S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

If the passersby had not interrupted him, he would have removed the head tefillah from the fish and erased the picture of Reb Fishl he had drawn on the fish’s skin. Since the passersby did interrupt him, he did not manage to do even one of the things he ought to have done. He neither removed the tefillah nor erased the picture of Reb Fishl from the fish’s skin, and he trusted that the tefillah would fall off the fish’s head by itself. As for the picture, he expected that moisture would ooze out of the fish’s damp skin and erase it.

Bezalel Moshe arrived at Hentshi Rekhil’s and handed her Reb Fishl’s tallit and tefillin bag. And in the bag lay the fish, glory bound to its head and the face of the fish like that of Reb Fishl. Hentshi Rekhil was of her husband’s mind. She comprehended that if Fishl had sent her his tallit and tefillin bag, certainly something important to eat was concealed within it. The smell of the fish came and told her, You are not mistaken. She quickly took it and hid it so that her neighbors would not notice what had been brought her, and she sent the bearer off without any food, letting him go off far hungrier than when he set out on Reb Fishl’s errand.

The orphan left Reb Fishl’s house hungry, and his hunger walked with him. It would have been good had Reb Fishl’s wife given him some food, which he would have eaten, and then he would have returned to the synagogue and saved Reb Fishl from hunger. But she dismissed the errand boy without food. And since hunger plagued him, he wanted to eat, for he had long since learned that if you put off hunger, it grows ever more importunate.

He had a penny which he had received in payment for drawing a memorial dedication for the abandoned woman’s orphan daughter. He had written her relatives’ dates of death in her prayer book. He had kept the penny in his pocket to buy paper or paints or red ink. Now that hunger seized him, he put his victuals before his art.

He went to buy bread. A peddler appeared with baskets of his fruit. The orphan thought to himself: Half the summer has already passed, and I still haven’t tasted a fruit. I’ll buy myself a few cherries. He bought a penny’s worth of cherries and went out of the city, sat under a tree, and ate the cherries and threw the stones at the birds, watching to see how they flew. He forgot Reb Fishl and the fish and delighted his eyes with the birds’ flight. He began to perfume their flying with the verse “As the birds fly,” to the melody of Rabbi Netanel the Cantor. His heart filled with the force of the melody, and he began to think of the power granted to human beings. Some are given a melodious voice, like Rabbi Netanel, who stirred people’s heart with love of the Lord when he opened his mouth in song, and some are given power in their fingers to make skilled handiwork, like Israel Noah, his father. Rabbi Netanel had the merit of emigrating to the Land of Israel, and Israel Noah his father had enjoyed no such merit but had fallen from the church roof and died. Some people say that the non-kosher wine that he had been given made him fall down and die, and others say he went out to work without eating first, because they had finished all the bread in his home, and hunger had seized him, and he had collapsed and died.

His father’s death oppressed his heart, and he was sad. The birds came, and with their flight they carried his mind away from its gloom. He looked at the way the birds fly and sing and how they trace shapes in the sky with their flight. Although the shapes were not visible, nevertheless they were engraved before his eyes and upon his heart. The birds are beloved, since the power to fly is given to them. If the power to fly were given to man, his father would not have died. Now that he was dead, other artisans had come and painted the walls of the Great Synagogue.

The orphan set aside his grief over his father for grief over the Great Synagogue. Ugly drawings had been imposed upon its walls. Far worse were those that had been imposed upon the Tailors’ Synagogue, where they had heaped up pictures of birds that did not even look like a likeness. If the painters had raised their eyes upward, they would have seen what a bird was. If so, why did the people of Buczacz praise the artists and their paintings? Because the people of Buczacz walk stooped over all their lives and never raise their eyes above their heads, and they do not see the creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He, except for the fleas in their felt boots. Therefore those drawings look pretty to them. But I shall show them how the creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He, look and how it is fitting to draw them.

From the birds in the sky he returned to the fish he had drawn. At that moment he was grateful to Fishl Karp, without whom he would not have seen the form of a fish. From now on, said the orphan to himself, if I come to draw the sign of Pisces, I won’t look in old festival prayer books, but I’ll draw as my eyes instruct me.

At that moment there was no one happier in Buczacz than Bezalel Moshe, the orphan, and no one in Buczacz was sadder than Reb Fishl, the moneylender. This is indeed a wonder: here is a poor person without enough food for a single meal, and here is a rich man who could have held banquets and celebrations all his life with the interest on his interest. The one was happy because of the birds in the sky, and the other was grieved because of his fish, which he was kept from eating.

Fishl saw there was no point in standing in the synagogue and shouting “Nu, nu” when there was no one to hear his “nu, nus.” The thought came to him that perhaps he had left the head tefillah in his tallit and tefillin bag when he had sent off the fish. Without further delay he removed his tallit and covered the arm tefillah with the sleeve of his garment and rushed home. He already visualized himself with the head tefillah adorning his head, praying swiftly and washing his hands for a meal. He swallowed his saliva and planned to double each of his steps and not to delay for anything in the world.

I too shall do as Fishl did and I shall not tarry until I reach the end of the story. For everything that has a beginning has an end. Happy is he whose end is finer than his beginning. Here, with the story of Fishl, though its beginning is apparently fine, its end is certainly not fine. If you wish to know, here it is before you.

12

The Thoughts of a Hungry Man

Indeed Fishl charged his legs according to the saying taught in the midrash: The belly charges the legs. However, our sages of blessed memory meant that by the power of eating the body has the power to charge its legs, whereas I interpret the teaching thus: Because he craved food, he found the power in his legs to bear the charge of his belly.

Thus Fishl hurried and did not tarry. He did not tarry, but the fortune of his meal tarried. He was not delayed; others delayed him. Where did they delay him? Close to his home, right next to the door of his house. So many people were there that he could not find the door. What did all of those people want at his house, and why had they gathered there, and why were they noisy and turbulent, and what caused them to besiege his house? Go and ask them when you are forbidden to speak, because you are in between the head and arm tefillin. As much as his soul clamors to know, no one tells him. Of such a situation it is fitting to say: There is no servant woman who has not got six mouths. Yet when you want to hear something, there is not one mouth to tell you.

He had a little girl whom he loved more than all of his other daughters, and she loved him too. She saw her father. She came and rose up on her tiptoes and wrapped his neck in her two arms and said, “Oy, Papa, oy, Papa.” He could no longer restrain himself and asked her, “Why has the whole town gathered in front of our house?” The girl repeated, “Oy, Papa, don’t you know?” And she said no more. Being small, she believed that her father knew everything and that he had asked in order to test her. If it’s something that everyone knows, does her father not know more than they? She answered him in kind, “Papa, don’t you know?” Fishl saw that the world was conspiring against him, and even the daughter of his old age, whose voice chattered on and on without stopping, would not tell him. Nor were his astonishments finished yet. While he was aching to know what had happened, he heard people saying, “He did well to lie down and die. In any event, he must be buried.” Fishl understood that someone had died, but he was puzzled about why they said he had done well. Is death a fine thing? There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink, and if one is dead, not only does one neither eat nor drink, but one becomes food for maggots. He stooped in sadness and lowered his eyes to the earth. The earth raised itself up and whispered to him, “Now you are treading upon me with your feet. Tomorrow I shall cover you.” It also whispered, “You may believe that I am sad because of you. I am sad for those who will bear your coffin, who will have to carry such a big-bellied man as you.”