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

“You don’t ask me about my wife,” said Gamzu.

“If you’ve anything to tell me, let me hear.”

“Indeed I have something to tell you. Isn’t there an ashtray?”

I went and brought him an ashtray. He groped about to deposit the stub of his cigarette. Then he looked at me with his healthy eye, wiped his ailing eye, rubbed his palm against his beard, licked his palm with the tip of his tongue, and remarked, “I thought I had burnt myself with my cigarette, but now I see that I have been bitten by a mosquito. You have mosquitoes in the house.”

“Perhaps there is a mosquito here and perhaps there isn’t a mosquito here. Who would notice a mosquito when he is honored by the presence of a dear guest like you?”

I do not know how Gamzu took this. What he said was, “I found her! I found her! Found her in bed fast asleep!”

It would be interesting, I thought, to know how Gamzu came to find his wife. But I shall not ask him outright. If he tells me, well and good; if not, I shall do without the information, rather than have him think that I am prying into his affairs. A few moments went by in which he said nothing; it looked as if he had put the whole matter out of his mind. Suddenly he passed his hand over his brow like a man stirring himself from sleep, and proceeded to tell me how he had come home, opened the door and looked into the bedroom without expecting to find anything. All at once he heard a steady breathing. Because he was so preoccupied with his wife, he thought he must be deceiving himself that he could hear her. He went over to the bed and found her lying there. He almost fainted with joy, and but for the reassurance her breathing brought, he would certainly have died there on the spot.

I was too amazed to speak. On the previous evening, I had told him distinctly that I was going back home, that I would not be staying at the Greifenbachs’ tonight; so why on earth had he come here? And I was all the more surprised that he had left his wife alone on this moonlit night, after the moon had already shown him her power.

Said Gamzu, “You are surprised that I have left Gemulah alone?”

“Yes, I certainly am surprised.”

Gamzu smiled with his live eye, or perhaps with his dead eye, and said, “Even if Gemulah wakes up now, even if she gets out of bed, she will not go walking.”

“Have you found the talisman?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t.”

“If so, how do you come to leave your wife alone? Did the moon give you its personal guarantee that it would let your wife sleep in peace tonight? Seriously, Reb Gabriel, what makes you so confident?”

“I have found a cure.”

“You consulted the doctors, did you, and got a prescription?”

“I did not consult the doctors,” said Gamzu. “I am not in the habit of going to doctors, for even if they know the names of all the diseases there are and the names of all the drugs for them, I do not rely on their kind. I put my reliance on one who has drawn his strength from the Torah, for he knows and can find a cure for every part of the body, and needless to say, I rely on him in matters that affect the soul.”

“And have you found such a man, and has he provided a cure for Gemulah?”

“The cure was already at hand. When I was studying at the yeshiva of Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg at Innsdorf, a woman came to the rabbi and told him that a certain youth was lodging in her house, who was sick in mind and moonstruck, so that every month at the new moon he would go through the window and climb along the roofs, endangering himself, for if he were to wake up in the course of his walking it was to be feared that he might fall and be killed. They had already consulted doctors and no remedy had been found. Rabbi Shmuel said to her, ‘Take a thick garment, and steep it in cold water until it is well soaked, and leave the garment beside the young man’s bed. When he has climbed out of bed and his feet touch the cold garment, the chill will wake him at once and he will get back into bed again.’ She did this and he was cured. Tonight I too did this, and I am sure that even if Gemulah should wake and stand up, she would immediately go back to bed.”

I sat there, still puzzled. If this was the cure, why hadn’t Gamzu made use of it before? Gamzu sensed what I was thinking and said, “You are surprised that I have waited until now.”

“I am not surprised. With all your great devotion to charms that are above nature, you paid no attention to the remedies that are in nature itself.”

“I can give you two answers. One is that the charms you speak of are also in general to be thought of as medicines. Once, for example, I took sick while I was on a journey, and was cured by means of charms. And when I went to Europe and told the specialists, they said, ‘The charms you used are known drugs, which used to be employed in treatment until better and more convenient drugs were found.’ As for my waiting until now, heaven caused me to forget the remedy of the great rabbi as a token of respect for him, because I gave up attending his yeshiva and went on to others. And as for my remembering today, it was because the object was at hand. I happened to be mending a tear in my clothes, and as I sat holding the garment I remembered the whole affair. I got up at once and put the article into water, and when it was soaked I spread it out before Gemulah’s bed.”

“Now,” I said, “I am going to ask you a simple question. Was it because you did not find me at home that you came here?”

“I did not go to your home and I did not think of coming here.”

“And yet you came.”

“I came,” said Gamzu, “but not intentionally.”

“You see, Reb Gabriel, your heart is truer than your conscious mind, and it sent you here so that you would keep your promise to let me know how your wife is.”

“The fact of the matter is this,” said Gamzu; “I was at home watching Gemulah as she slept. I thought to myself, Now that Gemulah is asleep I shall go and pay a call on Amrami. I tested the garment I had left by her bed, soaked it in water again, and went out. As I walked, I reflected on Amrami. He was born in Jerusalem and grew up here. After spending forty or fifty years out of the country, he came back home, with nothing left of all he had acquired in those forty or fifty years, except for a little granddaughter and a few Hebrew books. Thinking of this I began to consider all those others raised in the Land of Israel who had left the country at about that time, rejecting the Land for the sake of a comfortable living abroad. Some of them were successful; some of them grew wealthy. Then came the Great Persecution, which took from them all they had, and back they came again to the Land of Israel. Now they complain and grumble that the country has become estranged from them. While I was thinking of how they complain, and while I gave no thought to their sufferings, I suddenly heard someone screaming. I went in the direction of the noise and saw a girl calling out to a young man: ‘Günther, my darling! You’re still alive, my darling! The Arab didn’t wound you!’ What was it all about? A young fellow and a girl were taking a walk in one of the valleys on the outskirts of the city. An Arab came up and began to annoy them. The young man shouted at him to chase him off. The Arab pulled out a knife and threatened the youth. The girl was in a panic because she thought he had been stabbed. In the meantime, I had gone out of my way and found myself down in the valley. I stood and wondered, Why am I here? I had meant to go to Amrami’s, and instead, I have come to this house. Can you understand this? I cannot, just as yesterday I could not understand what had brought me here.”

I answered, “Have not the rabbis said, ‘To the place where a man is summoned, there his feet carry him?’ But a man does not always know to what end he is summoned.”