Shira (86 page)

When he is finished eating, Herbst goes back to his room, stretches out on the couch, and reads a book. Not one of the books he had set aside to read, but a book that appeals to him at that moment. After reading for a while and dozing for a bit, he gets up, showers, has some coffee, and goes to visit his wife. If she is alone, he sits with her. He asks her questions, and she asks him questions. She asks what he ate, what he drank, how he slept, what Sarah said, what Tamara is doing, how the garden is doing, what Firadeus is doing, how they are treating Ursula in her office, and so on. He asks how she is, how the baby is, what name she wants to give the child – having already agreed not to name him after one of their relatives with long, old-fashioned German names and not to construct one of those modern names that will sound banal in no time. If he finds some woman friend is visiting, he makes a point of being brief, to give them a chance to talk.

One day, he found a woman there who told a story. Since her story is relevant to the event, namely, the birth of a little brother and a circumcision ceremony, I will repeat what she said, adding a word of my own. “I was six years old when my little brother was born. On the day of his
brit
, I said to my teacher, ‘Mrs. Foiese,’ which was her name, ‘please, Mrs. Foiese, may I go home an hour early?’ The teacher said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘I have a new brother.’ The teacher asked, ‘What do you people do when a baby boy is born?’ I told her, ‘We have a
brit
and the baby is circumcised.’
‘What
?’ the teacher asked. I repeated, ‘We have him circumcised.’ The teacher said, ‘What’s that? You mean baptized?’ I was terrified. I began to shake and tremble. I was overcome with fear. I knew baptism was a Christian term, and I was afraid that, God forbid, they intended to convert my little brother. The teacher saw my tears and said, ‘All right, all right, you can go home.’ Another thing happened. A girl of about twelve said to me, ‘You should be ashamed. You crucified the Christ child.’ I didn’t know who the Christ child was, nor did I know anything about crucifying. But I realized that my friend was connecting me with some dreadful event, an event I had nothing to do with. The teacher, trying to make amends, said, ‘She wasn’t the one who crucified the Christ child; it was her ancestors who did it.’ I went home crying and said I couldn’t stay in a gentile school. My parents sent me to a Jewish school. These events led me to Judaism, to Zionism, to the Land of Israel.”

I will mention one more woman who came to visit Henrietta: Mrs. Rika Weltfremdt, the wife of Professor Ernst Weltfremdt. I don’t remember if I have already said what she is like, and I don’t imagine she adds to the saga of Shira and Herbst. Though this is the case, I won’t neglect her. I’ll tell a little bit about her, as an act of charity toward this unfortunate soul, removed from her source of vitality, ending up here with us, where no one pays attention to her poems, and even her family ignores them. Through deception and insipid compliments, they avoid reading her poetry.

Rika Weltfremdt is a small, thin woman, graceful and delicate. Her eyes are kind and lovely, brown and direct, viewing the world with deep yearning that tempts others to abuse her sensitivity. Because of her size, she is overshadowed by her husband. His limbs are gross, his eyebrows heavy. He deals with words as if he were dealing out new provinces and adding them to the universe. She relates to her husband as she relates to everyone else, as she used to relate to her father, her brothers, her sisters. Her father, who owned two shoe factories and was especially fond of her, gave her a dowry that exceeded her sisters’ by one part and found her a husband who was a doctor and a lecturer, and, if not for the horrors that befell the world, he would have been a professor in a German university by now. Because of these horrors, he was compelled to move to the Land of Israel. But even here he is recognized. Though scholarship is not valued here unless it contributes to nationalist interests, Zionist leaders acknowledge that he is a genuine scholar. Since he has an international reputation, those in the Land of Israel take credit for him when it suits them. However, as he becomes more ample, Rikchen becomes even more slight. No one is left to listen to her poems, except for a young lady who helps out in her daughter’s household. Now, having heard that Mrs. Herbst did a wonderful thing – that she gave birth to a son – she was inspired to produce a poem, which she brought to Mrs. Herbst. She was so modest that she made it seem secondary to the perfume she brought as a gift. It was good that she brought the poem, to perpetuate the fine and worthy sentiments of our sisters, and to convey her feelings about the birth of a Jewish child at a time when the seed of Israel is, God forbid, in danger of being eliminated from the earth. If the poem isn’t really a poem, the sentiments in it are truly sentiments, and those of us who look for opinions and sentiments in poetry regard those lines as poetry and accept their author as a poet. Since I’m not capable of translating her poem, I will put it aside and get back to Henrietta and to Zahara, who has come to see her mother.

Zahara came, bringing with her produce from the earth of Ahinoam, along with a hat and booties that were her own handiwork. Zahara’s delight in her little brother was beyond all measure. It was the delight we note in a woman who has been waiting for years and finally achieves what she achieves. The two women, mother and daughter, sit together, one in the bed, the other on the chair in front of it. One has graying hair and wrinkles on her face, her upper lip, and the corners of her mouth; the other has smooth skin, not a wrinkle on her face, an unwrinkled soul. They sit saying things to each other that they have never said before, accompanying their words with exclamations of joy and affection, emotions so powerful that they infect the nurses in charge of the new mother and her son. When they bring him to Henrietta so she can give him her milk, Zahara says, “How lucky you are to have such an adorable baby. If only I could nurse him, I would snatch him away and run off to Ahinoam with him. Tell me the truth, Mother, would you give him to me? I already told Dani that Grandma has a baby uncle for him. I think he actually understood. All day he was chirping ‘baby grandpa,’ and at night, before he fell asleep, he said ‘baby uncle.’ Oh, Mother, if you could hear him, you would be so pleased, so pleased. I can’t begin to tell you how pleased you would be. I tell you, Mother, Dani already loves his uncle. Really, Mother. He really loves him. And I love him too. But, Mother, I thought I had used up my supply of love. You brought me a brother, and new love was created. Where does it come from? I really don’t know, but I feel it stirring inside me, setting my heart in motion, and I love him. I love you and Father and Sarah and Tamara, all of you. I love you all. When they came and told me Father was on the phone, when I ran and heard the news, I was so excited I wept with joy. You know, Mother, that I don’t get excited. But I was so excited that I said to Avraham, ‘Avraham, I’m going to Jerusalem.’ Avraham said, ‘If you want to go, go.’ So I collected myself, took off, and here I am. Tell me, Mother, isn’t it good that I came? Make me be quiet, Mother. My heart is full because…because…How shall I say it? My heart…I won’t say anything. Here comes Father. Mazel tov, Father. I’ll go out for a minute and wash my eyes. When I come back, we can go home together. They won’t let me spend the night with you, Mother. Don’t worry about my eyes. They’re stinging because of the dusty road. I made our driver go as fast as he could. At that speed, all I could see was the dust in my eyes.”

Once again, Manfred sat with Henrietta, and they said things we are familiar with, adding some words about Zahara – that, as she gets older, she gets more and more emotional. But her life seems to be in good order. Would that Tamara’s course were as smooth. While Henrietta and Manfred were talking, Zahara managed to wash her tear-stained eyes, to go back to look at her little brother, and to find he had features like those of her Dani. Manfred had already concluded his conversation with Henrietta. If he had sat with her a thousand years, he wouldn’t have added anything. For this reason, when Zahara knocked and entered, he leaped up to join her. If not for the nurse, who gave a sign indicating that Zahara must leave too, she would have stayed with her mother another hour and yet another hour – a thousand years, at least.

Father and daughter left for home. Because Zahara wanted to see Sarah and because she wanted to get to see her an hour sooner, she prevailed on her father to waste his money on a taxi that happened by, rather than wait for the bus, since there was no way of knowing when it might be in the mood to come. They arrived with the speed of an arrow and were home before they had a chance to exchange a word. They came home and found Sarah alone. Firadeus had washed the dishes, given Sarah a bath, and gone home. Tamara had gone off, for just a few minutes, to the German colony. Unless my hypothesis is incorrect, she went to the post office to send off some of her proclamations. Tamara is clever, and she knows no one would suspect that mail from the German colony comes from Jews seeking freedom.

Chapter twenty-three

F
rom the moment Zahara entered the house, all household procedures were set on end. This applied to the food, to the cleaning, and especially to Sarah. She examined her from head to toe, changed her clothes, and combed her hair, arranging it in two braids tied with red elastics that emphasized its shiny golden lights. As soon as Herbst came home with his daughter, he realized he had someone he could depend on, that he was no longer needed to supervise. But, since he had become accustomed to staying in during the past four days, except for the hours spent visiting his wife, he chose to continue in this mode until Henrietta’s return from the hospital. Herbst hadn’t spent that much time at home in years. Whatever he did found favor in his daughter’s eyes. Her voice was never harsh; she never said anything that irritated him. I must admit – smart as Henrietta was, and concerned as she was with her husband’s welfare and peace of mind – she sometimes irritated him with her pedantic ways, which were thoroughly irrational. Much as Herbst tried to defend her, he regarded her behavior toward him in those petty matters as obstinate and cruel. As soon as Zahara came and took charge of the household, not a harsh sound was heard. On the contrary, Zahara accepted every foolish act of Manfred’s, even when he himself felt he had done something improperly, as if it were meant to be done that way and as if it had been done well. Tamara, who made a pretense, at first, of keeping an eye on household affairs and on Sarah, was only too happy to pass the reins to her sister. In fact, she said to her, “From here on, it’s all yours.” Manfred roamed through his house and garden, books and bushes, in a state of absolute repose. He knew that he could now go to Shira and spend the whole night there, without having to invent alibis. Still, he chose to stay home. Moving from activities in his room to those in the garden, he played with Sarah, sharing her bread (actually a mud pie), listening to music made by her wind-up doll, rocking either Sarah or the doll on his lap, singing jingles learned from Ursula. Playing with little Sarah, Father Manfred browsed through the nursery rhymes he found among Tamara’s books, as well as other assorted literature written for children. As he rummaged through these volumes, he was astonished to have lived in the country for so many years without considering the spiritual nourishment provided to children in the Land of Israel. His two elder daughters were raised here, so he should have taken an interest in this matter. If he happened to hear a children’s poem or to pick up a children’s book, he would discharge his duty with an outburst of intellectual ire: To think that they feed children such drivel, that they expect them to develop taste with these contrived rhymes! He was moved to ire rather than to serious study or an attempt at reform. Though I don’t mean to compare one thing to another, or, for that matter, one man to another, I will make an exception and say that, in this respect, Manfred Herbst was very much like Julian Weltfremdt. But one of these gentlemen denounced the scholars in the Land of Israel, while the other denounced its educators. In fact, had one of them found a job, he might have instituted some educational reforms, whereas the other was content to rail against educators and their inane practices, becoming particularly irate at the poems written for children and at the entire contrived body of literature designed for young readers. He was irritated to the point of despising that entire body of literature and those who produced it.

Manfred Herbst was a man of integrity, who didn’t tend to involve himself in a subject unless he was thoroughly familiar with it. Which may be why he had avoided the area of education all those years. With the birth of his son – because of which he happened to be playing with his little daughter – he begin to think about education. Hear this: he didn’t pick up a book to investigate the opinions of educators in other times, but he began, on his own, to consider what would be an appropriate education for his son. I’ll try to outline his opinions, what he pictured to himself in terms of how he would like to educate his son. (1) Total control of the body: the ability to fall asleep at any time and in any place, as well as a total ability to wake up whenever he likes. (2) To eat whatever he finds, without elaborate preparation, with no fuss. (3) To pronounce all words correctly. (4) To acquire an aesthetic and readable handwriting. (5) To choose a profession that will not make him dependent on others’ opinions and, similarly, to avoid any individual or enterprise that leads to dependence on others’ opinions. (6) To learn languages and their grammar. (7) To be meticulous in everything, to stand by his word, to keep every promise, to tell the truth even if it hurts. Manfred included many other matters in the fundamentals of education. I have chosen only a small number of them and have made no attempt to present them in any order, beyond the one in which they occurred to him.

I will now try to transmit some of his thoughts about human affairs and education. Again, I will take up each item in the order in which it occurred to him. Humanity suffers from the fact that the earliest education is in the hands of women. From birth, human beings cling to their mother’s breast, and, as they nurse, they become dependent on a woman. If this was the Creator’s goal, He was very successful. It is in the nature of man to be drawn toward a woman. In
Sefer Haggadah
, our compilation of ancient legends, I found the tale of a man whose wife died, leaving him an infant son. The Holy and Blessed One granted him teats, so he could nurse the child. In this splendid legend, a free-thinking storyteller proceeds to depict an ideal person: someone who doesn’t depend on mother’s milk. Alas, he did not tell us about this baby’s subsequent development and how he related to women.