S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

“Once, when he knelt during the thanksgiving prayer, his shoestring broke. After the prayer he remembered this, and, remembering this, remembered all that had happened to him, and that it was already thirteen years and more since he had left his wife, and if his wife had borne a son the time had come for him to fulfill the commandments. But for fear of neglecting the Torah he banished these thoughts from his heart and returned to his teaching.

“When the first day of the New Year Festival arrived, and he went out to the river to recite the Tashlich prayer, he saw a Jewish child standing on the other side. ‘Are you my son Hanoch?’ he asked him. ‘Father,’ the child replied, ‘I am your son Hanoch, and I have done as you commanded Mother.’ Immediately the father pulled off his shoes and threw them to his child, so that he should put them on and cross the river. But the father’s hands were weary from study, and the child’s hands were too small, so the shoes fell into the river and did not reach the child. The child could not reach his father, and the father could not reach the child, because his shoes were lost. So they stood, one on this side of the river and one on that. ‘How can I help you, my son?’ said the father. ‘It is a decree of the Holy One, blessed be He. Go back to Jerusalem and study the Torah, and when the time is ripe for the coming of the Messiah, I shall return to you with all our brethren, the Sons of Moses and the Ten Tribes.’ So the child returned to his mother in Jerusalem, studied much Torah, and became a Master of the Law in Israel.”

In the past, when I used to finish the treatment of a subject of the Gemara I would go over it again, but I cannot do so today, because I have cut down my stay in the Beit Midrash and extended my walks in the fields and the forest. If it is a fine day I bathe in the river. It is natural for water to stimulate the soul and restore the body to its youth, especially when you bathe in a river in which you bathed when you were little. The water in which I bathed when I was little has already gone down to the Great Sea and been swallowed by the great fishes, but the river is still as it was in the days when I was a boy. However, when I was a boy there were many cabins standing there, and today there is not even one. In the past, when the people of our town were dressed in fine clothes, they needed a clean place to leave them in; now, when the whole town is dressed in ugly clothes, they leave them on the banks of the river.

Since I have mentioned the matter of clothes, I will mention that I had a new suit made and bought new shoes. When I went out in the street, people looked at me. Do you think they were jealous of me? Not at all: they were jealous of the people to whom I had given the old ones. Dire poverty had descended on the town. Once, when I threw away a paper cigarette pack, a respectable man fell upon it and picked it up. What for? To use it for the salt on his table.

Not every day is fine; not every day is suitable for walking or bathing in the river. There are days in Szibucz when the rain comes down without a stop, when the whole town swims in mud, and you cannot go out and cannot go in. And since it is impossible to sit all day in the hotel or the Beit Midrash and you want to see a human being, you remember that you have promised someone a visit, so you go to keep your promise.

Whom had I promised? You might ask, whom hadn’t I promised. There is not a man in the town who has not invited me to visit him — not out of love for the visitor but out of sheer boredom. The town is small and its doings are few, so everyone wishes to distract himself with conversation. And since I did not know whom to visit, I visited Schuster: first, because he too was included in that promise, and second, to give some pleasure to his wife, who said that never did she find any time so welcome as the time I spent with her.

Sprintze was sitting in the big chair that Schuster had brought with him from Germany. There were two sticks lying at her feet for her to lean on when she went from bed to chair or chair to bed, for Germany had taken away her strength and dried up her legs, and but for her two sticks she would have lain there motionless as a stone. The outside door was open and on the threshold lay a copper basin, in which withered grasses were drying in the sun; Sprintze takes some for her pipe and others she uses to make a kind of tea. This tea is an elixir for the heart and a medicine for the soul, since the grasses come from the threshold of the house where she was born, and draw vitality from there, just as she herself had done. When you infuse these grasses and drink their essence, the body recovers its strength and reawakens as if it had returned to the house where it was born. “And, my dear, although the house is in ruins and its dwellers have gone into exile,” says Sprintze, “the grasses keep their grip and will not let go, and if you uproot them they sprout again, for it is natural for grasses, my friend, to love the source of their vitality. In this they are like human beings; only human beings abandon the source of their vitality, while grasses do not leave their place, and even if they are plucked out they sprout again and give healing to men.

“If I have not told you, my friend, sit down and let me tell you. My grandfather, may he rest in peace and speak for us in the world to come, was a porter, like his fathers and his fathers’ fathers before him, and as my father, may he rest in peace, was a porter. You should know, my friend, that we come from a healthy family, who like to take hold of tools that have some substance, and not to hold the needle and stab the cloth like a flea does flesh. If I told you, my friend, about the strength and vigor of my family, you would say, ‘If that is so, Sprintze, why are you so sickly?’ But let us not mix up one thing with another, and go back to my grandfather. Well, my friend, my grandfather, may he rest in peace, was a porter, and like all porters he would never refuse to take a glass of brandy so long as there was a copper in his pocket — and, needless to say, at times when there was not a copper in his pocket, for then he would be eaten up with anxiety, and eating calls for a drink. In those days the town was full of taverns. If he went this way he found a tavern before him, if he went the other way he found before him a tavern. In short, my friend, whichever way a man turned he would find himself turning toward a tavern, apart from the liquor shop in the middle of the town, where there were all kinds of big barrels full of brandy from which they drew liquor and gave men to drink. My grandfather, who used to live at peace with everyone, would go into this one’s house and then that one’s — and he did not stay away from the third either, for you must know, my friend, that he was a lively man, and never in his life was he too lazy to do something. And when he came in he would drink a glass or two, one to clear his bowels and one for enjoyment. And sometimes he would just come in and drink. Then, needless to say, before the meal and after the meal and during the meal, to steep the food in his innards, for eating without drinking is like a girl who gets pregnant, if you’ll excuse me, without the ceremony of holy matrimony.

“As time went on, my grandfather started to groan from his heart: cough, cough, cough. Says my grandmother, may she rest in peace, ‘Ilya, perhaps you will leave the brandy alone?’ He went into a rage and said to her, ‘What else should I drink? Perhaps grass-water like you?’ ‘Why not?’ says she. He grew angrier still at her for comparing herself to him, for he, my friend, was a big burly man and she, my friend, was as little as an ant.

“One hot summer day, on a Sabbath afternoon, my grandfather was sitting in front of his house, because he was too sick to go to the Beit Midrash and hear the rabbi’s commentary on a chapter, and because he used to disturb the listeners with his cough, cough, cough. He saw a bee buzzing as it flew; he looked at it affectionately and did not drive it away, for although he was an irascible man he had a good heart. As it was buzzing and flying about he says to himself: I should like to know what this creature is looking for here. This he said once, twice, and three times. My grandfather was no expert in the conversation of bees, and that bee was no expert in the conversation of men. You might imagine that all his wishes were in vain, but I tell you, my friend, anyone who sets his mind on a certain thing will understand it in the end. And it is worth your while, my friend, to hear how this matter took shape and how my grandfather learned at last the message of what had been hidden from him.