by S. Y. Agnon
“I believe it’s you who want to say something,” said Hirshl. “I’m waiting to hear what it is.”
“That’s very well put,” said Tsirl, not sounding as if she thought it was at all. She pursed her lips, then changed her tone of voice, let out a preliminary sigh, and said, “You know Ziemlich. I don’t think I have to tell you the sort of man he is.”
Although it came as a great relief that his mother was not spying on him but had simply come down to talk business, Hirshl failed to see why she was having so much difficulty doing it.
“Ziemlich,” Tsirl went on, “is a wealthy man, and he has an educated daughter. What do you think of her, Hirshl? If you ask me, she’s what’s called nowadays a modern girl. And as for the dowry she’ll get, we should only make that much from the store in a year. But why even mention the dowry when one day everything that her father owns will be hers? A bachelor can be free to follow his heart, but what would the world come to if he didn’t put his romances aside when the time came to get married? A fine place it would be if everyone followed their hearts! I wouldn’t envy it. Far be it from me to say a word against Blume. There aren’t many Blumes around. But you can’t just ignore the fact that she hasn’t a cent to her name. We were good enough to take her in and provide for all her needs, and I’m sure she knows her proper place and would never want to come between you and good fortune. You were born into a good family, Hirshl, and you’re meant for better things than Blume.”
Hirshl did not answer. Nor had his mother expected him to. She was merely seeking to put him in the proper frame of mind.
Hirshl’s arms felt numb. It was all he could do to hold on to the pitcher of wine. Although he hadn’t drunk a drop of it, his head was reeling as if a whole cask of grapes was fermenting there.
All that day he looked for Blume. He had a thousand things to tell her. Even though he had not talked back to his mother, he felt quite heroic. But Blume had disappeared. Her footsteps were nowhere to be heard. And when he finally came across her, her bottom lip was in her mouth and something had happened to her. How he had fought for her, and here she was looking right through him! His heart sank. How had he wronged her? God in heaven knew that he had not.
If Hirshl was seeing less than he wanted to of Blume, he was seeing more than he wanted to of his mother, whom he tried avoiding just as Blume was avoiding him. As dearly as he loved Blume, not only was she giving him no encouragement, she was actually spurning him.
In a vague way Hirshl began to feel that, if he did not stand steadfast forever, this would only be because Blume had abandoned him. He could never have a change of heart unless she changed toward him. Not that he had ceased to care for her. He still felt the same about her. Yet now he felt a grievance too.
Tsirl made good use of her time and moved quickly. She did not raise the subject with Hirshl again or pester him in any way. And since he didn’t raise it with her, she misconstrued his silence to mean that he had seen the error of his ways and wished to make amends.
Chapter eight
If one was looking for Blume, she was to be found only in Hirshl’s thoughts, for she was gone from the house. Blume had another job. She had packed and left without warning, ending her stay with the Hurvitzes.
Blume moved into her new home, arranged her things there, and hung her father’s photograph above her bed. The picture had faded, giving the blond beard that ringed his face an ethereal, otherworldly look. She had never been close to her father as a child. The pity she had felt for her mother had made her angry with him for reading and sighing over his books all day long. Yet his death had made him dear to her, so that anything reminding her of him filled her with emotion. Now that only his photograph was left, it made her think how good a man he must have been.
Blume folded her arms and looked at her new bed, her second since leaving her mother’s. She felt as if she were being orphaned all over again. Would she, she wondered, have to remain a housemaid all her life? Did leaving Tsirl’s home mean leaving her hopes behind too? She remembered the day of her arrival there. Not that there had been much cause for hope then either—yet it had been a far better day than the painful one of her departure.
Just because Hirshl is tied to his mother’s apron strings, thought Blume, is no reason for my world to come to an end: he may be her slave, but I have my freedom. And yet who could say whether this freedom should have meant taking herself elsewhere or trying to free Hirshl too?
There was a tap on the door. Her new employer, Tirza Mazal, entered the room and inquired, “Is there anything I can do for you?” She glanced at the photograph on the wall. “Is that your father?”
“Yes,” said Blume. “It’s my father.”
Mrs. Mazal gave her a curious look but said nothing.
“I look like my mother,” said Blume, reddening as if caught in a lie.
Silently they regarded the photograph. The face of the man in it was sad and gentle, yet peaceful too, as if any complaints he had against life were not meant to be taken too seriously.
Blume stared at the floor, and Mrs. Mazal slipped out of the room. The little she had said made Blume see her father in a new light.
One day Hirshl heard sounds coming from the room with the pile furniture. He went to have a look and found Mina Ziemlich sitting and embroidering a handkerchief. “Excuse me,” he stammered. “I should have knocked first.”
“If anyone is an intruder in this house, it’s me and not you,” said Mina, putting down her embroidery.
Hirshl felt as if he were seeing her for the first time. That is, he had seen her before, but he had paid no attention to what he saw. Now that he was standing in front of her, he felt at a loss. He knew he should say something, but he had no idea what. Why, he kept thinking, she knew just what to answer me and here I am gaping at her like a fool. She must think I have no manners. She lives in a city, and studies in a boarding school, and knows French, and goes to the theater and to concerts, while I’ve never been out of Szybusz, except for one time I took the train to Piczyric, which is an even smaller place than Szybusz is.
How sad it is to think the less of oneself just because someone else has seen a bit more of the world. If only one knew how grand that made the other feel!
The days came and went. Hirshl quickly forgot the momentary discomfort of his encounter with Mina. She was not, after all, the center of his life, nor need his mind dwell on her. If it must dwell on someone, that was Blume.
The more Hirshl thought about Blume, the less he could say what made her special. Was it simply her being gone?
He could not have been more wrong about this. It would have made no difference where Blume was. She had always been special for him. He had been drawn to her from the day he ceased being a boy. He felt about her as one might feel about a twin who has suddenly been abducted.
Hirshl was an unrealistic young man. Though he thought about Blume constantly, it never occurred to him that she might be working somewhere else. For all he ever considered the matter, she could have been living on starbeams. He imagined everything possible having happened to her without it crossing his mind for a moment that she needed a roof over her head.
Even when he finally learned where she was, he did not stop indulging his fantasies. The case of Mrs. Mazal, who had fallen in love with her mother’s former tutor and married him, cast a romantic glow over Blume’s new home. Hirshl imagined a conversation between the two women in which, Tirza Mazal having told Blume about her love affair with Akavia Mazal and Blume having told Tirza about Hirshl, Blume would realize that a woman had to take the first step. In fact, he was sure that she would take it. When at first she did not he felt surprised; then he began to hold it against her. If she did not do something soon, it would be too late.
Such self-indulgence was not for Blume. If the Angel of Dreams himself had whispered his sweet promises to her, she simply would have laughed at them. She bustled about from morning to night, busying herself with a thousand different things to ke
ep her mind off herself. In vain the Mazals chided her for working herself to the bone. She was in seven different places at one and the same time. There was no chore in the household that she did not perform. She even took such good care of Tirza’s little baby that Tirza was heard to complain that she no longer knew if the child was hers or Blume’s.
Hirshl waited on customers in the store, which was crowded with housewives and domestics, selling them sugar and kerosene.
He went about his job as usual, standing in front of the scales and weighing, wrapping, and handing out merchandise. The goods were of good quality, the scales were balanced, and neither the customers nor the Kaiser had any cause for complaint. And just as Tsirl kept boosting Mina, so Hirshl too deserves a good word. There was profit in everything he did.
Between customers Hirshl stood by the scales staring off into space and wondering why he put up with so much in silence. Perhaps it was because he felt sure that nothing would come of it anyway.
In fact, however, much had happened since the day Tsirl spoke to her son in the cellar, and even more was about to. It puzzled Hirshl why he was not angrier with Mina for coming between him and Blume. Dimly he felt that not she but Blume was to blame, since if Blume had been nicer to him, there would have been no question of Mina.
Hirshl’s mind kept changing. If one day it surprised him that he was not angrier with Mina, the next day his anger at Blume did not surprise him at all. He thought, It’s all because she walked out on me and left me with my father and my mother and everyone else who wants to run my life.
Why, Hirshl asked himself, do I put up with it? Because nothing will come of it anyway. Yet something already had come of his mother’s activity. Hirshl’s and Mina’s parents had met and agreed on a dowry. It only remained to convene the young couple beneath the wedding canopy.
His mother did not argue when Hirshl was moody with her but simply sighed along with him and said, “No one chooses his own fate. Better to marry a woman who respects you than to run after one who doesn’t care.” Tsirl was clever enough to know that she lived in an age when no parent could force a son to do anything, much less to marry against his will. Had she behaved like most mothers, she simply would have antagonized Hirshl. Yet as she continued to be her loving self, he was hers to do with as she pleased.
Indeed, just being near his mother made Hirshl dewy-eyed these days. As distant as he had felt from her, there was now no one in the world who seemed closer to him. Once, when he had been a small boy, a friend had jilted him; seeing how hurt he was Tsirl took him in her arms, where her kisses and caresses soon put the friend out of his mind. And although Hirshl was now a young man, the same thing had happened again.
It was the middle of the winter. The houses were waist-high in snow, and a column of smoke rose from every roof—a lower and fainter one from the far roofs and a higher and thicker one from the near ones. The river was frozen as flat as the sky, and a cross of ice stood upon it. The Christmas holidays were at hand, and every store was crammed with goods and customers. Horse-drawn sleighs jingled down the streets, the clear, cold chime of their bells resounding all over. The rich estate owners came to town wrapped in their bearskins and wolfskins. Szybusz was bright and bustling, and the shopkeepers had their hands full, for there were no better shopping days than those before Christmas, when the Poles and Ukrainians bought each other gifts. There was not a shop in town that did not do a booming business.
Gedalia Ziemlich arrived one day at the Hurvitzes’. Tsirl was sitting in the shop, warming her hands over a brazier of hot coals. She flashed Gedalia a cursory smile when he entered and nodded toward a stack of boxes that was redolent of wood and groceries. Boruch Meir came out of his office, handed Gedalia a sheet of paper, and said something to him in low tones. Gedalia Ziemlich took the page and read from it aloud while wiping the icicles from his mustache. His kind, weary eyes lit up with the pleasure it gave him to think of what so many officials and their wives would soon be eating and drinking at his expense.
Hirshl stood to one side with a sneer on his lips, his fingers drumming on the counter. Senses of right and wrong differ. It irked him to think that men appointed to enforce the law should take bribes; worse yet, that even though the Christian bribe takers considered the Jewish bribe givers their inferiors, the bribe givers were as pleased with themselves as if they were giving to a deserving charity. And yet it was neither socialism nor a sense of Jewish honor that made Hirshl think this way. It was simply his dislike for the Jew from Malikrowik.
Tsirl saw her son’s expression and sought to change the subject. Pushing aside the brazier of coals, she asked Ziemlich, “And how is Miss Mina?” Even though the dowry had already been settled, she still referred to Mina as “miss.”
“We expect her home any day now,” said Gedalia Ziemlich, putting down the sheet of paper.
“She’ll be most welcome here,” said Boruch Meir, rubbing his hands.
“Will she be returning to Stanislaw as soon as the vacation is over?” Tsirl asked.
“She won’t be returning at all,” said Gedalia.
“Why not?” Tsirl asked.
Gedalia Ziemlich let out a heartfelt sigh. “Because the headmistress of her boarding school has gone and married a Pole.”
“A Pole!” exclaimed Boruch Meir and Tsirl in alarm. “Imagine, she married a goy!”
Gedalia Ziemlich nodded and sighed again. Boruch Meir ran his left hand through his beard, distraughtly flipping its hairs upward as if throwing them away. Tsirl warmed her fingers in front of her mouth, lowered her eyes, and said nothing. Boruch Meir smoothed his beard down with his right hand, gripped his watch chain, and said:
“I hate to think of a young lady like Mina having to spend her whole vacation in the village.”
“Why not think of how happy her parents will be to have her,” said Tsirl.
“Well now,” stammered Boruch Meir, “if you look at it that way, I’m happy too.”
“I do hope, though,” said Tsirl, “that Mr. Ziemlich will not hide his daughter at home, so that we can get to see her also.”
“I do believe she’ll be more in Szybusz than in Malikrowik,” said Gedalia. “She’s already invited to stay here with Sophia. That Sophia is absolutely turning her against Malikrowik.”
“Ah,” said Boruch Meir in the tone of a man whom friendship has made an expert on another man’s business. “You must mean Mrs. Gildenhorn, Eisy Heller’s daughter.”
Gedalia Ziemlich nodded. “She doesn’t let Mina alone. The minute Mina arrives from Stanislaw Sophia runs off with her to Szybusz. She tells her that the cows in Malikrowik will give milk just as well without her.”
“The Gildenhorns have a big house,” said Tsirl. “There are always gay times there. It might not be a bad idea for Mina to stay with them.”
“That’s what I think,” said Gedalia. “But her mother is against it. When a child’s been away for so long, a mother wants her by her side when she’s home.”
“Well,” Tsirl said, “we’ll be glad to see Miss Mina when she comes. Tell me, Hirshl, will the Zionists be having their Hanukkah party this year?”
Tsirl cared for neither the Zionists nor their parties, but she thought it would make Hirshl glad to know that she took an interest in the same things he did.
Sophia Gildenhorn was two years older than Mina, though she looked two years younger. She was married to a commercial traveler named Yitzchok Gildenhorn, a carefree young man who made a good living selling life insurance to gullible provincials. His house, which was a quiet place when he was away, teemed with activity when he was home, especially during the Christmas holidays, when the shops were closed and there was much partying and the fast set in Szybusz gathered at the Gildenhorns’ to stay up all night eating, drinking, playing cards, and telling jokes. Sometimes the revelers invented comic names for various inhabitants of the town, or even composed satirical sketches about them that were posted in the marketplace, where others felt free to change or
add to them as they pleased. More than one marriage had been called off because of these lampoons, which cast whole families into disrepute. Indeed, the decline and fall of Szybusz’s old patricians had begun on the day that Gildenhorn moved into town. Anything went in Szybusz these days, and every rogue felt free to raise his head; nor could anyone do anything about it, since half the local residents were afraid of Gildenhorn and the other half were on his side. Anyone promising good times and free drinks is certain to have lots of friends. And anyone dropping in on Gildenhorn was certain to find the unlikeliest people in his house.
Chapter nine
On the last night of Hanukkah the Gildenhorns invited the Hurvitzes to a pirogen party that they were giving with the proceeds from a winning lottery ticket bought by Sophia.
When it was time to set out, Tsirl said to Hirshl, “Your father and I aren’t ready yet. Why don’t you go now, and we’ll come later. You know who’s going to be there, it’s not something you would want to miss. Judging by the amount of liquor they bought in the store today, there’s going to be lots of fun. Perhaps you had better put on a fresh shirt for the occasion.”
When Hirshl arrived at the party, Yitzchok Gildenhorn was already at the card table with his friends. Hirshl was perfectly presentable, yet unaccustomed to society as he was he kept touching himself to make sure that his tie was still in place and that his socks had not fallen down. He stood there uncertainly, running a hand over his clothes as though he had lice.
A large crowd of people was at the Gildenhorns’. Among them was the likable Leibush Tshortkover, as light of head as he was heavy of beard, sitting at the card table with his mentor and host; Gimpel Kurtz, who taught religion at the Baron de Hirsch School; the joke-loving amputee Mottshi Shaynbart, nattily dressed and gay-looking, his wooden crutch smelling of fresh paint; Gildenhorn’s father-in-law Eisy Heller; and many others besides, not all of whom Hirshl knew. As soon as they had greeted him, they went right back to their cards.