S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

I lay in bed and thought: Why do we fear death? Something whispered to me: Raise the blanket. Immediately my fingers were filled with that thing to which no term of joy or sadness applies. And it too, namely, that thing, spread gradually to my shoulders, and the nape of my neck, and the crown of my head. I still belonged to this world, but I knew that if I raised the blanket and put it over my head I could enter into another world in the twinkling of an eye. May all my well-wishers be privileged to experience such a good hour.

The wind blew again and moved the letter. The letter began to roll this way and that. I said to myself: If I die, the letter will remain without anyone to send it. I pushed off the blanket.

The moon peeped into the room, illuminating the floor, and a pale light covered my letter. I raised my right hand and made a kind of circle in the air. When I opened my eyes a second time I heard a bird twittering at my window. It noticed me and fell silent. Then it raised its voice and flew away.

A pleasant languor spread throughout my limbs, a languor that filled them with a pleasure beyond compare. My bones seemed to dissolve in my body and my spirit was light. Although I was lying among pillows and covers and blankets, I imagined that I was not lying among them, but was one of them, inanimate as they. I closed my eyes and lay still.

As I lay like this, a band of Arabs passed by; they sounded as if they were quarreling with each other, and the silence of the street doubled and redoubled their voices. I covered myself up to my head and over with my blanket, but the voices pierced the blanket. My peace had been interrupted, so I got out of bed.

Remembering my letter, I lifted it from the floor and spread it before me; then I put it aside and picked up a book to read, but I did not read it. I set aside my studies and sat down to copy out the glosses I had discovered, like those students of the Torah who write down comments and glosses in their notebooks. I dipped my pen in the ink, arranged the sheet of paper in front of me, and concentrated my thoughts in order to set them down. An hour passed, but nothing happened. Apart from the shadow of the pen, there was no shape of a letter to be seen on the paper. I bent my head over the sheet and looked at the shadow of my pen, which was coupled with the shadow of my fingers, like two different species who cannot be fertile.

I rose and picked up the pages I had written a few days before. As I read them, I began to feel a kind of writer’s itch in my hand, that sweet tingling one gets before starting work. I stretched out my hand over the paper and clothed my ideas in words. But the ideas disintegrated, like the snowman a child has made and wants to cover with a garment, which melts away as he tries to clothe it.

I read over again what I had written a few days before. When I started to read it, I thought I had got into the subject. I picked up the pen again. And again the pen cast a pale shadow on the blank paper.

As I found it hard to sit idle, I looked for something to do. I began to shake my books free of dust. Once I had started to shake a book, I began to regret the waste of time, for while I was shaking the dust off the book I might have studied it. When I sat down to study, it all started up again from the beginning. Things that used to refresh my soul turned to ashes in my mouth. An hour passed and another hour. I was trying to impress the words of the Torah on my heart, and my heart was giving me idle thoughts.

I went back to my writings and sat down to copy out what I had written recently; perhaps, while doing that, I could add something. And indeed I did not labor in vain. The pen moved on of its own accord, and added more and more.

When I examined what I had written, I saw that it did not add up to anything at all. I held the pen upright and made circles in the air with it. I remembered I had meant to kindle a light in memory of my grandfather. So I got up and went into town.

Before I went out I read the letter and saw that it was no worse than any other epistle of condolence. If Job said to his companions, who were privileged to have their words recorded in the Holy Scriptures, “How then comfort ye me in vain?” what can we write? I put the letter in an envelope and sent it off.

I went into town and walked from street to street and lane to lane until I reached the yard of the House of Study where I had been the evening before with Mr. Gedaliah Klein, and I heard a voice emerging from inside the yard saying, “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place.” I went into the yard and asked: “Where is the House of Study?”

A girl replied, “There’s no House of Study here.”

An old woman came out and asked, “What are you looking for?” I told her. “There is no House of Study here,” she said with a sigh. “But I was here last night,” I said to her. “Last night?” The old woman struck her forehead and said, “Well, Lord Almighty, now I remember! When I was a little girl, they used to show this place; they said there used to be a big House of Study here, and they used to study in it and pray, but because of all our sins it had disappeared.”

I bade her farewell and went to another House of Study.

This one was built many years ago, and it was built with the aid of a gentile king. His forefathers had destroyed Jerusalem and he helped to rebuild it, and we heard from the righteous men of that generation that when the righteous Messiah comes he will come and pray there. Some say this meant the gentile king, who would be converted and come to pray, but others said it meant the King Messiah. And it seems that those who applied the words to the King Messiah were right, for converts are not accepted in the world to come. When this synagogue was built, books and candelabra and Ark-cloths were donated from many countries, and the sages of Jerusalem used to adorn it with teaching and prayer. Now the house is empty, the plaster has peeled off the walls, the furnishings are broken and the books torn, the Ark-cloths are tattered and the candelabra rusted, and the students of the Torah have passed away. Hardly a bare quorum assembles there. And if the gates of Heaven are still open, nothing reaches them but a pennyworth of prayer.

I went in and found a blind old man sitting at a rickety table, shaking his head and muttering verses from the Psalms.

“Where is the sexton?” I asked.

“I am the sexton,” he replied.

I asked him to kindle a light in memory of my grandfather.

The sweet, clear smile of the blind gleamed in his two blind eyes, and he nodded, saying “I will.”

He went up to the lectern, took out a glass and raised it to the light, put in some oil, cut a length of wick and put it in the glass, set it on the lectern again, and said, “I will light it for the prayer.”

I took out four small coins and gave them to him. He took three and left one.

“I gave you four,” said I.

“I know,” he said, nodding.

He took the coin and put it into a charity box.

“Are you wary of even numbers?” I said to him.

He smiled and said, “A charity box should not be empty.”

I kissed the mezuzah and went out.

In the morning, when I sat down to study, my mind was not at rest. I stopped, and said: If I had looked longer for that House of Study I would have found it. I knew that this had come into my mind only to confuse me, but I thought of nothing else.

I tried to remember the faces of the worshippers who had appeared to me the night before in the House of Study. Apart from that illustrious scholar, whom I had recognized from a drawing, I knew no one there. And even he was not like any picture I knew.

To gather up enthusiasm for my work, I reminded myself how our recent sages, of blessed memory, devoted themselves to the Torah. For instance, there was the story of the author of the Face of Joshua , whose disciples once arrived late. “Why are you late?” he asked them when they came. “We were afraid to go out because of the cold,” they replied. He raised his face from the book — and his beard was frozen hard to the table. “True,” he said, “it is cold today.” Or like the story of Rabbi Jacob Emden, who hired a servant to announce to him every hour, “Woe, another hour has gone,” so that that illustrious scholar should give himself an account of what he had put right during that hour. But the acts of the righteous did not bring me to the point of action.