A Simple Story

by S. Y. Agnon

  Sometimes Dr. Langsam told Hirshl about the blind musicians who sat on empty sacks in the marketplace of his town and coaxed from their instruments such boundlessly sweet music that it could put one into a trance. And though the doctor’s voice was that of an old man, Hirshl was as entranced by the sweet, gruff sadness of it as he might have been by a lullaby, had he ever heard one when he was a child. Tsirl, however, had never sung to him because she knew that her voice was unmusical, while the old housemaid whose husband had run off was too busy with the housework or with sewing the shrouds for her funeral to have any time for such things.

  Sometimes Dr. Langsam brought Hirshl books of fiction to read and quizzed him about them with jesting questions, such as what color horse was the hero riding when the lovelorn maiden saw him through the window, or what kind of flower did she give him after he had been blinded in a duel. He himself never read these novels, which had been left him by his wife, a woman much younger than he who, in a moment of madness, had taken her own life. “What’s in them?” he once said to Hirshl. “Mostly a lot of descriptions of ladies’ fashions. That’s all very well if you’re a tailor or a jeweler, but what do you do if you’re not?” Still, he seemed to enjoy the sight of Hirshl reading the same books his wife had read.

  There were even times when Dr. Langsam turned his face to the wall and sang Hirshl the songs he had heard from the blind beggars in the marketplace.

  Hirshl knew nothing about the real world. Had anyone asked him, he would have said that it was divided into the rich and the poor, and that the rich had it better. And though his own unhappiness had nothing to do with being poor, he still could not understand how as rich a man as Dr. Langsam could have such a suffering face.

  God in heaven knew what made people do what they did. Here was a doctor who had healed many a mentally ill person in his life and yet had been powerless to prevent his own wife from killing herself. The poor woman had committed suicide after an unhappy affair with a rogue whom God had made different from other Jews and given a wooden leg, which the scoundrel still hopped about on with the help of his crutch, twirling his mustache and carrying on like a conquering hero.

  Chapter thirty

  Though grief, worry, humiliation, and other emotions could easily have endangered Mina’s pregnancy, she overcame them all and gave birth to a baby boy.

  Hirshl received the news in a ten-word telegram from Szybusz in which he was informed that both mother and child were doing well. At first he failed to grasp what need there was to tell him that Mina was well, or what she could be doing with a child. Then he laid his hand on his heart, which was pulsing oddly as if gripped by pincers.

  Hirshl felt neither happy nor sad. When he himself was born, his own father had been happier. What joy Boruch Meir had felt then! How lavishly he had celebrated the occasion! He had been twenty-six years old at the time, a mere youngster and a newcomer in Szybusz, yet already better known in the town than Hirshl was even now.

  It would have been natural had Hirshl tried picturing his wife and new son. Instead, he pictured his father, who seemed very big and made him, his father’s son, seem very small.

  During the first part of his stay in the sanatorium Hirshl tried not to think of the past. Anything that reminded him of Szybusz he quickly put out of his mind. He did, however, dream of the town, and some of these dreams kept recurring. Later on he stopped dreaming of it and began thinking of it while awake. Although his thoughts were not as frightening as his dreams, they angered him every bit as much as had the reality of Szybusz itself. And while Hirshl no more believed in metempsychosis than did any other educated young man of his age, having to return to his parents’ store seemed to him a worse fate than any possible reincarnation.

  It was a long way from Lemberg to Szybusz by train, which stopped at many stations, yet Hirshl’s imagination covered the distance in no time and showed him all of Szybusz at a glance. Although he didn’t know all his fellow townsmen by sight, he certainly knew most of them, if not by their real names, then by their nicknames, so that, like the ants dreamed about and described to him by Mina, he found himself remembering every one of them. Worse yet, just as the thought of so many ants had made his skin crawl, so did the thought of so many Szybuszians. Dr. Langsam, who had been away from his hometown for forty years and had no intention of returning, could feel as nostalgic for it as he pleased. Hirshl, who had been away for only a short while, could not bear hearing Szybusz mentioned.

  Once again Hirshl had trouble sleeping. After not missing a single night of sleep since his arrival in the sanatorium, he suddenly could not catch a wink of it. And as bad as his insomnia had been in the first place, its reappearance following a long absence drove him to the verge of despair. Why, he had all but forgotten what a sleepless night or the morning after were like, and here he was tossing and turning once more and unable to enjoy a moment’s rest! Despite there being no Mina to have to listen to breathing or talking, her voice like a driven nail, no barking dogs or crowing roosters, not even any people in the street, he still lay in bed like a broken watch that could not keep the right time. All kinds of visions passed before his sleepless eyes. Held in the fingers of a Szybusz whose hills, dales, and valleys had shrunk to the size and shape of his own hand sat a tiny blind beggar, who sang a song about the snow that fell on the ground where the froggies grazed. Perhaps the Angel of Dreams knew when it would end, but to Hirshl the song seemed interminable. It was still going on when a cloaked woman appeared, bent low before him, and sliced him a piece of cake. Yet before she could give it to him a man came along and threw a pocketful of coins at him—or rather, into his eyes, which soon were covered with two mountains of them. Though Hirshl screamed and sobbed, carriage wheels kept drowning out his voice. He uncovered his eyes and saw Sophia Gildenhorn, slender and attractive, sitting in a buggy with a friendly smile and smelling of something good.

  Hirshl was a nervous wreck again. His nights passed without sleep, and his head hurt all day. A great sorrow haunted his dazed eyes, which ached with an inner feeling of devastation. Though he no longer crowed like a rooster, croaked like a frog, or sang about the snow in the grass, his existence was pure agony. Yet Dr. Langsam, though he saw all this, gave no sign of having done so.

  “Could all those books be having a bad effect on him?” Schrenzel asked the doctor.

  “A few reams of paper,” scoffed Dr. Langsam, “or even all the yards of satins and silks described in them, are harmless enough. But just so you don’t think I’m neglecting him, here’s what I’m going to do.”

  What Dr. Langsam did was to put Hirshl on iron pills and arsenic salts and to have Schrenzel give him lukewarm baths. Hirshl swallowed the pills dutifully and let himself be washed three times a day in tepid water. Before long his eyes regained their healthy luster, his headaches went away, and he began to sleep again at night. He also resumed his games of chess with Schrenzel, did his exercises, ate and drank with a hearty appetite, and went for walks in the garden, where he helped Schrenzel to weed, water the flowers, and chop firewood.

  Hirshl liked the hours spent with Schrenzel in the garden. The trees and shrubs gave off a good smell, the work tools shone in the sun, and little winged insects flew all around. Schrenzel went about his work while keeping one eye on Hirshl, who wiped the sweat from his face without a sound. Though he was working hard and had every right to grunt now and then with the effort, he did not. True, a woodcutter could have done in an hour what would have taken Hirshl a week, but woodcutters worked in the winter and not in the hot summer sun, and they were paid for their work, while Hirshl was paying Dr. Langsam. Not far away from him Pinchas Hartleben was scratching at the ground while talking with his dead wife and children. He had yet to strike oil, which was not something that one did every day, but his faith that he would was worth all the earth’s treasures. Rabbi Zanvil and Feibush Vinkler were nowhere to be seen. Either they were all better and had been released, or they had acted up and had been confined by Dr. Langs
am to their rooms. Hirshl did not ask, and Schrenzel did not volunteer to tell him.

  Chapter thirty-one

  Elul was the last and best month of the Jewish year. Even when the weather was hot it was not as hot as Tammuz, and even when it was cold it was not as cold as Tevet or Shvat. The days were longer than winter days but shorter than summer ones, the clouds that sometimes hid the sun were warm and cool by turn, and the trees in the garden were bathed in an orange light. Though Hirshl had been in Lemberg for two and a half months, he still had seen nothing of the city. Once, upon hearing how Yona Toyber had been kept from reaching Lemberg by a geography book, he could not keep himself from laughing. Yet now that he had been in Lemberg all summer, had he seen any more of it than Toyber?

  Perhaps, thought Hirshl as he sat by himself one day, I will be a prisoner here until I die. Perhaps I will be one even after I die, like that corpse they found chained in irons in that peasant’s cellar in Malikrowik. And the proof that I am one already is that no one pays me any attention or brings me any news from home. Why, one would think there was no draft board to appear before, no son to bring up, no store that needed looking after!

  Hirshl pictured the long, narrow store with its scales and counters, its large balance that his mother liked to sit next to, its little office where his father kept the books, and its customers being waited on by Getzel and Feyvel. He suddenly was overcome by a hatred for Getzel such as he had never felt for anyone before. Could it be that he envied him his activity in the store while he, the owners’ son, did nothing all day but eat, drink, play chess, and listen to the tall tales of Dr. Langsam, who kept talking circles around him and refused to let him go? Indeed, Hirshl was beginning to doubt whether there was any chance of being released in Dr. Langsam’s lifetime. How old was the doctor, and how much longer could he live? And yet even if he would die and be buried some day, so would everybody he had cured. Never in his life had Hirshl felt so close to the reality of death. Nor was it just his parents’ store that he kept imagining. It was their home too and everything in it, even its abandoned dovecote, even its unused room with the pile furniture in which Mina had dabbed herself with cologne before their engagement. It was not necessarily his favorite spot, yet being away from a place made a man think of it.

  Hirshl felt that he was back to normal. If he regarded the other patients, he really did seem to himself more like a visitor in Dr. Langsam’s sanatorium. He didn’t scrabble in the earth for oil, tell stories about his own death, or curse Shlomo Rubin for inventing a mechanical dog that stole thoughts. And yet while one had to be crazy to believe in such an invention, Hirshl wondered what, if a dog like that existed, it could tell him about the things that people were thinking of him back in Szybusz. He himself no longer thought about his mother’s brother and grandfather. Since coming to the sanatorium he had not even dreamed of them. Perhaps they had purged their souls in limbo and did not have to wander about there anymore and haunt him. He too felt purged and fit. He hoped his wife and son were well too.

  Mina could not nurse her baby, for the nipples of her breasts were inverted. Of course, the condition could have been corrected before she gave birth by coating the inside of a perforated zinc cup with olive oil and placing it over her nipples to draw them out, but Hirshl’s hospitalization had left everyone too stupefied to think of it.

  Bertha brought a sturdy wet nurse from the village who had never been sick a day in her life. In fact, upon giving birth herself she had disproved the medical opinion that alcohol was bad for parturient women by downing a whole quart of vodka, after which she had devoured the light repast permitted by the doctor and gone on to eat a huge meal. Besides nursing the baby, she helped Mina a good deal around the house. Bertha and Tsirl were more than satisfied with her. They would have liked to be as satisfied with the baby.

  Meshulam was so frail at birth that he was not circumcised until the age of a month instead of the usual eight days. Being a firstborn son, he also had to be redeemed by his father from a kohen, a descendant of the priestly class, in accordance with the biblical rite. As Hirshl was not there to perform it, however, the child had a copper amulet with the letter heh, the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hung around his neck to indicate that his father owed the kohen five gold crowns.

  Chapter thirty-two

  One Friday before Rosh Hashana a letter arrived from Dr. Langsam saying that Hirshl could come home. So that he should not have to travel alone, the doctor suggested that someone come to Szybusz to get him.

  As soon as the Sabbath was over Tsirl packed a bag for Boruch Meir, who took a carriage to the train station.

  It was the first night of the penitential prayers of Elul. The train station was deserted. No one apart from the station workers was to be seen. Boruch Meir bought a ticket and boarded the waiting train. He found a seat by a window, put down his bag, and sat down.

  It was a moonless night. A dark sky and earth loomed toward each other and merged, blackly blotting out the silent world. The train stood on its tracks, peering with a nervous tremor into the endless night, then took a deep breath and set out. Boruch Meir was glad to have a compartment to himself in which to stretch out and sleep, though he had trouble deciding on which bench to do it. In the end he chose the one he was sitting on and placed his bag beneath his head. No sooner were his eyes shut, though, than it occurred to him that he had no business sleeping on a night when Jews everywhere were awake and at prayer. He sat up, wet his fingers on the frosty window in lieu of washing his hands, and took out his prayer shawl, tefillin, and prayer book. He was about to open the book when the train came to a halt.

  Boruch Meir stood up and peered out the window to read the name of the station. As he was trying to make it out a soldier returning to his base sat down with his bag on the bench facing him.

  “Well, the summer is over,” said Boruch Meir.

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  “It will be winter soon,” said Boruch Meir.

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  “But not as soon as all that,” said Boruch Meir.

  “No, sir,” said the soldier.

  “We still have some summer days ahead of us,” said Boruch Meir.

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  “And how, Nikofer,” asked Boruch Meir, “are you yourself these days?”

  “Just fine, sir,” said the soldier. “I can’t complain, sir.”

  “Nikofer,” inquired Boruch Meir, “aren’t you curious to know how I knew your name was Nikofer?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  “Because, Nikofer,” said Boruch Meir, “it is strange that I should know your name is Nikofer when I’ve never seen you before in my life, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  “Yes sir, no sir, yes sir,” said Boruch Meir. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I knew your name was Nikofer?”

  “How did you know my name was Nikofer, sir?” asked the soldier.

  “Aha,” said Boruch Meir. “I guessed it.”

  “You guessed wrong, sir,” said the soldier.

  “Then what is your name?”

  “If you’re so good at guessing, sir,” said the soldier, “you may as well guess again.”

  “You’re a funny boy, Ivan,” said Boruch Meir.

  “It’s not Ivan, sir.”

  “Then what is it? Stefan?”

  “Keep guessing, sir.”

  “Do you think, Petri,” said Boruch Meir, “that I have nothing better to do than to sit here guessing your name?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

  “Then you have another guess coming yourself, Andrei,” said Boruch Meir, opening his prayer book to begin the penitential prayer. The soldier stretched out on his bench, shut his eyes, and began to snore at once.

  It’s a rare gift these Christians have, thought Boruch Meir, to be able to fall asleep the minute their heads touch something solid. He took out his watch, mouthed “tw
elve” to himself, yawned, and put it back in his pocket. Midnight was the hour when his fellow Jews assembled in the synagogue and the cantor donned his prayer shawl and launched into the opening prayer.

  A great sadness descended on Boruch Meir. Had he waited to take the next train he could have been praying now with the congregation, yet he had all but forgotten what night it was in his eagerness to see his son. And even as he told himself this the feeling of sadness yielded to one of shame that brought a blush to his face. The thought of sitting in a railroad car when so many Jews were begging God for forgiveness made him feel like an outcast.

  The train stopped at another station. Boruch Meir rose and peered outside again. The darkness was so great that he could not tell if it was coming from above or below. Not a single passenger boarded the train. The Kaiser is not doing very good business tonight, thought Boruch Meir.

  The train breathed in, breathed out, and gave a lurch. Boruch Meir and the soldier were still alone in their compartment. Boruch Meir stifled another yawn with his hand and began to recite his prayers. Not being a learned Jew, he was uncertain whether or not when praying by himself he was supposed to recite the adoration beginning “O Lord, O Lord, God merciful and gracious.” In the end he compromised by standing up and reading it to himself from the prayer book as if it were not really a prayer. Just as he finished, the train stopped again. He turned the page of his prayer book and wondered which would come first, the next station or the next adoration.