S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

New faces are to be seen in the Beit Midrash. Every day I come across a certain old man dressed in rags. He comes in with me and goes out with me. He sits silent, speaking with no man. It is not my way to ask: Who are you? When I shall need to know, it will be made known to me.

Except on the day I came here, and a second time when the talk turned to the later generations, I had heard no one mention the divorcee and her hotel. The people I come across have nothing to do with a hotel of that type; they do not mention it even in condemnation. But now everyone is talking about it and about the divorcee. And they also tell a story about a certain girl who came across an old man in the market. Said he to her, “Perhaps you know if So-and-so, daughter of So-and-so, still lives here?” Said she to him, “She is my mother.” Said he to her, “If that is your mother, I am your father.” Immediately a rumor spread in the town that the divorcee’s ex-husband had come back.

That ex-husband, Reb Hayim is his name, was a descendant of great men, a brilliant scholar and qualified for the rabbinate. I remember that when he came to live in our town everyone was talking about him and his father-in-law; about him because of his learning, and about his father-in-law in envy.

This father-in-law was rich in money and poor in wisdom. He had a large dry goods store in the center of the town and a permanent seat in the old Beit Midrash. When his daughter reached marriageable age he heard that there was a certain rabbi in a little town near Szibucz who had a son, a great scholar. So he took all his money in notes and put it in a leather wallet, went to the rabbi, and put it down in front of him, saying, “Rabbi, all this is stored away for the husband of my only daughter, apart from property and chattels. Are you willing, Rabbi, to give me your son for my daughter?” The rabbi saw all that money and agreed to the match. The rich man kept his promise and even more. He bought a new house, with fine furniture and books, in which he set down his son-in-law, engaged an attendant to attend him, hired him a seat at the honorable eastern end of the old Beit Midrash, maintained him and his house generously, and even gave presents to his father the rabbi.

So Reb Hayim used to sit and study the Torah in the midst of wealth, and debate with the sages of the town. And he would even find time to put down his contributions on paper and send them to his father the rabbi and the other rabbis of the country, and they would reply with the respect due him. Our town, which had been distinguished for rabbis to whom questions on points of law used to be sent from all over the country, and which at that time had no rabbi but only an adjudicator authorized to decide minor problems of kashruth — spoon and kettle problems — was linked once again, thanks to Reb Hayim, through the bonds of the Torah with the other places in Jewry.

So Reb Hayim sat and studied, while his wife carried and delivered four daughters, and all the worry and bother of them was on her shoulders; and she did not feel the greatness of her husband. Or, if you like, you may say that all the honor with which her husband was crowned did not fit her. Her father and mother, who were proud of their son-in-law, used to be angry with her for not trying to be worthy of him. But she did not know what more she could do. Was it not enough that she wore a wig that reached below her forehead and pressed upon her head like a cart wheel? Was it not enough that she was always cooking for the swarms of intermediaries who used to come from all over the country to entice him to take up a rabbinical post, waiting on them like a maidservant, and had nothing in the world except her husband’s scoldings when he told her to keep the crying children quiet?

As time went on and Reb Hayim did not find a post, he began to turn his eye to the rabbinate of Szibucz. Reb Hayim used to say, “This fellow who is performing the duties of rabbi in Szibucz is only an adjudicator and not a rabbi, so the place of rabbi is vacant; and who is fit to be rabbi if not I?” Ever since Reb Hayim’s arrival, he had belittled the adjudicator. What the other permitted, he forbade, and what the other forbade, he permitted. In the end there was a quarrel between them that shook the town, and the town was divided into two parties. When the controversy spread, Reb Hayim’s party met and decided to make him the rabbi. His father-in-law undertook to provide him with a livelihood all his life and exempt the town from paying a salary, and he also obligated himself to donate for the public needs, apart from what he lavished on individuals. Today, there is not a single one left in the town of all those who took part in the controversy; some have been killed in the war, others have been scattered all over the country and disappeared among all the other fallen ones. In those days they made up a third of our town. When the town was weary of the controversy, they arrived at a compromise: to make the adjudicator rabbi, and Reb Hayim the adjudicator. Rut Reb Hayim would not agree. He said it was not to the honor of a greater man to be the subordinate of a lesser. And so the controversy went on and on.

I had gone up to the Land of Israel before the quarrel broke out and heard only fragmentary stories that reached me there, and I was not much interested in them, for while I was in the Land of Israel I abandoned all the affairs about which they wrangled in exile, and put them out of my mind. Well, a great war spread through the town, until another war came and the whole town fled, except for a few wealthy families who bribed the enemy to leave them alone. The enemy took their money and in the end exiled them too, and Reb Hayim, the most important of them all, they took away as a prisoner. From that time on, nothing was heard of Reb Hayim until a Jew came from Russia and brought a divorce for his wife.

This Jew said that Reb Hayim had fallen ill and was afraid he might die and no one would tell his wife, so that she would be left tied to a dead man all her life. He made a certain official swear to send for a scribe; and he wrote a divorce for his wife and made the scribe swear to take it to her. In the course of time, when the war ended and the world began to return somewhat to its former state, Reb Hayim was released from captivity and went from place to place, from town to town and country to country, until after days and years he reached that woman. He came and knocked at the door, but his wife was not glad to see him, just as she had not been glad when they had married her to him. She was the daughter of an ignoramus, and while her father, who prayed in the old Beit Midrash and saw the honor that was paid to scholars, used to respect rabbis, she, who sat in the store and saw the honor paid to traders and salesmen, did not respect rabbis. Had he not sent her a divorce, or had he sent her a divorce and come back years before, she might have been reconciled to returning to him, but now that he had sent her a divorce and returned after many years, she would not be reconciled to remarrying him, for she was already accustomed to living without a man. Not everyone is of the same opinion. Some say: What a bad woman that is, who sees him suffering and pays him no heed; and some say: What a bad man that is, who wishes to live with sinners. True, that woman has preserved her own virtue and that of her daughters, but she has certainly not preserved the virtue of the house.

Reb Hayim’s coming made no impression. Most of the people of the town were new arrivals, and how should they know Reb Hayim? And those who knew him had troubles of their own and felt they could discharge all their obligations with a sigh. But when they saw him sitting in the Beit Midrash, their hearts were stirred and they cried, “O heavens, a man who was the pride of our town, without a roof over his head!” They began inviting him to visit them, but he did not go. They brought him dishes to the Beit Midrash, but he did not accept them. They began to storm at the divorcee for not taking back her husband. “Leave her alone,” said Reb Hayim. “She owes me nothing.”