Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam Page 5

  The Consul raised his glass: “Go tell my countrymen that while they’re sitting over their cabbage with their blood congealing from the cold, we here take dinner by the open window! Are you cold, Shoshanah? What are you bringing us now, waiter – black coffee? If I drink coffee at night, I can’t sleep. Every age has its own customs: our forefathers used to take drinks that put them to sleep, but now we try to keep ourselves awake. After all, is there anything in the world worth staying awake for? Those scents from the garden are most exhilarating: a mixture of jasmine and orange blossom, isn’t it?”

  Shoshanah sat in silence. Those exhilarating scents were putting her to sleep. Without a word, she stood up from the table and kissed her father’s brow.

  “Are you going up to your room, my daughter?” he asked.

  “Yes, Papa.”

  Herr Ehrlich kissed her on the cheek and said good night. Shoshanah gave her hand to Jacob, then left.

  The Consul watched her leave and said, “Shoshanah is rather tired; I don’t think we shall go to Jerusalem tomorrow. What will you be doing?”

  Rechnitz consulted his diary. “I am free tomorrow after midday.”

  “Then come and take lunch with us,” said the Consul. “Shoshanah and I are always glad of your company.”

  “How about our going to Mikveh Israel tomorrow?”

  “Where is that?”

  “About an hour’s walk from here.”

  “Walk?” echoed the Consul in dismay.

  “It’s possible to go by carriage. And from there it’s an hour’s journey to Rishon LeZion.”

  “And what is Sarona?” asked the Consul.

  “Sarona is a small village of Christian Germans.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Very near here.”

  “I’ve heard,” said the Consul, “that they are very good farmers and God-fearing people. Let’s decide tomorrow where we shall go. We’ll lunch at half-past twelve. Bring a good appetite with you, it will encourage us to eat, too!”

  XIV

  When Rechnitz came at noon, Shoshanah was not there. She had spent most of the night looking over the pictures she had bought and had not gone to bed; in the morning she had been seen dozing at her window. Reluctantly she had let her father persuade her to lie down and take a short rest. “Shoshanah won’t join us for lunch today,” the Consul said.

  The meal passed in silence, the Consul eating little and showing no appetite. Evidently, thought Rechnitz, he is feeling out of sorts. All the plans to show his visitors around Mikveh Israel and Rishon LeZion came to nothing because of Shoshanah’s fatigue.

  Over coffee the Consul looked up and said, “Were you about to say something?”

  Rechnitz had had no such intention, but since he was called on to speak, he considered for a moment and then said, “Would you like to go, sir, to Mikveh Israel, or to Rishon LeZion?”

  “To Mikveh Israel or Rishon LeZion?” the Consul repeated. “After all the places we have been to, a little village like Rishon LeZion, or an agricultural school like Mikveh Israel, doesn’t amount to much. Tell me, incidentally, why on earth do you give your settlements such long, double-barreled names? Our forefathers, who lived to a good old age, chose short, agreeable place-names, like Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Gaza; and you people, who know that your time is brief, do just the opposite.”

  When Jacob was about to go, Shoshanah appeared. Her face was flushed, her movements sluggish. For seven whole hours, from eight in the morning until now, she had slept without a break, until the maid had brought lunch to her in bed.

  “Are you leaving?” she said to Jacob.

  “Yes,” he replied in a whisper, as if afraid he would wake her.

  Shoshanah said, “Come back in an hour, perhaps we’ll take a walk.”

  Jacob looked at the clock, took note of the time, and promised to come.

  Within an hour he was back. Shoshanah was seated downstairs in the hotel, dressed in warm clothes, gazing at a lithograph on the wall. When Jacob arrived she looked at him with the same gaze, as if he were part of the picture, or the wall itself on which the picture hung.

  He bowed to her. “You wished to go for a walk, did you not?”

  “For a walk?” she repeated, as if surprised.

  “But surely you said you would like to take a walk?”

  Shoshanah stared at him as if he were trying to trick her, then stood up and said, “Very well, let’s go.”

  XV

  Shoshanah walked in silence, and Jacob at her side was silent too. Words would not come for all the things he wanted to tell her. It seemed impossible, though, to go on walking in this fashion, and he searched for a subject to draw her attention. At that moment an Arab crossed their path. A member of some ascetic sect, he was barefooted and naked from the waist up. Two lances were embedded in his loins; his hair was long and unkempt; his eyes blazed with zeal. As he walked, he twisted the lances in his flesh, crying out Allah kareem; while a great company followed him, repeating, Allah kareem! Rechnitz halted and translated the words for Shoshanah. She did not look at the ascetic and paid no attention to his cry. Soon they came to the “Nine Palm Trees,” planted by Japheth, the son of Noah, when he founded Jaffa: one for himself, one for his wife, and seven for his seven sons. When Nebuchadnezzar laid the country waste he uprooted these trees and planted them in his own garden; but when the Jews returned from their Babylonian exile they brought them back and replanted them on the original site. This grove of nine palms, whose fresh green arch seemed to support the silvery clouds, made a crown of green and silver fronds that rustled and glistened, their colors alternating as the light breeze stirred them in their airy cavern, while the fibers of the fronds quivered like raindrops in a sunshower. The sight never failed to move Rechnitz, and especially now when he had the opportunity of pointing it out to Shoshanah. He stretched out his arm, crying, “Look, Shoshanah!” Shoshanah nodded, without a glance either at him or at the palms.

  Why am I showing her all this? he asked himself, distressed that he had taken her walking when she was so tired. Aloud he said, “Perhaps you would like to go back to the hotel?”

  She nodded her head in agreement. “Yes. But first let’s walk by the sea. It’s quite near, isn’t it?”

  She raised her long skirt a little as they made their way.

  The sea was still and very blue; the waves broke over one another, raising their crests as if held back from mingling with the waters beneath. Yesterday, the tide was full; now the sea withdrew from the shore, leaving a wide beach. No one was there, except for a single fisherman. Jacob would have given the world in return for something that might draw Shoshanah’s attention. But nothing in the world could awaken this sleeping princess who walked by his side, insensible to his presence. Jacob called to mind the times when he had played with Shoshanah in her father’s garden, and they had fed the goldfish in the pool. But as he watched the sea and the lonely fisherman standing up to his waist in water, he could not bring himself to speak of things past.

  Shoshanah halted suddenly. “Do you remember how you and I used to play in our garden?”

  He answered in a whisper, “I remember.”

  “Good,” said Shoshanah. “Let’s go on.”

  Then again she stopped. “Do you remember what games we played?”

  Jacob began to recount them to her as he walked. She nodded her head at every detail, saying, “That’s right, that’s right. I thought you had forgotten.”

  He laid his hand over his heart, as if to say, “How could anyone forget such things?”

  Shoshanah fell silent, but continued to walk, and Jacob followed at her side.

  “Aren’t you tired?” he asked.

  Shoshanah replied, “No, no. What’s over there?”

  “An old Moslem cemetery.”

  “Do they still bury their dead there?”

  “I have heard that they don’t anymore.”

  “Let’s go there,” said Shoshanah.

  When they re
ached the cemetery, Shoshanah stopped. “Do you remember that vow we made together?”

  “I remember,” said Jacob.

  She looked at him steadily for a moment. “Do you remember the words of the vow?”

  “I remember them,” said Jacob.

  “Word for word?”

  “Yes, word for word.”

  “If you remember the vow, repeat it.”

  Jacob repeated the substance of what they had sworn.

  “But you told me,” said Shoshanah, “that you remember it word for word. Say it to me, then, word for word.”

  He hesitated, sighed, and at last said: “We swear by fire and by water, by the hair of our heads, by the blood of our hearts, that we shall marry one another and be husband and wife, and no power on earth can cancel our vow, forever and ever.”

  Shoshanah nodded her head in silence. After a while she said, “Now we can go.”

  They walked on; then she stopped again. “And what do you think, Jacob? Are we now exempt from that vow?”

  His heart pounded so that he was unable to speak.

  “Jacob,” she said to him, “do you stand by your word?”

  Still he stared at her without speaking.

  “Are you prepared to keep your vow?” said Shoshanah.

  Jacob cried out loudly, “Yes, I am, I am!”

  “Good,” said Shoshanah. “Let us go back to the hotel.”

  On the way she stretched out her hand to him, saying goodbye.

  “Don’t you want me to see you back?” said Jacob.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “You may lose your way.”

  “I shall never lose my way,” said Shoshanah. “I never forget any place I have been; not even in my sleep.”

  A slight shudder ran through Rechnitz; the roots of his hair tingled. He whispered, “But still…”

  “If you really want to come, then do so. But don’t speak on the way. I want to do some thinking.”

  When they came to the hotel, she offered her hand to her betrothed and said goodbye.

  XVI

  Rechnitz shook himself out of a deep sleep. If you are told that people have a way of turning in their beds, you must not believe that this applied to Rechnitz, at least not that particular night. From the time he went to bed until the time he got up, he lay still as a post.

  This fine sleep was the result of his afternoon walk with Shoshanah along the beach. Now he put out his hand, picked up his watch and looked at it as if he were gazing through a soft curtain. “God above,” he cried, “if my watch isn’t playing tricks, I’ll have to run all the way to school just as I am!”

  But to run to school without dressing is impossible, and a man also has to wash himself. Accordingly, when Rechnitz had jumped out of bed he filled a basin with cold water, plunged his head into it, and after washing, shaved himself too. Asclepius the god of health protected him, so that he escaped from slashes on the chin or cuts on the cheek. Finally, he put his wet shaving kit down on the bed, threw on his clothes and raced off toward the school.

  The pupils were all gathered in the yard and the corridor. Some were munching at the snacks they had brought, some were improvising comic rhymes to set each other laughing. With all the noise, they overlooked the caretaker who was standing in the doorway ready to ring the bell. When they caught sight of him at last, they crowded around, taking hold of his arm, some to hinder and some to help in the ringing. In the meantime Rechnitz arrived and they followed him into the classroom.

  Soon they were seated in their places. Rechnitz mounted the platform and took all in with a glance. Everyone was present. Rechnitz was in good spirits, as he always was when surrounded by his pupils. He began teaching in that resonant, cheerful voice which the boys and girls of his class liked so much, speaking or reading with a restrained ardor that awakened their enthusiasm, listing on the blackboard any words whose spelling might give them trouble. Had the bell not rung for the second time that day, he would have continued his teaching, and the class would have continued to listen attentively. After the lesson he ran the eraser over the board and went out. Only now did he notice his hunger, remembering that he had not had anything to eat either that morning or on the previous evening.

  Rechnitz went into the staff room. The teachers were sitting together, drinking tea or eating the rolls which the caretaker’s wife baked for them daily. They dipped the ring-shaped rolls into their tea, sucking away as they read the books set in front of them. Rechnitz drew up his chair alongside them and hummed the tune of the Hapsburg anthem, beating out the rhythm with his knuckles on the table. This fetched Yehia, who greeted him with “What would you like, Rabbi?” The caretaker always called him “Rabbi,” because he knew that Rechnitz was a great scholar in secular science; therefore, needless to say, he must also be greatly learned in the Torah; perhaps also because when he first came to Jaffa he had worn a beard.

  “What would I like?” repeated Rechnitz. “I should like a full stomach for myself and happiness for you and all Israel.”

  “God willing,” answered the caretaker.

  Rechnitz looked up at Yehia’s swarthy face and great black eyes. “Make it black coffee in a tall glass.”

  The caretaker brought it. Rechnitz clasped the sides of the glass in both hands and lowered his head as if he were trying to conceal his expression. He took a sip, added sugar to the coffee, and sipped again, while trying to think of what he had told the Consul about Yehia. Then he drained his glass. The teachers got up and went off to their classrooms, and he too made his way out.

  Now my dear fellow, he said to himself, we can take a stroll in the school yard, or perhaps we ought to go over to the secretary’s office and see if there’s a letter addressed to the Herr Doktor.

  Rechnitz went to the office. He had not been there on the previous day, or indeed on the day before that, for he was not a great letter-hunter like some teachers, who were constantly in and out of the secretary’s room, rummaging and staring through all the mail for an answer to the crucial question of whether or not a letter had come for them. Even now he would not have entered had he not been at a loss for something to do between lessons.

  The secretary sat at his little desk, his nose buried in a ledger, a pen in his hand, pretending to ignore the not inconsiderable presence of Rechnitz. And Rechnitz, having time to spare, and having also forgotten what he had come for, forgot the secretary’s existence, too. He looked at the pictures on the wall, and at the space between the pictures. The secretary glanced up, then down again at his ledger, where he continued with his writing. Doubtless, thought Rechnitz, the celebrity whose portrait hangs on the wall believed a stern unbending expression suited him best. If not, he wouldn’t have pulled such a face. – As for you, sir, you whose name I’m afraid I’ve forgotten, what exactly was the impression you were trying to make?

  The secretary raised his nose like a divining rod, and their eyes met.

  “Is there a letter for me?” asked Rechnitz.

  The secretary stared at him contemptuously. “When do letters come from the post office? In the morning or afternoon? Since letters come in the afternoon, what is the sense in asking for them before people have properly digested their breakfasts?”

  “I rather thought there might have been a letter for me from yesterday.”

  “From yesterday?” exclaimed the secretary in a tone of amazement. “Do you mean to tell me that a ship put in yesterday? Let me tell you there was no ship, or at any rate, no ship that brought any mail. But perhaps, Dr. Rechnitz, you mean inland mail? If it was inland mail, that is of course another matter.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Rechnitz, grateful that this pedantic master of logic had put the subject on a reasonable basis. “Yes, indeed, I meant a letter from within the country; for example, from Jaffa itself.”

  The secretary laid his hand on a pile of letters and said, “The inland mail has indeed arrived, but I must inform you, Dr. Rechnitz, that no letter has come for you. That is
to say, no letter from within the country and none from Jaffa, which, as you may know, forms part of that country.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Rechnitz replied.

  Why do you keep yessing at me? thought the secretary to himself. If there’s no letter for you, what’s the sense in saying yes? A queer lot, these Germans. You can never get them out of the habit of conforming. And yesterday he took out some new girl from Austria, a Viennese she might well be, besides all the others. Now where did they go walking? By the sea. And what time did they choose to go walking? Just at the time when the sea turns cold and gives you a chill. A teacher with a cold! – Well! The secretary sneezed.

  XVII

  The school bell rang again. Rechnitz stirred. It was the break between lessons and he was still free; he walked over to the book room, known as the “nature room” because it contained a number of minerals, plants, and taxidermied animals and birds of the country.

  The books were in a locked cabinet. He had no great desire to read, and certainly no desire to ask the secretary for the keys, so he stood and surveyed the stuffed creatures, which had been acquired from Ilyushin the taxidermist. These specimens are always a witness to Ilyushin’s love for all living things; it was this love of his which gave them life even after their death. How beautiful, thought Rechnitz, is that swallow. She sits on her perch as if she were only dozing. When he went out he closed the door softly, as if he feared to wake the bird.

  Finally he went back to the staff room. It was empty and the table was clear of rolls and cakes. Instead there were notebooks on it, and pamphlets and textbooks, including a new arithmetic manual. He picked this up and put it down, picked it up again and took a look inside, checked the figures given and wrote: “Duly checked and proved correct.”

  Again the bell rang, and Rechnitz murmured to himself that it was time to go. He passed a hand over his brow, as though to stimulate his memory. What do I want? he asked himself. But he had not found the reply by the time he was up on the platform facing the class.