Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  Herbst lowered his head and lifted a finger toward the left side of his brow while holding on to his cup. After a while, he put down the cup and studied Böcklin’s skull. Did Böcklin paint from a model or from his imagination? Why do I ask? Herbst wondered.

  Temima continued, “Most of the cultural institutions, headed by the university – which truly belongs here – are in Jerusalem. The National Library and the Bezalel Museum, for example. So naturally there are many cultured people, more than anywhere else in the country, and every new book, as well as every new idea, comes here before it comes to our kvutza. Still, I can say that, when I come from my kvutza to Jerusalem, I don’t feel inadequate. To borrow a term from Freud, I don’t have an inferiority complex. After all, we in our villages are also promoting the country’s interests. A few days ago, I happened on a book of philosophical essays and I found something on this subject that I can quote word for word. If the capital is the head of the country, then the villages are its limbs. To which I add: Just as a body can’t live without a head, a head can’t exist without limbs.” Shira said, “I see, Temima, that you’re looking for an excuse for living in the country rather than the city.” Temima said, “What makes you think I’m looking for excuses? Besides, what difference can one person make in times such as these? I don’t mean myself and those like me. What I have in mind is the world at large. You have to consider whatever is going on in the era it is your fate to be living in and account for every single action. We have no right to let actions go by without examining them and concerning ourselves with them.” Shira said, “And if you and I don’t concern ourselves with whatever is going on in the world, will anything be different?” Temima said, “Really, I don’t understand what you mean.” Shira said, “I think I’m making myself clear.” Temima said, “I’m surprised at you, Shira. After all, a person is a person. Isn’t it a primary duty to reflect about and consider whatever is going on in the world, all the more so here in this country, since we came here for a specific purpose?” Shira said, “Well spoken, Temima. We came for a purpose. The question is: For what purpose?” Temima said, “Really, I don’t understand what you are saying. What did we come for? For…for…” Shira laughed and said, “Temima, your name means ‘innocence,’ and you are as innocent as your name. Don’t wear yourself out looking for sublime words. I’m satisfied with what you said. We came for a purpose.” Temima said, “Really, I must repeat, I don’t understand you.” Shira said, “If I were ten years younger, I would envy you. Imagine, you are still looking for reasons to be where you are. We’re here because we’re here and nowhere else. And, if my view is too simple for you, that doesn’t change a thing. I don’t presume to phrase my ideas the way you do in the kvutza, but they are sincere.”

  Herbst sat thinking many thoughts, having to do with another place and another time. If we look for a reason, only one comes to mind. Dr. Herbst wished to withdraw from his present company, if not in person, then in thought. Herbst asked himself: This skull of Böcklin’s – how was it drawn? From a model or from the imagination? Actually, Böcklin himself has answered my question. Where do we find his answer? He complained that he never had the chance to draw a woman from life, because his wife, who was Italian, was jealous and wouldn’t allow him to have a model in his studio. But why am I thinking about Böcklin’s skull painting? Is it because that nurse mentioned Bezalel? No, I thought of the question even before she mentioned Bezalel. Yes, Zahara went back and won’t be at the workshops. So, obviously, the nurse won’t see her and say where she met her father. Herbst looked at his watch and said, “Time to go. What’s this? My watch has stopped.” He took off his watch and set it, guessing at the time, not bothering to look at the numbers, and thinking to himself: I’m leaving this place, calm and confident, as if there were no reason to worry about the nurse telling Zahara that she met her father. Even if she were to tell her, she wouldn’t necessarily say where and when she saw me. Even if she did say when and where she saw me, Zahara, in the innocence of her heart and purity of her mind, would think nothing of it. And, if she were to wonder, her wonder wouldn’t last. Many things happen. Before you have a chance to attend to one thing, there is another on the horizon. We, too, rather than dwell on the past, should attend to what’s ahead.

  Herbst took leave of Shira and Temima. He was on his way, restating to himself what he had said before: I’ll put the past behind me and attend to what’s ahead.

  I’m going home to my wife, who urged me to take a walk before going to bed so my sleep would be sweeter. I went out for a bit, and the time stretched to several hours. What did I find in that time? I found Lisbet Neu. When I left her, I went to the bus stop, meaning to go home. I didn’t find the bus. I waited, and it didn’t come. Meanwhile, I heard the day’s news. If one were to be precise, I doubt it could be called news, since there is nothing new about it. Events that recur every day can hardly be called new. What do we consider new? A story with danger and with Arabs. Two Arabs come to an old woman and ask for water. They shoot her, though she has provided them with water. She falls in a pool of blood and dies. How naive that old woman was. Innocent blood is being spilled in this country, and it didn’t occur to her that what happens to others could happen to her. What happened in the end? In the end, they killed her.

  So much for the old woman and the villains who killed her. Let’s get back to Herbst. Herbst was walking home and thinking as he walked: I left the others waiting for the bus and went to Shira. I arrived at Shira’s and found her shipmate there, a good woman, if a somewhat simple one. But what does a man know about a woman? A man doesn’t really know a woman except…Take Shira. Before I was close to her, didn’t I see her the way she makes others see her? Remembering Shira, his voice began to intone, “Flesh such as yours / Will not soon be forgotten.”

  He grew silent and reviewed the entire Shira episode, since he began to be close to her. He argued with himself: What did I think when I first knew her? Was I so innocent as to think I wouldn’t have to put myself out for her, that I could come at any time? What did she do? When I came, she made it clear that she had a will too, that her will was different from mine. He reviewed all of his struggles with her. There must have been other men, the engineer and his like. Without envy, without hatred, he enumerated all the men Shira had told him about. They had no reality. Shira was the sole reality. Again she was there, before his eyes, revealed in all the forms he had seen her assume, and as each form unfolded, his voice intoned, “Flesh such as yours…”

  He suddenly began to wave his hands, as if to repel something unwelcome. But the very knowledge he was trying to repel seemed to become more and more palpable with every thought. He sighed from the heart and mused: As long as she exists, I will not be rid of her, whether or not that’s what she wants. As it is in the nature of thoughts to come and go, an evil thought came to him: Should something happen to her, if she were to be hit by a bus and run over, or if she were to come down with one of the dread diseases she treats, he would be rid of her forever.

  Shira appeared before him again, as he had seen her that first night in her house, in her room, dressed in dark blue pants and a thin shirt, when, to his astonishment, as soon as she put on male attire, her masculine qualities vanished and she became all the more female. He opened his mouth wide; the edges of his teeth protruded and began to strike each other. He stood, shouting, “If you insist on living, live, as long as you are transformed into a man!”

  He gradually calmed down. He wiped his brow and said, “Far be it from me to wish you misfortune, Shira. Live, but let me be, so I can live too. And, if you like, go off with your lovers and marry them. You could marry the one who gave you the cigarettes, or, if you prefer, the one with the whip, or that blind Turk. I won’t interfere. I will entertain you with a lovely tune, if you like.” He began singing, “Flesh such as yours…” Before he got to “Will not soon be forgotten,” his limbs became inert, and he was suffused with a pleasant sensation. The entire world became inert an
d vanished. Even Shira became inert and vanished. Only Herbst continued to exist.

  When he got home and climbed into bed, he didn’t think about Shira or about anything in the world or about what had happened on the way. He rested his head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling and at his shadow on the wall. While he was watching the shadow, it closed its eyes, exactly as Herbst himself did. The house was quiet. At intervals, a sigh could be heard in Henrietta’s room, but it didn’t reach Manfred’s ears, because of the snore from the wall or from the shadow on the wall.

  Now something occurred that was either a dream or I don’t know what it was. Manfred Herbst had a childhood friend, a Greek scholar who used to correct Wilamowitz’s translations of the Greek tragedies. One day, he abandoned his studies and left for America. The war came, and there was no trace of him until he came back and was exiled to a detention camp. He suddenly appeared in Mea Shearim. Or perhaps in Tel Aviv. No, it was Mea Shearim, because, when he and Manfred went walking, Mount Zion walked with them. During their entire walk, they never asked each other what they had been doing all those years, but they did discuss gender restriction in language, particularly those words that are masculine in one language and feminine in another. Herbst was going to mention Neu’s definition of the word piyyut (poetry) as an example. Before he could mention it, his friend bent down and said, “I think my shoes are torn.” Herbst took him to a shoemaker. When they were at the shoemaker, Herbst noticed that his shoes were also in need of repair. He extended his legs, slipped off his shoes, and handed them to the shoemaker. The shoemaker took them, rounded the toes, and stitched them with white raffia. The American reached into his pocket and paid the shoemaker what he asked, sixty grush. Herbst began arguing with the shoemaker. Not only had he ruined the shoes and changed their shape, but he was asking sixty grush, which was too high a price. Hearing the argument, the neighbors appeared. Everyone at the Bezalel exhibit came too, as well as all those who were praying in the Emet Veemunah Synagogue next to Bezalel. Herbst wanted to tell them what the shoemaker had done. He realized there wasn’t time, since he had to rush off to the wedding of Shira and Lisbet Neu. They were marrying each other, and he still hadn’t given them a wedding present. He left all the people to wonder about him and ran to a craftsman, from whom he bought a knife of pure silver. He ran and brought it to Lisbet and Shira – a wedding gift to gladden their hearts.

  With this I have concluded Book One of the book about the nurse Shira and Dr. Manfred Herbst. I will begin another, in which I will recount what followed.

  Book Two

  Chapter one

  It was two years since Herbst met the nurse Shira. Many things had happened in those years. Not only in the world, but in Herbst’s home as well. I will now recount some of what was new with Herbst.

  Little Sarah was already walking, like all bipeds, and chattering away like a full-fledged person. Her speech was still a jumble of single words, but her mother knew how to combine them. Apart from this, she was very clever and showed her cleverness in every realm. Hen-rietta had a chicken coop. Once, when Henrietta was trying to get a chicken out of the coop, it escaped, and another one flew into her hand. Sarah chased it away and caught the fugitive. Another time, two days after her birthday, her mother was baking a cake for Shabbat. Sarah remembered that it was her doll’s birthday and she hadn’t baked her a cake yet. She went and told her mother, who gave her a pinch of dough, from which Sarah made a cake. These were some of Sarah’s tricks, and they provided some solace for Henrietta.

  Henrietta managed to get a certificate for her brother. In the interim, he was offered a certificate for South America and went there instead. Henrietta got a certificate for another relative. In the interim, the Nazis harassed him out of existence, and he was dead. Henrietta tried to transfer the certificate to another relative and was told, “Why not?” Again, she ran around in a panic, for what had happened to her dead relative could happen to a live one. It was the anguish over these certificates that aged her prematurely. Since she considered herself old, the whole world seemed old to her, and she made no attempt to improve herself for her husband. Nor did she remark affectionately, as she used to, “Are there no young women in Jerusalem who would be glad to be with you?” Such talk was far from her lips and, needless to say, from her heart. Now all of Henrietta’s conversation with Manfred related to their daughters, to Tamara, for instance, who has finished her studies but has no job. All the openings are in depressed villages or in older settlements abandoned by the younger generation. A young teacher ought to be placed in a school in town, so she can learn from experienced teachers and from the principal, which is impossible in a far-flung village where the teachers and principal are second-rate. Meanwhile, she wastes her time on enterprises that please neither her father, her mother, nor even herself. A grown daughter can be an asset to her mother, but Tamara is incompetent in household matters and adds to her mother’s work. Henrietta Herbst, who taught Arab women domestic skills, didn’t teach them to her own daughter. Tamara spends half the day in bed, the other half in a telephone booth calling half of the directory. She spends evenings in a café, a cigarette in her mouth, a scornful look on her face, young men enveloping her in clouds of pipe smoke while she envelops them in clouds of cigarette smoke. When the band strikes up a tune, she dances, making no attempt to avoid the English officers, whose language she knows if not their intentions. Perhaps she does know their intentions and assumes her scorn will repel them too.

  As for Zahara, we had the impression that her heart was drawn to Avraham-and-a-half or Heinz the Berliner. But she suddenly seems attracted to someone else, who doesn’t measure up to the former in height or to the latter in intelligence. Who is he? Heinz from Darmstadt. In fact, he is also one of the founders of Ahinoam, a good fellow, too, with some virtues the others lack. But why should a girl wear herself out and be torn between so many? This was not her mother’s way. Before Henrietta knew Manfred, she didn’t look at another man, and as soon as she got to know him, she clung to him. Before Manfred knew Henrietta, his eyes were buried in his books. Other than Henrietta, no young woman, however scholarly or beautiful, distracted him from his studies, although he lived in Berlin, whose very air loosens the constraints of the heart and the eye. This daughter of theirs lives in a small kvutza in the Land of Israel, settled by young men and women who left Germany to live a pure life on the land. But, in the end, she doesn’t measure up to her parents. Which is especially perplexing, for she is a girl with a head on her shoulders and eyes in her head. Why should she be groping as if she were blind?

  Let me get back to Dr. Herbst. His great work on burial customs of the poor in Byzantium is in progress – a mass of references, notes, index cards, notebooks, quotations, outlines that remain incomplete, material that is still not in order. Herbst sits at his desk, removes a slip of paper, and replaces it with another. He writes, erases, records, copies, pastes in quotation after quotation, and substitutes a more appropriate word wherever possible. A scholar’s wisdom is not like dough in a woman’s hand, from which a piece can be torn to make a cake for a doll’s birthday. It is bothersome, like the chickens in their coop when you reach for one and another comes flying into your hand; not only do you have to pursue the one you want, but you have to struggle to get rid of the one in your hand. This may be a false analogy; still, it applies to the scholar’s struggle with his material. However, it must be noted that Herbst’s struggles are not in vain. Any author would be proud of the data Herbst has amassed. When he surveys his material, he often thinks: I’ll sit down and organize, combine, and copy, and I’ll have a book. But wisdom has such scope and is contained in so many volumes that no scholar can know today what tomorrow will bring. He persists, continuing to do today what he did yesterday and every other day, in some cases to support his data and in others to avoid discovering later that he left something out. There are scholars whose expertise is bewildering. Their bibliography alone occupies a third of the book, and when you
examine it you realize that most of the books mentioned are irrelevant. Other scholars, after citing many sources, add see and see also. In fact, they have copied their material from such see alsos, which is to say that the sources referred to by see also are the ones from which they have copied their data, never having seen the original books from which the data are derived. Still, should someone say, “Others have preceded you,” they can point out, sanctimoniously, that full credit was given. Other scholars quote extensively from their own books; that is to say, they cite themselves as authorities. If this isn’t a matter of extreme innocence, then it’s a game, for they play at showing how smart they are, how many books they have already produced. There are scholars who quote the opinions of others, not to support their own, but to dispute them.

  Manfred Herbst did not behave in any of the aforementioned ways. One could say that he and his work were clean. So he ought to have been pleased with himself, but he was not. When he confronted his box of notations, his piles of cards, his collection of notebooks, bundles of papers and pads, and heaps of writings, he would sometimes pound the table and cry out, “May flames leap up and consume you.” But, as long as they existed, it was his duty to rework, amend, and update them. He went back to his work, continuing to do today what he did yesterday and all the other days. He worked without joy, for there is no joy in amassing papers, even if the papers are full of fine quotations. When Herbst first thought of writing his book, he was inspired by an idea. As he began to support it with facts, the facts took over, and the idea dwindled. Finally, his box was full of facts but short on substance.

  Herbst left his desk and notes, lit a cigarette, and went to the west window, which was curtained in a colorful woven fabric. Under it was a bookcase that used to be filled with fine china from the era of Frederick iI, made in the royal factory. The pieces were passed on to Henrietta by her parents and grandparents, for the king, known as Frederick the Great, required every Jew in his kingdom who wished to marry to buy dishes produced in his factory. In time, these dishes were broken since the local help in the Land of Israel was unaccustomed to handling such fragile objects. What wasn’t broken, Henrietta sold to buy reproductions for Manfred or traded for books, and what they neither sold nor traded, they gave as a gift to the Bezalel Museum. When there was no china left on the shelves, Henrietta began putting volumes of poetry, stories, and novels there. Occasionally, when she was done with her work, she would come in and take a book to read. Manfred, too, when he was despondent and wanted to regain his composure, would reach for a book.