S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

Leibtche got up anxiously and said, rubbing his hands, “I am so happy you have come here, my dear sir. Something I had not the courage to ask has come to me unsought. Sit down, my dear sir, sit down, and I will stand in front of you.” “You are really living like a philosopher,” said I. “Oh, my dear sir,” said Leibtche, “what kind of philosopher am I if I have not yet achieved a single one of the philosophic qualities. Spinoza teaches us not to laugh, not to weep, not to be enthusiastic, but to understand — and can I say that I fulfill his teaching, except for laughing? In the other qualities, my dear sir, I am a total transgressor, and I have not been privileged to fulfill even the slightest part of them. Now, he tells us not to weep, but how should I not weep when we are surrounded by troubles, whether they come from man, from his evil instincts, or from his Creator. The same applies to enthusiasm. Is it possible not to give way to enthusiasm when I see clearly how my God above bestows His mercy upon me, on me, a lowly creature, a worm and not a man, gives me inspiration and sends me rhymes for every single verse in the Torah — besides my enthusiasm for the words of the Torah themselves, which have been handed down to us from the Deity? So how is it possible not to give way to enthusiasm? And now, my dear sir, I come to the end of the words of the sublime philosopher. He says, ‘but to understand’—and surely, however hard we try, we shall never understand. Let us take, for example, the verse, ‘God is angry every day’—is it possible to understand why He is so angry? And if we have sinned against Him, does He have to make our lives a misery and direct all His blows against us? And would it not be better if He treated us according to the philosophic principle, which means: to understand? Don’t regard what I say as impudence against heaven, my dear sir. Believe me, my dear sir, I do not have the least touch of impudence in me, or anything like it, and if you were to put your foot on my neck I would bend down low so as to give you no trouble. But what shall I do? This heart is a heart of flesh; it has not reached the heights of philosophy yet; it suffers and weeps, and sometimes it brings up ideas that are foreign to philosophy. When I sit in my room, at my table, and rhyme verse after verse, chapter after chapter, it seems to me that everything is right; when I put down my pen and put my head on my hand or my hand on my head, it seems to me that nothing in the world is right, and even the world itself, my dear sir, is not right. And how can it be right if its Creator is angry with it? Our sages, of blessed memory, have consoled us a little by saying: ‘And how long is His anger? — a moment.’ My dear sir, He is angry for a moment a day, and His creatures are angry twenty-four hours a day.

“It is not my way to mention the war. If an hour has passed without my remembering it, I feel as if a kindness has been done me. But one thing I will tell you, my dear sir. During the war I served with a certain doctor. Once they brought in a soldier, a young man, whose feet had been frozen in the trenches. Since his feet were frozen he could not move away and hide from the enemy. So he was struck by a grenade splinter, which broke his teeth and smashed his gums. His legs, my dear sir, could not be saved, for there was no more life in them, so the doctor amputated them above the knee, but he repaired his mouth. He sewed and cut and sewed and made him some kind of gums from some kind of material — I don’t remember what it was. When I saw that young man, who had lost his legs and had nothing left of his face but a kind of open wound, I used to turn my face away and weep, for I was afraid I might go mad. But the doctor liked to look at him, and whenever he was not busy with the other wounded he would occupy himself with him, patching and mending his face and sticking on one strip of flesh over another. And he would mention the names of famous professors and say, ‘Such perfect work they have never done in their lives.’ Meanwhile they would bring other wounded men, and there was no room for them in his surgery. So they put the earlier group in an ambulance wagon and sent them to a certain hospital in the town. Among them was that soldier I told you of. Indeed, the doctor did not want to send him away, but his clinic was full, and every day they would bring more wounded; so the doctor tied a ticket on his neck and wrote how they should treat him, how they should feed him and what they should feed him with. And he told us to take particular care of him every hour and every moment, for he had also lost the strength of his hands and could not raise them to his mouth. We traveled at the side of the wagon, looking after the wounded and protecting them, and trying to lighten their sufferings. On the way, along came a German lieutenant. He asked us if there was room in the wagon. ‘The whole wagon is full of sick and wounded,’ we replied, ‘and we are taking them to the hospital in town.’ ‘I will go and see if there is no place here for a German officer,’ said the lieutenant. So he took the legless soldier with the shattered mouth, put him off the wagon and sat him on the ground in a lonely and desolate place. Then he came and took his place on the wagon. And now, try to understand. Surely all our efforts to understand are in vain.

“Or another example, my dear sir, an example from times of peace. But why should I sadden you, my dear sir? Sometimes I apply my mind to life and I come to the conclusion that it is not worth a man’s while to live, for even if he does good and never sins, surely his very existence only brings about more evil and leads to sin, because his fellows have not reached this standard, and therefore they are compelled — both because they are evil themselves and because he is good — to do him evil. Wait for me, my dear sir, a little while; Aunt is calling me. I shall come back at once.”

I did not wait for Leibtche to come back, and when he went to his aunt I went away.

I made my way to the left bank of the Stripa, where a house stands in which I lived as a child with my father and mother and my brothers and sisters. Even that morning I had intended to go there, but Zippora had come along and stopped me on the road. Although Leibtche had refrained from giving me examples of the troubles he had seen in peacetime, so as not to sadden me, I was not joyful. In these days, whether you hear about the days of the war or the days of peace, you are sad.

In days gone by, the street to which I was going was a model of tranquillity. At its beginning stood the post office, in the middle was the high school, and at the end was a convent, containing a little hospital surrounded by a large garden; between them was a row of little houses, looking out on the Stripa, and opposite the post office stood a few green benches in the shadow of acacias. It was here that the intellectuals of the town used to come to open out their newspapers and read. In the evenings boys and girls used to stroll here until nightfall, and if the occasion called for it, they would add another hour.

The benches had been taken away and the acacias cut down; most of the houses were in ruins and the intellectuals of the town were dead. What was left of all that tranquillity, except for the river, which flowed as before? This was the river in which I used to bathe, and in front of which I would light a candle on the first night of the Penitential Prayers, to give light to the souls of those who had drowned there, so that if they rose to recite the Penitential Prayers they might see the light and guard themselves against the evil spirits that tried to cling to them. But the benches had been taken away and there was no place to sit; so I went to the house where I had lived as a child.