Shira (74 page)

Henrietta’s eyes were closed, her tongue weary. She spoke fitfully. If I were to put the words together and interpret her allusions, this is roughly what they would add up to: When a woman is young, in full bloom, capable of filling the earth with sons and daughters, she isn’t always pleased to be producing children. When she ages, when her energies diminish and her sons and daughters leave home, her lot is bitter, ever so bitter. Because she is lonely, she would love to bear a child, but this is something she no longer has the strength to do.

I am omitting the rest of Henrietta’s remarks, censuring those women who make no use of what the Creator granted them and giving credit to the Oriental communities: “If they didn’t behave like human beings, increasing and multiplying in a natural fashion, the land would soon be empty. But,” Henrietta added, “even they have begun to act like Ashkenazim.” At this point, Henrietta told about a pretty young Sephardic woman, about twenty-four years old, who had given her husband four handsome sons. After weaning the fourth one, she became pregnant. Her neighbor said, “If you keep up at this rate, you won’t have room for all your children.” They deliberated and went to a certain woman doctor. The doctor did what she did, and the woman aborted. After a while, she began to yearn for an infant to clasp in her arms. She was consumed with longing, but she was no longer able to become pregnant, and she was not fit to give birth again.

The very same doctor has set up a clinic, and her pace is tireless. The country is full of British soldiers, as well as impoverished young girls. Feeling confined by the narrow walls of their homes, these girls go out for a little while, seeking escape. The soldiers who see them are struck by their beauty and entice them to go to a café or a movie. Some are intrigued and respond, at first to scold the soldiers for their impudence, then because of curiosity, then because there’s no harm in talking, then because of habit. In the end, some of the girls are seduced by them, and, when they become pregnant, they go to this doctor to get rid of their unborn babies.

So much for those evils and the troubles they bring on. Now let’s get back to the Herbst household. Manfred and Henrietta finished their supper, and it was already Henrietta’s bedtime. But, like most women at leisure, she didn’t tend to look ahead. Henrietta remained seated, though Manfred stood beside her, taking her hand and attempting to get her out of the chair and lead her to her room. Henrietta, who was comfortable where she was, didn’t stir. She was thinking about her daughters. Zahara and Tamara are not here. One lives with Avraham and Dani in the country; the other has gone to see about the teaching position she was promised; Sarah is lying asleep in her little bed. Yet another child is inside his mother, Henrietta, who didn’t prevent the Creator from creating a person in her womb. Should the Creator of man alter His ways ever so slightly, He would give her a male child, now that she has produced three females. The world needs daughters too, but it would be nice for this mother of daughters to produce a son.

Henrietta’s eyes remained closed, and her hand was in Manfred’s. He held his wife’s hand and gazed at her. Her eyes were still closed, her face was bloated, and her nose cast its shadow all around. Now I’ll say something it would be nicer not to say, but truth goes beyond the niceties. Manfred noted her wrinkled cheeks, flushed and lined with bluish veins, and her body, bloated and slovenly. He also noted how she luxuriated before him, like a bride during the seven-day marriage feast, and he turned his eyes away, commenting to himself: How grotesque. He said nothing, except in his heart, and, like a man who respects his wife, he smoothed her cheek and tried to help her up.

After taking Henrietta to her bed, he sneaked back to the dining room, cleared the dishes, took them to the kitchen, and washed them thoroughly, examining each piece inside and out to be sure it was clean, so as not to give Henrietta reason to reject his work. Then he set the dishes on the slatted shelf to drain, moving about stealthily, so as not to disturb Henrietta and arouse her anger at him for intruding on her territory. Even though she had already allowed him to take on some of the chores, she would, no doubt, scold him. Having finished all the kitchen work, he inverted the dishpans and scanned the room, to be sure he hadn’t left anything undone. When he saw everything was in place, he turned out the light. When the light was off, he saw that one burner was still lit. Henrietta had forgotten about it, but it was serving no purpose. He turned it off and went to Henrietta, thinking: If I had left it on, Henrietta would surely complain. But when she does it, it’s all right.

Henrietta was lying in bed in her clothes. He began coaxing her to undress. When she was ready to comply, he helped her take off her clothes, just as he used to do when she was pregnant with Zahara.

I have something to say about Shira. That was a good question Shira had asked: “Do you help your wife, too?” Yes, Shira. Dr. Herbst helps his wife take off her clothes, and he does it expertly. His hands don’t tremble at all. But Shira is far away. In fact, she has moved. But we won’t be looking for you. Not today. It’s enough, Shira, that Herbst asked about you in the hospital. He also asked Anita Brik about you. Tomorrow afternoon, we might perhaps go and see where you live. If we find you, good. If we don’t find you, it’s your fault for not sitting and waiting for us.

After arranging his wife’s clothes, he embraced her and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed him too, if not on his mouth, then on his forehead. Manfred’s forehead is an integral part of him, you might say his finest part, with all his great thoughts plainly written on it. Henrietta assumes that these thoughts derive from the major essay he is working on. We will allow her this error, rather than divulge one or two of the schemes he is considering. Henrietta asked Manfred to go and see if Sarah was asleep and if she was perspiring. After he had done so, he took leave of his wife, with a kiss, and went to his room to read some papal history and find out just when Damasus became pope. This wasn’t actually why he went back to his room. He wanted to be alone for a while. He was worn out by the day’s concerns. He hadn’t had a moment’s rest. In the morning, he had lectured on the earliest known Byzantine coins with Greek inscriptions, as well as on the coins associated with Heraclius, which we assume were minted so they could be used by soldiers during the war against Persia. After the lecture, a guest, who had come to hear a Hebrew lecture at the Hebrew University, arrived and offered a somewhat dated insight. He stated that, even after Constantine became Christian, he continued to be attracted to idolatry, which is evident from the motifs on many artifacts from the Constantine period. Herbst wore himself out conveying to this genius, without being disrespectful, that, with coins, as in various other areas, such motifs are not always conclusive, because they often continue to appear even after they have lost their significance. When he got rid of the guest, he was joined by two of his students, who needed books they couldn’t find in the National Library. If I’m not mistaken, they were looking for the works of G. Finelli and W. Schultze. They went home with Herbst, and, like all bright students who are full of their own wisdom, they were eager to impart it to their teacher and enhance his wisdom. In the end, after they came home with him and he gave them the books, they found that the wording was ambiguous and Herbst had to confirm whether or not what they said was right. He was left with only a small portion of the afternoon break, time for lunch but not for a rest. Because he was so tired, he was afraid Henrietta would be talkative, which made him unable to rest. We would imagine that he did try resting right after lunch, but what use is such an attempt? As soon as he stretched out on his bed, he heard a sound at the door. He hurried to open it, so no one would ring the bell and wake Henrietta. He found a man at the door, a leather briefcase on his arm, his face like the face of a thousand other solicitors from national institutions. He began to barrage him with words about a particular individual who had just reached the age of fifty and in whose honor a grove of trees was being planted. Dr. Herbst was asked to contribute a tree. After the solicitor left, Herbst went back to bed, but he found no rest. He got up and went into town, to the French Library, hoping to find comfort in a new book. On the way, he met Anita Brik and went with her to Zichel’s, where they had a long chat. After leaving her, he took the bus home and heard news about some of the unfortunate events that had occurred that day. When he was finally home, he sat down to eat and had a long chat with his wife. If his mouth and mind had been with his wife, all would have been well. But his mouth was in one place, and his mind was elsewhere. This is why he was exhausted and eager to be alone.

He went up to his room, turned on the lamp, and surveyed his books. He stood there, closed his eyes, and concentrated, straining to remember what he was looking for. He opened his eyes and moved toward the row of books on the Church Fathers. He took down Tseckler’s book about Saint Jerome, not because he was interested in Tseckler, but because of an article in manuscript that was appended to the book. Since the article had no name, I’ll relay its subject: how Saint Jerome contributed to the work of Damasus on religious texts. It is very likely that the news Herbst heard on the bus, about a young scholar who was killed by Arabs, was what reminded him of that article, for Herbst had inherited the book, with all its appendices, from a young researcher who fell in battle.

Herbst sat with the book, studying the shape of the letters, scrutinizing them as if to analyze the writer’s character. He studied each letter, searched every line for a sign that the author was destined to die young. Several years had passed since his friend’s death. Others had died, others had been killed, others had committed suicide. But, whenever he thought of him, he felt his death anew. Why was this? Because he was killed at the beginning of the war, when people were not so accustomed to casualties. Now that the book was in his hand, he was overcome with fatigue, which led to a desire for sleep. He glanced at his bed, thinking: I’ll stretch out. I’ll have a rest. Actually, there’s no reason not to spend the night here, as I used to do before I went to Ahinoam with Henrietta to welcome Dani. He put Tseckler’s book on the table near his bed and slipped off his shoes to prepare himself for sleep. He was holding one of his shoes, inspecting it for traces of the shoeshine boy’s labor, when he realized that Tseckler’s book was not the right one for now. He returned it to its spot, scanned the shelf, and took down a book of Saint Jerome’s letters to read in bed. He undressed and climbed into bed.

After reading for a while, he came upon the letter in which Jerome tells about a chaste Christian woman who was falsely accused of betraying her husband, of the brutal torture to which she was subjected to force her to confess to a sin she hadn’t committed. The great event that occurred after she was tortured was also described. The ghost of a smile spread across Herbst’s lips, the smile of a literate person responding to an eloquent passage. He put down the book, placed his hand on it, and pursued his own train of thought: Jerome was a great writer. He succeeded in portraying all sorts of vicious tortures to achieve a desired end. Torture has been a common phenomenon since men first began to seek dominance over others. Still, the agonies described by Jerome were merely figments of his imagination. That broad-minded, saintly Christian concocted all those tortures. Gentiles! What an example of their corruption and brutality. Corruption and brutality that culminated in Hitler.

The light suddenly began to flicker, as an oil lamp does when it is about to go out. He blinked his eyes and was baffled, for he had just filled it with oil the day before. In fact, it was more than half full, but the wick was too short to reach the oil. He was too lazy to get up and add oil for the wick to draw on. He lay there, abandoning himself to all sorts of thoughts.

His mind wandered, settling on the last war. As he tended to do whenever he was reminded of it, he made an effort to forget what he had seen during the war, as well as the fact that he had actually fought in it. To some extent, he succeeded; to some extent, he failed. In any case, he didn’t really succeed in getting rid of war thoughts. Kings are at war with kings, nations with nations, religions with religions. A destroys B, B destroys C; they are all, finally, destroyed. If at first there was some logic to this scheme, it soon vanished, leaving only devastation in its wake. Herbst fixed his gaze on the wick that could no longer reach the oil because the fire had consumed it, and yet its light continued to flicker.

I am not one to infer connections, and I don’t mean to suggest that the sight of the lamp, et cetera, led him to think about Israel and the nations of the world. But I do allude to it, because it is appropriate. He gazed at the wick that didn’t reach the oil, thinking: The nations of the world berate Israel for considering itself a chosen people, and, in truth, it must be admitted that, compared to other nations, we have superior qualities. I don’t mean that every single one of us is virtuous and just, but, overall, the people as a whole are truly fine. There are intellectual women, concerned with the Jewish religion, who say, “Before, while we were in Germany, we didn’t doubt that the Jews were a chosen people. When we came to the Land of Israel, we saw that Jews are like everyone else, no better and no worse. Now that we have lived here several years, having seen what we have seen, we see that we are inferior to other nations.” These women have arrived at this conclusion because, when they lived elsewhere, they saw many Gentiles and knew very few Jews. Here, they see the entire people. Despite this, Herbst reflected, despite this, I believe that we are finer than other nations. What is so fine about the people of Israel? I, in any case, am not especially fine. The pursuit of bodily pleasure and the drive to create books are surely not fine, nor are these Jewish qualities. In this respect, I am no different from my peers. Yet I stand by what I said earlier: If a man sins once and doesn’t sin again, I don’t claim the sin is erased, but at least it isn’t compounded.