S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

In fact, I need not talk much. The innkeeper knows his guests and does not ask to hear more. He sits in his usual way, his lips holding the stem of his pipe and his eyes half closed, for he has given up the idea of seeing anything new and wishes to preserve what he has seen. And his wife is busy all day in the kitchen. Though there are not many guests, she has to cook for them, and of course for herself and her husband and her sons and daughters.

Of her sons and daughters I shall tell elsewhere, or perhaps I shall say nothing of them, for I have nothing to do with them. Just as I have nothing to do with them, so they have nothing to do with me. When the innkeeper’s two sons, Dolik and Lolik, realized that I did not come here to do business, they put me out of their minds, and now they pay no attention to me. It is the same with their sister Babtchi, who is occupied half the time in a lawyer’s office and half the time with herself. As for Rachel, the innkeeper’s youngest daughter, she is no longer a child but not yet a young woman. She is eighteen years old. A twenty-year-old might make advances to her, but not a man who has arrived at years of understanding. So I am free to myself to do whatever I wish. And so I do. Immediately after breakfast I take the large key of the old Beit Midrash, go in, and sit until it is time for the midday meal.

So I sit alone in the old Beit Midrash. The scholars who used to meditate on the Torah have passed away and gone to their eternal home, and the books that were here have disappeared. We had many books in our old Beit Midrash. Some of them I studied, even adding remarks in the margin — I was childish then and thought I had it in my power to add to their wisdom — and some of them I used to weep over, as children do, who try to obtain by weeping what is beyond the reach of reason. Now nothing is left of all the books but one here and another there. Where have they disappeared to, all those books? It is told in the Book of the Pious that the souls of the dead have their books; as they studied in their lifetime so they study after they are dead. If so, we may imagine that the sages who have died have taken their books with them, so as to study them after their passing. And they are right, for no one has remained in the Beit Midrash, and there is no one here who needs a book.

Before the few books that have remained shall disappear, I want to examine them. So I take a book and read it to the end. In years gone by I would take one book and lay it down, then take another and lay it down, as if the wisdom of one book were not enough for me. Suddenly I saw that in one book there is enough to sustain ten wise men without exhausting all its wisdom. Even books I knew by heart seemed new to me. Seventy faces has the Torah; whatever the face you turn to it, it turns that face to you.

I sat silent before the book, and the book unsealed its lips and revealed to me things I had never heard before. When I was tired of studying I thought many thoughts, and this is one of them: Many generations ago a wise man wrote a book and he did not know of this man who sits here, but in the end all his words prove to be meant for him.

This too I learned, that time is longer than I thought, and it is divided into many parts; each part stands by itself, and a man can do many things in one period, provided he is sitting alone and no one distracts him from his work. In jest I said: That is why the whole universe was created in one day, because the blessed Creator was alone in His universe.

Now that I have come to understand the nature of time, I divide my time among several things. Until noon I sit in the Beit Midrash and study, and in the afternoon I go out into the forests of my town. At this season the trees have not yet shed their leaves, and the sight rejoices the eye. Some of them are dappled, some shine like copper, and there are other shades of color for which there is no name.

I stand among the trees, rejoicing my eyes with the sight, and say: “Beautiful, beautiful.” The skies smile at me; they almost seem to say, “This man knows what is beautiful, and it is fitting that he should see more.” You can see that this is so, for immediately they show me things I have never seen before. I do not know whether new things have been added, or whether this man’s power of vision has been doubled.

I am alone in the forest, as I am alone in the Beit Midrash. No one enters the forest, because it belongs to the baron of the town, and although there are no longer any guards, the fear of them remains. Perhaps you have heard the story of the old woman who goes out to the forest to collect twigs, to cook porridge for her grandsons. If so, why do I not meet that old woman? Because her grandsons have grown up and been killed in the war, and she too is dead. Or perhaps she and her grandsons are still alive, but when they want to eat, the grandsons go out and fall on the Jews, and rob and steal and plunder, and bring food to their grandmother too, so that she need not toil in the forest. And where are the couples who used to go out to the forest to reveal their love for one another? Those things that used to be done in private are now done in the open, and there is no need to take the trouble to go to the forest. Or the explanation may be that when love for one’s fellow men ceased, so did the loves of youths and maidens. Now a man meets a woman in the market; if he and she desire each other, he brings her into his house, and before their love has entered into their hearts they are tired of each other.

The Almighty puts a blindfold over my eyes, so that I should not see His creatures in their depravity. And when He removes the apron from my eyes they see what not every eye notices. For instance, Ignatz, whose nose has been destroyed in the war, and who has a hole in place of the nose. Ignatz stands in the market, leaning on his stick, his hat in his hand, and calls out to the passers-by: “ Pieniadze !” which means “Money!” That is, “Give me charity!” And since no one pays any attention to him, I pay double attention. First, because of the compassion that is innate in the heart of Israel. And second, because I am idle and have time to put my hand in my pocket and take out a coin, for I have learned that time is long, and sufficient to do many things. When I came across Ignatz for the second time, he said “ Mu’es ,” which means money in the Holy Tongue. In two or three days he had succeeded in learning how to say money in Hebrew. When I gave him my alms the three holes in his face shone, namely his two eyes and the hole below his eyes where his nose used to be.

Although time is long, it has a limit. When you sit alone by yourself you imagine that time stands still, for between five before the hour and five past the hour you have thought enough to fill a whole universe; when a man accosts you, time jumps and passes by. It happened once that I left the hotel to go to the Beit Midrash and was accosted by Daniel Bach. In no time at all half a day had passed. First I asked how he was, then I asked after his father; and then he asked how I was. In the meantime half a day was gone and the time had come for lunch. So I returned to my hotel as if the key of the old Beit Midrash were of no use at all.

At first I thought that all the disabilities must have come from the war, but Daniel Bach told me that some came from earning a living, as in his case. So long as he was in the line of battle he was sound of limb; when he took up the burden of earning a living he lost his leg.

This is how it happened. After the war he went back to his town, and found his home in ruins, his sawmill a heap of rubble, and his wife and daughters sitting on the rubble lamenting and wishing they had never come back. For when the sword of war rested, the people mistakenly thought the days of the Messiah had come, so Daniel Bach’s wife took her daughters and went back to her own town. But they did not know that the Messiah was still dressing his wounds; the world had not yet returned to health, and there was no difference between one place and another except for the tribulations specific to that place. Today Daniel Bach has only one daughter and a sick child that was born after the war. But on the day he came back from the war he had three daughters, one of whom died immediately after his return and another at the beginning of the influenza epidemic; there had also been a son who was buried on the roadside by his mother when she fled before the approaching Russian armies.