S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

3

She lived in one room with her friend Pnina. Hemdat had never been there. One Saturday night Pizmoni talked him into going. Disorder reigned everywhere. All kinds of things lay untidily about, one on top of another, as if thumbing their noses at their owners. A few young men were sitting around. It was a Saturday and they had had the day off.

Dorban, the poet who had trekked the length and breadth of Palestine, was ridiculing the latest Hebrew poetry. Anyone who had heard the music of camel steps in a howling sandstorm could tell you that all that was written nowadays sounded like a creaky door. Dorban’s meters were based on camel steps. You had to have heard them to appreciate his verse.

Seated opposite him was fat Gurishkin. Gurishkin had a bushy, waxed black mustache tilting up at the ends that he resisted the temptation to twirl by ordering his hand to rub his forehead instead, which gave him a philosophical look. His eyes were red from hauling sand to building sites by day and writing his autobiography by night. Not that it was a major work yet, since he was young and hadn’t lived much, but it would be by the time he was finished. Gurishkin thought so far ahead that he had trouble keeping up with himself.

Gurishkin was no poet, and his imagination was not his strong suit. From time to time, he turned to look at Pnina. Pnina had a high opinion of him, but she never fell in love with her opinions. He was too big and fat. Not even his being a writer, that most spiritual of occupations, could make him less so.

Shammai was there too. Shammai was neither a poet like Dorban nor a workingman like Gurishkin but a student at the American College in Beirut. However, he thought highly of both poetry and work, having learned to admire them as a child from the Hebrew primers used by his teachers.

Apart from these three, several other young men were having an argument, gusting windily from politics to art to literature to the Hebrew press to the Ninth Zionist Congress and its consequences. Hemdat sat without joining them, alone with his thoughts. Now and then he glanced at Yael’s bed, which was made of a board and some oil cans. It looked more like an instrument of torture than something to rest on.

After the argument they sat around chatting. Pizmoni joked with Pnina, and Shammai with Yael. Shammai spat into a cracked pail, then looked at it and said, “Of course, I could be wrong.” Soon another argument broke out and lasted until everyone was hoarse. “How about a glass of tea?” Dorban asked. When he wasn’t trekking through the desert, he liked his creature comforts. “With pleasure,” said Yael and Pnina in one breath. Pnina lit the battered oil burner and Yael poured water in a kettle while Hemdat watched. Unless he imagined it, she took the water from the pail Shammai spat in. The smoke was too much for him.

Hemdat sat on an empty crate near the window, a wallflower in a garden of words. He had a headache and hoped the fresh air would help. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Hemdat,” said Yael, “you’ll get a concussion from pressing your head against that window.” The kettle began to boil. Pnina grabbed a handful of tea leaves and tossed them in. Presto, tea!

“And sugar too,” said Yael from her heights. Hemdat sipped his tea. He could not help thinking that he was drinking someone’s spittle. When he was done he put the empty glass on the shaky table. “More?” asked Pnina. Hemdat shook his head and said, “No.” He sat there silently, answering any questions as though at gunpoint. Words did not come easily to him. He knew he was not clever or witty like the others, and he had no desire to be. In the end they fell flat beneath their own jokes, blank and burdened by weariness. How he yearned for a face that was free, for friends who did not peck at life’s slops, who dreamed in the pallor of morning and saw through the noonday sun and ate the bread of unworriedness and spoke of themselves without banter! He threw an involuntary glance at the two girls sitting arm-in-arm on the edge of the bed: Pnina, so good and pure-faced, with her pretty tresses that bored him to tears, and dewier-but-just-as dull Yael. He rose and left.

Jaffa and its little houses stood soundlessly half-sunken in sand. Except for Hemdat, the town had gone to sleep. He walked on and on, his head heavy as a stone yet empty of all thought. He did not love her: he had told himself that a hundred times. He was bound to her by pity. She was misfortune’s child and he worried for her like a father for his daughter. He had never once touched her. She did not even excite him. How did he know what she would do if he tried kissing her? He liked to look at her, that was all. It had nothing to do with the lures of sex.

On his way he met Mrs. Ilonit. Mrs. Ilonit was happy to see him, because she had gone out for a walk and was afraid to be alone. She didn’t know what had possessed her to go out by herself in the middle of the night. Suppose she ran into an Arab. They were a loathsome people.

Mrs. Ilonit shook Hemdat’s hand. Her thumb rested on his pulse. How happy she was to see him! They hadn’t met in ages. Since the day of her visit, in fact. Hemdat had gone out that day because the cleaning woman had come, and as he was returning toward evening he met Mrs. Ilonit, who decided to walk him home. His room was a shambles. The table had been moved, and the washbowl left on top of it was full of books. Nothing was in its right place and there was nowhere to sit except the bed, on which a pair of his pants sprawled with its legs sticking out. He couldn’t find the lamp or even a candle. The damned little Yemenite had mixed everything up. They were fine at scrubbing and scraping, the Yemenite girls, but they never put anything back. Hemdat lit a match that went out and another that did the same. The room looked as big as a dance hall. “Shall we dance, Mr. Hemdat?” asked Mrs. Ilonit, taking him in her arms. Before he could answer she was waltzing him around. Suddenly she stopped and picked up the pants on the bed. “If I ever have to play a man on stage,” she said, “you can lend me these.” He was lucky he was a man. What woman could take the liberties with him that she took with him? Mrs. Ilonit clutched his arm. How dark it was getting. She couldn’t see a thing. Was that him? “Here, let me feel you.” My goodness, she had stumbled right into his arms. Hemdat backed disgustedly away.

Yael, lovelier than ever, came to see Hemdat. She was not alone. Shammai came too. “I won’t be a bother,” he said, and Yael swore that he never was. In any case, it was the Lord’s Sabbath and she hadn’t come for a lesson. Shammai looked around and spied a full bottle of wine. “Wine, wine, I am overcome by wine,” he cried biblically. He took the bottle and Hemdat gave him a glass. “You shouldn’t,” Yael said with a smile. “He’s still a baby and much too young to drink. I would have thought you’d prefer brandy. There was a lady back home who drank brandy all the time. She was born with a glass in her mouth. She said it was good for toothache and her teeth always ached. The funny part was that she never got drunk. She knew how to hold her liquor. Why don’t we go out for a walk?” Hemdat put on his hat and coat, and went for a walk with them.

They walked along the railroad tracks. The walls of Emek Refaim rose on either side of them, two green mattresses of fragrant grass. The tracks gleamed on their wooden ties as though polished. Shammai really was a baby. Suddenly he had a notion to walk on the tracks. Yael had to hold his hand to keep him from falling. Hemdat followed dotingly behind them. They both looked like babies now. Yael raised Shammai’s hand and said, “Your hands are so gross, Shammai. Hemdat’s hands are as smooth and pretty as a girl’s. I do believe that Mr. Hemdat is giving a lecture at the public library tonight. What will you say, Mr. Hemdat? I mean, what will your lecture be about?”