Only Yesterday (20 page)

1. When he woke up in the morning, he was puzzled. Where did that sleep come from? I didn’t expect it and it came. And I didn’t even dream any dreams, not bad dreams that come to scare you, and not good ones that end in disappointment. Or maybe I did dream and I forgot. How many stockings did Sonya have, twenty, thirty, when she mends them all, she’ll come to me.
   

   He got out of bed and made himself breakfast. The milkman came and brought him milk. And even though he still had all the milk left from yesterday, he took his daily share and ate what he had made yesterday for his supper with Sonya, amazed that he was eat-ing heartily, and pondered, Sonya is still sleeping, sleeping. Or maybe she’s already out of bed, for she promised Hofenstein to take her place. And when he said Hofenstein, he felt a kind of small re-venge at her that he didn’t attach
   Mme.
   to her name, as people dubbed her. After he cleared the dishes off his table, he examined his socks which needed mending, and left for work.
   

   At noon, he left his work and went to shave his beard. Afterward, he went to the inn and ate lunch. Afterward, he returned to his room and prepared himself for Sonya, a tune stuck in his head, How many stockings are there, twenty, thirty, when she mends them all she’ll come to me. He was certain she would come, and he kept checking his room and fixing something, until the day passed and he began to fear she would come before he finished his work. The day passed and Sonya didn’t come.
   

2. I
   

   Sonya didn’t come. And since he thought that she was ashamed of behaving unruly with him, he felt pity for her and wanted to overlook the rules with her. He went to her to hold out his hand to her in peace. And he pitied himself too, for his solitude.
   

   Puah and Ossip returned from the outing. She was tired but happy. Ossip walked ahead of her, holding his stick, as if that was all he had left from the whole outing.
   Mme.
   Hofenstein saw Isaac and said, her voice half shrieking, half childish, The outing we made today I shall never forget. We were in Kfar Saba and we got as far as Antipatros. We live in our own Land and we don’t know it. And the Arabs are the complete gentlemen. One Effendi invited us to his house and was very hospitable to us. What shall I tell you, Mr. Kumer. The salad he fed us was the equal of all the delicacies in the world. And a samovar he’s got, a real samovar, a Russian samovar. It was Mr. Eisenberg of Rehovoth who gave him that samovar. Too bad we can’t speak Arabic. But we understood one another. Didn’t we, Ossip? How did he tell you,
   Khorosho
   , just like a born Russian. How healthy are his wives’ teeth! I don’t believe that legend that there are rich Arab women who pull out a healthy tooth and make themselves a gold tooth because they envy us European women. I would give all my silver and gold just to have healthy teeth like theirs. By the way, Mr. Kumer, just between us, I don’t have even an iota of gold, aside from a gold Napoleon I’m keeping for the rent. A Spanish proverb says, More beautiful is the tooth that’s healthy than any jewel of the wealthy. I see that you are in a hurry and I don’t want to delay you. Just tell
   Mme.
   Zweiering hello for me, and please thank her for being so kind as to take my place in the kindergarten. I don’t know what came over me to leave the marvelous children and go on an outing. But that outing was worth it. Wasn’t it, Ossip?
   

   Ossip nodded and said, Hmmm. And with that Hmmm, he raised his eyes and looked angrily at Isaac. It seemed to him that that little Palestinian was judging him. Where are you going, Ossip? asked
   Mme.
   Hofenstein in a panic, as Ossip set out to go. Hmmm, answered Ossip, I’ve got to buy something for supper. What do you mean, exclaimed
   Mme.
   Hofenstein, didn’t we agree to eat at my
   

   house? Well, Mr. Kumer, what did I tell you? What? asked Isaac in confusion.
   Mme.
   Hofenstein smiled and said, You’ve already forgotten what I told you. Didn’t I tell you to say hello. . . . Yes, yes, said Isaac and went on his way.
   

3. I
   

The lamp that lighted his way to her room last night also lighted his way this night. But this night, his steps were shorter. If he hurried and took a long step, he lingered after it for a long while.

Sonya sat like yesterday in the chair she had bought from Princess Mira and a small cushion hung on the top of the chair and covered the places where the paint had flaked. As he entered, her face grew long and her lips formed a bow, and a kind of double chin embellished her chin and lent her a measure of femininity. Her dou-ble chin gathered into her neck and her chin rose toward Isaac and her lips opened a bit. She looked at him without amazement. Even though she wasn’t waiting for him, she understood that he would come, and since she understood that he would come, she wasn’t amazed.

At that time, she wasn’t busy with her stockings. But she was busy with that blanket, the one Isaac had thought needed mending yesterday. Sonya held out her fingertips with the needle between them to Isaac, and went back to her work.

Isaac stands in front of Sonya and doesn’t dare look into her face. Because of that, he looks at the blanket on her lap, and from the blanket the dog scowls at him, like the furious Grisha we all hate. Isaac turns his head back to the other side, but the blanket recoils on Sonya’s lap and the stick sways in the dog’s mouth. Isaac’s shoulders recoil and he brings his face back to Sonya and the dog once again looks at him with furious eyes. The image of Grisha comes and stands before him and Isaac’s heart is filled with wrath and envy.

Why am I thinking about him, and since I am thinking about him, Sonya is also liable to think about him out of telepathy. Suddenly he was terrified for maybe he thought of Grisha because Sonya thought of him. And once again, his heart was filled with envy, al—

though he knew that even if Sonya thought about Grisha, her thoughts wouldn’t be in Grisha’s favor.

Gradually, his envy dissipated. And since envy dissipated, his anger returned to burn in his heart. And as is the wont of soft men who know very well that their wrath is not effective, he swallowed his anger. And as is the wont of human beings like Isaac who don’t know that their qualities aren’t constant and nevertheless put everything on their ability and their will, he was satisfied with himself that he had succeeded in restraining his anger. And since he swallowed his anger, he began talking gently. Sonya scowled at him. Isaac was amazed. After all that, she’s still angry? Soon she’ll recognize her fault and will appease me. But I won’t be appeased toward her.

Sonya didn’t try to appease Isaac. On the contrary, her face grew more and more hostile. He began to fear that she might say harsh words to him. He anticipated that and started saying affectionate words. Sonya looked at him and her heart was filled with wrath for that solemnity in his words.

And here we must admit that there is a bit of truth in it. Isaac spoke in a tone, like a petit bourgeois on a holiday. And that solemnity drove her out of her mind and made her angry. And since in anger she didn’t find Hebrew words, she began speaking to him in Russian. And he didn’t know Russian. Sonya sensed that and said, I forgot that you’re a Galician, and she spoke Yiddish to him, the way you talk with simple people who don’t use the language of educated people. Sonya, who wasn’t used to Yiddish, spoke half Yiddish and half Russian; and he, who didn’t know Russian, didn’t understand most of what she said. Thus, the wall between them rose higher until he saw himself distanced from her. When Isaac began to feel Sonya’s remoteness, she was already cutting her mind off from him. Sonya said to herself, For two or three kisses do I owe him anything? And does this fellow think that a girl’s kiss enslaves her completely? At any rate, I’m not enslaved to him. The time has come for him to get it out of his heart. Where would I be if every single fellow I’ve kissed saw himself like this Galician?

Isaac didn’t know what was in Sonya’s heart. And the more she pushed him away, the more he tried to come close. And whatever he used to get close, she rejected him with the same thing. He began saying words she had been fond of and he didn’t know she was fond of the words not for themselves but because she was fond of the one who said them, and when the cause ceased, the fondness stopped. She scolded him, Do me a favor, don’t bore me. Isaac was amazed and astonished, for everything he did he did because he knew she was attracted to it, and in the end, she scolded him.

Brief Commentary on the Preceding Chapter

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This change, when did it begin? Perhaps the prologue was like this. One day she found him wearing new clothes. She glanced at him and she seemed to be looking at him affectionately, suddenly she said, There was a Hebrew teacher in our city, round as a herring bar-rel, who wore blue socks like the ones you’re wearing. Isaac didn’t understand that she intended to make fun of him, for what was there to make fun of blue socks, especially since in the Land of Israel, where people aren’t fussy about the way they dress, especially with socks that are covered by trousers. When he sensed her mockery, he was offended by her words. And when she saw that he was offended, she didn’t leave a stone unturned and there was nothing she didn’t tease him about.

And still Sonya would come to him. Until that day when he waited for her and she didn’t come. So he got up went to her. But she put on an amazed expression. And he went off and was insulted.

Isaac thought that Sonya would come and appease him, for she must have sensed that she hadn’t behaved decently. He sat with a furious expression to teach her good manners. What did she do? She didn’t come at all and didn’t give him a chance to teach her good manners. He began to give in to her just so she would come. What did she do? She didn’t come, and didn’t give him a chance to show her he had given in. His face became pallid and he sat and waited for her. Now his anger was calmed and an affection he had never known throbbed in his heart, the affection that starts with yearnings and ends with madness. He sat all by himself and enumerated for himself some of her movements which, when she used to come to

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him would make him happy, and now that she doesn’t come, he’s de-spondent. How lovely was Sonya when she would enter his house, throw her head back and her hat dropped off, and she stood before him full of affection. If he hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t have imagined that her presence alone was rejoicing. And since he recalled those times when she stood before him, he recalled how she stretched out on his bed and he sat with her and put a finger in her hair, took a comb from here and thrust it in there, his fingers quivering and just the memory of that quiver took his breath away with its sweetness.

What can we tell and what can we say? Isaac sat and waited for Sonya and she didn’t come, not when the sun went down and not when the stars came out, not yesterday and not today. He has already straightened up his room and lit the lamp, he spread a cloth and set the table. Everything was ready for the meal, all that was lacking was Sonya to come for supper. There stands the new jar of jam Isaac bought to sweeten Sonya’s supper, and the virgin in the picture on the jar bares her teeth and smiles at him. Can it be that Sonya isn’t coming today either? Sonya doesn’t come, not today and not the day after today and they won’t sup together and they won’t stroll together, not in the Baron’s garden and not on the seashore, and not on the hill of sand that lovers call the Hill of Love. Wherever you turn there you find couples. But Isaac and Sonya you don’t find together. To jog his memory, Isaac goes back over all those places where he used to stroll with Sonya, even though he knows that all his walking is in vain. Ah, Isaac, our comrade, pursues Sonya and doesn’t find Sonya.

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Why did Sonya change her way with Isaac? We can’t say that her heart was throbbing for Rabinovitch, and we can’t say that she was attracted to somebody else. True, that moneychanger who sits in the door of Café Hermon sent a matchmaker to her. And as for Mr. Orgelbrand, Mr. Orgelbrand keeps silent, even though he knows that she isn’t intended for Mr. Kumer. Did she turn her attention to Gorishkin who swallows books like quinine and blurts out the stories of his memories or the memories in the form of stories? As far as we know Sonya, she isn’t paying any mind to him. There are others who

Brief Commentary on the Preceding Chapter
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ask for her hand, and she doesn’t heed them. Sonya knows that in the Land of Israel, there are more men than women, and if she stretched out a finger, seven bachelors would come. In the past, when she went out with Rabinovitch, maybe if he had said, Marry me, she might not have said no; when he left the Land, he ceased to exist for her.

On the other hand, Isaac’s mind did return to Rabinovitch. There wasn’t an hour that he didn’t think about him and there wasn’t a day when he didn’t feel pangs of conscience. Even though Rabinovitch’s affairs with Sonya had ended, Isaac doesn’t see himself as innocent, for if he hadn’t clung to Sonya, Rabinovitch wouldn’t have gone away from her, for ever since the day that Isaac came close to Sonya, Rabinovitch stopped writing to them. When torments come to a person, he starts rummaging around in his deeds and believing in Divine Guidance, whose eyes wander all over the earth. If so, he had to stay away from Sonya, but he said you don’t mend betrayal with betrayal, I shall take her for a wife, maybe I’ll atone for that sin. If he had observed sufficiently, he would have left Sonya and gone on his way. Such matters happen every day, and a person doesn’t see it as his obligation, especially since Sonya doesn’t ask anything from him.

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Sonya doesn’t ask anything from him because it isn’t respectable for a girl to ask, especially a proud girl like Sonya who receives many requests for her hand in marriage and rejects them—so Isaac thought. And because of that, he felt he should open up to her and make it easier for her. That decision brought something good, for he took his mind off Sonya’s deeds, and set his mind to doing what he had to do, and between one thing and another, he again pictured to himself what he had pictured in his imagination before the quarrel, that is, that he writes to his father, I am betrothed to a maiden, her name is thus-and-so, and these are her virtues, Father reads the letter and is amazed, and so is the whole town, that a girl from a big city who studied in a Gymnasium would give her hand to Isaac. What do the envious say—this is the power of the land of Israel. But they admit that Isaac achieved what they didn’t. That’s how Isaac pictured to himself