S. Agnon - Shira

Herbst asked how he was and what he was doing. The young man smiled with characteristic shyness and thanked Herbst for taking an interest in him and asking about his affairs. But, being too shy to talk about himself, he fell silent. Herbst took no note of this and resumed his conversation with Taglicht. Taglicht interrupted and said to Herbst, “I see that you two are acquainted.” Herbst nodded, as if to indicate that there was no need for elaboration, and once more resumed his conversation. Taglicht placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder and said to Herbst, “Let’s hear what our friend has to say.” Herbst gazed at the young man, somewhat surprised, as one might gaze at a person he knows well enough to be certain he has nothing to offer.

At this point, it is worth mentioning that this young man, whose name was Heinrich Reiner, had come to Jerusalem a year earlier to enroll in the university, bringing with him letters to several professors and lecturers, including Dr. Herbst, from colleagues abroad, along with the request that they take him under their wing, et cetera. They may have taken him under their wing; they may have not. In any case, each and every one of these professors invited him to attend his lectures. He may have attended one or two lectures, but he didn’t become a university student. Herbst saw him once or twice, after the first time, when he came to his home to deliver regards from a friend. It was not that the young man didn’t appeal to Herbst. But Herbst didn’t especially welcome him and didn’t ask him to come again, because the relationship with that mutual friend was outdated, or perhaps for other reasons. In the interim, Herbst dismissed the young man from his mind and took no interest in him. Being somewhat shy, he didn’t presume to call on Herbst again. Now that he was with Taglicht, they met Herbst, and Taglicht said, “Let’s hear what our friend here has to say.” Herbst seemed surprised but willing to listen. Let me present the substance of his story, some of it in his language and some in my own.

Heinrich Reiner took on a job with a salary that didn’t quite support him but supplemented the allowance his father had provided. What sort of job? One could consider it a job or a mission. There is a place in Jerusalem called a leper colony, inhabited by those whose affliction is incurable. Reiner took it upon himself to visit them, and he made a special point of visiting the newcomers, who did not yet accept their fate and were unwilling to be shut in forever. At this point, Reiner recounted what we already know from the newspapers: that thirteen lepers had been found in an old-age home, that most of them had mild cases of leprosy, but that there was one advanced case among them that seemed to be the source of the contagion. From which ethnic group and from which social class did the patients derive? From every group and every class. Men and women, old and young, Orthodox and free-thinking, poor and rich. Yes, even the rich. There was a young girl there from a rich family. How did she contract leprosy? Until yesterday, no one knew. Her mother visited her yesterday. She saw a woman there who looked familiar, but she didn’t know where she had seen her. She asked her who she was, but the woman couldn’t answer, because half of her tongue and also her lips were so severely infected that she could no longer speak. But the girl’s mother couldn’t rest until she discovered who this woman was. She went to the office to inquire and was told who she was. She remembered that this woman had worked in her house fifteen years earlier, when her daughter was born. Reiner said many other things about those wretchedly afflicted individuals, who are betwixt the living and the dead, who are not quite alive and not quite dead. What he related he related so vividly that one could actually picture it. Now, imagine Manfred Herbst: Manfred Herbst, who could barely tolerate a leper drawn on canvas, was now standing with this man who mingles freely with lepers, speaks with them, and talks about them. True, there are ways to protect oneself from leprosy. Some people spend their vacations in that place. Professor Dalman, for example, spends all his vacations in the leper colony, because his wife is a nurse there. Herbst kept conjuring up images of every deformity, of each disintegrating limb, and the like. He responded with a revulsion that superseded any sort of compassion for these living corpses. At home, he found no respite from this sensation. He washed his face and hands many times with soap and eau de cologne, as if they had the power to erase the filth that filled his imagination. The next day, Herbst still could find no respite. He washed his hands several times that day, and, if he touched a book, he washed again. He didn’t go out for two days and didn’t go to Shira’s apartment. He pictured all sorts of ways to contract that affliction. On the third day, when he went out, he met one of the clerks from the home for the aged, who was strolling with Axelrod, the hospital clerk. Herbst was overcome with terror, for the clerk was from the old-age home where those thirteen lepers had been discovered. And Axelrod, who, after all, worked in a hospital, was walking with him. Who knew if the other clerk had the disease, if he would infect Axelrod, if all the patients in the hospital would then be infected, including women in labor and newborns? But Herbst succeeded in controlling himself and resisted making a fool of himself by scolding Axelrod. He walked on, speculating: What do we know about these living corpses, and what don’t we know about them? Apart from several myths and inane tales, Herbst knew nothing about lepers. He proceeded to collect all his knowledge about them and to consider it detail by detail. They say that, in days past, yet not so distant, when the Turks ruled the country, lepers used to walk through the city, and the people who lived there would fling them food. Herbst remembered this too: he had once read in the newspaper that some lepers in Rumania, who had been contained in a leper colony, escaped and went to a dentist’s office. Several gentlewomen were there at the time. The doctor called the police, who came quickly, aimed their pistols at them, and returned them to the leper colony. Among this profusion of memories, he became aware of the drawing he had seen in the bookstore, with the leper peering at him, studying him, the bell in his hand rattling continually. As it happened, Herbst happened to recall the night he sat with Shira, when she showed him her picture album with an empty space where there had originally been a picture. When Herbst asked about the missing picture, she explained that, when she lived abroad, she had tended a patient who was a Spanish prince, that the prince had befriended her, giving her many gifts, as well as his picture. When, in the end, it turned out that he had leprosy, she was asked to accompany him to the leper colony in Breslau. At this point, she burned all his gifts, removed his picture from the album, and flung it into the fire.

Once again, I will say what I already said. Imagine this: Manfred Herbst enters a bookstore, finds a picture of a leper, hears references to a leper colony, suddenly remembers what he heard from Shira. Could such a chain of events fail to have an impact? Henceforth, Herbst was haunted by these concerns. Although he didn’t put them into words, they remained fixed in his mind, so that, when he woke up knowing he hadn’t dreamed about lepers, he felt that they had done him a favor.

One Shabbat morning, Herbst went out for a walk. It was one of those delightful Jerusalem mornings, with a lull between rains. Since the day was so delightful, the roads were a delight, his heart was filled with delight, and all his thoughts were delightful too. He wasn’t thinking of Shira or of anything else that might confound him. He was seeing every tree, every rock that was there, all basking in the sweet Shabbat morning sunshine. Since he wanted to enjoy these pleasures fully, he turned toward the less frequented spots, where he found himself alone, like in the old days, when he had just come to the country. He kneeled down to collect some of the colored pebbles that were scattered along the road. Now that most areas have been built up, these delightful pebbles have all but disappeared. But, in those days, they were everywhere. If you were clever, you could collect them and make yourself a floor, which probably would not be a source of delight, because mosaic design was already a forgotten art. It’s a fact that the territory he was walking in that day was right next to the leper colony. I don’t know if Herbst realized this, but, even if he did, he would not have been upset. Because on that particular day he was utterly composed and untroubled.