S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

Here Krolka fixed her eyes on me and asked, “And what does an honorable gentleman like you think about it, and what do the holy books write about this kind of thing?” “You were quite right, Krolka,” said I, “to ask me what the holy books write about it, for if you had asked me what I think, I would not have known what to reply; for you must know, Krolka, that our reason is weak, and if we did not look in the holy books we would know nothing. As for what you asked me, I will tell you: If Yeruham had been Erela’s mate, Rachel would not have been able to take him away from her, and if she took him away, it is obvious that it was proclaimed in heaven that Rachel is Yeruham’s mate.” Krolka raised her two eyes to heaven and said, “Blessed be the Almighty who teaches men wisdom.” Then she said to me, “You have put a new soul in my heart, honorable sir.”

While we were standing there, Rachel’s mother came in. She was happy and tired. All day she had been with her daughter. What had she done and what had she not done? Seven women do not do what one mother does for her daughter, and, thank the Lord, her work had been successful. But she found it hard to bear the pangs of pregnancy, did Rachel.

She found it hard to bear the pangs of pregnancy, and small wonder, for Rachel had endured many troubles. Even when she was a little girl, she had suffered from many sicknesses. She had hardly recovered from the sicknesses when the war came, and Rachel was taken from bed, still sick, and put in a sack, and carried on her mother’s back in the sun and the dust of the roads. Once she fell from the sack and was cast among the thorns, where she lay without food and water, and black hornets threatened her life. Now she is not lying among the thorns and there are no black hornets threatening to sting her, but she lies on a broad bed with pillows and coverlets, and her mother feeds her with dainties and gives her milk to drink. If you have seen a fat chicken in the market, you can be sure it is being prepared to make gravy for Rachel; if you have noticed that the milk in the hotel is thin, you can be sure they have taken out all the cream for Rachel. All the money I pay for food and lodging is spent on Rachel, for all Yeruham’s earnings are not enough for more than a laborer’s meal.

Yeruham does all in his power to please his mother-in-law, but she refuses to be pleased by him. Once, Rachel was gripped by her pains and his mother-in-law looked at him with wrathful eyes, which clearly said: Rascal, what have you done to my daughter? Of all Yeruham’s pride, he has nothing left but his curls, and the pride has gone out of them too. Three or four times Yeruham came to the Beit Midrash to tell me his woes; but he had his trouble for nothing. When I asked him to come to the Beit Midrash he did not come; now that he comes he does not find me. Reb Hayim said to me, “That young fellow is wasting away with too much suspense.”

I feel sorry for Yeruham, squatting in the dust all day to mend the roads, in winter as in summer, morning and afternoon. True, in the Land of Israel he did not build towers and palaces either, and his work was harder than it is abroad, for he stood up to the waist in the swamps and set his life in danger. But in the Land of Israel what a man does leads to some end, and if it is not for his own sake, at least it is for others who will come after him. On the other hand, if he had not come back from the Land he would not have found Rachel. However, this should be said: it would have been better for Rachel to remain without a man. Comely girls like Rachel are comely when they are not burdened with a husband.

My other self, who lodges with me, whispered to me, “If it had not been for Yeruham Freeman, Rachel would have been free, and you and I could have looked at her.” Said I to my other, “You are quite right, Rachel was a lovely girl.” At once my other began to paint Rachel’s face before my eyes with all kinds of comely, alluring pictures. Said I to my other, “A great painter is our God.” My other gritted his teeth. “Why are you teasing me?” said I. “It is because you ascribe my deeds to the Holy One, blessed be He,” he replied. “It was not God who painted Rachel’s face before your eyes; it was I.” Said I, “You painted the face of Yeruham Freeman’s wife, but our God painted before me the image of Rachel, the hotel-keeper’s little daughter.” My other laughed and said, “Rachel the hotelkeeper’s daughter and Rachel Yeruham Freeman’s wife are one and the same.” I saw how things were going, and immediately reminded him of the pact I had made with him. He began to be afraid I might change my mind and cancel the pact, so he left me alone.

So that he should not return to the subject, I walked him off to the Beit Midrash. And so that he should not disturb me on the way, I stopped and talked to every man I met in the marketplace. And when I happened to meet Ignatz, I talked to him.

If you get accustomed to this Ignatz’s droning, you can hear some sensible things from him. Once the talk turned on Hanoch and his death, and Ignatz said, “All this hullabaloo all over the whole town on the day they found Hanoch dead in the snow — I don’t know the sense of it. During the war things like that happened every day, every hour, and we didn’t pay attention to them. Sometimes we found a soldier lying under his horse — he dead and the horse alive, or the horse dead and he alive. Before we could manage to separate them, we were caught by the enemy’s fire and most of our fellows were blown to pieces — a hand this way and a foot that way, a man’s head flying off and striking his mate’s, so that both of them fell together and sank in the blood and muck.”

Let us dismiss Ignatz and go to meet Daniel Bach. Daniel Bach hobbles along on his wooden leg, but his beard is trimmed and his face is happy. Let us go to meet him and shorten his way.

I have come to know many men in Szibucz, but I like Daniel Bach better than any, because I met him first on the day I came back to my town and because he does not weary me with futile talk that confuses the mind. Bach is not one of those who were born in Szibucz, but since he came to the town a few years before the war I look upon him as if he were a man of Szibucz; and since he was not born in Szibucz, he does does not regard himself as one of the Almighty’s favored children.

When I come across Daniel Bach, I make him walk on my right, and we stroll along wherever our feet carry us. As soon as we reach the forest, he immediately turns back to the town. It is not because the road is hard and the place distant that he does not go into the forest, but I imagine that the incident in the trenches, when he looked for the tefillin and came upon one of them bound to a dead man’s arm, took place in a forest, and that is why he avoids walking there.

What do we talk about and what don’t we talk about? About things that one talks about, about things that a man can bend to his will, or things that make a man bend to theirs. Once the talk turned on the Land of Israel. Said Daniel Bach, “I have every respect for old men who go up to the Land to die there, but not for those young men who go to make their lives there, for their lives are only a short cut to their deaths.” “And here,” said I, “do you live forever?” “Here a man lives without a program and dies without a program,” replied Mr. Bach.

And Mr. Bach went on, “These sanctities, the sanctity of life, and the sanctity of labor, and the sanctity of death, that you preach about, I don’t know what they mean. What sanctity is there in life, or in labor, or in death? A man lives and labors and dies. Has he any choice — not to live, or not to labor, or not to die?”