S. Agnon - Shira

He left the old books and went down the steps to the main store below. Like all modern establishments, it was closed for lunch, but the display windows were exposed to view. He stood looking at Weltfremdt’s book, thinking: I suppose I’ll have to buy it. He had another thought: I have mentioned Gethsemane a hundred times without thinking of those two brothers, the brothers who were killed together near Gethsemane. It wouldn’t surprise me to find a study of this phenomenon: certain place-names evoke memories of events that have occurred there, while other places can be mentioned without evoking any such events. With regard to Gethsemane and the murdered brothers, I blame Sacharson, whose name I don’t like to invoke. Having mentioned him only in order to resolve a dilemma, he has been mentioned, and I won’t pursue the paradox any further. I’ll just go into the café, sit down, and have some coffee.

He went into the café and ordered hot, not iced, coffee. He waited for it to cool, then drank it up all at once, took out his cigarette case, and sat smoking and reading the paper he had found on the table. He was watching the office girls who were taking a break. They wore good clothes that they couldn’t afford to buy on an office salary. They sat over coffee, tea, or cocoa. Their faces, dimmed by clouds of cigarette smoke, were weary from work and from the weight of the fine clothes on their backs.

One of them approached Herbst and asked for the newspaper that was next to him. He handed her the one he was reading, assuming that was the one she meant, when actually she had meant the one on the table. She returned his paper to him and picked up the other one. As soon as she was gone, Herbst went back to his paper, but he didn’t continue to read, because his mind was now on her. He hadn’t had occasion to talk to her, but he knew she was married and had children, maybe two, maybe three. She spends eight hours in the office, leaving her husband and children to depend on a housekeeper, who, one imagines, behaves as if she were the lady of the house. What moves this woman to leave her husband and children, to wear herself out eight hours a day in an office, surrounded by the rattle of typewriters, shrieking telephones, squabbles with office mates? If she is competent, her friends are annoyed. And the males in an office still find it hard to accept a woman who surpasses them in skill or earnings. He looked at her and saw that she was sitting with her cup in front of her, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, the newspaper slipping out of her hands as her eyes opened and closed, opened and closed, eager for sleep but afraid to doze off, lest she be late getting back to the office. Herbst looked at his watch and was overwhelmed by sympathy for her and for all the weary workers who would soon have to go back to work. He, too, went back to what he was occupied with earlier: Weltfremdt’s book, the spread of the Goths into Roman territory, and the famine they were confronted with almost as soon as they arrived. The famine was so great that, after the Germans had used up all their resources, offering their cash, carriages, and armor in return for food, Syrian merchants brought emaciated dogs to their camp and traded them for a male or female child.

Herbst suddenly found himself watching a particular young woman, though there was nothing special about her that would account for his interest, except for her face, which was quite childlike. This young woman, Herbst thought, works for a printer; she works in the office of a printing press. She looks German, but she isn’t. Anyway, I’m clearly right about the work she does. She works in the office of a printing press, and I can even describe what she does there. Henrietta would say, “You have such great intuition, Fred.” While he was celebrating the fact that he had guessed her line of work from her face, she was called to the telephone. Now that she was gone, Herbst turned to the waitress and asked who she was. She told him. Herbst said, “A lawyer, just as I thought. It’s perfectly obvious. What was I about to say?” The waitress stood waiting for him to say it. Herbst noticed and said, “Excuse me. I was going to say something to myself, not to you.” Because she was so tired, she wasn’t paying attention and didn’t find this odd. When she left, he whispered to himself, without letting the words reach any ears other than his own, “Another day is gone. What did I accomplish today? I didn’t accomplish anything. I got up in the morning, picked up half a donkey’s load of books, took them in to breakfast, and told Henrietta I was going to Gethsemane. Henrietta didn’t say, ‘Why go to Gethsemane on such a hot day?’ When I arrived in town, I didn’t go to Gethsemane, because I had no wish to go to Gethsemane. When I met Julian Weltfremdt, I went to a café with him and drank iced coffee. While we sat over the iced coffee, he mentioned that he had heard I was being considered for a promotion. When he said that the kindergartens in this country will become universities, did he mean to irritate me, because I may be about to be promoted? Another day is gone, one of those days that give us nothing beyond the knowledge that our lifetime is now one day shorter. What significance does this have for a man like me whose days have been decreased by one? How did I use this day? I looked at pictures. True, it’s good for a person to look at a fine picture every now and then. How successful that painter was, how vivid the colors on the dead flesh. However, I should say this: I was exaggerating when I said I could hear the voice of the bell in the leper’s hand. Tomorrow or the day after, I’ll get The Night Watch and take it to Shira. If I find her, good. If I don’t find her, I’ll leave the picture with one of her neighbors. In any case, I can say one thing: It doesn’t matter if I find her or not. Wait a minute! Shira was looking for that picture of a doctor, some students, and the patient who is the object of their lesson while all this time I’ve been thinking of The Night Watch .”

He suddenly began to feel the pinch of hunger. He called the waitress and asked for some food that could be considered lunch. “As for bread,” he said, “it doesn’t matter whether it’s black or white.” Though he preferred black bread, he had found that, in this country, one often has to make do with wheat bread, wheat being one of the native species. He learned about this from Gandhi, who wrote that every land produces the bread best suited to its inhabitants. He ate, drank, paid his bill, lit another cigarette, and left.

His limbs were light, as they tend to be after a light meal and two cups of coffee. The air outside was not light; burnt gasoline, scorched dust, human sweat, the stench of garbage and tobacco produced a mess of smells; the din that filled the air included traffic noise, the clatter of typewriters, the shouts of newspaper boys, the malevolent eyes of policemen, the bold footsteps of young Arabs, the howl of stray dogs, the anguish of human beings wondering what to do next. All this had the potential to unsettle one’s mind, but Herbst’s mind remained composed. His mind was on many things, even on the waitress who had served him in the café, who must have left work by now, put on good clothes, and looked so different that one would barely recognize her. Finally, he too was unsettled. His capacity to be a simple observer was lost, along with his physical lightness, a lightness he used to enjoy without being quite aware of it, a lightness that was once his characteristic mode. Once, before he knew Shira.

What began to unsettle him again was the tragedy he had wanted to write but never wrote. When he was with Henrietta in Kfar Ahinoam, after the birth of Dani, his daughter’s son, he had decided to abandon the project, and he had done so. Suddenly, all of a sudden, it was on his mind again, suggesting that he take it on. Isn’t it odd that, the minute I give up the idea of writing the tragedy, just then I happen to see a painting of a leper, a painting that could serve as a model for the faithful slave Basileios?