Only Yesterday (62 page)
When they mentioned water and a cistern, everyone mentioned his own cistern, whose water was low that year, and if the rains didn’t come on time, there wouldn’t be water to drink, for the reservoirs were already starting to raise the price of their water, as the Arab watercarriers, when they see that Jerusalem is thirsty for water, raise their price. Everyone became sad. Said one of them, Gentlemen, suf—
ficient unto the hour is the trouble thereof, it will be better to speak of happy things. They went back to talking about Jaffa, where they drink well water and don’t need to bring their water for money. And in addition, they have a sea there, and if you bathe in it, it’s like bathing in the ritual bath, which removes the pollution on your body. And the sea has a great advantage over the ritual bath, for when a man comes out of the ritual bath he is sick from the smell, while the sea smells good. And those who aren’t strong enough to go down to the sea take sand baths. How? You dig yourself a kind of grave and you sit up to your navel in the sand and you are healed, for a man is created from four elements, fire, wind, water, and earth, and the sand of the sea includes four elements, fire wind water and earth. Fire is the sun that inflames the sand. Wind is what blows the sand apart. Water, for the sand comes from the sea. Earth, for the sand is also a kind of earth. Those four elements come and bring healing to man who was created of four elements.
But a person has to be careful not to go far away from the settlement so that the grave he digs for his cure does not become an eter-nal grave, God Forbid, as happened once upon a time to one old man from Jerusalem who went into the sand up to his neck, and three young Ishmaelites passed by him with donkeys loaded with dung. They dumped the dung on him and buried him alive. Jews came and saw what they did to that old man. They chased the vandals and caught one of the three donkeys and cracked open the heap and pulled out the old man and put him on the donkey naked as he was and took him to his Consul and told him the whole tale. The Con-sul got angry that the Ishmaelites had humiliated his subject. He sent his deputy to the Saraya, the police chief. Police came immediately and arrested the donkey. The leaders of the city agreed to pay the donkey’s board until his trial came up, and they took the old man to the hospital and wrote to Jerusalem that his society would pay for medical expenses and lodging. Meanwhile, all the Fellahin of the village of Yazoor assembled and attacked Mikveh Israel with rifles and bows and spears to avenge the donkey. The officials of Mikveh Israel ran away along with the teachers and the students. One jumped out of the window and broke his leg, and was put in the hospital. He lay
in one bed and that old man in another bed, and all Jaffa discussed which came first, the trial of that old man or the trial of Mikveh Is-rael, for it was impossible to win both trials at the same time, for the community isn’t capable of bribing all the judges. Before some finished boasting of the greatness of the sons of Israel and others finished moaning over the troubles of the sons of Israel, the train approached Jerusalem.
He Goes to Shifra
1
I
Even before Isaac reached Jerusalem, Jaffa was uprooted from his heart, and all the things he had seen there vanished as if they had never been real. And when he reached Jerusalem, his soul woke up and his heart began to beat. In this city, every hour has something of the life of the World-to-Come. He wiped the dust of Jerusalem out of his eyes and the Holy City was revealed to him as it is revealed to those who love it. He recalled something the painter Bloykof had said to him, Come, let us embrace one another that we are graced to dwell in Jerusalem, and Isaac wiped a tear from his eyes and rented a seat in a wagon. He went to the inn of Shoel Hirshl, as he had done the first time he had ascended, but now he went on his own. Every inn is good and bad. The inn of Shoel Hirshl has a special advantage, that it embraces its guests.
There were no guests in the inn. Not even Shoel Hirshl or his sons and daughters were there. The sons and daughters weren’t there because they had bickered and left, and Shoel Hirshl wasn’t there because he had gone across the Jordan. Shoel Hirshl loved business and couldn’t sit idle. Now that the inn was empty, he had joined the Lulav merchants and went with them across the Jordan to bring Lulavs.
What were those Lulavs? Across the Jordan, along the Dead Sea, on the way to Kir-Moab, between the mountains and in the mountains, you find little groves of palms. The palms grow by themselves and the Bedouins don’t tend them, since they don’t bear fruit. Once a Jew from Jerusalem went to Kir-Moab to get wheat. He cut some palm branches and brought them to Jerusalem. The people of
I
519
Jerusalem saw the Lulavs and found them fit and fine and beautiful and good for waving. And another advantage of those Lulavs is that, since they grow without water, they are hard and can last a long time, and are suitable for export Outside the Land. One of the distinguished families of Jerusalem got permission from the Wali in Damascus to cut Lulavs there. Every year, they cross the Jordan and bring Lulavs. The people of Jerusalem rejoice at the Lulavs that come from across the Jordan, which the Lord prepared for them to perform the Commandment in utmost beauty and perfection, and even the poorest of the poor stints on necessities to buy himself a Lulav from across the Jordan. On the other hand, there were a group of people in Jerusalem who washed their hands of them, for the Torah says
the branches of palm trees
, and those Lulavs are palm-branches that don’t bear fruit. But it didn’t get as far as a Quarrel. And they already exported more than fifty thousand Lulavs Outside the Land and they wrote from abroad, Send us more like those.
I
Since the inn had no guests and all the rooms were empty, the landlady opened a nice room for Isaac, and asked money only for the bed. And as she made up his bed, she told him her troubles. Strife befell the house between her daughters and her daughters-in-law. Everyone moved out. And when did they leave? When the inn was empty. Why? To make Shoel Hirshl angry. They know he can’t sit alone and they left him at the moment of isolation. Shoel Hirshl is good-natured and loves folks, but what pleasure does a person get if he’s good and the world’s bad. Such a Sabbath as that Sabbath when the house emptied out—the day of mourning for the Destruction of the Temple, Tisha b’Av, is nicer than that. The table is set, the candles are lit, Shoel Hirshl comes back from the synagogue and says Shabbat Shalom and may you have a peaceful, blessed Sabbath, and I re-turn his greeting. Said Shoel Hirshl, Tsippa Riva, I tell you Shabbat Shalom and you don’t reply. Said I, You accuse me falsely, Shoel Hir-shl. I did reply to you, but you are used to many people answering you, and now when there is nobody but me here, you didn’t even no-tice my blessing. He started to say Peace Unto You. But suddenly he
turned his head around and asked, Where are they? I thought he was asking about the children. But he was only asking about the Minis-tering Angels. After he recited the Kiddush, he waited as he did every Sabbath until our sons and sons-in-law recited the Kiddush, but every one of them was making his own Sabbath. He groaned and washed his hands and broke off the bread and started chanting Sabbath songs. He chanted and stopped, chanted and stopped, like a Cantor who stops for his choir. And here there is no choir and no one to as-sist. He said to me, Bring the soup. I brought the soup. He took one sip and put down the spoon. I said to him, Shoel Hirshl, why aren’t you eating? He said to me, Who cooked the soup? I told him, The one who cooks every Sabbath cooked this Sabbath. He said to me, And who cooks every Sabbath? I told him, I am the one who cooks every Sabbath, and I am the one who cooked this Sabbath. He said to me, Why doesn’t the soup have the flavor of the Sabbath? That’s what he said about every single dish. When the Sabbath was over, I went to the children and shouted, Murderers, you are, there is no God in your heart. And what did they answer me? Oy, Isaac, the days of the Messiah have come. A daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house. So Shoel Hirshl went out across the Jor-dan to amuse himself a bit, for from all his trouble, he won’t earn a red cent, for that whole trade in Transjordanian Lulavs is in the hands of others, and it was only for the sake of friendship that they took him along on the trip. And I sit here forlorn, and in the whole inn, there isn’t anyone except one single guest in mourning, Heaven Forfend, and sits Shiva.
Isaac asked the owner, And where is that little girl who helped you in the inn? Said Tsippa Riva, That little girl is lying in the mission hospital, and may she recover. And if she does recover, may she keep her Judaism. There in the hospital, they tell her, if not for us, that is them, may-their-name-be-wiped-out, who took pity on her and took care of her, she would be dead by now. Oy, Master of the Universe, Jews come to Jerusalem, Your city, to serve You in truth and You send them troubles and suffering and diseases and converts and inciters who seduce them to idolatry. I ponder to myself, all the
Children of Israel are responsible for one another and if, God forbid, one is alienated from us, what shall we reply to God on High. And Noah, you remember him? Noah scratched himself with his tar-boosh and went on his way. Why? I also ask why. All the days he would roar, I’m worried about you, Reb Shoel Hirshl, that you’ll go to hell because you enslave me. Shoel Hirshl got fed up with the thing and expelled him with a reprimand. And that fool doesn’t know that all the work Shoel Hirshl threw at him he threw at him only because he can’t bear to see a person walking around idle. Go teach others wisdom if your own sons and your own daughters don’t want to learn. Right away I’ll bring you a cup of tea. After he drank, he put on his good clothes, wiped his shoes with a dustrag, and went to Shifra’s house.
I
The sun was about to set. The carters were bringing their horses to their stables and the shopkeepers were locking their shops. The streets grew wide and the earth grew still. Nothing was heard but the sound of a blind man’s cane or the sound of an old woman’s footsteps as she tottered from one holy place to another to bring a candle to the Ark. In the houses, candles hadn’t yet been lit, but the light of the synagogues fell on them, and every window gleamed like stained glass. In the doorways of their houses, girls stood and looked at Isaac walking calmly, as if he had already finished all his prayers. Isaac stroked his beard and entered the Hungarian Houses.
The doorways stood open, and from every threshold whispered an earthenware stove with a pot or a kettle on it, and in the prayer houses, the sound of prayer was heard. Leaning on their canes, old women stood outside to hear the Kedushah, the sanctification, and the Barkhu, the blessing. Near them, schoolchildren played hide-and-seek. One old woman lifted her head to Isaac and said, Run, my son, run, you may still find a Minyan. Suddenly the whole courtyard fell silent for the silent prayer.
Shifra stood at a washtub of water and laundered her father’s small prayer shawl. She rolled down her sleeves and raised up her eyes. Those were not eyes called dreamy eyes or eyes of gold. And if
they were dreamy, they were like a dream that wasn’t interpreted, and if gold—like tarnished gold, as if that wasn’t the Shifra he had always known. But she was more handsome than ever. Rebecca was sitting in a corner and knitting. When she saw Isaac, she looked at him in amazement. Said Isaac, I come from Jaffa, and he looked at Shifra. Rebecca shook her head and said, I heard you went to Jaffa. Said Isaac, I just now returned from there and here I am. How is Reb Fayesh? Rebecca tilted the lamp toward her husband and groaned.
Reb Fayesh lay on his bed. His eyes were sunk, and under his eyes were bags of flesh that moved by themselves. Rebecca looked at her husband and said, May the health of all the foes of Zion be as the health of Fayesh. Said Isaac, Which means that nothing has changed. Said Rebecca, Praise God nothing has changed. For if there was a change, it wouldn’t be for the good. Reb Fayesh stirred and peeped at Isaac. Rebecca tilted the lamp to the other side and said, Why don’t you sit down? Sit, Isaac, sit. So, you’ve come back to Jerusalem. Right away I’ll bring you something hot to drink. Said Isaac, Thank you. Jaffa is getting bigger. They’re building a new neighborhood there. Sixty houses all at once. All hands are busy building. I found work there, too. Said Rebecca, You plan to return to Jaffa? Said Isaac, If you ladies agree, I’ll return. Shifra blushed and lowered her eyes. Isaac gazed into her eyes, asking and pleading. And he blushed, too.
A dog’s shout was heard outside. Rebecca said to Shifra, Go to father. And she said to Isaac, When Fayesh hears the sound of a dog, he right away gets scared. Shifra went to her father and stood and stroked his brow. Reb Fayesh closed his eyes and his chin quiv-ered. Rebecca adjusted the kerchief on her head and wiped her eyes. Shifra returned from her father, took the prayer shawl out of the washtub and hung it on the chair, and went and poured a cup of tea for Isaac. Drink, Isaac, said Rebecca, my father, Long-May-He-Live, says, tea is above any drink, and you should know that outside the Land, he wasn’t used to tea. Said Isaac, How is Reb Moyshe Amram? Said Rebecca, God be praised. Just today a letter came from Safed. Both he, God be praised, and mother, God be praised, are healthy.
But they are weak. Drink, Isaac, drink. What were we talking about, Jaffa. Who’s at the door?
The door opened and a neighbor woman came in. When she saw Isaac, she wanted to leave. Isaac held the cube of sugar in his hand and said, Auntie, you don’t have to run away from me. He took the last sip and put down the sugar, he stroked his beard and said, The time has come for me to go. He stood up from his chair, nod-ded to Rebecca, and said, Goodnight. And he went to Shifra and took her hand and said goodbye. Rebecca looked and was amazed. Said the neighbor woman, That’s the fellow? Isaac smiled at her and said, That’s him, that’s him, and clasped Shifra’s hand. Shifra slipped her hand out of his and said, Goodnight. Isaac stroked his beard and left. Rebecca picked up the lamp and stood in the doorway to light his way out. And Shifra stood still and absorbed the sound of his steps. When he disappeared from sight, Rebecca came back and hung the lamp on the peg in the wall.
Said the neighbor woman, He still walks around and scares folks. Who? Rebecca called out furiously. Said that woman, My ex-husband got sick. They say it’s a fever of panic. The dog barked at him. Yesterday he went out as usual to collect the torn books the heretics, May-Their-Names-Be-Wiped-Out, throw away. He saw He-brew letters lying in the dung. And he didn’t know that those were the letters of the famous dog who has Crazy Dog written on his skin. When he touched the letters, the dog woke with a start and barked at him. He fainted dead away and got sick. Why are you trembling, Shifra? Atchoo! I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.
I