S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

Yeruham was sitting by the roadside near the King’s Well, cutting a drain to prevent the water’s flooding the road. You find young fellows like him in the Land of Israel in every town and village, and you pay no heed to them. Here in Szibucz he was something new. There sits a Jewish lad outdoors in Szibucz mending the road, and he imagines he is mending the whole world. Between ourselves, this work he is doing is superfluous. You who do not know Szibucz may say: What do you mean by superfluous? After all, the road is in bad repair, so it ought to be mended. But I, who do know Szibucz, say: What is the good of mending one place, when all the other roads are in bad repair, and it seems to me that they can never be mended? But I mention all this only in connection with Yeruham’s work. Of Yeruham himself, all that can be said is that he is digging up the dirt and sitting in the mud. When he saw me, he gave me an unfriendly look, and went back to his work as if I were not there. I took no offense, but greeted him, and even put out my hand. He paid no attention and did not return my greeting, or, if he did, he returned it under his breath.

I looked back at Ignatz and saw him talking to Yeruham. I did not like that: first, because he had suddenly left me alone, and second, because my arms were getting tired. I shifted my parcel to my left hand and said to myself: Ignatz has left me only for my own benefit, to tell that young fellow that I am the best of men, that I always give and give generously. I wonder if the lad is not sorry he behaved discourteously to me. I felt sorry for him and decided to give him an opportunity to make it up with me.

In the meantime the day was passing. The sun, which had stood stuck in the sky, as if inseparable from it, had disappeared. Yeruham rose, shook the dirt from his clothes, took up his tools, and went off. So I went to the tailor, left the cloth with him, and returned to my hotel.

In those days the hotel was empty of guests. Apart from myself, there was only an old man who had to make a declaration on oath in court. When he was hungry he would take out a crust from his basket and eat. When they brought him a glass of tea, he would drink hesitantly, for a glass of tea costs a penny, and he did not have a spare penny in his pocket. Before the war he had fields and orchards in the countryside, and a large house in town; he was one of the owners of the Szibucz bank, with a handsome, intelligent wife and successful sons. Then the war came, took away his sons, sent his wife out of her mind, and destroyed his house; others took over his property, and of all his wealth nothing was left but debts. The Lord impoverishes and makes rich, enriches and makes poor.

This is how that man’s troubles started. On the day he went off to war his wife went out to the fields to survey her property. She saw that the crops were standing ripe and scorching in the sun, for there was no one to take up the sickle and reap. She was still waiting there when they came and told her that her two sons had fallen in battle. In her grief she pulled off her kerchief and threw it on the ground. So the sun beat down on her head and touched her mind.

There is nothing new or out of the ordinary in this story, and I tell it only to show how welcome I am to the people of the hotel, which has such poor guests.

Krolka laid the table and brought in supper. I must say to my hostess’ credit that the meal was tasty as usual; but to my own discredit I admit that I did not touch it, much to her distress. I noticed that distress and said, “There is one kind of food that I should like, namely olives.” “Olives!” said the innkeeper’s wife. “But they are salty and bitter.” I nodded my head and said, “Yes, salty and bitter.” “Look,” said Rachel, “you say ‘salty and bitter’ and you look as if you were eating something sweet.” “When I was in Hungary,” said the mistress of the house, “I was served with olives. I thought they were plums, so I took a handful and ate them. What shall I tell you? They twisted my lips and I wanted to spit out my tongue — they were so salty and bitter.” “In your mouth they are salty and bitter,” I replied, “but to me they are sweet. Until I left the Land of Israel I never sat down to a meal without olives. Any meal without olives was not called a meal.” Said Babtchi, “Every man to his taste. If anyone served me figs, I’d eat them.” Said Dolik, “I like one of our pears and apples better than all the figs and dates and carobs and all the other kinds of fruit the Zionists boast about.” “Figs are tasty and fragrant,” said I to Babtchi, “but they cannot compare with olives. Now let us hear what Mistress Rachel has to say.” Rachel blushed. “I have never eaten olives,” said she, “but I can imagine they’re fine food.” “What makes you think they’re fine food?” asked Babtchi. “Look, she is blushing.” Her mother spat and said, “May all my enemies’ faces go green! What made you start on her all of a sudden?” “What did I say?” said Babtchi. “I only said she was blushing. And if her face was red, what of it? I think red is just as nice as black, for example.” “I don’t see that I was blushing,” said Rachel. “And is there any reason why I should blush?” And as she spoke she blushed still more. Babtchi laughed. “Dolik,” she cried, “did you hear? She doesn’t see she’s blushing and she doesn’t know the reason. Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will explain the reason.” Rachel rose, saying, “Am I blushing? I’ll go and see in the mirror.” Dolik put out his tongue at Babtchi and laughed. The innkeeper looked at his son and daughter, pushed his thumb angrily into the bowl of his pipe, and asked, “Where is Lolik?” “Lolik? He’s gone to his lady.” Said I to myself: You did well that night to let Rachel vanquish you. Now, not only does she follow what you say, but she agrees with you even about things of which she knows nothing. I was so puffed up with myself that I forgot what had happened to me with that young fellow, Yeruham Freeman.

Schuster’s house is in King’s Street behind the well, one of a few scattered houses that have survived the war. It is close to the street and a little below street level, so there is a smell of damp about the place; but at night there is just the smell of damp and by day there is a smell of dust as well. The whole house consists of one square room and is no higher than an ordinary man, for it was built long ago, when people were lowly in their own eyes and content with small houses. High on the wall, near the ceiling, to the right of the door, is a long, narrow window, through which you can see the heads of the passers-by but not their faces, though you can hear their voices and see the dust they raise with their feet. One broken shutter hangs over the window outside, and when the wind passes the shutter knocks on the window and shuts out the light. Apart from the paraphernalia of the tailor’s craft, such as a sewing machine, a long table, two irons, a mirror, and a wooden, cloth-covered dummy shaped like a woman without head or feet, on which the clothes are measured, there is not much furniture in the room. And for this reason the plush-covered chair that stands near the fireplace stands out particularly; they brought it from Berlin, where they used to live before they came back to Szibucz.

This chair has had many adventures. During the war some people grew rich and built themselves mansions, which they adorned with antique furniture, like nobles with long pedigrees. They used to go to old peasants in distant villages to buy old furniture, and pay with good money. In order to have something to sell, the peasants commissioned the craftsmen in town to make furniture of the kind that was sought after. When a rich man came to buy, the peasant would be struck with amazement and say, “Mother of God, a piece that my great-grandfather’s great-grandfather in the time of the Great Prince put aside as unfit for use, and the city folk come and want to buy it!” It seems reasonable that they would sell such things cheap, but not at all. First, because professors had already proposed putting them in a museum; and second, how can a man let out of his house a piece like this which has been standing there for four hundred years without even asking once for food or drink? When the rich people heard this they would give the peasant as much as he wanted; sometimes they gave him a new piano for a chair like this. When the plague of inflation came and the rich men lost their property, they sold their mansions to foreigners. These foreigners did not have the Gemiit of the Germans; they threw all those things out or sold them for next to nothing, so the tailor was lucky enough to buy that chair, and the newspapers made the whole of Germany ring with the story: a chair on which German princes used to sit, a Polish Jew now sat on. It was a blessed thing Schuster did not read the papers and did not know that he had helped to add to the malice of Israel’s enemies.