S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

I went back to my lodging and counted my money. The pounds I had brought with me had become dollars, the dollars groschen, and the groschen kreutzer. I remembered the days gone by, when my pocket was full, and thought of the days to come, when my pocket would be empty. I began valuing every coin in my possession at more than its worth, and limited my expenses to the very minimum. It came to such a pass that I wrote letters on scraps of letters that I had received. Once I wanted to write a letter to my wife and found no paper; so I took the last will and testament I had drafted when I was sick, erased what I had written, and wrote on the clean side.

I sit all by myself and see my wife straining to read the erasure. “Don’t you see what I have erased?” I say to my wife. “I will lend you my spectacles, and you shall see.”

My wife is startled and says, “Are you wearing spectacles? When you left the Land of Israel your eyes were good, weren’t they?” “The light of my eyes has been somewhat dimmed,” I reply. “It is because you sit in the Beit Midrash, amid the dust of the books,” says she. “Have you consulted doctors?” “I am with a doctor all the time,” I reply. “And what did the doctor tell you?” “What did he tell me? He said to me, ‘Is it to study the Gemara you came here?’” “So let us go back,” says my wife. “And what will happen to the key?” say I. “Leave it in the sacred Ark,” says she, “and when the dead come to read the Torah they will take it.” “And what about those who are not dead? What will they do?” “In any case,” she replies, “no one asks for the key.” “So long as the book The Hands of Moses was in the town,” say I, “no one needed the key. Now I have sent the book away, they will need the key.” “Why has your face reddened like that?” asks my wife. “My face has reddened? I thought it had darkened.” “Why should it have darkened?” “For sorrow.” “What are you sorry for?” says my wife. “Because I shall have to lift onto my shoulders the Ark where I left the key.” “Do you want to load the Ark on your shoulders?” says my wife. “Not only the Ark,” I reply, “but the whole Beit Midrash.” Says my wife, “The Beit Midrash will come of its own accord.” “Do you think it will come after me?” “And did it occur to you that it would remain alone?” “Wait a moment,” say I to my wife, “and I will count my money to see if I have enough for the expenses of the journey.”

My wife says to my children, “Did you hear, children? Father is going to come back with us to the Land of Israel.” My children come up to me and embrace and kiss me and say, “You are good, Father, you are good.” “You be good, too,” I say to my children, “and I will open up our old Beit Midrash for you and study Torah with you. Why have you recoiled, children? Are you afraid I will exile you out of the Land so that you should study Torah? Don’t be afraid; I am going back to the Land of Israel with you, for there is no Torah like the Torah of the Land.” My children embraced me again and said, “You are good, Father; you are good, Father.”

I look at the walls of the old Beit Midrash and say to them, “You see, the time has come for me to go back to the Land of Israel.” The walls of the Beit Midrash stoop, as if they wish to embrace me because I am going to the Land. I say to them, “If you wish, I will load you on my back and take you with me.” “We are too heavy,” they reply, “one man has not the strength to carry us on his back. But take the key and go, and when the time comes we shall follow you.” “How do you intend to come,” say I, “every stone by itself? No, I want you to come to the Land together. If you are ashamed to come empty-handed, I shall set my children down among you. Haven’t you heard that my wife has written that she is going back to the Land with her children?”

That day a letter came from my wife, and this is what she wrote: “You are sitting in Poland while I stay here with the children in Germany. The children are becoming accustomed to living abroad, and if we delay we shall be doubly the losers. Besides, if we are to go back, let us go back at once before the High Holidays, so that the children do not lose a year at school.”

Who has revealed to the people of my town that I am going to return to the Land of Israel? I have told no one, but the whole town comes and asks me, “When are you going back?”

That day Yeruham Freeman asked me to wait until his wife gave birth. “I will leave after the circumcision,” said I. Yeruham’s face shone, as if he felt assured that his wife would bear a male child.

I shared in Yeruham’s joy. First, that a son would be born in the town, for it was many years since a Jewish child had been born here. Second, that I had found an excuse to put off my journey, for it is not easy to uproot yourself from place to place. Yet in my heart I bore a grudge against Yeruham: not only had he left the Land, but he was delaying my return.

In those days Jerusalem stood before me, with all its environs. Once again I saw my house, as if it were still at peace, with my children playing there among the green pines whose fragrance filled the whole quarter, that sweet fragrance which flows from them until the end of the summer, when the sun rests on the trees and there is a gentle breeze, and the sky spreads out its vault of blue, and the hot earth looks up at it from among the thorns parched in the sun.

I counted my money again and shuddered; there was not enough to pay my hotel bill for the next month. Even worse, I did not have enough to pay for a place on the boat.

But I did not despair, for a certain publisher in the Land of Israel had printed several of my stories and had promised to pay my fee in full. I also had an old debt due from another publisher abroad, who had issued a few of my stories. I asked them to hurry up and pay me. The one in the Land of Israel sent no reply. No doubt he had gone abroad, for such is the way of the rich in the Land; in the cold season they go out to the hot countries, and in the hot to the cold countries. And the one abroad wrote, “On the contrary, you owe me money. You bought so many books from me, and the cost is more than the author’s fee.” What books had I bought? It is a custom among us that most readers demand that the author give them his books for nothing, and sometimes all his fee goes for the books he gives away.

Unintentionally, I have mentioned that I am a writer. Originally, the word denoted the scribe, who wrote the words of the Torah. But since everyone who engages in the craft of writing is called a writer, I am not afraid of arrogance in calling myself a writer.

I have told elsewhere the story of the poet who, when he was a child lying in his crib, was shown from heaven things no eye has ever seen. He wanted to utter poetry; a swarm of bees came and filled his mouth with honey. When he grew up and studied the Torah, he remembered all the songs and praises he wished to utter in his childhood; so he wrote them down and Israel inserted them into its prayers. And where did he get the Laments? The bees who had given him their honey stung him, and out of that pain he wrote the Laments for the Ninth of Av.

There are other poets who were not privileged in the same way as Rabbi Eleazar Hakalir, but because they were humble and modest, they regarded their misfortunes as part of the community’s misfortunes and made them songs and lamentations for the House of Israel; so a man reads them as he reads a lamentation over himself.

Other poets there were who saw their own misfortunes and did not forget them, but they were very modest and made the misfortunes of the community their own, as if all the tribulations that had befallen Israel had befallen them.