S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

Toni thought: He says, this is one transaction he’s emerged from safely; that means there was another transaction he didn’t emerge from safely. She raised her eyes to him, even though she knew that he was not in the habit of talking to her about his business affairs. But this time he opened his heart, and without any prompting began discussing business. He was involved in transactions he had entered into unwillingly, and now he could not extricate himself. These had led to disputes, quarrels and fights with partners and agents, who had bought merchandise with his money and, on seeing they were likely to incur a loss, had debited the amount to him.

Hartmann had started in the middle, like one who is preoccupied and talks of the things that are weighing on his mind. A person unfamiliar with the world of commerce could not have made head or tail of what he was saying, and Toni certainly knew nothing about business. But he ignored this and went on talking. The more he talked, the more confused he made matters sound, until his patience gave way completely, and he began to vent his anger on his agents, on whom he had relied as he relied on himself and who had betrayed his trust, causing him financial loss and involving him in degrading fights and disputes. He still didn’t know how to get rid of them.

Realizing that Toni was listening now, he went back and began from the beginning, carefully explaining each point to her. He now clarified what he had left unexplained in the first telling, and what he did not explain as he went along, he made clear later. Toni began to get the drift of his story, and what she did not grasp with her mind, her heart understood. She looked at him with concern, and wondered how he could bear so many worries without anyone to share them. Hartmann became conscious of her gaze and recounted the entire story in brief. Suddenly he realized that he was seeing his affairs in a new light. Although he had not intentionally set out to prove himself in the right, matters now seemed clearer to him, and he saw that the problem was after all not so insoluble as he had thought.

Toni listened attentively to all he said and realized that his angry mood had been due entirely to his business worries. She applied her new knowledge to the other matter, to the divorce. It was as if he had said, “Now you know why I have been so short-tempered, now you know why we have come to this, to getting divorced, I mean.”

Toni was thinking about the divorce and the period leading up to it, but she did not divert her attention from what he was saying. She lifted her brown eyes, which were full of trust and confidence, and said, “Michael, I’m sure you’ll find a suitable way out of it.” She looked at him again, trusting and submissive, as if it were not he but she who was in trouble, and as if it were she who was seeking help from him. He looked at her as he had not looked at her for a long time past, and he beheld her as he had not beheld her for a long time past. She was a head shorter than he. Her shoulders had grown so thin that they stuck out. She was wearing a smooth brown dress, open at the shoulders but fastened with rings of brown silk through which two white spots were visible. With difficulty he kept himself from caressing her.

2

Hartmann had not been in the habit of talking to his wife much, least of all about business. From the day he had built his house he had tried to keep home and office completely separate. But business has a way of not letting itself be shaken off. Sometimes he would enter the house looking worried. At first, when their love was still strong, he would fob Toni off with a kiss when she asked him to tell her what was worrying him. At a later stage, he would change the subject. Later still, he would scold her: “Isn’t it bad enough that I have worries outside? Do you have to go and drag them into the house? When a man’s at home he wants to take his mind off business worries.”

But a man cannot control his thoughts, and they would come crowding in on him, turning his home into a branch of his shop. The difference was that when he was in the shop, his business affairs got the better of his thoughts, while at home his thoughts got the better of him. His father had not left him any inheritance, nor had his wife brought him a dowry; whatever he had acquired had been the result of his own exertions. He applied himself to business and kept away from other matters. That is how it: had been both before and after his marriage. While still a bachelor he had thought: I’ll get married, build a home, and find contentment there; but when he did get married and built a home, he found himself stripped of all his expectations. At first he had solaced himself with hope, but now even that was gone. True, his wife did her best to please him, and the daughters she had borne him were growing up. On the face of it, he had no complaints against his home; the trouble was that he did not know what to do with himself there. At first he had numerous friends, but as time went on he had lost interest in them: it seemed to him that they only came on Toni’s account. At first he used to look at the books Toni read and tried to keep up with them. But after reading three or four books, he stopped: the love affairs, dresses, plots, and sentiment with which they were filled — what need had an intelligent man to know of such matters? Would I care to hob-nob with such characters?

From the books he drew inferences about Toni, and from Toni about the whole house. Since he knew only his shop and was not in the habit of frequenting clubs, he had no recourse after locking up his shop but to return home. And since, once at home, he did not know what to do, he grew disgusted with himself. He began to find solace in smoking. At first he smoked in order to smother his thoughts; and he went on smoking because they were smothered. He began with cigarettes, and went on to cigars. At first he smoked in moderation, but later took to smoking continuously, until the whole house was filled with the smell of tobacco. He did not consider that he was in any way harming himself; on the contrary, he congratulated himself on the fact that he was sitting quietly by himself and not demanding anything of others. Every man has his form of pleasure: I derive mine from smoking, she derives hers from other sources. And since he didn’t trouble to discover what her form of pleasure was, and he failed to find satisfaction in his own, he became troubled at heart and began to be jealous on her account of every man, woman, and child — in fact, of everything. If he saw her talking to a man or chatting with a woman or playing with a child, he would say: Has she no husband or children of her own that she has to chase about after others?

Michael Hartmann was a merchant, and he sold his goods by weight and by measure: he knew that to waste a measure meant losing it. Eventually he reconciled himself to the situation, not because he condoned her activities, but because she had come to assume less importance in his eyes.

3

The sun was about to set. In the fields the wheat swayed silently, and the sunflowers gazed one-eyed out of their darkening yellow faces. Hartmann stretched his hand out into the vacant air and caressed Toni’s shadow.

All around him the silence was complete. Toni took the parasol and poked at the ground in front of her. Her action seemed devoid of both purpose and grace, and that bothered him. Once again he extended his hand and caressed the air. By now the sun had ended its course and the sky had become dulled. The countryside took on an appearance of desolation, and the trees in the field grew dark. The air began to grow cool, and the cucumber beds were fragrant. High up in the sky was a tiny star, the size of a pinhead. Behind it another star made its way through the clouds and began shining, and other stars followed.