S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

10

The Form of a Man

While the fish was being ornamented with the head tefillah, Fishl was looking for his head tefillah and not finding it. That is the essence of the story, and the entire story is as follows. After sending the fish to his wife and preparing himself to pray, he filled his pipe with tobacco and saw to his bodily needs. He stayed there as long as he stayed and washed his hands to recite the blessing one recites after using the toilet, and then he went to wrap himself in his tallit and tefillin and pray. His thoughts began to race about within him. One said: Good-for-nothing, again you’ve forfeited the Kedushah and Barekhu. And one said: Since you’re praying by yourself, you’re the master of your own prayers, and you’re not dependent on the prayer leader, who waits for the old men who take a long time to recite the Shema and the Eighteen Benedictions. Since Fishl did not like the thoughts that were racing about, he removed his mind from them to make room for the prayer itself. He said: Well, while I pray, Hentshi Rekhil will be preparing the fish, and if she has not managed to prepare it for the morning meal, I shall be content with those things that open up the gut, and I shall eat the fish at noon. All of those foods came and settled in his mouth. He hurriedly shook out his tallit and placed it on his shoulder and examined the fringes and wrapped himself in it and recited the blessing and recited all the appropriate verses in the prayer book. Then he reached out his arm and took the hand tefillah and placed it correctly on his upper arm, on the distended flesh over the bone, which was swollen because of all the fat, until a good part of the tefillah sank into it. I do not know whether he was accustomed to bind the strap around his arm seven times or nine times, and what I do not know, I do not say. Then he reached out his hand for the head tefillah and did not find it. And why did he not find it? Because it was bound around the fish’s head. He sought and searched and groped, and there was nothing he did not look under. But he did not find it. He stooped to look under his belly. Perhaps it had fallen on the floor. And even though had it fallen on the floor he would have to fast all that day — and what a day, a fish day like this he still bent over to the floor and did not find it.

Reb Fishl stood alone in the synagogue, wrapped in his tallit and adorned with his arm tefillah, and he shouted, “Nu, nu!” That is, “Give me a head tefillah.” But there was no one there to hear him shouting. Had the orphan been in the synagogue, he would have heard and brought him a head tefillah, and Fishl would have recited the blessing for tefillin and prayed, and so on. Since he had sent the fish with the orphan, Reb Fishl was alone in the synagogue, and even if he shouted all day, his shouts would not be heard. When would they be heard? In any event not before afternoon prayers. Since it was a hasidic synagogue, they recited afternoon prayers late, just before the stars came out.

An expedient occurred to him, and he opened the box under the reading stand, for men who come to pray every day customarily leave their tallitot and tefillin in the synagogue. He found a torn prayer book and flawed tsitsit and the case of an arm tefillah and an old calendar and a broken shofar and the alef made of tin that is hung up for a firstborn who is not yet redeemed, and a scribe’s pen. But tefillin were not to be found. And why didn’t he find any? Because people had stopped leaving their tallitot and tefillin in the synagogue. Why? Because of a drunken beadle in the town who had been discharged. He had looked for a teaching job and found none. He used to take tallitot and tefillin, and sell them cheaply to people from the villages, and he would drink up the profits in brandy. Now, picture this: a man has recited the blessing for the arm tefillah but has no head tefillah. Talking is forbidden between putting on the arm tefillah and the head one, and he could not find a head tefillah. Even had he stood there all day, the day would not have stood still, and there was reason to fear the time for prayer might pass.

He rummaged through the box under the table and found what he found: ritual articles that were no longer fit for use. But what he wanted, he did not find. Now you see how expert a person must be in the necessary religious rules. For had Fishl known, he would have followed the rule for someone who only has a single tefillah: he puts it on and blesses it, since each tefillah is a separate commandment in itself. This is the law when a person is under duress: if he can only put on one, he puts on the one he can.

At that moment, while Reb Fishl’s world was falling in on him, Bezalel Moshe was sitting in the shade of a tree and playing with the fish and with the tefillah on the fish’s head. To avoid dishonoring the dead, I shall not repeat all the words that Bezalel Moshe said to the fish, such as, “Brow that never wore tefillin,” and the like. Finally he changed his mind and said to the fish, “Now we shall remove the tefillah from your head, so that Satan won’t come and accuse those Jews who sin with their bodies. For you are not commanded to put on tefillin but do so, and they, who are commanded, do not put on tefillin.”

As he touched the fish to remove the tefillah from its head, his fingers began to tremble again with desire to draw, like all artists whose hands are eager to work. For if they have succeeded in making one form, they wish to make another lovelier still. And if they have not succeeded, they are even more avid to do so, as many as seven times, a hundred times, a thousand times. As you know, Bezalel Moshe had drawn the sign of Pisces that day, and it had not come out well, because he had never seen a fish in his life. Now that a fish had been shown to him, his soul truly yearned to draw a fish. Out of desire for action his fingers trembled, nor did he take note of the nature of the fish, for it is not the way of fish to absorb color.

He passed the piece of chalk across the fish’s skin the way artists do before they draw. They mark a kind of guideline, and that line shows them what to do. Thus Bezalel Moshe drew a line and went back and drew another line, and between one line and another the form of Reb Fishl Karp emerged, until the image of the fish was effaced beneath that of Reb Fishl Karp. And this is something quite unusual, for Reb Fishl’s head was thick and round, and the head of that fish was long and narrow like the head of a goose.

And how did Bezalel Moshe come to draw the form of a man, when he had intended to draw the form of a fish? When he reached out his hand to draw, the form of the fish was transmuted into the form of Reb Fishl, and the form of Reb Fishl was transmuted into the form of the fish, and he drew the form of Reb Fishl on the fish’s skin. Strange are the ways of artists, for when the spirit throbs within them, their being is negated and they are acted upon. They are directed by the spirit, which obeys the commandment of the God of all spirit and flesh. And why was Reb Fishl transformed into a fish? Because he was a lover of fish.

11

Between an Arm Tefillah

and a Head Tefillah

I return to Fishl Karp — not to the Fishl Karp whom the artist drew, but to the Fishl Karp whom his Maker created.

Even before the time came to eat, his mind was driven to distraction by hunger. This is a virtue of man over fish. A fish can subsist without eating for up to a thousand days. A man can remain without eating no longer than twelve days. And Reb Fishl Karp not even a single day.

Bezalel Moshe heard the sound of passersby. He was frightened lest they ask him, “What is that in your hand?” And that they would see what he had done and tell Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would scold him, and everyone would say that Reb Fishl was saintly, for it is the way of the world that if a householder scolds a poor orphan, everyone joins in scolding him. He quickly concealed the fish and directed his feet toward Reb Fishl’s house.