A Simple Story Read online

  A Simple Story

  The Toby Press S.Y. Agnon Library

  Jeffrey Saks, Series Editor

  Books from this series

  A Book That Was Lost: Thirty-Five Stories

  To This Day

  Shira

  A Simple Story

  Two Scholars That Were in Our Town & Other Novellas

  Agnon’s Sefer HaMedinah – Satires from The Book of State

  A Guest for the Night

  The Bridal Canopy

  And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight

  Forevermore & Other Stories of the Old World and the New

  A SIMPLE STORY

  S.Y. AGNON

  A NEWLY REVISED TRANSLATION

  FROM THE HEBREW

  AND AFTERWORD BY

  Hillel Halkin

  INCLUDING A NEW PREFACE

  AND AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY BY

  JEFFREY SAKS

  The Toby Press

  A Simple Story

  by S.Y. Agnon

  Translated by Hillel Halkin

  Revised Translation © 2014 The Toby Press LLC

  S.Y. Agnon Library Series Editor: Jeffrey Saks

  Originally published in Hebrew as Sippur Pashut ©

  Schocken Publishers, Berlin 1935

  First English Edition © 1985

  Published by arrangement with Schocken Books, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

  The Toby Press LLC

  POB 8531, New Milford, CT 06776–8531, USA & POB 2455, London W1A 5WY, England

  www.tobypress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-59264-358-5

  Typeset in Garamond by Koren Publishing Services

  Printed and bound in the United States

  Contents

  Preface to The Toby Press Revised Edition by Jeffrey Saks

  A SIMPLE STORY

  Afterword by Hillel Halkin

  Annotated Bibliography

  Preface to The Toby Press S.Y. Agnon Library Edition

  Agnon Agonistes

  “And yet, though [Hirshl] was only sixteen years old, he was old enough to know that life was no idyll. There were those who claimed that the whole problem with the world was its being divided into the rich and the poor. Indeed, that was a problem. Certainly, though, it was not the main one. The main problem was that everything came about with so much pain.”

  A Simple Story, chapter 1

  “Sometimes it is actually those people who were hurt who show us how to elevate life. A man who has suffered … can be the source of feelings and thoughts that rise from the depths of the soul. The sidelines of society are no less important than the social center. And I would add: feelings and thoughts can crystallize on the sidelines, whereas the center, because of its tendency toward what is average and moderate, would reject them.”

  – Aharon Appelfeld, A Table for One: Under the Light of Jerusalem (The Toby Press, 2005), p. 105

  I FIRST ENCOUNTERED AGNON’S A SIMPLE STORY, in Hillel Halkin’s masterful translation, as a college student nursing the wounds of a profound heartbreak at the end of a long adolescent romance. Working with Halkin in preparing this revised translation, now some twenty-five years later, gave me an opportunity to share with him this bit of autobiographical trivia, which aroused a cynical laugh on his part – “I bet reading about Hirshl Hurwitz’s travails gave you little comfort – the realization that you’ll just get over it!”

  Actually, at the time, the novel’s power was precisely in its ability to fan the flames of heartache, and I now realize how much my initial reading of the novel differed from Halkin’s, as expressed over a working lunch in his hometown of Zichron Ya’akov and in this volume’s Afterword. Indeed, Robert Alter’s New York Times review of the original edition suggested that there is “more irresolution in the novel than Mr. Halkin suggests, that to that end Agnon makes us aware of the terrible price Hirshl pays for his final normality.”

  But as Agnon pointed out, “Any book not worth reading twice probably wasn’t worth reading the first time,” and repeated readings of this very complex “simple” story have produced profitable insights to love and loss, pain and profundity of “feelings and thoughts that rise from the depths of the soul” (in Appelfeld’s phrase). One does not read A Simple Story the same way in his forties that he did in his thirties – and certainly not as he did in his sophomoric twenties. I can only presume that readings in future decades will continue to bring new insight, but at this stage of mid-life I have grown more receptive to Halkin’s interpretation.

  However, one of the novel’s central motifs that has consistently drawn my attention is the presence of books and reading as a source of succor to varieties of anguish. This was a lifelong theme that occupied Agnon, from recollections of his first childhood composition, through the themes he struck in the 1966 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: His engagement with writing as a response to tragedy, from a small boy yearning for his absent father, to the nation of Israel banished from its Land yearning for its Father in Heaven. Recalling that he was a member of the caste of Levites, whose job in the Jerusalem Temple was to sing the sweet songs of King David’s Psalms, he felt compensated by being able to “compose ‘songs’ in writing,” i.e., to be a modern Hebrew author, in place of singing in the Temple. That is, he told the audience in Stockholm, he could now compose in prose what was formerly sung in praise. Words and language, and the books, stories and novels produced by them, become a form of spiritual consolation – for both the individual reader, and metaphorically-midrashically for the nation as a whole.

  As you make your way through A Simple Story (and I envy you if it’s your maiden voyage) be mindful of the presence of books and the act of reading as depicted in the novel. The significance of Agnon’s meta-artistic reflections on writing and reading should not be underestimated. Towards novel’s end, ponder the unconventional treatment (at any stage in the history of psychotherapy) administered in Dr. Langsam’s sanatorium, where books are prescribed, and medicines administered only to differentiate the work of the good doctor from that of Hasidic Rebbes.

  Consider poor old Hayyim Nacht’s relationship with books, practically all he has in the world, and his words to young Blume, “I know that I won’t be leaving you any riches, but at least I’ll have taught you how to read a book. No matter how black your life may be, you can always find a better one in books.” Today, at Jerusalem’s Agnon House, this quote adorns bookmarks and other knickknacks for sale in the gift shop. On its surface it’s a beautiful encapsulation of the power of books. But I sometimes wonder if visitors fathom the ironic sense of the quote. It was, after all, such novels that drove the late Mrs. Langsam to suicide, and which now make up the bookshelf qua medicine cabinet of her widower. (Dan Miron’s seminal Hebrew essay on the character of Langsam is entitled “The Doctor in Need of a Cure”!)

  For Nacht’s advice is only partially correct, and Blume – practical Blume, who, after all, we never get to fully know in these pages – doesn’t completely buy into her father’s bibliophilic naiveté. The point of reading, Agnon may be telling us, is not to escape our world, finding a better one in books, but to live better in our own world after we’ve returned to it.

  W
hile it’s never spelled out precisely how, Langsam’s treatment helps Hirshl overcome the madness of his heartbreak, and come to terms with his life – that of a middle-class, bourgeois shopkeeper in an arranged marriage, who recognizes that there are worse things in the world, and realizes that “you’ll just get over it”. It was certainly beyond Agnon to conclude any novel “happily ever after” – in fact, this un-simple story doesn’t even end with The End, as you are about to discover. For in the Agnonian conception that’s not the high calling of literature. Literature is not to tell us they lived happily ever after. Rather, it’s to help us look at the world that we live in and think about it in a less “simple” way.

  Jeffrey Saks

  Editor, The S.Y. Agnon Library

  The Toby Press

  A Simple Story

  Chapter one

  The widow Mirl lay ill for many years. The doctors consumed her savings with their cures and failed to cure her. God in heaven saw how she suffered and took her from this world.

  As she lay dying Mirl said to her daughter:

  “I know I’ll never rise from this bed. If you’re angry with me for not leaving you anything, don’t be. God in heaven knows I never spent a cent on myself. When I die, go to our cousin Boruch Meir. I’m sure he’ll have pity and take you in.”

  Soon after, Mirl turned her head to the wall and gave back her soul to its Master.

  Blume was left without a father or a mother. The neighbors came to console her, saw that the cupboard was bare, and said:

  “There’s a cousin named Boruch Meir Hurvitz who’s a wealthy storekeeper in Szybusz. He certainly won’t turn her away.”

  Blume nodded. “That’s just what my mother said,” she said.

  As soon as the seven days of mourning were over, Blume’s neighbors got together, hired a horse and wagon, gave her some provisions for the trip, and sent her off to Szybusz. “This cousin of yours is a very rich man,” they told her. “Everyone in Szybusz knows him. Just ask for him and you’ll be shown where he lives right away.”

  Blume boarded the wagon and left for Szybusz. When she reached her cousin’s house she sat down on a chair in the entrance hall with her belongings beside her.

  On coming upstairs from the store that evening, Tsirl Hurvitz saw a new face. She took it by the chin between her fingers and asked:

  “Who are you, my dear? And what are you doing here?”

  Blume stood up. “I’m Hayyim Nacht’s daughter,” she said. “Now that my mother is dead and I have no parents, I’ve come to you because you’re my family.”

  Tsirl pursed her lips and said nothing.

  Blume looked down at the floor and reached for her bags as though they were all she had to take hold of in the world.

  Tsirl sighed. “It was very sad for us to hear about your mother, may she rest in peace. I never met her, but I’ve been told that she did not have an easy life. Not everyone is fortunate. Your father too was taken before his time. What a pity that was, because there was no better Jew than he. I’ve been told that he spent his whole life studying, and I suppose that he passed some of his knowledge on to you. I myself don’t have much book learning. But I do hope that you were also taught a few things that a woman ought to know.”

  In a different tone of voice she went on:

  “Well, you’re not going back to where you came from tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have a talk and see if we can think of something.”

  Then she showed Blume to a room.

  Blume lay down to rest in her cousin’s home. She was so tired that she fell asleep right away. In the middle of the night she awoke with a start. Where was she? The bed she was in was not her own, nor was the room. She began to fear that she would have to spend the whole night awake in this place. Never before had she been so afraid of not sleeping.

  When she awoke again it was daylight. She tried to recall what had made her sleep so troubled and remembered dreaming that she was sitting on a wagon in a street back home. It embarrassed her to be where everyone could see her, and so she climbed down; just then, though, the horses bolted and galloped off, leaving her waiting with her arms out for the coachman to come and stop them before someone was trampled. But he did not. She felt sure that some terrible accident would take place and hid her face in her hands so as not to see it.

  No one was up yet in the house. Blume lay in bed, considering her situation. Carriage wheels rumbled through the street beneath her window. There was a railroad line connecting Szybusz with Stanislaw and a train that stopped in Szybusz twice a day, where it was met by the coachmen who brought passengers to and from the station. If one was not planning to take the morning train there was no need to rise early, but Blume had woken before the first carriage passed. She was used to it, for her bedridden mother had left all the housework to her; and yet though she was up early as usual, there was nothing usual about the day itself. Strange sounds came from the street and strange walls stared down at her. The ceiling was much higher than her parents’, which made the room seem to float in air. Blume had lived all her life in a one-story house; now, lying in bed on the second story of the Hurvitz house, she felt precariously perched.

  She could not go on lying there because it was already day, yet neither could she get up for fear of waking the rest of the household. For a while she lingered in bed thinking of her mother, who, while sick all her life and barely able to eke out a living, had never asked her cousins for anything. If ever one of the neighbors said to her, “You have such rich relations, why don’t you let them know that you exist?” she would reply with a smile, “Do you know what the best thing about rich relations is? That you don’t have to support them.” Every year around Rosh Hashana they had received a New Year’s greeting from the Hurvitzes. Blume remembered these cards well: they were made of stiff, heavy paper blazoned with gold letters. Every year they were placed on little straw ladders that her mother made in bed and fastened to the wall. There they stood until the gold letters peeled, the paper turned yellow, and they were finally thrown away. Now Blume’s mother lay in the grave and her daughter in their cousins’ bed.

  Suddenly the bed felt too narrow. Blume jumped out of it, washed, dressed, and went downstairs to prepare breakfast, using the same dishes that Tsirl had used the night before.

  She heated a saucepan of milk and made coffee, set out cups, saucers, spoons, and knives, sliced bread, and cut a slab of butter from the churn. Then she opened her bags, took out some little cakes, and put them on a serving dish. When Mrs. Hurvitz came down to make breakfast, she found it waiting for her.

  Soon Boruch Meir appeared, rubbing his hands. He said good morning to Blume, lifted the tails of his jacket, and sat down at the table, where he poured himself some coffee and regarded his cousin and the cakes she had brought with approval. He was followed into the dining room by his son Hirshl, who declared:

  “Those cakes look awfully good!”

  He took one of them, ate it, and said, “These deserve a special blessing.”

  “Who baked them?” asked Tsirl, breaking off a little piece and tasting it. “Did you?”

  “No,” Blume said, looking at her. She too tasted a piece. “But I can bake just as good.”

  “Thanks be to God,” said Tsirl, her tone of voice changing, “that we aren’t cake eaters and pastry nibblers here. Plain ordinary bread is good enough for us.”

  Blume looked down at the table. The munching of cake did not stop.

  “Mama dear,” said Hirshl, leaning toward his mother, “I have something to say to you.”

  Tsirl looked at her son. “Then say it,” she said.

  “It’s a secret,” said Hirshl with a smile.

  Tsirl bent an ear toward him.

  Hirshl put his mouth to it as though intending to whisper and said in a loud voice, “You must admit, Mother, that these cakes are delicious.”

  Tsirl frowned. “All right,” she said.

  Blume cleared the dishes from the table and went to the kitchen. Tsir
l followed her and showed her where the dairy sink, the wash basins, and the dishrags were while Blume took in the dairy counter with the corner of one eye and the meat counter with the corner of the other.

  Tsirl watched her. “Can you cook a cut of meat?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Blume said.

  “By the time you wash the dishes,” Tsirl said, “the meat delivery will come. Here’s rice, here’s noodles, here’s kasha, and here’s everything else.”

  Blume nodded as if asking to be left alone. Tsirl watched her move about the kitchen, stepped out, came back in, stepped out once more, and did not come back again until half past one in the afternoon, when she returned to find the table set and dinner ready to eat.

  It was a day in May, the first of the Hebrew month of Iyyar, when servants and household help renewed their annual contracts. Not long before Blume’s arrival the Hurvitzes’ maid had given notice and a new maid had yet to be found. When the employment agent came to Tsirl with a replacement, Tsirl said to her:

  “Just where, please tell me, am I supposed to put her? A cousin of ours is staying with us and sleeping in the maid’s bed.”

  So Blume went to work in her cousins’ home. God in heaven gave her strength, and her small hands did every kind of task: the cooking and the baking and the washing and the mending. There was not a corner of the house in which her presence was not felt. Work came naturally to her; she had not been raised by a sick mother for nothing, and the same habits that had served her well then did so now too. It did not take Tsirl long to discover that Blume had indeed been taught all the things that a woman ought to know. Nor, since she was family, was there any need to pay her a wage. “After all,” said Tsirl to her husband, “she is one of us, isn’t she? He who rewards us will reward her too.”

  It might have seemed that Blume was being taken advantage of; yet anyone considering the matter closely would have concluded that Tsirl was right. After all, was it conceivable that, when Blume’s time came to marry, Tsirl would beg a dowry for her from some local charity? She would surely recompense her then for each year of work, and, if the match was a good one, even double the sum that was due her. Besides, what sort of wage could Blume expect to receive? She had never worked as a housemaid before and was learning the trade from Tsirl, which made her case the same as a shopgirl’s who worked her first year without pay, or as an apprentice’s who served his master for three years before earning even a penny.