A Book that Was Lost

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If Agnon can be said to have invented himself as a modern Jewish writer, then these stories define that identity. From a tale of the would-be writer as a young man in Jaffa to stories that contrast the figure of the writer to his peers and his predecessors, we see a variety of narrative self-portraits. These are “self-portraits” only in the broadest sense: they give narrative form to the writer’s understanding of himself, his community, his art, and the Jewish past. These portraits are often heavily shaded by irony: the writer mocks his presumption in even designating himself with the title sofer, the Hebrew term for “writer,” which also refers to the scribes responsible for the transcription of Scripture. How can he take on this title, he asks, when he does not devote himself to the full-time study of traditional texts? In the range of these stories, we gain access to a variety of personae of the writer, with the result that our portrait of the artist resists reduction to any one component.

In “Hill of Sand,” a story set in Jaffa in the years of the Second Aliyah, we encounter the writer as a young man unable to write, to love, to work. (“Hill of Sand” went through a number of revisions, dating from the early story “Tishre,” a tale of unrequited love, written in 1911 in Jaffa, and culminating in the 1931 text of “Hill of Sand” which is the basis for this version.) Agnon lets us feel the atmosphere of the period from the perspective of the youthful Hemdat, who witnesses the founding of Tel Aviv from afar, but does not engage in physical labor or join in the enterprise of Jewish settlement. Themes of ambivalence are signalled by Hemdat’s repugnance for the physical side of life. He is drawn to Yael Hayyut, whose last name, derived from the Hebrew word for “life,” suggests a vitality, a life force, that Hemdat longs to share.

The Artist in the Land of Israel

Nor is Hemdat able to resolve an artistic identity for himself. He cites the stories of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and thus directs our attention to an important influence on Agnon’s literary development: Rabbi Nahman (1772–1810) told dark tales of enigmatic beauty, which were recorded by his followers. On a more satirical note, Hemdat expresses his scorn for the poet Pizmoni (whose name means “rhymester”), a self-proclaimed leading light of Hebrew literature. Hemdat may lie in bed thinking of translating the nineteenth-century Scandinavian writer Jens Peter Jacobsen, another important influence on Agnon, but he is unable to put pen to paper. This portrait of the artist as a young man uses irony to sketch conflict and indecision, and to draw the contrast between the youth’s vaulting ambitions and his inability to realize them.

“Knots upon Knots” gives us the writer at a later stage in his life, ill at ease in a series of encounters with a variety of individuals and groups, each of which has some connection to books and to writing. “Even I was invited to the craftsmen’s convention,” the opening line of the story announces, but the story that follows describes the failures of the protagonist to enter into any form of community. Indeed, he manages to offend and alienate all those he approaches, suggesting a singularly ambivalent relationship to his vocation. In contrast, the figure of the bookbinder, who stores all the narrator’s unwanted articles and binds his books, suggests a level of integration and a kind of spiritual harmony in his careful preparation of the workroom and the hints that he is about to engage in prayer.

“Knots upon Knots” engages in some historical playfulness underscoring its ironies. The narrator meets in succession two leaders of rival schools of thought and distances himself from each with awkwardly offensive behavior. The interactions of the narrator with these two characters take on an intriguing complexity when we realize that they carry the surnames of two great eighteenth-century rabbis, Eibeschütz and Emden. These two prominent rabbis engaged in a drawn-out feud that split German Jewry. The split began when Jacob Emden accused Jonathan Eibeschütz of being a covert follower of Sabbatai Zvi, leader of the messianic movement that swept seventeenth-century Jewry and continued even after its leader’s apostasy. That Agnon calls one character Eibeschütz and the other Emden, and gives to each one of his own names — Samuel and Joseph — suggests that the conflicts that energize this story are as much internal as they are external.

“Knots upon Knots” is one of the stories included in the Hebrew collection Sefer Hama’asim, which can be translated as both The Book of Deeds and The Book of Tales. Ma’asim is the Hebrew word for “deeds”; the Yiddish mayses refers to tales. Agnon’s title capitalizes on the coincidence. These stories, written largely in the 1930s and 1940s, offer dreamlike scenes of encounters with suggestive figures who either lead the protagonist astray or rebuke him for unspecified lapses. During this period Agnon was sometimes in the habit of transcribing his own dreams and developing stories out of them. “Knots upon Knots” takes its place in this fictional category, demonstrating his capacity to craft a perfectly balanced structure out of suggestive pairs of oppositions.

A pair of stories from the 1930s, “On One Stone” and “The Sense of Smell,” offer delicate portraits of the writer’s relationship to Jewish traditions of writing. It should be noted that “On One Stone” is actually set in eastern Europe. It is in this section, along with “The Sense of Smell,” because both stories highlight the writer’s relationship to mystical traditions of writing. These stories approach the mythical as they position the figure of the writer in relation to wonder-working rabbis of the past and to a conception of writing as magical in its capacity to create worlds. This belief in the special potency of the Hebrew language goes back very far in Jewish tradition. At the beginning of Bereshit Rabbah, the midrash on the Book of Genesis, we find the belief that God looked into the Torah to find the blueprint for Creation. This conception of the special powers of the very letters in which the Torah was written held enormous appeal for Agnon, whose writing plays out a variety of positions in relation to the holy tongue.

The Artist in the Land of Israel

With the model of the world-creating language of Torah before him, Agnon enacts the attempt and failure to attain the linguistic level of the sacred. Each story includes a brief moment of participation that appears to lift language beyond itself, but these are moments that cannot be sustained. The two stories offer tales of the writer that occupy a middle ground between the early stories of Hemdat, the artist as youth (“Hill of Sand”), and the stories that comprise The Book of Deeds, in which nothing happens but the act of telling itself.

“On One Stone,” written in 1934, mimics a passage in The Book of Praises of the Baal Shem Tov, a compilation of stories of the Baal Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century holy man around whose life and works Hasidism developed. The Baal Shem Tov is a luminous figure in hasidic tradition, a wonder-worker whose miraculous deeds are told and retold by his followers. In the source passage in The Book of Praises, the Baal Shem Tov speaks directly to a stone, so that it opens up and he can place his writings in it. Without ever explicitly referring to the Baal Shem Tov, Agnon’s story invokes this act of enclosure in a variety of ways that remind us of the story of the Baal Shem Tov as well as of other stories of wonder-working rabbis.

The first-person narrator of “On One Stone” is a writer, but he opens his story by referring to the days in which he devoted himself to writing about the wonder-working rabbi Adam Baal Shem, a predecessor of the Baal Shem Tov, who used the holy writings in his possession to bring about the redemption of souls in Israel. The narrator tells us how Rabbi Adam Baal Shem went to the forest and sealed his writings in a rock when the time for his death drew near. Emphasizing all the while the profound gap that separates him from the level of Rabbi Adam Baal Shem, the narrator of our story “inadvertently” reenacts a latter-day version of the moment at which the rabbi gave up his writings to a rock. Concerned about finding himself beyond the Sabbath boundary of the town, the narrator goes in search of the writings he had left lying out in the open upon a stone, only to see them swallowed up by that stone before his very eyes. What follows is a scene of radiant wonder that mimics a mystical moment in which word and world are fused. For that brief moment, it is as if the narrator gains access to the language of Creation.

In “On One Stone,” the speaker describes what could almost be considered a wish: were he able to read the writings of Rabbi Adam Baal Shem that were hidden in the rock, he would be able to “join together” worlds out of them. The story thus implies levels of linguistic activity, in order of descending strength, but on the model of a world-creating use of language. “The Sense of Smell,” written in 1937, enters this mythology of writing by building on the traditional belief that language is prior even to Creation. “The Sense of Smell” is a story in which the persona of the author figures as speaker. He refers to himself as the mehabber, meaning “author,” or more literally, “composer,” in the sense of “joiner of words.” And it is that very activity of joining words that the story brings up for question, since it is a dispute over proper linguistic usage that provides the stimulus for the mock-heroic text. In actuality, the story constitutes an engaging response to an annoying incident in which Agnon was rebuked for incorrect word usage by a member of the National Committee on Language. Agnon uses this story to enact a particularly literary form of revenge.

“The Sense of Smell” draws to an end with a two-sentence paragraph that acclaims the greatness of the holy tongue. Ultimately, it is Hebrew — the language of Creation — that joins together sages of the past and the figure of the writer in a fantasy that establishes the community of those who are devoted to the holy tongue. A Tzaddik (righteous man) leaves paradise, identified here as “the Academy on High” or a heavenly yeshivah, in order to come to the aid of the writer and to vindicate his use of the phrase that had brought Agnon under attack. In this linguistic fantasy, Agnon’s reference to the Academy on High not only suggests the timeless community of those who devote themselves to Torah, but it replaces the authority of the Committee on Language, established in 1900, with that of a much higher body.

Conflict is muted in these stories, as the figure of the writer effaces his own individuality in an effort to draw nearer to traditional uses of language. In each story, the writer achieves a moment of self-transcendence: the abrasive tensions of the present dissolve as he enters into moments of alliance with legendary sages and their writings.

The Artist in the Land of Israel

“A Book That Was Lost” shifts the focus from the writer’s own work to tell the story of his efforts to send a text of rabbinic commentary from Buczacz to Jerusalem. The story takes in the years from the writer’s eastern European youth to his maturity in Jerusalem and places that time span within a larger compass of rabbinic commentaries, beginning with the Shulhan Arukh, the sixteenth-century code of laws written by Joseph Caro, and moving on to the seventeenth-century Magen Avraham, the commentary of a Polish rabbi on a section of the Shulhan Arukh. This is a story that charts its course via references to the public dialogue of rabbis, conducted over centuries through their written works. The Magen Avraham was considered to be a difficult and elusive work, and scholars were helped by the eventual appearance of Rabbi Samuel Kolin’s commentary on it, Mahazit Hashekel. Agnon’s story sketches out this extended network of rabbinic texts and adds its own account of the modest Rabbi Shmaria, a rabbinical judge of Buczacz, who refrained from publishing his commentary when he came upon Mahazit Hashekel and felt it superseded his own work.

Drawing the larger scope of history into a personal frame, Agnon depicts himself as a young man who happens to stumble upon the commentary of Rabbi Shmaria in the attic of the Great Synagogue in Buczacz. Agnon uses this glimpse of his youth to touch upon the history of Buczacz and to affirm the ongoing life of the works of its sages, which survived even the predations of Tartar invasions in the seventeenth century. It becomes, then, the mission of the youth to insure the survival of Rabbi Shmaria’s commentary, first by ascertaining the originality of its contents and, second, by sending it to a newly founded library in Jerusalem.

Not so much a story of the writer as a story of the writer’s devotion to the town, “A Book That Was Lost” uses its narrative frame to construct a home for the lost book, the book that never makes it to the new national library of the Jewish people. Along the way, the story pays tribute to Joseph Chasanowitsch, a Russian doctor who was not able to settle in Palestine himself but whose collection established the basis for the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Thus the narrative draws together threads of history to link Buczacz to the Land of Israel. But while it appears to organize itself around the Zionist shift from Europe to Palestine, a shift that includes the writer’s own journey from Buczacz to Jerusalem, the story is as much a record of what has been lost or destroyed over the years as it is of Zionist achievement. With the account of the writer’s arrival in Jerusalem on the Ninth of Av, the day of mourning the destruction of the Temple, the story draws to a close by incorporating a reminder of loss into the narrative of Zionist renewal. It becomes the mission of the writer to record loss — to continue to look for the book of Rabbi Shmaria of Buczacz — and thus to make a place for a traditional text in a new society, even if that “place” consists of the notation of its absence.

In the major novel A Guest for the Night, the first-person narrator leaves his eastern European hometown, taking with him the key to the town’s Beit Midrash and citing the belief that in the future all houses of study will move to the Land of Israel. He resigns himself to waiting for that day. In “A Book That Was Lost,” the writer depicts himself at the other end, waiting in the Land of Israel for the book that he sent from Buczacz to arrive.

This section of tales of the artist in the Land of Israel closes with “From Lodging to Lodging,” a story that follows the moves of its first-person narrator from one residence to another as he claims to seek greater comfort and fresher air. In an expressionistic enactment of conflicts between illness and health, passivity and activity, death and life, “From Lodging to Lodging” moves through a variety of settings in the Land of Israel. From the noise and bustle of Tel Aviv to the seashore and from there to a rural setting, the narrator finds himself restless and ill at ease. His discomforts in each new setting suggest an inability to settle into anyone address or identification.

In the fourth section, then, when the narrator finds himself in a house on a hill that is described with the biblical imagery of the Zionist return to the land, his response acknowledges the fulfillment of that return and yet distances himself from complete identification: “I was glad that a man in the Land of Israel had all this, and I had my doubts that this place was for me.” The couple who live in this house recount stories that are the counterpart of the setting: of their own emigration to the Land of Israel and of their daughter, who willingly sacrifices comfort for the physical hardships of kibbutz life. The fulfillment in a relationship to the land that they express is something Agnon’s fiction tends to acknowledge, but from a distance. In novels as well as short stories, Agnon acknowledges the need for community while positioning his protagonists as solitary figures. The daughter’s commitment to collective life in “From Lodging to Lodging” finds its counterpart in several novels: in A Guest for the Night, we find the description of young Zionists who prepare themselves for aliyah to the Land of Israel by working on a farm in eastern Europe, and in the posthumously published novel Shira we have the involvement of the protagonist’s daughter and her family in a collective farm.

The Artist in the Land of Israel

In the logic of this particular story, the room to which the narrator returns suggests acceptance of a part of himself that he had sought to escape. The narrator returns to find the sickly child of his landlady on the doorstep, eager as ever to poke his dirty fingers into the narrator’s eyes, in search of his own reflection there. It was the intrusive presence of this child that caused the narrator to go in search of quieter surroundings in the first place. His return to a reluctant involvement with the child thus evolves into an emblem of identity by suggesting acceptance of an aspect of himself he has hitherto sought to escape.

Through these stories of the artist, we encounter shifting identifications and transient affiliations, all of which comprise facets of the artist’s identity. Whether by detaching the writer from the community of his peers or linking him to those who preserve tradition, these stories offer insight into the structures that define Agnon’s fictional world. The stories position the writer on the margins, never wholly inside or outside of a traditional Jewish world view.

Hill of Sand

1

It was most curious, Hemdat’s having agreed to give Yael Hayyut literature lessons. Yet since it struck him as being but one more insoluble psychological riddle, he took the moralist’s advice and did not probe what was beyond him. You made a promise? Keep it.

The evening before their first lesson he happened to find out more about her. He had always considered her an empty-headed flirt who never did a day’s work in her life, but now he discovered that she was terribly poor and hard up. She had more than her share of troubles. Although life had treated her well as a girl in Russia, she had not seen a cloudless day since coming to Palestine, and a stocking knitter’s wages were all she could look forward to. Or rather, while she was learning to knit stockings, a wage was far from certain, since she had a bad arm and was not supposed to strain it. As sad as it was to see anyone down on his luck, it was sadder to see a girl from a good family who had to work for a pittance, a princess banished to the spinning wheel.

How unfair he had been. Thank God he could make up for it. He opened his Bible as she opened the door of his room. He would teach her Hebrew. With a knowledge of the language she could be a nursery-school teacher instead of having to knit all her life. He had been providentially chosen to rescue her.

She was hungry, quite simply hungry. Not that she said so. But he could tell from the way she asked for a glass of water that she had not eaten lunch. Hemdat took out bread and wine. Oh, no, Yael said, she did not want anything. Just some water. In the end she took and ate a slice of bread, pecking at it like a bird. Exactly like a bird: that was all she touched. Pizmoni the poet once said that only birds ate aesthetically. Well put, Mr. Pizrmoni!

It was a fine time of his life, the one in which Hemdat tutored Yael Hayyut. The summer was over; the first rains had fallen and the days were no longer blistering deserts for the sun to beat down on. Hemdat liked to spend his afternoons in bed until clouds formed in the west. Beauteous were the evenings in Canaan.

One Wednesday Yael came late. When she arrived, she sat down on the divan instead of on the chair by the table. You could see she did not feel like studying. She looked at Hemdat and said:

“What makes you so quiet? I used to think you were happy, but now that I know you better I can see that you’re not. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

Hemdat bowed his head and said nothing.

Once, when he was more of a ladies’ man, Hemdat had liked nothing better than talking about himself. He had had a happy childhood and his stories about it had won many hearts. Now that all this was behind him, however, he preferred silence. He picked up his Bible and sat down with Yael.

She was a good head taller than he was. He had noticed yesterday how this made her bend, and so he propped the Bible on another book for her. Yet though he had meant to be helpful, she now had to arch her neck like a swan. What did Yael’s tutor think he was doing?

Hemdat took a small pillow and placed in on Yael’s chair. “That’s better, much better,” she nodded. After two hours of study she could sit in comfort at last. She gave him a grateful look with her green eyes. Before they could return to their book, he said:

“If you have no objection, it’s dinner time. I’d like to ask you to join me.”

Yael shook her head. “Oh no, thank you.”

“All right,” said Hemdat, putting away the tablecloth he had taken out. “Let’s get on with the lesson.” He was not going to eat without her. In the end she agreed. She did not have much choice.

If you have never met Hemdat, you might as well meet his room. It stood in the dunes of Nevei Tsedek and had many windows: one facing the sea, and one facing the sand that Tel Aviv is now built on, and one facing the railroad tracks in Emek Refaim, and two facing the street. And yet by drawing the green curtains, Hemdat could cut himself off from the world and the bustle of Jaffa. The room had a table spread with green wax paper, which doubled as the desk he wrote his poems at. Next to it stood a small chest full of good things. There were olives, and bread, and oranges, and wine, and you could take whatever you wanted, and whatever you took was washed down with the coffee that Hemdat made on the alcohol stove on top of the chest. Bright beads of flame twinkled around the beaker while it cooked. Yael glanced up at them from her book. Hemdat looked at her and said:

“You can’t say I’m not a good housekeeper.”

Indeed, you could not. He kept house for himself and ate from his own table. He was not one of your room-and-boarders who lounge around gabbing all day and are sitting down to supper before they have risen from lunch. Not Hemdat. He came from a well-to-do, bourgeois home in which a day spent in idleness was a day stolen from its Creator.

Hemdat bent his curly head by the flaming stove. The light lent his face a charming flush. Yael stared dreamily at the picture over the table. Apart from its furniture, Hemdat’s room had a portrait by Rembrandt on the wall, a picture of a bride and a groom. Yael saw her reflection in it. “I do believe,” she smiled, “that I can see myself in the picture. It’s a Rembrandt, isn’t it?”

Hemdat nodded. “So it is. It’s a Rembrandt, and it’s called The Bride and Groom.”

Hemdat’s room had no mirror except for the glass frame of the picture. Once, when the fiancée of one of his friends was half in love with him, he had imagined himself as a third person in it. He didn’t have such thoughts any longer. People should be happy with what they had and not crave what belonged to others. Hemdat thought of a friend who once said teasingly:

“You only like Rembrandt because he was a Casanova like yourself.”

Who was that knocking? It was Shoshanna and Mushalam. Hemdat opened the door and said, “Come on in.”

Yael jumped to her feet as if bitten by a snake. “Mr. Hemdat is behaving very oddly,” she said. “He absolutely insisted that I stay for supper. It’s too much for me, really it is.”

She blushed all the way down to her throat and looked away from the table.

Shoshanna and Mushalam had just come back from Petach Tikva, where they had unexpectedly attended their own wedding. What happened was that a cousin of Shoshanna’s had married off his youngest son and decided to make the most of the occasion by marrying off Shoshanna too. She and Mushalam were quite unprepared.

“Mazal tov, mazal tov!” said Hemdat and Yael in one breath. “Mazal tov, mazal tov!” they repeated in loud voices.

Hemdat kept thinking how happy he was for them. Such a story should be written in gold letters on unicorn horn. Shoshanna and Mushalam had come to invite him to their wedding party. Hemdat thanked them kindly but said he was busy. He would gladly come to their golden anniversary. Shoshanna and Mushalam were sorry to hear that but told him in leaving that they loved him anyway.

Yael sat there stunned. Shoshanna’s getting married was a big surprise. Imagine two people, one here and one there, and before you know it they have met somewhere else and are joined for life. They were like the palm tree and the fir tree in the poem by Heine.

Yael was poor at literary comparisons. What did one thing have to do with the other? The tree in Heine’s poem stood yearning at a distance of thousands of miles, while Shoshanna and Mushalam were now a married couple. “Some people,” said Hemdat, gripping the edge of the table, “are under the wedding canopy before they know it and others wait to get there all their lives.”

What had made him say a thing like that? Really, he was beginning to talk nonsense.

2

His friends’ suspicions were groundless. “Yael is a nice looking girl,” they said to him. “It’s no wonder that you’re taken with her.” But Hemdat knew that he was only giving her lessons because he felt sorry for her. The two of them were poles apart, and he had never even touched her. Not that she wasn’t attractive. Her tranquil bearing, fresh complexion, and tall, womanly way she held herself made him feel a kind of respect. And the odd thing was that before getting to know her he hadn’t thought her pretty at all and had even called her “that beefsteak” behind her back.

She arrived one evening soaking wet and limping, her right shoe as full of water as a kneading trough. “It’s raining,” she said, standing in the doorway.

Hemdat brought a chair for her to sit on and took off her shoe. She had a surprisingly delicate foot. “What are you looking at?” she asked, following his glance.

“Excuse me for asking,” he said, as though waking from a dream, “but did you make these socks?”

Yael smiled. “No, they’re from home. But I could have made them.”

Hemdat helped her out of her coat and spread it on the divan. How nice it would have been for there to be a warm stove in the corner and a samovar boiling on the table, so that he could dry out her coat and make her a glass of hot tea. He bent quietly to wring out the bottom of her coat. Yael put on a pair of his slippers, and he said with a smile:

“There’s a belief that if the groom at a wedding makes the bride move her foot with his own, he’ll be the boss. But if she makes him move his, she’ll be.”

Yael laughed. “Oh, my, I’ve gotten mud on you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She brushed off Hemdat’s clothes and went to wash her hands.

He shook his head and said, “You needn’t have bothered.”

The next day he washed without soap. Yael’s fingerprints were on his one bar. He knew he was being silly.

Yael was not a good student. She had managed to learn some writing and a few chapters from the Bible and Part ii of Ben-Ami’s grammar, but that was all. She had neither a quick grasp nor the time for it. Since she worked in the mornings and spent the afternoons with her sick mother at the hospital, she came unprepared to her lessons. Hemdat scolded her good-naturedly and did the best he could, but devoted teacher though he was, he was wasting his time. To think of all the things he could have done with it! Should he tell her he was stopping? But he did not want to stop. Often she came late. Once, when he asked her why, she said that she hated to take him away from his work. Another time she came and found him lying on the divan as though swimming in a sea of sadness.

Hemdat wondered what she saw in him. He knew that she liked him and valued his opinions. Once she even told him that the Bible verse “Your words uphold the stumbler” made her think of him. She had never met anyone like him who always knew the right thing to say. And yet he spoke haltingly. Every phrase began with a sigh and his warm voice was slow and monotonous. What did she see in him?

Yael saw that Hemdat was a poet. Poets took their time when they spoke. Pizmoni was a greater poet than Hemdat, but Bialik was even greater. She loved looking at Bialik when he visited Rehovot. He had worn a velvet jacket and walked with the almond-wood cane that he stood leaning on at the bonfire made in his honor. The whole town had turned out to see him. Not even a baby stayed home. What had he been thinking of? He seemed such a nice man. Yet in his photographs he bit his bottom lip as though annoyed. No two poets were the same. Hemdat bowed his head when he talked and shaded his right eye with his hand. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples to write poetry. Not that she ever had read Schiller. Her father read him all the time. Why did no one read him anymore? Every age had its authors. Now there was Tolstoy and Sanin and Sholom Aleichem. Of course, Sanin was a character in a novel, not an author, but Yael was not a student of literature and had no way of knowing such things. She had her good points, Yael Hayyut, and was certainly very pretty.

Once Hemdat sat by the window as dusk fell. The door of his room was wide open. The branches of the eucalyptus trees cast long shadows and the world was fading into darkness. A poet might have said that Sir Day was departing and Fair Night was about to arrive. Yael came for her lesson. Hemdat did not hear her. His bowed head was wreathed in shadow. He felt dull, and all he could think of was a lone cow standing in a field.

What was on his mind? Yael stood there saying nothing. She was thinking of the evenings in the town where she grew up. It was more of a forest than a town, and the whole summer had been one long frolic, every tree a maypole. But as soon as summer ended, so did the good times. The forest grew ever so dreary and sunken in snow. If a boy and girl went off into it, their voices were heard from afar and their footprints stood out in the snow.

Yael felt a flush. She wanted to take Hemdat’s head in her warm arms and hold it tightly. He had such fine hair. She thought of her own gorgeous head of rich hair with its auburn braids that had been like nothing else. Her friends could have told you about that hair. “Just imagine what it must do to a man,” they said, staring at it, “if that’s what it does to us.”

Hemdat’s eyes felt moist. Softly his hand grazed her short hair. Though he had never seen it long, he had heard of it. It had glowed like chestnuts half in shade and half in sunlight. Her old friends had burst into tears when she cut it because of the typhus. One, who was no longer even on good terms with her, woke from a dream crying out, “Oh, no, they’re cutting Yael’s hair!”

Hemdat sat up and looked at her like a man waking from his sleep. “Is that you, Yael?” he asked. She should forgive him for not having noticed her. Although this was an odd way of putting it, since he had just touched her hair, he was not conscious of telling a lie.

“Have you been here long?” he asked, rising in his confusion to offer her his chair while at the same time pointing to the divan. Yael retreated a step but did not leave. Even though she knew that he would rather be alone, she sat down. In fact, she sat down beside him on the divan.

Hemdat did not light the lamp as usual and sat with her in the dark. How afraid she once had been of him! But she was not anymore. They sat half-touching, and when the other half touched she took his head in her hands. He was so close that she could have bitten off the lock of hair on his forehead. What did he need it for? “What a fantastical idea,” laughed Hemdat loudly. “Go ahead and try.”

Yael leaned forward and bit off Hemdat’s hair. He had never laughed so hard in his life. What a she-devil she was, this quiet, sedate young lady! It was incredible. Who would have thought she had such spunk? He would never have believed it if he hadn’t felt it with his own head.

Although he had spent long hours with her, it only now struck him that she deserved a closer look. She was — with her green eyes, green hat, and green jersey — a living, breathing emerald. It thrilled him to see her so wild and full of life and youth. He gave her hand a friendly squeeze.

She looked at him and said, “I know why you did that.”

“You do?” he asked with a smile.

“I suppose you think I haven’t read my Forel. A handshake is a sexual release.” Hemdat beamed at her lovely innocence. Let him meet the cads who spread stories about her and he would tear them to shreds.

What a shame time couldn’t stand still. It was getting late. Yael rose to go. It was past her bedtime. Hemdat took his hat and set out to walk her home.

In the tender moonlight, the sand stretched for miles all around. The eucalyptus trees by the railroad tracks gave off a good smell, their branches whispering the heart’s language in the wind. The surf sounded far away, and the bells of a departing caravan chimed to the singing of the camel drivers. Nothing stirred in the world without Hemdat seeing or hearing it. He had a sharp eye. How many times have you passed the tree poking through the wall of the garden near his house without noticing that it was whitewashed? Not Hemdat. It was a clever joke on someone’s part to paint it white, as though that were its true color. You can’t fool me, he thought, because I know what I’m looking at. He walked Yael home and headed back.

3

She lived in one room with her friend Pnina. Hemdat had never been there. One Saturday night Pizmoni talked him into going. Disorder reigned everywhere. All kinds of things lay untidily about, one on top of another, as if thumbing their noses at their owners. A few young men were sitting around. It was a Saturday and they had had the day off.

Dorban, the poet who had trekked the length and breadth of Palestine, was ridiculing the latest Hebrew poetry. Anyone who had heard the music of camel steps in a howling sandstorm could tell you that all that was written nowadays sounded like a creaky door. Dorban’s meters were based on camel steps. You had to have heard them to appreciate his verse.

Seated opposite him was fat Gurishkin. Gurishkin had a bushy, waxed black mustache tilting up at the ends that he resisted the temptation to twirl by ordering his hand to rub his forehead instead, which gave him a philosophical look. His eyes were red from hauling sand to building sites by day and writing his autobiography by night. Not that it was a major work yet, since he was young and hadn’t lived much, but it would be by the time he was finished. Gurishkin thought so far ahead that he had trouble keeping up with himself.

Gurishkin was no poet, and his imagination was not his strong suit. From time to time, he turned to look at Pnina. Pnina had a high opinion of him, but she never fell in love with her opinions. He was too big and fat. Not even his being a writer, that most spiritual of occupations, could make him less so.

Shammai was there too. Shammai was neither a poet like Dorban nor a workingman like Gurishkin but a student at the American College in Beirut. However, he thought highly of both poetry and work, having learned to admire them as a child from the Hebrew primers used by his teachers.

Apart from these three, several other young men were having an argument, gusting windily from politics to art to literature to the Hebrew press to the Ninth Zionist Congress and its consequences. Hemdat sat without joining them, alone with his thoughts. Now and then he glanced at Yael’s bed, which was made of a board and some oil cans. It looked more like an instrument of torture than something to rest on.

After the argument they sat around chatting. Pizmoni joked with Pnina, and Shammai with Yael. Shammai spat into a cracked pail, then looked at it and said, “Of course, I could be wrong.” Soon another argument broke out and lasted until everyone was hoarse. “How about a glass of tea?” Dorban asked. When he wasn’t trekking through the desert, he liked his creature comforts. “With pleasure,” said Yael and Pnina in one breath. Pnina lit the battered oil burner and Yael poured water in a kettle while Hemdat watched. Unless he imagined it, she took the water from the pail Shammai spat in. The smoke was too much for him.

Hemdat sat on an empty crate near the window, a wallflower in a garden of words. He had a headache and hoped the fresh air would help. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Hemdat,” said Yael, “you’ll get a concussion from pressing your head against that window.” The kettle began to boil. Pnina grabbed a handful of tea leaves and tossed them in. Presto, tea!

“And sugar too,” said Yael from her heights. Hemdat sipped his tea. He could not help thinking that he was drinking someone’s spittle. When he was done he put the empty glass on the shaky table. “More?” asked Pnina. Hemdat shook his head and said, “No.” He sat there silently, answering any questions as though at gunpoint. Words did not come easily to him. He knew he was not clever or witty like the others, and he had no desire to be. In the end they fell flat beneath their own jokes, blank and burdened by weariness. How he yearned for a face that was free, for friends who did not peck at life’s slops, who dreamed in the pallor of morning and saw through the noonday sun and ate the bread of unworriedness and spoke of themselves without banter! He threw an involuntary glance at the two girls sitting arm-in-arm on the edge of the bed: Pnina, so good and pure-faced, with her pretty tresses that bored him to tears, and dewier-but-just-as dull Yael. He rose and left.

Jaffa and its little houses stood soundlessly half-sunken in sand. Except for Hemdat, the town had gone to sleep. He walked on and on, his head heavy as a stone yet empty of all thought. He did not love her: he had told himself that a hundred times. He was bound to her by pity. She was misfortune’s child and he worried for her like a father for his daughter. He had never once touched her. She did not even excite him. How did he know what she would do if he tried kissing her? He liked to look at her, that was all. It had nothing to do with the lures of sex.

On his way he met Mrs. Ilonit. Mrs. Ilonit was happy to see him, because she had gone out for a walk and was afraid to be alone. She didn’t know what had possessed her to go out by herself in the middle of the night. Suppose she ran into an Arab. They were a loathsome people.

Mrs. Ilonit shook Hemdat’s hand. Her thumb rested on his pulse. How happy she was to see him! They hadn’t met in ages. Since the day of her visit, in fact. Hemdat had gone out that day because the cleaning woman had come, and as he was returning toward evening he met Mrs. Ilonit, who decided to walk him home. His room was a shambles. The table had been moved, and the washbowl left on top of it was full of books. Nothing was in its right place and there was nowhere to sit except the bed, on which a pair of his pants sprawled with its legs sticking out. He couldn’t find the lamp or even a candle. The damned little Yemenite had mixed everything up. They were fine at scrubbing and scraping, the Yemenite girls, but they never put anything back. Hemdat lit a match that went out and another that did the same. The room looked as big as a dance hall. “Shall we dance, Mr. Hemdat?” asked Mrs. Ilonit, taking him in her arms. Before he could answer she was waltzing him around. Suddenly she stopped and picked up the pants on the bed. “If I ever have to play a man on stage,” she said, “you can lend me these.” He was lucky he was a man. What woman could take the liberties with him that she took with him? Mrs. Ilonit clutched his arm. How dark it was getting. She couldn’t see a thing. Was that him? “Here, let me feel you.” My goodness, she had stumbled right into his arms. Hemdat backed disgustedly away.

Yael, lovelier than ever, came to see Hemdat. She was not alone. Shammai came too. “I won’t be a bother,” he said, and Yael swore that he never was. In any case, it was the Lord’s Sabbath and she hadn’t come for a lesson. Shammai looked around and spied a full bottle of wine. “Wine, wine, I am overcome by wine,” he cried biblically. He took the bottle and Hemdat gave him a glass. “You shouldn’t,” Yael said with a smile. “He’s still a baby and much too young to drink. I would have thought you’d prefer brandy. There was a lady back home who drank brandy all the time. She was born with a glass in her mouth. She said it was good for toothache and her teeth always ached. The funny part was that she never got drunk. She knew how to hold her liquor. Why don’t we go out for a walk?” Hemdat put on his hat and coat, and went for a walk with them.

They walked along the railroad tracks. The walls of Emek Refaim rose on either side of them, two green mattresses of fragrant grass. The tracks gleamed on their wooden ties as though polished. Shammai really was a baby. Suddenly he had a notion to walk on the tracks. Yael had to hold his hand to keep him from falling. Hemdat followed dotingly behind them. They both looked like babies now. Yael raised Shammai’s hand and said, “Your hands are so gross, Shammai. Hemdat’s hands are as smooth and pretty as a girl’s. I do believe that Mr. Hemdat is giving a lecture at the public library tonight. What will you say, Mr. Hemdat? I mean, what will your lecture be about?”

“The stories of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav,” answered Hemdat in a whisper.

“I’ll be there to clap for you. Shammai, you have the perfect hands for a standing ovation.” Yael clapped her hands and said, “I’m just warming up. Wait until tonight. You better be there, Shammai. Oh, my, look how late it is.” Hemdat gave a start. He had almost forgotten that the Mushalams were back in town and that he had promised to drop in on them.

Hemdat couldn’t say what drew him to the Mushalams. Before their marriage he had not been especially close to either of them. Not that it wasn’t nice to spend time in a tasteful house, even if it was lived in by newlyweds. Shoshanna Mushalam understood him. Unlike some people, she didn’t think he had fallen for Yael Hayyut, and the apples she served were immaculately peeled and never came with bits of skin or knife mold. Shoshanna liked the early plays of Ibsen. It wasn’t fair that Norway had all those mountains and glaciers when here there was nothing but a bit of sea beyond the flat roofs of the houses and a lot of pushy women playing Florence Nightingale. “That’s all there is. Oh, look, the sun is going down. I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous. I wouldn’t leave this place for the world. Happiness for me is going out to my backyard and seeing all the fig trees and dates. It’s beyond me how Mrs. Ilonit goes around complaining all the time. Why, it’s paradise here! Hemdat, look at all those shooting stars. Someone should give the sky a hanky. When did you last see Yaelchi? I mean Yael Hayyut. How is she? Such a lovely person. I can’t believe you’ll end up living here, Hemdat. You’ll go abroad. You’re always welcome to stay with us when you come back, though. Tell me, do you think those frames suit the paintings?”

“Of course, of course,” Hemdat nodded automatically. He even found things to praise on his own. The furniture and the house matched perfectly. So did the flowers and the flowerpots. The Mushalams’ home smelled of flowers all year long.

Although Mrs. Mushalam was happy to hear nice things about her house, she had too much to say to have time to listen. “Really?” she said and was off again. It was a miracle she had found those flowers. She was on her way to the souk when she saw a little Arab holding them. “Ma’am, ma’am,” said the Arab, “buy my flowers.” And so she did. “Would you like a glass of water, or some juice? Yael Hayyut loves this juice. Aren’t those flowers just bursting with life? O my sweet little darlings!”

Mrs. Mushalam removed her head from the flowers and said to her husband, “Why didn’t you tell Hemdat that you read his story ‘The Shattered Soul’? Hemdat, I must know if it’s about you. I can’t believe that your father really walks around with a hasidic fur hat. Here, this flower is a present for you. You can give it to Yael Hayyut. Just don’t abscond with it. My spies are everywhere.”

Yael Hayyut had never brought him flowers. She couldn’t afford them. Once, when a rose fell off her hat, she picked it up and stuck it in the Rembrandt. Although roses were not in season at the time and this one was not real, Hemdat was pleased by the gift. From each according to her ability.

4

Hemdat lay on the divan. Usually Yael arrived between five and six, but today she was late again. She would do him a favor if she didn’t come at all. He needed to work and she wasn’t letting him. She was taking up all his time. Perhaps he should stop tutoring her.

A gust of wind caught the papers on the table and sent them flying in all directions while riffling the green blotter. Hemdat remained seated. He had a feeling of foreboding. The sky had grown dark. Where was she? Just when he needed her, she hadn’t come. His nights would be forlorn without her. There were days when he had to force himself to rise and only bothered to wash because of her. It was six o’clock and still no sign of her.

The wind was blowing harder. A storm was brewing. The street lamps sputtered in vain against the darkness. Swirls of dust spiraled upward, spiraling swirls of gritty dust. His hat nearly flew off his head. What was he doing out in a sandstorm? He began to run down the dark, narrow streets. The sand clung to his feet and lashed his face. He prayed he would make it to Yael’s room.

Yael was not in. A small, smoky lamp gave off a dim light. When Pnina turned up the wick, which cast its sickly glare on Hemdat, the flame grew even weaker.

“Where’s Yael?” Hemdat asked, looking down to hide his face.

Pnina looked down to hide the fact that she knew what it looked like. “She went to see her mother and stayed. Her bad arm is acting up and the doctor wants to keep her in the hospital.”

Suppose it was blood poisoning and they had to amputate? The thought of her lovely body without an arm! He felt overcome by sorrow, but even though he wanted to, he could not cry. He went back to his room and lit the lamp. The night seemed endless. He did not do a single thing he had planned to do, and what he did would better have been left undone.

Pizmoni whistled as he climbed the front steps. He was coming from the hospital, where he had just seen Yael. There was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t serious. Tomorrow or the day after, she would come home. After leaving the hospital he had decided to take a walk. What a lovely night it had turned out to be. An hour ago it was blowing like the devil, and now just look at the sky. That was Palestine for you! That was Pizmoni too: one minute with Yael in the hospital and the next minute here. He was in high spirits. A few days ago he had published his poem “The Song of the Strong,” which was a new voice in Hebrew literature. Now he had made up his mind to go abroad. A poet without an education was like a candle without a wick. Next summer he planned to start at a European university.

Hemdat enjoyed their walk. The night glowed darkly. A light breeze blew good smells from the wet sand, and the sea murmured in the stillness. The conversation flowed. Pizmoni knew more about the oddest things than all your uncles and cousins combined. I don’t know if Yael ever told you what made her come to Palestine, but Pizmoni knew the whole story. What happened was that a friend of hers in Russia had been arrested for subversive activities. When his house was searched, a letter from Yael was found, and although there was nothing against the government in it, she was thrown into jail with a lot of revolutionaries. It cost her father a pretty penny to get her out, and since the police kept following her even then, it was decided to send her to Palestine. Soon afterward her father lost his money and died in poverty, and the shame was so great that her mother packed her things and set out to join Yael. She had barely recovered from the voyage when she fell ill and had to be hospitalized.

Ah, wasn’t it the loveliest night! You could walk forever and never tire of the murmur of the sea and the smell of the sand. And what in the whole world tasted better than the salt on your lips? If Pizmoni hadn’t needed his sleep, Hemdat could have strolled with him all night.

The next day he put off going to the hospital. The hours passed in sleep. He wrote nothing new and revised nothing old. After parting from Pizmoni, he had stood looking out the window until the sunrise filled his room with light. Now he found himself at the gate of the hospital. Visiting hours were over, but the good-natured attendant let him in.

Outside the ward he found Gurishkin, who had come to see Yael too. Gurishkin was putting his time to good use, for he would have a few pages to add to his autobiography when he sat down later that night by his dim lamp. Although the hospital was a Jewish institution and deserved the public’s support, it was so poor that it stood empty most of the year despite the illness going around. Whoever was sick had to go to the Christian hospital and pay ten francs for the pleasure of being preached at.

Yael lay in a bed spread with white sheets, her heavy body rumpling the bedclothes. Her hospital smock gave her an odd look. It was hard to say if she looked happy or sad, but she was glad to be lying in a real bed in a clean room and to be brought her meals without lifting a finger. Even when he stared down at the legs of her bed, Hemdat saw her image before him. So she would look when she gave birth. And that, Hemdat, was the most peculiar thought you ever had in your life.

Hemdat was sure that Yael would marry someone rich. She was not made for drudgery. One day, gaunt from suffering, he would return from afar and come see her. A swarm of children would greet him in the yard and run to their mother’s arms. “It’s a stranger, Ima,” they would say. “Why, it’s Hemdat,” Yael would exclaim, jumping with joy. In the evening her husband would come home from work and sit down to eat with them. Hemdat would be far too frail to arouse his envy.

He was on his way to the hospital again when he was told that Yael had been released. She was planning to leave for Jerusalem the next day. It seemed that she needed a minor operation, and Mrs. Mushalam was going with her. Mrs. Mushalam had to go to Jerusalem to buy inlaid furniture from Damascus.

How would Yael pay for the trip? Hemdat felt his pocket. There was nothing in it, but he was owed some money by Dr. Pikchin. Dr. Pikchin was a leader of the Jewish community and Hemdat had served as his secretary. When he found him, he said:

“Doctor, I would appreciate it if you could give the money you owe me to Yael Hayyut.”

Dr. Pikchin puffed silently on his pipe.

“You can tell her, Doctor,” said Hemdat, who had to walk fast to keep up with him, “that the hospital is paying for her treatment. She doesn’t have to know where the money came from. Have you heard that Efrati is back from Europe? They say that he did a lot for this country when he lived here.”

Dr. Pikchin took his pipe from his mouth and said, “Everyone who comes back from abroad thinks he’s done a lot for Jewish settlement.”

“But he really did,” said Hemdat eagerly. “When I was abroad I heard of him too.”

Dr. Pikchin put his pipe back in his mouth and said, “Everyone who comes back from Europe says that he did a lot for this country.”

“I was just making conversation,” said Hemdat, his eagerness gone.

Hemdat ran into Yael. He was happy to hear she was all right. Yael gave him her cold hand to shake. She looked well but distracted. “Why don’t we buy a herring,” she said as they stood in the street.

Hemdat was glad that they had met, and that she wanted to eat with him, and that his room was nearby. She climbed the stairs to it with stately steps. He lit the lamp and set the table. There was butter and honey and jam. Who wanted jam, though? Yael was set on herring. She never ate preserves. Herring was what she craved.

The green-globed lamp gave off a tender light. On the green tinted walls the pots and pans gleamed larger than life. Shadow rubbed against shadow and pot against pan. Hemdat sat eating with Yael. Their shadows danced on the walls, barely touching. Yael poured Hemdat tea. “Why don’t you drink your tea?” she asked. “Or didn’t I pour you any?”

“You did,” he said.

Yael said, “I’ll bet you’re afraid to gain weight and spoil your good looks. Is that it, Mr. Hemdat?”

Hemdat smiled and said nothing. Yael thought that writers never stayed good-looking for long. Their chests collapsed from sitting so much and their hair fell out from too many thoughts. Each time Hemdat spoke, his face clouded with romantic anguish. It was as though he were in one place and his mind in another. What was he thinking? “Thinking?” he said. “I was thinking how many hankies you need for one snotty nose.” Writers could be a vulgar lot.

Yael was tired and stretched out on the divan. Hemdat offered her a pillow. She asked him to sit next to her and ran her hand along the wall. Back when her hair had been long, there had been a nail over her bed. She had slept on her side with her hair wrapped around it and her mother had woken her by undoing it and laying it on the pillow by her head. Everyone said it would grow back.

Yael lay on the divan. “Poets lose their hair on top,” she said, “and philosophers in front. Some men are so bald that they don’t have a single hair left.” There was a man in Dostoevsky with hair on his teeth, but Yael had her doubts about that. “I’ll bet he made it up,” she said. How could anyone have hair on his teeth? However, she also had doubts about her doubts, because her best friend Pnina had a dark white spot right over her heart.

Hemdat’s room was agreeably restful. Yael lay on the divan and Hemdat sat by her side. She opened her eyes, and when their eyes met both turned red as if a blush had passed between them. Hemdat rose determinedly and went to open a window to keep his flushed cheeks from being seen. The lamplight trembled. He hastened to trim the wick. The night blew sweetly through the open window. One summer Yael had spent moonlit nights like these in the lean-to of a field guard in the vineyards of Rehovot. Night cloaked the earth and the foxes barked and the wind blew through the vines and Pizmoni told legends of long ago on a straw mat in the vineyards of Rehovot.

“Tell me a story,” Yael said to Hemdat. “Tell me something you remember.” Right away she forgot what she had asked him and began telling him how hard her first days in Jaffa had been, when she lay ill by herself in a rented room until she was taken to the hospital.

Hemdat covered his eyes to hide his tears and a tear tumbled onto his fingers. How sorry he felt for her and how happy that she was telling him all this. Her eyes shone serenely in dark, green-tinted repose. Calmly she showed him the scar on her arm. The same arm that deserved to be covered with kisses bore the scrawl of a scar. Thank God she was going to Jerusalem, where there was a good hospital for her to get treatment.

Yael glanced at him and said, “Who knows when we’ll see each other again? I want you to tell me something.”

“And what, my child,” asked Hemdat with a smile, “is that?”

Yael ran a hand over her hair. “What are you?”

Hemdat did not answer.

Yael pouted indignantly and said, “I’m not asking if you’re a Zionist or a communist or anything like that. When I was a girl I had a friend who wrote in my class yearbook: ‘Our lives are as pointless as a dead tree.’ Isn’t that a nice way of putting it? He used to say, ‘I don’t care what party you belong to, I care what you are.’ What are you?”

“Me?” said Hemdat, letting his head fall back. “I’m a sleeping prince whose true love puts him back to sleep. I’m love’s beggar walking around with love in a torn old bag.”

5

Yael was still in Jerusalem, and Hemdat puttered about busy Jaffa. What was he doing there? What had brought him to this place? He twisted and turned inside himself, his torment unremitting. He was as lost on the dark plain of time as a solitary groan or a faded spark. His shadow marched before him beneath a profuse sun, up and down winding streets without a blade of grass to relieve their harsh lines. How small it was and what tiny legs it had. A man’s foot could cover the lower half of it.

Behind him, like a solid mirror, was the life he had lived, sunk in the doldrums of melancholy. And as in a mirror, he saw the days ahead, without change or the prospect of change. There was nothing to see but the endless, oppressive emptiness of a mirror reflected in a mirror. He wanted to cry and vent his sorrow, but the sun would have dried his unshed tears. Hope alone kept him going. The black mood would pass, he told himself. He would sleep for twenty-four hours, take a hot bath, and emerge a new man.

He longed for it to be winter. A cold wind would blow, the sea would pound, and he would rise cheerful and fit from a delicious sleep beneath warm blankets. Then would come days in which he would write his great novel. The kettle would boil and hot coffee would froth in his cup. In the garden the citron would flower beneath a brilliant moon, its branches dripping fragrance. The starry sky would sweeten the soft silence and Hemdat would pour the dew of his soul into the sea-blue night.

A caravan of camels plodded by, four-legged porters carrying twice their weight. Behind them came their driver, a two-legged camel crooning to Allah for strength. People passed, among them Mrs. Ilonit. A dentist drove by in a carriage and the coachman cried, “Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! Twelve bishliks a tooth, teeth pulled for twelve bishliks!” Men and women crowded around, and the dentist pulled their teeth.

The souk was teeming. Arabs stood selling cold drinks on crates filled with bottles and glasses. Here and there a white Panama hat gleamed amid the forest of red fezes. Shopkeepers sat in front of their shops, hawking bolts of fabric and colorful clothes in loud voices. Greek vendors hunched over their coals and spits of meat. A big beefsteak draped with gold tinsel hung before a butcher shop, glittering brightly despite the bugs and flies swarming over it. An old Arab straddled a basket of bananas, peeling them unhurriedly for customers who stood spitting out the seeds. Sailors from all over strutted with outthrust chests as if to embrace every female that their hungry eyes devoured. A semicircle of squatting women sold cut flowers and wild lilies.

Everyone was busy but Hemdat, alone in his own hapless world. I can’t simply do nothing, he told himself. I had better go see Pikchin. Perhaps he’ll give me some work or have news of Yael. There were two bishliks left in his pocket. He bought a bunch of roses with one and looked around for a shoeshine man. Two ran for Hemdat’s shoes and started to fight over them. One took his shoeshine stand and hurled it at the other’s head. While the blood was running down the second man’s face, a third came along and grabbed Hemdat’s feet. Hemdat threw him his last coin, and the man let out a whistle and scampered off with it.

Everyone, everyone, thought Hemdat self-improvingly, is doing something. How could he remain idle, faced with such a spirit of enterprise? He wanted to work, to accomplish. He would make lots of money before Yael returned to Jaffa. He had been a fool to throwaway a good job.

Hemdat entered Pikchin’s office just as an armless man was carried in and laid on the couch in the waiting room, like a broken wagon wheel waiting to be fixed. Hemdat sat without moving, embarrassed to have the full use of his limbs. He crossed his legs and looked out to sea. A southbound ship was making for the harbor. Soon it would anchor with another group of immigrants, new faces with new hopes and the same old problems.

Dr. Pikchin attended to the amputee and then sat down with Hemdat and dictated a few letters. Hemdat reached home exhausted. His head ached and he could barely move his legs. Yet even when he flopped down weakly on his bed and fell asleep, his nerves kept crawling like worms. Something was the matter with his brain. Perhaps it needed to be pulled by a dentist. He sat upright in bed, terrified of going mad. What would become of him? One morning he would awake to find that he was out of his mind.

Although Hemdat came on his father’s side from a distinguished old family, its vital force had run down in him, its last hope. Of course, he was young and had hardly lived yet. But did not Rabbi Nahman say that some people had lived more by the age of eighteen than others at seventy?

Hemdat thought of a pretty cousin of his who also had rebelled and left home. She had had a lovely voice and wanted to be a singer, and when her parents objected she ran away to Vienna and got along there on nothing, studying as much and eating as little as she could while waiting for the day she could support herself. Yet her dreams proved greater than her strength, which soon gave out, so that on the night of her debut before a large audience blood spurted from her mouth with the first note. Her parents came to take her home and plied her with doctors and drugs, and now, her lovely voice stilled, she never left her bed. Her brain had been affected too, and she lay wrapped in white in a white room with white walls and white rugs. All this whiteness was reflected in a large mirror, and if a doctor happened to bring her red roses, she sprinkled them with white powder while gazing off into dim space.

Once, as darkness was falling, Hemdat came to visit her. At first, although her eyes clung to him, she did not know who he was. Then she rose from her bed, spread her long, cold fingers, and ran them over his face. “Hemdat,” she said.

Hemdat jumped to his feet. He was certain that Yael Hayyut had called him. In this he was greatly mistaken, for he had imagined it. Grieving, he lay down again.

Hemdat lay in bed, his heart wide awake. Pikchin has nothing for you? Then sit down at your desk and get to work. You wanted to translate Jacobsen’s Niels Lyhne? Then do. He rose to get some paper and a new pen nib. The old nib was rusty. That was as far as he got. Still, it was a start.

Every morning Hemdat stepped out onto his terrace and gazed down at the railroad tracks in Emek Refaim. They gleamed as though polished. The train passed twice a day. Yael Hayyut would be on it and look out the window at him. “Hello, hello!” she would call. He secretly dreamed of a warm kiss. Yael would come and find him hard at work, and his chaste lips would linger on her pretty face. Though he was no longer the Don Juan he once had been, her calm mien stirred a longing for the pure elixir of a kiss. Someday, when he was already an old man, such pleasures would be his by right. He knew that Yael had been kissed before, but each kiss was holy to her and no man had profaned her face.

Hemdat got nowhere with his work. The sun beat down, its flat rays stinging like gnats and sapping his will. It was too hot, his heart was too inflamed, to get anything done. He remembered the days when his soul dripped its leafy dew on the tender buds of his poems while coffee sputtered on the alcohol stove. He wanted them back again and went to light the stove. Hemdat drank coffee like water. Black coffee must be running in his veins.

For hours, his eyes open and his mind blank, he lay on the divan without boredom. Weary was what he was, with a harsh, prolonged weariness. Oh, Lord, he said aloud, annoyed by the languor of his voice. Oh, Lord, where can I find rest. He lay without moving hand or foot, like a man about to be flogged. He heard the rumble of a train. It whistled as it approached.

A frightening shriek tore the silence. The train rushed by and was gone, leaving behind a slanting corkscrew of dark blue smoke.

“Yael!” cried Hemdat, jumping to his feet. Quickly he tidied up, did the dishes, spread the table with new wax paper, washed, put on fresh clothes, and sat down. His body came to life, his fingers sapient. The pen began to move, distributing letters over the page that joined into words, lines, sentences. I do believe the translation went well.

The hours went by and Yael did not come. Hemdat feared he had been wrong. Perhaps she had not been on the train after all. He had not seen her face, only a green coat. Could she already be wearing winter clothes? What would his landlord’s daughters say? The dowdy guests our tenant has! He had made a mistake. It was not Yael. Her face had been turned away from him. Surely she would not have ridden by in the train without a glance at his room.

Yael was back. She had not been seen looking so well since she arrived from Russia. Hemdat wondered if her hair had grown. You’ll find out when you see her tomorrow or the day after, he told himself, having heard from Pnina that she would come then. She had first gone to visit her mother in Rehovot. Yael’s mother was going back to Russia. An old woman like her was not meant for Palestine, nor was the country meant for her. Once, when Jews were more stalwart, coming to live out one’s last years in the Land of Israel had been the thing to do, but nowadays no punishment was harder. The sky dripped sweat, the earth brimmed dust, and a person did not last long. Even the food was not fit to eat. Whatever Yael’s mother ate went straight to her kidneys.

Hemdat, however, did not spend his time thinking about old people in the Land of Israel. He was twenty-two years old, Hemdat was, and not overly concerned with his digestion. If he had a bishlik he bought some bread, and if he had another, some figs, dates, or olives to go with it. “A land wherein you will eat bread without scarcity,” the Bible called it, and it had everything anyone could want. If you have any doubts about that, just count the treats that Hemdat bought for Yael.

Every morning after rising he cleaned his room — in fact, sometimes every minute. He changed his clothes each day and glanced often at the glass frame of the picture — that is, in case you have forgotten, at Rembrandt’s Bride and Groom. His room was spic-and-span, the table was freshly covered, and everything smelled good. He even scrubbed the floor all by himself. There was reason to suspect that he did it with eucalyptus water.

Having accomplished all this, Hemdat sat down at the table, picked up his pen, and guided it across the paper. How fine the tiny letters looked on the white page! Besides the page in front of him, two or three blank ones were laid on the edge of the table. Every few minutes he rose to open or close the window. Although he liked the breeze blowing through it, he also liked the quiet when it was shut, and since it was hard to decide, he kept changing his mind. Meanwhile, he heard Yael’s voice. Hemdat ran to the window. Yael was standing below. She had only a minute.

“Why don’t you come up,” he called down.

“Why won’t you come down,” she called up.

“Come,” said Hemdat.

“I can’t,” said Yael. “I have no time.”

Hemdat glanced back at his room as he started down the stairs. Bright and shiny though it was, it looked in mourning.

6

She came that evening. Hemdat met her in the yard. He held out his hand to her and said, “Come. Let’s go to my room.”

“Why?” asked Yael. “We could take a walk.”

They walked awhile, and Hemdat asked, “Why didn’t you write me from Jerusalem?”

“I didn’t think you would answer,” Yael said. And when he looked at her in silence, she added, “Pizmoni’s gone.”

“Where is he?”

“At some university.”

“What is he studying?”

“Zoology,” said Yael. “He should have chosen botany.” She would write him a long letter if she knew his address. Though, of course, he might not answer.

Hemdat broke his silence and began to talk. He hadn’t talked so much since the day he swore off women. It was unwise of him to let Yael know how he had longed for such a conversation. The more things he told her, the more trivial, even illogical, she became. At first, she said, she had found him insufferable. There had been something ridiculous about him. A woman passing in the street could make him blush. She would be a happy person if she knew Hebrew. That was her one desire.

Hemdat knew it was just chitchat, but he listened and was sorry when they parted. Before that, they came to a dune called the Hill of Love. Yael’s tall figure reached it first. Hemdat trailed behind her. He hadn’t kept a thing from her. He swung his arms limply, nothing left to say.

The dune was a lovely place on which to sit at night. The sand was dry and fragrant. Hemdat bent and scooped up a handful of it and they sat together on a little hillock. The words trickled a while longer from the wellspring of his heart and stopped. His right hand played with the sand, squeezing the gritty grains between his fingers and letting them run out. His hands felt cold. A breeze blew from the sea. Hemdat made a half-fist and placed it over his mouth like an empty clam shell. Yael glanced at him and said, “Why are you growing a beard? You look better without it. Something is digging into me. Oh, it’s the key.” She took the key to her room and handed it to Hemdat. Hemdat stuck it in his pocket.

All at once Yael rose. “Home!” she said. Hemdat walked her back and handed her the key. Yael opened the door and shut it from within. Hemdat’s pocket was empty. For a while he stood on the front stoop. He had thought she would turn around to say goodnight. Her firm footsteps rang in his ears. Hemdat smiled mockingly at himself and at his hopes, and went home.

* * *

Once she had come all the time, every evening of the week and twice on Saturdays, and now she had vanished.

“Why don’t you come anymore?” Hemdat asked Yael when he met her in the souk.

“I don’t want to keep you from your work,” Yael said. He had to work. The Mushalams had asked her what he lived off.

Yael Hayyut found an easy job overseeing the woman workers in a small fabrics factory. Hemdat talked to the manager, who agreed to hire her. Yael would make twenty-five francs a month, perhaps even thirty. “To tell you the truth,” said the manager, “I’m overpaying her at fifteen, but who can say no to a poet waxing eloquent?” Yael Hayyut had to pinch herself. She could rent a better room and buy a stove to cook on. She had already ruined her digestion. She thanked Hemdat for his efforts.

Hemdat went to get his hair cut. On the faded sign outside the barbershop was a man with a towel around his neck sitting in front of a barber. A small girl walked by, spat naughtily at the man, and ran off. Hemdat asked for a shave and a haircut. He was happy to have done Yael a good turn. The barber noticed his good mood and delivered a poetic speech about authors, who would sooner style their hair than their prose and cut their long locks than a word from their books. The scissors clicked and the barber’s eyes peered shrewdly out from a sea of hair to see what impression he was making. Hemdat was looking at his own hair, which lay scattered on the floor. “Right you are, old man,” said the barber. “The crown of your head’s on the ground to be tread.” When the barber was done, Hemdat looked in the mirror and saw his smooth, naked skull instead of his rich chestnut hair. He nodded and said, “There’s nothing like a change.”

That evening he went to see Yael Hayyut. The sight of what Hemdat had done to his beautiful hair nearly drove Yael crazy. His head came to a funny point. It was like a stand without a use. Hemdat took Yael’s hand. Back in Europe he had taken his little sister’s hand after shaving and run it over his cheek. “Ouch!” she had cried.

What more shall we tell you about Hemdat? All would have gone well with him had only it gone well with Yael Hayyut. Yael had a new worry. She had barely recovered before her arm got worse again. It wasn’t the future that troubled her, it was the past that wouldn’t go away. Yael had poor circulation and lived in fear of blood poisoning, and the slightest pain made her afraid that the arm would have to be amputated. Hemdat prayed for her health as though for a king’s. He brought her milk and medicines, and sat by her bed all day. “Yael’s brother,” he was called by the children in the neighborhood, and he bore the name with pride. An angelic soul, said the neighbors, which made him blush and bow his head. His alcohol stove had been thoroughly ruined by Yael, but she was getting better and soon was out of bed again.

Hemdat tidied up his room and went to see Yael. On the way he met an elder colleague. It was kind of the elder colleague to walk Hemdat to Yael, since it was Hemdat’s friendship with her that had caused him to stop seeing Hemdat — for Hemdat, thought his colleague, was spending too much time with Yael and not enough on his work. How pleased Yael would be to be visited by a famous author. She would tell all her friends that a famous author had been to see her.

The more was the pity, then, that Yael was not home. Tomorrow, thought Hemdat, she’ll come to see me. But she did not.

Hemdat ran into Yael in the street and asked her why she hadn’t come. She had wanted to, she said. Her room was like an oven. There was so little air that not a feather stirred in her torn pillow. “Then why didn’t you come?” asked Hemdat. “I was embarrassed,” said Yael, “because I don’t have a good dress.”

Next he met Mrs. Mushalam. Breezy Mrs. Mushalam was happy to see him. Dorban walked doubled over by her side, his hands gripping the ends of a rope. Although his meters were based on camel steps, he looked like anyone else beneath a load. Mrs. Mushalam had bought her husband the complete Brockhaus for his birthday, and Mr. Dorban had been kind enough to lend a hand. It wasn’t the latest edition, but you could hardly tell the difference. An encyclopedia was an encyclopedia. Of course, each edition had something new, but in Palestine one learned to make do. You could find everything in it from Chrysanthemums to Vasco da Gama. Reading an encyclopedia was like taking a tour around the world. She had already learned that Wasserman’s Caspar Hauser was based on a story from real life. “But why,” said Mrs. Mushalam, “should I even be talking to a man who hasn’t come to see my new furniture from Jerusalem? Didn’t Yael tell you about the inlaid furniture that I bought?” She held out a bouquet of roses and said, “Here, smell this rose.”

Hemdat apologized. “I’ve been meaning to come,” he said, “especially since there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Mrs. Mushalam pulled a rose stem from the bouquet as if reading his thoughts.

Hemdat buried his face in the rose. “When Yael’s mother left,” he said, “she gave me money for Yael to buy fabric for a dress. Yael can sew it herself.” It was Hemdat’s misfortune that he always blushed when he lied, but Mrs. Mushalam was a kind heart and did not hold it against him. “You needn’t tell Yael who gave it to you,” Hemdat said. “Any story will be fine. What a surprise it will be when she comes around in a new dress.”

Hemdat jumped back and rubbed his forehead. He had been stung by a bee. No, it was only a thorn. “The Revenge of the Rose,” said Mrs. Mushalam, laughing.

Although Hemdat did not know what fabric Yael would buy, he tried picturing her in her new dress. And if it is possible to picture a scent, he imagined that too. All day long he waited for her to come. But she did not. What was keeping her? Surely not the lack of a dress. Toward evening he left his room for the first time. What had he done at home all day? He had waited for Yael. And why had he not gone to see her? Because he had cleaned his room for her and wanted to share its intimacy with her. Now that his hopes had waned with the day, he stepped out.

Sandy Jaffa was at rest. The whole town had gone to walk by the sea. Hemdat strolled among the mounds of sand. A sound of singing came from some houses. Old Jews were sitting over the Sabbath’s last meal and singing the Sabbath’s last hymns. Hemdat felt a twinge. Through an open window he heard the rabbi giving a sweet-voiced homily. He tore himself away and walked to the sea. When Yael’s laugh reached him from a group of young people on the beach, he moved away and sat down by himself.

Hemdat sat facing the sea. The lacy waves raced in. Perhaps they bore Yael’s image. Pnina spied Hemdat and called to him from afar. Yael joined in, bidding him to come. Hemdat rose and went over. Pnina and the others slipped away. Yael acquiesced and stayed with Hemdat.

Although evening had fallen, there was still a bit of light in the sky. Suddenly Yael got to her feet and said, “I’ve creased my dress.”

Hemdat looked at her and said, “Wear it well. It’s very nice fabric.”

“My mother bought it. I sewed it,” said Yael measuredly, running a hand over the dress as if to brush something away. What childish pride. She studied him as though comparing their clothes. His pants cuffs were frayed and loose threads stuck out of them. It was the fault of the pigeon-toed way he walked, which made his legs rub dolefully together.

Hemdat traced some letters in the sand. At first he did not realize that they spelled Yael Hayyut. Although it was banal, he wanted to show her her name. Along came a wavelet and washed it away. Hemdat watched the waves lick at the sand and fall silently back. Yael got to her feet. She was hungry and wished to go home. Hemdat knew she had no food there and invited her to eat with him. Not in his room but in a restaurant. Yael said no. Then she said yes. Then she said no and yes. Hemdat was in rare spirits. He would not have to eat by himself.

They went to Yaakov Malkov’s inn. For once Hemdat was not his own housekeeper. Mrs. Malkov wiped the Sabbath wine from the table and Mr. Malkov spread a fresh cloth. Yael ordered meat, and Hemdat ordered dairy and fish. Hemdat did not eat meat. The truth was that he would have given up fish too, but he did not want to be labeled a vegetarian. Mrs. Malkov took away the big tablecloth and brought two smaller ones, one for meat and one for dairy. Hemdat regarded the plain strip of table between the two festive tablecloths.

As he was eating Malkov asked him, “If you’re a vegetarian, how come you eat fish?” “Because,” Hemdat said, “the fish didn’t sin before the Flood and weren’t punished by it.”

Malkov did a doubletake. Today’s young men had an answer for everything. What answer would they have on Judgment Day? He rose and went off singing an end-of-the-Sabbath hymn, and came back with a bowl full of almonds. Hemdat beamed at him. “That’s my man, Reb Yaakov,” he said, sliding the bowl over toward Yael.

The almonds had a tangy bitterness. Hemdat dipped one in sweet wine and watched Yael’s jaws bulge as the strong teeth she had bitten off his hair with cracked almond after almond. Yael rose and went to the sink for a glass of water. Hemdat poured her some wine. She shook her head. “I want water,” she said with a toss of her proud shoulders.

Mr. Malkov’s little daughter came to remove the tablecloth and whispered to Hemdat, “She’s so pretty.”

Hemdat patted her fondly on the ear.

7

Hemdat enjoyed Shammai’s visits. Shammai was a sight to see when he talked about Yael. He had visited her every day in the hospital, walking all the way to Jaffa. He had guarded her like a watchdog. And yet Yael could not stand him. She did not want him anywhere near her. Hemdat must remind her when he saw her that evening of everything Shammai had done for her. Really, Yael, what an ingrate you are.

Shammai’s enthusiasms delighted him. He was so youthfully naive. What did Yael have against him?

A few days went by. Yael was nowhere to be seen. Shammai dropped by. He had a walking stick, a safari hat, high boots, and a full picnic basket. Where was he off to?

Shammai had rented a carriage and was inviting Hemdat to come on a trip to Rehovot. “Please do us the honor,” he said. “Yael is coming too.” Shammai’s eyes came to rest on the Rembrandt and his reflection appeared between the couple there.

Hemdat removed the picture from the wall. As if Yael cared whether he came or not. “Yes or no,” Shammai had said. “If you don’t come, Mrs. Ilonit would like your place.”

Who was Shammai to be chasing after Yael Hayyut? Shammai was the son of a Jewish businessman who owned land in Palestine and lived in America and supported a family left behind in Russia, plus Shammai, who was studying medicine at the American College in Beirut. On his vacations Shammai came to Palestine to acquaint himself with the site of his future practice. His coarse hands and jowly cheeks should not mislead you into thinking that he wasn’t an idealist. Was it because he said, “Why don’t you drop in on us?” that he blushed when urging Hemdat to visit Yael? It made Hemdat laugh to hear him declare boyishly, “I love what you write, Hemdat. Everything of yours is so perfect. I’ll be damned if I know why Pizmoni is called a poet. I’ve never read a single line of his.”

Really, Hemdat asked himself, why don’t you go see Yael? After all, she invited you through Shammai. One evening he went. Yael’s embarrassment was great. She was wearing Shammai’s jacket, and Shammai lay sprawled on the couch. His smooth jowls that looked like an extension of his swollen neck erupted in strained, triumphal laughter.

They both jumped to their feet and said, “Why, it’s Hemdat! How about some seltzer and lemon marmalade? Or perhaps you would like an aperitif. There’s nothing like a little drink before dinner. You’ll stay to eat with us, of course.”

How, Hemdat wondered, could they sit in a room with no air? The place was a mess. Shammai’s ties hung over the back of the couch and a pair of slippers lay under each bed.

Hemdat did not judge Yael harshly. She had been hungry, and Shammai kept her not only in bread but in chocolates. When you came right down to it, she was a simple girl. Before you knew it she would be the fat wife of some businessman, with lots of children. He bore her no grudge. He did not mention her name anymore.

The summer was coming to an end. The days were muggy. An immense, relentless sun baked the city and there was not a breath of air. The best thing to do was to stay home and sweat as little as possible. Hemdat rarely went out. The coffee beaker bubbled all day and he drank cup after cup. It did not make him less lethargic but it did give him something to do. Not that there weren’t other ways of taking one’s mind off oneself. He could have gone to see the founding of Tel Aviv, for which there happened to be a party that day. All Jaffa celebrated with wine and cake except Hemdat, who stayed home drinking black coffee.

Hemdat’s friends began dropping by again. It must have been the simmer of the coffee. Gurishkin was in fine fettle. He was now a founder of Tel Aviv and the chronicler of a city. Dorban was tipsy most of the time, which did not make him any less himself. The thought of the first Jewish metropolis left a desert rat like him cold. His muse was not about to be seduced by it. Gurishkin did not take him seriously. Dorban had yet to publish a thing. If Gurishkin was up in arms about anyone, it was Pizmoni, who had just come out with a new poem entitled “On the Banks of the Dnieper.” How could you call yourself a Palestinian poet and write about Russian rivers? Hemdat kept filling their glasses. If the wine made them drunk, the coffee sobered them up. The conversation shifted from patriotism and poetry to women and love.

Hemdat, who had been sitting there quietly, stirred and said, “If you’re in your right mind you shouldn’t go out with a girl unless you take along a fat imbecile. She’s sure to fall in love with him and spare you a messy romance.”

Pnina hung her chaste head. She would never have thought that Hemdat could be so crude.

Hemdat stepped outside. In the street he bumped into Yael and Shammai. “How much did the meal at Malkov’s cost?” they asked. Yael wanted to pay for her share. Hemdat smiled awkwardly. “It isn’t fair of you not to answer, Hemdat,” said Yael. “There’s nothing to say,” Hemdat said. “It’s an insult to Yael not to tell her,” said Shammai. “Why don’t you visit me?” asked Yael. “Why don’t you visit me?” asked Hemdat. “I did,” said Yael. “You weren’t in. If you don’t believe me, your green jacket was on the chair by the table.” “Then come now,” Hemdat said. “No, you come first,” said Yael. They changed the subject.

Hemdat had told Yael what he thought of Shammai, which was not very much. Shammai’s father was sweating to put him through college, and Shammai was living high and growing a paunch at his father’s expense. He could never make a woman happy. All he could do was stain her honor. And now that he was not in the best of mental states, Hemdat was a danger too. “If you value your peace and quiet,” he told Yael, “stay away from me, because whatever I’ve got may be catching.” He knew she would pass what he said on to Shammai. What else could you expect from a gossip like her? Shammai was sporting her ring. Where was Hemdat going? He was going to tell Shammai he hadn’t meant it.

Hemdat was plagued once more by carnal desires. One sea-blue night followed another. He would have liked to run into Mrs. Ilonit. The summer was almost over. Although the girls still went about in short sleeves, in another week or two you would be able to touch them without feeling the clamor of the flesh. Hemdat had women on his mind. Being with them made him feel worse, though. Sometimes he still thought of the time he had kissed the hands of mothers in public and the lips of their daughters in private, and sometimes he no longer could imagine it.

When his loneliness was too much for him he left his room and went out, but it followed him everywhere. He shrank from the smell of humanity. He wanted to get as far away from it and into himself as he could, oblivious of others and even, in the quiescence of bone and blood, of his own self. And yet someone had only to lay a friendly hand on his neck to make him quiver with hidden bliss.

Hemdat roamed the streets of Jaffa. His days passed with no purpose and his nights with no rest. He must not let it get him down, his friends said. It was the lull before the creative storm. And indeed something great was brewing in the world. He could hear the tread of things to come. And whatever was heard by his dreaming ears was also heard, seen, and smelled by his other senses. Great events were afoot and the palpable world would step aside to make way for them. The dull, sweltering day was nearly over. Soon it would be night.

Hemdat’s room was on the top floor and had five windows. They were open all day, and green curtains rippled on them like the waves of a river, checkering the floor with tufts of light and darkness. Hemdat paced the room, up and down and across and back. Although the windows were open in all directions, the door was shut tight. Hemdat knew that the Blessed Days had come to the world. You could not find him in the streets of Jaffa or down at the beach. He sat in his room in front of his faithful table. How was he celebrating the holiday? With the gift-offering of his poetry. The summer was gone and the winds were starting up again. The eucalyptus trees swayed in the gardens and shed their wilted leaves. A dry leaf flitted in a corner of the room. The wind had blown it in.

The sun was setting, and black clouds flew like birds at summer’s end. Should he light the lamp? Why sit in darkness? Yael would come. He would be good to her. All was forgiven. They would sit close together on the green divan. She was his beloved.

How long have I known Yael? Hemdat wondered. For ages and ages, he told himself. Perhaps a year and perhaps more. On one of those light nights that flared in early summer he had gone for a walk to the dune. Some young ladies were out for a stroll. One of stately step kept laughing and tugging at her hat brim.

Hemdat rose and left his room.

Before he knew it, he had reached the dune.

He circled it at an even distance.

Then he was standing on top of it.

A chill, greenish moon lit the dune. Here, in this place, he first had seen her. Here he had walked with her. The Hill of Love, it was called. He felt a pressure in his heart. How close it all seemed. Her words lingered over the sand. That woman was born with a glass in her mouth. She never got drunk, though. She knew how to hold her liquor.

Hemdat stood on the dune. Just then he saw a shadow. It puzzled him, like an unfamiliar object found by a man returning home. He knew the dune and everything on it well. He tried to comprehend the shadow. Was it a bush or tree that had sprung up miraculously overnight? Perhaps it was a late stroller.

If it is the shadow of a tree, Hemdat told himself, our love is rooted and will last, and if it is the shadow of a person, it soon will be gone. He froze and did not move, willing himself between hope and despair. A sudden calm, like that between a baby’s fall and its cry, came over him. The shadow stirred and moved in his direction. Ah, sighed Hemdat, it’s a living creature. Was it a man or a woman? It was a woman. He took a deep breath and thought:

Thank God it’s not Yael Hayyut, because if it were Yael Hayyut that would be a bad sign.

It was Yael Hayyut.

She did not look his way.

Hemdat came down from the dune.

Knots Upon Knots

Even I was invited to the craftsmen’s convention. Since they had invited me I said, I’ll go. I gathered my overnight things and wrapped them in paper and took along several copies of my new book, for several of those who had requested copies of my book were sure to be at the convention, and by giving it to them I would not have to bother with the mails. It would have been good had I put my belongings in a satchel, except that a satchel is useful only as long as it carries your belongings. Once empty, it is simply a load to be carried.

I came to the city and left my things at the bookbinder’s place as I always do when I come to town, and then I set out for the convention building.

The hall was filled to overflowing. With difficulty I found myself a cramped spot among the many visitors, some invited and some uninvited. When my eyes had become clear of the stuffiness in the air I saw Joseph Eibeschütz standing before me. And since he is smaller than I in height, it seemed to me that I was sheltering him. His ears were red out of the strain of his effort to listen closely. But don’t be surprised, for at that moment the elder of the craftsmen was lecturing about all that had been introduced in his generation, and here Eibeschütz wanted to grasp the essence of the era’s innovations.

I greeted him with a nod, but did not ask him, Surely you wanted to visit me, so why didn’t you come? Nor did he apologize that he had not come. Others came and pushed their way between us, and I was pushed from my spot. And as long as I had been pushed, I left.

Since I had come for the sake of the convention but had not found myself anything to do, it appeared to me as if I had been blessed with a day that was entirely my own. I said to myself, As long as that’s so, I’ll take a little walk.

I took myself toward the Gates of Mercy and went down into the valley behind the houses, and from there I went up the hill that overlooks the valley.

The month of Heshvan was already over. Bands of clouds lay beneath the heavens and hung over the low trees on the hill. Their branches lowered themselves to the earth to form a kind of booth. And within that booth sat a group of men, among them Samuel Emden, who was striking out at adherents of the known craft. It was easy to understand his coming to the craftsmen’s convention but difficult to understand why he was here and not there. Since I knew him I went up to him.

At that moment he was sitting and discussing a matter that as yet had no interpreters, although a few people had begun to be aware of it. As soon as he saw me he greeted me and made room for me at his side. And he went on speaking, setting forth hidden matters as if they were explicit. When he paused I said to him, “That was a nice letter you wrote me. Perhaps I was supposed to have answered it?” This question was hardly necessary, for there had been nothing in the letter that required an answer. But when I asked him his face whitened like that of one who has been insulted. And I knew that I had not done well to leave his letter unanswered.

After a short while he and all the members of the group stood up and went on their way.

I too stood up and went on my way.

It would have been good had I returned home, but the day was drawing to a close and my house is far from the city and the buses to my neighborhood had already stopped running. There was nothing for me to do but to look around for an inn to find myself a place for the night. I went to the bookbinder’s to get my overnight things before he locked up the workroom.

Upon entering the bookbinder’s place I found several members of Emden’s group. From their manner it was apparent that they too had deposited their things there. And they whose feet were lighter than my thoughts had gotten there before me.

The old bookbinder stood in the entrance, twisting his sash on his loins in the manner of one who prepares himself for prayer. Afterward he took a bunch of keys and handed them over to him to whom he gave them and went on his way. When the one had gone, the other got up and gave each and everyone his belongings. Finally, with his keys in his hand, he showed me a many-chambered chest that held the articles I had brought today as well as those I had left there days and weeks and months before. Not only many articles, but numerous books that the binder had bound for me were piled in several places. I had no need of them at that moment, nor did I have a satchel or suitcase at hand to hold them. Consequently I kept my hands off them and took my overnight things.

Meanwhile the members of the group had gathered their things and were taking out their wallets to pay a storage fee. I was amazed that they were paying a storage fee, for the binder had never asked a fee of me for anything I had left with him. Since I saw that all were paying, I rummaged in my pocket and asked, “And how much must I pay?” And I thought, Without a doubt this fellow is going to ask a fee for each and every package. I became enraged that for the sake of one piece of rope with which I had not tied all the packages into one, I was to be charged who knows how much. He shook his head at me by way of saying no and did not request a fee. But he urged me to clear out my things, for the painter was to come the next day to paint the workroom and he could not guarantee that my things would not be lost, and even if they were not lost they were sure to be messed up.

I looked at the members of the group to see if they might leave with me. They left without me. And even the holder of the keys went out. Maybe he left to accompany them or maybe he went out for his own purposes. One who is not burdened with things is free to do whatever his heart desires.

I stood among my things and thought to myself, When did I ever have need of you and when will I ever need you? And there they lay, casting a shadow upon themselves, a thick and thickening shadow. And if there is no substance in a shadow, substance there is in those who cast shadows.

The holder of the keys returned to rap with the keys, whose sound became increasingly angry. But don’t be surprised, for tomorrow’s a hard day, the day they’re painting the workroom, and he wants to rest and renew his strength and at the last minute he’s held up by me. My hands weakened and my fingers became intertwined as if they had been tied with ropes.

I stretched out my hands to stir them from their sluggishness and took package after package and tied them one to another, because packages have a way of being easier to carry when they are tied together, which is not so when they are separate. When I noticed that fellow’s eyes as he waited impatiently, my fingers lost all their strength and the packages fell from my hands. And even the books that were wrapped and tied ripped out of their cords. The paper that covered them tore and they fell.

I went over to the biggest of the packages and took the rope that was on it in order to tie one package to another. The rope was old and knotted in knots upon knots, and on every knot that I unraveled I bruised my hands and tore my fingernails. And when I had finally unraveled all the knots, the rope fell apart. Its mate that I untied from a different package was no better. I unraveled it and it weakened, I knotted it and it disintegrated.

I took the pieces that had separated themselves and joined one to another to make one long rope out of them. And once I had a long rope in my hands, I used it to tie one package to another, all together, until they formed one package. The man locked the workroom after me and went his way, talking to himself and saying, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”

It would have been good had I found myself an automobile to take me to an inn, but it was time for the evening session and all the visitors who had come to the convention had grabbed all the vehicles in the city to get to the convention building. I bent my back to the package that weighed me down more and more. And as it was with the package, so it was with its shadow. I am not saying that the shadow weighed me down, but it is terrifying when it is thick and lacks a head. And don’t be surprised, for the load reared itself up above the head of the one who carried it so that his head entered into his burden.

In the meantime I heard a dull noise and saw that my things were falling. The rope I had worked so hard to assemble had been weak from the start, and when I began to move, the package on my shoulders shook, the rope tore, and the articles scattered.

I bent down to the ground and began to collect my things. I would lift one thing and its mate would fall from my shoulders. I would lift it and it would fall again. I had nothing left but the rope with which I had tied my package. To add to this, drops of rain began to fall. The rains that had hidden by day in the clouds emerged from their hiding places. And there was no automobile around to take me to the hotel, nor was there anyone to help me. And don’t be surprised, for the craftsmen’s convention was a large convention and all who were able went to the convention and whoever didn’t go to the convention hid at home from the rain.

The rains that had pattered softly at first began to descend heavily. And in the midst of the rain, as in a vision, two men ran in great haste. I am not saying that they were Joseph Eibeschütz and Samuel Emden. But if I were to say that one of them was one or the other, it would not be far from the truth.

A Book That Was Lost

Rabbi Shmaria the dayan, one of the rabbinical judges of our town, was a man learned in the law and conversant with the Shulhan Arukh, particularly with the section on daily ritual, Orah Hayyim, with which not all rabbis concerned themselves too much. Of all the glosses on Orah Hayyim, he liked best the commentary of Rabbi Magen Avraham.

Of course, most of Magen Avraham’s commentary is obscure and enigmatic due to overabbreviation. For though a man of great learning, he was poor, without the means to buy paper on which to write, and used to write his novellae on the face of the table and on the wall, and when a piece of paper came into his hands, he would compose his thoughts and jot down their essence in extremely concise language.

Out of fondness for the Magen Avraham, Rabbi Shmaria took upon himself to construe, interpret, and explain it for every student to learn and understand. I don’t know for how many years Rabbi Magen Avraham was occupied with his work. As for Rabbi Shmaria, I heard that it took him twelve years to define, elucidate, and construe each and every expression. He left no difficult passage uninterpreted. At the end of twelve years he checked and found nothing further to add or to detract.

He sent for a bookbinder to bind the sheets and delighted in the thought of printing and publishing his book.

The bookbinder came with a sheaf of pages in his hand.

Rabbi Shmaria picked up his work and said to the bookbinder, “Bind these sheets for me and make me a book out of them.”

The bookbinder put aside the sheets he had brought with him and picked up those of Rabbi Shmaria. He looked at them the way bookbinders do, at their thickness and size, taking into consideration the boards he would use and what he would cover them with, whether with hide or with cloth.

While the bookbinder was attending to Rabbi Shmaria’s sheets, Rabbi Shmaria became aware of the sheets the bookbinder had placed on the table and said, “What have you put down here?” The bookbinder replied, “A new book I was given to bind.” Rabbi Shmaria said, “Let me take a look.” The bookbinder put down Rabbi Shmaria’s work and handed him the book he had brought.

That book was called Mahazit Hashekel, which the great scholar Rabbi Samuel Halevy Kolin wrote on the commentary of the Magen Avraham to the Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim.

Rabbi Shmaria fixed his gaze on the book again and again, and said, “A most satisfactory commentary, most satisfactory; apt and with the ring of truth.” He sighed and said, “I have been preceded by another; there is no need for my work.”

He apologized to the master binder for having bothered him for nothing, left his work where it was, and had it neither bound nor published.

Four or five generations later the book came into my hands. How so? I was poking about the attic of the Great Synagogue in our town where the worn-out books were put away and whence they were brought to the graveyard for burial between the graves in earthenware urns. At first they used to bury them between the graves of the righteous, but later they began burying them between the graves of the stillborn, as I have related elsewhere.

I picked up the book and shook off the dust. I collected all the pages together and put them in order. I saw before me a complete work.

I went up to an embrasure in the wall through which rifle fire was once directed at the Tartars who came to wage war on the town. I stopped to thumb through the book and read a little here and there. I saw that it was a commentary on the commentary of Magen Avraham, and I knew that it was the work of Rabbi Shmaria the Dayan. I found in it nice distinctions not to be found in the book Mahazit Hashekel nor in the other books that I knew, which Rabbi Shmaria, so sorely grieved when he saw that all his efforts over twelve years were in vain, did not perceive in his own innovations.

I went into the old house of study in order to take a look at books that discuss the Magen Avraham, and I found that none of them contained the innovations of Rabbi Shmaria.

I showed some of Rabbi Shmaria’s innovations to my father, my teacher and a righteous man of blessed memory, and to other scholars. After giving them their consideration they said, “Rabbi Shmaria’s is a fine commentary. He has made nice distinctions. What he says deserves to be heard.”

I was sorry for such a wise man who had labored so hard in the law and had not been found deserving enough for a dictum of his to be cited. I wanted to save his innovations from oblivion. It occurred to me to make up a copy of the book, but I said to myself, What good would that do? That would only mean another bundle of writings that would drift from place to place and at best would end up in a place where worn-out books were laid to rest.

About that time I read in the Hamizpeh about the Ginzei Yosef Library in Jerusalem (which heralded the Jewish National and University Library). There appeared in the paper a notice asking publishers and writers, etc., to send books to the library. It seemed to me that this notice was read all over the world and that people from all places were sending books to Jerusalem. I said to myself, People everywhere are contributing to Jerusalem and Buczacz contributes nothing, so let me send Rabbi Shmaria’s book to Jerusalem.

Messengers with whom to send the book were not available; neither did I have any extra money to pay the cost of sending it by post. The little that my father, of blessed memory, used to give me from time to time was spent on payments I felt obliged to make, such as to the Jewish National Fund, anonymous poor, membership in the Zionist Society, and occasionally to buy a new book. But my ingenuity served me to find the money to send the book to Jerusalem. How so? When I was studying the law and would rise early and remain until evening at the house of study, my mother used to give me every Monday two kreutzers, so that if I was hungry I could buy a wafer or a piece of fruit. I said to myself, What my mother has done for the sake of her son’s learning I will do for the sake of Rabbi Shmaria’s teaching. So I said to my mother, “I have come to a very difficult passage and will not be home for lunch.” My mother was sorry for me for denying myself a regular meal but was happy that learning the law had become dear to me once again. At that time my interest in the law had waned in deference to those little books that God does not deign to look upon. But to get the book to Jerusalem I used the law as a pretext. My mother took from the housekeeping money and gave to me. So she did on that day and for a number of days, so that if I was hungry I might buy a wafer or a piece of fruit. Fruit and wafers I did not buy, but put a penny to a penny until I had enough to send the book by post to Jerusalem.

I went to a shopkeeper who was one of the Zionists in our town and bought strong paper and brand-new twine. I didn’t tell him what the paper and twine were for, lest he should think that I wanted a discount. God knows he didn’t run his shop for charity.

After I had bought the paper and twine I went home and took the manuscript and looked it over once or twice, wrapped it in the paper, and bound the twine around it. Then I sat down and wrote on the paper the name of the curator of the Ginzei Yosef Library and the designation Jerusalem. This time the word Jerusalem was not written in vain. I added the name of the country, Palestine, and not the Land of Israel, in memory of the destruction of the Temple.

I surveyed the parcel and found it fair enough to send up to Jerusalem. I took it and went to the post office.

There are things you do out of love but nevertheless you do not hasten to complete them. So it was with Rabbi Shmaria’s book. I was like a child holding fast to a paper kite; although the kite was made to fly on high, nevertheless the child holds on to it and doesn’t let it go. Why? Because as long as it stays in his hand, it belongs to him, but when he lets it fly, it disappears high up in the sky and he is left empty-handed. I knew that I had made up the parcel in order to send it up to Jerusalem, but for as long as it was in my hand, it bound me to Jerusalem. But if I let the parcel out of my hands it would go up to Jerusalem while I stayed in Buczacz. But my legs led me of their own accord to the post office.

I entered the post office and stood among the errand boys of the Buczacz merchants who send their goods to places all over the world, and although I was the only person in the whole town who was then about to send something up to Jerusalem, I was in no hurry and kept standing where I stood until the room was empty of all those who had come, and still I stayed where I was standing.

The clerk saw me and said, “And what have you brought?”

I raised my parcel from where I was standing. He beckoned me to approach and I did.

He took the parcel and looked kindly at me, for Jerusalem is still near to everyone’s heart, even if he is a clerk. He even gave me a receipt with “Jerusalem” written on it.

Upon returning home from the post office I resumed doing the things I used to do, such as a little Zionist activity, and a little of all those other things done by most Jewish boys of that generation who were still dependent on their fathers. In addition to those, I composed poems about Zion and Jerusalem.

I can’t tell whether the poems of Zion and Jerusalem brought me to Jerusalem or whether it was my longing for Zion and Jerusalem that brought me to compose poems about them. Either way, it was my good fortune to go and settle in the Land of Israel.

I spent a year in Jaffa before I settled in Jerusalem. In my own way I was persuaded that I was to be tested to see whether I was satisfied with Jaffa, so I was delayed there for a year until I went up to Jerusalem. Don’t be surprised to hear me say so, as if I consider myself worthy of being tested. But as every man who does not live in the Land of Israel is put to the test to see whether he is worthy of settling in the Land of Israel, so every man in the Land of Israel is put to the test to see whether he is worthy of settling in Jerusalem. And so after staying a year in Jaffa and its suburbs, I took my staff and my knapsack and went up to Jerusalem.

On the eve of Shabbat Hazon (the Sabbath before the Ninth of Av) before sundown I entered the gates of Jerusalem. If God be with me I shall tell what happened at the time I was fortunate enough to come to Jerusalem. For now I shall relate what happened to the book.

And so on the Sabbath eve before sundown I came to Jerusalem. I laid down my staff and my knapsack, washed myself of the dust of the road, and put on my Sabbath clothes and ran to the Western Wall. From there to the Hurvah Synagogue, from there to other synagogues, from there to the hostel, and to the streets of Jerusalem which were lit up quite clearly. Though Jerusalem was desolate, the moon, by the grace of God, had not ceased to shine upon it.

After the Ninth of Av my friends in Jerusalem took me to some places for which Jerusalem is commended. In the end they brought me to the Ginzei Yosef Library, which in those days we believed was the depository for all the books of Jewry. How strong was our faith in those days!

On the way to the library I told my friends about Rabbi Shmaria’s book which I had sent so many years ago to Ginzei Yosef in Jerusalem.

I was reminded of Buczacz and began telling about her. Perhaps I said too much and aroused their annoyance, because in those days which we now call the Second Aliyah every newcomer to the Land of Israel tried to forget his place of origin, and if he couldn’t, he endeavored not to mention it, for a new focal point requires a new frame of mind.

One of my friends laughed at me and said, “Even before you came to the Land of Israel you had already made your mark in Jerusalem.”

We went into the library and one of the two librarians who were there was kind enough to show us various books, and of each book he said, “It’s the only one in the world, unique, a gift from so-and-so.” And more than anyone else he praised Dr. Joseph Chasanowitsch of Bialystok, who denied himself bread for the sake of amassing a store of books in Jerusalem.

We looked at the books, everyone in his own way and everyone trying to say a word in expression of his feelings.

When we were about to leave I said to the librarian, “I too sent a book to Jerusalem.”

The librarian asked me for the name of the book. I told him, “It doesn’t have a name, but its description is just so, and in such-and-such a year I sent it, addressed to the man in charge by the name of So-and-so I sent it.” There I stood, telling what I knew, without distinguishing between what was relevant and what was not. Had it not been for my friends who wanted to see other things in town, I would have put before the librarian some of the novellae of Rabbi Shmaria. Those were the days when I still had such a formidable memory and librarians were so keen to hear something of the wisdom of the law.

“I will go and see where the book is,” said the librarian. He went from room to room and from cupboard to cupboard. After he had investigated all the cupboards, he said, “I have searched for it but have not found it. If your book has reached us, I will find it. It may be lying among the books that haven’t been given out for binding. Due to lack of funds, piles and piles of books are lying around that still haven’t been given out for binding. All the same, I will look for it and if I find it I will show it to you.”

Gratefully I took my leave of the librarian. His eyes testified to his good heart that was ready to oblige.

Many times did I go to the library and many times did I speak to the librarian. When I didn’t mention Rabbi Shmaria’s book, the librarian would, and he would say, “I still haven’t found it, but if not today, then tomorrow.”

So the years passed. That librarian went the way of all flesh and the librarian who succeeded him has also passed on, but the book was not found.

What a pity the book was lost.

On One Stone

Those were good days. I remained secluded in my house, writing the adventures of Rabbi Adam Baal Shem. This wise sage knew the Kabbalah in both theory and practice. He could recognize ghosts and demons as they set out upon their ways. He would throw a shawl over their eyes so that they could not see to do any harm. He was an expert on trees and could tell which ones grew by God’s grace and which ones were formed from the bodies of sorcerers in order to trick people. These he would cut down, limb by limb. Thus he saved many of Israel from the depths of evil and restored them to their own root. All this Rabbi Adam did only by the word, for he possessed holy writings of an esoteric sort. And when the time came for Rabbi Adam to depart from this world, he hid the writings in a rock, upon which he cast a spell that it not open itself, so that no unfit person could study those writings and turn the world back to chaos and confusion.

As though in a vision I saw the rock and the writings inside it. I could discern every letter and word, every line, every page of writing, every leaf. Had these writings belonged to the root of my own soul, I would have read them, and out of them I would have fashioned worlds. But I didn’t deserve to read them; I could only sit and look. My eyes would surround them like the metal settings in which precious stones are placed but which never combine with the stones themselves. Still, even if I didn’t manage to read them, I can tell about them. If we come into this world to put in order those things that previous generations have left behind, I can claim a certain measure of success.

When I got around to writing the tale of the rock, I began to worry that I might be interrupted in the middle. Even though I dwelt cut off from the world, I suspected that once I got into this matter and began to write the tale itself, people would come and bother me. That’s the way it is with people. They’re never there when you look for them, but just when you don’t want them, they come around. I took all that I needed for writing — ink, pen, and paper — and went to the forest near my town. I went in among the trees, and there I found a certain rock where I made myself a place. I laid my writings down on the rock, and there I sat and wrote. When I stopped my writing, I would see the trees, the birds, and the grass, as well as the river that flowed through their midst. My heart took great joy in hearing how the birds would speak their piece before their Father in heaven, how each shrub in the field would speak up before the Everpresent, how all the trees of the forest would bow down before Him. The river’s waters flowed gently, never raising themselves up too high. I did this for several days, until I had finished writing the tale of the writings Rabbi Adam Baal Shem had possessed on the theory and practice of Kabbalah. When the day of his death came, he was afraid that they might fall into the hands of improper folk, so he got up and went to a certain rock. He opened the rock, hid his writings there, and closed it up. No one knows where that rock is.

I wrote a lot about this matter, and I had still more to write. But on the day when I was going to finish the story, a man came by and asked me the way to town. I saw that he was elderly and walked with some difficulty. The path was strewn with rocks and the sun was close to setting. Fearing that he might not make it to town while there was still light, I left my writings and went to his aid. I walked along with him until we were close to town.

After taking leave of the old man I stood in astonishment. The holy Sabbath was coming and I was outside the permitted domain. Not only that, but something I had worked hard on all week long I had now suddenly abandoned in the middle. Even worse, I had left it there, open to the wind, to beast or to bird. Even if I’d had to fulfill the commandment of honoring the elderly by walking with him, I could have picked up my writings and then walked into town. I could have fulfilled the commandment perfectly and still preserved my writings, and not have to go back to the woods on the eve of the Sabbath as night was falling. It was not regret or distress that I felt, but just a sense of shock, like a person who is astonished at himself, but not distressed.

Just then the sun set. The day turned to silver and the Sabbath light began to break forth. I stood still, not knowing where to go first. If I went to town, I’d be abandoning all I had done in six days. If I went to the forest, the holy Sabbath would be coming in and I would not be coming in with her. While I was still weighing the alternatives in my mind, my legs took themselves to walk into the forest.

When I returned to the forest I found my writings lying on the rock, just as I had left them. No wind had scattered them. No beast or bird had bothered them. Had it not been for that old man who had interrupted me and were it not for the darkness of this Sabbath eve, I would have gone over what I’d written and come away with a finished product. What a shame that I’d let the time go by and left my affairs in such a state.

While I was thinking this, the rock opened up, took in my writings, and closed up again. I left the rock and went back to town.

In that hour the blessed Holy One brought the moon, stars, and constellations out in the sky. The whole earth shone, and every rock that came up before me along the way gave off light. I could see every crack and crevice, every vein in the rock. I took all those rocks into my sight, my eyes serving as the soil that surrounded each rock, the setting in which each rock was placed. I loved and took delight in each and everyone. I said to myself: What difference is there between the rock that took in the writings and these rocks right here? They peered out at me, or at least they seemed to be peering. And perhaps they said the same thing I had just said, not in my language but in their own.

The Sense of Smell

1. The excellence of the Holy Tongue

The holy tongue is a language like no other. All other tongues exist only by agreement, each nation having agreed upon its language. But the holy tongue is the one in which the Torah was given, the one through which the blessed Holy One created His world. Angels and seraphim and holy beings praise Him in the holy tongue. And when He comes to praise Israel, He also does so in the holy tongue, as it is written: “Behold thou art beautiful, my beloved, behold thou art beautiful.” What language does Scripture speak? Surely the holy tongue. And when He longs to hear the prayers of Israel, what language is it that He longs to hear? The holy tongue, as He says: “Let me hear your voice for your voice is sweet.” What voice is sweet to Him? The voice of Jacob, praying in the holy tongue. By the holy tongue He will one day rebuild Jerusalem and return the exiles to her midst. By the holy tongue He heals the mourners of Zion, their hearts broken by the destruction, and He binds up their wounds. Thus it is written: “The Lord builds Jerusalem, gathering the scattered of Israel; He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” For this reason all Israel should take care with their language, keeping it clear and precise, especially in these last generations so close to redemption, so that our righteous Messiah (may he be revealed speedily, in our own day!) will understand our language and we will understand his.

2. Against the scholars of our generation who write in every language except the holy tongue

But someone might object and say: “Is it possible to speak a language that has not been spoken for more than a thousand years?” as some stupid folk among the Jews have said. “Even most of the scholars in our generation cannot stand up to it, and they either make a mess of their language, even in the most simple things, or else they write in every other language except the holy tongue.” Whoever says this hasn’t paid attention to the most important fact. Even though speech passed from the lips, it never passed out of writing, and it is there for anyone who seeks it. How is this? A person reads Torah or studies Mishnah or learns Gemara and immediately all those treasures of the holy tongue that the blessed Holy One has stored up for His beloved are revealed to him. This is especially true on the Sabbath, when we are given an extra soul that understands the holy tongue just as well as do the angels.

Then why do certain scholars make such a mess of their language? Because they put worldly matters first and words of Torah second. If they would make Torah their basis, the Torah would come to their aid. As for those who write in every other language but not in the holy tongue, even a Gentile who writes in the holy tongue is more beloved than they, so long as he does not write words of folly. You can know this from the case of Balaam the Wicked. No man did such evil as the one who suggested that the daughters of Moab go whoring, by which one hundred fifty-eight thousand and six hundred of Israel were destroyed. But because he spoke in the holy tongue and in praise of Israel, he merited to have a section of the Torah called by his name, and to have all Israel open their prayers each morning with the verse “How goodly,” which Balaam spoke in praise of Israel.

And if you should say, “But do we not find that some of our early sages composed a portion of their books in Arabic?” the early sages are different, because the people of their generations were made weary by exile and were far from Messiah’s light. Therefore their sages wrote them letters of consolation in their own language, the same way you pacify a child in whatever language he understands. The language of Ishmael is also different, since the Land of Israel has been given over into their hands. Why was the Land of Israel entrusted to Ishmael? Because he had managed to wrest it from the hands of Edom. It remains entrusted to Ishmael until all the exiles are gathered and God returns it to their hands.

3. The secret of writing stories

For love of our language and affection for the holy, I darken my countenance with constant study of Torah and starve myself over the words of our sages. These I store up in my belly so that they together will be present to my lips. If the Temple were still standing, I would be up there on the platform among my singing brothers, reciting each day the song that the Levites sang in the Temple. But since the Temple remains destroyed and we have no priests at service or Levites at song, instead I study Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, Mishnah, laws and legends, supplementary treatises and fine points of Torah and the works of the scribes. When I look at their words and see that of all the delights we possessed in ancient times there remains only this memory, my heart fills up with grief. That grief makes my heart tremble, and it is out of that trembling that I write stories, like one exiled from his father’s palace who makes himself a little hut and sits there telling of the glory of his father’s house.

4. All that happened to the author because of a certain grammarian and all the suffering and woe that came upon the author

Since I just mentioned a hut, let me say something about one. It once happened that I had written a story about a sukkah, a festival hut. Using colloquial language, I wrote, “The sukkah smells.” A certain grammarian rose up against me, stuck his pen into me, and wrote, “You cannot say: ‘The sukkah smells.’ Only a person smells the aroma of the sukkah.” I was worried that perhaps I had strayed from proper usage and done harm to the beauty of the language. I went and looked in reference books but found no support for my usage. Most of the books either tell you what you already know or else tell you nothing at all. I went to the scholars of our time, and they did not know what to answer me. Scholars know everything except that particular thing you are looking for. Then I happened upon a certain Jerusalem scholar, and he brought support for my words from the book called Perfect Treatise by an early sage named Moses Taku, of blessed memory. I was somewhat consoled, but not completely. I still wanted further support. When I ran into people who were experts in the holy tongue, I would ask them, “Perhaps you have heard whether it is permitted to write: ‘The sukkah smells.’” Some permitted while others forbade. Neither gave any reasons for their opinions, but just stated them, like a person who sticks his thumb out at someone and says, “Well that’s my view,” or someone who licks his lips and says, “That’s my feeling.” That being the case, I went to erase those two words against which the grammarian had raised a protest. But when I started to do so, the sukkah came and its aroma rose up before me until I really saw that it was smelling. I left the words as they were.

5. The righteous from paradise come to the author’s aid

Once somebody came to ask me a favor. In the course of the conversation he revealed to me that he was a descendant of Rabbi Jacob of Lissa. I put aside all my other concerns and did him great honor. I took the trouble to offer him some honey cake and a glass of whiskey. I fulfilled his request gladly, out of respect for his learned ancestor whose Torah we study and out of whose prayer book we pray.

After I’d accompanied him on his way, I ran into a certain scholar who was carrying a book under his arm. I asked him, “What’s that you’ve got there? Isn’t that the prayer book of the Sage of Lissa?” He smiled and said to me, “Sometimes you get so clever that you forget a simple custom of prayer and you have to look it up in a prayer book.” I said to him, “It shows a special quality of that true sage, one who had already written novellae and commentaries known for both sharp insight and breadth of learning, that he would take the trouble to briefly lay out the laws of prayer and other matters in such an accessible way. His is a book that anyone can use to find the law and its sources, written right there with the prayers themselves. Our holy rabbis have left us lots of prayer books, filled with directions and commentaries both hidden and revealed, with matters grammatical or sagacious, with permutations of letters, secrets, and allegories, all to arouse the hearts of worshippers as they enter the King’s palace. But if not for my respect for our early teachers, I would say that the prayer book of the Sage of Lissa is better than them all. In many of those prayer books the light is so bright that most people can’t use them, while this one appeals to any eye.”

While I was talking, my own heart was aroused and I started to tell of some things that happened to that sage whose teachings had spread throughout the scattered communities of Jews, who in turn followed his rulings. I told of some of his good qualities, things I had heard from reliable sources and had found in books.

Finally we parted from one another, he with his prayer book and I with my thoughts. I went home and lay down on my bed to sleep a sweet sleep. Since I had done a Jew a favor and had gone to bed after telling tales of the righteous, my sleep was a good one.

I heard someone trying to awaken me. I was feeling lazy and I didn’t get up. On the second try I awoke, and I saw an old man standing before me. The prayer book Way of Life lay open in his hand; his eyes shone and his face bore a special radiance. Even though I had never seen a picture of Rabbi Jacob of Lissa, I recognized him right off. It wasn’t that he looked like any of the members of his family. The great among Israel just don’t look like their relatives, because their Torah gives their faces a special glow.

When a person darkens his face over study of Torah, the blessed Holy One gives him that radiant glow and makes his face shine.

While I was still staring, the prayer book closed, the old man disappeared, and I realized it had been a dream. But even though I knew that, I said: There must be something to this. I washed my hands, got out of bed, and walked over to the bookcase. I picked up the prayer book Way of Life. In it I noticed a slip of paper serving as some sort of marker. I opened up to that place and there I read: “One uses lots of flowers that smell sweet to make the holiday joyous.” It seemed that I had once been reading that page and had put the slip of paper there as a marker.

I thought to myself: He wouldn’t have used such language on his own, without some authority in Torah. In any case, I took the prayer book Pillars of Heaven, by his uncle the sage Javetz, of blessed memory, and there I found the same expression. I was glad that I hadn’t failed in my words and had done no harm to our holy tongue. If these two great pillars of the universe wrote this way, it must indeed be proper. The grammarian who had shot off his mouth at me would one day have to pay his due.

6. Reciting psalms

How Rashi, of blessed memory, interprets for the author a verse from the Psalms and lights up his spirit

It was hardly worth going back to bed, since most of the night had passed, but it wasn’t yet time for morning prayers. I got up and took a Book of Psalms. Reciting psalms is good anytime, but especially early in the morning when the soul is still pure and the lips are not yet defiled by wicked chatter. I sat and read a few psalms; some I understood on my own, and the rest were explained to me by Rashi, of blessed memory, until I’d completed the first book of the Psalter. My soul still wanted to say more. I did its bidding and read psalm after psalm, until I got to the Psalm for the Chief Musician upon Lilies. This is a song in praise of the sages’ disciples, those who are soft as lilies and pleasant as lilies, so that they come to love their learning.

That was a beautiful hour of psalm-saying. The lamp on the table was lit, crowning with light every word, every letter, every vowel point, every musical notation. Opposite it there was a window open, facing the south. Outside, the predawn breezes blew, but they didn’t put out the lamp or even challenge its wick. The breezes danced about the trees and shrubs in the garden, and there wafted in a sweet fragrance of laurel and dew, smelling something like wild honey or perfume.

The light from the lamp had begun to pale. It seems that the night was over. It may be that God hangs up the sun in the sky at that hour for the sake of those simple folk who don’t know the whole morning prayer by heart but who recite it out of the prayer book.

A sound was heard from the treetops, the voice of a bird reciting her song. Such a voice could interrupt a person’s studies. But I didn’t get up from my book to listen to the bird’s voice, even though it was both sweet to the ear and attractive to the heart. I said: Here I am reciting the Psalms. Should I interrupt these to listen to the talk of birds?

Soon another voice was to be heard, even more attractive than the first. One bird had gotten jealous of another and had decided to outdo her in song. Or maybe she wasn’t jealous and hadn’t even noticed the other. She was aroused on her own to sing before her Creator, and her voice was just sweeter than the other bird’s. In the end they made peace with one another, and each bird seemed to complement the other one’s melodies. They sang new songs, the likes of which no ear had ever heard. Melodies and voices like these certainly could keep a man from studying, but I made as though I didn’t hear. There is nothing especially wondrous or praiseworthy about this, because the psalm played itself like an instrument of many strings. A Song of Love, next to which all other songs are as nothing. I followed after its every word with melody.

“My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter…My tongue is the pen of a ready scribe;…ride on in behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness; let thy right hand teach thee awesome things.” I understood as much as I could, and the rest was explained to me by Rashi, of blessed memory. When I got to the verse “Myrrh and aloes and cassia are all thy garments,” I did not know what it meant. I looked in Rashi’s commentary and there I read: “All thy garments smell like fragrant spices. And its meaning is that all your betrayals and foul deeds will be forgiven and will smell sweet before Me.” My mind was eased, like a person smelling flowers that smell.

7. To conclude with praise as we opened with praise

Come and see how great is this holy tongue! For the sake of a single word a holy man troubled himself to come out of the Academy on High in the Garden of Eden, bringing his book before me, causing me to rise up at night to recite the Psalms, so that I might find something I’d been seeking for many days.

From Lodging to Lodging

1

Not one good thing happened all winter. Before I was free of one illness I was seized by another. The doctor had become a steady visitor; two or three times a week he came to examine me. He felt my pulse and wrote out prescriptions, changing his medicines and his advice. The doctor was always on call, and the whole house was filled with all kinds of cures whose smell reminded one of death. My body was weak and my lips were cracked. My throat was sore, my tongue was coated, and my vocal cords would produce nothing more than a cough. I had already given up on myself. But the doctor had not given up on me. He was constantly piling up pill after pill and giving new names to my illness. In spite of it all, we saw no change for the better.

Meanwhile, the cold season passed. The sun began to rise earlier each day and each day it tarried longer in the sky. The sky smiled at the earth and the earth smiled at man, putting forth blossoms and flowers, grasses and thorns. Lambs rollicked about and covered the land, children poured from every house and every shack. A pair of birds came out of the sky, leaves and stubble in their beaks, and hopped from my window to a tree and from the tree to my window, chirping as they built themselves a home. There was a new spirit in the world, and the world began to heal. My limbs lost their stiffness; they became lithe and limber. Even the doctor’s spirit had changed. His instruments seemed to be lighter and he was light-hearted and happy. When he came in he would say, “Well, now, spring certainly has arrived,” and he would open a window, knocking over two or three bottles of medicine, not caring if they broke. He still would examine me in order to write out prescriptions. At the same time he would write down a woman’s name and put it in his jacket or stuff it under the watch strap on his left wrist. After several days, he advised me to change my place of residence for a change of climate, to go down to Tel Aviv, for example, to enjoy the sea air.

When moving time came and I had to leave my lodgings, I decided to go down to Tel Aviv. I said to myself: He who changes his residence changes his luck. Perhaps the sea will help me get my health back.

The room I rented in Tel Aviv was narrow and low; its windows faced a street filled with people rushing back and forth. There were many shops on this street, dispensing soda and ice cream. And there was one further drawback: the bus station, noisy all day and not resting at night. From five in the morning until after midnight buses came and went, as well as all kinds of two-and four-wheeled vehicles. When this tumult stopped and the soda vendors’ kiosks closed, an echo began to resound within my room, as when a stone is thrown against a brass drum, making its sides resound. Often I awoke from my sleep to the sound of clinking glasses and rolling wheels, as if all the soda vendors on the street had gathered within the walls of my house to pour drinks for their customers, and as if all the buses were racing on the roof of the house. Then again, perhaps these sounds were no mere echo but the real sounds of buses and of street cleaners going about their work at night, when people sleep. And as for the pouring of drinks, a neighbor had returned from a meeting and had opened a tap to douse his head in cold water, and it had seemed to me that the soda vendors were pouring drinks. Because of all this, my nights passed without sleep, my mornings without a dream. I gave up on sleep and tried to lie quietly awake, but the city’s fish merchants came to shout their wares and the sun came to heat my room like Gehenna.

2

Because of lack of sleep I could not enjoy whatever is available for one to enjoy in Tel Aviv. I betook myself to the sea and took off some of my clothes. Even this exertion tired me, and I could not take off the rest. I took off one shoe; I was unable to take off the other. At times the waves of the sea would come toward me, inviting me in or driving me away. Finally I would return to my room, more weary than when I had left it. And my friends were already warning me, saying, “Leave your lodgings or you will come to a bad end.” With fantasy and with words they portrayed all sorts of dangers that were likely to befall a person in such lodgings. Some spoke calmly with me, and some told me of bad things that had befallen them. If I retained any ability to think, I thought that they were right, that I must leave these lodgings. But not every thought leads to action. I remained where I was, until a new trouble appeared. What kind of trouble? The landlord had a child whose frail body was a meeting ground for all kinds of ailments. Before my arrival he had lived with his grandmother; after I arrived, his mother brought him home, because she longed for her son or because my rent enabled her to support the child. I do not know if he was better off with his grandmother; with his mother he was not well off. She was a do-gooder, attending to everyone’s affairs with no time to attend to her own son. Each morning she would put him outside with a tomato or a roll in his hand, kiss him on the mouth, tell him what he should and should not do, and leave him. His father, too, was somewhat busy looking for work and did not have as much free time as he wanted. The child would lie around on the doorstep of the house and lick at dirt or scrape plaster from the wall and eat it. Didn’t his mother feed him? But it is human nature to want what we don’t have, and it is not human nature to be satisfied with what we do have. Whenever I walked by, he would stretch his thin arms and hang on to me, and not let go until I took him in my arms and rocked him back and forth. Why was he attracted to me? I certainly was not attracted to him. I treat children as I treat their parents. If I like them I get closer to them; if I do not like them I keep my distance from them. Humanity has invented many lies, nor am I free of them, but of one thing I can boast: where children are concerned I never lie.

All of this applied to daytime. Nighttime was worse. From the moment they put the child to bed until they wake him he cries and whimpers, stopping only to groan. When he neither cries nor groans it is even worse, for then he seems to be dead, Heaven forbid. I say to myself: Get up and wake his father and mother. Before I can get up I hear the sound of crying and groaning. Like everyone else, I dislike both sounds. But, in this case, the child’s cries and groans are dearer to me than all the musical instruments in the world, for then I know that he is alive.

3

In short, this child was attached to me, perhaps because his father and mother did not take care of him and he longed for human companionship, perhaps because I rocked him back and forth. In any case, he would never let me pass the doorstep without taking him in my arms. When I did take him in my arms, he would poke his fingers into my eyes and grin. Throughout the day he smiled only when he stuck his fingernails into my eyes. Often his father and mother would scold him. “Bobby, no! Bobby, no!” But from their manner of scolding it was clear that they were pleased with his cleverness. I, who did not share the joy of his father and mother, could not understand: when flies and mosquitoes crawled over his sores he was too lethargic to chase them away, but whenever he caught sight of my eyes he immediately sprang into action.

I too began to act cleverly. When I had to leave, I checked first to see if Bobby was outside. If he was, I would wait in my room. But since my room was not comfortable to sit in, I would be forced to go out. When I went out, the child would climb on me with a double measure of love, and would not leave me alone until I took him in my arms and rocked him. And, while rocking, he would stick his fingers into my eyes and grin. When I put him down he would shout, “Moo, moo, oinkle, moo,” which is to say, “More, more, uncle, more.” Who composed this jingle, the child or a nursery-school teacher? In any case, the nonsense syllables were something that a nursery teacher would compose. Man’s superiority over animals lies in his power of speech, but all of God’s works require a process of “redemption” on the part of man, and nursery-school teachers are the ones who do this. Since he asked for more, I would take him in my arms again and rock him, while he stuck his fingernails into my eyes and shouted, “Bobby! Bobby!” He could see his reflection in my eyes and was trying to snatch it away.

When a man is suffering he should examine his deeds. If he is humble and modest, he blames himself for his misfortunes; if he is neither, he blames others. If he is a man of action, he tries to rid himself of his trouble through action; if he is a man of contemplation, he waits until his trouble ends by itself. Sometimes he goes away, or another trouble appears, causing the first one to be forgotten. I, who have attained neither the passivity of the humble nor the zeal of men of action, would sit and ponder, Why do they make doorsteps for houses? If there were no doorstep, the child would not lie around there and I would not run into him.

I have already mentioned my friends; because of their affection I shall mention them again. At first they warned me. When their predictions came true, they began talking to me as people talk to someone who is sick, and they would say, “The prime need for any man is a place to live in, especially one who has come here to be healed.” Since it was difficult for me to change my quarters, I tried to shrug off the matter with a talmudic saying: “A man should never change his quarters.” What did my friends say? “In spite of the Talmud we shall rent another room for you.” But talk is easier than action, let alone than friendship. This being so, I stayed where I was.

There was one woman who did not argue with me, but took the trouble to find me a pleasant location with a pleasant climate, and she would not desist until I went with her to see it.

She told me that the owner of this house usually did not rent rooms. However, his daughter had gone to a kibbutz, her room remained empty, and he had agreed to rent it. And the rent was no more than what I was paying already. He had explicitly mentioned that “Money is not the main thing; it’s the tenant. If a man is looking for rest, I will gladly open my house to him.”

4

Among vineyards and orchards rises a hill surrounded on all sides by pleasant trees. On this hill stands a small house. One reaches it by walking up grass-covered steps. And a hedge of fruit trees surrounds the house, shading the house and the grass. One enters a yard wherein is a pool of water with small fish. When I saw the house and the yard, I was glad and I had doubts. I was glad that a man in the Land of Israel had all this, and I had my doubts that this place was for me.

The lady of the house came out. She greeted us gladly and looked approvingly at me. Then she led us into a pleasant room where the heat of the day was not felt, and brought us cool water to drink. The owner of the house came in, an aging man of about sixty, tall and lean, his head bent slightly to the left. His blue eyes were filled with sadness, but love of humanity shone in them. He greeted me and poured a drink for us. After we drank, he showed me the room I had come to rent.

A pleasant, square room suddenly stood open before me. Its wooden furniture was simple, but every piece appeared indispensable. This was also true of the picture on the wall, painted by the daughter, a picture of a girl alone in a field, looking at the setting sun. Sunset usually brings on sadness, but this one brought on sweet rest. And this was true of the breeze that blew from outside, and it was true of the entire room. After I rented the room, the owner of the house invited us to his garden for a glass of tea. A breeze was blowing from the trees and from the sea, the tea kettle was steaming, and the repose of peace and tranquility hung over the table and the people. As we sat there the lady of the house told us about her daughter who had left every comfort for the kibbutz. She was not complaining, but spoke like a mother who loves to talk about her daughter. The owner of the house was silent. But he looked at us with affection so that he seemed to have joined our conversation.

5

I asked him how he had come here. He answered and said, “I came here as most men in the Land of Israel came here. But some come when they are young; they are happy with the land and the land is happy with them. And some come when they are old; they are happy with the land but the land is not happy with them. I did not have the privilege of coming in my youth, but in my old age I came, even though I had given serious thought to the land before I reached old age. How did this come about? I was a grain merchant and once, in a field, as I walked behind the reapers, I thought about the Land of Israel and the Jews living on their own land, plowing and sowing and reaping. From that time on I could not stop thinking about the Land of Israel. I thought: May I be found worthy of seeing it. I did not intend to settle, but only to see it. During those years I was preoccupied with my business affairs and I had no time to emigrate. Then the war came and closed the road to us.

“When things calmed down and the roads were opened, I sold everything I owned and I came to the Land of Israel, not just to see it but to settle. For in those days, the land in which I had lived had become like Gehenna for Jews, and they could not stand up against their enemies.

“I did not buy land, for most of my life was over and I was not fit to work the land. And I did not want to work through others, since I did not want to be supported by their labors even if the land were mine. I decided to buy some houses, and to support myself from the rent. But I left that enterprise before I scarcely began. Why? The night I reached the Land of Israel I could not sleep. I went outside, to sit at the door of my hotel. The sky was clear and pure, the stars sparkled, and a quiet, secure repose reigned above, but below, on earth, there was neither quiet nor repose. Buses dashed madly about and people rushed in excitement and boys and girls shuffled wearily along, singing, and all kinds of musical instruments screeched from every house, every window.

I considered my surroundings, and I did not know whether to be filled with anger or with pity, for it certainly was possible that they also wanted to sleep, and that their apartments were not made for rest, just as my hotel was not, but since I was an old man, I sat on a bench, while they, being young, milled about in the streets. After several hours, the noises of the city died away, and I thought that I would go to lie down. When I was about to go inside I heard a weary voice. I turned this way and that, but saw no one. The voice seemed to be coming out of the ground, and I was reminded of the followers of Korah who had been swallowed up by the earth. But they are said to sing, while this was a voice of suffering and cursing. I looked again and saw some light coming up underfoot and realized that a cellar was there, with people living in it. I thought: Is it possible that in a city in the Land of Israel, built by the great leaders of Israel to enhance the people of Israel with grace and greatness in the Land of Israel, people are living in a cellar? I got up and walked away, so that I could not steal any air from them. All that night I could not sleep because of the mosquitoes and because of disturbing thoughts. Finally I reached the conclusion that I could never buy houses in the city, since no one knows what will become of them, for certainly that landlord too had come to Israel out of love and ended up doing what he did.

“I began visiting the outskirts of the city, and I found this hill. But I did not buy it until I had thought about the neighbors first. When I was satisfied that they were not in the class of those who cut up our land like so many olives to make merchandise out of it, I built a house in which my wife, my daughter, and I could live. I planted a garden to appease the land, and the land was appeased, for it gives us fruit and vegetables and flowers.”

The lady of the house added, “If people have money they usually travel abroad every year to mend their bodies and to be healed. For this purpose they leave their homes to travel for days by train and by ship. They come to a place with pleasant air, find cramped lodgings which are not pleasant and which have no air. But my husband has made our lodging in a pleasant place with pleasant air, and we do not need to wear ourselves out on the road. We live here in our house, enjoying everything with which the Lord has blessed us.”

Before I left, I took out a one-pound note to give to the owners of the house as a deposit. He waved his hand and said, “If you like the room, you will come; but if you do not come, where will I find you to return your money?” I rejoiced that God had brought me to pleasant lodgings and an honest landlord, and I thanked my companion for having brought me here.

In short, I liked the room and the landlord and the location, and the rent was no higher than I was paying the father of the child. I rejoiced over the repose that awaited me in that house and over the sweet sleep in store for me there. Someone who has known neither sleep by night nor repose by day can imagine my joy over that room.

6

It is easier for a man to grow wings and fly from one lodging to another than to tell his landlord, “I am leaving your lodgings.” For there is some embarrassment involved, as though it were repugnant for you to live with him — in addition to whatever you make him lose in rent.

Since I was thinking about leaving my lodgings, I paid no attention to the roar of the buses and the tumult of the street. And since I stopped thinking about them, sometimes I even slept. And since I slept, my heart slumbered, free of troubles. I thought to myself: There are people, like those living in cellars, who would be happy in a room like mine, and I didn’t need to look for other lodgings. But since I had rented another room I had to move there. But, since I had not yet left my lodgings, perhaps there was no need to leave.

While I was debating whether or not to leave, my eyes began bothering me. I went to a doctor, and he wrote me a prescription for eyedrops and warned me against touching my eyes with my fingers lest they become worse.

When I am alone I can be careful. But whenever that child sees me he hangs on to me and pokes his fingers into my eyes. And it is not bad enough that his fingers are dirty; his own eyes are diseased. What good is it for a doctor to warn those who take heed if he doesn’t warn those who don’t?

But Heaven helped me. It so happened that I had to take a trip. Because of this, there was no fear of embarrassing the landlord, since he realized that I was going out of town. I took leave of him and his wife in friendship, and because of their friendship they even let me hold the child in my arms. As I left, they said, “If you should return to Tel Aviv, our house is open to you.” I nodded to them, reciting silently, “Praised be He who has rid me of you.” From this day on you will not have the privilege of seeing me under your roof.

For eight days I was on the road. I had much trouble and much trouble was caused to me. But since I knew that soon I would move into comfortable lodgings, I accepted all troubles gladly, looking forward to the day of my return to Tel Aviv.

I had much trouble and much trouble was caused to me. But I also took joy in much happiness. I passed through the land and I saw that we had several more villages. Places that had produced only thistles and thorns had become like a garden of God. And like the land, so too the people were happy in their labors and rejoicing in building their land, their sons and daughters healthy and wholesome. Their hands were not soiled, and their eyes were not diseased. It is a pleasure to take a child in your arms. He does not stick his fingers into your eyes, and when he touches you it is as though a pure breeze has blown across your face.

At one kibbutz I met the daughter of my new landlord. Had most of my years not been behind me, and had I not rented lodgings from the parents of this young woman, I might have remained in that kibbutz. I left her as one leaves a friend, happy that he will see him again.

7

I was very happy to return to Tel Aviv, happier than I had been for many years. I could already picture myself living in a pleasant room, in a pleasant climate, with pleasant furniture and pleasant people, and I would come and go with no child to stick his fingers into my eyes. But most important of all would be the sleep, uninterrupted by buses and vendors and crying and groaning. Between you and me, for many years now I have considered man’s purpose to be sleep, and whoever has mastered sleep, and knows how to sleep, is as important in my eyes as if he knew why man was created and why man lives. Because of this, it is easy to understand my great joy at coming to occupy lodgings where sleep awaited me.

I do not know if that house is still standing, and, if it is, whether they have not made offices and stores and soda stands out of it, as they have done with most of the houses in Tel Aviv. In those days, it was unique among houses, the pleasantest of houses.

8

When the train arrived in Tel Aviv, my heart began to dance. At last I was entering the city and my room, to sprawl out on the bed for a good sleep. Praised be He who has preserved such satisfaction in His world for His creatures.

I called a porter and he took my baggage. Feeling very expansive, I asked him out of friendliness where he lodged and if he had pleasant lodgings, after the manner of a man whose mind is clear and open enough to ask after the welfare of his neighbor. And I told him all about my new lodgings. Moving from one subject to another, we spoke about the beginning of Tel Aviv, which had been a pleasant place to live. The porter sighed. “We will never be granted peace like the peace we had here at first, until the Messiah comes.”

As we spoke we came to the new house. The green hill rose among its stately trees, and lovely flowers put forth their fragrance from every side. The porter stopped and looked around. It was obvious that never in his life had he seen such a pleasant place.

Silently we walked up the grassy steps. A breeze blew in from the garden, and with it every good smell. Small birds were flying swiftly through the air, and fish were swimming below them in the pool, chasing the birds’ shadows.

The landlord came out, gave me a warm welcome, and said to the porter, “Bring up the baggage.”

Suddenly my heart sank, and I looked at the doorstep of the house. I was clean and scrubbed, and shadows of flowers were playing upon it. But that child was not there and did not climb all over me and did not hang on to me and did not stretch his arms to me. Silently the shadows of the flowers waved upon the doorstep; there was no child there at all. The porter stared at me. Was he waiting for me to tell him to take the baggage elsewhere? The lady of the house came out, affectionately nodded her head to me, and said, “Your room is ready.”

I bowed to her and I said something. Or perhaps I said nothing, and I retraced my steps. The porter trailed after me, my baggage on his shoulder.

9

I walked until I came to my first quarters. Truly, this porter be remembered for blessing, for he kept his silence and did not disturb my thoughts. Was he thinking about the peace to come in the days of the Messiah, or did his heart warn him not to disturb a man who returns to the place he has fled?

The child was lying on the doorstep, soiled with sores. His eyelashes were stuck together, covered with some sort of green pus. It would surprise me if eyes like that could see anything.

But he saw me. And when he saw me he stretched his slender fingers and called out, “Oinkle,” which is to say, “Uncle.” His voice was strained, like that of a cricket whose wings were weak.

I took him in my arms and rocked him up and down, north and south. He hugged my neck and clung to me with all his might. He was lighter than a chick, and his body was very warm. He seemed to be feverish.

For a long time I held him in my arms, and he kicked at my stomach with both of his feet in inexpressible joy. Two or three times I stared at him, to remind him that his reflection was still in my eyes. But he did not stick his hands into my eyes, since during the eight days of our separation his eyes had closed from sobbing so much and he could not see his reflection.

The landlord came out. “Have you come back to us, sir?” And he looked upon himself with great importance. I embraced the child again and said nothing. Finally I put him down, and I paid the porter for his trouble. The child stretched his arms to me and said, “Oinkle, moo.” I took him into my arms again. He put his head against my neck and dozed off.

I went into the house and I set him on his bed as his lips whispered, “Moo, moo, oinkle, moo,” which is to say, “More, more, uncle, more.”

The child’s mother came in. She put down her bag and curled her lips. “So, you have returned to us, sir. Had we known we would have tidied up the room a bit.” I nodded to her and went up to my room. There was so much dust there that the real dirt could not be seen.

I took off my clothes and stretched out on my bed. The buses roared in front of my window and sellers of soda poured and shouted. But all of these sounds gradually died away, except for an echo of the child’s voice ringing in my ears. I made my ear into a funnel so that I could hear more.