S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

As he looked at the earth, he saw that the earth was dry. He began to converse with himself. He said, If a man dies, the neighbors pour out their water, and here, besides sewage, there is no sign that they have poured out water. Little by little his mind reached the truth — that no person had died here. When his mind reached that truth, it did not know what to do with it. For if no person had died, why must there be a burial? But they had explicitly said that he must be buried. And if there is no dead person, why need there be a burial? One way or another, did they not say that he had laid himself down and died?

Had Fishl been full, he would not have wasted time with such thoughts, but he would have entered his house, washed his hands, and sat down to eat, and after the meal he would have wiped his mouth and said, “What is that rumor that I heard, that someone died there? Who died?” Now that he was weak from hunger he turned his thoughts to death. He thought again: Since they mentioned burial, that means there is a dead person there. If so, if there is a dead person there, why isn’t the beadle calling, Come out and accompany the dead? His thoughts began to devolve from person to person. He was alarmed lest someone who owed him money had died.

The thoughts that did him ill now turned kinder to him, for the idea came to mind that no person had died, for had a person died, they would have poured out water, and the beadle would be summoning people to the funeral. If so, what had died? A firstborn beast had died, which had to be buried, as is the law for a firstborn animal that dies. In any event, Fishl was somewhat puzzled as to why it had died at his house and not elsewhere. In any event, it had done a good deed in dying, for the city was released from its mischief. That it died at his house was a coincidence.

Although Fishl said that it was by chance, his mind was nevertheless disturbed, lest the animal had purposely chosen to die at his house, as in the story of the ewe and the old man.

What is the story of the ewe and the old man? It happened in our city that when the flock went out to graze every day, one ewe would leave the rest and go and stand before a certain house and bleat. One day the owner of the house fell ill. The ewe came and bleated. Every day its voice was thin, but this day its voice was strong. Every day its voice was short, and this day its voice was long. People saw that the patient’s face was changing because of his great suffering, for his heart was tormenting him because of his misdeeds, and his torments were etching themselves in his face. They believed that his face had changed because of his pains, and were he to sleep without disturbance, his torments would abate. They went out to drive away the ewe, but it would not move. They hit it with a stick, and it would not move. That day a soothsayer came to town. He heard and said, “You are struggling to drive it away in vain.” “Why?” He said, “I shall tell you a story. There were two friends in the town. One fell ill and was about to die. At the time of his death he deposited a purse full of coins in his friend’s hands and said to him, ‘My daughter is young and does not know how to keep money. Keep these coins for her until she reaches maturity. And when she finds a good match, give her her coins as a dowry.’ One man took the coins and the other turned his face to the wall and died. The orphan girl was close to maturity, and the holder of the deposit did not deliver the coins to her, but he buried them for himself under the threshold of his house. He said, ‘No one was present when the coins were transferred. If I don’t deliver them to the dead man’s daughter, no one will claim them.’ No one was present when the orphan girl’s coins were transferred. Just a creature of the Holy One, blessed be He, was present to see and to hear. It was a ewe from the flock. And when the orphan girl reached maturity, the ewe pitied her and came to bleat and remind the man that the time had come for him to keep his word to his dead friend and return the money that the orphan girl’s father had deposited with him for a dowry. As long as he doesn’t return the orphan girl’s money, the ewe won’t leave the threshold of his house.” They went and asked the dying man, “The money that your friend deposited with you — where is it?” He did not manage to tell them before he died. And the ewe died too. They sought to remove its body from the house, but they could not. The miracle worker said to them, “Dig beneath it and remove it with the earth.” They dug and found a purse full of coins. They went and handed the coins over to the rabbi for the orphan girl. The ewe relinquished its place and they buried it.

Fishl began to fear that the ram had died in front of his house to remind him of some sin. He scrutinized his deeds and could find nothing in himself except that once he had lent someone money in his hour of need and he had forgotten to remind him that the loan was subject to the permitted form of interest. He began to add up how much interest he had received. His presence of mind returned immediately, and he cleared a way for himself to his house.

13

A Homily on Reincarnation and the Conclusion

Upon entering his house he saw a kind of dirty creature that gave off the smell of a fish lying on the floor, and on it was some object that would not have been recognizable as a tefillah were it not for its straps. Fishl shouted a great shout, “Oy, my fish!” He shouted a second shout, “Oy, my tefillah!”

The fish was squashed and spotted. Fishl’s face, which Bezalel Moshe had drawn with chalk on the fish’s skin, had already been effaced by the damp skin and nothing remained of it but the dirtiest dirt. Stranger than that was the tefillah. Until it landed on the fish’s head, it had been yellow. Once it had sat on the fish’s head, the color of the chalk with which Bezalel Moshe had drawn Fishl’s face had clung to it and blackened it.

Before Fishl was freed of one fear, he saw that his head tefillah had been thrown down on the ground. Grief seized him, and he feared that the fish, in revenge, had thrown his head tefillah on the ground to force him to fast until after evening prayers to delay his enjoyment. He grew furious at that ingrate: had he not bought the fish from the fisherman, it would have descended into the priest’s belly without a benediction. In his great anger a fit of apoplexy gripped him.

After stripping off his clothes and letting his blood, they found the arm tefillah on his upper arm and stood in astonishment. Could it be that a man with a brain in his skull would put on the arm tefillah but not the head tefillah? Before they could resolve the matter of Fishl, they were perplexed by the matter of the fish. For never in their lives had they heard that you could catch tefillin-laying fish in the Strypa, and even the most absolute of fish eaters in Buczacz said, “Never in our lives have we seen a fish crowned with tefillin.”

There was in our city a research society called The Sons of Chance, because they used to say that everything happened by chance. For example, if Reuben ate bread, it was by chance that Reuben had found bread to eat — otherwise why is it that others seek bread but do not find it? Thus it was by chance that the fish found a tefillah. How? For example, a Jew had fallen into the river, and his tefillin tumbled out of his baggage, and the head tefillah caught on the fish’s head. No chance event transcends its simple meaning; it is a happenstance like any other.

However, you would do well to know that opposing them there was an elite circle in our city concerned with the wisdom of truth; some of its members met during the ten fateful days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and others regularly after midnight penitential prayers, both in deepest seclusion. They heard the story of the fish and said what they said, but they, too — that is, the sages of truth — failed to discover the truth. However, from their words we have learned some of the secrets of Creation, including information about the reincarnation of souls. Some of what the mind can grasp, I shall reveal to you.