S. Agnon - Shira

As it happened, after he took leave of the barber, it happened that he was needlessly delayed once again. How did this come about? I won’t refrain from telling all about it, though it compounds the delay.

For about half a generation, most of Jerusalem’s porters have had their headquarters on Hasollel Street, because most of the stores and businesses in the city are located on Jaffa Road. Hasollel Street cuts into the center of Jaffa Road, which is why the porters chose Hasollel. When they are needed to transport something, they are accessible.

Here they are, our redeemed brethren from Persia and its environs. The younger ones sit at the upper end of the street, the old-timers at the lower end, a scheme that predates the houses and the road, going back to a time when the entire street, as well as the section of Jaffa Road that faces Nahlat Shiva, was a heap of rubble, and it didn’t occur to anyone that houses would be built there and stores would open. The older men sit cross-legged, with colorful turbans on their heads. Their beards are black, with a glint of silver that inspires respect. Their trousers are floppy; their waists are girdled with heavy ropes; and on their backs is a small pillow. Their faces are like the face of some ancient king. On any given workday, they are there, many or a few, depending on the volume of business in town. And they offer their backs — lovingly, willingly, happily, skillfully, in heat, chill, rain, wind — to carry any burden. No load is too heavy, even if it has to be transported from one end of Jerusalem to the other. Why did our brethren from Persia elect this particular line of work? Because they derive from the tribe of Dan, and it was the Danites who carried Micah’s idol on their shoulders and worshiped it, though God’s house was in Shiloh. David, king of Israel, and his son Solomon rooted out the idol, but only temporarily, for the people continued to transgress and behave corruptly until the first exile. Now that the era of Israel’s redemption has arrived, and David’s son, the Messiah, will not appear until all the exiles are gathered together in Jerusalem, our people pour in from all over. They have come too, ready to shoulder any burden, because of the sins of their fathers, who were weighted down with idolatry until the first exile. Now that they do their job lovingly and willingly, they are hastening the final redemption.

Our brethren, who are the porters in Jerusalem, take on any load, yet they themselves are totally self-effacing when they work. You find a large oak chest with three heavy doors, the sort of chest one uses for clothes and linens, ambling from yard to yard, from alley to alley, from street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood. Its three mirrors are smiling. All this is unnatural, for the chest is made of wood and glass, both of which are inanimate. How is it possible for a lifeless and inanimate object to amble from place to place? If you look very, very carefully, you see that the chest is balanced on someone’s back, that a man is under the chest, transporting it, that he is bowed by its weight and effaced because he is so small in proportion to this mammoth object. This is also true of barrels, lumber, rocks, and other movable goods that are several times broader and larger than a person. When a porter has no work, he sits among his ropes. If he is a contemplative sort, he begins to contemplate, taking delight in his wife, his sons, his daughters, his home and sleeping mat, the foods and beverages that give strength to those who eat and life to those who drink. And if, because of sins, the Angel of Death should take charge and bring on untimely death to someone, he has the good sense to deal with the orphans and raise them, so they don’t fall into the clutches of secularists who would steer them away from the laws that express the will of our holy Torah, which was brought down from God by our teacher Moses, peace be unto him, with thunder and lightning, at Mount Sinai. When these thoughts begin to spill over, he shares them with a neighbor. Not everything that is on your mind can be conveyed. We can convey some of our thoughts, and, because the subject is timely, we can discuss the Arabs — how misguided they are to be making trouble, for they, too, are in exile under English rule. As for us, our king, the Messiah, is on the way, and every single one of us will rule one hundred and twenty-seven realms, like old Ahasuerus. As for the Arabs, if one of them is ever king, he will be a minor king, enthroned by us, by our Herbert Samuel, who called in Abdullah and told him, “I’m giving you a thousand pounds a year to rule the Bedouin in the desert. Be clever and crafty, so Weissman, the head of the Zionists, has no pretext to cast you out and overthrow your kingdom.” Among these porters, there are those whose minds reach no further than their eyes can see. They reflect on the Ashkenazim, who spend their days running around in an agitated state, trading apartments, trading possessions, casual with money, as if it showers down from heaven, many of them as cruel as the idols Gentiles worship. If a porter asks two or three pennies more than what was agreed, the Ashkenazim roll their eyes in anger, curse, and abuse him as if his offense were on the scale of the golden calf. The porters’ leader, Moshe, is unique. He knows how to get along with all the Ashkenazim. With a smile on his lips, a hand on his heart, he can deal with them. Even those who come from the land of Hitler, that depraved son of a she-devil — they also seek out Moshe.

There is a special relationship between Moshe and Herbst. Since their consultation about the books — transporting, organizing, packing them, et cetera — Moshe has remained fond of him, even devoted to him. As soon as he saw Herbst, he approached him and asked if he was now ready to have his books transported. Moshe stationed himself in front of Herbst and stuck his hands back into the ropes on his hip. Herbst realized he was expected to say something to him. Meaning to be polite, he asked him how he was doing. Moshe extricated his right hand, placed it on his heart, and began relating some of the troubles that had befallen him, some of the troubles he had been involved in because of bad luck, some of the troubles he was subjected to as a test, and yet other troubles whose nature was still unclear, for there are troubles that turn out to be for the good. As he listed each and every trouble, Moshe either turned his face to heaven and then closed his eyes or closed his eyes and then turned his face to heaven, saying, “May the Lord have mercy.” It was strange to Herbst that this mighty man was so tormented. And what torments! A chronically ill wife, who, because of her condition, was constantly bearing children only to bury them, bearing and burying, so that, after the last of her children was buried and she didn’t give birth again, they adopted two orphans, a boy and a girl. The boy was one of those children whose parents had died en route from Persia to Jerusalem; the girl was the daughter of a relative who was crushed under a safe he was carrying to a bank. They raised the orphans, indulged them with fine food and clothes, bought them shoes to fit their feet, even toys like those the Ashkenazim buy, making no distinction between the two orphans, though the girl was a relative and the boy was not. Moshe and his wife were contented, and they didn’t ask themselves, “Where are our own children?” It was decided that, when the two orphans grew up and were of age, they would marry each other. The boy suddenly took sick. He recovered, but he was unable to walk, because he had infantile paralysis. They carried him from Jerusalem to Tiberias for the holiday of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker, and from Tiberias to Meron on the festival of Lag Ba’omer. He was brought to the cave there and placed next to the resting place of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. Three wise men were hired to stay with him and recite the Zohar. After they recited the entire Zohar, he was taken back to Jerusalem to be married, so the demons would realize he was no longer a child and it was time to release him from that illness, which was, after all, an illness of childhood. Wedding clothes were ordered for him and for the girl. The girl went outside in her finest dress and new shoes. A vile and loathsome Yemenite saw her. That villain cast a spell on her, and, on the Shabbat of Lamentations — three weeks before the Shabbat of Compassion, when the wedding was to take place — he carried her off to one of the new settlements, where they were married. The boy remained crippled. An elderly divorcée appeared — actually, she was not so old — and said, “I’m willing to marry him.” Moshe’s wife said, “Go marry the Angel of Death.” She had a grudge against her because, when they were both girls, that witch had poured bird bile on her, which arrests childbirth. If she hadn’t washed herself with the urine of a woman giving birth for the first time, she wouldn’t have been able to bear children at all. Even so, all her children had died.