A Simple Story

by S. Y. Agnon

Mina reached out for the clock on the table with a yawn. “If you’re asking how many hours I slept, the answer is more than enough. But if you’re asking how I feel, the nights here are too short for me.”

  “Then turn over and go back to sleep,” advised Bertha. “We won’t be having dinner for a while yet. Come,” she said to Gedalia, pulling him after her out of the room, “let’s let the child sleep.”

  The two of them left.

  Hirshl went to the sukkah that Gedalia had built. It stood in a pleasant nook, garlanded with fruit and ears of grain. A breeze lifted the patterned sheets that formed its sides, revealing a world of woods and fields. A new day was starting, and men and women were already silently at work, it being still too early to be singing about mermaids or indeed about anything else.

  Hirshl wrapped himself in his prayer shawl and began to recite the morning prayer, thanking God for watching over his soul while he slept and restoring it to him in the morning. He felt as rested and at home in his body as a man does in his own house when every room is tidy and clean. He went from prayer to prayer, feeling at peace with the world. Gedalia was out making the rounds of the farm, Bertha was cooking in the kitchen, and Mina was still in bed, her limbs spread lazily over the sheets and not in the least annoyed with her over their lack of exercise. Szybusz was just an hour’s walk away. The shops there would be opening now and their owners comparing their lulavs and esrogs, each certain he had the best that money could buy. The sight of his father-in-law’s sukkah gave Hirshl a festive feeling. There was nothing like it in the narrow, crooked streets of Szybusz, where each holiday booth looked like a pack on a hunchback’s back. More than once on the Feast of Tabernacles Hirshl had preferred to skip a meal rather than eat it in such a sukkah. Perhaps Jews like Akavia Mazal who lived on the outskirts of town built nicer ones.

  Hirshl had not thought of Akavia Mazal for a long time. Once he had mused often about this man, who had fallen in love with and married his ex-pupil’s daughter Tirza, who sat talking with her friend Blume about her husband and young Hirshl Hurvitz. One day, however, Hirshl had sat down with himself and decided to put such thoughts out of his mind.

  Meanwhile Gedalia came back from the fields, Bertha set the table in the sukkah, and Mina appeared in a morning dress. Though for her part she could have slept more, she had not wanted to keep the rest of them waiting for their dinner. “Good morning, Heinrich,” she said with a bob of her head, standing so close to him that their noses nearly touched. Unlike Napoleon, however, Hirshl was no Frenchman; he did not like the smell of Mina’s cologne and gave his nose the order to retreat. “Well then,” said Mina, looking down at the set table, “I think I’ll go and change before we eat.”

  She stepped out of the sukkah, whose own fragrance reasserted itself. Its garlands of fruit were beginning to bruise and spoil. A jack-o’-lantern hanging from a chain of strung walnuts swung back and forth in the breeze. Hirshl was not hungry. Mina’s parents had been feeding him well. If he could have been allowed to sit all day in the sukkah without munching on more than a walnut, he gladly would have done so.

  The two men sat without speaking, Hirshl because he was feeling too peaceful to say anything, and Gedalia because a sukkah was no place for idle talk. His prayer book open before him, he sat praying that God would make the world His tabernacle as His people had made the sukkah theirs. The breeze rippled through the branches of the roof, which gave off a pleasant aroma.

  Mina returned in an afternoon dress, sat down beside Hirshl, dipped a slice of bread in honey, and said the blessing over it. A servant girl entered with a platter of freshly cooked fish. Gedalia Ziemlich put down his prayer book and stared at the unexpected dish in surprise.

  “I ordered fish for the last day of the holiday as usual,” explained Bertha, “but it came today by mistake. At first I thought of pickling it and serving it as planned, but then I thought that pickled fish would be too sour for a holiday meal, so I decided to cook it today.”

  “Bless God for each day,” mumbled Gedalia, tucking a napkin under his chin while dunking his bread in the aspic and chewing it slowly. Hirshl ate a great deal despite his lack of appetite, for the fresh air and his mother-in-law’s cooking had given him one just in time. Indeed, his stomach seemed to have expanded since his arrival in Malikrowik, and his interest in vegetarianism and the simple life was a thing of the past. “Your own mother would be proud of such gravy,” remarked Bertha as she watched him take a second helping. Hirshl ate in silence, his eyes on the angry beak of the china goose. Once he glanced up and saw Mina. What on earth, he wondered, was she doing there?

  Mina looked thin and pale. She ate little, and the little that she ate did not stick to her bones. Did she think she had to diet all her life so her tailored clothes would go on fitting her? Not that Hirshl did not like having a wife who dressed well. Still, he would have liked even better having one who ate a bit. Though he himself had grown up in a wealthy home and had never gone without anything, much less without three meals a day, so that, unlike some people, he was not obsessed with food, he still could not help noticing that Mina ate less than she left on her plate. After all, she was his wife and her health was his business.

  The servant girl cleared away the dishes and brought them plum tarts for dessert. Mina, thought Hirshl, had not even finished the bread and honey she had started with; who could possibly expect her to eat a plum tart? All that cologne, he felt sure, must be spoiling her appetite.

  A fly landed on Mina’s slice of bread and was trapped for a moment in the honey. Fighting free, it paused to rest on her plum tart. She shielded her face with one hand and pushed away the tart with the other.

  The dogs began to bark. Someone was outside. Bertha went to quiet them and ushered several visitors from Szybusz into the sukkah, where she set food before them and urged them to bless it and eat. Clearly they were knowledgeable Jews, for though they had dined already, they did not refuse what she brought them but ate and drank again in order to recite the blessing over sitting in a sukkah. True, there were rabbis who held that the blessing could be said without partaking of food, the main thing being the sukkah itself, but it was best, the guests explained to Gedalia, to be on the safe side. Though it was by no means the first time Gedalia had heard this question debated, his respect for learning was such that he listened as avidly as though it were.

  “The divine serenity of this place,” said one of the guests when he was done eating, “is something I envy you. Why, if it weren’t for the dogs one might think this heaven on earth!”

  An agreeable tranquility did envelop the sukkah. Hearing her home compared to heaven was music to Bertha’s ears. Gedalia looked down and half stifled a sigh as he prayed that he might indeed be found worthy of Paradise and not of hell. He was once again beset by the fear that this life had been kind to him only so that he might be roasted all the more thoroughly in the next. Nevertheless, he was glad to have guests. It was known that the spirits of the Seven Patriarchs who came to visit the sukkah of each Jew liked seeing nothing better than hospitality.

  The sun was going down. The eastward shadow thrown by the sukkah grew longer. The visitors said the grace after meals, rose to go, and exclaimed with an upward glance:

  “What a fine holiday, what weather we’ve had! Just see how when Jews sit in their sukkahs, God sends them sunny days!”

  They started back for Szybusz just as the peasants were coming in from the fields. A chorus of animal sounds, bird calls, and human song carried from the gardens of the houses. Storks circled high above, ready for their long journey, and the village girls stopped singing to look at them. The sky turned color after color, then faded and grew dark.

  Gedalia stepped outside, looked up at the sky, and said, “Still no sign of rain. We haven’t had a Sukkos like this, without a meal rained out in years. How charitable the Lord is to us.”

  He took his prayer book and went to say the evening prayer. Then supper was served and they all sat down to eat. Gedal
ia opened his book again and welcomes the Patriarchs, said to visit on that night, in the whisper of a man charged with greeting honored guests and afraid of being too familiar.

  While they were eating, several Jews from the village stopped by to pay their respects to the young couple. They had a bite to eat, sat with them for a while, and left.

  Mina returned to her room and Hirshl went out for a stroll around the barnyard. Stach was attending to his horses, talking to himself. “What I was saying,” he continued out loud to Hirshl when he saw him, “is that that God of yours must think a great deal of you folks to give you such fine days and nights for your holidays. I don’t suppose by any chance you smoke, sir, do you?”

  Hirshl took out a pack of cigarettes, gave one to Stach, took another for himself, and looked up at the sky.

  Stach bent to rub a horse’s belly and said, “I’d say that the moon’s too far off to give us a light, wouldn’t you?” He produced a strip of tinder, struck a flint, lit it, and then lit the two cigarettes.

  A woman’s footsteps echoed in the yard. Hirshl gave a start. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  Stach grinned. “Oh, just one of your fraid-to-be-alone-at-night-by-herself types. I reckon her legs will find her company enough.”

  The woman saw the young master talking to Stach and slipped away. Hirshl said good night and went to rejoin Mina.

  Chapter eighteen

  The Feast of Tabernacles ended, and Hirshl and Mina went home. That same day Gedalia sent them enough firewood, potatoes, cabbages, broad beans, kidney beans, fresh and dried fruit, and smoked meat to last the winter. Tsirl was quite right when she said that, if for no other reason, Mina needed a house of her own just to put all her father’s gifts in.

  Through the parting of its white curtains, which were trimmed down the middle with red, Hirshl and Mina’s snug apartment looked out on a triangular world. Mina, however, rarely stood by the window. Why bother looking out when everything was so cozy within? She and Hirshl were a couple. They may not have been all that happy, yet they were far from the opposite too, and they lived in comfort and lacked nothing.

  One night Gedalia Ziemlich dropped by. Mina sat knitting a sweater by the lit lamp on the tablecloth. Gedalia looked at her and thought, Why, it’s barely three months since I bought her a whole trousseau and she’s already making herself more clothes. He hung his head guiltily and asked, “Do you need anything?”

  Mina laid her knitting in her lap and considered out loud. “Do we need anything? We get cocoa, coffee, sugar, rice, kasha, oil, and kerosene from the store. We get butter, cheese, eggs, chicken, and chicken fat from you. What more could we need?”

  Gedalia Ziemlich ran a hand back and forth across his beard. For the first time in months he did not have to rush through his visit. Little by little his beard fanned out until it resembled the Kaiser Franz Josef’s, except that the Kaiser’s was forked in the middle while Gedalia’s was all of one piece.

  Though Gedalia had much on his mind these days, he could not bring himself to say it. Despite his satisfaction with Hirshl and Mina, he was a more and more worried man. Sooner or later, if not today then tomorrow, the Creditor would call in His debt and expect to be paid with back interest.

  Tsirl popped in, as was her custom, to see what the children were having for supper. “There is one more thing that you need,” she observed, overhearing Mina. “A new lock on your pantry to protect it from your maid and all her lovers!”

  Just as Gedalia was about to leave, in walked Hirshl and Bertha. Why not, Hirshl suggested, ask his in-laws to have supper with them? Why not, suggested Mina, ask her in-laws too? Boruch Meir was sent for, and they all sat down together. From then on, whenever the Ziemlichs were in town they were joined at the young Hurvitzes’ by Tsirl and Boruch Meir and a good time was had by all.

  These meals were truly enjoyable. When they sat chatting around the round table in its new chairs, both Hirshl’s and Mina’s parents felt that, although their houses had grown emptier, their families had grown larger. And though the upholstered chairs in Boruch Meir’s house may have been more comfortable to sit in than the wicker ones in Hirshl and Mina’s, wicker did have the advantage of being easily moved about the room.

  “Just look at the niggardly times we live in,” said Boruch Meir, wiggling his fingers through the back of a chair. “They make chairs nowadays with more holes in them than straw. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day soon they make them with no backs at all.”

  Gedalia Ziemlich nodded. There was nothing in the world that Boruch Meir did not have a clever opinion on.

  Hirshl lit a cigarette and smoked it like a grandee in front of his elders while Mina drove its smoke away with her hand. Boruch Meir asked Hirshl for a cigarette too, lit it, took several puffs, stubbed it out, scoffed that he never could see what the pleasure was in smoking, and inspected the hairs of his beard to make sure that they had not turned black from the smoke.

  “How is the count’s brother?” Tsirl asked Gedalia.

  Gedalia gave her a puzzled look, as if it escaped him what there possibly could be to ask about.

  “The one who has his cigarettes made in Paris,” Tsirl prompted.

  “He and the count had a quarrel,” said Bertha.

  “What, counts quarrel too?” asked Tsirl.

  “Brothers do,” said Bertha. “It seems that the count’s brother lit one of his cigarettes from Paris with a match when there was already a lit candle on the table, and the count cursed him out for being wasteful. The upshot is that the count has sworn to bequeath his whole estate to the Church when he dies.”

  Boruch Meir wiggled his fingers through the back of his chair again and said, “I’ll bet these first were made of solid straw and had the holes cut in them afterwards.”

  “Leave it to Boruch Meir,” said Tsirl. “Do you mean to tell me that if the two don’t make up, the whole estate goes to the priests?”

  “The priests will get their share whether they make up or not,” said Bertha. “You needn’t worry about them, my dear.”

  “I have worries enough of my own, thank God,” said Tsirl. “Tell me, Mina, when is that maid of yours serving supper? I think I’ll go see what she’s making.”

  The maid was making potato pancakes, and though this was a dish that Tsirl must have eaten a thousand times in her life, she stared at it as if there were no greater delicacy, asked for the recipe, and hung on every word with her mouth wide open as if in anticipation of a rare treat.

  “These pancakes,” said the maid when she had finished describing them, “are a favorite of Mr. Gildenhorn’s.”

  Tsirl sighed. “That Gildenhorn travels so much that he must eat new foods every day.” Her eyes had a far-off look. The world might be full of fine things, yet not everyone had the luck to enjoy them.

  Boruch Meir looked lovingly at Tsirl. Her round, rosily tinged face with its head of dark hair seemed suddenly changed to him. Indeed, each time he looked at her he discovered something new. His glance passed to Hirshl, who had not put on weight and was as thin as on the day of his wedding.

  Bertha seemed to read Boruch Meir’s thoughts. “If Hirshl would come stay with us in Malikrowik,” she said, “we’d fatten him up for you.”

  Hirshl reddened. Had his mother-in-law really kept tabs of all he ate in her house? He glanced at Mina and declared, “I know someone who was born in Malikrowik and still weighs less than a spider leg.”

  “The automatic spoon has yet to be invented,” said Boruch Meir with a smile. “But anyone not too lazy to lift his spoon to his mouth is in no danger of going hungry at your mother-in-law’s.”

  “Your maid,” said Tsirl without stopping eating, “is a wonderful cook and human being. Keep a good, good eye on her, Mina, because human beings have a way of walking off with things.”

  Mina was startled. All her life she had been watched out for by others, and now she was being told to watch out for someone herself.

  The maid came back into the r
oom. Tsirl regarded her genially and said, “Have you come to bring us more good things to eat?”

  “There’s a Mr. Kurtz at the door,” said the maid.

  “Goodness me!” cried Tsirl happily. “Come in, Mr. Toyber, do come in.”

  “I believe the girl said Kurtz,” Bertha said.

  “I’m so glad it’s Toyber,” said Tsirl loudly. “If it weren’t, I wouldn’t let him in, because this is strictly a family occasion. But Toyber is like one of the family.”

  “I’ll come another time,” Kurtz was heard to tell the maid as he departed.

  “The poor fellow,” said Bertha. “How humiliating for him.”

  “But how can you say that, my dear?” Tsirl asked. “Didn’t I say how glad I was that he was here?”

  “That Toyber was here,” said Hirshl. “But it wasn’t Toyber, it was Kurtz.”

  “You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t have been happy to see Toyber,” Tsirl said.

  “But we’re talking about Kurtz!” exclaimed Hirshl.

  “Oh, you mean the young man who danced beneath the handkerchief,” said Tsirl. “Whatever became of him?”

  “Do you think I remember if it was under the handkerchief or over it?” Hirshl asked.

  “Well, I thought he was marvelous,” said Tsirl. “I doubt if you’ll find another like him.”

  In the end Bertha too was glad that Kurtz had gone away. Being together was nicer without the presence of strangers, especially on a mid-October night when it was already cold out, though the fireplace had not yet been lit. As long as they were inside together the cold was barely noticeable, but an outsider would have brought it in with him.

  Gedalia cocked his head. “I hear our horses,” he said.

  “Why is that Stach in such a hurry?” asked Bertha, smothering a yawn with her hand.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Tsirl said.

  “Nor I,” said Boruch Meir. “Not a hoofbeat. Wait, just a minute: yes, that’s a horse whinnying.”

  “But whose horse?” asked Tsirl. “How do you know it’s yours, Gedalia?”