S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

When good men are successful in life, it is good for them and good for the world; moreover, they provide convincing testimony that virtue pays, for everyone can see that a man does not toil for nothing or waste his strength in vain. The whole world, therefore, mourns the passing of successful men. Relatives and friends, companies and charities, banks and business firms, managers and administrators, householders and craftsmen, speculators and agents, authors and teachers — all proclaimed their grief in public: in the press and on every wall. The newspapers also praised him at great length, and if they exaggerated, the exaggeration itself showed that the deceased was a great man, for if anyone is praised, he must be praiseworthy.

I too put aside my work to sympathize with his relatives and write them a few words of condolence, for I had been his friend and acquaintance for thirty years. It started when I arrived in the Land of Israel with nothing in my possession but love of the land and love of labor. I went to Mr. Klein to ask his advice, because I had heard that he was an amiable man and one could get advice and assistance from him; but since he had his hands full with the general good, he could not manage to deal with each individual, and he put me off time and again. Several years later, when I had married into a good family and become a family man, he took notice of me and showed me affection and friendship, as if we had been friends all the time. He honored me in the presence of my neighbors and visited me at home; and he used to rebuke me, saying: “I was the first you came to, as soon as you arrived in the country, and now you do not show me your face.” He remembered that I had waited at his door, but forgot that he had put me off. Because he was a great doer and was always doing good to people, he thought he had done good to me as well, like all the public benefactors, who feel as if they have worked for each and every man. I, too, felt as if I had benefited from him. Anyone who has asked another man for a favor, even if it is not granted, feels in his bones an attachment to him, as if he had received a benefit from him.

At the time when Mr. Klein was friendly to me, he had given up all his business and was busy only with his body, treating it with baths and medicines and taking a walk every day. But even during his walks he did not ignore the public needs, like a man of property who surveys his possessions to learn what they require. And during his walks he would call over anyone he met by the way, like those who are accustomed to company and do not like to walk alone. Often he would summon me and walk with me. It is not my way to boast, but I may be permitted to boast of this, because it shows Mr. Klein’s affection, for he took the trouble to tell me all that had been done in Jerusalem during the years of his life. Sometimes he repeated himself, like an old man who is fond of his memories, and sometimes he changed a little, according to the needs of the time and the place.

We used to stroll in the streets and neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Mr. Klein straight as a cedar and I swaying like a reed. As he walked, he would lift his stick and point to a house or a ruin, and tell me how much money had been sunk in the ruin, or how often the house had passed from hand to hand, from bank to bank, from speculator to speculator, from creditor to creditor, and it was still doubtful whether the creditor had acquired permanent possession, for one of the ten things said of Jerusalem is that no house can be held in absolute ownership there. So in every neighborhood he used to tell me how many lives had been spent there and how much Jewish money had gone down the drain. This is how it used to happen: When a Jew wanted a plot of land, the speculators would immediately raise the price. But Jews are stubborn by nature, and stubborn by heredity; they say that real estate can never be overvalued. So they go to the owner of the land and raise their bid. But the trouble is that the speculators are also Jews, stubborn by nature and heredity; so they raise their bids too, until a speck of dust costs a golden pound. Humble people have no option but to withdraw from the deal in disappointment, and but for him there would be no neighborhood here, not even a house. But this is a story within a story, and every story is longer than the earth — and any one of them would take a thousand and one nights to tell. And as he told me about the building of Jerusalem, so he would talk to me about the land and its worthies. Mr. Klein used to say that by the nature of things every great man was small to begin with, so small that he needed a godfather at his circumcision, and he had been privileged to be godfather to most of the leaders.

During the year in which Mr. Gedaliah Klein died, and half a year before as well, I had been separated from him somewhat by reason of distance, because he lived in town and I had gone out to live in a distant neighborhood, and when I came to town I did not happen to see him. Now that he had passed away I said to myself: I will write a letter of condolence to his relatives.

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When I sat down to write I did not know whom to write to, for of all his household I knew only one daughter, and she had no great respect or regard for me, for she remembered the early days when I would shuffle my feet on the threshold of her father’s house and he would pay me no attention, though she did not know that in the meantime Mr. Klein had changed his attitude to me. So I girded up my intellectual loins, as the literary men say, wrote a few words of condolence, and put the letter aside till the next day to check it.

I felt depressed and sad. I always feel sad whenever I am distracted from my work. Some people can do many things at a time without worrying, but as soon as I interrupt my work my heart feels sad, like a bookcase empty of books, or a field riddled by ants. For a year and a half I had set aside every other occupation to study the works of our later sages. I gave up the pleasures of the time and cut down my sleep, but not all dreamers see in sleep the good dreams I saw in waking. Days gone by and communities uprooted would come and appear before me, as at the time when Israel clung to the fear of God and were deeply in love with the wisdom of the Torah. And sometimes I was privileged to see the great men of Israel, the princes of the Torah in that generation; to perceive, if not the depths of their words, at least the fragrance of their teaching. There were times and periods when we had patriarchs and elders, judges and kings, heroes and men of war, seers and prophets, men of the Great Synagogue and Hasmoneans, sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud, scholars and eminences, nobles and princes, rabbis and codifiers, hymnalists and poets, who exalted the glory of Israel and sanctified the Divine Name in the world. But I love our later sages. Like a child in the darkening Sabbath, who comforts himself with the thought that the Sabbath still delays its departure, so I would comfort myself with the words of our later sages, which showed that there was still a little left of the Torah. For love of the Torah I would sit and study until the second watch of the night, and if I went to bed I would rely on the Divine Mercy to raise me up in the morning so that I could go back to my studies. Until the affair of that letter, when I put aside my studies.

I took a book, to restore my equanimity with the study of the Torah. The book slipped and fell out of my hand. I picked it up and opened it, but forgot what I had opened it for. When I remembered and looked into it, the letters skipped about in confusion and did not combine to make any sense. And I, too, skipped from one subject to another until I returned to the subject of Mr. Klein. The image of Mr. Klein rose before me, as when he and I used to stroll in the streets and neighborhoods of Jerusalem. I said to myself: I will go out and stroll a little, and recover my peace of mind.