S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

The ending of “At the Outset of the Day,” however, lends itself to varying and even opposing readings. From one angle, it can be argued that the story lifts both narrator and reader beyond the devastation it has recorded to achieve one of those moments of redemptive clarity that Agnon excels in creating. That concluding moment is achieved in this instance by virtue of the Torah scroll that the narrator himself inscribed, a writing that joins him to an ongoing tradition. On the other hand, the ending could be viewed as solipsistic, in the sense that the narrator can purify his soul after the destruction only by citing the scroll that he wrote for the souls of days departed. In this reading, the scroll constitutes his own body of work devoted to the world before the catastrophe.

In a different way, “The Sign” takes up the position of the writer in the world after the destruction of European Jewry. Published in 1962, this story uses shifts between past and present to communicate simultaneously a sense of the creation of a structure and of the impossibility of integration or wholeness after the Holocaust. Structure refers most obviously here to the narrator’s house. But his efforts to establish a home for his family in the Land of Israel are opposed by the news of the destruction of Buczacz, the town of his beginnings. The story thus marks the impossibility of regarding the building up of the Land of Israel as compensation for the loss of the European Jewish community.

The drama in “The Sign” hinges on the narrator’s emotional dilemma. Constricted emotionally, he is unable to weep for the destruction of his townspeople and at the same time afraid to face the enormity of his grief. Caught in this conflict, he finds himself unable to join in the celebration of the giving of the Torah, the holiday of Shavuot on which the story is set. Instead he absorbs himself in the physical setting of his neighborhood in Talpiyot, just outside of Jerusalem, where he feels the sea wind and the desert wind, and enumerates with love the flowers and shrubs that surround his house. Inevitably, however, he becomes the vehicle for powerful experiences of memory, which compete with ongoing ties to loved ones in the present. The attention of his imagination oscillates between past and present as he seeks the resolution that eludes him.

Working his way toward the expression of grief, the narrator recalls the coming of spring when he was a child in Buczacz: he remembers the recitation of Hallel at the New Moon, a moment that coincided with the thawing of the river. It is the interpenetration of these worlds that becomes the “sign” of the writing. The luminosity of the text is the result of grief transmuted into the activity of memory, which writes itself into the very landscape of Israel as the writer sees it.

In a bold gesture, Agnon summons up the figure of the medieval Jewish poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol to sanctify the memory of Buczacz and to signal its inscription in the heavens. The medieval payyetan (religious poet) who weaves his name into his poems promises the narrator a poem that will carry the name of Buczacz in its verses. The narrator’s soul melts in response to this memorializing gesture of the poet, which produces a heavenly writing to which he alone is witness. The poem “sings itself in the heavens above, among the poems of the holy poets, the beloved of God.” The dead of Buczacz now number among that heavenly company, while the writer remains below. He is the survivor, unable to evade the responsibility of memory, which animates his writing.

The Search for Meaning

Father lay ill, and a moist cloth was bound about his head. His face was weary from illness, and a heavy worry dulled his blue eyes — like a man who knows his death is near but doesn’t know what will happen to his young sons and daughters. Opposite him, in another room, lay my little sister. Each was ill with a different illness for which the doctor had not yet given a name.

My wife stood in the kitchen and shelled peas from their pods. After she placed them in the pot she put on her wrap and went with me to the doctor.

As I was leaving the house, I stumbled upon some peas, for when my wife was busy preparing them for eating they had rolled out of her hands and scattered on the stairs. I wanted to sweep them away before the mice would smell them and come, but I was rushed; it was already past eight-thirty, and at nine o’clock the doctor used to visit his friends and drink with them all night, while at home there lay two sick persons who needed special attention — particularly my little sister, who used to caper and sing, exciting our anxiety lest she fall from her bed or disturb Father from his sleep.

Those peas began to bother me because they turned into lentils, and lentils are a food of trouble and mourning. It is easy to understand the sorrow of a man who has two sick persons at home, and things put this kind of thought into his heart.

It is not proper to tell that I was a bit resentful toward my wife and I thought to myself: What good are women? She had toiled to prepare a meal for us and at the end all the peas had scattered. When I saw she was running and knew why she was running, my resentment disappeared and love entered my heart.

On the way, right next to the black bridge, Mr. Andermann met me and greeted me. I returned his greeting and wanted to leave him. He held my hand and told me that he had just arrived from the city of Bordeaux in England and today or tomorrow he and his father would come to see our new house. “Ay, Ay, Ay,” said Mr. Andermann, “they tell all sorts of wonders about your house.” I contorted my face to give it a pleasing expression and reflected, Why does he say he will come with his father? Does Mr. Andermann have a father? And I reflected further: Couldn’t this excessive attempt to give my face a pleasing appearance leave an impression after it? I remembered the peas which had turned into lentils and I began to worry about retribution.

So that Mr. Andermann might not realize what was in my heart, I put my hand into my pocket and took out my watch; I saw that nine o’clock was near, and at nine the doctor used to go to his club and get drunk, while there at home lay two sick persons whose illness had no name. When Mr. Andermann saw I was in haste, he understood in his usual way that I was hurrying to the post office. He said, “The postal arrangements have changed and you don’t have to hurry.”

I left Mr. Andermann in his error and I didn’t tell him about the sick persons lest he bother me with advice and detain me.

There came a stately old man in whose house of study I used to pray on the High Holy Days. I have heard many cantors, but I have not heard a baal tefillah like him whose prayer is beautiful and clear even during his crying. I had wanted to speak to him many times, but I never could. Now he set upon me his eyes which were bleary from crying and looked at me affectionately, as if he were saying, “Here I am; let us talk, if you wish.” Mr. Andermann grasped my hand and didn’t let me go. Actually, I could have removed my hand from his and gone off, but on that very same day a dog had bitten me and torn my clothes, and had I turned my face from Mr. Andermann and gone he would have seen the tear.

I remembered the time when the old man stood before the reader’s desk during the prayer “And because of our sins…” and beat his head on the floor until the walls of the house of study quaked. My heart quaked and I was drawn toward him, but Mr. Andermann grasped my hand. I stood and twisted my face and tried to give it a pleasing expression.

My wife crossed the bridge and reached the doctor’s house, which was next to the post office and stood before the entrance of the house, her shoulders twitching from sorrow and waiting. I removed my hand from Mr. Andermann’s hand and went toward my wife. The black bridge quaked under my feet and the waves of the river swelled and rose, rose and swelled.