A Simple Story

by S. Y. Agnon

  In the end he caught Mina’s eye and Mina made a sign to her mother. Bertha stepped out of the room and Hirshl rose, washed, and put on fresh clothes in place of his wet ones. Then he drank a cup of coffee and went to the synagogue to pray. Since Mina had found out she was pregnant, Hirshl had taken to praying there daily, it being a way of spending less time with her.

  The answer to a man’s problems, he mused to himself as he walked, is to sleep as much as he can. All the way to the synagogue he thought of sleep until, remembering how Blume fled at the sight of him, he suddenly grew sad.

  What a pitiful thing human life was. A man slept all night in order to rise in the morning, and looked forward all day to sleeping again at night. And between sleeping and waking, what a lot of guff he had to take.

  Blume generally wore a gray dress whose snug bodice kept her beauty well confined. What had made her choose it for herself? The heart that it confined had chosen it.

  Yet gray though her dress was, it took no great wisdom to realize that not everything gray on the outside was gray on the inside too. Within its snug bodice Blume’s beauty was as unconfined as ever. God in heaven knew why she was not Hirshl’s wife. For all that she denied being like her father, she resembled him in many ways. She had in her a great deal of Hayyim Nacht, the difference being that when things looked black for her father he had simply sat and complained, while Blume never uttered a cross word. She had managed to land on her feet, and the mute blue look in her eyes that were neither happy nor sad made one notice something special about her.

  Getzel Stein tried writing Blume letters and gave up. This was not because of his handwriting, ragged scrawl though it was, but because, losing heart when he pictured her, he tore up the paper each time. Even Dr. Knabenhut, if he happened to run into her, did not speak to Blume as he did to other young ladies. Indeed, though Blume, despite having every reason to be one, was not a socialist, Dr. Knabenhut saw to it that he ran into her often—whereupon he put aside the public welfare and found some rather private things to say to her. For a while she would listen intently; yet suddenly, with a shake of her head, she seemed to shrug off everything he said. At such times she suggested a drowning man fished from the river who, coughing up the water from his lungs, gets to his feet and walks away from his astonished rescuers. Having turned down Getzel Stein, she did not seem particularly interested in Dr. Knabenhut either.

  Whom did she think she was waiting for? Did she really believe some wealthy young man would still come along and marry her? The fact was that, having been unlucky with one once, Blume wanted no more mother’s or father’s boys, whether they dreamed of Zion or of the millenium. Once, long ago, she had given her heart to a young man named Hirshl Hurvitz, not because either of them planned it that way but because, one day when she grew up, there he was: Hirshl, who could have been her twin. Anyone knowing the two of them might have wondered—as indeed Tsirl did—why they should have been meant for each other; anyone less clever than Tsirl, however, must have felt a twinge of pity at seeing the two cousins parted. And while we know what this did to Hirshl, what it did to Blume is something else. Still, anyone talking to her could only have been impressed by the shadow of a smile around her lips that seemed to say: I may have been unlucky, but I managed to land on my feet.

  Chapter twenty-four

  The scheduled arrival of the draft board kept being postponed each week and each month. God in heaven knew whether this was to give Szybusz more time or to drive it frantic with uncertainty.

  Hirshl felt a change of attitude toward him. No longer was he everyone’s darling. His own family seemed to take pleasure in his distress. His mother-in-law, who used to boast to the world of what a fine fellow he had grown up to be, now looked at him as coldly as if she wished he had never grown up at all. Indeed, no one could look at him these days without making him feel like a burden. A year or two ago Hirshl would have had nothing to fear from the army. Now, however, there was a new draft board that refused to take bribes. It was almost certain that he would be called up.

  His nerves were shot. He hardly ate what was put before him and had trouble sleeping at night. And even if he slept, he would awake in the morning feeling that he hadn’t.

  He suffered from aches and pains. Each day he rose exhausted: his head hurt, his arms and legs were heavy, and he shivered as if with a chill although he felt hot all over.

  Yet as bad as it was to sleep poorly, it was worse not to sleep at all. Whole nights found Hirshl wide awake in bed. Often he did not even shut his eyes. Listening to Mina’s every breath, he lay on his side without moving so as not to awaken her, since if he did she was sure to want to talk. The sound of her voice at night was like a nail being driven into a wall.

  His first night of insomnia was a strange one. It seemed to go on and on while he lay tense and rigid, his thoughts coming and going sporadically. Several times he had the feeling that something important had happened, yet when he tried to recall what it was it turned out to be nothing at all. Hearing a rooster crow, he got out of bed to see if it was midnight; before he could look at the clock it crowed again. The whole world is asleep and resting, thought Hirshl, except for me. Tomorrow the shopboys will see me yawning in the store and think I spent the night making love.

  In the morning he rose pale and tired. Though he could easily have stayed in bed, he felt too on edge, and the bed itself refused to let him get comfortable. Outside in the street he was amazed by the broad, well-rested expanse of sky and earth. Men were on their way to the synagogue with their prayer shawls and tefillin, their faces refreshed and aglow. Automatically he trudged after them.

  The early risers had finished praying and a second prayer group was forming. A morning breeze blew through the open windows of the old study house. Hirshl opened a volume of the Talmud and noticed a fold in the corner of one page. It was the same fold he had made on the day he first began to work in the store. He tried reading the text but got nowhere. A few years ago no intricacy of the passage would have escaped him, while now he could not even remember the simple meaning of the Aramaic words.

  Hirshl did not bother consulting a doctor. Insomnia was not an illness or a medical problem. But though he did not look for a doctor, the doctors came looking for him. Whoever he ran into had some advice to give him. If one person told him to drink sweet tea with brandy before going to bed, another recommended straight rum. Sometimes he tried the first, sometimes the second, and sometimes both together by taking the tea with brandy on retiring and the rum when he woke in the night. The next morning he would be sick from them both. If not for the coffee he drank with his breakfast, he could not have kept on his feet.

  When one stayed awake at night, one heard all kinds of noises. Dogs barked, drunks sang, wagons rumbled down the street, men coming home from the tavern spoke in loud voices. Eventually all of these sounds vanished, leaving only the crowing of the cock. But though Hirshl could crawl into bed feeling more dead than alive, the mere thought of that outrageous squawk was enough to banish all prospect of falling asleep.

  He would stare up at the ceiling, feeling the minutes and the hours go by. At last he would shut his eyes as hard as he could in the hope of dozing off; yet just then the roosters would bristle their combs and break into their horrid screech, while the warm smell from Mina’s bed, which should have had a soporific effect, only reminded him that she had taken all the sleep for herself and left not a wink for him. Perhaps she had studied sleeping at boarding school.

  Mina lay on her back in a pink nightgown with satin straps like the ones worn by her friend Sophia when her husband was in town, her chest rising and falling above her distended stomach. One would think that Hirshl had every reason to be content with her. Yet when the feeling was missing, thinking did not help very much.

  And the Lord saw that Leah was hated. Jacob had two wives, one of whom he loved and one of whom he did not. Well might one ask, If he already had found a woman to love, why did God give him one to hate? And why d
id he have to marry the hated one first? Was it just in order to hate her, which is something he would never have done otherwise? In the end, of course, he prevailed, and when his seven years were up he was given his beloved too. Yet what did she do then? For the price of a mandrake root she sold him to her sister, whom he hated.

  And to Hannah he gave a double portion. Elkanah too had a wife whom he loved and gave twice as much as to Peninah. But what was a man to do who could not give his beloved anything, having already given all away to the woman he hated?

  Such thoughts had their good and their bad side. If they were bad for Mina, they were good for Hirshl, since they kept his mind off other things. Even then, however, he was not to have a moment’s rest, since no sooner was he occupied with the Bible than the cock began to crow. No matter how much blanket he pulled over his head, there was no keeping out the sound of it. Hirshl turned to look at his wife, whose chest rose and fell, her warm smell of no avail because she had already taken all the sleep for herself and left not a wink for him.

  Mina slept in perfect silence. Her narrow bed was right next to Hirshl’s, and he could hear her every breath. She may not have kept him from sleeping, but her sleeping kept him from thinking. He had hardly thought of one thing when the sound of her breathing made him think of another, such as a story he once had heard about two business partners who went on a journey in the course of which one was killed.

  No one knew who the murderer was. The surviving partner, being both pious and rich, was above suspicion. One day, however, while he was writing to his wife from an inn where he had stopped, a rooster hopped on the table and defecated on the letter. The wrathful man leaped to his feet and tore the bird apart limb by limb. A police inspector who happened to be present seized him and cried, “It’s you who murdered your partner!” The case was reopened, and the man was found guilty.

  When a man lost his temper, he was not in control of himself. Why, he might suddenly leap to his feet and kill all the roosters in the world! It was just as well that Hirshl put away his pocketknife at night. In fact, when sometimes he forgot, he rose from bed especially to do it. There was no point in looking for trouble.

  In a word, neither the brandy in Hirshl’s tea nor the straight rum helped him to sleep. He could have drunk them from a dropper or swallowed the whole bottle in one gulp: it would not have made any difference.

  But while his eyes were shut, his mind was open, and while his body lay still, his thoughts could roam where they pleased. Whatever he saw or heard that day came up for review at night. Things he had never understood before were suddenly clear to him. Though he had never, for example, seen a photograph of his mother’s crazy brother or of her grandfather who drank tea through a hole in a sugar cube and wore a chamberpot instead of a skullcap on his head, he saw them as clearly in bed at night as if they were standing before him.

  It was storming violently outside. The trees swayed in the wind. The birds and beasts of the forest hid as best they could, and not even a bug showed its face. One man alone was out on such a night, because he had no home to call his own. Who was he? Why, Hirshl’s uncle, who had been banished by his parents for disobedience.

  Yet Hirshl did not bring storms upon the forest every night. Sometimes the trees stood quietly at peace while a mild sun shone down on them and the birds flew chattering among their branches. A good smell of grass and mushrooms filled the air, and Hirshl’s uncle lay on his back, happy to be alone and unbothered. When he was hungry, he picked and ate berries. When he was thirsty, he drank from the spring. Not for him the houses, shops, customers, and women of mortal men.

  When Hirshl tossed, turned, and moaned that his head was killing him, Mina dabbed it with cologne. Though the remedy helped, he could not stand the smell of it. Napoleon, he would try telling himself, actually bathed in cologne water, yet not even his admiration for Napoleon could make him like it any better.

  When Bertha and Tsirl saw that Hirshl was not sleeping, they personally took charge of his bed. No one who failed to see them fussing over its sheets and pillows with their own hands could know what true mother love was. None of this, however, did the least good. The one person who might have made a proper bed for him was Blume, since Hirshl had slept well enough in the days when she had made it.

  There was one other thing that Hirshl tried, which was dipping absorbent cotton in oil and stopping his ears with it. If this made them less sensitive, however, it made the rest of his body more. Whenever a wagon went by, or a rooster crowed, the noise sent shock waves running through his knees, as if that was where his auditory nerves were.

  His arms and legs were so sluggish that he hardly could lift them. The slightest movement took a great effort. Not even the smallest joint in his body obeyed him anymore. His head felt full of thorns.

  After suffering like this for many days, Hirshl went to see a doctor.

  Chapter twenty-five

  The waiting room of the doctor consulted by Hirshl was shaped like a long corridor. Within the broken frame of a boarded-up window hung a large illustration of a gouty patient being treated by a physician and his aides. In the middle of the room stood a round table on which, smelling of disinfectant, lay some brochures put out by German sanatoriums. Seated alongside Hirshl were three women who talked among themselves in whispers and a thin, irritable-looking man who pinched an extinguished cigarette between his fingers while spitting into a handkerchief. He appeared to be afflicted with every disease that Hirshl had ever heard of, and, after taking out a cigarette to dispel the fetid air, Hirshl immediately replaced it in his pocket for fear the man might ask him for a light.

  The thin man belched. Hirshl shut his mouth, exhaled through his nostrils, and twisted his neck so as not to have to breathe the fellow’s germs. Yet the belcher stared at him steadily, as if to say, If you think you have seen human misery before, you had better take another look at me.

  The door of the office opened and out stepped an attractive woman with a relieved look on her face, as if she had been cured of a serious illness. If he cured her, thought Hirshl, he can certainly cure me. The doctor removed his eyeglasses, wiped them on the edge of his white smock, and inquired who was next. The three women stood up together. “Which of you is first?” asked the doctor. “I am,” said the thin man testily, getting to his feet and pointing with a finger to his heart.

  Now what was it I wanted to do? Hirshl asked himself when the door of the office had closed again. Ah, yes: to smoke a cigarette. Since the one in his pocket was crushed, he took out paper and tobacco to roll himself another. Just then, however, it occurred to him that the smoke might bother the three women, who must have scolded the thin man for smoking in their presence and made him put out the cigarette that he held. Or had he simply run out of matches? Yes, one should always take extra matches, because one never knew when one might need them. How strange I must have looked at the Gildenhorns’ that night when I went about looking for a match. If Mina had not arrived when she did… but where was I? Oh, yes: a modern man should never be without a match. The cavemen never let the fire go out, and neither must we. A match is our fire in the cave.

  The office door opened, and the sickly man emerged with a constipated expression. There was nothing relieved about it, which must mean that he was incurable. Could not the doctor have found something hopeful to say nonetheless? But no, clearly this was a doctor who refused to lie even to the most desperate cases. It was better for a sick man to know the truth. I’ve come to the right person, thought Hirshl: if anyone can straighten me out, it’s him. Ai, how much longer will I have to wait? There are still three women ahead of me. If he spends ten minutes with each one, that means at least half an hour.

  He was in the middle of this calculation when the doctor came out of his office, wiped his glasses once more, and asked who was next. The three women jumped up again; but now it turned out that they really were together, only one of them being a patient while the other two were members of her family.

 
The doctor smiled at Hirshl and invited the women inside. Before long two of them returned to the waiting room, leaving the third in the office. Suddenly she screamed. Either the doctor had pressed her too hard where it hurt or else he had told her the truth. No woman could stand too much truth, especially from a doctor. Though if a doctor were to tell me I had only a year to live, reflected Hirshl, would I be any calmer about it? How hard it is to sit here. It’s so stuffy I’m falling asleep. I don’t mean falling asleep, because I can’t fall asleep, but I can’t keep my eyes open either. Is there something in this room that’s drugging me? I am not sleeping. I am not sleeping. I just have to close my eyes.

  Hirshl let out a light snore. He awoke with a start and shut his eyes again. A good doctor can put you to sleep just by making you wait. Is there such a thing as dreaming in the middle of the day? There is if you can sleep, but I can’t. I must have been thinking. I must have thought that I dreamed what I thought.

  What did I think that I dreamed? That a button came off my jacket and Mina sewed it back on and I was chewing on the thread. But what made me think that was good for the memory? I’d better spit it out. That’s not a thread, though, that’s a snore. I must have fallen asleep and not noticed that another patient came. They’ll keep coming and coming until the doctor goes home and never even knows I was here. I’d better make a sound so that he does.

  When Hirshl tried making a sound, however, it came out like another snore.

  The doctor listened to Hirshl as if he had never heard of such a case before, without interrupting him even once. Then he advised him to go for long walks and to get lots of fresh air, which would brace his body, soothe his mind, increase his appetite, help his digestion, and guarantee him a solid night’s sleep. He also urged him to take a cold bath and a cup of hot milk before going to bed and not to use sedatives, which became so habit-forming that they poisoned the system and sapped a man’s will and strength.