Only Yesterday (42 page)

will you see him playing with dogs and writing on their skin, now he’s busy renovating houses for their inhabitants. Too bad for Isaac that, of all those houses, there isn’t a house waiting for him in the evening after he finishes his work and wants to relax with folks. All the time he was busy he didn’t notice that. When the moving season ended and Isaac’s hands grew light, his soul grew heavy. And when he returned to his room, his heart was bored inside him. After a few days, he overcame his hesitations and went to Reb Fayesh’s house.

And before he went to Reb Fayesh’s house, he changed his clothes and washed his face and hands. Even a painter sometimes wants to see his hands clean and to see himself dressed in clean clothes. And since the day had already declined, he went to the mar-ket to buy himself food for supper. Isaac walks around in the market and considers what to buy. The coins in his pocket slip into his hand. Round are the coins and they roll from hand to hand. A little while before they were in Isaac’s hands, a little while later they are in the shopkeeper’s hands. What will Isaac do with all those things he bought, for there are more than a single man needs. On the other hand, there are people who need them and don’t have them.

Rebecca opened the door to him and greeted him with tears. A letter came from her father and it didn’t contain good news. He is also sick and needs pity, and when he gets out of bed, he will do as much as a weak man can do. He’ll go to the graves of the Saints to pray for his son-in-law. And what he agreed to do his spouse has already done, but on her way back from the graves, she slipped and cracked her leg and now she is lying sick, and they can’t return to Jerusalem. It was a miracle from heaven that they reached Safed safely, and you can’t test God twice.

Isaac sits facing Rebecca and Shifra, and each of them is sad in his own way. Isaac is sad because of the two old people, and Rebecca is sad because of her father and mother and because of her husband, and Shifra is sad because of her father and mother and because of her grandfather and her grandmother, and because of herself. Before nightfall she went out to fetch water from the cistern, and she heard a neighbor woman saying to her friend, Did you see that girl who hung on his neck like the crucified hanging on a crossroads;

and the words clearly were said about her. Because Isaac comes to ask about her father, does that give the neighbor women the right to slander her.

Isaac asked Rebecca, How is Reb Fayesh? Rebecca pointed to his bed. Isaac looked and said, Nothing has changed. Rebecca answered, Nothing has changed, and she looked too. Reb Fayesh’s face was shriveled and dark. His eyes, that used to pierce the face of any-one who saw them, were slack, and his drooping lips were moving, as if he wanted to say something but his tongue didn’t obey him. When Isaac stood up to go, Rebecca remembered her neighbors and said, Are you going? And she lit the way for him, covering the lamp with her apron.

c h a p t e r t w e n t y - o n e

With His First Comrades

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Tranquility settled on the city and its houses settled into tranquility. And the people inside the houses are a quiet nation, secure in its God. Every house shines and every window stretches out peace to you. And between the thorns of the towers, the moon shines. The local stones are reconciled with you and the trees in the field wave their leaves. And a very faint voice rises from the earth, and you fol-low the voice. And here comes a caravan of Ishmaelites with their camels bearing the goods of the Land of Israel. And you imagine you are walking with them until they return you to your father.

But there are nights when Isaac doesn’t find peace, not at home and not outside. He goes into his house, and the walls of the house press him. He goes outside, and heaven and earth join together to grieve him. If the moon is shining, he sheds his heart inside him. If it isn’t shining, the world is dark for him.

Like most single people, who have a hard time living alone, he goes to the People’s Center. Even Adam, the First Man, who lounged in the Garden of Eden with ministering angels standing be-fore him and roasting meat for him and filtering wine for him, the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He said it is not good that the man should be alone, and that applies even more to someone who doesn’t have ministering angels standing before him. Isaac goes to the People’s Cen-ter to soothe his mind a bit in the company of human beings.

Some lavish heaps of praise on the People’s Center, as a gathering place for the educated people of the city, seekers of knowledge, and supporters of the renaissance of Israel; and others are complaining and say, A People’s Center should be it, and it isn’t. The weekly

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Young Laborer,
which can’t be dazzled, once published comments about the People’s Center, and from the day those comments were published, nothing has changed, and when you come in here, it seems as if your eyes had come only to confirm those comments.

You enter a fenced courtyard which grows thorns and stones, and you come to a big hall, with two rooms on this side and two rooms on that side. In one room sits the librarian and lends books; and in another room sit all those who want to spend one of the spare hours the day is full of; and in another room, the heads of the committee gather to discuss the issues of the People’s Center; and another room serves as a kind of cafeteria. And anyone who hasn’t yet decided what room to enter strolls in the hall. On the other hand, in the courtyard, girls walk around, to and fro, arm in arm, and they chat. What do those girls chat about? They chat about the endless boredom and that there isn’t a man here to stir their heart a bit. On the other hand, in the gatehouse sits a seminarian who sneaked in here clandestinely, and he shrinks himself up so they won’t notice him, for if they do no-tice him, they will throw him out of the seminary with a reprimand, for the principal of the seminary ordered his students not to go to the People’s Center, for all who come to the People’s Center are heretics and apostates or revolutionaries. The student sits and shrinks himself up so they won’t notice him. But his thoughts, which he can’t con-trol, are expanding. Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart, and the essence of all his thoughts is about women and about love. When the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He created a man He produced a woman from him. Since man transgressed, he has to pursue woman all by himself. That student sits there all by himself and whispers to himself Bialik’s poem, Take me in, they say there is love in the world, what is love? And he wonders, Doesn’t Bialik, that great poet, know what love is? An ordinary man, why does he need to know? The eyes and heart of that student are enveloped with tears, like those girls whose shadows are enveloped at evening. Says one girl to another, Come, let’s go inside, they’ve already lit the lamp.

When the lamp is lit, they pick up a paper to read it, or they sit and talk with one another. Their talk doesn’t refresh their soul, like a person who talks to himself in the mirror. If there is someone

there who knows how to deliver a speech, they ask him to deliver a speech. If it seems worthwhile to deliver a speech, he gets up and delivers a speech; if not, he doesn’t deliver a speech. Somebody comes along, climbs up on the stage and reads a story by Sholem Aleichem. People from Outside the Land sit and laugh, people of Jerusalem drop their heads onto their shoulders and doze off, until they are awakened by the sound of applause, and they also applaud so people won’t say they don’t understand literature, as they wonder what’s so funny here and what’s the reason for the applause.

But sometimes, a spirit of life enters the walls of the People’s Center, as on nights when there’s a party or a lecture, especially when the lecturer is from Jaffa. What’s the difference between the sages of Jaffa and the sages of Jerusalem? In literary matters, the sages of Jaffa are stronger, for they know literature and are acquainted with literary figures. In science, the sages of Jerusalem are stronger, for they know German and draw their ideas from the source, not like the sages of Jaffa who learn from Russian books translated from the German, and no translator is an expert in the language he is translating from. But the sages of Jaffa have an extra advantage, they speak excitedly. Aside from science and literature, there are also lectures on current events. Those lectures on current events attract a big audience, for even in Jerusalem which is withdrawn from the world, people long to know what’s happening in the world. On occasion, writers and scholars and activists from Outside the Land drop in. And once upon a time, a caravan of forty tourists who ascended to the Land and shook up the whole Land came to the People’s Center and all of new Jerusalem gathered to honor them and carried them on their shoulders. Speakers delivered speeches while they were carried and when they were put down.

Sometimes ordinary guests drop in, from Jaffa and from the settlements, who come to Jerusalem for their business or for their health, and they come to the People’s Center to welcome the educated people of the city, the best people of the New Yishuv. You can spot them by their light clothing and their suntanned faces and a few qualities unusual in Jerusalem. They sit, the people of Jerusalem, sons of the capital city, and are pleasant to their brothers, with mag—

nanimity and largess, as distinguished citizens of Jerusalem who know themselves that they are above the whole world because they are blessed to dwell in Jerusalem, and they weave into their conversation words that were coined by the Language Committee, and they boast about the art school, Bezalel, which has all kinds of artistic activity, from the rug at your feet to the turban on your head, as well as household utensils and ritual articles, and they brag about their Li-brary of the Treasures of Joseph, which is loyal to the Hebrew spirit and the ingathering of the exiles of our books, from the beginning of Jewish printing to our own day. And as they talk, they mention the sages of Jerusalem who will promote the wisdom of Jerusalem in the world, for you don’t have one single sage in Jerusalem who hasn’t written several books, some of them are still in manuscript and some of them are still in thought. And needless to say, a great writer will appear and write a novel about Jerusalem, a novel in two parts, one part about the divine Jerusalem and one part about the earthly Jerusalem. That part about the divine Jerusalem has to include all the yearnings and longings of the elders of the generation that sus-tained the Yishuv with their suffering. And that part about the earthly Jerusalem has to tell about the building of Jerusalem and her activists and builders.

Mr. Nehemiah Gedalia Posek, an old man of about fifty, with a jolly face and small eyes, one of the founders and supporters of the People’s Center, is lavish in praise of old Jerusalem. And even though he belongs to the New Yishuv, he was involved with the Rab-bis and the inspectors, and he is an expert in every single institution, for every single thing in Jerusalem, either of young people or of old people, is close to his heart.

Mr. Nehemiah Gedalia Posek sits wearing a black coat, which may be either the garb of the pious or the clothing of the educated, and on his head is a creased black felt hat he bought Outside the Land when he went to the Congress in Basel, and he looks very affectionately at the people listening to his words, and he praises the Rabbis of Jerusalem who can get along with every person, and they manage the city wisely, for you need great wisdom to manage the city that contains people from all over the Exile, and every single person

is an Exile in and of himself. Just as the Rabbis know how to manage the city, so the inspectors and the officials know how to manage the Societies and the other charitable institutions, which are the main source of income of Jerusalem. During the time when the Temple existed, Jerusalem was supported by the Temple, now the city is supported by the coins of Charity, for Jerusalem is not like all other cities that have trade and industry, but Jerusalem has Torah and prayer. Mr. Posek adds, When such-and-such an institution was founded and when such-and-such a Yeshiva was founded, how much income and expenses they have, who are those at the head of the institutions and who are the heads of the Yeshivas, what did they do Outside the Land and when did they ascend to Jerusalem, and he advises everyone who comes to Jerusalem to visit the institutions of Charity and the institutions of the Torah. And don’t be afraid of the zealots, but on the contrary, learn from them to be zealous as they are, for the es-sential thing is the lack of it, that zealotry has ceased in Israel and every person yields his opinions out of false tolerance.

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Once Isaac came to the People’s Center and found some of his first comrades with whom he had looked for work among the farmers and in the doorways of the offices. They thought Isaac had left the Land of Israel, and Isaac thought the same about them, and suddenly they find themselves together in Jerusalem. This soil they had wanted to work and preserve holds onto them and doesn’t let them leave it.

Isaac sits with his first comrades and talks with them about the farmers of Petach Tikva and the vine growers of Rishon LeTsion, about Victor and about Teplitsky and about the tobacco they planted in Nes Tsiona, about the clerk in the information office in Jaffa and about all the other clerks and offices that have already passed and gone out of the world or which were about to be abolished, for everything that does not have the spirit of life doesn’t live. And as they talked, they mentioned Rabinovitch and Sonya, the sea and Jaffa, its vineyards and palm trees. They talked about everything under the sun. Because of the length of their talk and for love of brevity, we shall omit their conversation. Isaac is fond of his comrades and invites them to drink a cup of tea, and makes them love the tea we drink in Jerusalem, for it is made of rainwater, and he orders them the fine cakes of the Georgian baker. They sit together and talk about Rabinovitch, whom they haven’t heard anything from, and about the many Rabinovitches who followed his example and left the Land of Israel, and from one Rabinovitch to another Rabinovitch, they talk again about Sonya, who prepares herself every day for another profession.