S. Agnon - Shira

He went up to his room, turned on the lamp, and surveyed his books. He stood there, closed his eyes, and concentrated, straining to remember what he was looking for. He opened his eyes and moved toward the row of books on the Church Fathers. He took down Tseckler’s book about Saint Jerome, not because he was interested in Tseckler, but because of an article in manuscript that was appended to the book. Since the article had no name, I’ll relay its subject: how Saint Jerome contributed to the work of Damasus on religious texts. It is very likely that the news Herbst heard on the bus, about a young scholar who was killed by Arabs, was what reminded him of that article, for Herbst had inherited the book, with all its appendices, from a young researcher who fell in battle.

Herbst sat with the book, studying the shape of the letters, scrutinizing them as if to analyze the writer’s character. He studied each letter, searched every line for a sign that the author was destined to die young. Several years had passed since his friend’s death. Others had died, others had been killed, others had committed suicide. But, whenever he thought of him, he felt his death anew. Why was this? Because he was killed at the beginning of the war, when people were not so accustomed to casualties. Now that the book was in his hand, he was overcome with fatigue, which led to a desire for sleep. He glanced at his bed, thinking: I’ll stretch out. I’ll have a rest. Actually, there’s no reason not to spend the night here, as I used to do before I went to Ahinoam with Henrietta to welcome Dani. He put Tseckler’s book on the table near his bed and slipped off his shoes to prepare himself for sleep. He was holding one of his shoes, inspecting it for traces of the shoeshine boy’s labor, when he realized that Tseckler’s book was not the right one for now. He returned it to its spot, scanned the shelf, and took down a book of Saint Jerome’s letters to read in bed. He undressed and climbed into bed.

After reading for a while, he came upon the letter in which Jerome tells about a chaste Christian woman who was falsely accused of betraying her husband, of the brutal torture to which she was subjected to force her to confess to a sin she hadn’t committed. The great event that occurred after she was tortured was also described. The ghost of a smile spread across Herbst’s lips, the smile of a literate person responding to an eloquent passage. He put down the book, placed his hand on it, and pursued his own train of thought: Jerome was a great writer. He succeeded in portraying all sorts of vicious tortures to achieve a desired end. Torture has been a common phenomenon since men first began to seek dominance over others. Still, the agonies described by Jerome were merely figments of his imagination. That broad-minded, saintly Christian concocted all those tortures. Gentiles! What an example of their corruption and brutality. Corruption and brutality that culminated in Hitler.

The light suddenly began to flicker, as an oil lamp does when it is about to go out. He blinked his eyes and was baffled, for he had just filled it with oil the day before. In fact, it was more than half full, but the wick was too short to reach the oil. He was too lazy to get up and add oil for the wick to draw on. He lay there, abandoning himself to all sorts of thoughts.

His mind wandered, settling on the last war. As he tended to do whenever he was reminded of it, he made an effort to forget what he had seen during the war, as well as the fact that he had actually fought in it. To some extent, he succeeded; to some extent, he failed. In any case, he didn’t really succeed in getting rid of war thoughts. Kings are at war with kings, nations with nations, religions with religions. A destroys B, B destroys C; they are all, finally, destroyed. If at first there was some logic to this scheme, it soon vanished, leaving only devastation in its wake. Herbst fixed his gaze on the wick that could no longer reach the oil because the fire had consumed it, and yet its light continued to flicker.

I am not one to infer connections, and I don’t mean to suggest that the sight of the lamp, et cetera, led him to think about Israel and the nations of the world. But I do allude to it, because it is appropriate. He gazed at the wick that didn’t reach the oil, thinking: The nations of the world berate Israel for considering itself a chosen people, and, in truth, it must be admitted that, compared to other nations, we have superior qualities. I don’t mean that every single one of us is virtuous and just, but, overall, the people as a whole are truly fine. There are intellectual women, concerned with the Jewish religion, who say, “Before, while we were in Germany, we didn’t doubt that the Jews were a chosen people. When we came to the Land of Israel, we saw that Jews are like everyone else, no better and no worse. Now that we have lived here several years, having seen what we have seen, we see that we are inferior to other nations.” These women have arrived at this conclusion because, when they lived elsewhere, they saw many Gentiles and knew very few Jews. Here, they see the entire people. Despite this, Herbst reflected, despite this, I believe that we are finer than other nations. What is so fine about the people of Israel? I, in any case, am not especially fine. The pursuit of bodily pleasure and the drive to create books are surely not fine, nor are these Jewish qualities. In this respect, I am no different from my peers. Yet I stand by what I said earlier: If a man sins once and doesn’t sin again, I don’t claim the sin is erased, but at least it isn’t compounded.

When did he make that statement? The day he got to know Shira. All his dealings with Shira have since been suspended. Only her address is written in his notebook. Should he want to, he could erase her address, and he could erase Shira from his heart, as if she no longer exists, as if she never existed, as if she would never return. If they should meet somewhere, and if she should say to him, “Why don’t you show yourself to me?” he could say, “You moved to a new place and didn’t tell me where you live. When I asked about you at the hospital, they said they didn’t know either.” Though he was feeling peaceful, on the brink of sleep, he took the trouble to get up and erase Shira’s address. He went back to bed, blew out the light, and delivered himself to sleep.

Sleep took over, all at once, wielding its power over each and every limb. You might remember that, when Henrietta was about to give birth to Sarah, Manfred brought her to the hospital, and he was sitting in the waiting room with her when the nurse Shira, whom he called Nadia, appeared and sat down with the women. At one point, a blind beggar from Istanbul appeared, and the limbs of that Shira-Nadia woman enveloped that beggar, as if to embrace him. The two of them finally began to dwindle and dissolve, until all that was left of them was a sandal. In the end, they were both enclosed in that sandal and vanished, never to emerge again. What had happened to that blind Turkish beggar was now happening to Herbst. His limbs were dwindling, until all that was left of them was sleep. From the depths of sleep, the hint of a human face seemed to surface. At first, it was hard to recognize. Little by little, the face became sharper, and Herbst realized that it belonged to one of the early monks who appear in so many Christian legends. This monk went into a place that resembled the building Shira’s new apartment was in, though it didn’t resemble the building Anita Brik had drawn. The monk was transformed too, and he began to resemble a certain monk from Gethsemane with whom Herbst had become acquainted at the post office, when he was mailing out offprints of his articles. There is something I should have mentioned earlier; not having done so, I will mention it now. When Herbst, who was mailing out his offprints, was standing at the window in the post office, there happened to be a monk in line behind him with whom he struck up a conversation, at the end of which the monk invited him to visit his monastery. Herbst promised to do so. I didn’t mention this event at the time, because it wasn’t relevant. Now that it has come up again, though only in a dream, I may as well mention it.