Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam Page 6

  Rechnitz raised his eyes and tried to keep them on his students. But his lids felt heavy and his knees were shaking. He crossed his legs, rubbed his eyes, and looked over the class again. The boys and girls sat in their usual rows; but above their heads a cloud seemed to hang, turning the class into something solid and opaque. Rechnitz began, “Boys and girls, yesterday we stopped at…” But he felt weak and wanted to cry. He closed his eyes and began again, “So yesterday…” The class could tell that their teacher’s mind was far away, and everyone began to follow his or her private concerns. Rachel’s brother took a novel out of his pocket, laid it on his knees and began to read. His neighbors to the right and left busied themselves drawing pictures. The girls were behaving even worse. Raya’s sister folded a paper plane and sent it flying at the nose of Asnat’s sister, while Asnat’s sister in turn held a little mirror up toward the sun and blinded her companions with the reflected rays. Rechnitz could see what was going on and his eyes ached with sorrow. How could these pupils, whom he treated as friends, disgrace him so?

  “What are you reading over there?” he called out sharply.

  Heilperin calmly exhibited his book and answered, Sanin.

  “What’s that?”

  “A novel.”

  “And what’s it about?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t read it yet.”

  “You don’t know! You don’t know anything, do you? – And you, what are you up to there?”

  The boy trembled and pushed his notebook away.

  “What’s your opinion?” said Rechnitz. “Would you say it’s worth my while to see what you have been drawing? Not worth my while? If so, why waste time on a thing that’s not worth doing? As for you, my little friend, my dear Miss Magargot, if I had such a delightful mirror as yours, I should hold it up to your face and see two hard-working students instead of one. Yes, my friends, I suppose I am being sarcastic, and that’s not what I am here for. But my dear friends, you’re not here either just to read novels. Very soon Yehia will be ringing his bell and we shall be going home. What we shall do at home is a problem; because once a person doesn’t do what he has to do, he doesn’t know anymore what to do instead. And now Yehia, God bless him, is sounding the bell. So goodbye, boys and girls. Goodbye.”

  XVIII

  What shall I do now? Rechnitz wondered. I can’t go to the Consul’s, because lunch time is near and I haven’t been invited to lunch. If I went, Shoshanah would think I was behaving as if I owned her and had the right to turn up whenever I liked. No, it’s no good, he thought. It was half past twelve. In half an hour the restaurant would be full of regular customers; if he didn’t hurry there would be no lunch left. He had not eaten there for two days and the proprietress would assume he was not coming.

  Suddenly he remembered what he had been trying to recall in the break before his second lesson. Tonight, or last night, or even the night before, he had been invited to Shoshanah’s for dinner. Her room was small and pleasant. The table was set for a meal with bread and matzah, butter and milk, tomatoes and cucumbers, eggs and cheese. In the middle of the table stood a bowl of strawberries and on the strawberries was a red dusting of sugar. The room had a pleasant scent, and not only because of the strawberries: when Shoshanah went out to bring in the tea, he looked at the wardrobe where she kept her clothes and saw a bunch of roses on top. He counted twelve roses, and was pleased, although he was not superstitious, to find that they did not add up to thirteen. What did they talk about, he and Shoshanah? They talked about all sorts of people, including her father, the Consul. Oddly enough, Shoshanah referred to him as if he were Jacob’s father and not her own. And when she mentioned him she said, “Of course, I don’t know him well, but I would suppose…” whatever it was she attributed to him. Jacob ate very little, and for that reason Shoshanah refrained from taking much. Although he knew that she ought to eat more, still he did not force his appetite. After they had eaten and drunk, she went and sat down on the sofa and he sat on a chair facing her. She showed him a more comfortable place, saying, “Sit here,” but he did not leave his chair, although he was feeling a pain in his shoulders from sitting where he was. In order not to tire Shoshanah, he resolved to leave at nine o’clock. The time came, but he still stayed. They sat talking about Rachel and Leah, and about Frau Ehrlich, Shoshanah’s mother. And this too was strange, that Shoshanah did not know where her mother was born until he told her. He glanced at his watch and found it was nearly ten. Time to leave, he told her; but Shoshanah answered that it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. “It’s already ten,” he said. “Is it really?” said Shoshanah in surprise, and she adjusted her watch. After a while he got up to leave and Shoshanah went out to accompany him. When they had gone halfway, he wanted to turn back and see her home, but she would not allow this. She made her way home, while he waited for his streetcar. He bought a ticket and climbed in. The streetcar filled up and started to move. On its way it kept stopping to take on more and more passengers. Two young fellows got in and one sat on the other’s knees. He heard them talking to one another about Otto Weininger and his book Sex and Character. The journey continued for an hour. And then, oddly enough, Jacob had found himself again sitting with Shoshanah; and it was not yet eleven o’clock, although he had left Shoshanah’s house at ten, and she had accompanied him halfway, and he had even traveled for an hour on the streetcar, and spent an hour at home. How could it be, then, that he was with Shoshanah at nearly eleven o’clock?

  XIX

  After his meal Rechnitz didn’t linger in the little restaurant and didn’t go back to his room. His habits had changed since the day of the Consul’s arrival in Jaffa; the times when he used to relax over lunch, make his own coffee and read a book, seemed part of prehistory. He said to himself: The Consul will be taking his afternoon nap now. Shoshanah will be sitting in her room arranging her photographs. If that’s where she is, I can take a walk in front of the hotel; and if she is out in the garden, I can walk there, as I did the day before yesterday. But the day before yesterday I was with others, and today I shall be walking alone. That stroll with Rachel and Leah on the day of Shoshanah’s arrival had given him a certain self-confidence in her presence, not because the stroll had made her jealous but for another reason, which was actually the same reason; it showed that Jacob Rechnitz was not isolated from the world and also that she, Shoshanah Ehrlich, was by no means the only woman in that world. In fact he had not intended to take a walk that day, either with Rachel or with Leah, still less with both of them at once; it just happened that Leah had come across him. And so on, and so on. Yet if one looked more deeply into the matter, it seemed that there was another truth here; namely, that Rechnitz was quite in the habit of taking some girl out for a walk, whether her name were Rachel or Leah, or indeed Asnat or Raya or Mira or Tamara.

  It is the way of people who have grown up in a beautiful place to take its charms for granted. But when they visit another lovely town, they not only note the new charms, but first become aware of the beauty they have always lived with. So for Rechnitz, the arrival of Shoshanah in Jaffa served also to reveal the beauty of the girls with whom he was already familiar.

  We have spoken of Leah Luria and Rachel Heil-perin. Friends as they were, Rachel was the more sharp-witted and Leah the more sympathetic. Leah was older than any of her friends and yet her eyes shone with youth and good nature, as if they were the dwelling place of angels. If her talk was not too solid, still it gladdened the heart. When they were out on an excursion and sat down to rest, it was Leah who would arrange a meal for the whole group, seeing that everyone got his share and forgetting to look after her own needs in her concern for the welfare of others. As for Rachel, she was not to be measured by any standards of good or evil. If she did something wrong, you could not be angry with her; if she did a good deed, she did not think well of herself for it. She was also the kind of person you could speak to without any pretense. Yet this merit was also a defect, for nothing you did could help you, s
ince all depended on her and nothing on you yourself.

  And now let us consider Asnat Magargot. She came from Kirov, and it was said that her father had gone bankrupt and absconded to the Land of Israel, much as most persons in that condition abscond to America. Bankruptcy and embezzlement are great transgressions, which cannot be atoned for until the ill-gotten gains are restored to their rightful owners, and even then it is doubtful if one is completely absolved. Magargot, however, was not very guilt-stricken; rather, he behaved as if he had done a great favor to the Land of Israel, proving by his action that the Settlement was a practical proposition, and that sudden departures from Europe need not have America for their destination.

  Asnat, like Leah Luria and Rachel Heilperin, was a tall girl. She wore a greenish brown dress of fine smooth weave, with a silver belt whose roped ends fell below her knees. Though her dress was like the habit of a monk, Asnat’s lips were eager – but not for kisses. You might be sitting beside her for two or three hours, my dear friend, almost crazy with the desire to take her in your arms; and she too might share something of the same idea. But that was all. You would merely pick up the two tassels that fell from her belt and go on talking about Ibsen’s plays or something of the sort. The world has its set ways, and if it occurred to you to deviate from them, you would find this impossible with Asnat. Her steel-blue eyes cut your soul into little pieces. This was the more surprising because the kind of topics Asnat discussed – all those “problems of modern life” – were just the kind that create the greatest intimacy; and yet you could not so much as touch her with your little finger. What then did Asnat really want? She wanted much, and she wanted nothing; she wanted nothing, and she wanted much. On a summer night she would take a fancy to walking as far as Rishon LeZion and ask you to escort her. And you would walk along with her by the sand dunes for three hours in the darkness, going by night and coming back by night, without her letting you touch even the tassels of her belt, either on the way out or on the way back.

  Raya Zablodovsky was a relative of Asnat, though you could hardly find two girls so unlike, either in stature or feature. Asnat was tall and her face bore witness to a quick wit; Raya was no taller than a child and her face testified neither to a quick wit, nor even to a slow-paced one. She had sandy hair and her lips pouted as if she had just tasted an unripe fruit. In disposition she was withdrawn, like a bird that covers its head with its wings. Some of her friends declared her too egotistical, others even thought her malicious. Yet they could not help being drawn to her, since both qualities, that is to say both the self-love and the malice, were cloaked in a humor that never failed to surprise. Thus, she might decide to seat herself on a boulder after spreading some fine silk scarf over it; if you remarked that this was strange behavior, she would say, “Not at all. It isn’t my scarf, you see.” Never in her life had Raya read a book cover to cover, neither in Russian nor in Hebrew, not even the books that everyone was talking about. She failed her examinations twice and left school before finishing, without any regrets. “In the end,” she would say, “you forget everything you have learned. As for me, I forget without bothering to learn it first.” How, then, did she come to be one of the girls in Rechnitz’s group? Simply because this is life’s way: once you belong to a certain group, you belong, however different you are.

  Raya’s neighbor was Mira Vorbzhitsky, the daughter of Niuma Vorbzhitsky, who had been a guard of the Sharon settlements. He was the terror of bandits, and if he found any within his beat he was capable of picking a man up and using him as a flail against his companions like someone beating a garment with a stick. Mira had more agility than any girl in Jaffa, not excepting even Rachel Heilperin, for when she was little her father used to make her ride an unsaddled horse which he would set galloping over the hills, paying no heed to her frightened cries. She was still accustomed to riding bareback, and on occasion she would take a horse from between the shafts of a carriage and mount it and ride as far as Sarona. Although she had the graceful figure of a girl, she resembled a handsome youth. When she was a child and her father was still a guard, they had lived on the outskirts of the village away from other settlers, where her mother used to dress her in boys’ clothes as a precaution against the Arabs. Her bearing still had something boyish about it, though her manners were those of a girl, and she was dear to her companions of both sexes.

  Something has yet to be said about Tamara Levi. Her father had been a doctor. Once in the rainy season, on a dark overcast night, he was out riding on his donkey to visit a patient in the settlements. The donkey stumbled into a flooded wadi, and the doctor drowned. Tamara lived with her mother in a single room in a large courtyard of many apartments. The mother was a rabbi’s daughter and well aware of her standing, but she found it difficult to earn a livelihood. She would care for the sick, sometimes sitting with them all night. Her husband had left her nothing when he died; and now she had to make a living for herself and Tamara and to see that her daughter had the same education as other girls of good family. Mother and daughter loved each other much, but this involved them in serious conflict. For it happened that a certain school Secretary, with quite a good income, was courting Tamara and her mother approved of the match. As for Tamara herself, she said that she had no objection to marriage but that she did not see why it should be with this man in particular, even though he did have a good position at the school where Rechnitz taught.

  Tamara’s hair, one supposes, was ash-grey; her eyes, it may be assumed, were blue; but the blue-tinted radiance that lit up her features and dazzled the eyes made these two colors seem interchangeable. At first sight she might have escaped your notice. Later, if not for the narcissus or carnation pinned on her breast, you might miss the presence of a heart underneath. Her real name was Tamar but she liked to be called Tamara, and since she was such a dear child, let us call her by the name she preferred. Her conversation was not notably wise; if one cared to say so, it even tended to silliness; but her lips caressed your heart much as the red flower on her own heart was caressed by the tip of her nose. One time Rechnitz had set his lips to hers; they had quivered slightly and just touched his in return. A touch that was hardly a touch at all. Heavens above, if that was the shadow of a kiss, what would a true kiss be like? No girl in the world had such lips as hers, and, besides this, every touch of her hand was like a kiss. But was there any man in Jaffa who knew it?

  Tamara had this virtue too: she never used to complain or seem angry. She would look up at you admiringly and accept whatever you said as a gift of grace. So you would sit contentedly surveying the tip of her nose and letting the radiance of her face wrap you in a sweet blue mist. Only once had Rechnitz kissed Tamara and he did not repeat the performance; he was, after all, her teacher, and it was not proper for teachers to kiss their pupils. This applied even though there were teachers who permitted themselves such conduct and even though Tamara had now left school and belonged to his group of friends. At times Rechnitz regretted the kiss; at other times he regretted not having made a second attempt. However that may be, it was a good thing that he had no occasion to be alone with her, for more reasons than one. Since the school Secretary had his eye on her with a view to marriage, it would not have been decent to spoil someone’s life for the sake of a fleeting pleasure. That was a sufficient reason, but there was still another one which Jacob buried in his heart.

  XX

  A strange shriek interrupted the train of Rechnitz’s thoughts. The parrot, which on the evening before last had perched in his cage at the hotel imitating the jackals’ screams, was now in the garden answering the sound of the striking clock. Before him stood the old Baron, dressed in white, with a tropical sun-helmet on his head. The Baron was holding out an apple and the parrot, standing on one leg, extended the other, snatched the apple and pecked at it. “Schmeckt’s, Herrchen? – Tasty for you sir?” the Baron asked. The parrot shook his hooked beak and cried, “Schmeckt, Herrchen!”

  “A fine bird,” said the Baron to Re
chnitz. “I bought it from a hunter who had caught it to eat. There are places, you know, where they eat parrot meat. “Verflucht! Dammit!” he called to the parrot.

  “Verflucht!” it answered back.

  The Baron laughed and wagged his finger at the bird.

  “Verflucht,” he said to it, “Dammit, bird, you mustn’t curse!”

  The parrot replied with a shriek, “Verflucht! Verflucht! Dammit! Dammit!”

  When Rechnitz had disengaged himself from the Baron, he went on to the hotel. By now, he reflected, the Consul will have awakened from his nap and lit the cigar he smokes out of boredom. I shall go across to him, perhaps he will be grateful to me for rescuing him from his boredom. And what will Shoshanah have to say? She will say nothing be-cause that is her way. There are some people whose silences are awesome; we imagine their minds to be full of great thoughts beyond our ken, thoughts which keep them from communicating, and this makes us shrink in their presence, believing that they hold in their hands the keys of all wisdom. Yet if we consider the matter well, we shall find that their silence grows out of overweening pride and that they don’t surpass us by so much as the breadth of a parrot’s claw. It is only because we shrink that they tower above us. And why do we thus belittle ourselves before them? This calls for investigation but I have no time for it. It is after four o’clock, the Consul is already up and having his boredom. I have extended my reflections too far and extended monologues are to be avoided in modern drama. Verflucht! I like the smell of baking in butter over there. Yehia’s wife does all her baking in oil because the Jews here don’t have any butter and because people in the East prefer olive oil to dairy products anyhow. It isn’t a thing you can reason about but simply a matter of taste, just as the Sefardi teacher will say “a quarter-hour” instead of “a quarter of an hour.” And now a quarter of an hour has gone by and I am still standing outside, delivering long monologues.