S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

Yael lay in a bed spread with white sheets, her heavy body rumpling the bedclothes. Her hospital smock gave her an odd look. It was hard to say if she looked happy or sad, but she was glad to be lying in a real bed in a clean room and to be brought her meals without lifting a finger. Even when he stared down at the legs of her bed, Hemdat saw her image before him. So she would look when she gave birth. And that, Hemdat, was the most peculiar thought you ever had in your life.

Hemdat was sure that Yael would marry someone rich. She was not made for drudgery. One day, gaunt from suffering, he would return from afar and come see her. A swarm of children would greet him in the yard and run to their mother’s arms. “It’s a stranger, Ima,” they would say. “Why, it’s Hemdat,” Yael would exclaim, jumping with joy. In the evening her husband would come home from work and sit down to eat with them. Hemdat would be far too frail to arouse his envy.

He was on his way to the hospital again when he was told that Yael had been released. She was planning to leave for Jerusalem the next day. It seemed that she needed a minor operation, and Mrs. Mushalam was going with her. Mrs. Mushalam had to go to Jerusalem to buy inlaid furniture from Damascus.

How would Yael pay for the trip? Hemdat felt his pocket. There was nothing in it, but he was owed some money by Dr. Pikchin. Dr. Pikchin was a leader of the Jewish community and Hemdat had served as his secretary. When he found him, he said:

“Doctor, I would appreciate it if you could give the money you owe me to Yael Hayyut.”

Dr. Pikchin puffed silently on his pipe.

“You can tell her, Doctor,” said Hemdat, who had to walk fast to keep up with him, “that the hospital is paying for her treatment. She doesn’t have to know where the money came from. Have you heard that Efrati is back from Europe? They say that he did a lot for this country when he lived here.”

Dr. Pikchin took his pipe from his mouth and said, “Everyone who comes back from abroad thinks he’s done a lot for Jewish settlement.”

“But he really did,” said Hemdat eagerly. “When I was abroad I heard of him too.”

Dr. Pikchin put his pipe back in his mouth and said, “Everyone who comes back from Europe says that he did a lot for this country.”

“I was just making conversation,” said Hemdat, his eagerness gone.

Hemdat ran into Yael. He was happy to hear she was all right. Yael gave him her cold hand to shake. She looked well but distracted. “Why don’t we buy a herring,” she said as they stood in the street.

Hemdat was glad that they had met, and that she wanted to eat with him, and that his room was nearby. She climbed the stairs to it with stately steps. He lit the lamp and set the table. There was butter and honey and jam. Who wanted jam, though? Yael was set on herring. She never ate preserves. Herring was what she craved.

The green-globed lamp gave off a tender light. On the green tinted walls the pots and pans gleamed larger than life. Shadow rubbed against shadow and pot against pan. Hemdat sat eating with Yael. Their shadows danced on the walls, barely touching. Yael poured Hemdat tea. “Why don’t you drink your tea?” she asked. “Or didn’t I pour you any?”

“You did,” he said.

Yael said, “I’ll bet you’re afraid to gain weight and spoil your good looks. Is that it, Mr. Hemdat?”

Hemdat smiled and said nothing. Yael thought that writers never stayed good-looking for long. Their chests collapsed from sitting so much and their hair fell out from too many thoughts. Each time Hemdat spoke, his face clouded with romantic anguish. It was as though he were in one place and his mind in another. What was he thinking? “Thinking?” he said. “I was thinking how many hankies you need for one snotty nose.” Writers could be a vulgar lot.

Yael was tired and stretched out on the divan. Hemdat offered her a pillow. She asked him to sit next to her and ran her hand along the wall. Back when her hair had been long, there had been a nail over her bed. She had slept on her side with her hair wrapped around it and her mother had woken her by undoing it and laying it on the pillow by her head. Everyone said it would grow back.

Yael lay on the divan. “Poets lose their hair on top,” she said, “and philosophers in front. Some men are so bald that they don’t have a single hair left.” There was a man in Dostoevsky with hair on his teeth, but Yael had her doubts about that. “I’ll bet he made it up,” she said. How could anyone have hair on his teeth? However, she also had doubts about her doubts, because her best friend Pnina had a dark white spot right over her heart.

Hemdat’s room was agreeably restful. Yael lay on the divan and Hemdat sat by her side. She opened her eyes, and when their eyes met both turned red as if a blush had passed between them. Hemdat rose determinedly and went to open a window to keep his flushed cheeks from being seen. The lamplight trembled. He hastened to trim the wick. The night blew sweetly through the open window. One summer Yael had spent moonlit nights like these in the lean-to of a field guard in the vineyards of Rehovot. Night cloaked the earth and the foxes barked and the wind blew through the vines and Pizmoni told legends of long ago on a straw mat in the vineyards of Rehovot.

“Tell me a story,” Yael said to Hemdat. “Tell me something you remember.” Right away she forgot what she had asked him and began telling him how hard her first days in Jaffa had been, when she lay ill by herself in a rented room until she was taken to the hospital.

Hemdat covered his eyes to hide his tears and a tear tumbled onto his fingers. How sorry he felt for her and how happy that she was telling him all this. Her eyes shone serenely in dark, green-tinted repose. Calmly she showed him the scar on her arm. The same arm that deserved to be covered with kisses bore the scrawl of a scar. Thank God she was going to Jerusalem, where there was a good hospital for her to get treatment.

Yael glanced at him and said, “Who knows when we’ll see each other again? I want you to tell me something.”

“And what, my child,” asked Hemdat with a smile, “is that?”

Yael ran a hand over her hair. “What are you?”

Hemdat did not answer.

Yael pouted indignantly and said, “I’m not asking if you’re a Zionist or a communist or anything like that. When I was a girl I had a friend who wrote in my class yearbook: ‘Our lives are as pointless as a dead tree.’ Isn’t that a nice way of putting it? He used to say, ‘I don’t care what party you belong to, I care what you are.’ What are you?”

“Me?” said Hemdat, letting his head fall back. “I’m a sleeping prince whose true love puts him back to sleep. I’m love’s beggar walking around with love in a torn old bag.”

5

Yael was still in Jerusalem, and Hemdat puttered about busy Jaffa. What was he doing there? What had brought him to this place? He twisted and turned inside himself, his torment unremitting. He was as lost on the dark plain of time as a solitary groan or a faded spark. His shadow marched before him beneath a profuse sun, up and down winding streets without a blade of grass to relieve their harsh lines. How small it was and what tiny legs it had. A man’s foot could cover the lower half of it.

Behind him, like a solid mirror, was the life he had lived, sunk in the doldrums of melancholy. And as in a mirror, he saw the days ahead, without change or the prospect of change. There was nothing to see but the endless, oppressive emptiness of a mirror reflected in a mirror. He wanted to cry and vent his sorrow, but the sun would have dried his unshed tears. Hope alone kept him going. The black mood would pass, he told himself. He would sleep for twenty-four hours, take a hot bath, and emerge a new man.