Only Yesterday (28 page)

1. c h a p t e r f o u r
   

   The Man We Alluded to at the End of the Previous Chapter
   

   1. I
      

      Near Isaac’s apartment stands a group of houses. People who were content with little built themselves those houses, people who were content with even less came to dwell in their cellars. When Isaac left the restaurant, he saw the sign of Samson Bloykof the painter, whose name he had heard and whose pictures he had seen in several He-brew and foreign almanacs, and his frames are found in the home of every Hebrew teacher in Jaffa and Jerusalem. Those frames are of olive wood in the shape of a Magen David inlaid with seashells, but the teachers of Jaffa who have a literary bent put the pictures of our writers and poets in them, the greatest one in the middle and his satel-lites around him, including pictures of themselves, for there isn’t one single teacher in Jaffa who doesn’t see himself as a writer, unlike the teachers of Jerusalem who see themselves as sages and who put pictures of our great sages including pictures of themselves in those frames. Bloykof was Isaac’s fellow countryman, and now that he found himself standing before his house, he took heart and went inside.
      

      Samson Bloykof was about thirty years old, suffered from a weak heart and weak lungs, and knew that his death was near, and so he worked diligently to accomplish in his life what he wouldn’t accomplish after his death, for when a person is dead, he can’t paint, and furthermore, at the moment when he is passing to the nether world, all his images return and pass before his eyes and are thousands and thousands of times sweeter and finer. And he wants to stretch out his hands and paint. And his hands reply, We are already delivered to the earth, for dust we are. And he wants to cry but the tears don’t come, for his eyes are closed with shards. Bloykof, who
      

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      knows all that and isn’t a fool like the foolish artists, wants to work as long as he can, and wants to return to the world a little bit of what the world has given him, and if not really a little bit, then a little bit of a little bit. He no longer paints the pictures that made him popu-lar in his generation, and he doesn’t make frames for pictures, but paints what Heaven shows him. And even though he knows himself that he is the slightest of the slight and keeps neither Torah nor Commandments, he knows that Heaven is gracious to him and gives him strength to see and to paint, and the Omnipotent Creator of the World must have a special intention for future generations to know the splendor of Jerusalem, even in her destruction. And they will know that there was one Samson Bloykof who looked favorably upon her.
      

      His round face is wreathed with a yellowish beard and his blue eyes smile from their sockets a smile that comes from satis-faction and a good heart. And Samson Bloykof really does have sat-isfaction and pleasure, for every single hour things that rejoice his heart appear before him. There are things he saw eye to eye and didn’t pay heed to them, and now they come and stand before his mind’s eye, and he sees that they are more beautiful than they were, and he knows how to draw them. Carpets of flowers that cover the valleys and hills in the month of Nissan, bluish mountain slopes in the east, a solitary plant in a field, a small reed burgeoning out of a rock, an old woman crying at the Western Wall, a porter lying in the shadow of a wall and sleeping the sleep of toilers, and a little bird dwelling in the beard of an old man sitting at the cistern in his courtyard and dozing off over his book—all those rise up in his mind’s eye, and as they rise up before him, so they rise up on the canvas with ex-quisite colors he extracts from his tube of paint. Years ago, Bloykof ascended to Jerusalem with the first Bezalel students, he painted paintings and made frames for pictures which made him famous in the Land. Finally he made his own artists’ house. And so that he wouldn’t have to paint pictures for money, he made signs for shopkeepers. But there is no great demand for shop signs, and his income is few and far between, so he paints out of hunger and out of extreme yearnings. Sometimes hunger gets the upper hand and sometimes yearnings get the upper hand. But since an artist cannot conquer
      

      hunger, but he can conquer his yearnings, he removes his eyes from hunger and paints paintings. If his heart afflicts him because of his illness, he silences it and tells it, Are you better than the lungs? And if his lungs afflict him, he silences them and tells them, Are you bet-ter than the heart? And he goes back to his craft and does his work. And if hunger attacks him, he strikes his stomach and says, Are you more distinguished than I am? Even if I die of hunger, I don’t say a word.
      

   2. I
      

      When Isaac knocked on the door, Bloykof flinched and shook, and he cursed and insulted him in his heart as we tend to do with any-one who comes to divert us from our work. But his anger quickly turned to pity and he greeted him nicely because man is created in the image of God, and because Bloykof was a good and hospitable man. When Isaac told him what country he came from, Bloykof welcomed him and clasped his hands very affectionately and didn’t let go of them, as if they rolled up all Galicia and gave it to him, for Bloykof was inordinately fond of his homeland, and everyone who came from Galicia was like a greeting card sent from there.
      

      All the time Bloykof had lived in Galicia, he was not attracted to its inhabitants; when he left there, he began to love them. And there were several reasons for that. And the entirety of all the reasons is that he sees himself in Jerusalem, among the Russians, as a herring in a cage, for those Russians, even though their heart is open and their hand is generous and their mind is determined and most are brave and responsible, they lack something we people of Galicia are given in abundance. And since Isaac Kumer is a son of Galicia, Bloykof was extremely happy to see him, and didn’t budge from his affection until he sat him down in front of him and showed him some of his paintings. And that’s not something Bloykof does with everyone, for not everyone is worthy of the artist’s cares. Finally, he revealed some of his intentions to him and explained some of his paintings to him. Indeed, not every fine painting needs interpreta-tion, but since most people see and don’t know what they’re seeing, the artist has to guide their heart. On the face of it, it’s enough for the
      

      artist that he paints, and sometimes even if he doesn’t know what he is painting, at any rate, he knows more than his interpreters, not to mention those who claim to be patrons of the arts. As he talked, he showed him a bunch of pictures that could be mistakenly attributed to him, but they were just the creations of various people who had nothing of their own, but who looked at his pictures and imitated their model. You wouldn’t think that would preoccupy him, for everything that is not real doesn’t catch the truth, and all that is real has its own truth and doesn’t need to borrow from others, hence every imitation is essentially flawed, and there’s no point bothering with what is flawed, but the critics attacked us, mentioning the names of the forgers along with his name. And if you say that among the things the imitators imitate, there are things that look like what I drew my-self, I tell you that they don’t look like mine, and if they do look like mine, what need is there for them, since mine already exist, and they can’t deny that mine exist, for if mine didn’t exist, how would they imitate them?
      

      Samson Bloykof and Isaac Kumer sat down. Bloykof talks and Isaac listens. And Isaac doesn’t understand everything Bloykof says, but every single thing that comes out of Bloykof’s mouth ca-resses his heart and makes him forget his troubles a bit, and it seems to him that all his life he yearned for nothing but this hour, and it seems to Bloykof that everything he says was kept in his heart for this man. And isn’t it a little puzzling, for Kumer is a simple housepainter and has nothing to do with art, but Bloykof is confident that if he talks with him, he is surely worth it. And so he goes on talking.
      

      And so they sat, one talking and one listening, and they didn’t hear the door open. And when the door opened, Mrs. Tosya Bloykof, Samson’s wife, entered with two baskets in her hands, one with fruit and vegetables and one with other food. Samson jumped up to greet her and called out, Tosya, and drawled out the name Tosya as if she was suddenly revealed to him. He looked at her for a while with a bit of affection and a bit of criticism, the way he looked at his wife after she had been gone from him for some time. But he immediately shifted his critical eye away from her and looked at her with complete affection and tremendous love as he had done from the time
      

      he had first seen her. As he looked at her he turned his gaze to Isaac, and didn’t rest there, but turned his face back to his wife and said, A guest has come to us. You may think just an ordinary guest, Tosya, so I tell you he’s from our homeland, a son of Galicia. You may think just an ordinary son of Galicia, but I tell you that he understands art. You think he told me so, but no he didn’t, but with the insight of an artist I recognized that he understands. Put down the baskets, Tosya, and say hello to our guest and be nice to him, for I tell you that he deserves a nice welcome. Just as he praised the guest to his wife, so he praised his wife to the guest, that if not for her, he would already be lying in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Not because she takes care of him, but because it’s worth living when a man’s got a wife like that with him. As she put down the baskets, Samson grabbed her two hands and embraced them and kissed them. Mrs. Bloykof looked at the guest with an embarrassed smile, and scolded her husband for not letting her say hello to their guest, and apologized to the guest for appearing before him in a housedress, for she hadn’t yet had time to change her clothes because she had to hurry to the market before the hands of all the women in Jerusalem had groped the vegetables. And as she spoke she went and brought Isaac a cup of cocoa. Isaac, who had had breakfast and had eaten more than his fill, thanked the hostess for her kindness and said that he had just eaten and drunk and was still sated. Samson jumped up and said, Don’t say I’m full, for I don’t believe you, for never have I seen a full man in Jerusalem. Drink, my dear, drink, boy, the advantage of cocoa is that it’s drink and food at the same time, it quenches your thirst and satisfies your hunger. In truth I say, of all the beverages in the world, I love brandy, but it doesn’t love me because the doctors denounced me, and when I take a drop in my mouth, it vomits itself up with what remains of my lungs.
      

      Mrs. Bloykof went to the corner where the kitchen was, for the whole apartment was one room with two beds, and the cradle of their only daughter who died two years before, and a long table where the painter painted his paintings, and other things a man and woman need. She came back and begged the guest to swear he wouldn’t go until he had had lunch with them. She enumerated all the dishes she
      

      had made for that lunch, and looked at him fondly, as did the daughters of Israel of that generation who valued guests. Isaac felt her eyes and his heart felt good, but since he was full and since he wasn’t used to sitting at the table of a man and wife, he was a bit embarrassed and apologized to her that he couldn’t eat with them, since he had to go look for work. Said Bloykof, If it’s because of work, you don’t have to hurry, for there’s nothing going on. First eat and then we’ll go over the names of the painters in Jerusalem, maybe one of them will hire you, and may you make a little bit of a living. Oh, a living, a living, whoever invented you doesn’t love folks, and whoever keeps you away from folks surely doesn’t love folks. I often wanted to find a trick to get around making a living, but I’m busy with more important things than making a living and don’t have time to get involved with tricks. And maybe it’s good that my time isn’t free for that, for if I found it, who would enjoy it? Of course, the scoundrels who use the power of others to imitate them. Thus not only art would be forged, but everything would be false. And what face, my dear boy, would our world have.
      

   3. I
      

So Isaac remained at Bloykof’s house until after lunch. In honor of the guest, the host left his work and talked with him about everything an artist is wont to tell and praised Isaac for leaving Jaffa and coming to dwell in Jerusalem, for you don’t have a single hour in Jerusalem that doesn’t have something of eternal life. But not every person attains it, for Jerusalem is revealed only to those who love her. Come, Isaac, and let us embrace one another that we have been blessed to dwell in Jerusalem. At first, when I compared Jerusalem to other cities, I found a great many disadvantages in it, at last my eyes were opened and I saw her. I saw her, my brother, I saw her. What can I tell you, my friend, can language tell even the slightest bit? Pray for me, my brother, for the Lord to give me life, and I will show you with the brush in my hand what my eyes see and my heart feels. I don’t know if I believe in God, but I do know that He trusts me and He revealed to my eyes to see what not every eye sees. If I was allowed to paint, I would have painted thus. Who’s here? Mrs. Bloykof again.

What did you want to say, Mrs. Bloykof? No, my dear, I don’t want anything except rest, but rest I don’t find, that woman is wont to dis-turb me. Sixty times a minute she comes and says, Shimsi, my sun, perhaps you want bird’s milk, Shimsi, my sun, perhaps sky blue I shall spread beneath you. And perhaps she does it out of love, no she doesn’t, she’s afraid she’ll be widowed and will have to wear black, and black doesn’t become her. And here Samson grabbed his wife and kissed her mouth, and immediately wiped off her mouth because he suffered from all kinds of contagious diseases, and it would be too bad if she got sick, for she is a Galician, and the people of Galicia are good people, but there’s a difference between eastern Galicia and western Galicia, for the people of the west are like Poles, and Poles are like Russians. And we know well what the Russians are. And here Bloykof laid his hand on Isaac’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and said, I see that I am destined to die among the Russians, and I hired one of our own people from my hometown to say Kaddish after my death and study a chapter of Mishnah.