S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

After the mourners’ Kaddish, the congregation wished each other a good and blessed year. That troublesome fellow, Elimelech Kaiser, came up and greeted me. “I believe I have not yet offered you my good wishes,” he said, and put out his hand. I returned his greeting and reminded him of the matter of the key I had received through him. “I was joking,” said he, stammering, “and I ask you to forgive me.” “On the contrary,” said I, “it is a precious gift that I have received through you.” Said he, “You are laughing at me, sir, so now we have nothing against each other.”

Daniel Bach went up to the cantor and said, “A happy new year, Father, a happy new year. Come home with me and have a meal.” Reb Shlomo replied, “ Nu, nu ,” and it was not clear from his voice whether he was agreeing or not. Daniel Bach looked at him and said, “Father, please come. Sara Pearl will warm you up a glass of milk. Warm milk is good for the throat after the fast. Aren’t you hoarse, Father?” “What are you thinking of, son, to say I am hoarse,” said Reb Shlomo. “If we had been given two Days of Atonement, I would have recited all the prayers over again.” “A glass of warm milk with a little honey in it is good after the fast,” repeated Daniel. “Come, Father, the child wants to hear the Havdala at the end of the Holy Day.” “We must recite the sanctification for the new moon first,” said Reb Shlomo. “Well,” said Daniel, “we’ll wait for you to come, Father.” “How well this one knows how to ask!” said Reb Shlomo. “If you had asked your Father in heaven like that you would have been saved. You were here during the Closing Service. I heard the sound of your foot. It made me very sad. It is high time you were saved.”

Reb Shlomo went out to the yard of the Beit Midrash to sanctify the new moon, and Daniel Bach went after him. A fine moon stood in the sky, shining on the upper and the lower worlds. I stood and waited for the congregation to finish the sanctification of the moon and go home, for I held the key to the Beit Midrash, and someone might have left something there and come back to fetch it. When they had all gone, I locked up the Beit Midrash.

And still Daniel stood waiting for his father. After Reb Shlomo had shaken the skirts of his coat, as is the custom after the sanctification, Daniel whispered to him, “Come, Father, come.” “I am coming, I am coming,” said Reb Shlomo, nodding his head. Daniel bowed his head and said, “Yes, yes, Father.” So he took his arm and they went. Said Reb Shlomo, “I cannot run like you.” “You can’t run,” said Daniel, “I’ll shorten my steps.”

As he was going he said to me, “We are going the same road, aren’t we? Won’t you go with us?” So I went with them, although I knew the way myself.

Before the month of Tishri was out, the people of the Beit Midrash had gone off on their separate ways, except for Reb Shlomo the cantor, who delayed his going up to the Land of Israel. Szibucz did not notice its loss. In these days, the towns of Poland are used to shedding their inhabitants by stealth, a few today and a few tomorrow, and one group does not grieve for the other; nor, of course, does one group envy the other. These are days when it is bad for Jews who stay at home and bad for those who go elsewhere. In the past, when a man changed his place he changed his luck; now, wherever a Jew goes, his bad luck goes with him. Nevertheless, you find some consolation in moving, because you move yourself from the realm of “certainly” to the realm of “perhaps.” Everywhere else, if you have a choice between “certainly” and “perhaps,” “certainly” is better; but here “perhaps” is better than “certainly.” For you are certain that the place where you live is hard; perhaps your salvation will come from somewhere else. And why do they travel in the winter, as if the cold days were good for traveling? Surely the summer is best. But summer is better for the rich, and winter is better for the poor, for in winter most of the ships leave empty and lower their fares. If I returned to the Land of Israel now, my voyage would cost me less. For the time being it is not my intention to return, but since we were talking of ships I remembered my own ship.

One day my host said to me, “I have heard that you want to stay with us. If so, we shall treat you as a permanent guest and reduce your bill. Or perhaps you would like to rent a house for yourself. There are many houses standing empty, but you will not find a good one. We have one room where all the fine folk who come here like to stay. If you wish, we shall clear it for you.” “I don’t want to change either my lodging or my room,” I replied, “but I am afraid that if you see I am satisfied with everything you will think little of me.” Said the hotelkeeper, “Because a man is satisfied with me, should I think little of him?” Said I, “Let us ask the mistress of the house; perhaps I am too much trouble for her. I am not finicky about food, but you know I don’t eat meat. It may be difficult to cook special dishes for me.” “Who eats meat here?” said the mistress of the house. “All six days of the week no one has a taste of meat. And for the Sabbath I can cook you special dishes. During the war we learned to cook without meat; only in wartime we cooked without meat or anything else, and the food had no flavor or anything; but since the war I have learned to make the food tasty even without meat. There was a doctor here who didn’t eat any flesh foods, and he taught me to make all kinds of dishes with vegetables, and I haven’t forgotten his teaching yet.”

It is not quite proper for a man to sing his own praises, but in general I am happy with my lot. I have a room in the hotel, with a bed, a table and a chair, a lamp and a wardrobe. As for food, the hotelkeeper’s wife makes me a good meal every day. Since I am not ungrateful, I sing her praises to her face, and when she hears them she makes her cooking tastier and tastier.

This is the food she prepares for me. In the morning a cup of coffee, with a layer of cream covering it like the lid of a pot, and a hot dish of beans made like a kind of porridge, or potatoes with cheese, or chopped cabbage, or cabbage leaves filled with rice or groats, sometimes with raisins or mushrooms — all made with butter. On Sabbath eves: pancakes filled with buckwheat, or cheese with raisins and cinnamon, baked in the morning and eaten hot. The midday meal is fuller than the breakfast, for it includes soup and vegetables. The evening meal is less, but there is always something new. For Sabbath she cooks fish, boiled or stuffed, or pickled or marinated, besides other good things. And it goes without saying that there is no Sabbath without a pudding. She is helped by Krolka, one of those few still left of the Swabians who were brought to Galicia by the Emperor Joseph, and who speaks German mingled with Yiddish. So I sit in the hotel, sometimes in my room and sometimes in the dining room, which they usually call the salon. As the guests are few and the work is not heavy, the host is almost idle. His face is straight and his forehead narrow; his hair is black, streaked with grey; and his eyes are half closed, either because he does not expect to see anything new or because he wants to preserve the old sights. He keeps the stem of his pipe in his mouth and his thumb on the bowl. Sometimes he adds more tobacco and sometimes he sucks it empty. He lets fall a word and then is silent, so as to give the guest time to answer, either out of respect for the guest or in order to test his character.

I am this guest. I reply to everything he asks and add things he did not ask about, and I do not conceal even things about which one is usually silent. Since the people of my town cannot imagine that a man should describe things as they really are, they believe I am a shrewd fellow, who talks much and evades the main point. At first I tried to tell them the truth, but when I found that the true truth deceived them, I left them with the imaginary truth.