Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam

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I

GERHARD GREIFENBACH AND HIS WIFE GERDA, MY TWO GOOD FRIENDS, were just about to go abroad. They hoped to rest a while from the strain of life in our country and visit relatives in the Diaspora. But when I called to wish them well upon their way, it was plain to see that they were really troubled. I hadn’t expected anything of the kind. After all, they lived a measured life, enjoyed a steady income, got on well together, and never did anything without first considering it carefully. If they had decided to go on their travels, they had surely managed to eliminate any obstacles and snags. Why then were they so dark and distracted?

We sat together over tea, talking about the countries they were going to visit. A good many lands are no longer accessible, for since the war the world has closed in on us and the countries that admit tourists are fewer in number. Even places which have not barred their doors do not exactly welcome visitors. Still, if a traveler goes about things sensibly, he can find ways of enjoying his trip.

All the time we talked, their anxiety never left them. I began trying to guess at the causes, but could not find any real grounds. These people, I thought to myself, are my friends; indeed I am almost one of the family. After the riots of 1929, when the Arabs had destroyed my home and I had no roof over my head, the Greifenbachs put me up. Again, in the bad times when people who had gone into town could not get back to their homes on account of the curfews suddenly imposed by the British, I had spent several nights at their house. Seeing them so worried, I felt I should ask the reason, but I found some difficulty in framing the question tactfully. I could see Mrs. Greifenbach staring straight ahead of her into the depths of the room. She was like someone looking at a beloved object in order to fix its image so firmly in mind that he will be sure of recognizing it again. Still staring at the room, she remarked, as if to herself, “It’s hard to leave and hard to come back. I only pray that when we get home the doors won’t be locked against us and we won’t have to go to court with squatters.”

Greifenbach made Gerda’s words more explicit. “These are fine times,” he said, “when we can’t even be sure of a roof over our heads. You open the newspaper, only to read about people breaking into other people’s homes. You go to the shops and hear of this person or that whose house has been broken into. A man’s afraid to go out for a short stroll for fear his house will be grabbed while he is away. And we’ve all the more reason to be anxious, because our house is so far from any others and a long way out of town. It’s true that one room is rented to a Dr. Ginat, but that doesn’t help us in the least; most of the time he’s away from home, and when we go on our travels the house will be left with no one to guard it.”

My heart beat fast as I heard this; not because of the Greifenbachs, but because they had spoken of Ginat as a real person. Since the time when the name of Ginat became world-famous, I had not come across anyone who could say he actually knew him. Nor had I heard any mention of him, except in connection with his books. And now here he was, staying in this very house where I came and went freely.

Even with his first published article, “Ninety-nine Words of the Edo Language,” Ginat had drawn the attention of most of the philologists; when he followed this up with his Grammar of Edo, no philologist could afford to ignore him. But what made him truly famous was his discovery of the Enamite Hymns. To discover ninety-nine words of a language whose very name was hitherto unknown is no small achievement, and a greater one still is the compilation of a grammar of this forgotten tongue. But the Enamite Hymns were more: they were not only a new-found link in a chain that bound the beginnings of recorded history to the ages before, but in themselves splendid and incisive poetry. Not for nothing, then, did the greatest scholars come to grips with them, and those who at first had doubted that they were authentic Enamite texts began to compose commentaries on them. One thing, however, surprised me. All these scholars affirmed that the gods of Enam and their priests were male; how was it that they did not catch in the hymns the cadence of a woman’s song? On the other hand, I could be mistaken; for I am not, of course, a professional scholar, only a common reader who happens to enjoy anything beautiful that comes his way.

Mrs. Greifenbach could tell that I was excited, but could not tell why. She poured me another cup of tea and repeated what she had been saying before. I held my teacup while my heart pounded; at the same time, I could hear a kind of echo from my very depths. This did not surprise me; ever since the day I had first read the Enamite Hymns that echo had resounded. It was the reverberation of a primeval song passed on from the first hour of history through endless generations.

I held down the turmoil within me and asked, “Is he here?” Even as I said this, I was amazed at my own question. Never had I been inside a house where Ginat had been seen.

“Oh, no,” answered Mrs. Greifenbach. “He’s not in.” Well, I thought, that’s clear now. But since they’ve told me that he has rented a room, they must surely have seen him; and if they’ve seen him, they may very well have talked to him; and if they’ve talked to him, perhaps they can tell me something about him. With a great man who shuns publicity and lets nothing be known about himself, even the least bit of information is an unexpected find.

I turned to the Greifenbachs. “May I ask what you know about Ginat?”

“What we know?” answered Greifenbach. “Very little, so little it amounts to less than nothing.”

“How did he turn up at your house?”

“That’s easily answered,” said Greifenbach. “He just rented a room and came to live in it.”

“But how did he get here?” I insisted.

“Well, if you want to know the whole story, I can tell you, though there’s really nothing to tell.”

“Nevertheless, please tell me,” I said.

“One afternoon in summer,” he went on, “we were out on the veranda having tea, when a man with a walking stick and a knapsack came up and asked if we would rent him a room. We aren’t in the habit of renting rooms. Besides, this man didn’t so take my fancy that I felt like changing my ways in order to have him as a roomer. On the other hand, I was thinking, We do have a room that has been empty all these years. We’ve no use for it, and there’s a separate entrance, a shower, and so on. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to rent the room, if not for the money’s sake, at least to do a good turn to someone who wants to live in this modest neighborhood and is plainly a lover of peace and quiet. This fellow went on to say, ‘I promise I won’t give you much trouble. I travel about a great deal and only come to Jerusalem for a rest between one journey and the next. I shall not bring in any visitors, either.’ I took another look at him and could see that it would be a good thing to rent him the room; not for the reasons he gave, but because by now I rather liked him. In fact, I was surprised at myself for not realizing at once what sort of man he was. I looked across at Gerda and could see that she agreed. So I said to him, ‘Very well, the room is yours, on condition that you expect nothing from us; no service or anything at all, except a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp; and the rent will be such-and-such.’ He took out his money and paid down a year’s rent, and he has kept to his side of the bargain ever since, making no demands on us. That’s all I can tell you, besides what I’ve seen about him in the literary supplements to the newspapers, which I’m sure you have also read. I dare say you have read his Hymns, too. So have I, a bit here and a bit there, but I still don’t see why they are so important. I’m not in the habit of expressing my views about matters on which I’m no expert, but I think I can say this: in every generation, some discovery is made that’s regarded as the greatest thing that ever was. Eventually it’s forgotten, for meanwhile some new discovery comes to light. No doubt that goes, too, for the discoveries of Dr. Ginat.”

I let these remarks pass and returned to the main question, concerning Dr. Ginat himself. “My guess is that Gerda could tell me more,” I said.

Mrs. Greifenbach looked at me, surprised that I should credit her with knowledge she didn’t possess. She hesitated for a moment, reflected for still another, then said, “I really don’t know any more than what Gerhard has told you. There’s a separate entrance to the room, we don’t have to keep it tidy, and our hard working cleaning woman Grazia, as you know, isn’t keen on extra work. Since we gave Ginat the key to his room, I’ve not been in it, nor have I seen him; after staying here one night, he went off and didn’t come back for months.”

Having said this, Mrs. Greifenbach began speaking again about their intended journey, throwing in at the same time a sort of complaint. “Your head is so full of our tenant,” she said, “that you don’t listen to what we are saying.”

“Possibly,” I answered.

“Don’t just say ‘possibly,’” she went on, “you must admit that it’s absolutely true.”

“Heaven forbid that I should contradict you, but please tell me more about Ginat.”

“Haven’t I already told you, he only stayed one night and went away next morning.”

“And didn’t you say, too, that he came back? Very well, when he came back what did he do?”

“Do? He closed the door and stayed in his room.”

“What was he doing there?”

“Oh, he may have been drawing the pyramids to scale or writing a third part to Faust. How do I know?”

I looked hard at her for some time, but she only laughed and said, “I see you want to turn me into a detective.”

“No,” I answered, “I don’t want you to be a detective. I simply want to hear more about Ginat.”

I’ve told you,” she said. “Since we gave him his key, I’ve not spoken to him.”

“But what did he do when he came back?”

“I’m sure he did one of the things I’ve mentioned. Which it was, I’ve not troubled myself to find out.”

“Gerda,” said Greifenbach, “just hasn’t got that quality women are noted for. She isn’t the least bit curious.”

Gerda tapped her long, slender fingers on his hairy hands, saying, “You have enough of that quality for both of us. So you tell him.”

“Who, me??” Greifenbach exclaimed in surprise. “Even I can’t tell him about things that never were.”

“So you really want me to tell him,” said Gerda. “Wasn’t it you who said Dr. Ginat had created a girl for himself?”

Greifenbach laughed a long and happy laugh. “Do you know what Gerda’s referring to? She’s thinking of the legend about the lonely poet — I’ve forgotten his name — who was said to have created a woman to serve his needs. Are you familiar with that legend?”

“It was Rabbi Solomon Ibn Gabirol,” I said, “and if you are interested, this is how the story ends. News of the affair spread about until it reached the king, who gave orders for the woman to be brought before him. The king saw her and fell in love with her, but she ignored him. They went and brought Rabbi Solomon Ibn Gabirol. When he came he showed the king that she was not a real creature, only pieces of wood made up into the likeness of a woman. But what has this legend to do with Dr. Ginat?”

Mrs. Greifenbach said, “One night, Gerhard and I were sitting together reading Goethe when we heard a voice coming from Ginat’s room. We knew that Ginat was back from his travels and that he was in there reading. We began our own reading again, and again the voice came through. Gerhard put his book down and said, ‘That’s a woman’s voice.’ But it wasn’t only the idea of Ginat bringing a woman to his room that surprised us; it was the language she spoke, some strange tongue we had never heard before. Gerhard whispered to me, ‘Ginat must have created a girl for himself, and there she is talking to him in her own language.’ My dear, that’s all I can tell you about Ginat. If you want to know more, ask Gerhard. He loves to make conjectures and treat them as proven facts.”

Greifenbach, who had made a hobby of philology, began to speak of the mysteries of language and all the new discoveries in that field. I added something of what I had learned from the literature of the Kabbalah, which in this matter has anticipated academic scholarship. Mrs. Greifenbach interrupted us by saying, “The woman sang, too, in a strange language we knew nothing about. Judging by her voice, I’d say she was sad and bitter. Gerhard, where have you hidden the present our tenant gave you the morning after our anniversary? What pity you weren’t there, my dear. Our wedding, you know, was a very simple affair, but we made up for it with our party ten years after. Don’t be lazy, Gerhard; get up and show him what Ginat gave you.”

Greifenbach got up, opened an iron box, and took out two parched brown leaves that resembled leaves of old tobacco. He set them before me with pride and watched for my reaction. From the look on his face it was clear that he believed he was exhibiting a rare possession. I glanced at the leaves for a moment and then asked what they were.

“Look again,” he said. I looked again but could see nothing except certain strange lines and markings which might be taken, if one were so inclined, for letters of a secret code.

“What is all this?” I insisted.

Greifenbach answered, “I know only what Ginat told me, and what he said was that they are talismans. What kind of talismans he didn’t say, but he told me that he has a collection of such things, and these leaves are duplicates and come from a far-off country. It’s a pity they have no power against burglers.”

“Perhaps,” said Gerda, “those that Ginat kept for himself do have that power.”

Greifenbach lit his pipe and sat silent, as if preoccupied with his own thoughts. After a while he knocked out the ash and took a cigarette. He lit up and went on, “You see, whatever we find to talk about leads us back to our worries about the house. As for the squatters, it’s even possible that right is on their side. A young fellow, let us say, comes back after the war. He needs a roof over his head and can’t find one. What’s he to do but break in somewhere? Let me tell you something. One Saturday evening I was standing at a bus stop. The bus was full up and passengers were still pressing in. The driver sounded his horn and drove off. All the people left behind stood about miserably as they waited for a second bus. But, of course, it never came; the more passengers there are, the fewer the buses, as is always the case in Jerusalem. A couple were standing together, a young fellow and a girl. The girl was looking at him with passionate longing. ‘Günther,’ she said, ‘it’s over a year since we were married and we’ve still not spent a single night alone together.’ The fellow squeezed his young wife’s hand, sucked his lips in and was silent with grief and anger. Günther and his wife haven’t found a home for themselves. They live apart, wherever they happen to be. The landlords make difficulties about their visiting one another, hoping that they will get tired of their rooms and leave them, because meanwhile the number of people wanting apartments has increased and the number of rooms available has become less, and if they leave, the landlords can raise the rent. They meet each other in cafés and amusement places and separate to go back to their rooms at the opposite ends of the town, all because they have no place where they can live together. So now you know why we are so scared about our home. In fact, we got into such a state that one night Gerda woke me up because she thought someone was walking on the roof.”

“You are always telling tales about me,” said Mrs. Greifenbach. “Why don’t you tell him what you said?”

“I said nothing. I don’t remember saying anything.”

“Do you want me to remind you?” said Gerda.

Gerhard laughed heartily. “And if I don’t want you to, does that mean you won’t tell him?”

“If it weren’t so funny,” said Gerda, “I wouldn’t repeat it. Do you know what this master mind had to say? He said, in these very words, ‘It must be the girl Ginat created, taking a stroll on the roof.’”

Greifenbach laid down his cigarette, took up his pipe again, and remarked to me, “Do you really believe I said that?”

“Who wouldn’t believe a lovely girl like Gerda?”

Mrs. Greifenbach laughed. “A lovely girl, indeed,” she said, “whose wedding canopy has been pressing on her head for ten years now!”

“Have you two really been married for ten years already?”

“Those leaves,” said Gerda, “which Ginat gave to Gerhard were his present on our tenth anniversary. If they came into just anybody’s hands he’d probably break them up as tobacco for his pipe. He wouldn’t know there was magic in them. To tell the truth, we wouldn’t have known either if we hadn’t heard it from Ginat; and we believe him, because he’s quite without guile. Well, tomorrow we start on our travels, and I don’t know whether I should feel glad or sorry.”

Without thinking about it much, I said to Gerda, “You’ve no need to feel sorry. I’ll take it upon me to keep an eye on your house, and if I think it necessary, I’ll stay here for two or three nights.”

The Greifenbachs were delighted at this offer. “Now we can travel with an easy mind,” they said.

“Surely you don’t have to thank me,” I added.

“Really, it’s I who ought to thank you; your house is a wonderful place for sleep, as I learned on curfew nights.”

My remark brought back to mind that troubled time, when people who went into the city could not get home again because the Mandate government had suddenly proclaimed a curfew. Anyone out on the Street who lived away from the center and couldn’t find shelter in town would be taken by the police and locked up in jail for the night. His family, not knowing where he had disappeared to, would be worried to death. And this had led to other oppressive decrees against us, decrees which at the time seemed to be in the very nature of life in this country. So we talked on about the curfew nights. Yet, evil and oppressive as they were, some little good came of them. People were obliged to stay at home and as a result gave thought to their wives and children, which they had not been accustomed to doing when they spent their evenings at assemblies, councils, meetings and the like, all of which estrange a man from himself and, needless to say, from his family. You might even say that public affairs benefited; with fewer meetings and debates things worked out in their own way, and in spite of it all turned out for the best. Another positive result of the curfew nights was that many bachelors, compelled to stay indoors, came to know the daughters of the house and ended up marrying them.

So we sat and talked, the Greifenbachs and I, until I said it was time for me to go. Greifenbach gave me the key of the house and showed me all its entrances and exits. Soon afterwards I parted from him and his wife and went on my way.

II

One day at sunset I went out to get myself some bread and olives. My wife and children had gone away to Gederah, and I was left to provide for myself. Carrying my bread and olives, I strolled about among the shops. I had no desire to go home, since no one was there and there was nothing I especially wished to do at the day’s end. Walking on aimlessly, letting my feet carry me where they wished, I found I had come to the valley where the Greifenbach’s house stood. In the stillness that fills the valleys of Jerusalem at sunset all manner of blessings abide. It is as if the valleys were cut off from the settled land around them; as if they contained in their depths the whole world. And this valley especially is ringed with a crown of trees through which beneficent vapors flow, keeping it free from the taint of malign airs. I said to myself, Since I am here, I shall go and see how things stand at the Greifenbachs’ house; and since I have the key in my pocket, I may as well go inside.

I went in, put on the light, and walked about from room to room. The four pleasant rooms and their equally agreeable contents were all in good order, as if the mistress of the house had just given them her attention. Yet a month had already passed since the Greifenbachs left home. Truly, when a house has a good mistress it remains well kept even though she is far away.

Just then I was neither hungry nor thirsty, only tired. I put out all the lights, opened the window, and sat down to rest. Out of the secret places of the night, silence came and wrapped itself around me until I could see and touch the tranquility. I made up my mind to spend the night there and so keep my promise to the Greifenbachs. I rose from my seat and lit the table lamp. Then I picked up a book to read in bed by a lamp already at the bedside, glad that I would not need to shift any article in someone else’s house. Actually, so long as I held the key, I had the right to regard myself as in my own home; but the sense of strangeness we feel on such occasions makes us forget our privileges.

I sat in Greifenbach’s chair and reflected. Just now, while I am staying in their house, perhaps they are looking in vain for a place to spend the night; or if they have found one, it is not the kind they are accustomed to. Why should they have left their beautifully furnished home to wander about in foreign parts? What reason, indeed, have all those who leave their homes and drift from place to place? Is it a first law of our experience or a mocking illusion that, as the ancient proverb has it, “Your happiness is where you are not”?

I took off my shoes, undressed, picked up my book, put out the table lamp and lit the one by the bed. I lay down and opened the book. I could feel myself dozing off, while an idea of sorts seemed to be thinking itself out on its own. Strange, I thought, that I, who on other nights can’t get to sleep even after midnight, should now feel suddenly drowsy before the night has properly set in. I put the book down, switched off the light, turned to face the wall and closed my eyes. I told myself in silent speech: Here in this house, where not a soul in the world knows of your presence, you can sleep as long as you like and no one will come to seek you.

All around me was stillness and repose, such as one finds in the valleys of Jerusalem, which the good Lord hid away for lovers of tranquility. The Greifenbachs had good reason to be concerned for their home: if any squatter were to break in, no one hereabouts would be aware of it. Little by little the run of my thoughts came to a halt, until nothing remained but the dim sensation that all my limbs were locked in sleep.

Suddenly I heard a sound of scratching and awoke. Since I had put my bread and olives away in a tin box, I was not afraid that mice might get at them; but I was afraid that mice might damage the carpet, the clothes or books, or those leaves that Ginat had given to Greifenbach. I pricked up my ears and realized that the sound was not made by a mouse, but by a man who was fumbling at the outside door. If it’s not a housebreaker, I thought, then it must be Dr. Ginat, who has come home and is trying the wrong door. I’ll open up for him, and so I’ll see him face to face.

I got out of bed and opened the door. Someone was outside, groping for the bell. I pressed the switch, put on the light, and then — words failed me. After all, I had not told a soul that I would be spending the night at the Greifenbachs’, indeed, I myself hadn’t known that I would be here, how then could Gabriel Gamzu have known my whereabouts?

“Is it you, Mr. Gamzu?” I called. “Wait a moment while I put on some clothes.”

I went back and dressed, wondering why this visitor was here. He was not acquainted with either the owner of the house or his wife. Greifenbach was not looking for books in Hebrew, even less for manuscripts and first editions. The little Hebrew he knew had been learned with difficulty. Although he prided himself on his sound knowledge of the language and its grammar, all this amounted to was some biblical grammar he had studied in Gesenius’ textbook on the structure of Hebrew. His wife managed better than he, for although her grammar was an amateur affair and she knew nothing of Gesenius, she could get on in Hebrew with her cleaning woman Grazia, and with the street traders too. All the same, Hebrew books were none of her concern. So the question still stood, what had brought Gamzu here? I had to conclude that he was here on my account. Gamzu knew that he was always welcome, to me as to all his friends and acquaintances, because he was a scholar, had seen the world, had voyaged to distant lands, and reached places where no traveler had been before. From these far-off parts he had brought back poems by authors about whom nothing was known and manuscripts and first editions of whose very existence we had been ignorant. But now he no longer traveled at all; he stayed at home with his wife. This man, so used to making journeys, had become in his prime the attendant of a sick wife who, it was said, had been bedridden since their wedding night. Whether or not the story was true, it was certainly a fact that he had a sick wife at home, that there was no earthly cure for her, and that her husband had to nurse her, wash her, feed her and attend to her every need. Nor was she grateful for his self-sacrifice, but would beat him and bite him and tear his clothes. Because of this he went about his business at night, being ashamed to show himself in the street by day with torn clothing and bruised face. Now he had come to me. And why had he come? He had saved twelve pounds to purchase a place for his wife in a nursing home; he was afraid to carry the money about on him in case he should spend it, and so he had left it with me. On the day he did so I had gone on a trip to the Dead Sea region and left the money behind at home. Thieves had broken in and robbed my house and taken Gamzu’s money. I had sent him a message not to worry about it; all the same, he had come to hear from me directly whether I was really prepared to repay him what had been stolen. And since he had not been able to find me at home, he had come to see me here. This was my conjecture. I was later to see that it was wrong; Gamzu had not come on account of the money, but for another reason.

III

Having put on some clothes, I returned to Gamzu and said, “You’ve come for your money?”

He gazed at me woefully with an uncertain look in his eyes, imploring in a broken voice, “Please let me in.”

I showed him into the house and offered him a chair. He looked around in all directions and deliberated for a while. At last he stammered out, “My wife.” After another pause he added, “I went home and my wife wasn’t there.”

“So what do you intend to do?” I asked.

“Forgive me,” he said, “for suddenly bursting in on you. Just imagine: I came home after the evening service at the synagogue to get my wife settled for the night and found the bed empty. I went off in search of her. ‘Going to the south, turning to the north, turning, turning goes the wind, and again to its circuits the wind returns.’ Suddenly I found myself in this valley without knowing how I came to be here. I saw a house; I felt drawn to enter it. I knew there was no point in doing this, but I did so just the same. It’s good that I found you. Let me sit here for a short while and then I’ll go away.”

“Pardon me for asking, Mr. Gamzu,” I said. “I have heard that your wife is bedridden.”

“Bedridden she is,” Gamzu replied.

“Then how is it that you found the bed empty? If she can’t move, how did she get out of bed and go outside?”

He whispered, “She’s a sleepwalker.”

I sat for a while without speaking. Then I repeated his words in the form of a question, whispering back, “A sleepwalker?”

“Yes.”

I looked at him as a man might who has heard a report and does not know what to make of it. Perceiving this, he said, “Every night when the moon is full, my wife gets up from bed and walks wherever the moon leads her.”

I could not keep myself from saying reproachfully, “And don’t you lock the door?”

Gamzu smiled slyly. “I lock the door.”

“If so,” I said, “how can she get out?”

“Even if I hung seven locks upon the door, and locked every one with seven keys, and threw each key into one of the seven seas of the Land of Israel, my wife would find them all and open the door and go walking.”

I sat on, saying nothing, and he too sat in silence. At last I said, “Since when have you known that she is in that condition? I mean, that she’s a sleepwalker?”

He clutched his forehead, dug his thumbs into his temples, and said, “Since when have I known that she is a sleepwalker? I have known since the day I met her.”

I was silent again, but not for long. “Nevertheless,” I said, “this did not keep you from marrying her.”

He took off his hat, brought out a small skullcap and put it on, paused, and asked, “What were you saying?”

I repeated my words.

He smiled and said, “Nevertheless it did not pre-vent me from marrying her. On the contrary, when I saw her for the first time poised on a rock at the top of a mountain which not every man could climb, with the moon lighting up her face while she sang, ‘Yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah,’ I said to myself, If she is not one of the angels of the Divine Presence who have union with the angels of the Divine Being, she must be one of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac, and none other than the constellation Virgo. I went to her father’s home and said, ‘I wish to marry your daughter.’ He answered me, ‘My son, you know of Gemulah’s condition and yet you wish to marry her?’ I said, ‘The All-Merciful will be merciful to us.’ He looked up to the sky, addressing the Holy One, ‘Master of the World, if this man who comes from afar is filled with mercy towards her, how much more so will you, who are so near, show mercy to us.’ Next day he called me and said, ‘Come with me.’ I went with him until we reached a mountain, the highest of the range of steep mountains that raised themselves up to heaven. I climbed with him, leaping with him from crag to crag, until he stood by a perpendicular rock. He looked about him in all directions. When he knew that no one could see us, he bent down and dug beneath the rock and lifted one stone. A cave opened up and he went inside. When he came out, he was holding an earthenware jar. ‘Let us go back,’ he said. On the way back, he opened the jar and showed me a bundle of dry leaves unlike any I had ever seen; and on them were the strange characters of a script unlike any that I knew; and the color of the characters, that is, the color of the ink in which they were written, was not like any color we know. At first sight I should have said that the scribe had mixed gold, azure and purple with all the primary colors of the rainbow and written with them. But as I stood gazing, the colors altered before my eyes and changed into the tints of sea-weeds drawn from the depths, such weeds as Dr. Rechnitz drew up from the sea near Jaffa. Then again, they were like the silver strands we observe on the moon. I stared at the leaves, at the characters, at Gemulah’s father. At that moment he seemed as if transported to another world. And then it became increasingly clear that what at first sight had seemed an illusion was the truth itself. If you ask me what it all meant, I can give you no answer. For my part it was clear, crystal clear, even though I wonder now how I am able to say this. And if I have no words to describe the experience, yet it was more distinct than anything one can explain in words. At that moment I had neither speech nor power to ask any question; and the cause of this was not the leaves or the characters on them, but the ecstatic state of Gemulah’s father. As for the characters, all the colors which I had seen before faded later and underwent a complete change, but I have no clear knowledge of how the characters came to shed their colors and when this change came about. As I stood marveling, Gemulah’s father replaced the leaves in the jar and spoke to me simply, with these words: ‘They are plants of the earth, and they have been given power to influence the upper air.’

“A year later, on the night before our wedding, he said, ‘You will remember those plants which I showed you on the mountain. You know what they are.’ He stooped and whispered in my ear, ‘There is a magic in them; what kind of magic I do not know. I do know that it has power to influence the atmosphere that surrounds the moon, and the moon itself. I now give you all these plants, and as long as they remain in your keeping you may control Gemulah’s steps so that she will not go astray. Up to now, I have not taken them from the place where they were concealed. And why? Because, so long as Gemulah is calm and sheltered and wrapped up in her own wholeness, they serve no purpose. Now that the time has come for love and union with her husband, when she must draw upon her husband’s strength, she is subject to a different influence and another mode of being. So, when the nights of the full moon come, take these plants and set them in the window facing the door, and hide them so that no man will notice them, and I assure you that if Gemulah leaves the house she will return to you before the moon returns to her proper sphere.’”

I said to Gamzu, “Tonight you forgot to follow all your father-in-law’s instructions.”

“I did not forget.”

“Well then, how did it happen?”

Gamzu spread out his two empty hands and said, as if to himself, “Gabriel, your magic has gone.”

“You mean it has lost its power over her?”

“Not at all,” he answered. “It has gone from me.”

“Has your wife rooted it out?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “I am the cause. I sold it. By mistake, I sold it. There was a gathering of scholars here, many scholars from all over the world came together in Jerusalem. Some came to my house to buy books and manuscripts. As they turned them over hurriedly, one man rummaging among the books I had set aside and another looking at those which his colleague had taken, in the midst of all this confusion those charms got mixed up in a heap of miscellaneous manuscripts and I sold them without knowing to whom. I don’t remember, though I should have, for I can remember every manuscript I sold, but not this; and the money I got is the penalty I am paying, twelve pounds, which I left with you to buy Gemulah a place in the home for incurables.”

Gamzu clutched his brow and pressed his temples. Then he rubbed his blind eye with one finger; for Gamzu had a blind eye, and when he was overcome by his thoughts he would rub it until it turned as red as healthy flesh. He wiped his finger and looked across at me as if he wanted me to say something. What can I say to him, I thought; I shall say nothing. So I sat facing him in silence. Again he spoke.

“Sometimes I think that Gemulah knows the man who bought it; that he is the Hakham from Jerusalem who appeared in her region when I was away in Vienna. And for this I have two pieces of evidence. First, all that same day she sang her yiddal, yiddal, yiddal song, a thing she had never done all the time she was here. Secondly, she began to speak the language they use in her parts, a thing she had never done since she left her country. I am sure that the man who bought the talismans brought this about; when she saw him she remembered the times when she lived in her own region and that same man had been a visitor. But then he was dressed like a Jerusalem sage; for anyone who visits those parts dresses that way so that the holiness of the city may protect him from the Gentiles.”

Again Gamzu rubbed his blind eye, which seemed to be smiling between his fingers, as if mocking his distress, as if winking for me to laugh at this man who had sold an article on which his life and that of his wife depended. But I did not feel like deriding him. Rather, I was sorry for him. The thought suddenly came into my head that Dr. Ginat was the man who had acquired Gamzu’s talismans; for had I not heard from Greifenbach that Ginat had a collection of magic articles and had given him some duplicates? I asked Gamzu, “About those charms, what material are they written on? Is it paper or parchment?”

Gamzu answered, “Neither paper nor parchment nor vellum; as I told you before, the charms are inscribed on leaves.”

I correlated the times and saw that it was impossible for Ginat to have been the purchaser; indeed, that scholars’ convention had taken place after the tenth anniversary of the Greifenbachs’ marriage. And even if it had taken place before, was it conceivable that a European like Ginat would dress himself up as a Jerusalem sage, and be able to pass himself off as such?

Gamzu had read much, and studied much, and served many scholars; he had traveled through half the world. Truly there was not a community of Jews in which Gamzu had not been. Besides manuscripts and early printed books, he had brought back from every place he had been traditional tales and customs, wise men’s sayings and proverbs, and stories of travelers. Whatever occurred, he would tell of similar occurrences as though recent events took place merely as the occasion for him to recall earlier ones; or he would pick up a word from those being spoken, and speak on it. Even now, he passed on from his immediate distress over the charms to an account of the way in which charms operate.

There sat Gamzu and rolled himself a cigarette and talked about the magic properties of charms, whose virtue is superior to that of drugs; for the drugs we find mentioned in ancient books cannot for the most part be relied on, since the nature of man has changed and with these changes the effect of medicines has altered. But charms have undergone no change and still retain their first nature and condition, because they are yoked together with the stars, and the stars remain just as they were on the day when they were first hung in the firmament. And their influence is observed on all creatures, and especially on man; for according to the star under which he is born, such is a man’s character and his fate. As it is said in the Talmud, “All depends upon one’s star,” and it is said, “Our star makes us wise, or makes us rich.” The maladies of man likewise depend upon the stars, for the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the stars their power to work upon the lower orders of creation, whether for good or ill. The earth too is altered according to the stars, as Ibn Ezra put it in his commentary on Exodus, “For the regions of the earth change according to whatever star is above them”; and he also wrote, “And those who have the wisdom of the stars know this.” Yet we must not attribute to the stars in themselves any power or purpose, for all their power and purpose stems from that of their Maker and Creator, who keeps them employed. And what need, if one can so phrase it, has the Holy One of stars, except that, as Proverbs says, “The Lord hath made everything for His own sake.” Le-ma’anehu, for His own sake. This last word should be derived from ma’aneh, meaning song and praise, as in the verse, “sing out — anu — to the Lord in praise.” And this is just what David said in his psalm: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament declares His handiwork.” All that the Holy One created was made for the sake of Israel, that they might know how to give honor to the Holy One and how to recount His praise, and that the prophecy might be fulfilled, “This people that I have created, they will declare My praise.” And the stars, like the angels, are half of them male and half of them female, in heaven as it is on earth, male and female; even so are the letters of the word “heaven” equal numerically to those of “male and female.” And this being so, they yearn for each other, in heaven as on earth; and thus the way a man and woman are drawn each to the other is in accordance with their stars. What, then, gave the children of Benjamin such assurance, when they seized in the vineyards, each man a wife from the daughters of Shiloh? Were they not apprehensive that they might be unsuitably matched? But they knew that in the time to come the Temple would be built on the heights of their land, and that all Israel would have a share in it. For this very reason the color of the flag of Benjamin resembles the colors of all the rest of the tribes, and accordingly they were sure that the women they seized were their destined mates.

IV

As often happens with ideas, which you may develop as far as you wish or break away from at any time you please, so with Gamzu’s account of the workings of charms and the functioning of stars: he went on until he chose to stop, and then began to tell me of his travels.

“If you wish to see Jews from the days of the Mishnah,” said Gamzu, “go to the city of Amadia. Forty families of Israel live there, all God-fearing and true to the faith. They rise each morning to say their prayers; but they do not know how to pray, except for the verse ‘Hear O Israel’ and the response ‘Amen.’ They do not put on Tefillin, save for the rabbi and one old man. At times of prayer they sit in silence, and when the prayer leader says the blessings, they devoutly reply, ‘Amen.’ When the service brings them to the recital of ‘Hear O Israel,’ they shiver and quake, and recite it throughout in fear and dread, with trembling and terror, like men whose time has come to sacrifice their souls for God. And in the neighborhood of Amadia, shepherds move about, men of great stature with long hair; they sleep with their herds in clefts of the rocks, and do not know the laws of the Torah, not the least iota, and do not come to pray even on Rosh Hashanah. To them and to those like them that passage in the Mishnah refers: ‘The case of a person who was passing behind the synagogue and happened to hear the sound of the Shofar.’ Once a year a Hakham from Babylon comes to circumcise the boys who were born during that year.” “Is your wife of this people?” I asked him.

“My wife is not one of them. My wife is from another region, from the mountains. At first, her ancestors were settled beside the good springs, where the pasture was also good. But their neighbors made war on them, and they retaliated and drove them back. Because of their great might some of their troops advanced into the lands of the Gentiles, for they misconceived the text: ‘And to Gad he said, Blessed be he who enlarges Gad; he dwells as a lioness, and tears the arm, yea, the crown of the head.’ For they have a tradition that they are of the tribe of Gad, but they did not know that the blessing refers only to the time when they lived in the Land of Israel, not to their exile in the lands of other peoples. All the Gentiles gathered together against them and defeated them and killed many and captured many as slaves. Those who were left took to the high mountains and settled there. They remain there still, and have no fear of the Gentiles; but once every few years collectors come to gather taxes from them. Those who are so disposed pay them, the others take up their weapons and hide in the mountains until the tax collectors have gone. Sometimes it happens that a man who has fled does not return, because he has been made a prey of the eagles who attack and tear him with their talons. And all this time they have looked forward to their return to the Land of Israel, as was promised them by God through Moses our Teacher, peace upon him, who said that they would all return, according to the text: ‘Gad, a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last.’ All his troops shall regain their inheritance, which they took up beyond the Jordan, and no man of them shall be missing. Moreover they will come back with great possessions, as is written in the Aramaic Targum: ‘And with ample riches they shall return to their land.’”

Gamzu went on to relate how when he first came upon them they were dejected, with many sick at heart because of their long exile and long-deferred hope. But Gevariah ben Ge’uel, his father-in-law, is remembered for good, for he read to them from the Midrash and the Jerusalem Targum, which they have in its complete text, and which he translated into their language, and so gave them new heart, till they began to remember all the promises and assurances given us by the Holy One concerning the time of the Messiah.

Gamzu continued, “Gevariah ben Ge’uel, my father-in-law, was a mighty man. His face was the face of a lion, his strength was that of a bull, and he was light-footed as an eagle in flight. High praises of God were in his mouth and a two-edged sword in his hand. He led his people in prayer, and he forged their weapons of war. He also healed the sick, wrote charms, and taught betrothed maidens the marriage dances and songs. For this he would take no fee; all his works were done for the sake of heaven. And Gemulah his daughter was his mainstay. She was accomplished in all their songs, those that they had once sung when they dwelt by the springs and also those of the mountains.

“If you had seen my father-in-law Gevariah when he stood on the peak of a rock, a sky-blue turban on his head, his complexion and beard set off by his flowing hair, his dark eyes shining like two suns, his feet bare and the color of gold, his big toes striking the towering rock while he raised a song from the depths as he led his troops onward and Gemulah his daughter sang at full pitch and between twenty-two and twenty-seven maidens danced, all of them beautiful and high born, then you would have seen a likeness of the festive days of ancient Israel, when the daughters of Israel went out to dance in the vineyards.”

And how did Gamzu come to their land? “I had gone in search of manuscripts. I sailed the sea routes and walked for forty days in the wilderness. A sandstorm arose. But I failed to lay my head to the ground after the manner of those who cross the desert, who cover their heads when a sandstorm strikes, and when the storm has blown over stand up unhurt. The sand got into my eyes and blinded me; there was darkness all around me.

The leader of the caravan saw my distress, and after some days brought me to a settled region, and to the house of a certain man, saying, ‘He is of your people.’ That man was Gevariah ben Ge’uel. He prepared charms and medicines for me, and his daughter Gemulah tended me as I lay sick.

“Gemulah was then about twelve years old, and her gracious bearing and lovely voice were the most beautiful things in the world. Even when she spoke of commonplace things, saying, for instance, ‘Your bandage has slipped, Gabriel,’ or ‘Look down while I put ointment in your eye,’ my spirit rejoiced as if odes had been chanted to me. And when she sang, her voice stirred the heart like that of the bird Grofit, whose song is sweeter than that of any creature on earth. At first I had difficulty in understanding their speech, even when they spoke to me in the Holy Tongue, because their Hebrew has more full vowels and fewer elided syllables than ours and they pronounce words differently. Their speech rhythms are strange, too, so that I was unable to distinguish between their Hebrew and the language they spoke among themselves, a language that no outsider has heard. Gemulah and her father had yet another language. Often I would find them sitting in the twilight, a white kid lying in Gemulah’s lap and a bird hovering over the old man’s head, while they conversed, sometimes in a leisurely way and sometimes in haste, sometimes cheerfully and sometimes with an expression of fear. I would listen to them but not understand a word, until Gemulah revealed to me that this was an invented language which they had made up for their own pastime. Since the day Gemulah was torn from her native soil all that speech has disappeared from her lips, nor does she express herself in any song, save on the nights when the moon is full and she takes her walks, singing as she goes. But on the day when I sold the magic text, she spoke in that language and let her lovely voice be heard in song. And in the evening she said, ‘I want to eat kavanim.’ This is a kind of flat cake which they bake on live coals. Now I must go and see if my wife has come back.”

Gamzu took off his skullcap, placed his hat on his head, and stood up. But he had not got as far as the door when he turned back and began to pace about the room, his arms folded behind him, the fingers of his left hand fluttering nervously. After a little while he said, “I can’t understand why I came here, especially since I saw no light and didn’t know you were in the house; but certainly there is some reason for my coming, and even if I don’t know the reason, that doesn’t remove it. Who lives here?”

“A certain Dr. Greifenbach,” I said.

“And where is he?”

“He has gone abroad with his wife. Do you know them?”

“I do not know them,” said Gamzu. “Is Greifenbach a doctor of medicine?”

“He is a doctor who has left his profession. Why do you ask?”

“Apart from these people, who else is here?”

“You and I. Before they went on their travels, I promised the Greifenbachs that I would keep an eye on their house. They were worried about squatters, since there are so many of them now among the soldiers back from the war. Tonight I have kept my promise and come to stay here.”

Gamzu pricked up his ears. “And is no one else lodging in the house?”

“There is someone else,” I said, “who is not at home. Why do you ask?”

Gamzu blushed and said nothing. After a while he asked again, “What is the name of that lodger?”

I told him.

“Can he be the famous Dr. Ginat?” asked Gamzu.

“Do you know him?”

“I don’t know him, though I have heard of his books. But I haven’t read them. I don’t look at books that are less than four hundred years old.”

“Ginat’s books,” I replied, “go back four thousand years and more.”

Gamzu smiled. “I am looking at the vessel and not what it contains.”

Smiling in turn, I said, “Well, then, in another four hundred years you’ll be looking at Ginat’s books.”

“If in my third or fourth incarnation I am still interested in books,” said Gamzu, “it’s quite possible that I shall.”

“Two or three incarnations,” I replied, “are all a man goes through, according to the words of Scripture: ‘And it is said, unto three transgressions of Israel, yea, four, I shall not reverse it.’ No man of Israel passes through this world more than two or three times, unless he is obliged to fulfill some precept he has omitted from the six hundred and thirteen in the Torah; in which case he may even go through a thousand cycles of life, with reference to which it is said: ‘He commanded it unto the thousandth generation.’ But otherwise this is not so, yet you speak of a fourth incarnation.”

“It was a slip on my part,” said Gamzu. “You know my opinion, that no Jew is capable of saying anything for which the Bible gives no support, and especially that which is contrary to the plain meaning of the text. And do not answer me with those Bible critics who turn the words of the living God upside down. This they have learned from Gentile scholars, but in the depths of their heart they know that no text of Scripture has any other meaning than that which has been passed down to us by tradition. Yes, and the Hasidic leaders, they too twist the words of the Holy Writ; but the truly righteous who study the Torah for its own sake, with the intention of serving heaven, these only have the right to interpret scripture beyond its simple meaning. But as for the Bible critics who have not the merit of studying the Torah for its own sake, their teaching is perverted in accordance with the emptiness of their own spirit. So you say that Ginat lodges here. Do you know him?”

“I do not know him,” I said, “and I doubt if I shall get to know him. He hides away from people, and even the owners of the house do not see him.”

“It is a good sign when people don’t know a scholar. I like scholars who don’t show up in every place and make themselves into a public spectacle. Let me tell you something. I once came to London and informed a certain scholar there that I had brought manuscripts with me. He got busy and came along with two escorts, a journalist and a photographer. He took all the material I showed him and sat himself down in the pose of a great savant looking at his books, while the photographer stood there taking pictures. Two or three days later, someone showed me a newspaper. I looked at it and saw a face framed by books printed alongside praises of that scholar, who, it seemed, had discovered precious works that were quite unknown until he brought them to light. What do you think of that?”

I said to Gamzu, “I think as you do.”

Gamzu looked at me with an expression of annoyance. “You don’t know what I think, so why say you think as I do?”

“Very well. I don’t think as you do.”

“Are you making fun of me?” he asked.

“Not of you,” I answered, “but of that scholar, and of those like him, who waste their energies in trying to prop up their reputation. Whereas if they concentrated on their work, possibly they would become more famous.”

“They would not become more famous.”

“If so, they are right in behaving as they do.”

“I must go,” said Gamzu.

It was near midnight when he left, and I walked with him part of the way. The moon was full and the entire city glistened like the moon. If you have ever seen such a night, you will not find it strange that somnambulists leave their beds to go out and wander with the moon. When we reached the Georgian Quarter at the Damascus Gate I parted from Gamzu, expressing the hope that he would find his wife. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and said, “God willing.”

“If you want to get in touch with me,” I said, “you will find me at my home. I mean to go back in the morning.”

V

I returned to the Greifenbachs’ house and went back to bed. Sleep came quickly, and I knew nothing until I was roused by the sound of train wheels. The train reached Garmisch and stopped there. The door of the compartment opened and there was a view of high mountains and streams; I could hear a voice singing yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah. I was drawn by the voice and wanted to follow it. The door was shut against me. The moon came out and covered me with her light. I smiled at her with one eye and she smiled back with a grin that covered all her face.

But there was no train. I was in bed at the Greifenbachs’. I turned over to one side and pulled the blanket over my eyes, because the moon was shining on my face. I was thinking of how the world has shut itself in so that none of us can go where he wishes, except for the moon, that wanders over all the earth, singing yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah.

After lunching at a restaurant in town, I had gone home to get on with my work. But when I broke off to make myself some coffee, I found there was not a drop of water in the tap. I went up to the roof and inspected the water tanks. They had become overheated in the sun and the water at the bottom of the tanks was barely an inch deep. Jerusalem, a dry place, was at that time badly in need of water. I left my work behind and went over to the Greifenbachs’, for their house has a cistern, such as you find in the older houses of Jerusalem that were built when people drank rain water.

They had lived through many lives, the houses of Jerusalem. There is not one without a long story to it, especially the first ones to be built outside the walls. The Greifenbachs’ house was no exception.

About seventy years ago, there came to the land a grandee of the grandees of Gallipoli, Signor Gamaliel Giron, to spend the close of his life in the Holy City. He found no house to suit his needs, for the Jewish population was confined to the old courtyards within the walls, and every courtyard was inhabited by many families, and each family was a large one. So he bought himself two thousand square cubits of land outside the city, below the Damascus Gate, and built there a spacious house and planted a garden. And because the house was a long way from the populated area, with no synagogue in the neighborhood, he set apart one room as a private chapel and hired men to come and make up a Minyan for prayer. On his demise he bequeathed the house to the charitable society Gomlei Hasadim. In time those in charge of the society’s finances became pressed for money to pay the army tax, and mortgaged the house. The house remained under a mortgage for some years, they were unable to redeem it, and accordingly it was sold by those who had advanced the loan.

The house was sold to a German named Gotthold Gänseklein, who was head of the sect of Guardians, who had seceded from the sect of the Gemeinschaft der Gerechten, founded in the city of Gerlitz by Gottfried Greilich. Gänseklein, his wife and his mother-in-law lived in this house, and here he would hold prayer meetings and preach concerning the three true guards for redeeming the body and extending the limits of the soul. One night a quarrel occurred between Gänseklein’s wife and her mother. The wife bit her mother’s nose in order to disgrace her before the husband. People came to hear of this affair and Gänseklein was obliged to quit the country for shame.

Three Georgian brothers-in-law, who supported themselves by manufacturing Gouda cheese, now bought the house and made their cheese there. The Great War broke out, and Gamal Pasha expelled them from the country, because they were suspected of Zionism, the Star of David having been found stamped upon the cheese. After the war the Council of Delegates rented the house for their fellow member Georg Gnadenbrod. The house was repaired, the refuse heap cleared away, the garden replanted and the estate fenced in. Mr. Gnadenbrod had scarcely taken possession when his wife, Gnendlein, put her foot down and said that she did not wish to live in Jerusalem. They returned to Glasgow and the house was made into business offices. Then came the earthquake, which damaged the building and weakened the roof. For some years the house stood untenanted until Gerhard Greifenbach rented it and repaired it and decorated it and installed electric lighting and plumbing and other modern improvements. He and his wife had lived there until they felt a longing to go abroad and rest a while from the strain of life in our country, and I was asked to keep an eye on the house lest squatters break in and take possession. And now I was spending two nights there.

Cut off from the settled area, the house stood alone in the valley, surrounded by its garden gleaming in the light of the moon. And in that moonlight the garden and all that was in it, every tree, every shrub, seemed detached and unconcerned with its neighbor’s affairs. Only the moon made no distinctions and shone impartially on all.

I stood at the window and looked out at the garden. Every tree, every shrub slept its deep sleep; but among the trees movements could be heard. If these were not the footsteps of Ginat returned from his journey, perhaps they were Gabriel Gamzu’s. When I had gone along with him on the previous night I had asked him to let me know how his wife was; he had come back, then, to tell me. Or perhaps it was not Gamzu; after all, it could be anybody.

But that pure, perfect moonlight did not deceive me. It was none other than Gamzu walking this way. I went and opened the door and showed him into the room. Gamzu picked a chair and sat down. He took out some paper and rolled himself a cigarette. He put the cigarette to his lips, lit it and sat there smoking, paying no attention to me as I waited to hear if he had found his wife. I was annoyed, and in my annoyance said nothing.

“You don’t ask me about my wife,” said Gamzu.

“If you’ve anything to tell me, let me hear.”

“Indeed I have something to tell you. Isn’t there an ashtray?”

I went and brought him an ashtray. He groped about to deposit the stub of his cigarette. Then he looked at me with his healthy eye, wiped his ailing eye, rubbed his palm against his beard, licked his palm with the tip of his tongue, and remarked, “I thought I had burnt myself with my cigarette, but now I see that I have been bitten by a mosquito. You have mosquitoes in the house.”

“Perhaps there is a mosquito here and perhaps there isn’t a mosquito here. Who would notice a mosquito when he is honored by the presence of a dear guest like you?”

I do not know how Gamzu took this. What he said was, “I found her! I found her! Found her in bed fast asleep!”

It would be interesting, I thought, to know how Gamzu came to find his wife. But I shall not ask him outright. If he tells me, well and good; if not, I shall do without the information, rather than have him think that I am prying into his affairs. A few moments went by in which he said nothing; it looked as if he had put the whole matter out of his mind. Suddenly he passed his hand over his brow like a man stirring himself from sleep, and proceeded to tell me how he had come home, opened the door and looked into the bedroom without expecting to find anything. All at once he heard a steady breathing. Because he was so preoccupied with his wife, he thought he must be deceiving himself that he could hear her. He went over to the bed and found her lying there. He almost fainted with joy, and but for the reassurance her breathing brought, he would certainly have died there on the spot.

I was too amazed to speak. On the previous evening, I had told him distinctly that I was going back home, that I would not be staying at the Greifenbachs’ tonight; so why on earth had he come here? And I was all the more surprised that he had left his wife alone on this moonlit night, after the moon had already shown him her power.

Said Gamzu, “You are surprised that I have left Gemulah alone?”

“Yes, I certainly am surprised.”

Gamzu smiled with his live eye, or perhaps with his dead eye, and said, “Even if Gemulah wakes up now, even if she gets out of bed, she will not go walking.”

“Have you found the talisman?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t.”

“If so, how do you come to leave your wife alone? Did the moon give you its personal guarantee that it would let your wife sleep in peace tonight? Seriously, Reb Gabriel, what makes you so confident?”

“I have found a cure.”

“You consulted the doctors, did you, and got a prescription?”

“I did not consult the doctors,” said Gamzu. “I am not in the habit of going to doctors, for even if they know the names of all the diseases there are and the names of all the drugs for them, I do not rely on their kind. I put my reliance on one who has drawn his strength from the Torah, for he knows and can find a cure for every part of the body, and needless to say, I rely on him in matters that affect the soul.”

“And have you found such a man, and has he provided a cure for Gemulah?”

“The cure was already at hand. When I was studying at the yeshiva of Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg at Innsdorf, a woman came to the rabbi and told him that a certain youth was lodging in her house, who was sick in mind and moonstruck, so that every month at the new moon he would go through the window and climb along the roofs, endangering himself, for if he were to wake up in the course of his walking it was to be feared that he might fall and be killed. They had already consulted doctors and no remedy had been found. Rabbi Shmuel said to her, ‘Take a thick garment, and steep it in cold water until it is well soaked, and leave the garment beside the young man’s bed. When he has climbed out of bed and his feet touch the cold garment, the chill will wake him at once and he will get back into bed again.’ She did this and he was cured. Tonight I too did this, and I am sure that even if Gemulah should wake and stand up, she would immediately go back to bed.”

I sat there, still puzzled. If this was the cure, why hadn’t Gamzu made use of it before? Gamzu sensed what I was thinking and said, “You are surprised that I have waited until now.”

“I am not surprised. With all your great devotion to charms that are above nature, you paid no attention to the remedies that are in nature itself.”

“I can give you two answers. One is that the charms you speak of are also in general to be thought of as medicines. Once, for example, I took sick while I was on a journey, and was cured by means of charms. And when I went to Europe and told the specialists, they said, ‘The charms you used are known drugs, which used to be employed in treatment until better and more convenient drugs were found.’ As for my waiting until now, heaven caused me to forget the remedy of the great rabbi as a token of respect for him, because I gave up attending his yeshiva and went on to others. And as for my remembering today, it was because the object was at hand. I happened to be mending a tear in my clothes, and as I sat holding the garment I remembered the whole affair. I got up at once and put the article into water, and when it was soaked I spread it out before Gemulah’s bed.”

“Now,” I said, “I am going to ask you a simple question. Was it because you did not find me at home that you came here?”

“I did not go to your home and I did not think of coming here.”

“And yet you came.”

“I came,” said Gamzu, “but not intentionally.”

“You see, Reb Gabriel, your heart is truer than your conscious mind, and it sent you here so that you would keep your promise to let me know how your wife is.”

“The fact of the matter is this,” said Gamzu; “I was at home watching Gemulah as she slept. I thought to myself, Now that Gemulah is asleep I shall go and pay a call on Amrami. I tested the garment I had left by her bed, soaked it in water again, and went out. As I walked, I reflected on Amrami. He was born in Jerusalem and grew up here. After spending forty or fifty years out of the country, he came back home, with nothing left of all he had acquired in those forty or fifty years, except for a little granddaughter and a few Hebrew books. Thinking of this I began to consider all those others raised in the Land of Israel who had left the country at about that time, rejecting the Land for the sake of a comfortable living abroad. Some of them were successful; some of them grew wealthy. Then came the Great Persecution, which took from them all they had, and back they came again to the Land of Israel. Now they complain and grumble that the country has become estranged from them. While I was thinking of how they complain, and while I gave no thought to their sufferings, I suddenly heard someone screaming. I went in the direction of the noise and saw a girl calling out to a young man: ‘Günther, my darling! You’re still alive, my darling! The Arab didn’t wound you!’ What was it all about? A young fellow and a girl were taking a walk in one of the valleys on the outskirts of the city. An Arab came up and began to annoy them. The young man shouted at him to chase him off. The Arab pulled out a knife and threatened the youth. The girl was in a panic because she thought he had been stabbed. In the meantime, I had gone out of my way and found myself down in the valley. I stood and wondered, Why am I here? I had meant to go to Amrami’s, and instead, I have come to this house. Can you understand this? I cannot, just as yesterday I could not understand what had brought me here.”

I answered, “Have not the rabbis said, ‘To the place where a man is summoned, there his feet carry him?’ But a man does not always know to what end he is summoned.”

“So it is,” said Gamzu. “To the place where a man is summoned his feet carry him. Whether he wishes it or not, his feet carry him there. Many have asked me how the hymns of Rabbi Adiel came into my possession. You too have asked me, if not in so many words, most certainly in your thoughts.”

“Whether I have asked you or not, you have still not told me how it came about.”

“If you wish, I shall tell you.”

“If that is your wish, proceed.”

Said Gamzu: “I came once to a certain village, and my feet would not allow me to go on from there. I said to myself, Nothing could be so patently foolish as to waste time in this wretched place, where the Jews have little knowledge of the Torah and are stricken with poverty. They can scarcely support themselves by their work on the soil and by the fruit which they buy from the Gentiles straight off the tree and sell to the dealers in the city. Do you expect to find books among men like these? In the meantime the Sabbath began. I found a bed at the house of a man who packed dried figs and dates, and went with him to the synagogue, a structure of palm-wood blackened with age. All the congregation assembled. They took off their shoes and kindled the earthenware lamp; they seated themselves and recited the Song of Songs; they stood and recited the Sabbath psalm and read the daily prayer ‘And He is merciful’ as on weekdays. And the prayers for the Sabbath were sung to their own melodies with which none of us is familiar, but which make their appeal to everyone who has a Jewish heart in his breast. So it was with their customs, which were handed down by their fathers, who had received them from their forefathers, as far back as the exiles of Jerusalem who were expelled by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. When he exiled Israel from Jerusalem, he ordered all the millstones in the land of Israel to be removed and loaded on to the shoulders of the young men. The young men went into exile laden with the millstones, and of them Jeremiah said, ‘The young men carried a grinding mill,’ and it is said, ‘He weakened my strength on the way.’ But the Presence saw their grief and poured life into the very stones, so that they mounted on high like wings and carried the young men away to a place where there was no oppressor. There the young men set down the millstones, and laid them as foundations for their synagogues, and from those that were left they built the foundations for their homes. And among these young men were some with a great knowledge of the Torah, who were learned in its mysteries and filled with the holy spirit. Many times have I pondered to myself whether their customs were not more pleasing to the Omnipresent than ours. So they set down the stones, and laid them as a foundation for the synagogues, and established a great settlement, virtually a kingdom. But still there was cause for anxiety, lest, heaven forbid, they should perish from the earth, for they had no wives. Then God gave light to their eyes, and they saw maidens coming up from the sea, of whom it is written, ‘From Bashan I shall bring them back, I shall bring them from the depths of the sea.’ Each man took himself a wife from among them, and they bore sons and daughters, and passed their days and years in delight. So things continued for several generations, until in their abundance of good they forgot Jerusalem. And when Ezra wrote to them, ‘Go up to Jerusalem,’ they did not go, for they said the Presence had given them this place instead of Jerusalem. Then there came against them the armed troops of the Gentiles, and went to war with them, and made great destruction among them, and few remained where once there had been many. Those who were left alive turned completely penitent and remembered Jerusalem and recognized, too, that those Gentiles had come against them only that they might be duly punished. Now I shall return to what I began to tell you.

“After the service they went to greet each other with kisses on the shoulder and beard, and wished each other a peaceful Sabbath and left for their homes after this exchange of Sabbath blessings. I went back with my host and dined with him, his two wives and his children all seated on the mat as they ate and drank and sang hymns which were unfamiliar to me and which I had not come across in any collection. Before sunrise I awoke to the sound of singing, and saw the master of the house seated on his mat as he raised his voice in hymns of praise. I duly washed my hands and listened attentively to these poems which I had never heard in my life, never seen in any book of devotional verse. So moved was I by their sweetness and holiness that it did not occur to me to inquire who was their author nor how they had reached this simple villager. But even had I asked, he would have declined to answer, for in those parts they avoid speaking before they have said their prayers. After he had finished his hymn-singing, we went to the synagogue, their custom being to pray at dawn.

“The entire community was gathered in the synagogue, seated round the four walls, singing psalms. Their way is for one of the congregation to recite a single psalm in a loud voice, word by word; after him, another takes his place, and then another. It is as if each man is given an audition to discover if he is fit to be an emissary of Israel before the Divine Presence; after finishing the psalm he lowers his voice, realizing that he is not fit for such a mission. When they reached the blessing for the daily renewal of light, the leader of the congregation came down from the dais and stood before the Ark, where he recited the call to prayer and the blessing for light, and then returned to his place.

The congregation went on with the regular order of the Service through to the end of the Silent Devotion. For the repetition of the prayer, the leader again took his place before the Ark, while the congregation stood with willing heart, and responded ‘Amen’ with great devotion. While taking the Torah scroll from the Ark, their way is to say ‘Happy is the people whose lot is thus’ and ‘The Lord will reign.’ And their scrolls are of deerskin, the writing is in large letters, and they do not allow more than the prescribed seven readers of the weekly portion. To the reading of the Torah the women come, and sit down in the synagogue on each side of the door; and I heard that this was an ancient custom which not even the most righteous or saintly of men had ever opposed. For at the time when the Torah was given to Israel, no evil desire could prevail; and to this day it cannot prevail with those whose thoughts are wholly upon the Torah.

“After the prayers I went home with my host. He seated himself on his mat and began with melodious hymns to the Divine Presence, who had chosen His people Israel and given them the Sabbath day. Next he sang in praise of Israel, the people who had been so honored; and then in praise of the Sabbath, which, being holy, makes all who keep it holy. Afterwards we washed our hands and ate the chief meal of the day. The meal ended, but not the singing of hymns. I asked him about these hymns, about their origin. He said, ‘I have them from my father. He was a great scholar and knew all that is in the books.’ ‘And where do the books come from?’ He reached into a recess in the wall and brought out a bundle of writings, containing a great number of awe-inspiring devotional poems. Some were by Rabbi Dosa the son of Rabbi Penuel who originated the hymn El Adon and in his great humility did not sign his name to it, except in the fourth line, where he wrote of how the two great angels Knowledge and Understanding, who encircle the majesty of the Holy One, revealed themselves to him; and as he wrote of their works he introduced his name in an acrostic. In similar fashion I identified the poems of Rabbi Adiel, who composed the hymn, ‘This people which Thou didst create, Thy holy commandments they shall keep,’ and similarly those of other early poets who concealed their names. I broached the question of his selling me his book. He said, ‘Even if you gave me an ox I would not sell it.’ I asked him for permission to copy two or three of the poems. He said, ‘Even if you gave me a sheep I would not let you.’ He would not sell his book even in return for an ox, nor let me make copies even for a sheep. I went away despairing and came back to the city. Three days later he came to my home and presented the volume to me as a gift. I offered to pay him what it was worth; he would not agree. I raised the sum, and still he refused. I said, ‘Even that amount, it seems, is not equal to the value you set upon it.’ He answered, ‘God forbid that I should take it. I am giving the book to you for nothing.’ ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What concern is that of yours?’ he said. ‘You want it, and I am giving it to you.’ I said, ‘I do not wish to take it without payment. I shall give you what it is worth.’ He put his hands behind his back and went away. It was hard for me to take a precious article like this from a poor man. I went to the learned men of the city to seek their advice; as soon as they saw me coming they hastened to meet me and greeted me with great deference. I said, ‘My masters, why have you seen fit to do me such honor?’ ‘How else could it be,’ they said, ‘seeing that you are favored by heaven?’ ‘I do not deserve to be addressed in this way,’ I said. ‘Why do you think that I am favored on high?’ They answered, ‘There came a villager, who told us that he was instructed in a dream to give you a holy volume in manuscript which he had inherited from his father, who had it from his father, and so back for many generations.’ I said, ‘I have come to you because of this book. Set a value upon it and I shall leave the money with you.’ They answered: ‘God forbid that we should take money from you.’ I said, ‘I swear that I will not budge from here until you tell me how much I must pay.’ When they saw that I was determined, they agreed to take from me a certain sum of gold dinars, and I left the sum with them. I do not know if the poor villager took what I left for him or not. Possibly he was told in his dream to give the money to charity, and did so. That is the story of the collection of devotional poems which came into my possession not long before I became acquainted with Gemulah.”

VI

Perfect as the moon was Gemulah; her eyes were sparks of light; her face was like the morning star; her voice was sweet as the shades of evening. When she lifted up her voice in song, it was as if all the gates of melody were opened. She knew, besides, how to bake kavanim and how to roast meat on hot coals. Though Gemulah was only twelve years old when Gamzu first chanced upon her home, her wisdom shone out like that of a mature woman, for her father had passed on to her the secret knowledge laid up by his ancestors. She was his only child, his wife having died in giving birth to her. He had taken no other wife, and since he could not bear to think of so much wisdom perishing, he had handed on what he knew to his daughter.

Gamzu spent about a year in her father’s house, until his strength began to return to him. Then he went his way and traveled to Vienna to have his eye treated. He spent a year in Vienna and left with one eye only. All the time he was in the hospital he consoled himself with the thought that his sight would return and he would then go back to Gemulah. When he left the hospital he had no funds for travel; all his resources had been eaten up in doctors’ fees. Akiva Amrami met him and said, “Obadiah and Obadiowitz are seeking a man like you, who would be willing to travel on their behalf to distant countries and bring back rare books.” He went to see Obadiah and Obadiowitz; they marked out all the places he was to go to, paid his traveling expenses, and authorized him to spend on their account as much as he needed. God prospered his way and Gamzu gave satisfaction to his employers. He was able to save some of his earnings, and so he set out for the land where Gemulah lived.

In the meantime something had happened in Gemulah’s country, the like of which hardly occurred once in a jubilee cycle. A holy man, a Hakham of Jerusalem, had appeared there and stayed for six months. Six more months had already gone by since his departure, yet his name was still on everybody’s lips. Those who had been sick spoke of how Hakham Gideon had relieved their suffering. Others told of how Hakham Gideon had taught them ways to ease the burdens of life. He had also shown how all kinds of illnesses might be avoided, even without incantations, even in the case of infants who normally die of the evil eye. He had taken no fees from them, and if they had given him a present he had made them a gift in return. Gamzu was of the opinion that this Hakham Gideon was no Jerusalem Hakham, but a European man of learning, an ethnologist or something of the kind. He saw as evidence of this the fact that Gideon had recorded in his notebook all the songs he had heard from Gemulah and even her conversations with her father in the language they had devised for themselves.

So Gamzu returned to Gemulah’s home, and when Gemulah saw him, she rejoiced as a bride over her bridegroom. She roasted a kid for him and baked kavanim and sang for him all the songs that Hakham Gideon had liked. Nor did she concern herself with the affairs of Gadi Ben Ge’im, her neighbor, who insisted that Gemulah had been betrothed to him since the time when they were nursed together at his mother’s breast; for Gemulah’s mother having died in giving birth to her, the mother of Gadi had reared her as a daughter.

At this time evil fell upon Gevariah, Gemulah’s father. He had gone up to the mountaintop to learn from the eagles how they renew their youth. There an eagle had attacked him, not heeding the fact that Gevariah came in peace, without any weapon, not even a stick. Gevariah fought back, and had he not managed to beat off the eagle, he would have been mauled beneath its talons and torn to pieces and devoured. Even so, the eagle injured his left arm, lacerating the flesh. Gevariah neglected the wound until he took sick and died.

Before his death, he appointed a night of dancing, for his own and Gemulah’s sake, for such was the custom in their country. Seven nights before a betrothal they appoint a night of dances, and it is usual on such occasions for the young men to come, and each snatches a wife for himself from among the girl dancers. Gamzu was aware that Gadi Ben Ge’im intended to snatch Gemulah, but he anticipated him and won her and made her his bride.

For seven days and seven nights they held the wedding feast. Gevariah lay upon his mat and conducted the dances with his uninjured hand. Seven different dances he conducted each night, and eight kinds of dances each day, that Gemulah might give birth to a son who would be circumcised on the eighth day. With the end of the seven days of feasting, Gevariah’s life ended, too.

Gemulah mourned her father for seven days and nights, with songs of lamentation every day and night. At the end of her first week of mourning she made a great memorial, with songs and dances full of dread and wonder. After thirty days had passed, Gamzu began to speak to her of the journey they must take. Gemulah heard him out, but could not grasp what this meant for her. When she understood she protested strongly. Little by little she was persuaded, until she consented to leave, but she put off making the journey from week to week and from month to month. All this time the moon did not affect her; it seemed that because of her grief at her father’s death the moon had no power over her. She was also protected by the charms, though there was no change in her condition, and she was like an unripe fig that is still closed up, on the tree, her sweetness all stored within. At the end of the year of mourning, she said of her own accord that she was ready for the journey. Gamzu hired two camels, and they rode until they came to the edge of the desert, where the caravans go out. They joined a caravan, journeying for forty days until they came to a settled region. Gamzu bought shoes for her feet and dresses for her to wear and a kerchief for her head, and they rode on until they reached a port. There he hired a ship, and they sailed to the Land of Israel. And because they were traveling to the Land of Israel, God preserved them from all evil. But it was not so in the Land itself. As Rabbi Alshikh wrote, concerning the dispute in the Talmud as to whether a man is judged every day or on Rosh Hashanah only: the latter applies outside the Land, but in the Land of Israel one is judged daily; each single day the Holy One sits in judgment upon His people. The beginning of the judgment was that Gemulah no longer sang her sweet songs. Later, all speech was withheld from her. Next, she was possessed by melancholy. Lastly, she fell seriously ill. With her sickness she began to torment Gamzu. His plight grew worse from day to day.

As Gamzu was relating this, I heard a sound like the opening of a window. At the same moment I could hear spoken words. I was not afraid, but I was certainly astonished, since besides myself and Gamzu there was no one in the house, and neither he nor I had opened a window. I began to recollect the dream I had had on the previous night, the train I saw and the window that opened. And again I was amazed at the power of dreams, which come back to us when we are awake as if they were real happenings. Once more I heard the same sound. I listened attentively and thought, Ginat must have come home and opened a window. But how could one explain the sound of spoken words? Gamzu saw I was distracted, and said, “You are tired. Do you want to sleep?”

“No, I am not tired, and I don’t want to sleep.”

“Are you troubled about something?”

“I can hear footsteps.”

“If I can trust my own ears,” said Gamzu, “there has not been a sound or even an echo of one.”

“If that is so, I must be mistaken. Let us go back to what we were talking about.”

Gamzu began to speak again about his experiences with Gemulah in Jerusalem. Many a time her life had hung by a thread, and had not the Holy One helped him, he would not have been able to endure his distress for a single day. But God’s mercies are great. He sends a man afflictions, but He also gives him the strength to withstand them.

I do not remember the exact sequence of Gamzu’s remarks, but I recall that he told me again about the garment, and in bringing this to mind made mention of his teacher. Having spoken of him, he also mentioned the time of his youth, which he had spent as a student in yeshivas.

You know Gamzu as a man with many connections, in demand among scholars of the East and West alike for books and manuscripts. But he had begun as any other yeshiva student, boarding out on the charity of the local townspeople. Once a certain householder sent him to buy a copy of the Concise Shulhan Arukh. At the bookseller’s he came across a book quite different from the rest. Every other line of print was indented, and every word had vowel points; some lines resembled the Great Hymn of Praise sung by the ministering angels, some the confessional Al Het. He looked at it for a long while, full of wonder; never in his life had he seen a book like this. The bookseller watched him, and told him he could have it for forty kreutzer. For a yeshiva student, forty kreutzer was a large sum; even if he sold his long coat, he would not get that amount for it. But he had a box which a carpenter had made him in return for giving lessons to his son. It was something of a luxury, since all his possessions, apart from the clothes which he stood up in, could be wrapped in his shirt; but it gave him the kind of pleasure one feels in owning an article of intrinsic beauty. He gave his box to the bookseller and received the book. It was the divan of the poems of Judah Halevi, edited by S. D. Luzzatto. He read it again and again, until he knew all the poems by heart. And still he was unsatisfied. He began to pore over festival prayers and penitential hymns and elegies and old prayer books, reading and transcribing for himself. He could not afford the paper to copy down all the things he liked, so he noted down only the opening lines as reminders. Because he was so fastened to poetry, he came unfastened at the yeshiva. Accordingly he went and hired himself out to a bookseller. The shopkeeper could see that he knew a great deal, and sent him out to widows with the books of their husbands left on their hands, as well as to the “enlightened” rich who were clearing their homes of sacred literature. In time he began to make his own purchases. Later, he started traveling to far-off countries, and still later, to lands which no European had ever crossed. He reached the farthest edge of the desert and brought out books and manuscripts of which the most eminent bibliographers had no knowledge, as well as divans by anonymous poets who in their holiness and humility had left no record of their names.

Gamzu rolled himself a cigarette and laid it down. He rubbed his dead eye, smiled out of his good eye, and again took up the cigarette, holding it unlit between his fingers and saying, “When I pass over to the next world, they will lead me to the place where carcasses like me belong. I shall lie there in my shame, justifying the divine decree that I have been left exactly where I am, telling myself I have no right to expect anything better, naked as I am of merit and good works. At that moment, rank upon rank of demons will be massing against me, created out of my own sins. They will rise on high before the seat of judgment to accuse me and make hell deep for me. While waiting for the sentence, what shall I do? I shall recite from memory the hymns I know, until I forget where I am, and become so excited by them that I shall start shouting them aloud. The holy poets will hear me and say, ‘What noise is that from the grave? Let us go and see.’ They will come down and see this wretched soul and take me up in their hallowed hands, saying, ‘You are the man who rescued us from the depths of oblivion.’ And they will smile at me in the humility of their virtue and say, ‘Gabriel Gamzu, come with us.’ So they will bring me to dwell with them, and I will find shelter in the shade of their holiness. That is how I console myself in my misery.”

Gamzu sat there smiling, with the expression of a man who knowingly deceives himself and is aware that he is only joking at his own expense. But I knew him very well; I understood that he believed in what he had said, more completely, perhaps, than he would admit to himself. I looked at his face, the face of a Jew out of the Middle Ages, reincarnated in this generation in order to procure manuscripts and early prints for scholars and investigators, enabling them to write observations and annotations and bibliographies, so that men like me might read these works and delight in the beauty of their verse.

Thus Gamzu bore his sufferings and solaced himself with the thought of better things to come. Meanwhile he was fully taken up with the troubles of his wife, an incurable invalid. I began to speak to him about nursing homes where the sick receive some degree of attention. “It would be a good idea to place Gemulah in a nursing home,” I said. “As for the cost, I have here the first payment of twelve pounds; the rest will surely come.”

Gamzu blew on his skullcap. “Those twelve pounds,” he said, “are what I received for the manuscripts I sold to whoever got the talismans.” I asked if he suspected this person of taking the magic objects by deceit.

“I am not a suspicious man,” he said. “It is possible that whoever took them did not notice them at first, and when he did so, told himself that since they had come into his possession they were his. Or perhaps he believed that the charms were part of the lot he had bought. He may sometimes have thought one way, and sometimes another. Morality admits of compromise, and a man can still be moral even if he compromises according to his need; especially where books are concerned.”

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that he knows the properties of the charms?”

“How should he know? If an article of that kind came into my hands by chance, and no one told me what it was, would I know? Besides, all these scholars are modern men; even if you were to reveal the properties of the charms, they would only laugh at you; and if they bought them, it would be as specimens of folklore. Ah, folklore, folklore! Everything which is not material for scientific research they treat as folklore. Have they not made our holy Torah into either one or the other? People live out their lives according to the Torah, they lay down their lives for the heritage of their fathers; then along come the scholars, and make the Torah into ‘research material,’ and the ways of our fathers into folklore.”

I listened carefully to what Gamzu said, and thought of those scholars who acquire what their original owners regarded as articles of magic, but which for those who have bought them are only so much bric-a-brac; and I thought, too, of this poor Gamzu, afflicted and dejected, whom the Holy One had crushed with sorrow. If we are allowed to judge a man by his deeds, surely it was not for the deeds Gamzu had done in this incarnation that he had been so doomed. But who was I to involve myself in these issues? Such as I was, I should be satisfied that the Holy One had, in a manner of speaking, not looked in my direction for some little while. I passed my hand over my forehead as if to set these thoughts aside, and gave all my attention to my companion.

There he sat, in a strange posture, his head bent to one side and an ear turned towards the wall. After a considerable lapse of time, in which he still kept his ear averted, I said, “You look as if you can hear what the stones in the walls are saying to one another.”

He stared at me without reply and went on listening, his ear concentrated on the wall and both eyes aflame. There was no difference between his good eye and his dead eye, except that one was full of amazement and the other grew more and more irate. I took it that he was listening to matters which made him angry, and asked, “Can you hear anything?”

He stirred as though from sleep. “I can hear nothing, nothing at all. And what about you? Do you hear anything?”

“No, nothing,” I answered.

He rubbed his ear. “Well then, it must be a hallucination.”

He began to feel about in his pockets, produced some tobacco, and set it down. Then he extracted a handkerchief and laid that down, too. Next he stroked with his fingers the space between his nose and beard, then passed his hand over his beard, and finally said, “Didn’t you say you could hear footsteps?”

“When did I say that?”

“When? Just a little while ago you said it.”

“And didn’t you answer that there was not a sound, nor the slightest suspicion of a sound?”

“So I said,” he replied, “and so I am still inclined to think. But if you were to tell me now that you can hear something, I should not contradict you.”

“Then you did hear something?”

“No, I didn’t,” he answered.

“Very well,” I said, “let’s return to our previous subject. What were we talking about before?”

“I swear, I don’t remember.”

“Does what you say count so little to you,” I asked, “that you don’t even try to remember it?”

“On the contrary.”

“Why ‘on the contrary’?”

“Because talk between two men of Israel is important, just as songs and hymns are; when you try to repeat them, the tune is never the same. Listen, I have just had an idea. I shall take Gemulah to the village of Atruz.”

“To Atruz? Why?”

“Atruz is the name for Atrot Gad, which is in the territory of Gad, and Gemulah is of the tribe of Gad. She will breathe the odor of her own land and recover her health. I shall never forget how glad she was of my presence when Gadi Ben Ge’im was about to snatch her and I anticipated him and seized her first. I would give the whole world only to hear Gemulah laugh again as she laughed at that moment. But now let me ask you about that doctor, not Dr. Greifenbach, but Dr. Ginat. Everything you have told me about him pleases me. Our sages of blessed memory have said, ‘Who is wise? He who knows his place.’ If it were not wrong to add to their words, I should continue, ‘when others do not know it.’ At any rate, I am surprised that you live with him in the same house and have not come to know him. Is he old or young? How do you like his books? You have made me curious about matters I have not given any thought to. Why is this?”

I said, “See how many of our savants have been given high positions, and the journalists hang on to what they say and make them into worldwide celebrities, yet we ignore them. But this great scholar has no post, no articles are written in his praise; yet we wonder at him and try to know more about him. Even you, Mr. Gamzu, have undertaken to read his books in your second or third incarnation, and already in this one he arouses your curiosity.”

Suddenly the colors began to change in Gamzu’s face, until at last all color left it, and there remained only a pale cast that gradually darkened, leaving his features like formless clay. Within that clay without form, I read a kind of horrified amazement. Contemplating it, I was so shocked that my hair stood on end, for never in my life had I seen a living man so completely divest himself of his own likeness. Gamzu took hold of my hand and said, “What’s the matter?”

I sat speechless. When I withdrew my hand from his, he did not even notice. “What happened to you?” I asked.

Roused from his trance, he smiled in an embarrassed fashion, waved his hand and said, “Idiot that I am, I’ve been fooled by my senses.”

“What is your answer, then?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you are referring to,” he replied.

“To the suggestion of the nursing home.”

He waved his hand again. “My mind is not on that now.”

“And when will you put your mind to it?”

“Not now, at any rate.”

I began to describe to Gamzu how much he would benefit if he sent his wife to the nursing home. “It would certainly be good for Gemulah to be there, and you too, Mr. Gamzu, would take new heart; then perhaps you would go on your travels again and discover new hidden treasures. These days, it is as if the earth had opened up and brought forth all that the first ages of man stored away. Has not Ginat discovered things that were concealed for thousands of years, the Edo language and the Enamite Hymns? But why should I mention Ginat? Haven’t you yourself discovered ancient treasures that were unknown to us?”

Gamzu looked at me, but his ears were inclined elsewhere. Sometimes he turned them in the direction of the door, sometimes toward the window, and betweentimes toward the wall. I was irritated with him. “What a brain you have, Reb Gabriel. It is not enough that you listen simultaneously to what the door, the window and the wall are saying to one another; you even take note of every word spoken by a mere man like me.”

Gamzu stared at me. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything,” I replied.

“I was convinced that I heard people speaking.”

In my annoyance I answered, “If so, tell me in what language they spoke. Was it in Edo, or Enam?”

Gamzu realized that I was angry. In a broken voice he said, “Believe it or not, they spoke that very language.”

“What language?”

“The language that Gemulah used to speak to her father, the language they made up to amuse themselves. My nerves are in such a state that I believe I hear things impossible to hear; and I am not far from saying that what I hear sounds like Gemulah’s voice.”

I sat quiet, making no reply; for what indeed should I say to a man whose spirit has been broken by his troubles and who seeks to console himself with that which gave him pleasure in the days when he enjoyed peace of mind? Gamzu’s blood had drained away from his face; only his ears seemed to be alive. He sat there and hearkened with those ears which were all that was left to him of his whole motionless being. In the end he waved his hand in dismissal and said, “It is all mere fancy.” He smiled with embarrassment, adding, “When a man’s imagination gets the better of him, the merest shadow of a wall seems like a substantial thing. What is the time? It is time for me to go back home. I am worried that the garment I put down before Gemulah’s bed may have dried up by now. In the Land of Israel even the moon gives off more heat than the sun in other countries.”

He stood up, then sat down again. Seated, he stared straight ahead and muttered sorrowfully to himself, “And a word was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a whisper thereof.”

“You are sad,” I said.

He smiled. “It is not I who am sad. Those words were spoken by Job. He was the sad one.”

I surveyed him and tried to think of what I could say. I felt in my pocket, like a man who has been searching in the recesses of his heart and ends by rummaging through his possessions. In so doing I brought out a picture postcard that had reached me from Greifenbach and his wife. I looked at it and saw depicted there a kind of moon shape resting on a roof. Gamzu took out some paper and tobacco, and rolled himself a cigarette. He licked the edges of the paper and put the cigarette between his lips and lit it. “Won’t you smoke?” he asked. “Let me roll you a cigarette.”

“Don’t trouble, friend,” I said, and taking out a pack of cigarettes, I lit one for myself.

We sat smoking together; the smoke of the cigarettes rose in the air, and our conversation came to a halt. I looked at the smoke and began to reflect in silence. If Gamzu gets up to leave, I said to myself, I shall not tell him to sit down again; and if he goes, I shall not call him back. When he has left, I shall make my bed and lie down. And God willing, tomorrow I shall write a letter to Gerhard and Gerda saying, “Your house is being well looked after.” As for my own home, I am not worried, for after the thieves broke in I had strong new locks made.

Now my thoughts turned to my wife and children, who were staying in the country. Away from the city, they would certainly be asleep by now, for village people go to bed early. I too should be asleep were it not for Gamzu. As for Gamzu, wasn’t it strange that he had come here? What would he have done if he had not found me? I reached out and tilted the lamp over to the other side. The moon came and shone straight into the room. My eyelids closed involuntarily, my head began to nod. With an effort I looked up to see if Gamzu had noticed that I was falling asleep. I saw that his fist was clenched and laid against his lips. Saying nothing, I thought: Why should he have put his hand over his lips? If he wants to hint that I am not to speak, I am not speaking anyhow. From so much thinking my head grew heavy; my eyelids were heavy too. My head sank down on my breast; the lids closed over my eyes.

Both my eyes were closed, craving a little sleep. But my ears were not ready for sleep, because of the sound of bare feet on the stone floor of the nearby room. I bent my ear and heard a voice singing, “Yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah; yid-dal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah.” I am back in my dream again, I thought. The moon shone straight upon my eyes. I said to the moon, “I know you. You are the one, aren’t you, whose face was on the picture postcard.” Again the voice sang, “Yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah.” The moon lit up the voice, and within the voice was the likeness of a woman. If that is so, I said to myself, then Greifenbach spoke the truth when he said that Ginat had created a girl for himself. But this pain in my fingers, where has it come from all of a sudden?

I opened my eyes and saw Gamzu standing beside me pressing my hand. Taking my hand out of his, I looked at him in amazement. Gamzu sat down again. He closed his live eye and let it set in sleep, but his dead eye began to burn. Why did he squeeze my fingers, I wondered. Because he wanted me to listen to the song. So there really was a song, a song in waking and not only in dream. What song, then? It was a woman’s, and she was beating time with her feet. I laughed inwardly at my having been ready to think of her as a girl created by the imagination. And to rid myself of all doubt, I made up my mind to ask Gamzu what he thought. Gamzu had closed his dead eye together with his live eye, and his face wore a smile of delight, like that of a young man who hears his true love speaking. It was hard to break in upon his rapture. I lowered my eyes and sat in silence.

There was the sound again, no longer the sound of singing now, but of spoken words. In what language? In a tongue that was unlike those we know. I wanted to ask Gamzu about it. I opened my eyes and saw that his chair was vacant. I looked all around but could not see him. I stood up and went from room to room without finding him, and came back and sat down again. About ten minutes passed, but he did not return. I began to feel anxious lest something had happened to him. Getting up from my chair, I went out into the hall. Gamzu was not to be found. I shall wait for him in my room, I thought. Before I could manage to return, I entered a room which had been built as a sukkah for the festival and was now serving as an anteroom to that of Ginat. I looked around me, and saw Gamzu standing behind the door; I wondered what on earth he was doing there. The palm of a hand reached out and touched the door. Before I could decide whether what I saw was really seen or not, the door opened half way and the light in the room shone out brightly. It drew me and I looked inside.

Moonlight filled the room, and in the room stood a young woman wrapped in white, her feet bare, her hair disheveled, her eyes closed. And a young man sat at the table by the window and wrote in ink on paper all that she spoke. I did not comprehend one word of her speech, and I doubt if there is any man in the world who could understand a language mysterious as this. Still the woman spoke and the pen wrote. And this was clear, that the man writing down the woman’s words was Ginat. When had he returned, when had he gone to his room? He must have come back while Gamzu and I were sitting in Greifenbach’s room, and the woman must have gotten in through the window. That was why I had heard a window being opened and the sound of bare feet. With all the things I was seeing in quick succession I forgot Gamzu, and did not notice that he was standing beside me. But then Gamzu — yes, Gamzu! — did a strange thing. He forgot all manners and proprieties. He flung himself into the room and twined his arms around the woman’s waist. This chaste man, who had devoted his entire being to his wife, burst into a strange room and embraced a strange woman.

And now things began to get confused, and I am surprised that I can remember their sequence. These events all happened in a short time, yet how long it seemed. I stood with Gamzu facing the room of Ginat, and the door was half open. I peeped into the room, which was lit up by the moon. The moon had shrunk in order to get inside, but once in, she proceeded to expand until the whole room and its contents were visible. I saw a woman standing there, and a young man seated before the table writing. Gamzu suddenly rushed in and clasped the woman’s waist with his arms. The woman drew back her head from him, and still in his embrace, cried out, “Hakham!” Her voice was that of a maiden whose love has fully ripened.

The young man answered, “Go, Gemulah, follow your husband.”

Gemulah said, “After all the years that I have waited for you! Now you say, ‘Go, Gemulah.’”

“He is your husband,” the young man said.

“And you, Hakham Gideon,” said Gemulah, “what are you to me?”

“I am nothing.”

Gemulah laughed. “So you are nothing! You are a good man, you are a lovely man, in all the world there is no man so good and so lovely as you. Let me stay with you, and I shall sing you the song of the bird Grofit, which she sings only once in her lifetime.”

“Sing,” said the young man.

Gemulah said, “I shall sing the song of Grofit, and then we shall die. Gabriel, when Hakham Gideon and I are dead, dig us two graves side by side. Do you promise you will do that?”

Gamzu put his hand over her mouth and held on with all his might. She struggled to escape from his arms, but he held her tight and shouted to Ginat, “Do you know what you are? A sinner in Israel, that’s what you are! You are not even afraid to steal another man’s wife!”

“Don’t listen to him, Hakham Gideon,” cried Gemulah. “I am not any man’s wife. Ask him, has he ever seen my naked body?”

Gamzu let out a long and bitter sigh. “You are my wife,” he said, “my wife, my wife! You are consecrated to me by the law of Moses and of Israel.”

The young man said, “Go, Gemulah, go with your husband.”

“So you reject me,” said Gemulah.

“I do not reject you, Gemulah,” said the young man, “I only tell you what you must do.”

With that, her strength left her, and were it not that Gamzu still held her she would have fallen. And once Gamzu had grasped her, he did not let go of her until he took her up in his arms and went away, while Ginat and I looked on.

VII

The moon went her way, completing her journey of thirty days. Thirty days had now passed since Gamzu took his wife back from the house of Ginat, and all this time I saw neither Ginat nor Gamzu. I did not see Gamzu because he did not come to my home, and I am not in the habit of going to his; as for Ginat, he went away immediately after that affair. I came across him once in an Arab coffeehouse, with Amram, the son of the Samaritan high priest. Since nothing came of it, I shall not dwell on it. Once again I found him in Giv’at Shaul, at the parchment workshop belonging to Hakham Gvilan and Hakham Gagin. Again, nothing came of it, and I shall not dwell on it.

My wife and children have returned from their holiday; the water has returned to the tanks, to the pipes, and to the taps. I stay at home and rarely go out, nor do I know how Gemulah has been faring with Gamzu since he took her back. Since, on balance, goodness outweighs evil, I assume that she has made her peace with him, and that having done so, her own language has returned to her. Perhaps she even allows herself to sing, and once more her voice stirs the heart like the voice of the bird Grofit; and as you know, Gamzu loves nothing so much as Gemulah’s voice lifted in song. Why then did Gamzu lay his hand over her mouth to silence her? Because songs are conjoined, they are linked up one with another, the songs of the springs with the songs of high mountains, and those of high mountains with the songs of the birds of the air. And among these birds there is one whose name is Grofit; when its hour comes to leave the world, it looks up to the clouds and raises its voice in song; and when its song is ended, it departs from this world. All these songs are linked together in the language of Gemulah. Had she uttered that song of Grofit, her soul would have departed from her, and she would have died. For this reason Gamzu stopped up her mouth and preserved her soul that it might not depart.

I stay at home, then, and continue with my work, whether it be little or much. But when the sun sets I lay my work aside. “Behold that which I have seen: it is good, it is comely”—and so forth— “to toil under the sun,” for so long as the sun shines upon the world, it is good, it is comely in the world. If I have a little strength left when my work is done, I go for a walk. Otherwise, I sit alone in front of my house or stand in the window and watch how the day passes and the night comes, how the stars take their places in the sky and the moon rises.

The moon and stars have not yet come out. But the sky gleams with its own light, burning from within, and a blue-grey glow, like the bloom on a ripe plum, hovers between heaven and earth, while the whole world is alive with the chirping of countless crickets. Not far from my house there is a commotion among the trees. It continues until it sounds like a forest on a stormy night, like a sea in tempest. I wonder if something is not astir in the world.

I have stood alone and looked behind the back of the world; and because so much has already happened, I have looked away from events that are at present taking shape. One of those past happenings was the affair of Gamzu and Gemulah: the story of a man who comes home and does not find his wife; going to the south, turning to the north, turning turning, he goes on, and at the last finds her in a house where he chances to be. But what truly amazed me was this: with my own eyes I had seen Gamzu snatch his wife away, and yet it seemed to me that it was only a story, like the one he himself had told me, of how on one occasion dances were held, and Gadi Ben Ge’im was about to seize Gemulah, and Gamzu forestalled him. There is no event whose mark has not gone before it. Such is the parable of the bird: before it flies, it spreads its wings and they make a shadow; it looks at the shadow, raises its wings, and flies away.

The moon has not yet appeared, but she is about to rise, and a place is set aside for her in the sky. Clouds that seemed a portion of the sky itself are parted now, moving this way and that on their course, while the moon ripens towards her rising. Happy is he who can make use of her light without being touched by it.

My thoughts turn to those who long for the moon. And from thoughts of the moon, to thoughts that are bound up and conjoined with the way earth binds us. And from earth to man. To those whom the earth welcomes, and those who wander about like the shades of night. I do not refer especially to that young couple who had not found a home for themselves; nor especially to those who left the country and, on their return, found that the land had become estranged from them. Nor do I mean in particular Greifenbach and his wife, who went abroad to take a rest from the strain of life in our country. I refer to all men who are in the grip of this earth.

Greifenbach and his wife are about to return. Their cleaning woman, Grazia, told me this; a picture postcard from Mrs. Greifenbach had come for her. I know this, too, from the contents of a card they wrote to me. And since they are about to arrive, I have been to see how their house is faring.

Their house is locked up. No one has broken in. I do not know if Ginat is in his room or not. At any rate, the window that opened for Gemulah is now closed. When the Greifenbachs return to Jerusalem, they will find everything securely in its place.

Next morning when I picked up the newspaper to see if the Greifenbachs’ return was announced, I read that a Dr. Gilat was dead. Since I was not acquainted with any person of that name, I did not linger over the news. But my heart sank, and when a man’s heart behaves irregularly, evil things begin to take shape. I began to wonder if there was a misprint and “l” had been substituted for “n.” Once a man enters into evil speculations, they do not leave him. I took up the paper again and saw the letter “l” standing out plainly in the dead man’s name, yet my eyes which could see the “l” also saw “n,” as if the “l” had been twisted and turned into an “n.” The matter troubled me so much that I got up and went out.

I looked at the announcements on the walls but found no declaration of his death. Ginat did not hold an official post and was not known in town; there was nobody to publicize his death on the billboards. But I learned from another source that he was indeed dead, and how his death came about.

I shall start at the beginning. I was walking the streets and reflecting to myself: If it was Ginat, why was the name written as Gilat? And if it was indeed Gilat, why do I have these forebodings?

Old Amrami, leaning upon his granddaughter, came across me and said, “Are you going to the funeral?”

I nodded and said that I was.

“What a strange case!” he said. “A woman who can’t move from her bed meets her death on a roof.”

I looked at him long and hard without knowing what he meant.

He went on to say, “Mysterious are the ways of God; who can understand them? A man risks his life to save another life in Israel, and the end of it is, he falls and is killed. So now we are not going to one funeral, but to two. To the funeral of Gamzu’s wife, and to the funeral of Dr. Ginat.”

Amrami’s granddaughter Edna added, “The newspapers didn’t report this, but eyewitnesses say that last night a gentleman went out of his room and saw a woman climbing up onto the roof. He rushed up to save her from danger, the parapet collapsed, and they both fell to their death.”

So we walked, Amrami and Edna and I, until we reached the hospital where the bodies of Gemulah and Ginat had been brought. The hospital was closed. At the gate sat the porter, looking at passers- by, daydreaming that they were all asking his permission to go inside and were all being refused. But his luck was out; not a man asked if he might enter the hospital, but all went into the open courtyard where the mortuary stood.

At the side of the courtyard, standing apart, was the patients’ laundry. Small as it was, it performed a service to the dead, for it fulfilled the obligation of hospitality by admitting visitors. Alongside it, on a broken bench, sat three members of the burial society, professional watchers of the dead, while a fourth stood up behind them and rolled himself a cigarette. He saw Amrami and me and attached himself to us, telling us that he had sat all night beside the corpse, reciting psalms for the dead. And who, he wanted to know, was going to pay him for saying those psalms? He could tell I was an honest man; he would grant me the mitzvah of paying him.

A family of mourners came and sat down on the bench opposite. A woman detached herself from the group and walked in front of them, raising her voice in loud wailing and laments, swaying her shrunken body to the rhythm. She was sad, very sad, and so was her voice. Not a word that she uttered could I understand, but her voice, her bearing, and the expression on her face moved all who saw her to tears. The woman took from her bosom the picture of a young man and gazed at it intently. Again she sang, in praise of his beauty and his grace, recounting all the years he would have had for life, had not the angel of death come for him too soon. All the mourners wept bitterly, and all who heard them wept in sympathy. Just so Gemulah must have wept for her father, just so she must have mourned him.

As I stood among them, I saw Gamzu coming out of the mortuary. The perplexity of soul that always accompanied him had left him for a while; in its place came two new companions, astonishment and sorrow. I went up to him and stood by his side. He rubbed his dead eye with his finger, then took out a handkerchief and wiped his finger, saying, “He was the one. He was the Jerusalem Hakham, and he was the scholar I sold the talismans to.”

One of the mortuary attendants came over to us. He looked once at me and once at Gamzu, like a dealer who has two customers and wonders which he should attend to first. While trying to make up his mind which of us was the more important, he asked for a cigarette. Gamzu searched in his pocket and took out cigarette paper and tobacco. In the meantime they brought out Ginat’s coffin. Gamzu lifted his finger to his dead eye and said calmly, “Ginat is the one who bought the talismans.”

The coffin bearers moved on; about half the necessary Minyan, I and three or four others who were at hand, followed to perform the last rites. A beggar with a tin box approached. He banged on his box, calling repeatedly, “Charity saves from death.” Each time he looked behind him, lest in the meanwhile other bodies had been brought out and he should stand to miss what the accompanying mourners might give him.

On the way back from the Mount of Olives, Gemulah’s funeral procession caught up with me. And on the way back from Gemulah’s funeral I was stopped by an automobile in which sat the Greifenbachs, just returned from their travels.

Greifenbach saw me and called from inside the automobile, “How nice to see you! How really nice! How is our house getting on? Is it still standing?”

Mrs. Greifenbach asked, “Has nobody broken in?”

“No,” I answered, “no one has broken in.”

Again she asked, “Did you get to know Ginat?”

“Yes,” I said, “I got to know Ginat.”

Both of them said together, “Get in and ride with us.”

I answered, “Good, I shall get in and ride with you.”

A policeman came along and shouted that we were holding up traffic. The driver started up the car, and the Greifenbachs went on without me.

Some days later, I went to the Greifenbachs to return their key. On the same day officials had come to examine Dr. Ginat’s room, but they found nothing except his ordinary utensils and two tins full of the ash of burnt papers. The ash was probably made up of his writings. When had Ginat burnt these? On the night when Gamzu took Gemulah back? Or on the same night that Ginat went out to save Gemulah and was killed with her?

What induced Ginat to destroy his own work, to burn in a few minutes the result of years of toil? As is usual in such cases, the question is disposed of lightly. It was psychological depression, they say; grave doubts brought him to this deed. But what led him to such a state of depression, and what were those doubts of his? To these questions no answer is forthcoming. For surely there is no way of estimating, no way of knowing or understanding such a matter, especially where one is dealing with an enlightened spirit such as Ginat, and with works of wisdom and poetry such as his. No explanations can affect the issue, no accounts of causes alter it. These are no more than the opinions people put forward in order to exercise their ingenuity in words without meaning on cases that cannot be solved, on happenings for which there is no solace. Even if we say that events are ordained from the beginning, we have not come to the end of the chain, and the matter is certainly not settled; nor does any knowledge of causes remove our disquiet. They found this, too, in Ginat’s room: a deed of annulment, in which Ginat canceled the rights of the publishers to bring out his books, forbidding them to reprint his vocabulary (that is, the ninety-nine words of the Edo language), and his book of grammar (meaning the grammar of Edo), and his book of Enamite Hymns.

As usual, the dead man’s orders were not carried out. On the contrary, his books are printed in increasing numbers, so that the world is already beginning to know his works, and especially the Enamite Hymns with their grace and beauty. While a great scholar lives those who choose to see his learning, see it; those who do not, see nothing there. But once he is dead, his soul shines out ever more brightly from his works, and anyone who is not blind, anyone who has the power to see, readily makes use of his light.

Annotations to “Edo and Enam”

In attempting to uncover the complexities of the kabbalistic sources woven throughout “Edo and Enam” (and the rest of Agnon’s canon) the reader will find a very useful research tool in Elchanan Shilo, HaKabbalah BeYetzirat Agnon (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan Univeristy Press, 2011).

Meshulam Tochner identifies the names Edo and Enam as echoing the roots of the Hebrew words ye’ud (destiny) and ma’ayan (source).

101. Riots of 1929 / Series of violent demonstrations and riots in August 1929 set off by a dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, resulting in many Jewish deaths (most severely the massacre of 67 in Hebron) and widespread property damage. Agnon’s home in Talpiot was marauded during these riots.

Agnon’s library after the 1929 riots

103. Cadence of a woman’s song / This is potentially a reference to the theory advanced by Shlomo Dov Goitein, who suggested that the Biblical Song of Songs was composed by a female court, but ascribed to Solomon, as was customary. He published this theory in the wake of his ethnographic studies on the Yemenite Jewish community and the Biblical cadences of its female poetic singers. Goitein (1900–85) was a distinguished historian, specializing in Jewish life under Medieval Islam, and was a close friend of Agnon. This topic is discussed, most recently, in Ilana Pardes, Agnon’s Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), pp. 60–65. Pardes’ study focuses on the presence of the Song of Songs in the intertextual matrix of the two stories in this volume — “Betrothed” and “Edo and Enam”.

S.D. Goitein

105. Faust / Faust, protagonist of a classic German legend, is a frustrated scholar whose pact with the Devil grants him unlimited knowledge in exchange for his soul. Goethe’s Faust is an early 19th century play in two parts.

106. Solomon Ibn Gabirol / (c. 1021–1058) Among the greatest Hebrew poets and philosophers of Spanish Jewry. The legend of Ibn Gabirol’s creating a female servant (à la legends of the Golem) is recorded in Joseph Solomon Delmedigo’s 17^th century work Matzref LeHokhmah (9b) and cited in Agnon’s anthology Sefer, Sofer ve-Sippur, p. 244 (2000 edition).

Statue of Ibn Gabirol in Malaga, Spain

109. Mandate government / The British Mandate over Palestine administered civil affairs from 1920–1948.

109. Gederah / A town in central Israel.

111. Your happiness is where you are not / Closing line to Mordechai Zvi Maneh’s 1884 poem HaNoded (“The Wanderer”). Maneh (1859–86) was a lyrical Hebrew poet of the First Aliyah period, who wrote longingly for the Land of Israel, although he died of tuberculosis before he could leave his native town of Radoshkovich (in today’s Belarus). My thanks to Dr. Shuli Marom for help in identifying this line.

111. Gamzu / The character’s name is likely a reference to the 1st century long-suffering Rabbi Nachum Ish-Gamzu, whose response to the many calamities which befell him (including blindness, similar to our character’s loss of one eye), “gam-zu le-tovah” (“This, too, is for the best”) became him moniker (Ta’anit 21a).

Wilhelm Gesenius

112. Gesenius’ textbook / Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842), a German orientalist and Biblical critic, was the author of multiple lexicons and grammar books concerning Biblical Hebrew.

112. Twelve pounds / The Palestinian Pound (lira) was the currency in use during the British Mandate, linked in value to the British Pound Sterling, and then maintained in the early years of the State of Israel. Adjusted for inflation to 2011, twelve lirot would have been worth about $900.

One Palestine Pound

113. Going to the south… / Ecclesiastes 1:6.

114. Seven locks… seven keys / Likely based on idea of seven keys to the seven gates of the Temple courtyard; Tosefta Shekalim 2:15.

114. Yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah / The enigmatic lyrics of Gemulah’s song have remained a mystery for critics of this story. Tochner interprets the “Yiddal” song as a acronymic hint to the concluding phrase in Song of Songs 4:16: “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out; let my beloved come to his garden (Yavo Dodi Le-gano) and eat his sweet fruit (Ve-yokhal Peri Megadav) — with the word for “garden” (“gano”) echoing the meaning and root of the name Dr. Ginat.

114. Gemulah / Cf. Rosh Hashanah 26a, in which R. Akiva interprets the word “gemulah” as connoting a woman “separated from her husband”. The kabbalistic-allegorical interpretation of the story points out the resonance between Gemulah and “gemilut hessed” (lit. performance of acts of kindness) which is kabbalistically identified by Tikkunei Zohar (114b) with the Shekhinah (God’s divine presence).

115. Dr. Rechnitz / The protagonist of Agnon’s novella “Betrothed”, which opens this volume.

117. Hakham / Hebrew for Sage, as in a Rabbinic Sage, but here can also mean a scholar or academic.

118. Nature of man has changed / An idea advanced by the early medieval rabbis, but evidenced already in the Talmud.

118. All depends upon one’s star / Mo’ed Katan 28a.

118. Our star makes us wise, or makes us rich / Shabbat 156a.

118. Ibn Ezra / R. Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain, 1089–1164), was a preeminent medieval Biblical commentator, philosopher, grammarian, and poet. The statement quoted here appears in the Commentary to Exodus 15:17.

118. The Lord hath made everything for His own sake / Proverbs 16:4.

119. Sing out to the Lord in praise / Psalms 147:7.

119. The heavens declare the glory of God… / Psalms 19:2.

119. This people that I have created… / Isaiah 43:21.

119. Letters of the word “heaven” equal numerically to those of “male and female” / According to the gematriya method of assigning numerical value to each letter, heaven (shamayim) and “male and female” (zakhar u-nekevah) both equal 390.

119. Children of Benjamin… daughters of Shiloh / As related in Judges 21, during the period following the battle in Gibeah, when the other Israelite tribes would not allow their daughters to marry sons of the tribe of Benjamin.

119. Temple would be built / The site of the Jerusalem Temple straddles the territory of the Tribe of Benjamin.

119. Amadia / Small, ancient Assyrian and Kurdish town in Iraqi Kurdistan. The town is built on the flat top of a mountain, formerly only accessible by a narrow stairway cut into the rock. Amadia was the birthplace of the 12^th century false Messiah, David Alroy, who led a revolt against the city but was defeated and killed in the process, as related in Benjamin of Tudela’s near contemporaneous travelogue.

Amadia

120. The case of a person who was passing behind the synagogue / Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3:7.

120. And to Gad he said… / Genesis 33:20.

120. Gad, a troop shall overcome him… / Jacob’s blessing to the tribe of Gad in Genesis 49:19.

120. Which they took up beyond the Jordan / The tribe of Gad was settled on the eastern banks of the River Jordan (see Numbers 32:1–5).

120. Aramaic Targum / An exegetical translation of the Bible into Aramaic by Onkelos (c. 35–12 °CE). The comment appears at Genesis 49:19.

121. Jerusalem Targum / A later translation of the Bible into Aramaic of the Land of Israel, including many interpretive and homiletic passages woven into the translation.

121. Face of a lion… / Cf. Ezekiel 1:10 (the description of the Divine Chariot).

121. High praises of God… two-edged sword… / Cf. Psalms 149:6.

121. Daughters of Israel went out to dance / Cf. Mishnah Ta’anit 4:8.

122. Kavanim / As Gamzu explains, these are “a kind of flat cake which they bake on live coals,” but commentators on the story have alternatively identified Gemulah’s kavanim with the kabbalistic notion of kavanot (mystical intentions) or with some form of pagan practice.

123. I am looking at the vessel and not what it contains / Inversion of Mishnah Avot 4:20: “Said Rabbi Meir: Look not at the vessel, but at what it contains.”

124. Unto three transgressions of Israel… / Amos 2:6.

124. No man of Israel passes through this world more than two or three times… Even go through a thousand cycles of life / The discussion about the limits to the number of reincarnations of the soul is based on Tikkunei Zohar 32 (76b) and in the 16^th century Sefer HaGilgulim of R. Chaim Vital (chapter 4 at 7a).

124. He commanded it unto the thousandth generation / Psalms 105:8.

125. Georgian Quarter at the Damascus Gate / The Damascus gate is one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City, at the northwestern side of the surrounding city walls. The Georgian Quarter, known in Hebrew as the Eshel Avraham neighborhood, lies immediately outside the gate and was founded by Jewish immigrants from the country of Georgia in the 1890s.

Orange sellers at Damascus Gate (1944)

125. Garmisch / A Bavarian mountain resort town in southern Germany.

126. Minyan / A quorum of ten men necessary to recite parts of the communal prayers and public Torah reading.

127. Gemeinschaft der Gerechten / German for: Society of Justice.

127. Gamal Pasha / Djemal Pasha (1872–1922), Ottoman military leader during World War I.

127. Earthquake / Major earthquake on July 11, 1927, centered in Jericho caused mass damage throughout Mandatory Palestine — including more than 130 deaths and 300 house collapses in Jerusalem alone. Agnon’s home in the center of Jerusalem was damaged, after which he relocated to the Talpiot neighborhood (then a new suburb of southern Jerusalem), where he spent the rest of his life.

Djemal Pasha

129. Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg / Rosenberg (1842–1919) was a prominent anti-Zionist leader, who served as rabbi from 1884 in the town of Innsdorf (or Unsdorf), which is known today as Huncovce, northern Slovakia.

1927 earthquake, Old City of Jerusalem

131. Amrami / Amram was the father of Moses (Exodus 6:20).

132. To the place where a man is summoned… / Cf. Sukkah 53a.

132. I came once to a certain village… / The description of Gamzu’s journeys have parallels in the travelogue of Yaakov HaLevi Saphir’s Even Sappir (2 vols., 1866 and 1874), who travelled to Yemen in search of the lost tribes. (This source was identified by Michal Oron, “Kabbalistic Symbols and Motifs in Edo and Enam” [in Hebrew] in BaSeminar [1977]). Agnon’s copies of Saphir’s books are still in the collection of the Agnon House library.

Yaakov Saphir (1859)

132. And He is merciful / Psalms 78:38; introductory verse to the weekday evening prayer, not generally recited on the Sabbath.

132. Nebuchadnezzar / Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 634–562 BCE), king of the Babylonian Empire, responsible for the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and forced exile of the Jewish tribes.

132. The young men carried a grinding mill / Lamentations 5:13 and Midrash Eikhah Rabbati 5:14. The motif of the stones “flying on high like wings” is present in Midrash Shir HaShirim 1:4.

133. He weakened my strength on the way / Psalms 102:24.

133. From Bashan I shall bring… / Psalms 68:23.

134. Happy is the people… / Psalms 144:15.

134. The Lord will reign / Exodus 15:18.

135. Rabbi Dosa… El Adon / Early liturgical poem recited as part of the Sabbath morning service, ascribed here to Rabbi Dosa, whose name appears in acrostic.

135. Rabbi Adiel, who composed the hymn, “This people which Thou didst create…” / This does not appear to be an actual hymn, but likely a reference to Adiel Amzeh, the protagonist of Agnon’s novella Ad ‘Olam (“Forevermore”); his last name, Amzeh (“this people”), being a reference to Isaiah 43:21.

139. Rabbi Alshikh… whether a man is judged every day / R. Moshe Alshikh (1508–93, Safed) was a prominent kabbalist and Bible commentator. The debate about daily vs. yearly judgment appears in Rosh Hashanah 16a.

140. Concise Shulhan Arukh / Kitzur Shulhan Arukh, guide to practical halakhah by Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried (1804–86, Hungary).

140. Judah Halevi / Spanish Jewish physician and philosopher (c. 1075–1141), considered one of the greatest Hebrew poets, both for his religious and secular poems, many of which appear in present-day liturgy. His greatest philosophical work was The Kuzari.

S.D. Luzzato

140. Luzzato / Samuel David Luzzatto (1800– 65) was an Italian Jewish scholar, poet, and a member of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.

144. He who knows his place / Cf. Avot 6:6.

146. And a word was secretly brought to me… / Job 4:12.

148. Sukkah / An outdoor booth or hut for the seven-day Sukkot festival, see Leviticus 23:42.

148. The palm of a hand reached out / Cf. Ta’anit 29a, description of the metaphorical Divine hand reaching out to grab the Temple keys as it burned — a scene similarly played out on a rooftop.

150. The law of Moses and of Israel / From the traditional formula of the Jewish marriage vow.

150. The moon went her way… / Cf. Yerushalmi Rosh Hashanah 1:4 (58a).

150. Samaritan / Descendants of the sect of converts (described in Kings II 17:24), whose conversion to Judaism was questioned then subsequently rejected by Rabbinic Judaism. Fewer than 1,000 Samaritans remain in Israel today.

150. Giv’at Shaul / Neighborhood at the western entrance to Jerusalem, established in 1906.

150. Gvilan / Gvil is the Hebrew term for parchment.

150. Gagin / Rabbi Chaim Avraham Gagin (1787–1848) was a noted Jerusalem kabbalist who was responsible for saving the Samaritan community from a potentially fatal persecution at the hands of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt in 1831. The dates of this Gagin cannot align with our story, but Agnon may be trying to work in some connection here.

151. Behold that which I have seen… / Ecclesiastes 5:17.

151. Behind the back of the world / Bava Batra 25a.

152. Going to the south, turning to the north, turning turning / Ecclesiastes 1:6.

155. Charity saves from death / Proverbs 10:2 and 11:4.

155. Mount of Olives / Site of an ancient Jewish cemetery to the east of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Mount of Olives funeral procession (c. 1900), with view of Old City walls