Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  Herbst put the German classics out of mind and went into the other room. He began to sort through familiar and unfamiliar books, with his eyes and with his hands. Some were books he had been looking for; some, he began to covet as soon as he saw them. If he had had seven eyes and ten hands at each of his fingertips, he would not have been able to satisfy his desires. It didn’t occur to him that each additional book would require further effort and strain, especially on moving day, and it was essential that he move because of the riots, which were becoming more and more severe. It was impossible to remain in Baka, hemmed in by Arabs. Once again, he recalled the night he was ambushed and nearly killed right near his home. The bullet came so close; what a close brush with death. Had he been hit by the bullet, all the books in his house, the ones he had let friends borrow, and the ones he had sent to be rebound would have remained unclaimed by heirs. His wife and daughters – even Avraham, his son-in-law – don’t recognize the value of his books. All of the city’s book dealers would come – those vultures who prey on corpses, who run to the widow and orphans as soon as a man dies and offer next to nothing for his valuable books.

  We ought to picture the anonymous person who borrowed books and never returned them, as well as the bookbinder who kept some of the books he was to have rebound. When we are dead, will the books be returned? Or will the borrower say to himself: That fellow is dead, and no one is demanding the books; why should I be virtuous and return them? Books are a commodity, and not everyone realizes that it is a crime to take a book and not return it to its owner. Herbst suddenly blushed in embarrassment, recalling something that had happened in his childhood. A young doctor, the son of a widow, lived in Herbst’s neighborhood. One day, he was told that the young doctor had hanged himself in the woods. Herbst had a book he had borrowed from the doctor, but he didn’t return it to the doctor’s mother. The book was part of Nietzsche’s Collected Works, so he was responsible for spoiling the set. To take revenge on those scoundrels who might behave as he had, Herbst decided that he would make a comprehensive list of all the books that had been borrowed, and, in the future, when lending a book, he would add it to the list. For further revenge, he decided to keep the list in a sealed envelope labeled “To be opened twelve months after my death,” in order to expose those individuals who, given the chance, would choose to ignore the fact that they possessed someone else’s property. What is this all about? Herbst asked himself. Why am I suddenly thinking such awful thoughts? Again, I’m involved in books; again, I’m eager to add books to books I won’t have time to read, leaving me less air to breathe.

  He stuck another cigarette in his mouth, shook the book dust from his clothes, and turned away to wash his hands and be off. As for the pile of books he had chosen, they could sit there until the clerk decided to put them away. Which was also true of the splendid editions of those German classics. While he was washing his hands and intending to go home, the clerk who had served him was replaced by a former student of Herbst’s, who had abandoned academia to earn a living. Most university students in the early days tended to be drawn to one or another of their teachers; he had been drawn to Herbst. He whispered whatever he whispered. Herbst peered at him as if he had heard something he wished to believe, although it was unbelievable. The clerk smiled and said, “Yes, yes, Dr. Herbst. What I told you is absolutely true.” Herbst asked, “When did it happen?” The clerk answered, “They’re already here. They haven’t been sorted yet, or priced. In any case, if you want to have a look, I’ll get the key and open the room.”

  Let me explain what the clerk whispered to Herbst and why it was hard for Herbst to believe it, the meaning of “They’re already here,” and all the rest. He had told him, “We succeeded in buying a major library that belonged to that scholar who was murdered by his Arab driver. The books are already here, in a special room. They haven’t been sorted or priced, and, if Dr. Herbst wants to have a look, I’ll unlock the room so he can see what’s there.” Herbst’s heart was unlocked by this news and he trailed behind the’ clerk as he went to get the key. The clerk came back and opened the door. The room was so full that it was hard for them to find a place to stand. Herbst contemplated the books, pile after pile, bundled and tied together with twine. His heart began to pound. His hands were eager to touch whatever his eyes lit on. His eyes were naming; his brow was ablaze; his hands were hot. His arms, shoulders – his entire body responded similarly. Which is no surprise. How could anyone, confronted with such a treasure, remain calm?

  I’ll put aside Herbst’s story and tell about the owner of the books.

  When the Great War was over, in which England triumphed over Germany, subjecting the Land of Israel to English rule, various people from various lands came to Jerusalem. Among them was Sir Davis Birkenthal, a wealthy man and a scholar with an international reputation, the author of Strange Gods in the Land, an exhaustive study of idolatry in the Land of Israel from earliest times and considered a useful source to this day. When he arrived, he bought himself a large house on the road to the Mount of Olives, brought in many books that filled several rooms, surrounded himself with Arab maids and menservants, and, in that entire period, had no contact with any Jews, not even Jewish scholars.

  He gave money to several young Arabs and sent them to study abroad at his expense. He was especially generous to his Arab driver, a handsome young man. On the first day of the ‘29 riots, he took his car and went to see what was going on. He arrived at the Damascus Gate. The Arabs who saw Lord Birkenthal, thinking he was an Englishman, suspended the violence to give him safe conduct. The driver made a sign and whispered to them that he was Jewish. They shot him immediately. He fell out of the car, steeped in blood. The driver took the car and set off in it to have his way with the Jews. After the riots subsided, when Birkenthal was buried, his relatives arrived to deal with the inheritance. They divided everything up, leaving the books until they could agree on a plan for them. They wanted to donate them to Oxford or Cambridge in his name. It was even suggested that they be given as a memorial to the National Library in Jerusalem, since the English libraries were willing to accept only the volumes they didn’t already own. Over a period of time, an impasse was reached. Still, many Jewish scholars remembered his books with a sigh. They, too, finally despaired.

  All of a sudden – I don’t know why – most of the books were sold. To whom were they sold? To a Jerusalem book dealer. And now Herbst had the privilege of being perhaps the first of Jerusalem’s scholars to be informed.

  Little by little, his limbs began to falter, to be overcome with an odd weariness. He felt another sort of weariness in his shoulders. He turned his head and looked behind him, as if someone had placed a heavy load on his back and he was trying to make it lighter. Feeling sick to his stomach, he snuffed out his cigarette with his fingers, crushed it, discarded it, and tried to open a window to let in some air. The window wouldn’t open, and no air came in. Some old books, along with a bunch of pamphlets that were piled on the sill, fell to the floor in a shower of dark yellow dust that gave off a foul smell. The clerk didn’t notice what was happening to Herbst. He was busy extricating a particular pile of books from the larger mass. It was tied with twine, like the others; the letters on the spine of each volume announced its title. Any single one would make a collector proud; all of them together were extraordinarily rare. The clerk stood there, casually dropping names of world-famous dealers and the books each one had inquired about. They had touched on only a small part of the collection, which included books it didn’t occur to them to ask about, as they had been searching for them for so long that they had despaired of ever finding them. The clerk talked on and on. Herbst stood listening, but it is doubtful that a single word registered. He felt extremely faint. He turned to the door and, on his way out, jokingly tossed off the Latin equivalent of “everything depends on luck, even a Torah scroll in the Ark.” He added, “These books are unlucky; I don’t mean to buy them.”

  As soon as he left the room
, his pain vanished, his shoulders relaxed, and his stomach no longer bothered him. He felt not a trace of faintness. He was on the verge of going back to that room, back to those books, especially the ones every collector was after. The telephone rang, and the clerk ran to answer it. Herbst stood and waited for him to finish talking. When Herbst saw that it was likely to be a long conversation, he wandered into a room he was unfamiliar with, because there were art books in it, and he wasn’t an art collector. Herbst didn’t collect works of art. In his home, he had no drawings, no sketches, no art folios, because he knew himself well enough to realize that, if he allowed even one piece of art into his house, many more would soon follow. He was the sort of man who was moved by anything artistic, and he had to be very careful not to let himself be captivated by whatever he saw, to leave time for his work, for his research, for the things he was required to do. This is why he gave up chess in his youth; this is why he had put his poems aside and resolved not to write any more of them; this is why he had renounced various pastimes he once enjoyed. Now that he was waiting for the clerk to finish talking, because he was interested in the books left behind by the murdered scholar, which had led him to relinquish those German classics, he wasn’t afraid to go into the fine-arts room and pass the time there.

  So Herbst went into the room with the art books. He glanced at the shelves before catching a glimpse of the paintings and drawings that hung on the walls between the bookcases. Without having so much as picked up a folio yet, he remembered that, before he came to this country, he used to say, “I could give up anything to settle in the Land of Israel, even theater and concerts, but not the sculpture and paintings I can see in the lands of exile.” By now, he had been in the country quite a number of years, and it hadn’t occurred to him that he had given up things he once thought he could never do without.

  He took a folio of drawings off the shelf and leafed through it aimlessly, not bothering to see who the artist was. Putting down one folio and opening another, his mind wandered back to Ernst Weltfremdt’s book. He found himself thinking about a chapter that had already appeared in some collection, the chapter about the major forces that impelled Valens to allow thirty thousand Goths to cross… As he examined Ernst Weltfremdt’s argument, he began to wonder why he hadn’t emphasized the fact that Valens had allowed the Goths to enter Roman territory so that some of their regiments could fight the Persians. While he was considering this idea, he opened a folio containing the work of several artists. He gazed at the drawings and muttered: “They’re from Bruegel’s school, but, unlike Bruegel, they don’t give one pleasure. Now I’ll go and see what the clerk is doing.”

  His eyes were pulled in several directions. He stood trembling and astonished. What is this? A leper. A painting of a leper standing at the city gate, ringing a bell to warn the people to keep their distance. Herbst picked up the picture and stood it up so he could see it better. The eyes were awesome and sad. Their sockets had, for the most part, been consumed by leprosy, yet they were alive and wished to live. Sadder and more awesome was the hand holding the bell, a hand consumed by disease that could not be reversed. Even sadder and more awesome was the bell, warning people to keep their distance. The painter was a great artist to see the bell as the source of pestilence. Why? This cannot be explained, but it is surely correct.

  Herbst stood before the picture, examining it first from one angle, then from another, looking into the leper’s eyes, at his hands, at the open city gates. Within the city, on one side of the gate, people were milling about, on the way to church, to a tavern, to do business, or just to pass the time. The infected man stood on the other side. In his leprous hand, he held a little bell, and it alone was unblighted, although it was the source of all blight. Who painted this picture? What is the name of the great painter who imbued the inanimate with the breath of life? The men and women of the town fade in and out of view, yet the figure of the afflicted man is extremely clear; he, his hand, his bell. The entire city – the men, the women, the houses, the marketplace, the well – are serene and unconcerned. But the sound of the bell is already disengaged from it, rattling, tinkling, moving out of the afflicted man’s hand. A great calamity is imminent. Herbst looked at the picture once again; at the leper, at his hand, but not at the bell, because by now he recognized that the blight was not in the bell. All this time, Herbst had avoided touching the picture, as if it were alive and afflicted. Readers, you know me by now. You know that I don’t exaggerate. And if I tell you something, don’t say, “What an exaggeration!” At that instant, it was clear to Herbst that he heard a voice from within the bell the leper was holding, cautioning, “Go away, don’t touch me.” Herbst listened to the cautionary voice and didn’t touch the picture. But he looked at it, again and again, with panic in his eyes and desire in his heart. Then he took down another folio, which he placed on top of the picture of the leper, and left. He came back again, exposed the picture, but didn’t look at it. Then he took down a folio of Rembrandt drawings. He looked at several reproductions, then took out The Night Watch and studied it. What happens to anyone with a discerning eye happened to Herbst. The melancholy that emanates from Rembrandt’s work soothed his spirit and brought on tranquility – a tranquility known as harmony, though I call it understanding and certainty.

  The clerk appeared and apologized to Herbst for having abandoned him in mid-conversation. Some consulate or other called about some dictionary or other for some language or other. When the conversation with the consulate was over, the phone had rung again, and someone from the high commissioner’s office inquired about the new location of a certain bookbinder, a woman to whom the high commissioner always sent his books.

  “The high commissioner is a celebrated collector. He haunts the bookstores, especially this one. His car swallows up an infinite number of volumes. He doesn’t admit Jews to Palestine, but he craves their books. I see you have been leafing through the pictures, Dr. Herbst.” Herbst pointed to The Night Watch and asked the price. He told him. He said, “Wrap it up and add it to my account. I want to send a gift to a doctor I once consulted, who refused to accept a fee. I’ll leave it with you for now. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll pick it up.”

  Herbst lit another cigarette. After putting the case back in his pocket, he took it out again and offered the clerk a cigarette. “They’re black,” he said. “Since I came to this country, I haven’t smoked a black cigarette.” The clerk put down The Night Watch and lit his cigarette. He studied it, then he said, “Actually, it’s not black, it’s dark brown.” Herbst stood in front of The Night Watch, considering: Shira told me she wanted a reproduction of The Night Watch but couldn’t find one. I’ll take it to her tomorrow; she’ll be pleased. Henrietta is eating lunch now. Firadeus is eating with her, watching Mrs. Herbst’s gestures to learn how to handle herself. Firadeus is a good student. She learns the manners of the Ashkenazim very fast and regards them as the only truly well-mannered people. If I were to go back now, Henrietta would say, “But, Fred, you told me you wouldn’t be back for lunch, so I wasn’t expecting you and I didn’t prepare anything. But, if you give me a minute, I’ll fix something for you.” Herbst looked at his watch and considered: It’s lunchtime, and I really ought to leave. The clerk is probably eager to be rid of me, so he can have his lunch. He looked at his watch again, not that he had forgotten what time it was, but to be sure he was right. It crossed his mind that he ought to go to Gethsemane, not because of the monk, but because he had told Henrietta he was going to Gethsemane. He knew he wouldn’t go to Gethsemane, that, if he did set out, he would turn back midway. In that case, Herbst told himself, I won’t go, and I won’t have to turn back. I’ll go to a café, have some coffee, and look at the newspapers. Then I’ll go home and get back to my work. Work that follows leisure is twice as pleasant.