Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  The three of them sit together, engrossed in their conversation. I said “their conversation,” though it is actually her conversation. She does all the talking. What does she talk about, and what doesn’t she talk about? What does she tell about? What doesn’t she tell about? All of Jerusalem rolls off her tongue: Jews, Ishmaelites, Christians alike. She has something to say about them all, a story to tell about everyone. It is the convention to assume that doctors are on the most intimate terms with their fellow human beings, because a sick person is likely to open his heart and reveal what he wouldn’t otherwise reveal, not even to himself. But how much time does a doctor spend with a patient? A famous doctor, who has many patients, is short on time, whereas doctors who aren’t famous pretend to be busy and in great demand. As it turns out, doctors spend very little time with patients. But a nurse is with the patient all the time, always, even longer. Patients get bored and are eager to extract hidden information from the nurse, such as, Is there a chance they will recover? Is there hope they will live? In this context, they talk to the nurse and tell her things they themselves were not aware of before. They do this to stir her heart, so she will reveal what they want to know, which allows a nurse to hear things not everyone gets to hear. Ludmilla the nurse doesn’t say very much about Jews. First of all, because Jewish patients are so preoccupied with their illnesses that, though the illnesses vary, they talk about them in one and the same way. Second, if she were to report what they say, it would sound like gossip and slander. But she tells about Muslims and Christians, because, to the general Jewish society, they are mere names, like those in the tales of A Thousand and One Nights and the Brothers Grimm. She admits that she doesn’t have the talent of either Scheherazade or the Grimm brothers, but her stories have one advantage. They are true. True, not concocted. True, without a particle of fantasy.

  It’s impossible to tell all of her stories, but some of them can be told. So I will tell two of them that add up to a little less than two segments of a thousand and one stories. The young wife of Ibn Saud’s hangman was both very pretty and very sick. In all of Saudi Arabia, there was no doctor who could cure her. They put her in a bed, which was lifted onto a camel’s back, and carried her from land to land, from country to country, to each of the seven Arab kingdoms, but they found no cure for her illness. They took her to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Back in Ibn Saud’s country, that hangman had a title equivalent to vizier, and his wife was nobility, true nobility. He had achieved rank because of his occupation, but her nobility derived from her person. It was the custom there that, once a year, all the noblewomen in the kingdom would come to kiss Ibn Saud’s hand. She, too, came to kiss his hand. Hearing she was sick, he commanded that no effort be spared to cure her, which is why she was finally taken to Hadassah. It was obvious to Ludmilla the nurse, who was in charge of her, that, apart from being sick, she was a delicate and well-mannered woman. Having mentioned hand kissing, she mentioned another incident that revolved around this custom. Every year, around the time of the Muslim holidays, Master Salomiac used to bring a gift to the old mufti, who was the father of Amin Husseini, the current mufti. Master Salomiac was the Russian emissary, and, as such, he had dealings with Muslim leaders as well as with the mufti. His relationship with them was one of great affection. Whenever he came to the mufti, he was offered the seat of honor and was served coffee, sweets, and a narghile, in accordance with Ishmaelite custom. While they were discussing politics, Amin Husseini entered and bowed to the guest. His father scolded him and said, “You insect, why haven’t you kissed his honor’s hand?” Amin Husseini bowed to Master Salomiac and kissed his hand. The two of them remember that exchange to this day. Ludmilla the nurse once went to the Old City to watch the Nebi Mussa celebrations and found herself standing next to Master Salomiac. He said to her, “Come, I have something to show you. See the mufti over there, riding on his white mule, facing the crowd of celebrants? You’re about to see him turn his face away.” Master Salomiac positioned himself in front of the mufti, who immediately turned his face in the other direction. Master Salomiac moved so that, once again, he was directly in front of the mufti. Once again, the mufti turned his face away. This was enacted several times. Master Salomiac said to Ludmilla the nurse, “It’s hard for that villain to look me in the face from such an elevated position. He still remembers that he once kissed my hand.”

  Manfred sits there, his heart pounding with hunger and dread, for Ludmilla the nurse might mention Shira. She doesn’t mention Shira. Is it because she is determined not to talk about Jews, or is it to avoid upsetting Herbst? Who can fathom a woman’s heart? All our speculations about women are inherently contradictory. Ludmilla the nurse has visited Mrs. Herbst many times. She has consumed a keg of coffee and a mound of cakes; she has told a thousand and one stories, none of them about Shira. For this reason, I will say no more about Ludmilla the nurse and return to Herbst’s essential concerns.

  Herbst returned to his own concerns, concerns that have been essential to him since the day he was imbued with an inquiring soul. True, he has made other concerns his concern, but these are not relevant to his essential concern, which is the history of Byzantium. In any case, it is baffling: what does such a man, such a scholar, have in common with Shira? Even if we grant that no scholar can survive on his work alone, in what way are they compatible? Scholarship is totally alien to her. She neither understands it nor wishes to understand it. If he had become involved with Lisbet Neu, I would have said it was because of her uncle. But why does he cling to Shira? Is it because professionals are attracted to the nonprofessional world? I may be mistaken, just as I was mistaken about Ludmilla the nurse, to whom I have devoted so much attention, although she is not connected to the story of Herbst and the nurse Shira. On the other hand, whatever surrounds the core may be essential, just as the whiteness around a letter sustains its shape. Without a context, we wouldn’t recognize the text. So much for the irrelevant; now on to essentials.

  We are familiar with Dr. Manfred Herbst’s work habits, which are probably no different from those of most scholars. He sits at his desk, in his study, bent over his books and his notes, reading, adding notes to his notes, which are filed in a special box. Sometimes, the box fills up before he has a chance to use them. At other times, the hour passes before the box is full. When it’s time to write a chapter or an article, he takes out his notes, puts them together, organizes them by subject, ties them in a bundle, then reads them, and writes what he writes. I’m not mentioning the cigarettes and the pipe, because they don’t apply to all scholars. He sometimes succeeds in writing a page or two at one sitting; at other times, he barely manages to produce two or three lines. But he adds one line, then another line, until, in time, he can put together half a chapter or even a whole chapter. All this relates to the actual work, to the work process itself.

  I will now attempt to clarify just how he handles ideas. A learned man’s mind isn’t always filled with ideas. Even if his brain is as busy as a beehive, when he looks into it, he might find it empty. Sometimes, inadvertently, suddenly and inadvertently, when he least expects it, a good idea comes to him. When he’s alert, he follows through with an action: he writes it in his notebook. When he’s less alert, he tosses it around until it floats away. Then, later, when he is ready to write it down, he finds his hands are empty, unless it was replaced by a similar idea while he was hesitating. If I’m not mistaken, I have outlined most of Herbst’s habits with respect to his work.

  I will now note the fact that Herbst has devised a new approach to his work. He no longer sits for long periods laboring over books, nor does he take notes. He does his work outside, on the streets of Jerusalem, in its open spaces. This is roughly his routine: He eats, drinks, smokes, gets up from the table, says, “Time for a little walk,” and goes out. Some days, he boards the bus and rides into town; other days, he goes on foot. When he gets to town, he turns toward one of the relatively uncrowded streets. Not that he avoids those places that hum
with activity, for a person’s thoughts reflect the person. At times, he seeks silence and tranquility; at times, he prefers the human bustle.

  Herbst is tall and hardy. His head is somewhat bowed. He has a cigarette in his mouth, a walking stick in his hand. His mind roves from Jerusalem to Byzantium. All the emperors of that Rome-of-the-East flit through his mind. He drives them away sometimes, as an emperor would drive away irritating ministers. But he sometimes welcomes one of them and responds, even to the extent of dealing with matters of the heart. The story of Arcadius and Eudoxia is a case in point. Arcadius was a young emperor with many fantasies when he married the beautiful Eudoxia. But the beautiful Eudoxia was a cold woman, with no love in her heart. She cloistered herself in her room or in a secluded chapel, isolated from people, where she prostrated herself before her God. The emperor knocked on her door many times, but she didn’t open it. The affairs of Byzantium were in a state of neglect, dire neglect; that great kingdom was in a state of neglect. The emperor ignored his city, his people, his entire realm. His mind was totally taken up with Eudoxia, who rejected him. Why did she reject him? There are many opinions, but not much truth. Herbst’s opinions on this subject are no more valid than anyone else’s. How can we arrive at the truth? How can we eliminate doubt? How can we eliminate theories that, for the most part, derive from an impulse to innovate and from a wish to demonstrate that everything is clear and obvious to us, that we have solved all the mysteries, though in our hearts we know these theories have no substance? Not only do they themselves lack substance, but they generate other theories, upon which entire new systems are built. Meanwhile, there is a mess of documents, hidden away and ensconced in storage vaults somewhere, unread and untouched. A scholar or researcher appears, unrolls the documents, reads them, studies and analyzes them to the best of his ability, and, finally, publishes a paper. Those who read it imagine that they are now holding the truth in their hand. Another document is suddenly discovered, different from the preceding ones, and what was accepted as definitive truth turns out to be totally invalid. Who can but sympathize with the learned men of the past, who labored, toiled, and lived out their lives under basic misconceptions.

  Herbst walks the streets of Jerusalem, responding to greetings, exchanging pleasantries, studying a store window, reviewing his relationship to his own research. One doesn’t always know the truth about himself, what he is like at a given moment. But, if he is a person who seeks the truth, he can know, to some extent, what he was once like in specific respects. Manfred Herbst was like a deep well, filled with errors – errors that ensued from one another, engendering still more errors, ad infinitum. He had argued about them with friends, based several theories on them, taught them to his students, built his reputation on them, since they were widely accepted and, presumably, reliable. Suddenly, a photocopy of an unknown document fell into his hands. He read it. He saw and recognized that what was considered definitive truth wasn’t true at all. This is not the place to explain why this document was more convincing than the earlier ones. But it is the place to say what Herbst did after he discovered what he discovered and arrived at the truth. Herbst made no effort to protect himself. He wrote, “I made a mistake, which I retract.” When he was invited to republish some of his early papers, he declined, because most of them were based on those errors. There are famous scholars who, once they have made a statement, refuse to retract it, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary. Even when they themselves are aware of their error, they don’t admit it. They maintain their position, dismissing the opinion of peers if it suggests they themselves are in error. If they could, they would burn any manuscript that challenges their views. Needless to say, this isn’t Herbst’s way. In fact, Herbst lives by this axiom: I uphold this view today, because this is what my research suggests. If I see tomorrow that I’m mistaken, I will undo all the structures that are based on this error. Scholarship itself is more important than an individual scholar, and the essence of scholarship is precision. This remains true even if we concede that there are no absolutes in the realm of scholarship, since what was true until today is no longer true in the light of new discoveries, and what we learn from today’s discoveries may be a fleeting truth, because further discoveries remain to be discovered, and, when these further discoveries are discovered, earlier truths will be invalidated. But there is one ultimate truth, forever valid: the quest for truth itself, directing our hearts to explore the truth without political or social bias. As long as we have no evidence about the past other than the texts left to us by preceding generations, it is our mandate to examine them thoroughly and meticulously, to be very cautious about offering new theories that can’t be supported. In the future, when new data are discovered, more authentic than before, we must discard what is outdated in favor of the new. Herbst repeated this message to his students every semester, in his opening lecture. Needless to say, he repeated it to himself as well. He used to add: Who among us has read travel stories as a child without being stirred by explorers who traveled to remote lands; crossed seas, deserts, uncharted forests; risked life and limb; exposed themselves to harsh environments, deadly disease, savage animals, in order to investigate nature and life in its varied forms – unintimidated by all these perils? We who work in the serenity of our homes, who are guaranteed food, drink, and sleep – will we cling to distorted opinions and be distorted by them ourselves, because of habit, for the sake of our so-called honor? Neu, whose errors are superior to other scholars’ certainties, didn’t spare himself. On the eve of a gala event celebrating his sixtieth birthday, he published a paper entitled “My Errors,” in which he listed every error, every suspicion of an error, that he had ever perpetrated.

  Chapter nine

  In those days, with Jerusalem’s area diminished by Arab gunfire, Herbst would meet a growing number of friends on his walks. There is nothing remarkable about this, since most of his walks were in Rehavia and its environs, where many of his friends lived. And those who didn’t live there were visiting others who did. Whom did he find there, and whom didn’t he find there? Everyone, except for Julian Weltfremdt, who deprived Rehavia of his company because of his cousin and because so many other university scholars lived in Rehavia. There wasn’t a day when Herbst came to Rehavia without meeting a friend or acquaintance. If I were to list them all, it would turn into a lexicon of Jerusalem’s leaders and learned men. Believe it or not, he even met Gavriel Gamzu. I don’t know when this meeting occurred, whether it was before or after Gemula’s death. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter when it was. What did Gamzu tell him, and what didn’t Gamzu tell him? No one has ever talked to Gamzu without hearing something unforgettable from him. As for Gamzu’s story, I won’t pursue it now, since its subject is remote, but I will tell about someone else whose story is more immediate.

  Now then, in this period, when Herbst was working out of doors, when he used to amble back and forth, strolling, pondering, thinking his thoughts, he ran into a friend, a fellow professor at the university who had just recovered from a serious illness. He was an epidemiologist, who used to travel everywhere to study the course of contagious diseases. When the unrest in the world was such that he could no longer travel, he stayed in Jerusalem and worked at home. Now I will reveal in a whisper what was whispered to me. One day, he wanted to study a particularly deadly tropical disease. But, in all of the Land of Israel, he couldn’t find anyone suffering from it. He exposed his own body to the disease and tried to cure himself with the drug he had invented. Great German doctors report in their memoirs that, when they were trying to fathom the secret of a disease and its cure, they would expose one of their patients to it. Not this Jerusalem scientist. He tested the disease and the cure personally, on his own body, and in so doing he almost died. Now that he was recovering, he often went out for walks. When Herbst first heard this story, tears rolled down his cheeks. One day, he spotted the doctor in the park at the end of Rashba Street, at the very edge of Rehavia. He and Herbst were not c
losely connected. One of them worked in the humanities; the other worked in science. But, since they worked in the same institution, they did know each other. When Herbst saw him, he bowed, kissed his hand, and went on his way.

  Now I must get back to something I have already given too much time to, namely, the realm of thought. As long as I have no alternative way to get to the essence of the story, I can’t give it up. Herbst invested a lot of thought in the scientist who experimented on his own body. Even if we assume that he didn’t realize he was endangering his life, he surely knew that he would suffer extreme agony by infecting himself with the disease. He inflicted it on himself in the interest of science and for the sake of those afflicted with the disease. These observations led Herbst to ask himself: Would I do anything comparable? Who, in my field, would willingly risk his life to advance knowledge? Julian Weltfremdt calls our type of scholarship “coffee-and-cake scholarship.” What that nihilist means to say is: The person we call a professor sits around with a coffee cup in his hand, his mouth filled with cake, an open book before him. He drinks the coffee, chews the cake, and reads the book, deciding what to copy and put in his note box for the book he is writing. Because of his wrinkled soul, because of his need to deprecate himself and his profession, Herbst forgot about all the true scholars, even Neu, whose entire lives are devoted, truly devoted, to their work. If need be, they would no doubt take risks in order to achieve their end – their sole end being true scholarship. Herbst suddenly remembered something Gamzu had told him, and he began to quake. When he heard the story, he didn’t make anything of it, but, remembering it, his entire body began to quake.