Mr. Mani

by A. B. Yehoshua

  —The congress? It was the Third Zionist Congress, Father. There will undoubtedly be a fourth one too...

  —I mean ... but was it not fully written up in Der Ytd? The fact is, Father, that my mind was not entirely on the congress.

  —A great deal of talk. Of speech-making. Of debate. Even our Dr. Mani delivered a little oration to the “Medical Committee” in which he asked for help and invited all the doctors to be his guests in Jerusalem. Why don’t you ask Linka? She can tell you what made the fur fly and what was decided when it settled, because she sat through it all faithfully and did not miss a single session. You should have seen her in her embroidered peasant’s dress—I had already gotten rid of that outrageous black décolleté—taking everything terribly seriously and even keeping notes—a most loyal and responsible delegate from an imaginary constituency. But what constituency was not imaginary? Was Moscow polled on its delegates or Warsaw asked about its? The fact is that I was rarely at the sessions because I was already secretly planning our journey to Palestine. I acted quite clandestinely, Papa. I did not breathe a word to Linka or to Dr. Mani, who had let slip the name of his ship, which was sailing from Venice to Jaffa on the first of September. I believe he had a sixth sense of it, though. He took to following us around, sitting with Linka whenever he could and speaking to her in the language of the future. But my thoughts just then were not of them. They were only of you...

  —Of you. Of your anger—your shock—no, Father, you cannot deprive me so easily of the conviction that you were furious...

  —Delighted? But how can that be? No, I don’t want to hear another word, you stubborn man, you, ha ha ... Why, this most whimsical journey of ours would never have tasted so delicious if it had not been partly aimed against you...

  —Against all your bourgeois Zionists. You don’t know how disappointed I am, Papa dear, to hear you say that you were not in the least annoyed.

  —True—it is an odd thing to be disappointed about—but there you are. And do you think it was so easy to get from Basel to Palestine? I had no notion where to begin. I went to the Bahnhof to ask for train schedules and information, but I soon realized that there was little of either and that the Swiss would only drive me to despair, first by not understanding my German and then by not understanding my question, since Palestine for them was not a place on the map but a location in the Bible. Ultimately, however, they saw who they were dealing with and sent me to a Jewish clerk, a soft-spoken young lady not much older than Linka, who had run away from a fanatical family of Hasidim in Vilna to attend the first congress two years ago and decided not to go back. And so she had stayed on in Basel, living from hand to mouth between congresses, during which she found temporary work at the Bahnhof—where the authorities had seen fit to open a “Jewish bureau” for the delegates, who—once the proceedings were over—wished to travel to various boardinghouses, hotels, and sanatoria in the green heights of Europe and recover there from their national responsibility while digesting it thoroughly...

  —No, that’s true. There were good people there too, conscientious and with a sense of the occasion. But—why deny it, Father—there were plenty of freeloaders also—people like myself, for example—who only came to divert themselves at the expense of Jewish destiny, which they regarded as they might a game of whist...

  —Why, our whole trip had been intended as nothing more than a diversion—until it suddenly changed course...

  —Hold on a minute, will you! Don’t you want to hear about the Jewish clerk from Vilna?

  —As a matter of fact, she was not especially pretty, Father. She was pale and rather sickly looking—a consumptive, I had already decided—but a sharp-witted and free-mannered young thing, with a most Talmudical mind. And she was an expert in the map of Europe, which she knew by heart and could slice in any manner in her head. She knew every train—the name of each station—the departure and arrival schedules—the points of connection. She could describe the compartments for you in every class—tell you where each number seat was—advise you which coaches were best—and needless to say, quote the price of everything. In a word, an incomparable young lady! She took a liking to me too, and when she heard that I wished to travel to Palestine she all but made the journey her own, as if she intended to go with me. Despite her doubts about Mani’s Greek ship that was sailing from Venice, which she thought too light a craft, she dashed off a telegram to the agent reserving us two of his best cabins and began to plan our route. She was—how shall I put it?—most enthusiastic, and at once my flagging spirits revived. And so I roamed back and forth between the congress and the Bahnhof, hatching my secret plan, which still seemed to me little more than a fantasy. On the afternoon of the third and last day of the congress I went to see my little consumptive and was handed a handsome folder with our train tickets, our travel papers, and our entire itinerary written out in Yiddish—and a most ingenious itinerary it was too, with all the travel at night and the days kept free for touring. Nothing had been left to chance: where we would stop, and what we would eat, and the sites we would see, and what it would cost—and of course, how we would return from Palestine ... she had planned every step of the way. All that was missing was the height and direction of the waves ... which, alas, Father, turned out to be the most important thing of all, ha ha...

  —Wait, I will get to that. That evening, in her little cubby in the crowded Bahnhof, I paid her for the trip, took her small hand in my own, and—her eyes were suddenly bright with tears, that’s how hard it was for her to say good-bye—kissed it devoutly...

  —Four thousand Swiss francs.

  —The exchange rate, I believe, is—

  —More or less...

  —More or less...

  —Perhaps a bit more ... is that really so dear? The boardinghouse in Lugano would have cost something too.

  —Of course. Nothing but first class, as befits the son and daughter of gentry...

  —I had not said a word so far to Linka, who was faithfully attending the congress and not missing a single speech in that whole deluge of speeches. Sometimes Dr. Mani sat on her right and sometimes I sat on her left, quietly smiling to myself. I knew she suspected something, but—no matter how piercing and questioning her glance grew—she had no way of guessing what that was. We still had not made up after that night of the pans—when we talked, it was in short, brusque sentences—and that evening in the boardinghouse—it was a particularly warm one—she showed me without a word her dress for the closing ball. I must say, it was perfectly presentable...

  —Yes, there was a closing ball, Father. Was there no such thing at your congress?

  —Well, this time they must have decided on a modest one to cheer us all up after the German Kaiser’s cold shoulder. That is, “our elected officers” closeted themselves in a small hall and elected themselves to various positions, while the hoi polloi put on its frock coats, evening dresses, and jewels, and danced up a storm. The Viennese waltzes were already gaily playing when we arrived, and outside the Casino—in the line of carriages parked on the main street—I was astonished to see Dr. Mani’s black-topped hansom packed with bundles and valises and already prepared to set out. The big coachman stood by in a blazer with his whip in one hand, while his horse, which was supping on a sack of barley hung around its neck, looked up from its meal with a heavenward roll of its bloodshot eyes. What—I asked the coachman—did all this mean? It meant, he explained succinctly, that they had decided to leave for Arth-Goldau ahead of time on account of the heat, since the horse did better in the cool of night. By now I was afraid that Mani might vanish before knowing we were about to be his guests, and so I hurried into the dance hall and found him in a black frock coat, waltzing a ponderous, old, diamond-bedecked English Jewess. He was talking to her quite somberly—no doubt about his clinic, for which he must have been hoping to pluck from her a last-minute contribution. Linka, despite her modest dress, was already besieged by young men, and so I went off to a corner and smoked cigar
ettes in a chain, my travel plans safely inside my head. Despite the great heat, I was actually trembling from my secret.

  —Dance? I am not, you know, much of a dancer—and the women, apart from Linka, did not seem especially light on their feet—but the truth is, Father—the truth is—that if my little consumptive from the Bahnhof had been there, I might not have been able to resist asking her for one waltz.

  —So it would seem. I grew rather fond of her, but she does not have long ... believe me ... a dry cough like hers...

  —But again, what do you want from me? You take me for the murderer when all I am is the witness...

  —Yes, perhaps that explains my fondness for her ... how astute of you, ha ha ... ha ha ha ha ha...

  —No, don’t say that, Father, not now. You will live, don’t you worry—you will live for a long, long time. I don’t think you have realized yet that this story is not about me. It is about him, Mani, who finally gave up on his Anglo-Jewess—she had not made herself one diamond lighter for his benefit—and parted from her with a deep bow before sitting glumly down beside me with his eyes on our merrily waltzing Linka. And I ask myself: if he was already determined to take his own life—if the idea was even then in him like a living seed—why did he not do it right then and there, in that blue-toned dance hall, in front of all the delegates? It would have made an immeasurably greater impression than waiting for the dusk of day in that wretched train station in Beirut...

  —The devil knows, Father...

  —The devils ... no, no...

  —Because I saw how he was clinging to me, unable to say good-bye. And I, Father, suddenly began to shake, stirred by the journey that was pressing on my heart like a hot coal. I was beginning to get cold feet—it was not, after all, too late to change my mind—to cancel everything—to let the itinerary in my pocket take the place of the trip itself...

  —I was frightened ... I don’t know of what ... frightened of Palestine...

  —No. Your anger only spurred me on...

  —Of Palestine itself. I kept picturing it, like a little yellow viper at the tip of the large map that hung in my clerk’s cubby with P-a-l-e-st-i-n-e spelled out on it in black...

  —Perhaps the shape of the letters ... But anyway, Papa dear, that was what I sat there thinking. And next to me was my brown-skinned gynecologist from Jerusalem, feeling low over haying to part and waiting to say good-bye to Linka, to whom he had become quite attached. All at once I felt sorry for him—odd as it sounds, he seemed to merge in my mind with the travel clerk from Vilna, who had labored over my trip—so sorry that I broke my silence and asked him in a low voice—since I might soon wish to take him up on it—if his invitation to Jerusalem still stood. He crimsoned with surprise, which made me wonder whether all his generous offers of hospitality had not been extended on the basis of the fullest confidence that there was no one who could possibly accept them. Presently, however, he stammered with great feeling: “You wish to come to Jerusalem?” “Yes,” I answered gently, fingering the packet of travel documents in my breast pocket, which yielded with a soft, pleasant crackle. “Yes, I do,” I repeated, speaking in the first person, because I had no idea what Linka would say. “I am sailing from Venice on the first”—I took a piece of paper from my pocket and read what was written on it—“on the Kereiti Zurakis” When he heard me utter the name of his ship, he sat up and grabbed my wrist, as if seeking to ascertain from my pulse whether or not I was pulling his leg. For a moment or two he was speechless—and when he could speak again, he said: “In Jerusalem you are my guest.” “I will be most honored,” I said—we were still talking in terms of “I” and “you,” as if I did not have a sister with me. He rose and circled me in his excitement. “And will mademoiselle be coming too?” he asked. It was strange to hear Linka called that—strange too to hear him ask with such emotion—because—although I knew that he had fallen in love with her before seeing her—I had no idea that he was still in love with her after seeing her, since she was only a—

  —Bravo, Papa! Yes, a pretext. You need not smile. That is all we were for the passion that had been lurking in him for so long that perhaps he had even snatched it from his mother’s womb ... Yes, dear Papa, that is an indispensable part of my conception...

  —Wait, don’t say anything ... just hold on, for God’s sake...

  —Linka has not been talking to me since Beirut. The most I could get out of her were yes-or-no answers when it came to planning our travels...

  —I never forced her to do anything. On the contrary, I said to Mani: “Mademoiselle? Let us ask her to speak for herself.” I rose, waited for the music and the waltz to stop, spirited her away from the outstretched arms of her would-be partners—do not think, Father, that there was any lack of them—and brought her all flushed in the face to Dr. Mani, who kissed her hand—he was aware that by now she expected no less—while she radiantly flashed him her wonderful, prodigal smile. “Linka,” I said to her, “Linka—Dr. Mani is inviting us to Jerusalem and I am inclined to accept—what would you say to our setting out tomorrow morning for his Palestine?” All she had to answer was, “My dear brother, I don’t know what has gotten into you, but you are quite mad,” and I would have gone off at once to a corner, torn up every last travel document without a thought for what it had cost, and gone straight to Lake Lugano as you wished me to—straight to Frau Lippmann’s boardinghouse, Father—to ogle the Jewish lovelies of Europe gathered there for matrimonial purposes and to ask myself—not for the first time, I assure you—exactly what about them turns my stomach. But Linka’s smile just grew brighter and broader, as though glowing out of the darkness where her newly hatched soul was beating its wings—as long as I live, Father, I will never forget how she showered me with kisses, hugging me with a childlike trust, as if I had providentially granted her very wish—as if during the two days of my secret comings and goings from the gare her intuition had already told her everything—had made her guess our destination without comprehending that there had to be some means of getting there—that there was no magic wand to transport us straight from that dance hall to the center of Jerusalem. I tell you, I felt butterflies...

  —My stomach?

  —Yes—ha ha—that is where I feel things ... I was in fact slightly nauseous—but it was only my lack of resolve—you need not worry about me—a most yidlike lack of resolve, which I shall overcome one day in order to find myself a yiddess and jump right into bed with her...

  —No.

  —No...

  —Perhaps we should stop here, Father. What is the point of going on? Linka can tell you the rest of the story, and I will spread a blanket here by the stove and lie down. I must have caught something from one of those damned pilgrims. Why, I’m shivering! The fire could not be any colder if it were just a painting of one. Is Stefa sleeping also? Here, let me stir up the coals a bit—by now God must be asleep too...

  —Such virtue as I have displayed can be allowed at least one little sin...

  —If you insist. By now it was midnight. Our elected leaders, led by Herzl and Nordau, filed out of the small hall to a burst of cheers and applause. There were some short, rosy speeches and some toasts, and all at once everyone was talking about the next century and about the next congress. “Fin de siècle!” somebody called out—a shiver ran through us all—“fin de siècle!” the cry was taken up—you could feel the hatred for this old century of ours, which everyone will be glad to say good-bye to, and the warmth for the new one on its way—the twentieth. The three of us stood excitedly off to one side, no longer a part of it all. Mani could not bear to leave us. Indeed, he might have lingered there forever had not the coachman entered the hall in his traveling blazer, swept in upon his black beard. He sullenly elbowed his way, whip in hand, through the crowd of cheering Jews—he had quite run out of patience and was in a thoroughly vile mood—it made a splendid, a perfect antithesis to all that Jewish dignity to see the three of us marched out of there—all but whipped out—by Mani’
s coachman, who practically flung him into the hansom. It was thus, rather dejectedly, that he bade us farewell, unbelievingly asking over and over: “But will you truly come?” Linka promised him we would. She hugged him as a child hugs a father—all in English, of course, which by now was their own private language—and suddenly gave him a kiss. You would think that I, who found that sudden kiss most charming, would have realized that it was only the first—but I did no such thing. I was too busy gaping at all the bundles and valises tied to the black-topped hansom—at that earnest black horse—at the passenger sitting inside—who did not look—no, not then in the middle of the night—like a man bound for a country that was our common goal, but rather, like one being sent back to some starting line. That night—

  —No. That night—

  —Yes. That night Linka wrote you her first letter, which I confiscated in the morning, because I was so concerned for you and Mama that I was still thinking of calling the whole thing off. Now, however, it was she who would not hear of it; it was just like her to feel obliged to honor her promise to our Eastward-ho-ing doctor; and I grew so fearful that she might decide to make the voyage by herself that I had no choice but to give in. The next morning we went to buy traveling clothes more suitable for our trip than the lace dresses on Linka’s shopping list. We bought ourselves blazers like the coachman’s, and cork helmets for protection against the sun, and fine silk scarves for protection against the dust—here, this rag around my neck is what is left of one! At teatime we boarded a train for Arth-Goldau, and the next morning, by the lakeside there, Linka wrote you a second letter, which I expropriated too: I still had my doubts, you see, about the entire business. But evening found us on a train again, heading southeast, for Lugano, where we arrived on Saturday morning. Since we had a long stopover there, we rented a carriage to tour the town and even dropped by Frau Lippmann’s boardinghouse, entering incognito in our blazers and cork helmets for a gander at the dressed-to-kill yeshiva students who had just finished the morning prayer and were now assembled in the lobby to bless the Sabbath wine while keeping an eye out for possible wives. In the end, we introduced ourselves to Frau Lippmann. She was quite furious about the cancellation—she would not, she said, refund so much as a franc from the advance you had paid—she even refused to surrender a letter from you until Linka wheedled it out of her with gracious smiles. And so we sat down to read your lovely correspondence, passing it back and forth to make out what it said while thanking our lucky stars for sparing us the torments of such an establishment—after which we continued our tour of the town, which is quite beautiful. That evening we boarded a sleeping coach for Milan, from which I wrote you my first letter, although in my concern for you I pocketed that too. On Sunday morning we arrived in Milan. We found an overcast city drenched by a summer downpour with lots of Italians buzzing all around us—with church bells ringing—with all the restaurants shut down. And so we joined a crowd of worshipers for mass in the duomo, taking refuge there from the rain and kneeling when everyone else did, although you may rest assured that we did not touch the Sacrament. And that was all we saw of that gray, busy city, because we were in a hurry to catch the train for Venice—in the compartment of which we struck up a conversation with a most helpful German. (This was not the first time I noticed that Germans on trains befriended us with great ease. There was something about us they took to—we must have seemed to them a charming couple—and finding out that we were brother and sister only made them grow fonder of us.) This particular German was an educated man, a novelist, who traveled to Venice every year and was well acquainted with the city and its treasures; he gave us much useful information, such as the fact that there are epidemics in Venice at the end of every summer that the authorities try to hush up. We must not, he made us promise, drink any unboiled water or eat any fruit—indeed, he so thoroughly alarmed us that I all but pulled the emergency brake and returned to Frau Lippmann’s at once in the hope that she might take us in in her mercy.