Mutations and Permutations
I
Let’s go back to the main issue. One day Isaac came home from work. He put on his best clothes and went out for a stroll. What made Isaac put on his good clothes on a weekday and go out early? If you had asked him, he couldn’t have answered. Not every day are a man’s actions in his own hands.
As he walks, Sonya comes toward him. Her light shirt flutters over her heart and a new hat is on her head, a girl’s hat that gives her face the bloom of a handsome girl. She too went out early, just like Isaac. Even though she didn’t have anything to do outside, she was happy she went out, for the day was declining and the time had come to get a breath of fresh air.
Sonya is happy and joyful and the freckles on her face scattered like golden lentils. Her eyes smile at Isaac and on her lips is an accommodating smile that is neither stunned nor amazed to fi Isaac. Isaac asked Sonya, What did Rabinovitch write? Sonya replied,
That’s just what I wanted to ask you, did he write to you? I haven’t gotten a single word from him. Rabinovitch had planned to do great things Outside the Land, and hadn’t done any of them. He is ashamed to write the truth, and he doesn’t want to lie, so he keeps silent.
Since they came upon one another, they joined one another and went for a stroll. And not just at that time, but whenever they met, they would stroll together.
I
At first their conversation was about their comrade Rabinovitch. Isaac told how he met Rabinovitch, and how Rabinovitch treated him with
I
125
love and affection. And Sonya told how she met him, and when she knew him it seemed to her that she had known him forever. That is hard to put into words, because there’s a contradiction here, for if you hadn’t seen him before, how does it seem to you that you know him? Maybe because of an imaginary reminiscence that unwittingly brings hearts close together.
Isaac Kumer and Sonya Zweiering walk together because he is Rabinovitch’s friend and she is Rabinovitch’s girlfriend. And even though Rabinovitch isn’t with them, his image goes before them. Sonya, who is an expert in human beings and likes to paint their por-traits in words, talks about Rabinovitch until it seems to you that he is standing before your eyes.
Isaac was fond of those hours when he strolled with Sonya and chatted about Rabinovitch. If Rabinovitch isn’t here, his mate is. And here Isaac had to admit that he had no cause to complain about his friend for courting Sonya, for aside from the fact that she is a handsome girl, her mind is astounding. Whether she is talking about Rabinovitch or whether she is talking about other people. There are things Isaac feels and can’t explain, and Sonya comes and gives them a Hebrew or a foreign name and everything is nice and clear, for Sonya attended a general school and acquired general knowledge, something he doesn’t have, because all the learning he received in Heder and the study house allowed him to read a Hebrew newspaper and a Hebrew book about Judaism and Zionism and Zionism and Judaism. And one more thing. Sonya is the daughter of educated people, a girl from a big city, while he is the son of a poor shopkeeper, a boy from a small town where there is nothing except trying to make a living and gossip and slander.
With time, they talked less about their friend Rabinovitch. Sometimes they started with him and then sailed off to another subject. And if they came back to talk about him, they themselves felt that there was nothing new to add to the matter of Rabinovitch, and all they had to say they had already said. Nevertheless, they did mention him. Sonya would say, Too bad for Rabinovitch, while we’re strolling here and the stars are taking shape in the firmament and the waves of the sea are skipping on the sand like a cluster of lovers
assembling for a meeting of love, he’s probably sitting in coffee houses and irritating his eyes with his cigarette smoke. And Isaac adds, Just as we think of him, so he thinks of us. Isaac brought up the subject of Rabinovitch a lot, but as he spoke he saw that his words had lost their warmth and he was talking only to fulfill an obligation.
With time, they stopped mentioning him. And since they didn’t mention him, they mentioned their own affairs. They talked about this, that, and the other. Sonya told Isaac about her father and her mother, about her boyfriends and her girlfriends, about everything a girl of a good family tells and isn’t ashamed of. And by now Isaac was an expert in Sonya’s affairs, as if he had known her since childhood, and he was grateful to her for considering him worthy to tell him things that were important to him, both in their own right and because of Sonya. And he also told her about his father and his mother, and about his brothers and his sisters. And to make those things sound proper, he changed them to make them seem more worthy. Perhaps Sonya doubted his words or perhaps she believed the things he added to the truth.
Isaac wasn’t forgetful, and needless to say he wasn’t a liar; but he had heard things from his comrades about the status of their fa-ther’s house and those things amazed him at first, now they rose up in his mind’s eye when he spoke with Sonya, and he used them to embellish his father’s house for her. If Isaac had told things as they were, he wouldn’t have lost face in Sonya’s eyes, for Sonya was a girl from Russia and read Russian stories that make troubles endear-ing and make the poor precious. But Isaac was a Galician fellow from a poor family who were ashamed of their poverty, and if his imagination hadn’t helped him out, he would have been ashamed to tell Sonya.
And since they grew accustomed to one another, they also talked about current events, for even if those don’t capture the heart as in bygone days, a person should know them. And in that, Sonya shone, for she was an expert in what was done and what should be done and isn’t done. And she casually mentions an article by somebody or other about settlements and says that the writer wasn’t precise. Sonya, who heard a lot and read books, can make her way among ideas, unlike Isaac who, even if he looks at articles about the settlements, doesn’t understand the meaning of the words, not to mention foreign words, for he lacked the basics of an education. Isaac may know who Warburg is or Franz Oppenheimer, but Sonya is an expert in their plans. A lot Sonya heard in meetings and a lot she got from her friends, some of them leaders of parties, others writers of articles.
I
Isaac should have been happy that a handsome, educated girl treated him as her friend, something he had never achieved before in his life. For until he ascended to the Land, he hadn’t talked with a girl, except for his sisters, and even in the Land, he hadn’t had a chance to talk with a girl. We already said that Isaac did have men friends but he didn’t have women friends. But precisely where he should have been happy he was sad, for his heart rebuked him, saying, She belongs to your comrade. Says Isaac, But what am I doing? I’m just talking to her. And his heart replies, You’re stealing her heart away from him. And Isaac is stunned, What is this stealing the heart? Because I’m talking with Sonya am I stealing her heart away from Rabinovitch? And his heart replies, You better stay away from her be-fore you get too close. Isaac ponders and says, Maybe I should stay away from Sonya, but not all at once.
Habit becomes nature. When they met, she held out a hand to stroll with him. At first, they strolled among folks and then they turned to side paths, then they went off to the Baron’s garden, the garden that became a salvation for Isaac, where the old Baron found him and helped him earn his bread. Once the Baron found him as he was strolling with Sonya. He was friendly to him, picked a flower and gave it to Sonya. And it wasn’t only the Baron who was friendly to him because of Sonya, but many people are friendly to him because of Sonya, for a lot of fellows are courting her and she neglects them all and is occupied only with him. So he should be happy. But the open wish is undermined by the hidden cause.
I
Once, a week went by and he didn’t see Sonya. Isaac decided, I’ll go to her house. Before he could go, she came to his house. That hour was strange. It was night and the lamp was lit over the table, and on the table was a book. A little while earlier Isaac was reading a story of fiction or nonfiction. The door was perhaps open and perhaps not. Once or twice Isaac looked at the door. Suddenly, Sonya is standing in the room. And all that is nothing compared to Sonya.
Sonya was strange at that hour. Her mouth was somewhat open and her tongue was between her lips as if she were licking them. She opened a book and put it down. She picked up a dish in one place and put it in another place. Isaac spoke and wasn’t answered. He was silent and she didn’t notice. He stood up and sat her down on his chair, and since he didn’t have another chair, he sat on the bed. It would have been proper if he had sat on the chair and she on the bed, for the chair wasn’t safe and those who weren’t used to it found it hard to sit on it. But Isaac wasn’t used to guests like Sonya and didn’t know what he should do. And since it is more comfortable to lie down than to sit with no support, he stretched out on the bed.
As he lay he peeped up at Sonya. And she looked at him. She looked at him and shifted her eyes away from him, shifted her eyes away from him and looked at him. His face blushed and his eyes grew dim and his heart began to pound. He held out his hand to Sonya, like someone who doesn’t know what to do, or perhaps he intended to beckon to Sonya to sit down next to him on his bed, for sitting on the chair certainly wasn’t comfortable. She came and sat down next to him. A sweet warmth bubbled up, a kind of experience he had never known. And Sonya was still silent. And he was silent too. It occurred to him that it wasn’t proper to be silent. He said to her, I haven’t seen you in a few days. Said she, You haven’t seen me. Said he, I haven’t seen you. Why? Said she, Even now I’m amazed at myself that I came here. Said he, Why are you amazed? Said she, I really didn’t mean to come to your place. Said he, How did that occur to you all of a sud-den? Said she, Is there any sense to these rendezvous? Isaac took her hands in his, as if he were afraid he would lose her.
Her hands inflamed his hands and his heart. Her head sank slightly on his shoulder. He sat up straight and stroked her head and pressed it to his heart like an amulet. At last she lifted her head and he kissed it. This was the kiss that had been preserved in his mouth ever since the hour his mother died. And Sonya kissed Isaac too. But this kiss was not a virgin kiss.
After midnight, Isaac walked Sonya home. The sky was deep and blue and many stars were set in it and the ground was soft as a carpet. That is the sandy ground of Jaffa, by day it digs underneath you and by night it appears like fine silk. The sea is fragrant and its waves rock pleasantly. At some distance from the shore a ship is float-ing. We don’t know who is there on that ship. At any rate, Sonya’s friend isn’t there. He is thousands of miles away from the Land of Israel, wandering from place to place and not finding a place for himself.
Let’s go back to Isaac. In the afternoon, Sonya found Isaac in the street. Isaac dropped his head and wanted to turn into a side street. Isaac was ashamed of two disgraceful acts at that hour, one, that he had disgraced Sonya and two, that he had disgraced their friend. Isaac’s face blushed and his eyes grew dim. Sonya smiled at him and took his hand affectionately and asked, Why don’t we see you? And Isaac asked himself, What does that mean, they don’t see me, it hasn’t even been a day since she was at my house. By the time he pondered her words, a billow of warmth came and flooded his heart as when she laid her head on his heart.
Isaac and Sonya
1
I
From now on, Isaac changed his ways. He began to be fussy about his clothes and shaved his beard twice a week, once on Friday evening like everybody else and once in the middle of the week. If he has work he comes home after work and washes his face and hands with soap and puts on clean clothes, and eats something, and runs to Sonya’s place. If he doesn’t have work, he reads a book and sleeps a lot and swims in the sea and straightens his room and tends to his things and prepares for Sonya, who comes in the evening. And when she does come she stands on tiptoe and leans her head back, her hat drops off, and she stretches out on the bed and shuts her eyes. At that moment, the white buttons sparkle on her blouse and the freckles on her face turn dark. And he comes and sits next to her and counts the buttons on her blouse, and says, One and one more, up to eight. If he counted nicely, she says, You counted nicely, and she rewards him for his trouble. If he made a mistake in his counting, she caresses him and says, Didn’t you ever study arithmetic? And since arithmetic can-not be learned casually, they leave off their arithmetic and sit like that, until she slips out of his arms and says, Light the lamp. He stops and lights the lamp and spreads a tablecloth and brings bowls and spoons and forks and knives and they eat together everything he has prepared beforehand. Sonya looks and laughs at him for acting like a housewife, not like those who eat out of the paper they bring the food home in from the store. And since she laughed at him she appeases him, and doesn’t appease him like those girls who kiss until they’re a nuisance, but places her mouth on his mouth and the hair on her upper lip, which is usually not seen, caresses you until you’re
I
131
about to die. When they had eaten and drunk, they go out for a stroll. And on their way, they rest on the seashore or on the hill of sand called the Hill of Love, or they go into Café Hermon and eat ice cream.
I
Café Hermon stands at the edge of Neve Shalom, near Bustrus Street. You enter a hall where, during the day, in the doorway, a pitch-black man sits bent over a green lattice table with large and small bills and coins, like those moneychangers who sit in the doorways of houses in the street and count coins. Since we haven’t got two pennies to rub together, we’ll leave him and dwell on the café, where at night the café owner stands, his face red as a honeycake and his beard flaming like a pomegranate bud, and his multicolored eyes staring at everyone who goes out or comes in or looks at the flies eager to enter that candy box. Those who are thirsty or hungry and don’t have time come in and eat and drink standing up. If they do have time, they come into the yard where the ground is covered with seashells. And little wicker tables and chairs painted green stand among the palm trees that are lit by lanterns, except on moonlit nights when their light isn’t needed.
This café isn’t like Arab cafés with their narghilas and gramo-phones and parrots; nor is it like the café in Lemberg with silver dishes and china dishes and waiters dressed like lords serving the guests. Here, you find a higher virtue, for wherever you turn you see writers and teachers and clerks and activists. Some of them cool themselves with a cold drink and some of them warm themselves with a hot drink and when they drink something hot a kerchief is wound around their neck to absorb the sweat. Some of them talk about Mendele, whose old age did not disgrace his youth, and about Bialik, who suppresses his poetry and doesn’t publish any poem. Next to them sit the other distinguished people of the Yishuv. Some praise the Odessa Committee and some slander the German Zionists who took over the Jew-ish National Fund and regard the Land of Israel as a stepdaughter of Zionism. Some discuss the domain of Rothschild, the Famous Donor, and some discuss the quarrels of Petach Tikva and the squabbles of
Be’er Tuvia. Some mention
The Young Laborer
, which attacked Dizengoff and the Anglo-Palestine Company in one issue, and some mention Rabbi Benjamin, who even writes about current events as if he’s writing poetry. Next to them sit the other people. Some of them play chess and some watch their moves. Some of them face the chess-board and some turn their back on the pieces. Over them stand the kibitzers, who know how to advise them where it is advisable to move and where it isn’t. Far away from those, near the wall of the café, stand men in shirtsleeves and collarless, and play ping-pong, and a little boy runs and picks up the balls that roll here and there. And sounds rise from the seashells on the floor, as if the animals inside them are shrieking under your feet. And nevertheless, the whole yard is tranquil as if all the tranquillity of the world had gathered here.
Isaac, who comes from a small town where there are no cafés and people don’t sit in groups and don’t know what ice cream is, is amazed to find himself suddenly sitting among famous people all Zionists talk about. Sometimes Isaac asks himself, Can it be that these people sipping lemonade are the ones you read about in the newspapers? If only the Zionists of his hometown could see him in such honor! In truth, the Zionists of his hometown had declined in his eyes, but even so, they should see who he was sitting with. Isaac was especially amazed at Sonya, who converses with those famous people, and even with the writers, as if they were her friends. Before Isaac ascended to the Land, he had made do with pictures of the writers, and today he sees a living writer. There sits our warm-hearted story writer Simha Ben Zion beaming. At that time, folks were still fond of the words of writers and their faces were illuminated by the light of their affection. There sits Simha Ben Zion wearing brown cloth clothes shiny as modest silk, and like that silk, his brown eyes are shining, and a poetic cravate is knotted at his collar, and his whole being is like a handsome column of poetry, and everything that comes out of his mouth is the verse of a poem. We are familiar with the stories of Simha Ben Zion. Now he sits face to face with us, and some of his words even reach our ears.
Dizengoff comes in wearing a light white jacket buttoned up to his neck, and on his head is a hard black hat, neither concave nor
square, and under his arm is a loaf of bread. That day Antabbi was dining at his table and some guests came to honor him and didn’t leave a crumb of bread, and the Yemenite housekeeper comes at seven o’clock, and he is accustomed to getting up at six, and sometimes he is attacked by hunger at four or five, and goes out to get some bread, so he’ll have some ready, and on the way, he comes into the café.
Dizengoff sits down on a willow chair and his body fills the seat. He put his hat on the table and the bread on the chair in front of him, and rubbed his hands together as if preparing for some hard work. He looked with his gray eyes at the café owner, who brought him ice cream, and waved his hand over the little bowl as if he were shaking off a fly and said, What’s that in front of a man? Just look at it and it’s gone. So the café owner ran and brought him another portion. Before he could bring it, his assistant has already anticipated him, for he knows that that gentleman isn’t satisfied with a little bit. Dizengoff thrust the spoon into this bowl and into that bowl and looked around to see which of his personal friends was here.
In fact, all the persons of Jaffa are his personal friends. And if there is a person here who is irritated with him, he is silly. And as for that article, “Jupiter Is Raging,” that
The Young Laborer
published against him, he has already given them a devastating reply in Ben-Yehuda’s
Ha-Tsvi
, and Mordechai Ben Hillel Ha-Cohen has also answered them as they deserved. The main thing is that we must do, do and do, until there is no time for intrigues. And isn’t he the first of the doers, even for the laborers and the improvement of their conditions? Yet they took the wrong path. And so he wrote explicitly, You’re making war on the whole Yishuv, the Old and the New, as if you were the only ones who remained after the Flood, and aside from you no one else is pained by the rupture in the nation and by the crisis of the Yishuv. You’ve set yourself the goal of the conquest of work, but that goal is beyond your reach, and the war itself became your goal, for you carried on a war front and back. A justified war and a sweeping war, a war for the sake of war, and the whole Land is full of the trum-pets of war and victory. But woe unto such a victory. For if in fact all the settlements and all the national institutions are so rotten that they
are all opposed to Jewish work—if so, who are you toiling for? Why do you deceive yourselves, and don’t you know, if today everyone in Petach Tikva embraced
Ha-Po’el Ha-Tsa’ir
and demanded of you, Give us Hebrew laborers instead of Arab laborers, would you be able to supply them all the wagon drivers and orange pickers and guards they need? The work of the Yishuv demands back-breaking toil, and we aren’t used to such work. We need simple laborers, yet the immigration gives us make-believe laborers with big demands who can’t adjust to the life of a laborer. His steely eyes are veiled, like a general commanding his troops and finding them weak. He wants to scold them but takes his eyes off them so they won’t see that he is filled with pity for them.
As he senses his own valor and the weakness of others, his heart whispers to him, All your deeds are nothing but failure. A lot of things he tried to do and succeeded in nothing. Was all my energy and my strength created in vain? What does
The Young Laborer
say, That gentleman knows that the
Ha-Po’el Ha-Tsa’ir
organization is working, while those gentlemen, that is I and my comrades, are yawning, they, that is, I and all the other excellent people of the Yishuv, see
Ha-Po’el Ha-Tsa’ir
as a rising force, and they’re scared that, God Forbid, their communal activity won’t show. Were they jok-ing, those innocent fellows, don’t they themselves say there’s enough work for honest people who really want to work and not to fight, and if such activists arrive, they will certainly find work both outside
Ha-Po’el Ha-Tsa’ir
and along with
Ha-Po’el Ha-Tsa’ir
.
Dizengoff isn’t vexed about being insulted. But he is sorry that those young people who are plotting war against him stay away from him. In his hometown, all the young people used to come to him, and here in the Land of Israel, a mountain has risen up between them and him. There are fellows here that his wife Tsina should meet, and they seem to keep pleasure away from his house. His house is full of teachers and writers and clerks and activists, but no young man shows himself in his house.
As he ponders, he saw Simha Ben Zion. Dizengoff says to Simha Ben Zion, You’re here? And they come and sit together. And you don’t know if Dizengoff came to Simha Ben Zion or if Simha
Ben Zion came to Dizengoff, and they indulge in a discussion, and everyone pulls up their chairs and sits down to listen. Some esteem Dizengoff and some are fond of Simha Ben Zion, and when they come together, the light of one illuminates the other, and everyone basks in their light.
I
Never did Isaac have better days than those. Isaac is involved in the Land like all our other comrades who know that they have no other place in the world and are absorbed into the Land for good or for bad. Little by little, Isaac started forgetting his hometown and his father’s house. The cramped apartment where one of two dark rooms serves as a kitchen was exchanged in his imagination for the houses of the dignitaries of Jaffa who have spacious yards inside and balconies outside. Here there are no damp walls of a dark kitchen, where his big sister Frumtshe stands in front of her empty pots and their little brother Vove holds onto the hem of her threadbare dress and cries, I’m hungry, I’m hungry. His sisters gather round his voice and poke fun and say, Come on, come on, everybody who wants news, you’ll hear something new that you’ve never heard before. There’s a hun-gry person among us. Vove stretches out on the floor, lies prostrate, and bleats because everybody is making fun of him. Father comes from the shop and hears all that wailing. He puts his hand in his pocket in case there’s a coin there to buy his son a bagel, and he doesn’t find any. Father turns his face to his daughters and asks, What do you want from the child? They reply, We don’t want anything, but Vove wants to eat. Father scolds them angrily and says, You’re turning my house into a theater. I don’t want a theater. And they scatter, one here and one there, and he goes and wets his fingers on the win-dow and recites the evening prayer, and goes to bed without supper just as he had gotten up early in the morning without breakfast, and he groans in his sleep pursued in his dream as he is when awake by usurers and creditors.
And when the truth shifted from its place, delusions and imaginings came to Isaac. Father is portrayed in his mind’s eye as a person who resides in a spacious dwelling and respectable guests come to
him, including Gymnasium pupils and university students. They sit and drink tea and discuss world events. And as they sit, they glance at the daughters of the house. This one glances at this girl and that one glances at that girl. Father smiles and says to himself, My daughters are destined for people greater than you. And all his sisters go out in handsome clothes with handsome hats on their head, hats like the ones Princess Mira Ramishvili makes. And when they go for a stroll, they turn neither this way nor that way, like well-bred girls who know their distinguished pedigree, just as he had portrayed them to Sonya.
But the power of imagination slackened and his sisters went back to being as they were, with their threadbare dresses and their down-at-the-heel shoes, and muddy strings hang from their ears instead of earrings. Isaac was furious at them, Why are they like that and not the way he wants to see them? As soon as he swallows his anger, the postman throws him a letter from Father. Isaac reads tear-fully and every letter of the alphabet stands out like a painful thorn. Isaac wipes his tears and says, Oh my God, what does Father want to tell me, didn’t I know that things were bad with him? Isaac picks up the note again and sees disjointed letters there, where Blomtshe Leah, his little sister, wrote a greeting to her dear brother. Isaac tries to read, but the letters don’t combine into words, because she didn’t learn to write, because she doesn’t have shoes and can’t go to school. Isaac says to himself, If God helps me and an extra penny falls into my hand, I’ll send it to Father to buy her shoes. The Blessed Lord who is better than His creatures did put an extra penny into Isaac’s hand. But Isaac didn’t send it to Blomtshe Leah to buy shoes, but bought jam to sweeten his meals with Sonya. His heart rebuked him. And he replied, It’s enough for Father that I don’t ask him for money, like some of my comrades who bother their fathers to send them some. Enough for a father that his son doesn’t ask him for money,
but supports himself and buys his own clothes and shoes and lives in his own room all by himself. Of all the craftsmen in Jaffa, nobody is dressed like Isaac. Not to mention his dwelling. Some of our comrades live two, three, and four in one room. But Isaac lives all alone in his own room all by himself and can entertain Sonya anytime at all. And blessed be Sonya, who doesn’t keep away and comes to Isaac.
Just as he is satisfied with his actions, so he is satisfied with his craft. In truth, he ascended to the Land of Israel only to work its soil, but since the Land didn’t want that, he took hold of this craft of painting. And we must admit that he did well, for it does give him a livelihood, and he doesn’t depend on anybody in the world. He’s the boss and he’s the laborer and he’s the one who gives himself his work. If we look at it, his lot is better than most of the people of Jaffa, for most of them depend on others. A clerk on his supervisor, a teacher on his principal, and the principal himself depends on the Odessa Committee. Not to mention the laborers. If they are agricultural workers, they depend on the farmers; and if they are factory workers, they depend on the factory owner; and the factory owner and the farmers depend on the moneylenders. While Isaac Kumer is his own master. He picks up his brush and his paintcan and works, a day or two here, and a day or two there, he takes his pay and he goes on his way. And something else too. Most craftsmen are stuck in one place, the tailor at his needle, the cobbler at his last, the carpenter at his wood; while Isaac wanders from place to place, among many people, and many come to look at what he’s doing. When a house is repainted, all the neighbors come to see it. Two things attract a person’s heart, a new house and a house that was painted. A house, because it separates him from the world; and paint, because it’s a higher model of the colors of the firmament, which appeal to the human soul.
Isaac stands at his work. A pot of paint in front of him and a paintbrush in his hand. He dips his brush and moves it back and forth and knows from the beginning what the end will be. Isaac learned a lot from Sweet Foot, and what he learned he learned well. We shall not offend the honor of craftsmen if we count Isaac among them. His hand is as light as his soul and his soul is as light as his hand. From the lightness of his soul, he jests and draws funny pictures, sometimes to astonish people and sometimes to please the children and sometimes for himself and his own enjoyment. If you met Isaac in the beginning, you’d be amazed that this fellow with nine measures of grief poured over his face could do such a childish thing. But don’t be amazed, for human beings are wont to change, like those walls he is painting. And that’s a mistake most of the world makes, when they
see a sad person when he’s happy, they say maybe he’s not himself. And in truth there are many qualities in a person from the beginning of his creation, and everything happens for many reasons. Yesterday he was heavy as lead and now he’s light as a bird. And in Isaac, what is the reason? If you like, it is the proficiency he has acquired in his work. If you like, it is Sonya. If you like, it is both. In the past, he saw his work as secondary to his livelihood, now he sees it as the main thing. No longer does he have to go beg for work from the farmers or the clerks of the institutions. And in the evening, when he comes home from work, he changes his clothes and goes to Sonya or Sonya comes to him. Blessed is he who has someone close who brings him close to himself.