Isaac looked at him and thought to himself, While I was eager to ascend to the Land of Israel, this one was eager to descend Outside the Land. That man looked at Isaac and thought to himself, I who am a native of the Land of Israel, and my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters died in the Land of Israel, I have to wander Outside the Land, and this one who was born Outside the Land and his father lives Outside the Land, he dwells in the Land of Israel.
I
After he withdrew from the mourner, Isaac went out to rent himself a room. But first he wanted to see how his tools were. And since his tools were with the landlord where he lived before his trip to Jaffa, he went there. When he came close to the house, he changed his mind. Once, twice, three times, he had already resolved to move out and was afraid the room was free and he would be tempted to return there. When did he resolve to move? From the moment he returned
to Jerusalem, or from the moment he was at Shifra’s? At any rate, he didn’t get up his will power and didn’t reach a definite decision until that moment when he went to look for a room. And not only did he want to change his place, but all his ways, too. He looked at himself to see if there was already a change in him, and was amazed that no change was obvious in him. But he soon took his mind off himself and looked straight ahead like a man who returned from a trip and wanted to see what had been done in his city.
The sun was blazing as usual, but some change was evident in the city, where the month of Av had already begun and the nine days had arrived and double sadness rested on the houses and the courtyards and the alleys, for the two Destructions of the Temple. Isaac suddenly felt that solid earth of Jerusalem, where your feet don’t get lost as in the sands of Jaffa. He looked here a bit and there a bit, as if he doubted that he really was in Jerusalem. And once again, the city appeared before him. The houses and the courtyards stood in their place, and human beings were occupied as usual, but a kind of gloom lay on their faces. The butchers and all the barber shops were closed and from the synagogues and study houses rose the voice of the mourners of Zion, sitting on the ground and praying the Mid-night Vigil, for from the seventeenth of Tamuz to the eve of the ninth of Av, they gather in the synagogues and in the study houses and lament over Jerusalem. And even though it wasn’t yet midday, the eager ones were anticipating the hour.
Isaac walks in the streets of Jerusalem and glances here and there. Here a man is carrying an Etrog, to send it to his relative Outside the Land; and there a Yemenite is running with a water-melon in his arms. Here a dog is walking behind a butcher, and is evidently amazed that the man doesn’t emanate an odor as on all other days; and there a broad she-ass walks along bent under a load of calendars for next year; and here a lame stammerer grabs the hem of your garment and hops in front of you and stammers, B-b-b-buy y-y-your-r-rs-s-s-s-elf a l-l-l-lam-m-m-ment-t-t-tat-t-t-ion for the n-n-ninth of A-A-Av.
And meanwhile, Doctor Mazia is going to a patient, riding on a donkey. The donkey runs where he is asked. Mazia steers him
to the other side, since he saw Lunz walking with a tourist and point-ing with his stick to everything a Jerusalemite should show, for Lunz is an expert in the paths of Jerusalem, more than any other Jerusalemite, even though he is blind in both eyes. Mazia bows to Lunz and starts splitting hairs over an interpretation of a word they have been wrestling with for a few nights in the meetings of the Language Committee. A rich Bukharan came and invited Mazia to a ran-som celebration for the first born of an ass. Mazia steers his donkey. Two blind broomsellers come. And toward them comes a mule loaded with writings, and two clerks are walking behind it to bring them to the post offices to send them to our brothers in Diaspora. The mule saw the brooms and was startled and threw the load off his back. A few people gathered and picked up some of the letters and read the names of the institution on them. They started laughing that never in their lives had they heard of such an institution in Jerusalem, and in the end it sends the mule loaded with pleading letters. And Isaac has already stopped thinking about a room because of the things he heard in the morning at the inn from that Safed man, a native of Mahanayim. Isaac moves to another place and to other times, when he sat in his father’s house and read good tidings from Mahanayim in old newspapers. Suddenly the printed letters flew off the pages and became a thick swarm of locusts. And even the pages changed their shape and turned into mats and charred fields. Isaac wanders in the field with no shade and no roof overhead, and the sun beats down on his head and thirst parches his throat. For half a Matlik, Isaac could get himself a cold drink, for at that moment, a carob water vendor passed by, banging his instruments and announcing his wares. But you, Isaac, saw him as if he were one of the people of Mahanayim, standing and banging their pots and pans to scare off the locusts. And when Isaac recognized that he was a drink vendor, he said to himself, Wouldn’t it be better to support workers of the holy soil for that money than to fill the gullets of idlers. And when he realized who said those words, he recalled everything that native of Mahanayim had told him, about the administrator who borrowed money from usurers, and about Father, whose soul was bitter. And I, said Isaac to himself, I walk around as if nothing happened.
Isaac’s eyes filled with tears, and all the troubles that had come upon him since the day he ascended to the Land came and stood before him. He wasn’t sad, but on the contrary, it seemed as if he had already come out of the valleys of troubles, and days of blessing were making their way toward him. Why? Because in his heart of hearts, he expected to take Shifra as his wife.
And when he recalled that, all the words of the letter he had written to his father the night before reappeared. I shall not conceal from my father, Long-May-He-Live, etc., even though it is still in the process of emerging,
etc.
Therefore, may it please Heaven that I may be able to send tidings of a happy ending,
etc.
Father picks up the let-ter and reads it, and shows it to Mr. Atamanut. Mr. Atamanut reads it and praises the language. Isaac is glad he inserted a few rhetorical flourishes in the letter, something he hadn’t done before, for he usually wrote in a plain language. Mr. Atamanut returns the letter to Fa-ther, and says, Well, Reb Simon, we should congratulate you. Father bows to him and replies modestly, Now that Mr. Atamanut has congratulated me, I know that Isaac really is a bridegroom. And Isaac’s heart is filled with love and affection for Shifra for the Lord brought happiness to his father through her.
I
He encountered a maiden. If we’re not mistaken, it was the maiden he had met at Bloykof’s. She gazed at him and said, I almost passed by and didn’t recognize you. If I knew that you would get my meaning, I would say that you’ve got something, Mr. Kumer, that’s hard to grasp. Your face is fenced off as if you put up a fence between yourself and the world. How come we haven’t seen you? Come pay me a visit, Mr. Kumer. When he left her, he encountered the man whose house he had lived in before his trip to Jaffa. He greeted him and talked at length with him. And as they talked, the landlord hinted to him that the tenant who was living in his room was not to his liking, and that he would like to get rid of him. And when Isaac left the landlord, he encountered that teacher who lived in his neighborhood. The teacher talked with him and told him that his house was open to people like him, and if he needed a room, he had a fine room to
rent, the same room his sister-in-law had lived in. And when he mentioned his sister-in-law, he praised her. When Isaac left him he ran into Mendel the Tokay. That Mendel who was litigating with his wife about divorcing her, because he set his sights on the American Rabbi’s wife who was Sweet Foot’s ex-wife. Before they took three or four steps, Mendel raised his voice and shouted, What do you say about that numbskull, that Leichtfuss who calls himself Sweet Foot. That boor that wanton that ignoramus that criminal that heretic, who isn’t even worth my chitchat, sticks his nose between me and her to keep her from marrying me. Me, a pious man and a scholar and of distinguished character and distantly related to two famous Rabbis. But why should I talk to you, you’re just like him, for if you weren’t like him at all, would you have been close to him. And Rabbi Haim, Rabbi Haim, Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand. And because he is incorruptible, something you can’t say about all the other Rabbis, he is entitled to scold me, for a woman who is tempted by evil people not to accept a divorce decree from me. If she doesn’t want a divorce decree, the divorce decree will fly into her hands. Thank God, Jerusalem is full of Rabbis and scribes we don’t lack, and messengers to send a divorce decree we won’t lack. I don’t envy you, Gitteshi, I don’t envy you. Not even a red cent will I give you. Now, in a peaceful way, I’m willing to give you, later on—not a thing. You know the Rabbi’s wife. You say yourself, Am I doing something wrong that I want to marry her? And you too must intercede for me with Leichtfuss to keep him from doing me any harm. No good will come to him out of that. If I’m not important in his eyes, I am important in the eyes of the Con-sul. And don’t say that Leichtfuss is a Russian, and what can the Aus-tro-Hungarian Consul do to a Russian. If a Consul wants to, he can. And you, don’t think I walked with you to accompany you, but only after you stuck to me did I walk with you so as not to shame you.
Isaac saw that all his turns were in vain. Here he comes on a man who wants to drive him out of his mind and there he is simply pestered by a hard man. And he didn’t know that all the delays were for his own good. How? Near the railroad station stands a big brewery of Richard Wagner. A few days earlier, Richard Wagner had hired
a painter to paint his furniture. The painter got drunk and left his work in the middle. Richard Wagner went out to hire a Jewish worker who won’t get drunk. He saw Isaac and called to him. Isaac went to the landlord where he had left his tools and took his belongings and sent them with a porter to the inn and he picked up his tools and went to Richard Wagner’s.
Richard Wagner is a short man and the hair on his head is full and black and his belly rises toward his chin, and his face is bluish and his moustache stands erect at both ends close to his eyes, and his eyes are like the eyes of Egyptian dancing girls who wink here and there and their face doesn’t move, and his voice seems to emanate from his navel and sounds like a kind of scolding. Different from him is his wife, who is tall and thin and her hair is sparse and her face is blazing like a baker’s oven and a kind of singsong accompanies her speech, like a woman who was suddenly jolted with fear and is calm-ing down. The two of them were born in the Land to German fathers who ascended to the Holy Land to live a holy life on the holy soil. As long as the old folks were alive, she made railway cars and wagons with her father, and Richard made wine for the priests with his fa-ther. When the old folks died, she left her craft and he left his craft and they made themselves a brewery which gives an easy and satisfying livelihood.
I
Isaac did his work in the courtyard under the olive tree. From time to time, Wagner and his wife would come to look and would say to one another, That Jew is a diligent worker. When dinnertime had passed and he hadn’t sat down to eat, they brought him bread and cheese and beer. Since they didn’t take money from him, and because he didn’t want something for nothing, he repaired the brewery sign whose colors had become blurred, and he touched up the wings of the angel on the sign and added waves of foam rising from the beer in the jug in the angel’s hands.
After he repaired the sign, he went back to his main work. Meanwhile, the day declined. The brush grew thick in the hand of the painter and all the furniture he painted raised a dark moisture. The
day was over, said Isaac, and a kind of sadness began entwining around him. He raised his head and looked into the twilight, thinking to himself, Now they’re forming a Minyan at the inn, now they’re reciting the prayer, It is You, our God, before whom our forefathers burned the in-cense, now the mourner is repeating the Eighteen Blessings, now he’s saying, Forgive us, our Father, for we have erred. Believers feel good when they’re praying. But for a man like me, what good is prayer? At any rate, if I were at the inn, I would have joined the Minyan. He raised his head again and looked at the firmament. The edges of the west were turning red and the sun rolled like a ball of fire in a flame of fire, in hosts of flame, in a pool of blood, in arrows of gold, thrown into gray clouds, into pink mists, into torches of splendor, to the purple mountains, to the dark earth. And a kind of dull bleating rises from the earth and a trace of an action is heard from the mountains. Sometimes the mountains trample the firmament and sometmes the earth walks on the slopes of the mountains, and of all the things that just filled the firmament nothing is seen anymore. And between the firmament turning silver and the earth growing dark, a pillar of gloom rises and spreads. Isaac put down his brush and picked up the jar and washed his hands and closed his eyes and started to recite the prayer, Praise-worthy are those who dwell in Your house. As he prays he asks himself, Did I want to pray? The verses came one after another until he forgot what he wanted and what he didn’t want. He stood heartbroken and downcast and prayed the afternoon prayer. And when he finished the afternoon prayer, he started praying the evening prayer.
After he finished his prayers, he left his tools with his boss and went to the city. Little stars like the eye of gold, like the eye of silver, like blue fire, like red fire sparkled from the black blue of the firmament. And a sweet fragrant chill rose from the earth. And a sound like the sound of a rug being rolled up was heard from the sound of camels’ feet. Sometimes the whining of jackals was heard and sometimes the sound of the wind was heard like the sound of mighty water. Isaac made his way to the city, but his heart wandered in other places. In Rabinovitch’s hut, in Sonya’s room, in Mahanayim, and in the house of the mourner. Thus did Isaac ponder and walk until he came to the house of Reb Fayesh.