S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

A man came up and said to me, If it is a match you want, here you are.” I looked at him and asked myself, “Where has Elimelech vanished to? I wanted to tell him something, or he wanted to tell me something.”

The man took out a match, rubbed it on his sole and lit it, but by the time I put it to my mouth it had gone out. He took out a second match and said, “Don’t be like those men who, if they are offered something, turn it over in their minds until it slips from their fingers.” “Is this a parable?” said I. “It is the truth,” said he. “Then He Himself, the Truth, is a parable,” said I. He put his hand on his right ear with his thumb on his Adam’s apple and chanted with a chant of glory, “And He was, and He is, and He shall be in glory.” “You are the old cantor,” I said. “David the beadle am I,” he said, “who summoned the people to prayer.” “But surely,” I said, “I saw your tombstone in the graveyard, and if you do not believe me I will give you a sign: the picture of a hand, with a little baton in its fingers, is engraved on the tombstone, and I even still remember the rhyme on it.” “I did not know they had put rhymes on my tombstone,” said David. “You did not know?” “I have not been in the graveyard.” “And where have you been?” “Where have I been? Rousing the sleepers to prayer; I had no time to go and lie in the grave.” “Please, Reb David, do not be harsh with me, surely you do not mean to say that you are alive?” He looked at me and said, “And you, are you alive?” “What is the sense of this question?” I said. “And what is the sense of the question you asked me?” “Because,” I replied, “I saw your gravestone: ‘Passed away the 5th day of Adar Rishon 5602,’ that is in February 1842, and I saw your name engraved on the tombstone. If you do not stop me I will read you the rhymes:

‘David summoned men to prayers,

Served our folk in their affairs,

Walked the strait and narrow way,

Good and upright night and day.

Heavenly prosecutor! Silence, pray.’”

“Wonder of wonders,” said David. “They even put my father’s name on the tombstone,” “Where do you see your father’s name?” “Just look at the last line,” replied David. “It is indicated in the initials of the words.” And indeed, in Hebrew the line reads: “ Yehass alav kategor bashamayim ”—signifying “ Yakob .” “You are a clever fellow,” I said, “I read the inscription and did not notice your father’s name, while you noticed it though you only heard it from my lips. But that’s not all. How is it, Reb David, that you use matches to make fire, when I remember that if the old men wanted to make fire, they would rub two stones together? Did you have matches in your day? Or perhaps you’re not the same Reb David?” “Who else do you think I am? Do you think I am Elimelech?” “How do I know?” “You don’t know and you ask questions!” “If a man asks questions, he gets a reply.” “And if he gets a reply?” “He adds to his knowledge.” “Such as: when So-and-so died and what was engraved on his tombstone?” “And is that all I know?” “That is not all you know; you also know how to compose formulae of the same kind. Perhaps you will compose rhymes for the tombstones of Hanoch and Freide?” “Do you think it is my duty to compose them?” “I do not think anything. I have been given a staff in my hand to arouse the sleepers to prayer, so I arouse them and pass on.” “And do they awake and arise?” “It is for me to awaken them; it is not for me to check and see whether they have risen. He that is commanded to do, and does, does not turn his head back to see what others are doing. Now I take my leave of you, for I have to go, and I believe that you wanted to go too.”

“I too wanted to go, but I was delayed by Elimelech, son of the Kaiserin, my mother’s nurse.” “What are you telling me?” said Reb David, “Elimelech lives far from here.” “Far from here? And what is he doing?” “Writing letters to his mother.” “And what does he write?” “That he wishes to return to Szibucz.” If so, is he likely to return?” “If he finds the money for the journey.” “And what else does he write?” Reb David stretched out his hand and said, “Read.” I saw engraved on it the verse, “And it is a time of trouble for Jacob.” I asked Reb David, “Who was that old man who crossed my path on the day I went to make the key?” Reb David replied, “Tell me the day he passed away and I will tell you who he was.” Reb David took his leave of me and I went into the Beit Midrash.

I returned to my Beit Midrash and my studies. I sat alone in the Beit Midrash, and no one interrupted me. Elimelech and Reb David had left. Reuben and Simon and Levi and Judah were busy earning a livelihood; they traveled about the countryside and did not come home except on Sabbath eve at dark. They could hardly take their clothes off before the Holy Day overtook them, and they welcomed the Sabbath at home or in a nearby house of prayer. This is how they earn their living: Reuben has entered into partnership with Simon, who has become an assistant to an agent for cigarette papers. This agent had a little car, shaped like a box, and Reuben, who learned to drive during the war, drives this car. They go around to the shops and taverns that sell cigarettes, and at night they sleep in the car — Reuben on the driver’s seat and Simon in the box — except for the agent, who sleeps in hotels. This driver’s seat is long enough for three ordinary men to sit, and if you cramp yourself and do not care about your feet hanging down outside, you can use it to sleep on, especially in the short summer nights. Levi has found himself some other way of making a living — I don’t know what — while Judah goes to Lvov to bring merchandise from there and takes less pay from the shopkeepers than what they would pay for mailing. If his two hands are not sufficient, he carries the bundles on his shoulders, and if his shoulders aren’t sufficient, good people come and lend him a hand. So long as the merchants of Lvov give him merchandise he takes his pay and celebrates the Sabbath; if not, he loses his outlays, as happened once when he came to buy cloth for a shopkeeper (the same one from whom I bought cloth for my coat), and the merchant would not give it to him, because the shopkeeper owed him money and had not paid.

Even Reb Hayim stays away from the Beit Midrash, except on Sabbath eves, when he sweeps the floor and fills the basin with water. And when he does come, it seems like his last coming, because his daughter and son-in-law have urged him to go and live with them. I heard that on Shavuot they visited Szibucz and Reb Hayim promised them to come.

What reason did Reb Hayim have for not going with them at once? After some time we found that he had undertaken to teach Hanoch’s orphans the Kaddish and the prayers first; that was why he put off his journey.

Let us return to our affairs. I sat alone in the Beit Midrash and no one interrupted me. But if others did not interrupt me, my thoughts did. Everything I had seen and heard distracted my mind. Even things a man pays no attention to when he can see them forced themselves on me and unsettled me. For one hour I flew from one end of the world to the other; for another hour I flashed from man to man. People who had died seemed to me alive, and the living appeared to me as dead. Sometimes I saw them face to face, and sometimes I saw the tombstones on their graves.

To deliver myself from this confusion, I fixed my attention on my comrades in the countryside, with whom I had spent the festival of Shavuot. Just think: the sons of Shimke, Yoshke, Veptchi, and Godzhik have abandoned the ways of their fathers and do not wish to live on each other or on other people, but only from the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He. As for the reformation of the world, a man who reforms himself reforms the world at the same time. And even if they do not hold out, and behave like Yeruham Freeman, what they have done in the meantime combines with what others have done. It is like the soldiers of the king: one serves in the army a year, another two years, a third three — as a result the king always has an army.