S. Agnon - Shira

“The road is clear, and we can move on. They create a disturbance when they’re alive as well as when they die. A constant disturbance. I never saw such a people. Their days are idle. They do nothing. When we come and take action, they sound an alarm, as if we were depriving them of work. Please tell me, folks, what do these Arabs really want? If not for the Jews, they would still be what they were in Terah’s generation, in Terah’s time. What haven’t we done for them? Roads, water, orchards, electricity. Still they complain. You, my friend, are probably from Brit Shalom and find my words uncongenial.” Herbst looked at the interrogator and said, “What makes you think I’m from Brit Shalom?” He said, “If you aren’t from Brit Shalom, please forgive me for suspecting you.” Herbst smiled and said, “And if I am from Brit Shalom, what then?” “In that case, you shouldn’t have come to the Land of Israel.” “Be quiet!” the driver shouted. “This is not the place for arguments. Professor Herbst, we are here. This is your stop.”

It’s possible that he would have found Shira’s apartment, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have found Shira’s apartment; it’s possible that he would have found her in, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have found her in. But he made no attempt to find her. When he felt the urge to see her, he overruled it with this rationale: If, at the hospital, where she worked for so many years, no one knows where she is, who am I to know? On the face of it, Herbst was at peace with the situation. Not merely in terms of himself, but in terms of Shira, too, he was at peace. If she were to come and reproach him for not showing himself to her, he could say, “I asked Axelrod about you, and he didn’t know where you were.”

Axelrod didn’t know where Shira was, and Herbst didn’t know where Shira was. They were different, however, in that one had forgotten her and the other had not.

Shira began to show herself to him again. He saw her dimly, in his imagination. The image was different from previous ones, earlier on, when his heart was aflutter and, more recently, when he was bitter, angry, and eager to be rid of her. Now, the image was ambiguous; even as he saw her, he knew she had vanished. He wanted to ask where she had vanished to and why she had left her job at the hospital, but he refrained, lest his voice disrupt the pleasure of his vision. His thoughts drifted, alighting on the climber, the ambitious young man who had pursued her in her youth and whom she had rejected. He speculated that this man had come to Jerusalem and was at the head of every public institution — perhaps he was even a trustee of the hospital — and that Shira had left her job to avoid having him see her in a subordinate role when his position was elevated and prominent.

One day, Herbst saw that climber’s name on a poster announcing a rally in Jerusalem, at which he was to be one of the speakers. Herbst took out his notebook and wrote down the date, the hour, the place. At the appointed time, he went to listen.

Whenever Herbst went to one of these gatherings, known as rallies, he was appalled at the number of people who pushed their way into a noisy, crowded space to hear the same message over and over again — a hundred times, a thousand times — a message that was trivial to begin with. Now that he was at the rally and saw the mob that had come to listen, he changed his mind and decided that the public wasn’t crazy after all: if the speaker attracted such a large crowd, he must have something to offer. Herbst had said roughly this about several orators, and he had turned out to be mistaken. But, in the case of this climber, it was clear to him that he was not mistaken. I refer to him as the climber, not because he was unique in his ambition, but because I’m not free to use his real name. Since I prefer not to invent names, I refer to him in terms of his character.

Let me return to the subject. That particular day was hot and hamsin — like, a day when the good Lord remembered His land unfavorably. The sky was yellow, gray, and dusty; the earth was gritty and hard. In between, the air was yellow and gritty, searing one’s eyes, scratching one’s skin, drying one’s mouth and lips. Throats and palates became irritated, as if they had been sprinkled with salty sand. There was no wind. The sun peered down with ugly eyes. The murky tar on the roads began to melt, sticking to everyone’s heels. Loose dust crawled about, rose up, and seeped into one’s pores, one’s eyes, and one’s nostrils. There were no birds in the sky. Jerusalem had suddenly reverted to an earlier era, before the Second Aliyah, when the only birds in the Jerusalem sky were birds of prey, who came in droves, occupied the land, and behaved as if it were their domain. But the streets of Jerusalem were filled with people, men and women, old and young. On that day, Jerusalem was demonstrating against the Mandate government, whose policies added villainy to villainy, heaped decree upon decree, and made Israel’s burden hard to bear. Those who had escaped the sword and eluded the raging madmen, who had wandered over the land, who had gone to sea in battered boats without bread, water, or medicine — with nothing — reached our shores only to be turned away by the authorities and forced to wander farther, until their boats were wrecked, leaving them to drown and be devoured by sharks. Even people who ordinarily shunned public events came to join this demonstration. Without words, without noise, without shouts, in total silence the community of Israel made its way through Jerusalem, with faces that bespoke grief, for there was no one present who did not have relatives at the bottom of the sea.

British policemen were stationed on every corner of every intersection, armed from head to toe. They wore helmets, and weapons were fastened to their uniforms. In addition, military vehicles stood ready and menacing, reflecting the attitude of those in charge, as such equipment tends to do. Some of the soldiers were on foot, some in vehicles. If I’m not mistaken, there were even some on horseback. We walked in silence, not saying a word. We didn’t lift our eyes to look up at those who inhibit life, inflict death, and rule the world — those conquerors, angels of fury, villains dispatched by others even more villainous. In our hearts, there was neither hatred nor resentment, but each face was covered with sadness, a sadness that begins in the heart and takes over the entire face. Little by little, whispered words began to be heard. People who were not in the habit of expressing themselves in public began to whisper to each other. One man told his neighbor, “My wife said to me, ‘This cannot be.’“ What that man said was strange. If that’s what his wife said, what of it? Actually, it was meaningful to us that even his wife, who was not interested in politics, said, “This cannot be.”

Herbst was swept along by the procession. When he left home in order to hear that climber’s speech, he didn’t know there would be such a huge crowd. All of a sudden, he was part of the crowd. One minute, he found himself among ordinary, anonymous people. A minute later, he found himself next to a friend or acquaintance. On that day, it made no difference. Everybody was of one mind. Though opinions might be expressed differently, the substance was the same. Only on rare occasions is there such agreement.

His mind was suddenly diverted from all this, because he saw Tamara. He realized immediately that he was mistaken, that it wasn’t Tamara, that it was a boy. How could a man mistake a stranger for his daughter, and a boy at that? Since it seemed to him that he had seen Tamara, he began to think about her. Where is Tamara? She is undoubtedly here. She certainly wouldn’t miss such an event. Tamara, who is always denouncing the British and deploring their actions in this country, is surely here. And it’s possible Shira is here too. Not really; Shira wouldn’t be here. She doesn’t involve herself in public affairs. The very first time he saw her, the day a young man from one of Jerusalem’s leading families was killed by Arabs and the entire city turned out to mourn, she stood on the sidelines, a cigarette in her mouth, as if to declare, “I’m not with you.” This would surely be the case now, when her rejected suitor, whom she would not enjoy seeing in such an honored public role, was scheduled to address the rally. On the other hand, since the crowd was large enough for an individual to be swallowed up in it, Shira might feel free to come, if not to hear his speech, then to see him.