by S. Y. Agnon
How could he make her? Hirshl believed that if he thought very hard of someone, concentrating his utmost, that person would be bound to come. No matter how hard he thought of Blume, it was true, there was still no sign of her; but rather than give up, he told himself: I must not have been thinking hard enough, from now on I’ll think even harder. It reached the point that he could not abide having his mind taken off her by anything. He waited on customers as though at gunpoint and could hardly bring himself to say a civil word to them.
The Hirshl who had changed so after his marriage had reverted back to type. No one can be who he is not for very long. His once full home was empty. Its only visitor nowadays was young Mrs. Gildenhorn, and since she came to see Mina, Hirshl felt no need to amuse her and sat by himself with his thoughts—one of which, on the day of Blume’s birthday, was: A single person was created perfect in this world, and I am not allowed to see her. Though he was about to be a father, Hirshl was still a mere boy.
Tsirl saw that Hirshl was out of sorts and spoke to Boruch Meir about it. Never suspecting that their married son could be pining for Blume, they decided to send him to Malikrowik for a rest.
Being in Malikrowik with Mina, however, did Hirshl no good at all. Indeed, the tranquility of the village and his mother-in-law’s meals bored him to tears and made him even more sluggish and flaccid. If he did not spend his time in front of the fireplace leafing idly through a prayer book, he spent it yawning in front of Mina. A walk in the snow might have worked wonders; yet as the snow fell outside and Hirshl remained within, there was little chance of his taking one.
The winter days were short and the winter nights long—and in the village, where even the days could seem endless, the nights were doubly so, especially as Hirshl had nothing to do with himself. His parents saw that it was a mistake to have sent him to Malikrowik, which, though a lovely spot, was not for him, and, bringing him back to Szybusz, encouraged him to lead a more social life there.
And so Hirshl began again to frequent the Society for Zion clubhouse, which had been renovated in his absence and now had two rooms instead of one, the first for reading and the second for conversation and chess playing, so that the talkers no longer bothered the readers. A small buffet at which one could order a quick snack had been added too. Before one could even say “Yossele,” Bendit the carpenter’s son of that name would arrive with the coffee, tea, or beer, the sweets or peppered chickpeas that one had asked for.
Hirshl’s friends at the club welcomed him back warmly. He may not have been a Zionist, but since when did only Zionists belong to the Society for Zion? People came to it for all sorts of reasons, among them not wanting to pass their evenings in the study house or among the socialists instead.
Once more Hirshl was a member in good standing. As before he paid his monthly dues, to which he added a special contribution when asked for one. Indeed, he was asked often, for war had broken out between Russia and Japan, and the depraved government of the Czar was sending Jewish boys to be killed at the front. Those who could flee the draft or desert did so with nothing but the shirt on their back, and there was not a town in Austrian Galicia without its young Jewish refugees. Anyone whose heart was not made of stone was eager to help; yet not everyone who was eager to help had the means to. Hirshl had them and helped. He was not about to turn down old friends for the first time now. Whatever was asked of him, he came up with.
Hirshl had another sterling quality too, which was that he had no interest in high office and was not competitive about it, so that when the Society had its annual Hanukkah party, for instance, he did not insist on being seated on the dais. Indeed, his modesty was apparent even in his reserve; for whereas his grandfather, Shimon Hirsh Klinger, rarely talked to anyone because there was no one to whom it was worth talking, Hirshl’s silence was more a matter of feeling that he himself was unworthy of being listened to.
One way or another, Hirshl was again surrounded by the companions who had sat with him in the schoolroom and the study house until they had put away their books and gone into business, some with their parents and some for themselves. Most of them had put away their traditional black garb too and now went about in modern dress. Once a small town of millers and moneylenders, Szybusz had become a commercial center surrounded by nearly a hundred villages whose prolific growers of wheat, barley, oats, and beans had come to realize that, rather than stay up all night at the spinning wheel, they could just as well buy their clothes in town. In fact, people came from other towns to shop in Szybusz, which was almost a small city by now and attracted merchants even from Germany—who, when they arrived, did not bother to tour the Great Synagogue with its sun, moon, and signs of the zodiac, the old study house with its Bible glossed by a cardinal, or any of the other leading sights, but spent their time doing business, eating and drinking in the taverns, and sitting in the Society for Zion clubhouse, where they glanced at the headlines and advertisements in the newspapers while skipping over the political columns and the parliamentary reports that were perused by the local intelligentsia. Several youngsters in Szybusz had even taken to aping these foreigners—and indeed, anyone not hopelessly narrow-minded might well have been proud of the fact that, whereas once all of Szybusz had bought tickets for the performance of a single chanteuse, there were now young men in town with their own private harems of such performers, a night with one of whom cost more than the money raised in a year by the Needy Brides Charity Fund or the cigarettes ordered from Paris by the Count of Malikrowik’s younger brother. Why, even the “nebbichlach” of Sebastian Montag, the town’s leading citizen, were so much beef on the hoof compared to these artistes, some of whom had even been written up by the press!
It would be too much to say that Hirshl enjoyed the Society for Zion clubhouse, but it did give him somewhere to be besides the store and his home, so that, on evenings when Mina was not expecting him, he went there straight from work. In this he was not alone, for the membership of the club had changed. Not only had it grown larger, it was now for the most part composed of married men like himself, whether because Zionism had made further inroads or because the members of former years had aged. Whichever, there was much less singing than there used to be. The youngsters who had once spent their evenings pouring out their hearts in song now had too many cares and children, while the new generation did not appear to be musical and preferred to talk politics or play chess.
Sometimes Yona Toyber dropped in at the club. He would remove his hat, place it on the chair in front of him, lay half a cigarette that he had carefully divided in its crease, insert the other half in a holder, and sit watching the young men play chess. Not that he himself was a chess player or even (though he knew practically by heart the whole of Ya’akov Eichenboym’s Hebrew chess manual Sefer HaK’rav) a kibitzer, but his method of doing business had changed. Once, when a young man came of age, his father had told Toyber what girl he had in mind and Toyber had taken care of the rest; now, however, it was the young man himself who Toyber had to hear from and the parents who had to be convinced.
(And yet when Hirshl was engaged to Mina, the reader may ask, did not the idea come from Tsirl? Indeed it did. Either the world was changing very quickly, or else Hirshl’s engagement was already passé when it took place.)
As in the past, Hirshl borrowed three books from the librarian’s unlocked bookcase on Monday and Thursday nights. He did not, however, read them but let them lie gathering dust in his home. And though four candles burned at his parents’ on Sabbath eves, one for Boruch Meir, one for Tsirl, one for Mina, and one for himself, none burned in Blume’s old room, for Blume now lit her candle elsewhere and the new maid stepped out as soon as the dishes were done. Like the marriage of many an educated young man, Hirshl’s had put an end to his reading days. Even if Mina picked up one of his books, he never discussed it with her. Hirshl was as silent as was Blume’s room without the sound of her footsteps.
He soon grew tired of the clubhouse. There was something rather odd about seeking o
ut company yet making no effort to talk to it, which was what Hirshl, who sat lost in thought, chose to do. Indeed, when spoken to by anyone he gave a guilty start as if caught doing something he should not have been.
Yet talk was everywhere: in the store, at home, at the club. The only sensible way to avoid it would have been to go to the study house, wrap his prayer shawl around him, and sit there saying nothing all day long.
Sheer force of habit kept Hirshl going two or three times a week to the clubhouse, where he sometimes glanced at the newspaper without realizing that he had already read the same news. And the next day in the store, listening to some customer tell it again, he would wonder, Now where have I heard that before?
Gradually he went to the club less and less. Sometimes he set out for it and turned back halfway there. In the end he stopped going altogether.
Chapter twenty-one
It was the opinion of Tsirl’s sensible friends that while there were people who liked to be with people, there were others who preferred to be by themselves and needed to take regular walks. The mother of the town’s new doctor, who was one of Tsirl’s customers, agreed. In fact, she said to Tsirl, a young man of more or less Hirshl’s age who had come to consult her son was told by him: “No prescription that I can give you will be half as good for you as a bit of fresh air.” Tsirl mulled the matter over and finally broached it to Hirshl.
Hirshl was neither for nor against it. Although in theory it seemed a fine idea, in practice he was not quite sure what it meant. On a wall of the Gildenhorns’ home was a picture of a slim young man in a colorful jacket, the tails of which were flapping in the wind; he wore a pink top hat, carried a rattan cane, and was in the act of striding forward with one leg, beneath which was written, “The Walker.” If that’s what my mother has in mind for me, wondered Hirshl, when and where does she expect me to do it?
Tsirl kept after him, though. “Hirshl,” she said to him in the store one evening, handing him his walking stick as it was getting dark out, “why don’t you go out for a walk? Put on your jacket and get some fresh air so that you’ll have an appetite for supper.” Hirshl put on his jacket, took his stick, and stepped out into the street. From then on, a little before closing time each day, his mother handed him his walking stick and said, “Here, put on your jacket and take a nice walk.”
At first Hirshl found these constitutionals tiresome. The exercise was dull and made him sore all over. No sooner did he set out than his feet, shoulders, side, or even whole body began to ache. It was difficult to adjust to a street beneath his feet when he was used to a roof above his head, especially when that street led nowhere.
Eventually, however, Hirshl found a destination for his walks in an outlying section of town. Sometimes he would reach it in a roundabout manner and sometimes he headed straight there. If he met someone he knew on the way he would do his best to get rid of him, while if this proved impossible, he would walk with him back to the marketplace, take his leave of him there, and set out again. As soon as he arrived, like an alcoholic sneaking a drink and afraid of being discovered, he looked for a place to hide.
Though it had no synagogue, the street that Hirshl was on was known as Synagogue Street, there being a local tradition that the first Jewish house of worship in Szybusz had stood on the spot where the Catholic church was now situated. In fact, one sagging wall of the church, which was older and lower than the others, was said to have belonged to the original structure. This wall, legend had it, was bent in sorrow over its fate and, on the night of the Ninth of Av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple, shed real tears like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
Szybusz was an ancient site and had been lived in by Jews from the earliest times until its destruction in 1648 by Chmielnitsky’s Cossacks, who burned the synagogue to the ground. When the town was rebuilt by the Polish Count Potocki, the Jews were not only permitted to come back but were exempted from all duties and taxes for a period of twelve years, after which they were to pay a levy of a thaler per household and half a thaler per hearth every year, as determined by a Jewish assessor. Their butchers too were excused from the slaughter of pigs, in lieu of which they were required to bring a bucket of tallow and a side of beef to the castle of the count every Friday. These obligations met, the returnees were declared free to buy houses, to manufacture salt, beer, brandy, and wine, and to engage in any trade that they desired, and were subject only to the personal court of the count, which conferred on them the right to elect their own rabbis and leaders in accordance with their own laws.
It stood to reason that Synagogue Street, bounded as it was at its upper end by the ruins of the count’s castle, which had been subsequently sacked by Tatars, and at its lower end by the river, had once been inhabited by Jews. In fact, it was the fear of a Tatar raid (against which the castle protected them on the land side and offered them refuge if it came by water) that had caused Jews to build their homes there in the first place. Nowadays, however, not a single Jew lived on the street except for Akavia Mazal. Its few, low thatched houses, small and scattered amid clumps of trees and greenery, were lived in mostly by government clerks, only some of whom Hirshl knew—and even those but slightly, for though they shopped at his parents’, he took little notice of them. Perhaps this was because they were not sent large gift packages at Christmas but were paid off in person, bribing a lowly official being a much simpler affair than bribing a superintendent or department head. After spending all day in an office they came home at night to Synagogue Street and shut themselves up once again, so that, apart from one of their wives stepping out to draw water, or one of their daughters slipping off to meet a beau, Hirshl never saw a living soul there.
Although the profound silence of the night might have seemed scary to a city boy like Hirshl, he was hardly even aware of it. If he saw a pair of lovers approaching, he turned his head away and so did they, neither party wishing to be seen. Even the dogs, which at first had barked at him, now merely growled in acknowledgment when he passed.
As quiet as a mouse, Hirshl walked down Synagogue Street. What was he thinking of? Indeed, there was much he might have thought of, for much had happened to his ancestors in this place. Not long before the birth of his great-great-grandfather, for example, a local landowner had cast a wagonful of Jews on their way to Szybusz for the penitential prayers of Elul into the river, whose unappeased waters were said to rise so high each autumn that only the Tashlich service said on Rosh Hashanah kept them from flooding the town. In the forest across the river, on the other hand, stood a ruined Catholic convent in which the miscreant Chmielnitsky’s troops had raped six hundred nuns in one night, so that the grass grew red there to this day. Yet though Hirshl was not unmindful of such events, they were far from uppermost in his mind. He was not, after all, a chronicler of human misery, which was something that he gladly left to Akavia Mazal, in whose house Blume lived. How was she making out there? Since the day she left his parents he had not spoken a word to her.
Hirshl could not have spoken a word to Blume, because the two of them had had no chance to meet. Now that he stood facing the house in which she lived, though, what was to keep him from doing it?
Every evening before closing time Tsirl handed Hirshl his walking stick and urged him to go for a walk. No longer were these excursions odious, for they had become second nature to him. Sometimes he made a circuit of the town before coming to Synagogue Street, and sometimes he went straight to Akavia Mazal’s house, which he scrutinized from every angle. Though he had never been inside it and did not know its layout, something told him that the light in the northernmost window was Blume’s. Like a man waiting for the heavens to open so that he might beg them for mercy, Hirshl stood facing that window. What did he wish to beg for? For Blume to look out and see him.
It felt good to be out-of-doors by himself on a quiet summer night and to forget about the store with its cartons and crates that were everywhere; about its customers who breathed all over him while vyin
g obsequiously for his attention; about his mother who sat by the entrance buttering them up; and about Mina waiting for him to come home at closing time. Of course, he could have gone to the Society for Zion club too, where one could read the newspapers and chat, but Hirshl preferred to walk down the peaceful street while the stars shone down on its houses in their setting of trees, the night breeze brushed his face, and the water flowed gently in the river, from whose far bank came the good smell of the forest. Not even the rain could spoil his pleasure. The harder it fell, the longer he stayed out in it.
It seemed odd to Tsirl that Hirshl should insist on walking in the rain. Yet since she knew that he was a creature of habit who might stop his walks entirely if he missed even one of them, she said nothing to him about it. On such nights Hirshl donned his overcoat, turned up his collar, took along an umbrella, and set out. He liked the steady drumming of the raindrops that kept time with his thoughts and allowed him the privacy of them by drowning out all other sounds. He still believed that will power could bring two people together. If I keep thinking of Blume, he told himself, she will have to appear. Of course, this method had failed him so far, yet it had done so, Hirshl was convinced, because the customers in the store kept distracting him. Out in the rainy street there was nothing to spoil his concentration.
At this point, however, a fresh obstacle appeared in the person of Getzel Stein, whom Hirshl twice spied standing by Akavia Mazal’s house. Though he did not think that Getzel was following him, he betook himself elsewhere and refrained from coming back.
Chapter twenty-two
Getzel Stein, the subject of this chapter, worked in the Hurvitzes’ store and dreamed of Blume. Yet his dreams, like any that fail to come true, were unhappy.
Although a mere shopboy, Getzel was officially called a salesman, the word shopboy having fallen into disrepute. (Not that being a salesman was any different from being a shopboy, but in the time it took to realize as much a shopboy’s stature could rise.) Getzel himself, though, needed no such titles, for even without them he was an active young man with ambitious plans for the future—and though none of these had as yet been fulfilled, he had already played a role in one historical event, namely, the founding of a local chapter of the Workers of Zion Party, of which he was a charter member. Not a few students and even some of their parents supported this party—the parents because, if their children had to be socialists, better the Workers of Zion than the Polish Socialist Party, and the students because, had they joined the PSP, they would have had their parents’ servants for comrades.