S. Agnon - Two Tales - Betrothed & Edo and Enam

Rechnitz consulted his diary. “I am free tomorrow after midday.”

“Then come and take lunch with us,” said the Consul. “Shoshanah and I are always glad of your company.”

“How about our going to Mikveh Israel tomorrow?”

“Where is that?”

“About an hour’s walk from here.”

“Walk?” echoed the Consul in dismay.

“It’s possible to go by carriage. And from there it’s an hour’s journey to Rishon LeZion.”

“And what is Sarona?” asked the Consul.

“Sarona is a small village of Christian Germans.”

“Where is it?”

“Very near here.”

“I’ve heard,” said the Consul, “that they are very good farmers and God-fearing people. Let’s decide tomorrow where we shall go. We’ll lunch at half-past twelve. Bring a good appetite with you, it will encourage us to eat, too!”

XIV

When Rechnitz came at noon, Shoshanah was not there. She had spent most of the night looking over the pictures she had bought and had not gone to bed; in the morning she had been seen dozing at her window. Reluctantly she had let her father persuade her to lie down and take a short rest. “Shoshanah won’t join us for lunch today,” the Consul said.

The meal passed in silence, the Consul eating little and showing no appetite. Evidently, thought Rechnitz, he is feeling out of sorts. All the plans to show his visitors around Mikveh Israel and Rishon LeZion came to nothing because of Shoshanah’s fatigue.

Over coffee the Consul looked up and said, “Were you about to say something?”

Rechnitz had had no such intention, but since he was called on to speak, he considered for a moment and then said, “Would you like to go, sir, to Mikveh Israel, or to Rishon LeZion?”

“To Mikveh Israel or Rishon LeZion?” the Consul repeated. “After all the places we have been to, a little village like Rishon LeZion, or an agricultural school like Mikveh Israel, doesn’t amount to much. Tell me, incidentally, why on earth do you give your settlements such long, double-barreled names? Our forefathers, who lived to a good old age, chose short, agreeable place-names, like Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Gaza; and you people, who know that your time is brief, do just the opposite.”

When Jacob was about to go, Shoshanah appeared. Her face was flushed, her movements sluggish. For seven whole hours, from eight in the morning until now, she had slept without a break, until the maid had brought lunch to her in bed.

“Are you leaving?” she said to Jacob.

“Yes,” he replied in a whisper, as if afraid he would wake her.

Shoshanah said, “Come back in an hour, perhaps we’ll take a walk.”

Jacob looked at the clock, took note of the time, and promised to come.

Within an hour he was back. Shoshanah was seated downstairs in the hotel, dressed in warm clothes, gazing at a lithograph on the wall. When Jacob arrived she looked at him with the same gaze, as if he were part of the picture, or the wall itself on which the picture hung.

He bowed to her. “You wished to go for a walk, did you not?”

“For a walk?” she repeated, as if surprised.

“But surely you said you would like to take a walk?”

Shoshanah stared at him as if he were trying to trick her, then stood up and said, “Very well, let’s go.”

XV

Shoshanah walked in silence, and Jacob at her side was silent too. Words would not come for all the things he wanted to tell her. It seemed impossible, though, to go on walking in this fashion, and he searched for a subject to draw her attention. At that moment an Arab crossed their path. A member of some ascetic sect, he was barefooted and naked from the waist up. Two lances were embedded in his loins; his hair was long and unkempt; his eyes blazed with zeal. As he walked, he twisted the lances in his flesh, crying out Allah kareem ; while a great company followed him, repeating, Allah kareem! Rechnitz halted and translated the words for Shoshanah. She did not look at the ascetic and paid no attention to his cry. Soon they came to the “Nine Palm Trees,” planted by Japheth, the son of Noah, when he founded Jaffa: one for himself, one for his wife, and seven for his seven sons. When Nebuchadnezzar laid the country waste he uprooted these trees and planted them in his own garden; but when the Jews returned from their Babylonian exile they brought them back and replanted them on the original site. This grove of nine palms, whose fresh green arch seemed to support the silvery clouds, made a crown of green and silver fronds that rustled and glistened, their colors alternating as the light breeze stirred them in their airy cavern, while the fibers of the fronds quivered like raindrops in a sunshower. The sight never failed to move Rechnitz, and especially now when he had the opportunity of pointing it out to Shoshanah. He stretched out his arm, crying, “Look, Shoshanah!” Shoshanah nodded, without a glance either at him or at the palms.

Why am I showing her all this? he asked himself, distressed that he had taken her walking when she was so tired. Aloud he said, “Perhaps you would like to go back to the hotel?”

She nodded her head in agreement. “Yes. But first let’s walk by the sea. It’s quite near, isn’t it?”

She raised her long skirt a little as they made their way.

The sea was still and very blue; the waves broke over one another, raising their crests as if held back from mingling with the waters beneath. Yesterday, the tide was full; now the sea withdrew from the shore, leaving a wide beach. No one was there, except for a single fisherman. Jacob would have given the world in return for something that might draw Shoshanah’s attention. But nothing in the world could awaken this sleeping princess who walked by his side, insensible to his presence. Jacob called to mind the times when he had played with Shoshanah in her father’s garden, and they had fed the goldfish in the pool. But as he watched the sea and the lonely fisherman standing up to his waist in water, he could not bring himself to speak of things past.

Shoshanah halted suddenly. “Do you remember how you and I used to play in our garden?”

He answered in a whisper, “I remember.”

“Good,” said Shoshanah. “Let’s go on.”

Then again she stopped. “Do you remember what games we played?”

Jacob began to recount them to her as he walked. She nodded her head at every detail, saying, “That’s right, that’s right. I thought you had forgotten.”

He laid his hand over his heart, as if to say, “How could anyone forget such things?”

Shoshanah fell silent, but continued to walk, and Jacob followed at her side.

“Aren’t you tired?” he asked.

Shoshanah replied, “No, no. What’s over there?”

“An old Moslem cemetery.”

“Do they still bury their dead there?”

“I have heard that they don’t anymore.”

“Let’s go there,” said Shoshanah.

When they reached the cemetery, Shoshanah stopped. “Do you remember that vow we made together?”

“I remember,” said Jacob.

She looked at him steadily for a moment. “Do you remember the words of the vow?”

“I remember them,” said Jacob.

“Word for word?”

“Yes, word for word.”

“If you remember the vow, repeat it.”

Jacob repeated the substance of what they had sworn.

“But you told me,” said Shoshanah, “that you remember it word for word. Say it to me, then, word for word.”

He hesitated, sighed, and at last said: “We swear by fire and by water, by the hair of our heads, by the blood of our hearts, that we shall marry one another and be husband and wife, and no power on earth can cancel our vow, forever and ever.”