoe factories and was especially fond of her, gave her a dowry that exceeded her sisters’ by one part and found her a husband who was a doctor and a lecturer, and, if not for the horrors that befell the world, he would have been a professor in a German university by now. Because of these horrors, he was compelled to move to the Land of Israel. But even here he is recognized. Though scholarship is not valued here unless it contributes to nationalist interests, Zionist leaders acknowledge that he is a genuine scholar. Since he has an international reputation, those in the Land of Israel take credit for him when it suits them. However, as he becomes more ample, Rikchen becomes even more slight. No one is left to listen to her poems, except for a young lady who helps out in her daughter’s household. Now, having heard that Mrs. Herbst did a wonderful thing – that she gave birth to a son – she was inspired to produce a poem, which she brought to Mrs. Herbst. She was so modest that she made it seem secondary to the perfume she brought as a gift. It was good that she brought the poem, to perpetuate the fine and worthy sentiments of our sisters, and to convey her feelings about the birth of a Jewish child at a time when the seed of Israel is, God forbid, in danger of being eliminated from the earth. If the poem isn’t really a poem, the sentiments in it are truly sentiments, and those of us who look for opinions and sentiments in poetry regard those lines as poetry and accept their author as a poet. Since I’m not capable of translating her poem, I will put it aside and get back to Henrietta and to Zahara, who has come to see her mother.
Zahara came, bringing with her produce from the earth of Ahinoam, along with a hat and booties that were her own handiwork. Zahara’s delight in her little brother was beyond all measure. It was the delight we note in a woman who has been waiting for years and finally achieves what she achieves. The two women, mother and daughter, sit together, one in the bed, the other on the chair in front of it. One has graying hair and wrinkles on her face, her upper lip, and the corners of her mouth; the other has smooth skin, not a wrinkle on her face, an unwrinkled soul. They sit saying things to each other that they have never said before, accompanying their words with exclamations of joy and affection, emotions so powerful that they infect the nurses in charge of the new mother and her son. When they bring him to Henrietta so she can give him her milk, Zahara says, “How lucky you are to have such an adorable baby. If only I could nurse him, I would snatch him away and run off to Ahinoam with him. Tell me the truth, Mother, would you give him to me? I already told Dani that Grandma has a baby uncle for him. I think he actually understood. All day he was chirping ‘baby grandpa,’ and at night, before he fell asleep, he said ‘baby uncle.’ Oh, Mother, if you could hear him, you would be so pleased, so pleased. I can’t begin to tell you how pleased you would be. I tell you, Mother, Dani already loves his uncle. Really, Mother. He really loves him. And I love him too. But, Mother, I thought I had used up my supply of love. You brought me a brother, and new love was created. Where does it come from? I really don’t know, but I feel it stirring inside me, setting my heart in motion, and I love him. I love you and Father and Sarah and Tamara, all of you. I love you all. When they came and told me Father was on the phone, when I ran and heard the news, I was so excited I wept with joy. You know, Mother, that I don’t get excited. But I was so excited that I said to Avraham, ‘Avraham, I’m going to Jerusalem.’ Avraham said, ‘If you want to go, go.’ So I collected myself, took off, and here I am. Tell me, Mother, isn’t it good that I came? Make me be quiet, Mother. My heart is full because…because…How shall I say it? My heart…I won’t say anything. Here comes Father. Mazel tov, Father. I’ll go out for a minute and wash my eyes. When I come back, we can go home together. They won’t let me spend the night with you, Mother. Don’t worry about my eyes. They’re stinging because of the dusty road. I made our driver go as fast as he could. At that speed, all I could see was the dust in my eyes.”
Once again, Manfred sat with Henrietta, and they said things we are familiar with, adding some words about Zahara – that, as she gets older, she gets more and more emotional. But her life seems to be in good order. Would that Tamara’s course were as smooth. While Henrietta and Manfred were talking, Zahara managed to wash her tear-stained eyes, to go back to look at her little brother, and to find he had features like those of her Dani. Manfred had already concluded his conversation with Henrietta. If he had sat with her a thousand years, he wouldn’t have added anything. For this reason, when Zahara knocked and entered, he leaped up to join her. If not for the nurse, who gave a sign indicating that Zahara must leave too, she would have stayed with her mother another hour and yet another hour – a thousand years, at least.
Father and daughter left for home. Because Zahara wanted to see Sarah and because she wanted to get to see her an hour sooner, she prevailed on her father to waste his money on a taxi that happened by, rather than wait for the bus, since there was no way of knowing when it might be in the mood to come. They arrived with the speed of an arrow and were home before they had a chance to exchange a word. They came home and found Sarah alone. Firadeus had washed the dishes, given Sarah a bath, and gone home. Tamara had gone off, for just a few minutes, to the German colony. Unless my hypothesis is incorrect, she went to the post office to send off som
e of her proclamations. Tamara is clever, and she knows no one would suspect that mail from the German colony comes from Jews seeking freedom.
Chapter twenty-three
From the moment Zahara entered the house, all household procedures were set on end. This applied to the food, to the cleaning, and especially to Sarah. She examined her from head to toe, changed her clothes, and combed her hair, arranging it in two braids tied with red elastics that emphasized its shiny golden lights. As soon as Herbst came home with his daughter, he realized he had someone he could depend on, that he was no longer needed to supervise. But, since he had become accustomed to staying in during the past four days, except for the hours spent visiting his wife, he chose to continue in this mode until Henrietta’s return from the hospital. Herbst hadn’t spent that much time at home in years. Whatever he did found favor in his daughter’s eyes. Her voice was never harsh; she never said anything that irritated him. I must admit – smart as Henrietta was, and concerned as she was with her husband’s welfare and peace of mind – she sometimes irritated him with her pedantic ways, which were thoroughly irrational. Much as Herbst tried to defend her, he regarded her behavior toward him in those petty matters as obstinate and cruel. As soon as Zahara came and took charge of the household, not a harsh sound was heard. On the contrary, Zahara accepted every foolish act of Manfred’s, even when he himself felt he had done something improperly, as if it were meant to be done that way and as if it had been done well. Tamara, who made a pretense, at first, of keeping an eye on household affairs and on Sarah, was only too happy to pass the reins to her sister. In fact, she said to her, “From here on, it’s all yours.” Manfred roamed through his house and garden, books and bushes, in a state of absolute repose. He knew that he could now go to Shira and spend the whole night there, without having to invent alibis. Still, he chose to stay home. Moving from activities in his room to those in the garden, he played with Sarah, sharing her bread (actually a mud pie), listening to music made by her wind-up doll, rocking either Sarah or the doll on his lap, singing jingles learned from Ursula. Playing with little Sarah, Father Manfred browsed through the nursery rhymes he found among Tamara’s books, as well as other assorted literature written for children. As he rummaged through these volumes, he was astonished to have lived in the country for so many years without considering the spiritual nourishment provided to children in the Land of Israel. His two elder daughters were raised here, so he should have taken an interest in this matter. If he happened to hear a children’s poem or to pick up a children’s book, he would discharge his duty with an outburst of intellectual ire: To think that they feed children such drivel, that they expect them to develop taste with these contrived rhymes! He was moved to ire rather than to serious study or an attempt at reform. Though I don’t mean to compare one thing to another, or, for that matter, one man to another, I will make an exception and say that, in this respect, Manfred Herbst was very much like Julian Weltfremdt. But one of these gentlemen denounced the scholars in the Land of Israel, while the other denounced its educators. In fact, had one of them found a job, he might have instituted some educational reforms, whereas the other was content to rail against educators and their inane practices, becoming particularly irate at the poems written for children and at the entire contrived body of literature designed for young readers. He was irritated to the point of despising that entire body of literature and those who produced it.
