S. Agnon - Shira

Once again, Manfred sat with Henrietta, and they said things we are familiar with, adding some words about Zahara — that, as she gets older, she gets more and more emotional. But her life seems to be in good order. Would that Tamara’s course were as smooth. While Henrietta and Manfred were talking, Zahara managed to wash her tear-stained eyes, to go back to look at her little brother, and to find he had features like those of her Dani. Manfred had already concluded his conversation with Henrietta. If he had sat with her a thousand years, he wouldn’t have added anything. For this reason, when Zahara knocked and entered, he leaped up to join her. If not for the nurse, who gave a sign indicating that Zahara must leave too, she would have stayed with her mother another hour and yet another hour — a thousand years, at least.

Father and daughter left for home. Because Zahara wanted to see Sarah and because she wanted to get to see her an hour sooner, she prevailed on her father to waste his money on a taxi that happened by, rather than wait for the bus, since there was no way of knowing when it might be in the mood to come. They arrived with the speed of an arrow and were home before they had a chance to exchange a word. They came home and found Sarah alone. Firadeus had washed the dishes, given Sarah a bath, and gone home. Tamara had gone off, for just a few minutes, to the German colony. Unless my hypothesis is incorrect, she went to the post office to send off some of her proclamations. Tamara is clever, and she knows no one would suspect that mail from the German colony comes from Jews seeking freedom.

From the moment Zahara entered the house, all household procedures were set on end. This applied to the food, to the cleaning, and especially to Sarah. She examined her from head to toe, changed her clothes, and combed her hair, arranging it in two braids tied with red elastics that emphasized its shiny golden lights. As soon as Herbst came home with his daughter, he realized he had someone he could depend on, that he was no longer needed to supervise. But, since he had become accustomed to staying in during the past four days, except for the hours spent visiting his wife, he chose to continue in this mode until Henrietta’s return from the hospital. Herbst hadn’t spent that much time at home in years. Whatever he did found favor in his daughter’s eyes. Her voice was never harsh; she never said anything that irritated him. I must admit — smart as Henrietta was, and concerned as she was with her husband’s welfare and peace of mind — she sometimes irritated him with her pedantic ways, which were thoroughly irrational. Much as Herbst tried to defend her, he regarded her behavior toward him in those petty matters as obstinate and cruel. As soon as Zahara came and took charge of the household, not a harsh sound was heard. On the contrary, Zahara accepted every foolish act of Manfred’s, even when he himself felt he had done something improperly, as if it were meant to be done that way and as if it had been done well. Tamara, who made a pretense, at first, of keeping an eye on household affairs and on Sarah, was only too happy to pass the reins to her sister. In fact, she said to her, “From here on, it’s all yours.” Manfred roamed through his house and garden, books and bushes, in a state of absolute repose. He knew that he could now go to Shira and spend the whole night there, without having to invent alibis. Still, he chose to stay home. Moving from activities in his room to those in the garden, he played with Sarah, sharing her bread (actually a mud pie), listening to music made by her wind-up doll, rocking either Sarah or the doll on his lap, singing jingles learned from Ursula. Playing with little Sarah, Father Manfred browsed through the nursery rhymes he found among Tamara’s books, as well as other assorted literature written for children. As he rummaged through these volumes, he was astonished to have lived in the country for so many years without considering the spiritual nourishment provided to children in the Land of Israel. His two elder daughters were raised here, so he should have taken an interest in this matter. If he happened to hear a children’s poem or to pick up a children’s book, he would discharge his duty with an outburst of intellectual ire: To think that they feed children such drivel, that they expect them to develop taste with these contrived rhymes! He was moved to ire rather than to serious study or an attempt at reform. Though I don’t mean to compare one thing to another, or, for that matter, one man to another, I will make an exception and say that, in this respect, Manfred Herbst was very much like Julian Weltfremdt. But one of these gentlemen denounced the scholars in the Land of Israel, while the other denounced its educators. In fact, had one of them found a job, he might have instituted some educational reforms, whereas the other was content to rail against educators and their inane practices, becoming particularly irate at the poems written for children and at the entire contrived body of literature designed for young readers. He was irritated to the point of despising that entire body of literature and those who produced it.

Manfred Herbst was a man of integrity, who didn’t tend to involve himself in a subject unless he was thoroughly familiar with it. Which may be why he had avoided the area of education all those years. With the birth of his son — because of which he happened to be playing with his little daughter — he begin to think about education. Hear this: he didn’t pick up a book to investigate the opinions of educators in other times, but he began, on his own, to consider what would be an appropriate education for his son. I’ll try to outline his opinions, what he pictured to himself in terms of how he would like to educate his son. (1) Total control of the body: the ability to fall asleep at any time and in any place, as well as a total ability to wake up whenever he likes. (2) To eat whatever he finds, without elaborate preparation, with no fuss. (3) To pronounce all words correctly. (4) To acquire an aesthetic and readable handwriting. (5) To choose a profession that will not make him dependent on others’ opinions and, similarly, to avoid any individual or enterprise that leads to dependence on others’ opinions. (6) To learn languages and their grammar. (7) To be meticulous in everything, to stand by his word, to keep every promise, to tell the truth even if it hurts. Manfred included many other matters in the fundamentals of education. I have chosen only a small number of them and have made no attempt to present them in any order, beyond the one in which they occurred to him.

I will now try to transmit some of his thoughts about human affairs and education. Again, I will take up each item in the order in which it occurred to him. Humanity suffers from the fact that the earliest education is in the hands of women. From birth, human beings cling to their mother’s breast, and, as they nurse, they become dependent on a woman. If this was the Creator’s goal, He was very successful. It is in the nature of man to be drawn toward a woman. In Sefer Haggadah , our compilation of ancient legends, I found the tale of a man whose wife died, leaving him an infant son. The Holy and Blessed One granted him teats, so he could nurse the child. In this splendid legend, a free-thinking storyteller proceeds to depict an ideal person: someone who doesn’t depend on mother’s milk. Alas, he did not tell us about this baby’s subsequent development and how he related to women.

Herbst’s thoughts about education were interrupted, and once again they settled on a subject I assumed he had already put out of mind. What had happened to him some time back happened that night. He lay in bed, seeing himself either with Shira in her new apartment or in the role of the man with the whip, walking with her, far away. Suddenly, an Arab approached her and did what he did. He himself had been hiding in a hollow, his eyes closed, so he wouldn’t see. He fell fast asleep, only to be startled by the bite of an animal or an insect. He tried to get up and escape, but the creature’s teeth were in his flesh. He was dripping blood and didn’t have the energy to defend himself, let alone get up and take flight. If not for Zahara, who knocked on the door and asked if he was up yet, he would have been late to his son’s circumcision.