Shira (7 page)

After they took leave of each other, Herbst went to the jeweler to buy a new strap for his watch. While the worn strap was being removed, he looked at the watches, designed for a single purpose yet made in many forms. Time is constant, yet manifest in varied forms. All things are like time, even rumors, even words. A single lesson can be learned from many texts. Herbst had once said to Lisbet Neu, “I’m old enough to be your father.” She had said, “I don’t know your age, but I see your face and you look young.” At the time, he had thought she was being generous. Now he viewed her words differently.

So much for the parable of the clocks. After fastening the new strap around his wrist, he stuck in his finger to stretch it. All of a sudden he felt bewildered. Where was the pure spirit that used to be invoked by the mere mention of Lisbet? One thought led to another, as thoughts do, and he had another thought: What if I had a son and this son was drawn to Lisbet? One thought led to still another: Henrietta will, undoubtedly, be unable to nurse the baby, so we’ll have to hire a wetnurse, which will mean extra expense and put us even more in debt. Moreover, while the baby is young, wherever we put her to sleep, I will hear her and be distracted from my work, which requires concentration. My paper will remain a mess of notes, and I will remain a lecturer, with a lecturer’s salary, rather than that of a professor or even an associate professor.

I will now convey some of what was implicit in Herbst’s thoughts. The author of a thorough and comprehensive work on Leo iii, the Byzantine ruler, a work that established his academic reputation, so that, when our university was opened in Jerusalem, he was recommended by Professor Neu and appointed lecturer – such a man should have produced another book. But days and years had passed, and he had produced nothing. When he was a student, still single, and the university was full of German women, Russian women, Jewish women – among them, some who sought his company – he turned away, out of devotion to his studies. Now that he was married, all the more reason to avoid distractions. Yet, in the end, it was he who pursued them. Who was to blame? Certainly not Henrietta. I doubt there are many like her. In terms of intelligence, beauty, and competence, Henrietta has no peer. Without regular help, without her husband’s assistance, she did all the household chores. She cooked, baked, sewed, ironed, even made her own clothes. And when the girls were young, she chose to take care of them herself, without a nursemaid. As for their house – when the Herbsts came up to Jerusalem, they couldn’t find a place to live. Talpiot and Beit Hakerem were new neighborhoods, and there were no apartments to be had there. Rehavia was in the planning stages. This left the Bukharan Quarter, which in those days was as important and as lovely as Rehavia is now. And there were areas that were free of flies and mosquitoes, but every space was occupied, taken over by intellectuals from abroad. In Baka, however, Henrietta found a hovel filled with garbage, considered unfit to live in. She rented this hovel, got rid of the garbage, and fixed it up. We were astonished; the hovel was transformed into a delightful, even glorious house. Henrietta made herself a garden, too. She made it with her own hands. Without the help of a gardener, without the help of her daughters. Tamara, as you know, loves flowers that come from the store rather than from trash and dung. Her sister Zahara has many tasks to perform for her teachers – she collects money for the Jewish National Fund’s land-reclamation projects, sells ribbons for charitable causes, et cetera – and, because of all these tasks, she has no time for homework and never eats at mealtimes. Henrietta’s only helper is Manfred, who waters the garden. Not that Henrietta needs him to do this, but it gets him out of his room and gives him a chance to exercise, rather than acquire a belly, like Professor Weltfremdt and Professor Lemner, who are all belly, below their middle and above it – a mound of neck topped by a tiny head.

Having referred to Herbst’s study, let me say a word about the room. It was the largest and most spacious room in the house, but its dimensions were not apparent because of the books lining its four walls. The wall opposite the door had a square window in it that looked onto the street, bringing the outdoors in. There was no end to what went on outside or to the shifts of scene from day to day, from hour to hour. There was another window in the south wall, and, if not for the tall piles of books on the floor, it would be possible to get to the window and see the earth’s marvels: rocks rising from the ground, looking like shepherds with their flocks. Or are those shepherds with their flocks that look so like rock? Either way, there are rocks in Jerusalem that look like sheep, as well as sheep that look like rocks, and the shepherds look equally ambiguous.

The desk, the chair next to Herbst’s chair, the guest chair opposite the desk – all these, like the walls, were filled with books. When a guest came, he would clear a place for him, either with a single gesture or book by book, lingering over each one. In some fields, new replaces old. Not so with Herbst. He was fond of every book that passed through his hands, even if it was outdated, even if its conclusions were outdated when it first appeared. A scholar ought to consult those naive works, Herbst would say, for we learn from them that knowledge has arrived at its current positions by way of false hypotheses, invalid conclusions, groundless evidence. In truth, it was not for this reason alone that Herbst filled his room with books. He began collecting books as a child, and what he was accustomed to do as a boy he continued to do as he grew older. In the past, before his house was filled with books, the walls of the room were decorated with antique maps of Byzantium, shaped like ships in the heart of the sea, like mountains floating in pale blue air, like many-colored towers. But, in time, these maps gave way to bookshelves.

Many other things could be found in Herbst’s room, on his desk, on the windowsills. Such as pipes and ashtrays, some of which he bought in Jerusalem’s markets and some of which were gifts, like the pebbles he had collected in Ashkelon, on which one can discern symbols of a language not yet decoded. Next to the pebbles were thorns, the ones that seem to have a human face. Since they are not relevant to Dr. Herbst’s field of study, I will not deal with them, though I will mention the polished brass inkstand he bought from the crippled scribe who sits at the entrance to the courthouse, who was rescued by Herbst from under the hooves of a wild horse on Ramadan – its drunken rider was a judge in that very courthouse at the time.

Herbst’s study is his domain, and he works with few distractions. Henrietta has a discerning eye, and whoever calls on her husband is closely scrutinized to determine whether or not he is one of those who lead to idleness. There are many idlers in Jerusalem, those employed by national institutions as well as people who know the value of work but, not having found anything to do themselves, keep others from their work.

Just as Henrietta protects her husband from idlers, she protects him from excessive burdens. She even spares him the burden of the girls’ education. You, of course, know how hard it is to raise a daughter in this country. Not only a daughter like Tamara, who is as full of thorns as a cactus, but even one like Zahara, who is softer than butter. What’s more, she – that is, Henrietta – manages her household without complaints or bitterness on thirty-five lirot a month, her husband’s salary from the university. Were the entire sum available for household expenses, it would be simple. But it isn’t simple, as some of it is earmarked for the National Fund, some for the Foundation Fund and various other funds not yet founded, which, when they are founded, will be superfluous. But who can withstand such an appeal, the word-filled drone that drowns everyone and everything? Despite all this, Henrietta carries on and maintains her home with dignity. Everyone who sees Henrietta Herbst is moved to remark, “That woman has sprung out of a painting. She’s a Rubens in the flesh.”

But Henrietta is flawed in one respect: she began to age prematurely. Though Manfred is still in his prime, she is aging rapidly. Another flaw: she works too hard and doesn’t look after herself – all so Manfred can devote himself to his work, prepare lectures that will not bore his audience, produce a new book on a par with the first, which made his reputation. After giving him a second child, Henrietta began to behave as if she were not wife to her husband. If not for his birthday nine months ago, Sarah would not have come into being.

Manfred was faithful to his wife, even if his fantasies were sometimes illicit. From several of Henrietta’s remarks, one learns about Manfred’s fantasies. She has said to him many times, “Are there no attractive girls in this country? Is that why you’re always after me? Go find yourself a young girl. If you look, you’ll find one.” I don’t know how long a man’s wife would tolerate another woman. Even if she did put up with it, in the name of domestic peace, one would do well to beware. Manfred Herbst neither looked nor found, either out of respect for Henrietta or because it was not his style. A man who marries his wife out of love at first sight isn’t likely to have eyes for other women. He was once on an ocean voyage, and, finding himself on the high seas for several days with nothing to do, he considered: If an attractive woman were to appear, would you keep your distance? But nothing came of this. Herbst assumed he was the cause. He was in the habit of telling his wife everything; should he take up with another woman, he would tell his wife and cause her sorrow. Which is not to say that, in the time he was abroad, no woman was warm to him, but only a fool would assume that every attractive woman who behaves warmly is open to love. The episode ended as it began. Dr. Manfred Herbst came home bringing new books, nothing more. When would he read them? As book collectors know, not every book has to be read. All a book needs is a buyer, and all a buyer needs is a bookcase that can take one book more. It is to their credit that books contract to make room for others.

Suddenly, all of a sudden, there were newcomers in the land. They were unexpected, and if anyone had said to them two or three years earlier that they would emigrate, they would have protested. Suddenly, all of a sudden, they were here. These people whose fathers and forefathers preferred the soil of Germany to that of the Land of Israel, loving Germany perhaps even more than the Germans did, felt the ground crumbling under them and could find no foothold anywhere in Germany. Some of them went from nation to nation, from exile to exile. Others sought refuge in the Land of Israel, waiting there for Germany’s rage to be spent, assuming Germany would soon recover. They came to the Land of Israel, continuing to refer to it as Palestine, as its detractors always do.

Among the recent newcomers from Germany were various scholars and their wives, their sons and daughters. Herbst had studied with some of them and had known their daughters when they were in high school, at the university, hiking together in the woods of Berlin. One elderly professor with a sharp tongue, who was hostile to women, hearing that the students were planning a hike, had offered this advice: “My dear colleagues, be sure to invite some women. If there are mosquitoes, they will attack the women, and you will be spared.” Many years had passed. Young women Herbst had known in Germany were now married, and he had a wife too. Hearing that some of them were in Jerusalem, he was stirred and began to recall each one, what she was like, or rather, what she had been like in those days. These thoughts led him to imagine ties of affection. He forgot that there had been nothing between them beyond prosaic words. Time plays odd tricks: what never was, pretends to have been. Some of these girls, who were once extremely beautiful, had lost their beauty and radiance. There were others whose beauty endured, but it was not the sort of beauty that revives the soul. Living in Germany, we regarded blonde hair, blue eyes, and the like as the ultimate in beauty. Having settled in the Land of Israel, another beauty arrests our eye, another sort of beauty is appealing. If he happened on one or another of these friends from the past and gathered from the conversation that she was unable to pay for lodging, he would tell Henrietta, and she would put her up. Even after the friend was settled in an apartment, Henrietta would invite her, as is the custom in this country, for lunch, dinner, sometimes for the weekend. If Manfred became deeply involved in conversation with the woman, Henrietta was never jealous. It happened that they invited one of these women for Shabbat. On the following day, Sunday, Henrietta had to go to Tel Aviv. She went to Tel Aviv, leaving her husband alone with the woman. Manfred thought to himself: I see that Henrietta trusts me. In the evening, she came home and put on the kettle. Then they had coffee with the cakes she had brought from Tel Aviv. Henrietta was not in the habit of buying baked goods. She and her family were accustomed to home baking, but, when she had occasion to be in Tel Aviv, she would bring all sorts of treats, for the confections one finds in Tel Aviv are unlike anything in Jerusalem, where pastries all taste alike. Though they come in many shapes, they have one taste.

Among the learned men who came from Germany, there were several distinguished scholars. Some were experienced medical doctors; some occupied academic chairs and were renowned throughout Germany and beyond. There were those who had been a thorn in the flesh of their Christian colleagues and those whose learning served them well, so that their Christian peers took note of their learning but not of their Jewishness. They now roamed the streets of Jerusa-lem, destitute, with no prospect of a livelihood. This country has only one university, and all its academic positions were occupied. Not many people would act as the scholars of Bathyra did, yielding to the authority of Rabbi Hillel. What an opportunity to make Jerusalem a metropolis of medicine and scholarship! But, because of financial calculations and narrow vision, these great men did not find a footing here. They left the country, and their wisdom was dispersed in other lands.

When these exiled scholars arrived from Germany, Manfred Herbst was like a man who wakes up and is unable to find his clothes.