S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

2

His friends’ suspicions were groundless. “Yael is a nice looking girl,” they said to him. “It’s no wonder that you’re taken with her.” But Hemdat knew that he was only giving her lessons because he felt sorry for her. The two of them were poles apart, and he had never even touched her. Not that she wasn’t attractive. Her tranquil bearing, fresh complexion, and tall, womanly way she held herself made him feel a kind of respect. And the odd thing was that before getting to know her he hadn’t thought her pretty at all and had even called her “that beefsteak” behind her back.

She arrived one evening soaking wet and limping, her right shoe as full of water as a kneading trough. “It’s raining,” she said, standing in the doorway.

Hemdat brought a chair for her to sit on and took off her shoe. She had a surprisingly delicate foot. “What are you looking at?” she asked, following his glance.

“Excuse me for asking,” he said, as though waking from a dream, “but did you make these socks?”

Yael smiled. “No, they’re from home. But I could have made them.”

Hemdat helped her out of her coat and spread it on the divan. How nice it would have been for there to be a warm stove in the corner and a samovar boiling on the table, so that he could dry out her coat and make her a glass of hot tea. He bent quietly to wring out the bottom of her coat. Yael put on a pair of his slippers, and he said with a smile:

“There’s a belief that if the groom at a wedding makes the bride move her foot with his own, he’ll be the boss. But if she makes him move his, she’ll be.”

Yael laughed. “Oh, my, I’ve gotten mud on you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She brushed off Hemdat’s clothes and went to wash her hands.

He shook his head and said, “You needn’t have bothered.”

The next day he washed without soap. Yael’s fingerprints were on his one bar. He knew he was being silly.

Yael was not a good student. She had managed to learn some writing and a few chapters from the Bible and Part ii of Ben-Ami’s grammar, but that was all. She had neither a quick grasp nor the time for it. Since she worked in the mornings and spent the afternoons with her sick mother at the hospital, she came unprepared to her lessons. Hemdat scolded her good-naturedly and did the best he could, but devoted teacher though he was, he was wasting his time. To think of all the things he could have done with it! Should he tell her he was stopping? But he did not want to stop. Often she came late. Once, when he asked her why, she said that she hated to take him away from his work. Another time she came and found him lying on the divan as though swimming in a sea of sadness.

Hemdat wondered what she saw in him. He knew that she liked him and valued his opinions. Once she even told him that the Bible verse “Your words uphold the stumbler” made her think of him. She had never met anyone like him who always knew the right thing to say. And yet he spoke haltingly. Every phrase began with a sigh and his warm voice was slow and monotonous. What did she see in him?

Yael saw that Hemdat was a poet. Poets took their time when they spoke. Pizmoni was a greater poet than Hemdat, but Bialik was even greater. She loved looking at Bialik when he visited Rehovot. He had worn a velvet jacket and walked with the almond-wood cane that he stood leaning on at the bonfire made in his honor. The whole town had turned out to see him. Not even a baby stayed home. What had he been thinking of? He seemed such a nice man. Yet in his photographs he bit his bottom lip as though annoyed. No two poets were the same. Hemdat bowed his head when he talked and shaded his right eye with his hand. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples to write poetry. Not that she ever had read Schiller. Her father read him all the time. Why did no one read him anymore? Every age had its authors. Now there was Tolstoy and Sanin and Sholom Aleichem. Of course, Sanin was a character in a novel, not an author, but Yael was not a student of literature and had no way of knowing such things. She had her good points, Yael Hayyut, and was certainly very pretty.

Once Hemdat sat by the window as dusk fell. The door of his room was wide open. The branches of the eucalyptus trees cast long shadows and the world was fading into darkness. A poet might have said that Sir Day was departing and Fair Night was about to arrive. Yael came for her lesson. Hemdat did not hear her. His bowed head was wreathed in shadow. He felt dull, and all he could think of was a lone cow standing in a field.

What was on his mind? Yael stood there saying nothing. She was thinking of the evenings in the town where she grew up. It was more of a forest than a town, and the whole summer had been one long frolic, every tree a maypole. But as soon as summer ended, so did the good times. The forest grew ever so dreary and sunken in snow. If a boy and girl went off into it, their voices were heard from afar and their footprints stood out in the snow.

Yael felt a flush. She wanted to take Hemdat’s head in her warm arms and hold it tightly. He had such fine hair. She thought of her own gorgeous head of rich hair with its auburn braids that had been like nothing else. Her friends could have told you about that hair. “Just imagine what it must do to a man,” they said, staring at it, “if that’s what it does to us.”

Hemdat’s eyes felt moist. Softly his hand grazed her short hair. Though he had never seen it long, he had heard of it. It had glowed like chestnuts half in shade and half in sunlight. Her old friends had burst into tears when she cut it because of the typhus. One, who was no longer even on good terms with her, woke from a dream crying out, “Oh, no, they’re cutting Yael’s hair!”

Hemdat sat up and looked at her like a man waking from his sleep. “Is that you, Yael?” he asked. She should forgive him for not having noticed her. Although this was an odd way of putting it, since he had just touched her hair, he was not conscious of telling a lie.

“Have you been here long?” he asked, rising in his confusion to offer her his chair while at the same time pointing to the divan. Yael retreated a step but did not leave. Even though she knew that he would rather be alone, she sat down. In fact, she sat down beside him on the divan.

Hemdat did not light the lamp as usual and sat with her in the dark. How afraid she once had been of him! But she was not anymore. They sat half-touching, and when the other half touched she took his head in her hands. He was so close that she could have bitten off the lock of hair on his forehead. What did he need it for? “What a fantastical idea,” laughed Hemdat loudly. “Go ahead and try.”

Yael leaned forward and bit off Hemdat’s hair. He had never laughed so hard in his life. What a she-devil she was, this quiet, sedate young lady! It was incredible. Who would have thought she had such spunk? He would never have believed it if he hadn’t felt it with his own head.

Although he had spent long hours with her, it only now struck him that she deserved a closer look. She was — with her green eyes, green hat, and green jersey — a living, breathing emerald. It thrilled him to see her so wild and full of life and youth. He gave her hand a friendly squeeze.

She looked at him and said, “I know why you did that.”

“You do?” he asked with a smile.

“I suppose you think I haven’t read my Forel. A handshake is a sexual release.” Hemdat beamed at her lovely innocence. Let him meet the cads who spread stories about her and he would tear them to shreds.

What a shame time couldn’t stand still. It was getting late. Yael rose to go. It was past her bedtime. Hemdat took his hat and set out to walk her home.

In the tender moonlight, the sand stretched for miles all around. The eucalyptus trees by the railroad tracks gave off a good smell, their branches whispering the heart’s language in the wind. The surf sounded far away, and the bells of a departing caravan chimed to the singing of the camel drivers. Nothing stirred in the world without Hemdat seeing or hearing it. He had a sharp eye. How many times have you passed the tree poking through the wall of the garden near his house without noticing that it was whitewashed? Not Hemdat. It was a clever joke on someone’s part to paint it white, as though that were its true color. You can’t fool me, he thought, because I know what I’m looking at. He walked Yael home and headed back.