S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

At that hour the cleaning woman was sweeping the building and raising clouds of dust. My lungs became blocked and my voice choked off. I said to myself, I’d better wait a minute until my throat clears; otherwise the official won’t know what I want, and all my efforts will be wasted.

As I was standing, the office suddenly filled with hordes of people pushing one another, standing in angry, sullen compliance, and looking avidly toward the men and women clerks who sat at their battered desks scratching away with gray pens on pads and ledgers. I too was pushed first to this clerk and then to another, and I kept my head lowered timidly in the hope they would turn to me and ask what I want. But they paid no attention to me and of course asked me nothing. This was all to the good, for had they asked I doubt whether I could have said a word with all that dust clogging my throat.

So one day passed and so a second. From dawn to dusk I stood in that office. My feet became leaden and my spirit exhausted. Occasionally I was moved from one spot to another, from one room to another; I stood before this clerk or that clerk; I was pushed again and returned to the room from which I started. The clerks sat on — their faces bent over their papers and their pens writing automatically, incessantly. The clock ticked gloomily away. Its hand moved slowly, and a dead fly was stuck to it and moved along with it.

On the third day things got a little better for me. A new clerk came in to replace one of the clerks who had died. This new clerk, by the name of Nahman Horodenker, was a blond, well-built youth with clear spectacles over his good eyes. From his name and facial expression, as from his bear-like movements, I could tell that he was a countryman of mine. All I had to do was announce publicly that he was a Galician Jew, and immediately I would have had the upper hand. But some indefinable misgiving, something like conscience, stopped me. I swallowed my words and was silent.

Meanwhile I was getting sicker and sicker, and I could think of nothing else. I had been ill twice that winter, and each time the first symptoms had been the same — a swelling of the tongue, a tickle in the throat, dry and cracked lips. Now the symptoms were appearing again. My eyes blurred, my forehead began to sweat, and my throat became hoarse. I took a cigarette from my pocket and lit it. Without waiting to finish, I lit another. I had already forgotten why I had come to this office, and why I was standing here, and why I was being pushed and was running from room to room and from clerk to clerk.

Suddenly I heard a noise and felt my left foot expanding in its shoe. I looked down and saw that the shoe lace had snapped, but before I had a chance to tie it, they called my name. Looking up, I saw a man sitting alone at a small table covered with a soiled black oilcloth, and with files of papers to his right and left; his eyes smiled in his bent head.

I relaxed and rejoiced as one does in recognizing a man one knew before the war. It was the druggist of the municipal hospital in my home town, who always had a glass of soda to offer me whenever I came to visit a sick friend. The druggist looked up and motioned me to be seated. This gesture of compassion touched me, yet I didn’t feel right about sitting down because of the papers that were on the chair. He took out a bar of chocolate and offered it to me.

I said to myself, It’s now three days and three nights that I haven’t seen my wife and children, and they’re undoubtedly complaining about me; now I’ll be able to placate them with some chocolate.

As I stretched out my hand to take it, though, I saw that the druggist had not intended to give me the whole piece. I became ashamed of my greediness, I blushed and lowered my eyes.

Slowly looking up I saw some professor sitting to the right of my acquaintance. He had a short, blond beard, a cane rested between his knees, and a hidden sneer played on his lips. I nodded and greeted him.

At this he grasped my hands and informed me that he had ingeniously solved a great problem. That letter “L” in a certain word, which everyone mistakenly believes to be part of its root, is not etymologically related to the word and should be substituted with another letter.

The professor’s pronouncement was clear to me and the word he was talking about was completely explained. Yet, I was puzzled by a different problem of phonology…

In the meantime the day had cleared up, and I knew that in a certain spot near the edge of the table my acquaintance had left me a piece of bread — except that I couldn’t tell where it was. But in any case, the mass of people had begun once again its squeezing and shoving. I was pushed outside and found myself standing on a large balcony floating on an endless ocean.

My wife had returned from a journey, and I was very happy. But a tinge of sadness mingled with my joy, for the neighbors might come and bother us. “Let us go and visit Mr. So-and-so, or Mrs. Such-and-such,” I said to my wife, “for if they come to us we shall not get rid of them in a hurry, but if we go to them we can get up and be rid of them whenever we like.”

So we lost no time and went to visit Mrs. Klingel. Because Mrs. Klingel was in the habit of coming to us, we went to her first.

Mrs. Klingel was a famous woman and had been principal of a school before the war. When the world went topsy-turvy, she fell from her high estate and became an ordinary teacher. But she was still very conscious of her own importance and talked to people in her characteristic patronizing tone. If anyone acquired a reputation, she would seek his acquaintance and become a frequent visitor in his house. My wife had known her when she was a principal, and she clung to my wife as she clung to anyone who had seen her in her prime. She was extremely friendly to my wife and used to call her by her first name. I too had known Mrs. Klingel in her prime, but I doubt whether I had talked to her. Before the war, when people were not yet hostile to each other, a man could meet his neighbor and regard him as his friend even if he did not talk to him.

Mrs. Klingel was lying in bed. Not far away, on a velvet covered couch, sat three of her woman friends whom I did not know.

When I came in I greeted each of them, but I did not tell them my name or trouble myself to listen to theirs.

Mrs. Klingel smiled at us affectionately and went on chattering as usual. I held my tongue and said to myself: I have really nothing against her, but she is a nuisance. I shall be walking in the street one day, not wanting anyone to notice me, when suddenly this woman will come up to me and I will ask her how she is and be distracted from my thoughts. Because I knew her several years ago, does that mean that I belong to her all my life? I was smouldering with anger, and I did not tell myself: If you come across someone and you do not know what connection there is between you, you should realize that you have not done your duty to him previously and you have both been brought back into the world to put right the wrong you did to your neighbor in another incarnation.

As I sat nursing my anger, Mrs. Klingel said to my wife, “You were away, my dear, and in the meantime your husband spent his nights in pleasure.” As she spoke, she shook her finger at me and said, laughingly, “I am not telling your wife that pretty girls came to visit you.”

Nothing had been further from my thoughts in those days than pleasure. Even in my dreams there was nothing to give me pleasure, and now this woman tells my wife, “Your husband had visits from pretty girls, your husband took his pleasure with them.” I was so furious that my very bones trembled. I jumped up and showered her with abuse. Every opprobrious word I knew I threw in her face. My wife and she looked at me in wonderment. And I wondered at myself too, for after all Mrs. Klingel had only been joking, and why should I flare up and insult her in this way? But I was boiling with anger, and every word I uttered was either a curse or an insult. Finally I took my wife by the arm and left without a farewell.