S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

All the other houses lined up in a row, but this one jutted out somewhat from the rest, at a little distance from the street, and you went up to it on stone steps. There was a large stone in front of the house and a kind of little garden behind it, from which something like a hill arose — and behind that was the end of the world. There, when I was a child, I had dug a little pit, like the pit of Asmodeus, King of the Demons, in the Tractate of Divorces , and on the slab in front of the house I would play ball with my little girl neighbors. This game was not like the boys’ games, such as the overthrow of the wall of Jericho and the Battle of David and Goliath, with their parallels in the Scriptures; but it involved waving of the hands and running with the feet and beating of the heart, for when you let the ball fly in the air it becomes its own master: if it likes it rolls one way, if it likes it rolls another, and you can never be sure it will come back to you.

When did I stop playing ball with the girls? It happened that once I was running after the ball, with a little girl after me. I touched her hand with mine and blushed, so I knew that this had something of sinning in it. Then I moved away from her and played by myself. Once my teacher saw me playing and said, “What is the sense of a boy playing ball? If you want the ball, why did you throw it away? And if you threw it away why do you run after it? Only because your evil impulse incites you to run — and if that’s the case, don’t listen to it.”

Did the pictures in my memory precede what I saw with my eyes, or did the sight of my eyes come before the pictures my memory drew? Whenever I see this house I remember those things.

At this moment the pictures in the soul were stronger than the sight of my eyes, and although I was standing in front of the house with my eyes open, there came before me a picture of the house as it was in days gone by, when Father and Mother, my brothers and sisters and I lived in it, we in the lower storey and the owner and his son in the festival succah in the attic. A better landlord you have never seen in your life. What a pity he did not succeed in ending his days in his own house — because of Dr. Zwirn, who took his house away for nothing. What Antos Jacobowitz had not succeeded in doing, Zwirn did.

And where was Kuba my friend, the tinsmith’s son? When I went up to the Land of Israel he left high school and went to the university. If he is alive, he may be a doctor or a lawyer. Once he told me, “When I grow up I will go to a lepers’ colony and look after them.”

So I stand beside that house. All the time it was without ten-ants and today there is someone there. Who is this that has suddenly come to live here? Hadn’t I heard that there was no one in the town who would rent this house, because Dr. Zwirn did not want to let it at a low price and there was no one to pay a high one, so the house stood empty and untenanted?

I said to myself: I will go in and see; perhaps the tenant will be courteous and show me his house. This is the house where I lived with Father and Mother and my brothers and sisters; and even if Zwirn has broken it down and rebuilt it, and changed much of it, a trace of my childhood has remained in it.

I knocked at the door, but no one opened. I knocked again, but no one opened. I looked in through the window, but saw no one, except for my shadow, and I knew it was my shadow that had deceived me before.

I went away and walked back to the end of all the houses and the end of all the ruins, till I reached the convent, which was also in ruins. Since the day I came back to Szibucz, I had not been here — and if I had, it had been at night, for if 1 had been here during the day I would have seen this little house with a sign hanging on the door. Most of the letters on the sign were blurred and obliterated. It seems to have been used as a target for the darts the boys throw for practice. I took my time and spelled out the letters, adding from my own knowledge what was obliterated, and I read: Dr. Jacob Milch, Physician.

A tall, lean man came out, with heavy boots like those the soldiers wear in war, and breeches of the same kind, tightfitting up to his knees. His collar was open and his beard unkempt. As I stood, preparing to go away, he looked at me with one eye half closed and asked, “Aren’t you So-and-so the son of So-and-so?” And immediately he stretched out his hand to greet me and called me by name again. (It was not the name I bear now, but the name they used to call me by when I was a child.) I returned his greeting and cried, “Kuba!” It was my friend Kuba, the son of the one-eyed tinsmith. And since I did not know what to say, I asked him, “What are you doing here?” “What am I doing here?” replied Kuba. “I live here. Didn’t you see the sign on the door?” “What is your surname?” I stammered. “I use my mother’s name,” said Kuba.

So he took me by the hand, drew me into the house, sat me down on a chair, and looked at me in utter silence, as if he had lost the power of speech. Then he passed his hand over his eyes and said, “Why are we silent? Haven’t we anything at all to say to each other? We used to have so much to talk about, didn’t we? My new name has confused you. Father was not married according to the government’s laws, and they registered me in Mother’s name. So my name is Jacob Milch.” And here Kuba scratched at his unkempt beard and said, “I heard you had come here, but on the day I heard I had to go away. Now it is three days since I came back and I’m glad you have come to see me.”

“I was strolling along the street,” said I, “and when I got here it did not occur to me that I would find you. Besides, all the time I have been here I have not asked about you; since the war I do not ask if So-and-so is alive or not, for whomever I asked about I was told: He has already gone to his eternal rest and this was the way he died. Now that I have seen you my joy is doubled.” “If you did not know I lived here,” said Kuba, “how did you find me?” “I was sick,” I replied, “and went out for a stroll; and on my way I reached here. And another thing: since the day I returned to Szibucz I have never happened to come here before.” “You said you were ill,” said Kuba, “but your face contradicts you. Sit and let us chat for a while. Or perhaps I should examine you first, before your ailments disappear and I have nothing left to do.” So I enumerated all kinds of ailments — fever and sore throat and pain in the heart, all the ailments I suffered from at the time or previously.

The doctor put on a white coat, washed his hands, put a mirror on his forehead, took a small mirror in his hand, and sat me down on a chair. He too sat down, opposite me, and looked into my throat. Then he said, “Lie down on the couch.” He examined me from top to bottom and bottom to top, thumped on my heart and my spine, told me to get up, recited the names of diseases acute and chronic, and taught me what to do for my throat and for my heart. He gave me two kinds of drugs, one against the cold and one against the pains in the heart, and did not ask me to pay, for he got them free from the pharmaceutical factories in Germany to introduce them to his patients.

As he was speaking, he looked at his watch and said, “I must go to bring my wife. I am sorry I must leave you, but I shall not let you alone until you promise to come back tomorrow for lunch. And don’t be afraid I will feed you with carrion or unclean meat; I eat neither slaughtered fowl, nor moribund birds, nor carrion, nor unclean meat.” “Are you that vegetarian doctor who taught my hostess a thousand different kinds of vegetable dishes?” “What good did it do,” said Kuba, “if she still cooks meat? Didn’t Mrs. Zommer tell you anything about me?” “What was there to tell?” said I. “When she mentioned you, she called you the vegetarian doctor, and I did not know it was you.” “And you didn’t ask about me?” “Didn’t I tell you that since the war I do not ask if So-and-so is alive or where he is. Every man I come across is an unexpected find, like Schutzling, and like you.”