S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

While we were living in tranquillity, the judgment struck us. The enemy raised his sword against our holy city and the cities of our God, and the houses of Israel were plundered. Jews were killed and burned and grievously tormented, and all the fruits of our toil were pillaged. “Yet His anger has still not been appeased, and His hand — heaven forbid — is still outstretched.”

My wife and children and I emerged alive, and the sword from the desert did not strike at our persons. But my belongings were looted and my books torn up, and the house in which I thought I should live was laid desolate. “The Lord gave and the Lord took; blessed be the Name of the Lord.”

Praised be the Name of the Lord that we emerged alive, but our household goods and my books were pillaged and torn. I, for whom every article in the Land is like a limb of the body, and every book is a part of the soul, suddenly became as one stricken in body and soul.

My wife was worse stricken than I: when the disaster fell upon us it took away all her strength, and when some began to return to their homes and rebuild the ruins, we could not do the same. Anyone who has lived through most of his life and has endured two destructions has no strength left. So she and her children went to her relatives in Germany, and I went to the town of my birth.

What I did in my town I have written in this book, and what my wife did in the home of her relatives she wrote to me in letters. From her letters it could be seen that she was not broken-hearted at living abroad; on the contrary, there was a slight measure of joy there, for she had cast off the burden of home and the trouble of guests, and was free to look after the children, to bring them up and educate them and teach them. True, the little ones longed for the Land of Israel, and at every mishap they would say: “In Jerusalem this did not happen to us.” You may say that she too was longing for the Land a little, especially for its climate; nevertheless, she was living well abroad, for she was resting and the children were learning to recognize their family and know their origins. They were already speaking German and giving pleasure to their relatives with their accent, which sounded somewhat like Hebrew. They were also teaching their young relatives Hebrew, and it was very likely that they knew more than the rabbiner . Once my little girl happened to say “Take a footstool” in Hebrew, and the rabbiner did not know what she meant. A certain professor who chanced to be there said, “Prodigious! This baby is learned in the language of the Talmud, for this word is not mentioned in Gesenius’ dictionary, but it is mentioned in the dictionary of the Talmud and the Midrashim.”

I do not press my wife to return and she does not press me to return. So long as the measure of our exile is not fulfilled, we dwell abroad, she with her relatives, and I in the town of my birth, and every week we reach out to each other by letter. I write all that I can write, and she writes all that she can write.

Some of my friends in the Land also send me letters. To some I reply and to others I do not. I reply to those to whom I have nothing to say, and I do not reply to those to whom I have something to say, for since they are near to my heart, I talk to them while I talk to myself, and because there is so much to say I do not succeed in putting it on paper, so I put off my reply from day to day and week to week. But to my wife and children I write regularly, whether I have anything to tell or not. And since the day Reb Hayim took on all the burden of the Beit Midrash and I am free to my own devices, I write them even more.

The events are few and the words are many, and I add more in the margin of the letter and between the lines. I see my wife sitting by herself, turning the letter over from top to bottom and bottom to top, and screwing up her eyes to take in every single letter. And I am glad that my wife takes so much trouble with me, not like a woman who skims over her husband’s letter, folds it up, and puts it away; perhaps my wife reads it again once or twice, or perhaps she reads it aloud as I read hers aloud, but her voice is more pleasant than mine.

My own letters, too, those I write to her, I am in the habit of reading aloud, and I have my own sound reason, for it is the way of the voice to hover and wander from place to place, and sometimes two places that are far away from one another are joined by the voice and combined into one, as if they were one place.

After I have written to my wife and children I say to myself: Here is the pen in my hand; I will write to the Land of Israel and ask them to send me a box of oranges. A man gets tired of eating potatoes every day, and his soul longs for a blessed fruit that rejoices the heart and the eye. Potatoes are also fit for Jews to eat, and we say a blessing over them, but oranges are more beautiful. It is not without reason that the Land of Israel was blessed with them, for the Holy One, blessed be He, plants every beautiful fruit in His garden. And what is the garden of the Holy One, blessed be He? The Land of Israel.

The orange season has come. The groves are full of fruit, hanging on their trees like little suns, their pleasant fragrance filling the land. There stand the boys and girls. If it is strength you want, there are the boys; if beauty, there are the girls. If you are a man of imagination, join the strength and the beauty together. Alas for that man who has been exiled from there.

Let us return to our subject. The groves are full of trees and the trees full of fruit. There stand the boys and girls; they pick the fruit into baskets and bring these into the packing house. There sit other girls, as fair as those we noted before, and sort the fruit. The good fruit they wrap up in tissue paper printed with Hebrew letters, and the mediocre they send out to the markets of Jerusalem and the rest of the country. There are people who feed on nothing but oranges, like the pioneers who have nothing to eat. But I, praise the Lord, have other foods as well, grown in the Land and grown abroad, and for additional enjoyment I add an orange to my meal.

I sit a little while and think: To whom shall I write. If I write to So-and-so, my friend, perhaps he will have left the Land for abroad and my letter will not reach him. The wings he made for himself to fly to the Land of Israel he has made into wheels for his feet to run abroad. Yesterday he was in the Land and today he is no longer there. Yesterday he went out of the Land to a congress and today to a conference. And if there is no congress and no conference, his body says to him: Every year you travel for the sake of duty; this year go out for your own sake — to the springs of salvation, mineral springs.

But one man there is in the Land of Israel who is not moved from his place by all the affairs of the world, neither congresses nor conferences, neither mineral springs nor the needs of the body. From the day he opened his little fruit and vegetable shop by the side of the street, he is firmly planted in his place ready to serve you, and if I write to him, my letter will find him and he will send me a box of oranges. Modest and humble is this shopkeeper, and he does not stir the world with his words. All the shopkeeper thinks of is how to sustain his house and teach his sons to read and find husbands for his daughters, and that perhaps the Almighty will help them and they will not need to stand in a shop like his, for shops are many and income is small. When Israel returned for the second time, Ezra the Scribe prescribed that there should be peddlers going around the villages; when Israel returned for the third time, they prescribed shops for themselves. In the days of Ezra, when Israel tilled the Land, they had patience to wait until the peddler should come to them; we, who have gone far away from our soil, are impatient and cannot wait; so we have set up many shops in every street and every house, in every nook and corner.