Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam Read online

I told him.

  “Can he be the famous Dr. Ginat?” asked Gamzu.

  “Do you know him?”

  “I don’t know him, though I have heard of his books. But I haven’t read them. I don’t look at books that are less than four hundred years old.”

  “Ginat’s books,” I replied, “go back four thousand years and more.”

  Gamzu smiled. “I am looking at the vessel and not what it contains.”

  Smiling in turn, I said, “Well, then, in another four hundred years you’ll be looking at Ginat’s books.”

  “If in my third or fourth incarnation I am still interested in books,” said Gamzu, “it’s quite possible that I shall.”

  “Two or three incarnations,” I replied, “are all a man goes through, according to the words of Scripture: ‘And it is said, unto three transgressions of Israel, yea, four, I shall not reverse it.’ No man of Israel passes through this world more than two or three times, unless he is obliged to fulfill some precept he has omitted from the six hundred and thirteen in the Torah; in which case he may even go through a thousand cycles of life, with reference to which it is said: ‘He commanded it unto the thousandth generation.’ But otherwise this is not so, yet you speak of a fourth incarnation.”

  “It was a slip on my part,” said Gamzu. “You know my opinion, that no Jew is capable of saying anything for which the Bible gives no support, and especially that which is contrary to the plain meaning of the text. And do not answer me with those Bible critics who turn the words of the living God upside down. This they have learned from Gentile scholars, but in the depths of their heart they know that no text of Scripture has any other meaning than that which has been passed down to us by tradition. Yes, and the Hasidic leaders, they too twist the words of the Holy Writ; but the truly righteous who study the Torah for its own sake, with the intention of serving heaven, these only have the right to interpret scripture beyond its simple meaning. But as for the Bible critics who have not the merit of studying the Torah for its own sake, their teaching is perverted in accordance with the emptiness of their own spirit. So you say that Ginat lodges here. Do you know him?”

  “I do not know him,” I said, “and I doubt if I shall get to know him. He hides away from people, and even the owners of the house do not see him.”

  “It is a good sign when people don’t know a scholar. I like scholars who don’t show up in every place and make themselves into a public spectacle. Let me tell you something. I once came to London and informed a certain scholar there that I had brought manuscripts with me. He got busy and came along with two escorts, a journalist and a photographer. He took all the material I showed him and sat himself down in the pose of a great savant looking at his books, while the photographer stood there taking pictures. Two or three days later, someone showed me a newspaper. I looked at it and saw a face framed by books printed alongside praises of that scholar, who, it seemed, had discovered precious works that were quite unknown until he brought them to light. What do you think of that?”

  I said to Gamzu, “I think as you do.”

  Gamzu looked at me with an expression of annoyance. “You don’t know what I think, so why say you think as I do?”

  “Very well. I don’t think as you do.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” he asked.

  “Not of you,” I answered, “but of that scholar, and of those like him, who waste their energies in trying to prop up their reputation. Whereas if they concentrated on their work, possibly they would become more famous.”

  “They would not become more famous.”

  “If so, they are right in behaving as they do.”

  “I must go,” said Gamzu.

  It was near midnight when he left, and I walked with him part of the way. The moon was full and the entire city glistened like the moon. If you have ever seen such a night, you will not find it strange that somnambulists leave their beds to go out and wander with the moon. When we reached the Georgian Quarter at the Damascus Gate I parted from Gamzu, expressing the hope that he would find his wife. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and said, “God willing.”

  “If you want to get in touch with me,” I said, “you will find me at my home. I mean to go back in the morning.”

  V

  I returned to the Greifenbachs’ house and went back to bed. Sleep came quickly, and I knew nothing until I was roused by the sound of train wheels. The train reached Garmisch and stopped there. The door of the compartment opened and there was a view of high mountains and streams; I could hear a voice singing yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah. I was drawn by the voice and wanted to follow it. The door was shut against me. The moon came out and covered me with her light. I smiled at her with one eye and she smiled back with a grin that covered all her face.

  But there was no train. I was in bed at the Greifenbachs’. I turned over to one side and pulled the blanket over my eyes, because the moon was shining on my face. I was thinking of how the world has shut itself in so that none of us can go where he wishes, except for the moon, that wanders over all the earth, singing yiddal, yiddal, yiddal, vah, pah, mah.

  After lunching at a restaurant in town, I had gone home to get on with my work. But when I broke off to make myself some coffee, I found there was not a drop of water in the tap. I went up to the roof and inspected the water tanks. They had become overheated in the sun and the water at the bottom of the tanks was barely an inch deep. Jerusalem, a dry place, was at that time badly in need of water. I left my work behind and went over to the Greifenbachs’, for their house has a cistern, such as you find in the older houses of Jerusalem that were built when people drank rain water.

  They had lived through many lives, the houses of Jerusalem. There is not one without a long story to it, especially the first ones to be built outside the walls. The Greifenbachs’ house was no exception.

  About seventy years ago, there came to the land a grandee of the grandees of Gallipoli, Signor Gamaliel Giron, to spend the close of his life in the Holy City. He found no house to suit his needs, for the Jewish population was confined to the old courtyards within the walls, and every courtyard was inhabited by many families, and each family was a large one. So he bought himself two thousand square cubits of land outside the city, below the Damascus Gate, and built there a spacious house and planted a garden. And because the house was a long way from the populated area, with no synagogue in the neighborhood, he set apart one room as a private chapel and hired men to come and make up a Minyan for prayer. On his demise he bequeathed the house to the charitable society Gomlei Hasadim. In time those in charge of the society’s finances became pressed for money to pay the army tax, and mortgaged the house. The house remained under a mortgage for some years, they were unable to redeem it, and accordingly it was sold by those who had advanced the loan.

  The house was sold to a German named Gotthold Gänseklein, who was head of the sect of Guardians, who had seceded from the sect of the Gemeinschaft der Gerechten, founded in the city of Gerlitz by Gottfried Greilich. Gänseklein, his wife and his mother-in-law lived in this house, and here he would hold prayer meetings and preach concerning the three true guards for redeeming the body and extending the limits of the soul. One night a quarrel occurred between Gänseklein’s wife and her mother. The wife bit her mother’s nose in order to disgrace her before the husband. People came to hear of this affair and Gänseklein was obliged to quit the country for shame.

  Three Georgian brothers-in-law, who supported themselves by manufacturing Gouda cheese, now bought the house and made their cheese there. The Great War broke out, and Gamal Pasha expelled them from the country, because they were suspected of Zionism, the Star of David having been found stamped upon the cheese. After the war the Council of Delegates rented the house for their fellow member Georg Gnadenbrod. The house was repaired, the refuse heap cleared away, the garden replanted and the estate fenced in. Mr. Gnadenbrod had scarcely taken possession when his wife, Gnendlein, put her foot down and said tha
t she did not wish to live in Jerusalem. They returned to Glasgow and the house was made into business offices. Then came the earthquake, which damaged the building and weakened the roof. For some years the house stood untenanted until Gerhard Greifenbach rented it and repaired it and decorated it and installed electric lighting and plumbing and other modern improvements. He and his wife had lived there until they felt a longing to go abroad and rest a while from the strain of life in our country, and I was asked to keep an eye on the house lest squatters break in and take possession. And now I was spending two nights there.

  Cut off from the settled area, the house stood alone in the valley, surrounded by its garden gleaming in the light of the moon. And in that moonlight the garden and all that was in it, every tree, every shrub, seemed detached and unconcerned with its neighbor’s affairs. Only the moon made no distinctions and shone impartially on all.

  I stood at the window and looked out at the garden. Every tree, every shrub slept its deep sleep; but among the trees movements could be heard. If these were not the footsteps of Ginat returned from his journey, perhaps they were Gabriel Gamzu’s. When I had gone along with him on the previous night I had asked him to let me know how his wife was; he had come back, then, to tell me. Or perhaps it was not Gamzu; after all, it could be anybody.

  But that pure, perfect moonlight did not deceive me. It was none other than Gamzu walking this way. I went and opened the door and showed him into the room. Gamzu picked a chair and sat down. He took out some paper and rolled himself a cigarette. He put the cigarette to his lips, lit it and sat there smoking, paying no attention to me as I waited to hear if he had found his wife. I was annoyed, and in my annoyance said nothing.

  “You don’t ask me about my wife,” said Gamzu.

  “If you’ve anything to tell me, let me hear.”

  “Indeed I have something to tell you. Isn’t there an ashtray?”

  I went and brought him an ashtray. He groped about to deposit the stub of his cigarette. Then he looked at me with his healthy eye, wiped his ailing eye, rubbed his palm against his beard, licked his palm with the tip of his tongue, and remarked, “I thought I had burnt myself with my cigarette, but now I see that I have been bitten by a mosquito. You have mosquitoes in the house.”

  “Perhaps there is a mosquito here and perhaps there isn’t a mosquito here. Who would notice a mosquito when he is honored by the presence of a dear guest like you?”

  I do not know how Gamzu took this. What he said was, “I found her! I found her! Found her in bed fast asleep!”

  It would be interesting, I thought, to know how Gamzu came to find his wife. But I shall not ask him outright. If he tells me, well and good; if not, I shall do without the information, rather than have him think that I am prying into his affairs. A few moments went by in which he said nothing; it looked as if he had put the whole matter out of his mind. Suddenly he passed his hand over his brow like a man stirring himself from sleep, and proceeded to tell me how he had come home, opened the door and looked into the bedroom without expecting to find anything. All at once he heard a steady breathing. Because he was so preoccupied with his wife, he thought he must be deceiving himself that he could hear her. He went over to the bed and found her lying there. He almost fainted with joy, and but for the reassurance her breathing brought, he would certainly have died there on the spot.

  I was too amazed to speak. On the previous evening, I had told him distinctly that I was going back home, that I would not be staying at the Greifenbachs’ tonight; so why on earth had he come here? And I was all the more surprised that he had left his wife alone on this moonlit night, after the moon had already shown him her power.

  Said Gamzu, “You are surprised that I have left Gemulah alone?”

  “Yes, I certainly am surprised.”

  Gamzu smiled with his live eye, or perhaps with his dead eye, and said, “Even if Gemulah wakes up now, even if she gets out of bed, she will not go walking.”

  “Have you found the talisman?” I asked.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “If so, how do you come to leave your wife alone? Did the moon give you its personal guarantee that it would let your wife sleep in peace tonight? Seriously, Reb Gabriel, what makes you so confident?”

  “I have found a cure.”

  “You consulted the doctors, did you, and got a prescription?”

  “I did not consult the doctors,” said Gamzu. “I am not in the habit of going to doctors, for even if they know the names of all the diseases there are and the names of all the drugs for them, I do not rely on their kind. I put my reliance on one who has drawn his strength from the Torah, for he knows and can find a cure for every part of the body, and needless to say, I rely on him in matters that affect the soul.”

  “And have you found such a man, and has he provided a cure for Gemulah?”

  “The cure was already at hand. When I was studying at the yeshiva of Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg at Innsdorf, a woman came to the rabbi and told him that a certain youth was lodging in her house, who was sick in mind and moonstruck, so that every month at the new moon he would go through the window and climb along the roofs, endangering himself, for if he were to wake up in the course of his walking it was to be feared that he might fall and be killed. They had already consulted doctors and no remedy had been found. Rabbi Shmuel said to her, ‘Take a thick garment, and steep it in cold water until it is well soaked, and leave the garment beside the young man’s bed. When he has climbed out of bed and his feet touch the cold garment, the chill will wake him at once and he will get back into bed again.’ She did this and he was cured. Tonight I too did this, and I am sure that even if Gemulah should wake and stand up, she would immediately go back to bed.”

  I sat there, still puzzled. If this was the cure, why hadn’t Gamzu made use of it before? Gamzu sensed what I was thinking and said, “You are surprised that I have waited until now.”

  “I am not surprised. With all your great devotion to charms that are above nature, you paid no attention to the remedies that are in nature itself.”

  “I can give you two answers. One is that the charms you speak of are also in general to be thought of as medicines. Once, for example, I took sick while I was on a journey, and was cured by means of charms. And when I went to Europe and told the specialists, they said, ‘The charms you used are known drugs, which used to be employed in treatment until better and more convenient drugs were found.’ As for my waiting until now, heaven caused me to forget the remedy of the great rabbi as a token of respect for him, because I gave up attending his yeshiva and went on to others. And as for my remembering today, it was because the object was at hand. I happened to be mending a tear in my clothes, and as I sat holding the garment I remembered the whole affair. I got up at once and put the article into water, and when it was soaked I spread it out before Gemulah’s bed.”

  “Now,” I said, “I am going to ask you a simple question. Was it because you did not find me at home that you came here?”

  “I did not go to your home and I did not think of coming here.”

  “And yet you came.”

  “I came,” said Gamzu, “but not intentionally.”

  “You see, Reb Gabriel, your heart is truer than your conscious mind, and it sent you here so that you would keep your promise to let me know how your wife is.”

  “The fact of the matter is this,” said Gamzu; “I was at home watching Gemulah as she slept. I thought to myself, Now that Gemulah is asleep I shall go and pay a call on Amrami. I tested the garment I had left by her bed, soaked it in water again, and went out. As I walked, I reflected on Amrami. He was born in Jerusalem and grew up here. After spending forty or fifty years out of the country, he came back home, with nothing left of all he had acquired in those forty or fifty years, except for a little granddaughter and a few Hebrew books. Thinking of this I began to consider all those others raised in the Land of Israel who had left the country at about that time, rejecting the Land for the sake
of a comfortable living abroad. Some of them were successful; some of them grew wealthy. Then came the Great Persecution, which took from them all they had, and back they came again to the Land of Israel. Now they complain and grumble that the country has become estranged from them. While I was thinking of how they complain, and while I gave no thought to their sufferings, I suddenly heard someone screaming. I went in the direction of the noise and saw a girl calling out to a young man: ‘Günther, my darling! You’re still alive, my darling! The Arab didn’t wound you!’ What was it all about? A young fellow and a girl were taking a walk in one of the valleys on the outskirts of the city. An Arab came up and began to annoy them. The young man shouted at him to chase him off. The Arab pulled out a knife and threatened the youth. The girl was in a panic because she thought he had been stabbed. In the meantime, I had gone out of my way and found myself down in the valley. I stood and wondered, Why am I here? I had meant to go to Amrami’s, and instead, I have come to this house. Can you understand this? I cannot, just as yesterday I could not understand what had brought me here.”

  I answered, “Have not the rabbis said, ‘To the place where a man is summoned, there his feet carry him?’ But a man does not always know to what end he is summoned.”

  “So it is,” said Gamzu. “To the place where a man is summoned his feet carry him. Whether he wishes it or not, his feet carry him there. Many have asked me how the hymns of Rabbi Adiel came into my possession. You too have asked me, if not in so many words, most certainly in your thoughts.”

  “Whether I have asked you or not, you have still not told me how it came about.”

  “If you wish, I shall tell you.”

  “If that is your wish, proceed.”

  Said Gamzu: “I came once to a certain village, and my feet would not allow me to go on from there. I said to myself, Nothing could be so patently foolish as to waste time in this wretched place, where the Jews have little knowledge of the Torah and are stricken with poverty. They can scarcely support themselves by their work on the soil and by the fruit which they buy from the Gentiles straight off the tree and sell to the dealers in the city. Do you expect to find books among men like these? In the meantime the Sabbath began. I found a bed at the house of a man who packed dried figs and dates, and went with him to the synagogue, a structure of palm-wood blackened with age. All the congregation assembled. They took off their shoes and kindled the earthenware lamp; they seated themselves and recited the Song of Songs; they stood and recited the Sabbath psalm and read the daily prayer ‘And He is merciful’ as on weekdays. And the prayers for the Sabbath were sung to their own melodies with which none of us is familiar, but which make their appeal to everyone who has a Jewish heart in his breast. So it was with their customs, which were handed down by their fathers, who had received them from their forefathers, as far back as the exiles of Jerusalem who were expelled by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. When he exiled Israel from Jerusalem, he ordered all the millstones in the land of Israel to be removed and loaded on to the shoulders of the young men. The young men went into exile laden with the millstones, and of them Jeremiah said, ‘The young men carried a grinding mill,’ and it is said, ‘He weakened my strength on the way.’ But the Presence saw their grief and poured life into the very stones, so that they mounted on high like wings and carried the young men away to a place where there was no oppressor. There the young men set down the millstones, and laid them as foundations for their synagogues, and from those that were left they built the foundations for their homes. And among these young men were some with a great knowledge of the Torah, who were learned in its mysteries and filled with the holy spirit. Many times have I pondered to myself whether their customs were not more pleasing to the Omnipresent than ours. So they set down the stones, and laid them as a foundation for the synagogues, and established a great settlement, virtually a kingdom. But still there was cause for anxiety, lest, heaven forbid, they should perish from the earth, for they had no wives. Then God gave light to their eyes, and they saw maidens coming up from the sea, of whom it is written, ‘From Bashan I shall bring them back, I shall bring them from the depths of the sea.’ Each man took himself a wife from among them, and they bore sons and daughters, and passed their days and years in delight. So things continued for several generations, until in their abundance of good they forgot Jerusalem. And when Ezra wrote to them, ‘Go up to Jerusalem,’ they did not go, for they said the Presence had given them this place instead of Jerusalem. Then there came against them the armed troops of the Gentiles, and went to war with them, and made great destruction among them, and few remained where once there had been many. Those who were left alive turned completely penitent and remembered Jerusalem and recognized, too, that those Gentiles had come against them only that they might be duly punished. Now I shall return to what I began to tell you.