Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam (17 page)

Kaiser Wilhelm II

68. Any pain’s better than a pain in the head / Shabbat 11a.

68. Nothnagel / Dr. Hermann Nothnagel (1841–1905), German-born internist and professor in Vienna. The family name is German for an “emergency nail” or “nail in need” – an iron spike carried by firefighters of old to be used when an escape from an upper floor was blocked. It could be hammered into an outside window so that a rope could be lowered from it allowing the firefighter to rappel down to safety. Agnon may be using the name here to connote such a last-minute resort.

71. Sitting at her window / Cf. Judges 5:28.

72. Hotel Semiramis / An actual Jaffa hotel at the time, named for legendary queen of Assyria. See Robert Alter’s afterword to this volume on the symbolism of the hotel, which becomes a landmark for the final action of the story, bearing the name of “the queen who is a burning image of antiquity’s erotic splendor.”

72. Because we have no university here / The first institute of higher learning in the Land of Israel was Haifa’s Technion – The Israel Institute of Technology, founded in 1912. However the vision of a Jerusalem university mentioned by the school principal is a reference to the Hebrew University, whose cornerstone was laid in 1918 on Mount Scopus (which overlooks the Temple Mount, as hinted at by the principal), and which began operation in 1925.

Balfour speaking at inauguration of Hebrew University (1925)

73. Blessed be your going out… / Inversion of verse in Deuteronomy 28:6.

77. Zeus / In Greek mythology, Zeus, king of the gods, was also titled Philoxenon (lover of guests), patron god of hospitality and guests.

78.
Beside the brook…
/ Opening of a German poem, “The Youth by the Brook” (“
Der Jüngling am Bache
”), by Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).

Dukhifat
(Hoopoe)

82. Hobbled bird / The Hebrew text reads
dukhifat kfutah
, a bound-up
dukhifat
(bird mentioned in Leviticus 11:19; identified as the hoopoe, a colorful bird with a distinctive crown of feathers). The Talmud mentions this bird, an agent of the mythic Lord of the Sea (
Sara de-Yama
), having committed suicide upon lacking to fulfill a particular “sworn oath” (Gittin 68b and Rashi s.v.
badku
, as per Hullin 63a) – all elements resonating with various symbols in the story.

87. Here, for the time being… / A typically Agnonian indeterminate and ambivalent ending (see the conclusion to
A Simple Story
). There are, however, a number of references to Rechnitz and Shoshanah in other Agnon stories (see for example “Edo and Enam”, p. 115 in this volume). In Agnon’s
Temol Shilshom
, it’s very clear that all Agnon characters of the various Jaffa stories occupy the same literary universe. See there, Book III Chapter 8:1 (p. 415 in the English translation,
Only Yesterday
), which opens: “Isaac got out of bed. He washed his face and hands, but he didn’t go to the sea, for it was already noontime, and in those days, we didn’t go walking at the sea in the afternoon on hot days, except for Doctor Rekhnitz [sic], who used to hunt for seaweed,
and now that he has left for America
, you don’t see a person at the sea in the afternoon.” Jacob, it seems, sets sail for New York after the conclusion of “Betrothed” – whether Shoshanah accompanies him, or what becomes of their life together, is left for the reader to decide.

Edo and Enam

Home of Prof. Gershom Scholem, 28 Abravanel Street, in the Rehavia section of Jerusalem. Agnon was staying here in 1949 when he wrote this story, while Scholem was spending a sabbatical in the United States. “Edo and Enam” was rumored to be inspired by Scholem and his pioneering work in Kabbalah research (a speculation Scholem strongly objected to); the house seems to have served as a model for the setting of the story, which admittedly takes place in a different neighborhood of Jerusalem (Photo by J. Saks).

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.