S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

11

They did not fetch me another meal. Maybe because they had not yet had time to prepare it, or maybe because the waiters were busy making up the accounts of the guests. In any case, some of the diners rose from the table, picking their teeth and yawning on their full stomachs. As they went out, some of them stared at me in astonishment, while others paid me no attention, as though I did not exist. When the last of the guests had left, the attendant came in and turned out the lights, leaving just one light still burning faintly. I sat at a table full of bones and leavings and empty bottles and a dirty tablecloth, and waited for my meal, as the hotel keeper himself had asked me to sit down and wait for it.

While I was sitting there I suddenly began to wonder whether I had lost the letters on the way, while I had been rolling on the ground with Gressler. I felt in my pocket and saw that they were not lost; but they had become dirty with the muck and the mire and the wine.

Once again a clock struck. My eyes were weary and the lamp was smoking and black silence filled the room. In the silence came the sound of a key creaking in the lock, like the sound of a nail being hammered into the flesh. I knew that they had locked me into the room and forgotten about me, and I would not get out until they opened next day. I closed my eyes tight and made an effort to fall asleep.

I made an effort to fall asleep and closed my eyes tight. I heard a kind of rustling and saw that a mouse had jumped onto the table and was picking at the bones. Now, said I to myself, he’s busy with the bones. Then he’ll gnaw the tablecloth, then he’ll gnaw the chair I’m sitting on, and then he’ll gnaw at me. First he’ll start on my shoes, then on my socks, then on my foot, then on my calf, then on my thigh, then on all my body. I turned my eyes to the wall and saw the clock. I waited for it to strike again and frighten the mouse, so that it would run away before it reached me. A cat came and I said, Here is my salvation. But the mouse paid no attention to the cat and the cat paid no attention to the mouse; and this one stood gnawing and that one stood chewing.

Meanwhile the lamp went out and the cat’s eyes shone with a greenish light that filled all the room. I shook and fell. The cat shivered and the mouse jumped and both of them stared at me in alarm, one from one side and the other from the other. Suddenly the sound of trotting hooves and carriage wheels was heard, and I knew that Mr. Gressler was coming back from his drive. I called him, but he did not answer me.

Mr. Gressler did not answer me, and I lay there dozing until I fell asleep. By the time day broke, I was awakened by the sound of cleaners, men and women, coming to clean the building. They saw me and stared at me in astonishment with their brooms in their hands. At length they began laughing and asked, “Who’s this fellow lying here?” Then the waiter came and said, “This is the one who was asking for the whole loaf.”

I took hold of my bones and rose from the floor. My clothes were dirty, my head was heavy on my shoulders, my legs were heavy under me, my lips were cracked, and my throat was dry, while my teeth were on edge with a hunger-sweat. I stood up and went out of the hotel into the street, and from the street into another until I reached my house. All the time my mind was set on the letters that Dr. Ne’eman had handed over for me to send off by post. But that day was Sunday, when the post office was closed for things that the clerk did not consider important.

After washing off the dirt I went out to get myself some food. I was all alone at that time. My wife and children were out of the country, and all the bother of my food fell on me alone.

After the enemy destroyed my home I took my little daughter in my arms and fled with her to the city. Gripped with terror, I fled in frenzied haste a night and a day until I arrived at the courtyard of the Great Synagogue one hour before nightfall on the eve of the Day of Atonement. The hills and mountains that had accompanied us departed, and I and the child entered into the courtyard. From out of the depths rose the Great Synagogue, on its left the old house of study and directly opposite that, one doorway facing the other, the new house of study.

This was the house of prayer and these the houses of Torah that I had kept in my mind’s eye all my life. If I chanced to forget them during the day, they would stir themselves and come to me at night in my dreams, even as during my waking hours. Now that the enemy had destroyed my home, I and my little daughter sought refuge in these places; it seemed that my child recognized them, so often had she heard about them.

An aura of peace and rest suffused the courtyard. The Children of Israel had already finished the afternoon prayer and, having gone home, were sitting down to the last meal before the fast to prepare themselves for the morrow, that they might have strength and health enough to return in repentance.

A cool breeze swept through the courtyard, caressing the last of the heat in the thick walls, and a whitish mist spiraled up the steps of the house, the kind children call angels’ breath.

I rid my mind of all that the enemy had done to us and reflected upon the Day of Atonement drawing ever closer, that holy festival comprised of love and affection, mercy and prayer, a day whereon men’s supplications are dearer, more desired, more acceptable than at all other times. Would that they might appoint a reader of prayers worthy to stand before the ark, for recent generations have seen the decline of emissaries of the congregation who know how to pray; and cantors who reverence their throats with their trilling, but bore the heart, have increased. And I, I needed strengthening — and, needless to say, my little daughter, a babe torn away from her home.

I glanced at her, at my little girl standing all atremble by the memorial candle in the courtyard, warming her little hands over the flame. Growing aware of my eyes, she looked at me like a frightened child who finds her father standing behind her and sees that his thoughts are muddled and his heart humbled.

Grasping her hand in mine, I said, “Good men will come at once and give me a tallit with an adornment of silver just like the one the enemy tore. You remember the lovely tallit that I used to spread over your head when the priests would rise up to bless the people. They will give me a large festival prayer book filled with prayers, too, and I will wrap myself in the tallit and take the book and pray to God, who saved us from the hand of the enemy who sought to destroy us.

“And what will they bring you, my dearest daughter? You, my darling, they will bring a little prayer book full of letters, full of all of the letters of the alphabet and the vowel marks, too. And now, dearest daughter, tell me, an alef and a bet that come together with a kametz beneath the alef — how do you say them?”

“ Av ,” my daughter answered.

“And what does it mean?” I asked.

“Father,” my daughter answered, “like you’re my father.”

“Very nice, that’s right, an alef with a kametz beneath and a bet with no dot in it make av .”

“And now, my daughter,” I continued, “what father is greater than all other fathers? Our Father in heaven, who is my father and your father and the father of the whole world. You see, my daughter, two little letters stand there in the prayer book as if they were all alone, then they come together and lo and behold they are av . And not only these letters but all letters, all of them join together to make words and words make prayers and the prayers rise up before our Father in heaven who listens very, very carefully, to all that we pray, if only our hearts cling to the upper light like a flame clings to a candle.”