A Simple Story

by S. Y. Agnon

  The doctor’s advice made Hirshl’s condition no better. As if he had not taken enough walks and cups of hot milk already! I do believe, he thought, that sitting in that waiting room was the best medicine yet, because it at least put me to sleep.

  In the end Mina’s obstetrician was apprised of Hirshl’s problem and prescribed a sleeping powder for him. Sometimes, he explained, the body simply forgot how to sleep and had to be retrained. Once Hirshl grew used to sleeping again with a sedative, he would be able to sleep without it. A sleepless night did the body more harm than any drug.

  Just as he had listened to the first doctor, so Hirshl listened to the second. At nightfall he quit the store, went straight home, and prepared himself for sleep, so that by nine o’clock he was already in bed. His mother came by to see that he was tucked in and that he had taken his powder. Then she wished him a good night and left, leaving Mina to blow out the candle.

  The curtains on the window were drawn all the way, and the room was as dark as a grave. Hirshl shut his eyes. I am falling asleep, he told himself. I am sleeping already. Tonight nothing will keep me awake. Yet suddenly it occurred to him that the room was so dark because he had gone blind. He opened his eyes in a fright. Pitch-blackness was everywhere. Panic-stricken he sat up and looked all around until, making out the glimmer of the windowpane and the glint of the metal lamp stand, he was satisfied that he still had his sight. The sudden movement upset him, however, and left him wide awake.

  The fact is, thought Hirshl, that someone in an impressionable state like mine should not be allowed to sleep in the dark: I had better get out of bed and open the curtains. Yet before he had even set foot on the floor every object in the house began to glitter wildly. And not just in the house: whatever was in the street outside—people, lights, horses-and-buggies—impinged on his consciousness too.

  The two sleeping powders that he had swallowed felt as if they were stuck in his throat. At last they dissolved there. Mina climbed into bed and lay as still as she could so as not to disturb him, while he lay wondering when the drug would take effect and what should worry him more, having taken it against the first doctor’s orders or the fact that it was not putting him to sleep. If he had not swallowed the two powders, he could pick up a book now and read. How long did they need to do the job? Well, they were down the hatch: there was nothing to do now but wait.

  Half an hour went by without his dozing off. Evidently the drug was not working. Or could he already be asleep and only dreaming that he was awake, as he had done at the doctor’s?

  It did Hirshl good to recall that he had fallen asleep at the doctor’s, since that proved he still could. To sleep to sleep to sleep: that was the one thing he wanted. To sleep and to forget everything. But he could not. Eyes shut, the clock ticking away, the hours coming and going, he was sure to stay awake again all night. If he were not drugged he would get up and stop the clock’s ticking, which was playing havoc with his nerves.

  The one good thing about the sedative was that it kept Mina quiet. The clock chimed. Look how another hour has passed without my noticing, thought Hirshl. I should be happy that the clock won’t chime again for sixty minutes, which is enough time to sleep and get my strength back. Who says a man needs more sleep than that? The few minutes I dozed at the doctor’s did me more good than a whole night of it.

  Hirshl had barely shut his eyes when the first cock crowed.

  His arms and legs weighed a ton and his throat felt lined with a mixture of cake dough and sand. Either some of the sleeping powder was still stuck there or he had caught cold from sweating in bed. What he needed to put him back on his feet was a good cup of coffee. The thought of it made him imagine its smell; the smell of coffee made him picture a hot cup of it, and the beans before and after being roasted, and the sacks of them on the shoulders of the porters who brought them from the station to the store; and the sacks of beans brought to mind the mice that sometimes scampered inside them. Suppose one were inside a sack, and he were to open it, and the mouse were to jump into his mouth, and he were to close it, and the mouse were to remain there half in and half out, with its long tail protruding and tickling the tip of his nose until he fell asleep.…

  Hirshl rose in the morning feeling like an opium eater. A heavy caul enveloped his head and descended over his eyes. He could hardly make out what was said to him, which sounded like a distant echo in his ears. A cup of strong coffee was his one hope of recovery—yet where was he going to get it? What passed for coffee in his home was merely coffee-colored milk. Once after his marriage he had been to Stanislaw and had drunk real coffee in a coffeehouse. Of course, there were such places in Szybusz too, but no self-respecting citizen would be caught in one.

  Here it is time for morning prayers, thought Hirshl, and all I can think of is coffeehouses. Yet what was so sinful about a coffeehouse? It was simply a matter of local custom. Perhaps no decent person would frequent one in Szybusz, but there were towns where this was not at all the case.

  As a matter of record, Hirshl was quite mistaken about what was served in his home, for Sophia Gildenhorn, who could brew a cup of coffee whose aroma alone was enough to wake the dead, had taught Tsirl, Bertha, Mina, and Mina’s maid to make coffee just like her own, which Hirshl could enjoy for the asking.

  The piping hot, deep-brown beverage put before him cleared his head at once. A cup of it made Hirshl, whose limbs had been heavy as lead, feel light as a bird. Blume should only have seen him now! Yet Blume was not like Hirshl and did not sit thinking of him, much less of how she might see him. Not that she had forgotten him. She had simply put him out of her mind—and the rest of the Hurvitz establishment with him. Even the letter she received from Getzel Stein had gone unanswered. Indeed, when Getzel ran into her one day and asked her for her answer, she told him there was none.

  Did Blume expect to be carried off by a prince on a white charger? In fact she did not, not even if his name was Dr. Knabenhut, who was always inquiring about her. In any case, Dr. Knabenhut had no more romantic interest in Blume these days than Blume had in him, for so great was his devotion to the public welfare that he was about to marry a rich woman solely in order to continue his political career without being dependent on his father. Not that he was any more self-denying than Blume—the proof being that Blume had come to the conclusion that not every woman had to marry, by which she meant herself as well.

  Mina lay in bed. The bigger grew the child in her womb, the bigger Mina grew too. It cannot be said that she was ecstatic over the prospect of having it. Ecstasy was too much to expect from a woman with a depressed husband like Hirshl. And though Mina was reduced by now to being little more than a walking hotel room, she and Hirshl seldom talked about the infant. Nor did Hirshl think about it when he was alone or wonder what it would turn out to be like.

  Since he had started drinking coffee à la Sophia Gildenhorn, Hirshl was on his toes all day long, let alone a good part of the night. Indeed, he was so much on his toes that it was all he could do to keep himself from jumping right out of his skin. He had given up going to bed early and resumed his habit of late walks, though he no longer took them to the same place. Their one purpose was to keep him out of bed, which was the least restful place he could imagine. He had despaired of ever being able to sleep and wished only to make the nights as short as possible.

  Mina lay in her clothes, half awake and half asleep. She had felt so weak that evening that she had not even bothered to eat supper. Hirshl ate by himself and said the grace. Then he rose, put a glass of water by his bed, covered it with a plate, laid a double dose of sleeping powder on top of it, put on his overcoat, turned down the wick of the lamp, and prepared to step out.

  “Where are you going?”

  Mina asked him.

  “Where am I going? As if you didn’t know I was going just where you and all my well-wishers keep telling me to go: for a walk.”

  He was already at the door when Mina said, “Enjoy yourself. But I want you to know it
can’t go on like this. I promise you I’ll outlive you. That isn’t my way of wishing you a short life; it’s just that you had better realize you’re not going to get rid of me so quickly. And what I’d like to know is, exactly how do you envisage spending our life together in the meantime? I don’t care what you say to me, but for God’s sake, say something! Your silence is killing me. You’re a sensible enough person to understand that we can’t go on like this anymore. I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while, but I kept hoping that something would change. Well, it hasn’t, so I’ve come out with it. You want to take a walk? Go right ahead, you’ll have plenty of time on your way to think about what I just said. And please tell the girl, Heinrich, that I don’t need her anymore tonight. I’ll undress by myself. Why do you think my mother didn’t come today? Good night, Heinrich. You needn’t tiptoe when you get back, and you can turn up the lamp all you like. You don’t have to worry about waking me. I only wish you slept as well as I did.”

  Chapter twenty-six

  Hirshl rose as usual for the morning prayer. He felt unusually alert, and his eyes shone exuberantly. As is often the case when one’s spirits are high, he did not stop to ask why they were, yet his good mood was evident even in how he washed and dressed. Nor was it affected by the headache he had, which merely proved to him that, while he might not feel well physically, there was nothing the matter with his mind. Indeed, a sound mind was needed to realize that there was something wrong with his body.

  He was on his way out when Mina awoke. Seeing there was no chance of slipping away unnoticed, he halted. Mina opened her eyes, yawned, and said, “Did you sleep any, Heinrich?”

  His good mood vanished all at once and his eyes went red with a rage that would have struck her aghast had she seen it. Immediately, however, he fought to contain it and did his best to be friendly.

  “Does your head hurt, Heinrich?” asked Mina.

  “Come, Mina,” he answered. “Where would I be if my head didn’t hurt? It’s my way of knowing I’m alive.”

  She reached for her cologne bottle and asked, “Would you like to rub a little of this on your forehead, Heinrich?”

  “It might help,” said Hirshl, regarding her approvingly, “but I’d better not now. I’m going to synagogue, and the men who pray there aren’t used to eau de cologne. They would think that I was the strangest-smelling creature they had ever smelled. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”

  “Thank you, Heinrich,” said Mina. “I don’t need anything right now.”

  “Then I’d better be off,” said Hirshl.

  “Goodbye, Heinrich,” said Mina.

  “Goodbye, then,” Hirshl said.

  “Goodbye,” said Mina. “On your way out, Heinrich, please tell the girl that I’m up.”

  “You see, Mina,” said Hirshl, “first you said you didn’t need anything and now there’s something you want. Who knows what else there might be if you let yourself think of it. But I’m talking so much that I’ve already forgotten what you said. Please don’t be angry with me for asking, but what was it you wanted me to tell the girl to do?”

  “Just be so good as to tell her that I’m up,” Mina said.

  Hirshl regarded her with a queer animation, as if he had heard an intriguing bit of news. His eyes gleamed with an extraordinary light and he said, “You are up, Mina? You really are? I swear I’ll tell the girl, though I must say it surprises me to see you up so early. Not that that’s any reason not to tell her exactly what you said. I may have forgotten once, but I won’t forget again. Just look at me, though, promising you not to forget when I nearly forgot to take my prayer shawl to synagogue with me! And while we’re on the subject of forgetting, let me tell you something I just remembered. Mr. Coocoo kept me up all night again. I do believe it’s time we got rid of him. Don’t you think we might take him to the throat-slitter? He just has to go whisht and there’s no more cock-a-doodle-doo.”

  Hirshl ran a finger over his throat and laughed.

  “Do you want to slaughter the rooster?” asked Mina.

  “That, Mina,” said Hirshl, “is the most marvelous idea.”

  “But it was your idea,” Mina said.

  “My idea, Mina? Why, I never said a word about a rooster. How can you call it my idea when I never said any such thing? And even if it was, no one could have read my mind but you. Well, I have to go now. You don’t happen to know what time it is, do you? My watch has stopped. It was tickety-ticking along, and suddenly it just went and stopped.”

  “It’s half past seven,” said Mina.

  “Half past seven? Then it really is time to go. You know, I’m amazed by people’s optimism. If they have to be somewhere on time they trust their watches, though you see for yourself how a watch can take a notion to stop running. You look at it and it doesn’t say a word. You turn it every which way—still no answer. Even when you shake it, it doesn’t wake up. It couldn’t care less how you feel. Why, you come to depend on it as though it were your own father and mother, you carry it around in your pocket, you even make it a gold chain—and it just stands there and laughs at you. Do you suppose being tied to a gold chain all day long isn’t good enough for it? Of course, this is all in a manner of speaking, since a watch has no mind of its own. It isn’t a rooster that crows whenever it wants to. I suppose you’ll tell me that a person should have two watches, one to tell the time by when the other stops, but believe me, two watches are too much for anyone. You’ll just forget the second one anyway. It’s not as if we had two brains in our heads to keep track of them both. Well, goodbye, Mina. I’ll tell the maid you want to get up. If you ask me, though, you’re better off sleeping. If I could sleep myself, I’d do it until the end of the world.”

  Hirshl recovered his good mood on the way. Whatever he saw—the servant girls gossiping to each other in the market, the children washing their faces in the doorways of the houses—only heightened it. A dappled dove perched on the back of a horse pleased him in particular.

  Yona Toyber passed and greeted him. Hirshl flushed and said with a slight stammer, “I’m on my way to synagogue. It’s a fine day, Mr. Toyber, isn’t it?”

  Yona Toyber cast him a sideways glance and extracted a rolled cigarette from his pocket. “Where’s your father-in-law these days?” he inquired.

  “He doesn’t often come to town because my mother-in-law is here so much. Someone has to mind the farm, isn’t that right, Mr. Toyber?”

  Toyber nodded, shook Hirshl’s hand, and went his way.

  I suppose it was indecent of me, mused Hirshl when they parted, to have wanted to kiss his hand when I shook it. Now what was I thinking about? Yes, about whether that dove was so free with that horse because it knew it was tied. How smooth Yona Toyber’s hands are.

  Not only did Hirshl forget to tell the maid what Mina had asked him to, Mina forgot to do it too. She kept dozing off and waking up with a start each time she recalled their conversation. Since the day she had known her husband, she had never seen him in such a state. Not that anything had happened—yet she had a sense of foreboding all the same.

  Bertha found her daughter feeling low. “Is something the matter?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Mina said. “Heinrich just seemed very strange today. Everything he said was strange.”

  Bertha was alarmed. “How do you mean, strange?”

  “It’s hard for me to explain, Mother,” said Mina. “He had this strange, happy gleam in his eyes. In general—”

  “But what can be on your mind?” interrupted her mother. “In general, he’s happy he’s going to be a father.”

  “That isn’t it, Mother,” said Mina. “That’s not the kind of happiness I meant.”

  “Ach, Mina,” said Bertha. “You make too much of things. A man has his moods. Even a stone isn’t always the same. If it’s in sunshine it seems happy, if it’s in shadow it seems sad. It’s the same stone, it just doesn’t look it—and a human being is no different.”

  As Mina
kept the rest of her thoughts to herself, Bertha sighed and went on, “All these troubles come from not having faith. People are so taken with themselves nowadays that they forget all about God. If a young woman isn’t primping in the mirror for her husband, she’s asking him if he likes how she looks, or else she’s back in front of the mirror to see what it was he liked. Between him and the mirror she has no time left for the Lord. Why, she doesn’t even realize that a man’s mood can change! One day he’s like a willow tossing in a storm and the next he’s as quiet as a sparrow in a nest. I ask you, what difference does it make how your husband looked at you? You’re a married couple, God joined you together, why make so much of every look? If I had made so much of every look of your father’s, we’d never be where we are today.”

  Hirshl stepped into the Little Synagogue, donned his prayer shawl and tefillin, and joined the prayer. Though he had intended to pray in the Great Synagogue, where he could have stood unnoticed in a corner, his meeting with Toyber had unnerved him and caused him to come here instead.

  Midway through the service he felt a jolt in his head as if it had been banged against a wall. A moment later he felt another jolt as if it were being blown right off. He bent to look at the floor, then felt his forehead to see if his tefillin had been knocked to the ground. As soon as he could pull himself together, he drew his prayer shawl over his head and resumed his prayers. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, but he was unable to concentrate on even one. A draft riffled the pages of his prayer book, which he began to turn backward and forward. He smelled snuff and heard the snuff taker sneeze and mutter something against the evil eye. Two men who had prayed already were discussing a Talmudic text that dealt with the head feathers of slaughtered birds. Suddenly everyone fell still and rose for the silent prayer.

  It was the day of the New Moon, and the Torah scroll was taken out to be read. As it was carried around the synagogue, Hirshl pushed back his prayer shawl and stepped forward with the other men to kiss it. Idly he pinched a bit of wax from a candle and kneaded it with his fingers while rehearsing the Torah blessings under his breath in case he was called upon to recite them. After a while he stuck his hand in his pocket to knead the wax there unseen, and when it slipped from his fingers he continued kneading himself. The discovery that he was squeezing his own flesh without feeling it alarmed him. Had his fingers gone numb or was he dead? He gripped his head with both hands and thought, I can’t be dead as long as my head hurts. I’m glad I’m not screaming, because if I was I might crow like a rooster and seem crazy. Perhaps someone can tell me why it is that a man’s a poor devil when he screams like a man and crazy when he crows like a rooster, but a rooster that crows isn’t crazy at all, it’s just talking rooster talk. I suppose that a rooster barking like a dog would be as crazy as me crowing like a rooster. It’s a good thing I’m screaming like a man then and not going cock-a-doodle-doo.