A Simple Story

by S. Y. Agnon

  The Hurvitz house stood in a row of shops and houses in the center of town. It was no bigger than the buildings around it and was conspicuous only by virtue of an abandoned dovecote on the roof, Tsirl’s father having raised pigeons as a hobby. The top half of the structure was a large home with many rooms, while the bottom was a long, narrow store which, though three or four customers could make it look crowded, never had less than five or six at a time. The counters were lined with scales heaped with merchandise, at the first of which, by the entrance, sat Tsirl. Tsirl did not touch the merchandise herself but was simply there to make conversation. Unlike her father, who thought that a store was not a synagogue in which to sit around and gab, or her husband, who was busy with his accounts, or Hirshl, who was always measuring and weighing, or the shopboys, who had no end of parcels to wrap, she had time to chat with each customer, which she did while signaling to one of the men to come sell him something he had never originally meant to buy. Certainly the store could not have done without Boruch Meir, who kept the books and made the entries and did all the ordering on time; it could not have done without Hirshl either, who handled the actual sales; it could not even have done without the shopboys, who packed and unpacked and waited on customers and delivered; yet least of all could it have done without Tsirl, who knew from talking with each customer just what he was worth. Perhaps in her father’s time, when the world had been simpler and it was more obvious who was poor and who was rich, no great effort had to be expended on such things; nowadays, however, when the poor pretended to be rich in order to obtain credit and the rich pretended to be poor in order not to give it, one had to draw a man out. And when it came to knowing where he stood, there was no one like Tsirl for getting him to give himself away. He could be dressed like a lord; he could keep his hands in his pockets as though they were filled with gold coins; he could wipe crumbs of white bread from his mustache and moan about the stomachache he had from overeating; sooner or later the false moan would turn into a real one and the truth would come out that he had less clothes than creditors, that his pockets had nothing but holes in them, and that he would gladly give his right arm for an onion or a radish to munch on. Or the opposite might happen and someone would enter the shop in the most threadbare of suits, his shoes unpolished, his hat coming apart, his pockets hanging out of his pants; try getting him to part with a penny and he would groan as if he were being robbed of his last sou; yet let Tsirl listen to the sound of that groan and she could tell you at once that it was one of well-heeled bliss. How, if she were not such an artful conversationalist, would she ever have found out that Ziemlich was worth a good twenty thousand? Certainly not by the looks of him, nor by what he wore. A man’s money, though, had its own voice that spoke when he did.

  Ever since taking Gedalia Ziemlich’s true measure, Tsirl had gone out of her way to befriend him and to invite him upstairs for coffee or even, if it was lunchtime, to dine. The stairs themselves were narrow and cracked, stained with oil and kerosene, and littered with sugar, grains of rice, broken matches, squashed raisins, and crushed coffee beans; the hallway was lined with cartons of candles, cans of paint and turpentine, and boxes of pepper and salt; yet Blume had managed to keep the Hurvitz home spotless, and, when a new maid replaced her, Tsirl saw to it that she did too, for Tsirl was not too old to learn.

  As for Hirshl, he was an irreproachably affable youngster who never put on a rich man’s airs. One would have thought that the son and grandson of well-to-do businessmen would not have argued with the common belief that making money was a sign of intelligence, yet this is just what Hirshl did. “What exactly is so intelligent,” he liked to ask, “about selling something off a shelf?” Though no one in Szybusz was taken in by this, socialism did sound much better when expressed with the authority of wealth.

  No less well liked in Szybusz than the Hurvitzes were the Ziemlichs. Gedalia Ziemlich had never hurt a fly and, however well buttered his bread, he aroused no one’s envy, for he was not a man who paraded his good fortune. A generous giver to charity, he practiced it in strict privacy, discreetly letting others distribute it for him so as not to seem competitive about it. In fact, there were wealthy Jews in Szybusz whose reputation as philanthropists rested entirely on Ziemlich’s magnanimity.

  Although the story of Gedalia’s success was seemingly an ordinary one of hard work and frugality, there was still something miraculous about it. His father, a dairyman, had never done well, since every self-respecting household had had its own cows in those days and did not need to buy milk, while his equally unsuccessful brothers and cousins had all left the vicinity of Szybusz for greener pastures, where some of them had died of hunger and others were never heard from again. One had even traveled all the way to Germany in search of his fortune, which he found in an unknown grave.

  If Gedalia was not a happy man, then, this was not because he did not have enough but because he feared losing what he had and sinking back into poverty. He was keenly conscious of the fact that, while he lacked for nothing, lived in a grand house, and rode about in a carriage of his own, other no less worthy Jews lived in penury—which was why, though he meticulously performed all his religious and human duties, he never stopped worrying that life’s kindness to him was only a ploy to make his ultimate downfall more dramatic. He dreaded the day of reckoning that would come. So great was this anxiety indeed that any stranger knocking on his door was immediately suspected of having come to turn him out. He still had clear memories of himself and his family going to bed without supper, rising without breakfast, and lunching on dry bread and onions. Not that the cows had given no milk, but the milk that they gave was never drunk by the Ziemlichs, for it was too precious to be wasted on themselves. Nevertheless, Gedalia had fond recollections of his days of making the milk rounds when, before the Almighty, so to speak, had even awoken in heaven, he and his father were up and about with their cans on their shoulders, although they never started work without first attending the early prayer at the synagogue in Szybusz.

  Eventually Gedalia grew up and married Breyndl, the daughter of the keeper of the village tavern, which Gedalia managed with his father-in-law until the latter died and he became its sole proprietor. He would gladly have remained that, being unambitious and content with his lot, which seemed to him a token of divine beneficence, yet Providence helped him put his pennies together until they turned into crowns and gulden. Before long he became the count’s estate manager, a position that only heightened his concern that his success might be some sort of test. Who, though, was testing him? He could hardly believe that God Almighty would take such an interest in him, especially as He must have His trusted agents on earth to manage His finances. It could only be then, thought Gedalia, that the count himself had made him his steward for the purpose of ignominiously dismissing him. When he had lived as a child in a wooden shack that leaked from both roof and floor, and the frost had drawn mocking pictures on the windowpanes, and his parents could not bring themselves to scold his brothers and sisters who were crying from hunger, Gedalia had sat reading tales of the saints who magically provided poor Jews with livelihoods, and had rejoiced in the knowledge that God looked after His own. Yet he had never expected such miracles for himself, so that when one befell him and the count leased him all his holdings, rather than look upon it as a case of heavenly intervention in his behalf, Gedalia had considered it a private joke on the part of the count, who was just waiting for the right moment to send him packing in disgrace.

  Becoming the count’s manager, therefore, had not gone to his head. His house was still open to rich and poor alike and he himself waited on each guest. Whenever he had a free moment he read Psalms to himself, while each Monday and Thursday he journeyed to Szybusz to hear the Torah read in the synagogue. Far from a jealous man by nature, his only envy was of those Jews who could double their merit by putting on two pairs of tefillin each morning, one according to the formula of Rashi and one according to that of Rabbenu Tam—and if he did not emul
ate them it was not for lack of time but because he feared that, since many pious and learned Jews made do with one pair, it would be vainglorious of him to insist on two. As it was, he took great care of his tefillin, inspected them constantly to see that they were in order, and made sure never to engage in unnecessary conversation while wearing them. It was his custom too to buy a new prayer shawl before each holiday and exchange it for the torn one of some poor but God-fearing scholar—and indeed, his tongueless tefillin and torn prayer shawls were apt symbols for the man himself, who never said a word to anyone about how torn he felt inside. If his clothes befitted his station in life, this was not because he cared about them but only because he did not wish to embarrass the count. In fact, had it not been for his wife, his clothes would have looked like his prayer shawls.

  As surprised as Gedalia Ziemlich was at God’s goodness to him, he was no less amazed at his wife for taking so naturally to wealth that she screamed at the servants whenever they broke a dish or did anything that displeased her. Why, he thought, tomorrow God could easily switch us around so that Bertha and I would have to serve them; does she think they would fail to remember how mean she was to them? If he himself got through a week with nothing breaking he would wonder whether his good luck in this life was not meant to facilitate his being sent straight to hell in the next without any right of appeal.

  When Mina was born, Gedalia’s dread of the future lessened somewhat. He worried so much about her falling, or breaking an arm or a leg, or being bitten by one of the dogs, that there was no time left for worrying about himself or his good fortune. Besides, he imagined that even if God did not pity him for his own sake, He would at least do so for his daughter’s. Now that Mina was engaged to Hirshl Hurvitz, however, his sense of unworthiness was obsessing him again. And the anxiety that accompanied his happiness for Mina was even worse than it used to be, since while once it had been only for himself, it was now for Boruch Meir too, whom he feared would be ruined along with him. Each day that passed without disaster seemed a miracle to him.

  A man like Gedalia might appear likely to be hen-pecked, yet in fact he was not, for Bertha was a simple woman and did not put herself above him. Her own character had been fully formed before they came into money, and she was as self-sufficient as he was, the difference between them being only that she did not second-guess the Lord for having improved her station in life. Indeed, if she rolled up her sleeves each day and increased what He had given her, she did not do so out of cupidity but simply so as not to be idle. Did anyone really expect her to sit gossiping all day long with the neighbors? She had been a hard worker ever since childhood and did not intend to stop now; surely it was no fault of her own if her work, which once had brought in a small profit, now yielded a large one. God be praised that there was even enough to share with her and her husband’s families. Gedalia gave little thought to his relations: he was glad to help when they turned up, but he seldom thought of them when they did not, and in general he never remembered where they lived and scarcely knew where the post office was. Had Bertha not taken it upon herself to send them money and gifts they would all have gone hungry, while Gedalia would have gone wild with grief and guilt the minute he found out.

  The fact was that, though she might sometimes shout at the servants, Bertha too was not at all stuck-up and gave no one cause for offense. When she first decided to change her name from Breyndl the local wags had joked that becoming rich must be like becoming ill, a condition for which a change of name was known to be efficacious. Eventually, however, everyone grew used to calling her Bertha, or else “Mrs. Ziemlich” to her face and, behind her back, “the Lady of Malikrowik.”

  As for Mina, she was hardly known in Szybusz and, since she studied in Stanislaw, was seldom seen there. Sometimes one of her Szybusz friends ordered a copy made of a fashionable hat or coat of hers, but by the time the milliner or tailor had it ready Mina was already forgotten.

  Chapter fifteen

  Hirshl had never been so popular as now that he was a model bridegroom. Once, in the good old days, the Jews of Szybusz had married with each other, and there were still families in town that, though maintaining no ties between them, could trace a relationship by marriage going back many generations. Subsequently, however, when it became the common practice to marry out of town, the greater the distance the bride or groom came from, the more distinguished the match was deemed to be. Such newlyweds walked the streets of Szybusz like counts and countesses. Whatever they did produced volumes of commentary and whatever they said was repeated over and over until, lapsing slowly into the routines of daily life, they became like any other Szybuszian.

  Nor was there a family in Szybusz that did not have its favorite adventure stories of travels to faraway weddings, of robbers and swindlers encountered on the way, and of in-laws and matchmakers met upon arrival. Indeed, as times grew harder and a decent match rarer, one had to range farther and farther to look for it and be less and less picky about what one found. Thus, Hirshl’s engagement combined the best of both worlds. You could say that he was marrying locally, and you could say that he was marrying out of town, for though Szybusz was not Malikrowik, Malikrowik was only two miles away.

  When strawberry season arrived, the Ziemlichs began fetching the Hurvitzes in their carriage to come eat fresh berries with them. It would be the time of day when the cows were being driven back from the meadow by singing village girls; slowly the sun went down; the moon and stars came out; and, under Bertha’s doting eye, Hirshl sat beneath a tree with his parents, his fiancée, and her father, before him a loaf of yeasty-smelling, appetizing black bread, bowls of butter and cheese, a pitcher of buttermilk, and lots of red berries swimming in sweet cream. Servants smelling of tar and wood waited to do his every bidding, bringing him new dishes, taking away old ones, and filling his empty glass. Thus pampered, Hirshl felt like a well-cared-for patient. Such attention indeed could make even a healthy man ill.

  Hirshl and Mina did not talk much to each other. The evenings and nights of early summer were not conducive to conversation. They sat lost in thought, or perhaps in the absence of it. Sometimes Mina glanced up at the stars. Although once, before her engagement, she had known some of their names, she had forgotten them by now—or rather, it was not their names she had forgotten but which name belonged to which star. Had her nature teacher asked her about them, she would have been at a loss.

  But Hirshl was not Mina’s teacher and had no interest in astronomy. He sat lazily on a wooden bench with his feet barely grazing the ground, half listening to the snatches of voices that drifted from the village. Some peasant girls were singing a song about a mermaid who married a prince. What did the prince do when he realized that his bride was half fish? The village girls were far, far off, and their voices barely reached him.

  It had been daylight when the Hurvitzes arrived in Malikrowik, and now Hirshl and Boruch Meir rose and went inside to say their evening prayers. Gedalia Ziemlich had already said his with the first stars, yet, always ready for more, he accompanied the two men into the house. Unlike Boruch Meir, who prayed quickly, Hirshl took his time. Perhaps he had things to pray about and perhaps he had thoughts that kept him from praying at all. He still had not finished when Stach the coachman appeared with his whip to take them back to Szybusz.

  It was an hour after nightfall when they started home. Stach flicked the haunches of the horses and sang sad, sweet peasant songs. Although the world seemed his for the asking, Hirshl felt that he too was sad and that a man might have all the good food, pleasant surroundings, wealth, possessions, honor, and fame that could be wished for, everything but one thing, and still feel that happiness eluded him.

  What was that thing? If his own father and mother did not know, it was unlikely that anyone did.

  Yona Toyber may have been given his matchmaker’s fee, but he still put an arm around Hirshl when they met and talked to him of interesting things—and while there is no knowing whether he ever told Tsirl about wha
t happened on his first visit to Malikrowik, what he said to Hirshl is no secret. There were in Szybusz, besides those in the cemetery, many old graves that kept turning up whenever a new foundation was dug. Akavia Mazal had even written a lengthy book about them that was reviewed in the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna— and, though Toyber had not read it, he was no slouch on the subject himself, for when Hirshl mentioned it to him he replied, “Yes, they even found a couple of them underneath the old study house when it was renovated. You’ll come on an old grave anywhere you stick a shovel in Szybusz.” It was questionable, he said, whether a descendant of the priestly caste, who was forbidden to enter a graveyard, should even be permitted to live in the town. If Mazal had written one book, Toyber could have written two, yet Hirshl still craved to hear more. Perhaps Mazal, who could have filled more books than Toyber, might have told Hirshl what he wished to know, but Mazal lived at the far end of town while Hirshl lived in its center, and the divine economy never brought them together as it brought him together with Toyber. Indeed, it was a pity that Mazal did not know Toyber, because Toyber was a mine of erudition. Hirshl wondered what Mazal would think of him.