S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

The one responsible for a miracle does not recognize it. If instead of Fishl Karp there had come someone who puts on two pair of tefillin or someone whose bag was full of those writings by which one seeks to approach our Father in heaven, such as Hok Leyisrael or Hovot Halevavot or Reshit Hokhmah , it would have been more crowded.

The fish extended one of its fins and bumped into a tefillah. I do not know whether it was for the head or for the arm, and what I do not know, I do not say. It also banged its mouth on the prayer book. If the fisherman had been in the place of the fish, he would have hollered, “What do you want from me? Am I a Jew? Am I required to pray and wear tefillin?” But the fish shut its mouth and kept silent.

It shut its mouth but not its thoughts. What were its thoughts at that moment? That fleshy man bought me with scales of silver. If I make a reckoning, my silver scales are more numerous than the scales of silver he gave to the one who delivered me into his hands, and, needless to say, mine are finer. Thus, what made the one deliver me to the other? Perhaps because I am heavy to carry. If so, if I had deprived my soul of good, would that have improved anything? One way or another, it makes no difference in whose hands I am. Neither one intends to return me to the place where I live, but one gives me water for my thirst and the other does not even give me a drop of water.

Having touched upon Reb Fishl with the tip of its thoughts, the fish’s mind now wandered from him to Reb Fishl’s nation. Damp were its thoughts, and most of them nonsensical. If I were to reproduce them, they would be approximately thus:

The Jews are like fish and they are unlike fish. They are like fish in that they eat fish as fish do, and they are unlike fish since fish eat fish at every meal, and Jews — if they wish, they eat fish, and if they wish, they do not eat fish. It is difficult for the Jews to eat fish, for they have to take great pains before they bring the fish to their mouths. They rise early to go to market, and each grabs the fish out of the other’s hands. One shouts out, “In honor of the Sabbath.” The other taunts him, saying, “Don’t say it’s in honor of the Sabbath. Say it’s in honor of your belly.” In the end they take it and cut it and salt it like those who prepare salt fish, and they light a fire under it. Finally they eat it, some with their fingers and some with a pronged stick. And their pleasure is not complete, for they are afraid lest a bone catch in their throat. Whereas fish need nothing but their mouth. The Holy One, blessed be He, loves fish more than Jews, for the Jews weary themselves with every single fish, but while the fish swims in the water, the Holy One, blessed be He, sends it a fish that enters its mouth on its own. You know that this is true, for when you find a fish inside a fish, how else could it come to lie in a fish’s stomach with the head of one toward the other’s tail? Why is that? Because it enters the other’s mouth headfirst, and if it had been fleeing, you would find its tail facing the other fish’s tail.

The fish recalled times when it was in the water, and many good fish used to swim up and enter its mouth, and it would eat and drink all the delicacies of the rivers and streams and lakes, and the other fish all flattered it and were anxious to do its will. So our fish never imagined that the world was likely to change until it entered the net, which it had been seduced into believing was good for it. Those who had said that they themselves had been created only for our fish were the first to lead it to ugly death, beginning with imprisonment and ending with fire and salt and pepper and onions, and after all of those troubles it would not have the privilege of a watery grave. What would be done to it? It was to be buried in the bellies of human creatures. Wealthy men drink wine after the burial and poor men drink brandy after the burial, avoiding mention of water, in which the fish had lived. They drink to each other’s life and are not fearful of dishonoring the dead.

The fish set its death before its eyes, no longer knowing whether or not it desired life. The image of its ministers and workers came to the fish’s mind in its grief. Then it despised its world and began to spit in disgust. Were it not for the life force, which did not abandon the fish, it would have spit out the remnant of its life.

Little by little its salivation ceased, as did all its thoughts. Its thoughts ceased, but its torments did not cease. Finally its thoughts returned and traded places with its torments, and its torments with its thoughts. This is something the mind cannot grasp. The fish lay there as though inanimate, and it is in the nature of an inanimate object not to have thoughts, yet here its thoughts raced about and created torments. It girded up the remnant of its strength and drew its eyes into its head, gathering up scraps of thoughts and reflecting: Perhaps this is the gathering up spoken of in connection with fish: “And even the fish of the sea will be gathered up.” Because the fish was kosher, the heavens had mercy upon it, and its spirit was gathered up with a verse from the Prophets.

8

Between One Fish and Another

At the moment when the fish began to depart from the world, Bezalel Moshe was dragging his feet with difficulty because of the weight of his burden and the weight of his thoughts. While he was sitting in the synagogue his heart had been one, bent upon the work of making a lovely mizrah. Once he went outside, his heart become two. Thinking about the mizrah, he remembered his hunger. Thinking about food, he remembered the mizrah.

He nodded his head to himself and said: What is the use of thinking about a mizrah if the mizrah is in the synagogue and I am outside, and what is the use of thinking about eating if I don’t have a slice of bread to sate my hunger? The fish is heavy. Who knows how much it weighs? Certainly the soul of a great Tzaddik has been reincarnated in it.

He went and sat by the side of the road to rest from the effort of carrying the fish. He put down the tallit and tefillin bag, which had become the temporary home of the fish, and he sat, weary of his burden, weary of hunger, and weary of being a poor orphan. If people wished, they gave him food; if they did not wish, they did not. And if he had something to eat, rather than satisfying him, the food only made him hungry, for he feared lest the next day his soul should languish from hunger and ask to depart, and no one would think of inviting him to a meal or of giving him a penny to buy bread. Maybe that is the meaning of the verse “For the earth was full of knowledge”—in the future everyone would be of the same mind, so that if one person asks for bread, the other gives it to him. Bezalel Moshe knew there was no knowledge but the knowledge that there was no bread but the bread of Torah. However, a hungry man removes Scripture from its literal meaning and interprets “bread” as meaning actual bread. The greatness of bread is that even saints who fast constantly cannot live without eating. Some break their fasts on the Sabbath, on festivals, and on days when one is not supposed to fast, and from fast to fast they break their fast with a banquet for the fulfillment of a commandment, such as serving as the godfather at a circumcision. Whereas he fasted without fasting, for even when he fasted all day long, the fast did not count, since he did not fast of his own free will, but rather because he had nothing to eat. Were it not for the drawings that he drew, he would have seemed to himself like a beast whose only thoughts were about eating and drinking.

He began to be ashamed of his thoughts and tried to repress them. When he saw that they were stronger than he, he began to lose himself in them. Since he could not draw food to satisfy himself, though he knew some people can do that, his mind took leave of him and journeyed off to those who eat their fill and do not refrain from eating fish, not even on a weekday, not even when people seek to boycott them. In normal times everyone is used to eating fish, everyone but him, for in his life he had never seen a living fish nor even a cooked fish, except for those in old holiday prayer books next to the prayers for dew and rain. These had provided him with a model to draw fish on the mizrah and had given Fishl Karp reason to open his mouth and laugh at them.