S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

While we were sitting talking, a man came into the Beit Midrash and filled his utensils with embers. Before he left, another came and filled his utensils too. The men in the Beit Midrash flared up, crying, “It says clearly in the Shulchan Aruch that it is forbidden to make common use of sacred provisions.” So they advised me to have a lock made for the stove; otherwise there would be no embers left in the Beit Midrash, for all the peddlers sitting in the market were freezing with cold and wanted to warm themselves, and if I did not lock the stove against them I might just as well invite them to come and help themselves.

“It is easy to make a lock,” I replied, “but I am afraid I might lose the key, as I lost the key of the Beit Midrash, and I would freeze with cold. And even if I had another key made, by the time the locksmith came and made one, the cold days would be over and no one would have any need for my embers; so I would have been wicked for nothing.”

As the number of those who took embers increased, I told Hanoch to bring wood every day. When the embers in the stove diminished I added more wood. I am no longer free to pay attention to a worm consumed in the fire, because I am busy warming the men of Szibucz.

Ever since I came to years of understanding, I have hated any forms composed of different parts that do not accord with each other, especially a picture whose parts exist in reality but whose combination and conjunction exist not in reality but only in the imagination of the artist; and more especially things in which only something of the concrete image has been shifted to the abstract image — that is, when someone compares states of the soul to things of the body, as certain commentators have interpreted the verse, “Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, in the likeness of any figure.” So I was surprised to find myself beginning to make analogies and saying: There are symbolic things here — for a man from the Land of Israel has come down to bring warmth to the sons of exile.

Besides Reuben and Simon, Levi and Judah, and so forth, who sit regularly most days in the Beit Midrash, you also find Ignatz there. Ignatz does not come to warm himself — nor, needless to say, does he come to study and pray. I doubt if he is able even to recite the “Hear, O Israel.” Ignatz was a foundling and did not study in the Hebrew school, and when he grew up he ran about the streets, until the war came and made him a soldier. When he came back from the war he became a beggar. And if he comes to the Beit Midrash, he comes to collect charity from me, for since the day we have been heating the Beit Midrash, I have been doing much sitting and little going out, so he comes here to make sure of his payment.

In my honor, Ignatz has improved his language and asks for his needs in the Holy Tongue, saying nasally “ Mu’es .” And when he stretches out his hand he does not push his face at me. Ignatz knows that I give to him even if he does not show me his disfigurement.

Since the day Dolik offered him a glass of brandy to drink through the hole in his face, which is in the place of his nose, and I rebuked Dolik, saying, “How can a man born of a Jewish woman be so cruel?” Ignatz has taken me to his heart, and — so I have heard — he says that were he not in need he would not take money from me. Ignatz also says that even if he did not take I would give him perforce, because I am a merciful and goodhearted man who cannot bear to see my neighbor in trouble, and I give of my own accord even if I am not asked.

Ignatz is a lean, erect man with a smooth face on which nothing juts out except his mustache, which turns upward and makes the cavity of his nose a kind of pitcher. There are insignia of honor pinned to his chest, some that he won by his deeds and some that he took from his comrades who fell in the war. Before the war he used to look after horses or tout for coach passengers, and sometimes he would act as a pimp, although there was no need of it, for there were other pimps standing at the hotel doors to serve sinners who put their bodies before their souls. The people of Szibucz disagreed about him. Some said his mother was a Jewess and his father a Gentile. It happened that in a certain village near our town, forty years ago and more, there was no quorum in the synagogue, so the Jews of the village used to pray in town on the Days of Awe. One year, on the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the innkeeper and his wife went to town, they left a young girl, their relative, alone in the house, for she was sick. During the night thieves came and robbed the inn and set it on fire. One of them found the girl hiding in the garden and ravished her, and Ignatz was born of that. Others said, however, that his father and mother were both Jews, but his father was an evil man, who cast his eyes on another woman, left his wife pregnant, and ran away. When Ignatz was born it was hard for his mother to support him, so she left him at the Great Synagogue in the pile of tattered pages from the holy books in the courtyard. A childless carter saw him, picked him up and brought him home, and saw him through until the war came and Ignatz went off as a soldier. Then a grenade splinter struck him and smashed his nose, and when the war ended he came back to Szibucz, where his disfigurement gave him a head start on the other beggars. Although there are a number of beggars with deformities in our town, none of them earns as good a living as Ignatz. There is something about Ignatz’s disfigurement which is not like others’, for with other deformed persons, such as those without hands, by the time you have considered what this poor man will take his copper coin with, since he has no hands, you find that you forget to give it to him. The same with one who has no feet. By the time you put your hand in your pocket, you have already passed him, and he has no feet to run after you, so you put him out of your mind. It is not like that with Ignatz, who stretches out his hand and runs after you looking at you with the three holes in his face and cries, “ Pieniadze ”; immediately you throw him a copper, if only so he should not look at you, especially if he says “ Mu’es ,” for the Hebrew word issues from his lips like something loathsome, reverberating in the cavity of the nose he has lost.

It was all very fine of me to take up the poor man’s cause against Dolik, but what I said to him, “How can a man born of a Jewish woman treat this wretched fellow so cruelly?” did not turn out to be in my favor, for when my own turn came I saw that I was as cruel as Dolik. The first time Ignatz came to the Beit Midrash to beg charity from me, I told him to come in and warm himself. He obeyed and entered. When I was ready to go I did not find my coat. Next morning I found Ignatz dressed in my coat, and took it off him. He stared at me with his eyes and the hole in place of his nose and said to me, “How can a man born of a Jewish woman treat his brother so cruelly and take his coat off him on a cold day like this?” So Ignatz paid me back with the same coin I had used for Dolik.

To return to our subject. Every day we hold three services in our old Beit Midrash, and four on the Sabbath. What shall I tell first and what shall I tell last? Everyday wisdom suggests that I should first describe the six working days, on which we sustain the body; the higher wisdom suggests that I should start with the Sabbath, which sustains the soul. But since the six working days come first in the order of creation, we shall start with them.

Briefly, then, every day we hold three public services, and on Mondays and Thursdays we take out the Scroll and read the Torah. The prayer leader goes from the lectern to the Ark, takes out the Scroll, goes up with it to the pulpit, lays it on the reading desk and begins, “May His kingdom be soon revealed and made visible unto us, and may He be gracious unto our remnant and unto the remnant of His people, the House of Israel, granting them grace, kindness, mercy, and favor…” and then he reads the Torah. Before returning the Scroll to the Ark he says, “May it be His will to establish the house of our life… to preserve among us the wise men of Israel… that we may hear and receive good tidings of salvation and comfort, and that He may gather our scattered ones from the four corners of the earth….” And he begs mercy “for our brethren, the children of Israel, who are given over to trouble and captivity, whether they are on the sea or on dry land, that the All-present may have mercy upon them and bring them forth from trouble to tranquillity, from darkness to light, from subjection to redemption….”