S. Agnon - Two Scholars Who Were in our Town and other Novellas

One of these ‘chained’ women joined our comrades to make the journey with them. This was her sad story: Formerly she had dwelt with her husband and had borne him sons and daughters, never hearing a harsh word from his lips. His business had been dealing in horses which he bought for the nobles, who all trusted him and gave him money on account. He had never broken faith, neither in those matters which lie between one man and another nor in those that lie between a man and his God. But once he set out to buy horses with a lot of money in his possession and he never came back. It was plain when he never came back that he must have been slain on the road. His disappearance created a great commotion among the rest of the Jews and they set out in search of his body, asking many wayfarers whether they had seen such and such a Jew named Zusha, the horse dealer. Nobody admitted to having seen him, but some had heard that robbers had attacked a Jew and there was little chance that he had escaped alive from their hands. What was more, the same was said by an old wise Gentile woman who was versed in the stars. There is no sense in the Jews being excited, said she. That man has already left the world. The same was said in slightly different words by a Gentile who trafficked in witchcraft. The way he put it was, The Jews are not smart. They are spending their money for a tiny heap of bones. More than that he did not say, it being the practice of witches not to say what they do not know. But when they entreated him to take pity on the woman and her children and to interpret his words, he said, The Jews are not smart. They are looking above-ground for what has already been put underground.

Now there was an old judge who was present and he said, If he is referring to that Jewish robber chief who was hanged in the Land of the Ukraine, I can promise that they will not find him any more.

Now why should they have suspected that robber of having been Zusha? Well, several years earlier some Jews of that town had come and said that they had seen Zusha standing at the crossroads as a highwayman.

Here your wife and children, said they to him, are moving heaven and earth for your sake, and you…

Before ever they finished, other robbers arrived. But Zusha said, They are my townsmen. So they let them be.

Well, the Government heard about it and sent to capture him, but he was not to be found because he had already moved on to another country. Before long there came news that a robber chief had been caught in the Ukraine and there hanged; and the good name of the Jews was desecrated among the nations, because he was found to have a pair of tefillin and thus identified as a Jew. And that was the last news to have been heard about Zusha.

But his wife took her children and went from one zaddik to another, weeping in their presence; but they had nothing to answer her. At last she came to the renowned Rabbi Meir of Primishlan, who told her, If you wish to weep, go to the place where the sea and the Danube weep for each other, and weep there. Meir has no love of tears. So she and her children were proceeding to the spot where the river Danube empties into the sea in order to seek her husband there.

The women sat knitting, tears falling from their eyes for this poor woman left ‘chained,’ and for her husband who had died a sinner and left his children orphans. Yet the woman did not despair of her husband and was still searching for him; for, she argued to herself, could Zusha, who had lived at peace with every man and had always done his business so honestly, have joined a band of robbers and highwaymen? She was sure it was all a false charge.

The wagoner stopped his wagon and called to Hananiah, who came up level with him and stopped. Hananiah, said the wagoner, did you hear the story of the poor woman?

I heard it, Hananiah answered.

What do you think, Hananiah? went on the wagoner. Who is the robber they hanged?

It’s my opinion as well, said Hananiah, that the fellow can have been nobody but Zusha.

The sun sank, sank again, and then sank once more. The women dropped their knitting needles, and wiped the tears from their eyes. Hananiah took out his kerchief and knotted it for a sign. In silence they rolled along the riverbank until they arrived at Lipkani, where they halted. From Lipkani they made their way towards Radiaitz, where the wagoner took off the horses’ bells so that robbers and highwaymen might not hear them jingling. From there they made their way to Shtepenasht, a small town on the Basha river not far from the river Pruth. The folks of Shtepenasht are heavy in flesh and light in Torah; a fist-sized bite of food to them is like a mere olive-sized bite of food for others.

From Shtepenasht they made their way to Jassy, where they arrived at dusk on the Sabbath eve. There are twenty-one large synagogues in Jassy, apart from one hundred and twenty Houses of Study and small synagogues and prayer rooms; yet when they came to Jassy, they did not pray in a single one of them but stayed at their inn and constituted a prayer quorum for themselves, as the Sabbath had begun ere they had time to change their clothes.

But next day they hastened to the Great Synagogue, dressed in their Sabbath clothing and wearing their prayer shawls. By the time they reached the synagogue the congregation was already deep in prayer, since the folk of Jassy start early and leave early. Anyone who has never seen Jassy at her ease never saw a contented city in his life. More than twenty thousand Jews lived there, eating, drinking, rejoicing, and enjoying life. Among them, indeed, were some for whom the eating of cookies in the shape of Haman’s ears at Purim was more important than eating matzah at Passover. The holy men of the age labored greatly to make them stand erect instead of wallowing in the dust.

In brief, our men of good heart arrived in the midst of the prayers at a time when no man greets another. They stood where they were and nobody paid any attention to them. But when the time came to read the Torah, the sexton summoned them to the reading. What was more, the sexton summoned each one of them by his own name and the name of his father — except for Hananiah, whom he did not summon. It is the general custom that when a man comes to a place where he is not known and the warden wishes to summon him to the Torah, the man is asked for his name and the name of his father and then summoned; but this fellow summoned them without first asking any questions. If he was not a prophet, he was an angel or more than an angel; since even an angel has to ask, as we find in the case of Jacob, whom the angel asked, ‘What is thy name?’

After the prayer was ended, the sexton arranged a fine repast in their honor, and while they sat together he asked each one of them about his affairs. They were astonished, for he told them everything that went on in their homes and their town. Yet from the way he ate and drank there was no sign that he was on a high spiritual level.

But once the wine went in, his secret came out.

Don’t you recognize me? he asked them.

We have not the honor, they answered.

Then he said, Do you remember Yoshke Cossack, who once sold himself to the king’s army for a skullcap full of money?

We remember, they replied, that they used to feed him on all kinds of dainties. If he wanted raisins and currants, they gave them to him. If he asked for Hungarian wine, he received it. If he wanted a bed with pillows and cushions, they had one prepared for him. When they took him off to serve the king, he asked for his pay to be doubled and they doubled it; and then, after all that, he ran away and deserted.

Would you suppose, said he to them, that he ran away to the Garden of Eden?

His actions, they responded, were not such as to indicate that there would be any place prepared for him in the Garden of Eden.