S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

In the early days, when the world was founded on the Torah, Szibucz produced rabbis, and afterward scholars. After that it produced men of action, but they gave us no more than the scent of action, while when Knabenhut went into public affairs he showered us with deeds in overflowing measure.

This was the beginning of Knabenhut’s doings in Szibucz. There were wretched boys in the town, poor boys, the sons of poor men, shop assistants and laborers, who lived like cattle, tyrannized over day and night by their masters. When Knabenhut came along, he got them together, hired them a room and lectured them on science and social theory, until they straightened their backs and lifted up their heads. Some of them were devoted to him all their lives, ready to jump into fire and water for his sake; others betrayed him, made a mockery of his teachings, and when they reached the place where their masters had stood and became their own masters, they behaved as their masters had behaved to them at first. Knabenhut incited his disciples against the Zionists; and during a strike his disciples would see to it that no one stole away to take work; but he made light of those who betrayed him, and even when he had the opportunity he did not pay them back.

Schutzling was one of his disciples at the beginning and was more devoted to his teacher than any of them, until Sigmund Winter came along and taught them that Knabenhut was only a daydreamer, for he wanted to reform the world through socialism, when there was no help for the world but extinction.

This Sigmund Winter was the son of a doctor and one of Knabenhut’s disciples. He was distinguished from his fellows by his black hair and his beautiful eyes, which he used to fix on the girls. There were many stories they used to tell about him: it was said, for instance, that he would go after a girl in the street and say to her, “Let me look at you”—which was not customary in Szibucz, where they used to talk to girls with respect. On the other hand, he was not distinguished in his studies and would go from one high school to the other, sometimes because his teachers could not stand up to his eyes and sometimes because he could not delve deeply enough into their wisdom. There is reason to believe that he was not lacking in other qualities, which the men of Szibucz did not mention, for it was the custom in Szibucz to tell things about their great men that minimized their stature, and whenever anyone was greater than his fellows, his fellows used to say that he was not distinguished in his youth — on the contrary, that he often failed to understand points of learning known to any child, who is neither clever nor foolish. It would be no exaggeration to say that if Og, King of Bashan, had been born in our town they would have said that Rabbi Gadiel the Infant was a head taller than he. When Sigmund Winter’s time came to enter the university, he went where he went and we did not know where, and we heard nothing at all of him for many years. One day a rumor spread in the town that he had been arrested in Gibraltar for an incredible act; if it had not been written in the newspapers, no one would have believed it, for he was suspected of having tried to assassinate a certain king who was passing through the country. We thought Winter’s end had come, and we said it was right for it to come. Then the papers said that deputies in the Austrian parliament had protested against a foreign country throwing an Austrian citizen into prison, and — wonderful to relate — Vienna intervened and he was released. Before long, Sigmund Winter appeared. He held his head high like a prince; he had a black cape on his shoulders with its hem flowing down below his knees, and a black hat on his head tilted a little on one side, and his mustache pointing up, with a beard below like half a Shield of David, and beautiful girls of good family accompanying him, and all the ministers making way for him, because he used to walk as if the whole of Szibucz were his private estate. Before long, the papers came to Szibucz, with pictures of Kropotkin and Bakunin and Reclus, and among them the picture of Sigmund Winter. Heavens above, never had Szibucz known a young man to have his picture published abroad, especially among the world’s great men. True, we did not know who Kropotkin and Bakunin and Reclus were, but we understood that they were great men, for otherwise they would not have had their pictures published in the papers. And indeed we were not wrong, for those in the know told us that the first two were princes and sons of princes, while the third, Elysée Reclus, was a university professor.

What reason did Winter have for returning to Szibucz? If it was true that he wanted to raise his hand against the King, well, there are no kings in Szibucz. After all, what harm have the kings done to him that he tries to make their lives a misery? And if he is an anarchist, what of it? People have all kinds of opinions, one more peculiar than the next, and if everyone acted on them what would the world come to?

Before long, various kinds of brochures and pamphlets were discovered, with all kinds of evil things about the commandments of the Lord and the eternal laws enunciated by the great men of all generations for the improvement of the world. On the other hand, there were good things said there about free love and the like. Before long, the town was rent with controversy; every day there were quarrels, every day people came to blows. This was not a controversy between masters and servants, or socialists and Zionists, but a controversy between socialists and their comrades. We used to think that everyone who followed Knabenhut was devoted to him forever, but in the end many turned against him and became enemies to him and their former comrades. So Knabenhut stood up and attacked them, as he had never attacked any man or faction. For who had been his rivals before? Either men who were well aware that they had a skeleton in the closet and were afraid they would be discovered, or Zionists who played with words. But here Knabenhut found rabid zealots facing him, ready to sacrifice themselves and the whole world as well. When he saw that he could not defeat them, he betrayed them to the authorities — and some say it was not he who betrayed them but one of his comrades, because in the end Knabenhut himself was punished by the authorities, as well as his opponents. Some of them fled the country and some redoubled their war against Knabenhut, while the authorities closed one eye to their actions and laughed with the other at this Knabenhut, whose disciples had seized his weapons and were sharpening them against their leader. And we too were glad. Not that our views were close to those of the anarchists — but it was like this: a man who reads the Koran is not said to have become a Turk — but anyone who reads the Gospels is suspected of being a heretic, because the one is near and the other is far.

I was not attracted by Knabenhut or his opinions, but I thought about him a great deal. A great quality is power, but greater still is the quality of renunciation. When we find both of them in one man, we admire him. These two qualities were united in Knabenhut. He showed his power in deeds, and renounced his own interests. Sometimes his means were wrong and the end was right, and sometimes his means were right and the end was wrong, but one way or the other we never heard of him seeking his own welfare. We were accustomed to men who summoned up strength to defeat their enemies and gave up a little of their own interests so that others should renounce much, but we did not see a man who gave up his own to others and for their benefit. When they tried to bribe him with a good post he would not accept it. Moreover, he abandoned philosophy and such studies, and went to study law; and he did not use it for his own selfish purposes, but served the oppressed even without pay, and borrowed money at interest to support the strikes. We were accustomed to men who squandered money for power and authority, for women or horses; Knabenhut did not chase women, or want to become a member of parliament, or seek any other kind of greatness for himself. It cannot be said that Szibucz lacked idealists, but between ourselves, how much did it cost? A man who bought a share in a Zionist bank, and took the shekel as a sign of membership, and paid a monthly contribution of twenty-five groschen to a Zionist society, was called a loyal comrade. And if he gave half a zloty for the people of Mahanayim he was called a good Zionist. But Knabenhut rented and furnished a house for his comrades, and bought books and newspapers for them, and learned to speak Yiddish so as to be able to speak to his comrades in their own language — unlike most of our leaders, who were too lazy even to learn the Hebrew alphabet.