by S. Y. Agnon
Most of Szybusz had no use for historical events and simply laughed at the new group. Not everyone made fun of Getzel and his friends, however. A new generation had arisen in town that believed in changing the world. Some of these young people joined the Polish socialists, while others wavered but did not, saved for the Jewish camp in the end by either the religious training of their childhood, the respect still felt for their parents, teachers, and elders, or the wondrous tales about the Land of Israel that had been told them when they were little. Many talked in favor of the Workers of Zion, and some even signed up for it. God in heaven had kept their dreams from leading them astray.
The pro-Workers of Zion faction in Szybusz did more than just talk; it elected a steering committee and invited as its guest speaker the head of the regional organization, a cousin of Sebastian Montag’s who could have easily been the chief of all the Zionists in Galicia were it not for his proletarian conscience. Nor was his speech the sole event planned. A gala evening was scheduled along with it, since while a speech could reach only the handful of people who turned out to hear it, a gala evening provided other opportunities as well, such as ushering, decorating, and singing in the choir, all of which, once tasted, created a lifetime appetite for political activity.
Between the store and the Workers of Zion, Getzel led a double existence: if he shirked his work as a shopboy he would anger the Hurvitzes, who were Blume’s cousins, while if he neglected the party, what would become of it? Indeed, in honor of the gala evening he had even learned by heart several poems concerning the plight of the Jewish people and the exploitation of the working class. Yet though Getzel had bumbled about like a mooncalf for years before discovering that his true vocation lay in the reciting of poetry, no sooner was this revealed to him than he was forced to give it up, it being pointed out by his comrades that declaiming in public was an honor traditionally reserved for the young ladies. And even then, finding the right young lady was no simple task. If she was well-off enough to be educated, her parents would never allow her to appear before an audience of socialists; while if she was not, what sort of impression would she make? And so, on Getzel’s recommendation, the steering committee invited Blume Nacht, who had read a lot of books for a housemaid.
God in heaven knew why Blume turned down the offer. Although Getzel must have asked her a thousand times, she refused to take him seriously even once. And in general, what made her keep a presentable young man like himself, and one who earned an honest living besides, at arm’s length? Many a housemaid in Szybusz would have been glad of his company, whereas Blume not only failed to encourage him but actually drove him away. Could it be that her heart was still pledged to Hirshl, even though he was married and no longer free? And yet she had not even come to Hirshl’s wedding, at which Getzel had been an honored guest. Worse yet, each time she turned him down it was with that extraordinary smile of hers that could make everything seem of no account, including one’s own self.
If Getzel was of no account, however, the fault was not his own but his family’s. His father was an ex-chicken slaughterer—that is, a man with a license to slaughter chickens but no chickens willing to be slaughtered—who went from house to house looking for work, which meant pulling at his long sidelocks, chewing on his beard, and coming home in the end without a penny. Getzel’s mother had a notions stand in the market and hardly fared better, while the house was kept by his hunchbacked sister, a spiteful creature whose whole body was warped from sheer malice. Besides her there were two other sisters, but these were the bane of Getzel’s life, for each of them was as empty-headed as she was pretty. “Where are the girls?” Getzel would ask upon coming home from the store every evening; yet before the hunchback could so much as snap at him, “Where do you think?” he knew what the answer would be, since each day when the sun went down they went off to visit Viktor, the Singer sewing machine agent, a bachelor who lived in rented rooms. Still, Getzel went on asking, for if he did not, who would? Certainly not his father, who saw nothing wrong with his baby daughters getting some enjoyment out of life. Getzel would have liked dearly to enjoy life himself, but he knew the facts of it only too well. A Singer sewing machine agent was here today and gone tomorrow. Just try suing him for breach of promise when you couldn’t even find him—and supposing you could, how could two women sue him at once?
Growing up poor without a carefree day in one’s life was no pleasure. Though Getzel earned enough in the store to set up house for himself, he was forced to contribute every cent of it to his parents’ home, which was sheer hell for him to live in. When his mother was not fighting with his father she fought with his sisters, who fought with each other or with Getzel when she was not around. How he envied his two older brothers who had escaped to America, from where, when implored by their father to have pity and send home a remittance, they had replied that Columbus did not discover the New World for them to bear the old one on their backs.
Getzel sat with a suffering look, eating his supper and reading a socialist tract. He was self-conscious about his lack of education and wished to acquire a better one. As he had never learned much in the schoolroom and had forgotten what little he had, whatever he read seemed new to him. And though the literature he possessed was meager, there was still much he could glean from it.
The small lamp, whose wick was bent and sooty, gave hardly any light. The hunchback sat at her sewing machine, making herself underclothes. It was enough for her to ruin her eyes slaving for others all day; at night she was her own boss and could sew what she pleased. The machine seemed on the verge of giving out. The flywheel creaked and groaned; yet when his sister saw Getzel cover his ears in an effort to concentrate, she jiggled her leg to make it creak even louder. Meanwhile his mother, having finished banging about with her pots, struggled noisily into her boots and began mopping the floor with a wet rag until the whole house felt uncomfortably damp.
She was not yet done when Getzel’s father came home in unusually high spirits and declared, “Well, well, if it isn’t my socialist! Tell me, why don’t you make me a brand-new world in which the chickens will line up to be slaughtered? Only I suppose that in any world that you made, no one would know a kosher chicken from a pig.”
It was intolerable for Getzel to have to endure such torture. He would have given anything for a quiet corner to share with people like himself who wished only to read a book or newspaper in peace with a modicum of mutual respect.
Getzel had a vision of the good days to come when he and his friends in the Workers of Zion would sit talking like human beings in a club of their own. He rose, went to his corner of the room, and drew back the curtain that hid his clothes.
“Are you looking for your new tie?” asked his sister.
“As a matter of fact,” said Getzel, “I am.”
“Well, you needn’t bother.”
“What do you mean, I needn’t bother?”
“Not,” said the hunchback, “that you aren’t welcome to look for it if you’d like to.”
“Where is my tie?” shouted Getzel.
“It’s at Viktor’s. Saltshi wore it there to show him what good taste you have. She dresses like a man anyway.”
By now Getzel’s father had sat down to eat at the head of the table. His mother, who consumed only medicines, stood at the stove brewing some potion while looking wrathfully at her husband enjoying his food and, to her great annoyance, ignoring her completely. She would have liked to let out a great scream. Of all possible livelihoods, God had given her the one with the smallest profit and the biggest aggravation, namely, selling buttons, bows, bangles, needles, and hairpins in the marketplace—and yet as bitter as she felt, she knew that if she started to scream she would never be able to stop and that her voice must be saved for hawking her wares. Angrily she stirred her brew in silence, waiting in vain for it to get done, for the wood in the stove was still green and sputtered like potatoes in hot oil.
The hunchback sat by her machine on the windowsill and
regarded the wood that refused to burn for her mother with an odd satisfaction. Meanwhile Getzel’s father, seeking to head off the scream that had formed on his wife’s lips, said to Getzel, “Why don’t you study a page of Talmud instead of reading that rubbish?”
He pawed Getzel’s books as he spoke, dribbling food and liquid on them from his beard while glancing at his wife as if to say, See, I do everything for your sake.
Getzel’s mother, however, declared, “You’re afraid that when you’re dead and buried he won’t know enough Talmud to intercede for your soul, eh? Well, whether he does or doesn’t, you won’t get any further in the next world than you have in this one. Getzel, it’s high time you left this den of murderers and ran away to America like your brothers instead of wasting your life here like I did. Just look at him, will you! The man pretends to slaughter chickens, but all he’s ever slaughtered is his own wife and children!”
Just as Getzel’s mother knew what it was like to sit in the marketplace all day, so she knew how it felt for Getzel to stand in the Hurvitzes’ store until he was falling off his feet and then to come home to a father and sisters who only rubbed salt in his wounds. Mother and son understood each other. Each day Getzel passed her in the marketplace, huddled in her old rags while she waited for the customers to come. A wretched sight when they did not, she was hardly less so when they did and she had to contort her wrinkled face into a smile for them, even her laughter sounding like a groan. Were he not so sorry for her, he would have taken her advice and made off to America long ago. But what would the poor woman do without him? If only with God’s help he could find a wife, set up a house of his own, and have his mother come live with him.
Yet what peace could Getzel’s mother have even then as long as her daughters were not married? The hunchback was no cause for concern. She was mean and ugly enough to stay out of trouble, although an old widower or divorcé asking for her hand would not be getting a bad bargain, since her chest was full of the clothes that she had made for herself at night and the money that she earned by day. What about his other two sisters, though?
Such was Getzel Stein, whom Hirshl saw standing in front of Akavia Mazal’s house. And though Hirshl did not suspect him of having been sent by his mother to spy on him, he was wise to betake himself elsewhere. Getzel may not have been there because of Tsirl, but he was not there by accident either, for he was sweet on Blume himself. It was just as well for Hirshl that Getzel did not see him keeping vigil by her house.
Chapter twenty-three
Before many days had passed, though, Hirshl returned to his old haunts. His world had shrunk so that almost nothing was left of it but the street on which Blume lived.
Once more he circled Akavia Mazal’s house, his eyes on the candle burning in the north window. God in heaven knew whose light it was. Most likely it belonged to Akavia, who sat up nights writing at his desk. Yet Hirshl’s heart told him it was Blume’s, and there is no way of reasoning with a broken heart.
Hirshl walked up and down, up and down, his steps growing shorter and shorter the longer he waited. Blume could not stay shut up in her room forever. Sooner or later she was bound to come out.
Yet when God in heaven saw to it that she did Hirshl had no reason to be glad. He was on one of his circuits of the house when he heard the garden gate swing open. It had been blown by the wind, which was followed by Blume, who had stepped out of the house to close it. “Who’s there?” she asked when she saw someone standing in the street.
“It’s me,” Hirshl said.
Blume recoiled and retreated into the house.
Hirshl felt utterly crushed, utterly mortified. What am I doing, what? he moaned again and again, seizing his head with his hands. Rain began to fall, striking his face; his whole body was drenched with sweat; yet he remained where he was. Not that he expected Blume to come out again to comfort him. Having come this far, however, he refused to abandon his post.
The rain fell noiselessly. Through a curtain of mist so thick that he could not see his own self the image of Blume appeared as brightly before him as it had on the day she had stroked his head in her room after walking out and returning. Hirshl rested his head on the latch of the gate and began to cry.
The tears kept coming. Rain collected in his shoes. He let the umbrella slip from his hands and soon was wet all over. Then the rain stopped and the moon came out. Hirshl wiped his eyes and prepared to go home. Yet still he did not budge.
Dejected and soaked to the bone, he stood outside Blume’s house. It shimmered in the moonlight, and in its north window, which Hirshl mistook for Blume’s, a candle burned. It did not burn all night, though, for when he glanced at it again it was gone. He thought of the candle that had gone out at his wedding and of the Hindu sect that lit candles at a divorce, one for the husband and one for the wife, and made the man or woman whose candle went out first depart forever. He had not felt as sad then as he did now thinking about it.
Never since his walks to Blume’s house began had Hirshl been so downcast. His throat had a lump in it, and his lips felt puffy. Though he was not sure if he felt hot or cold, he was certain that he was coming down with something. The thought of being ill upset him less than the thought of being it in a bed next to Mina’s.
Though the sky had cleared, the air, earth, and grass still had a good rainy smell. At last Hirshl went home. A rooster crowed and the clock inside chimed twelve as he reached the front door of his home. He paused on the doorstep to consider what to tell Mina should she ask where he had been. I’ll tell her I was at Blume’s, he decided.
—Who is Blume?
—What, you don’t know who Blume is?
—Not your ex-housemaid?
—Yes, our ex-housemaid.
—But what were you doing there?
—Why, she’s my love.
—How odd that no one told me before.
—No one told you?
—No one.
—Well, I had better start from the beginning then.
—The beginning doesn’t interest me. I want to know what she is to you now.
—You want to know what she is to me now?
—Precisely. What is she to you now?
—But I told you that I’m coming from her house.
—You are?
—Yes, Mina, I am.
—Is this the first time you’ve been there?
—Really, Mina. I go there every night.
—Every night?
—Yes, every night. When I’m awake I walk, and when I’m asleep I’m transported.
—Heinrich, aren’t you confusing yourself with Rabbi Joseph de la Reina, who was transported every night to Queen Helen of Greece by the Devil?
—No, Mina, I’m not confusing myself with anyone. Joseph de la Reina is a totally different case. But as long as you’ve asked, suppose I ask you how you know about him. You certainly never learned any Jewish history in that boarding school of yours.
—How do I know about him? Do you really think that just because my headmistress became a Catholic I don’t know the first thing about being Jewish?
—Your headmistress became a Catholic?
—Yes. That’s why I was taken out of school.
—And is that why you were married to me too?
—I really couldn’t tell you.
—But you can tell me, Mina. You just don’t want to.
—I’m not keeping anything from you. If someone isn’t telling the whole truth around here, it’s not me.
—Meaning that?
—That it’s you, Heinrich. You never tell me anything.
—Are you referring to Blume?
—Blume? Who is Blume?
—How can you ask who Blume is when all this time we’ve been talking about her?
—I’m not one to pry, Heinrich.
—You’re not one to pry?
—No, I’m not.
—Then maybe you can tell me what made me start telling you about her in the first place?
—I suppose you felt you had to.
—I felt I had to? What is that supposed to mean?
—That’s something you know better than I do.
—Isn’t it strange that you know that I know when I don’t know that I know myself? But I believe I’ll go to sleep now, because I can see that you want to sleep too.
Hirshl took off his shoes and wet socks and tiptoed to his bed. The windows were shut tight, and a warm, somnolent smell came from Mina. As she was fast asleep, his whole conversation with her must have been a dream. God in heaven knew what it meant. Hirshl undressed, curled up beneath his blanket, and fell asleep at once.
He could have slept a thousand years. God in heaven had melded his body with the bed. Even when a sound woke him he kept his head on the pillow, luxuriating in the sensation of his bedclothes and quilts. He felt as if he must have been lying there since the Creation of the World—nor, having gone to sleep after midnight, was he at all inclined to get up. It was only because of the mirror on the wall across from him that he saw the face of Mina’s mother smiling at her sleeping son-in-law.
Hirshl felt in fine fettle. The events of the night before seemed far away and forgotten. His sleep had been so delicious that a wondrous sense of well-being pervaded his whole body. If only he could sleep one more hour, he would be a new man.