Only Yesterday (12 page)
Isaac paid his debts and became his own master, bought his groceries in the shop where he wanted, and ate where he wanted. And needless to say, he rented himself a room, for since the day he returned to Jaffa he had slept in the vestibule of a doctor who went abroad to be cured and left a guard to guard the house, and the guard let him sleep
with him. Meanwhile the doctor died and they sold his belongings and rented the house and got rid of the guard and took away Isaac’s place. Isaac moved from comrade to comrade and from room to room. Until the day he rented himself his own room. He also bought light clothing and a light hat and light shoes that walk on the sand and don’t sink in it. No longer is he bothered by the sun in his heavy clothes and doesn’t add to her warmth. The Land of Israel gives a new soul to the nation, but every single person has to tailor his clothing according to his own body. Because of his new clothes, his nick-name, The New Man, was forgotten, a name they had stuck on him the day he entered the Land, and is synonomous with Nincompoop. The Land, too, expanded for him, since when he was ashamed to meet his creditors, he had detoured around their shops. Now that he doesn’t owe anyone a penny, the whole Land is open before him, wherever he wants to go he goes.
Another thing Isaac did. He bought himself a spirit stove and a teapot and cups and pitchers and bowls and spoons and bread and tea and olives. He makes his own dinner and doesn’t waste his time in restaurants, whose pleasure is small and whose cost is great. He spends his day with others and at night he returns to his room and lights the lamp and draws water from the cistern and puts on a teapot and drinks tea and eats whatever his heart desires, bread and tomatoes and olives. Isaac has now learned to appreciate olives, which satisfy the heart and guard against malaria. If a guest comes to him from the city or the villages, they eat together and drink tea and rejoice with a glass of wine. You think the blessing of wine was created only for the rich! A glass of wine also kisses the mouth of a simple laborer. After they eat and drink, Isaac makes up a bed for his comrade. The Land of Israel is mild for her inhabitants and they don’t need luxu-ries. All a person needs is a roof over his head and a stone floor beneath him, and if he puts his clothes under his head and covers himself with his blanket, he gets his sleep.
Isaac at His Work
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Isaac is still a novice at work, for his brush leads him and he doesn’t lead his brush. He dips a brush in a pail and puts the paints on the objects without thinking before he acts. He lays it on thick where he should be sparing, is sparing where he should lay it on thick, and if something perfect comes out of his hand, it’s only by chance. We shall not offend Isaac’s honor if we count him among the painters who are called smearers, who stretch out their hands with paint and rely on the brush to do what it does, just so they get paid. After a few days, he learned a bit from experience. But every rose has a thorn, for the routine of work made a habit of the same mistakes he kept mak-ing. And even if he recognized that he was doing wrong, he didn’t know how to correct it, because he hadn’t learned this craft and wasn’t experienced in it.
To learn the craft properly, he should have gone to an artisan, and served as his apprentice for a year or two. After he became expert enough, he would work for him as a laborer for a salary of two Bishliks a day. But two Bishliks a day aren’t enough to support him, let alone during those two years when he doesn’t get any salary. And furthermore, there wasn’t anyone to teach him. The ten painters who lived in Jaffa weren’t accustomed to using assistants, not because they are destined to become their competitors, but because they have no need for them. There are painters in Jaffa who don’t have work in the city and go seeking work in the villages, and there are those who take any job that comes their way. When people move, they work as plas-terers and whitewashers, and in the winter, they make crates for oranges for export, for painting jobs aren’t found in every season and
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the work doesn’t support those who do it. Isaac, who was a bachelor, supported himself with it, those with a lot of children couldn’t support themselves with their craft.
Isaac worked at his craft and supported himself, sometimes less and sometimes more. In the end, he found his craft tedious, for if you’re not expert at a craft, it grows tedious. All that time, Isaac didn’t have a moment of satisfaction. By day he was depressed as he worked and at night he saw the other painters shrug their shoulders at him and say, You’re a painter? You’re not a painter, you’re a smearer. And if he dozed off, in his sleep he peeped out of a box or a cabinet to see how the artisan does it. What the artisan does is to fill his brush with paint and throw it in his eyes and blind him. If he climbed up to the top of the roof to look from there, the artisan pulls the ladder down from under him and he falls into a can of paints. Thus Isaac despaired of improving, and pulled his yoke with an anguished heart, like those who learned their craft in a casual way and work like a don-key in a mill, turning the millwheel with blinkered eyes until he wears out his soul and dies.
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One day Isaac went to the inauguration of the synagogue of the Artisans’ Center in Jaffa. When he arrived there, most of the people were already drunk. Sheinkin, who had already concluded his speech, sat at the head and sang a tune without words, and the heads of the synagogue bim-bammed after him, bim bim bam, nodding their heads and snapping their fingers. And the rest of the people, every one with a glass in hand, this one drinking and that one pouring into his comrade’s mouth and another one dancing in front of a barrel of wine that was bottom up. Isaac wasn’t a member of the Center, but when it comes to drinking on a joyous occasion, they don’t distinguish between members and nonmembers. They brought him a glass. He saw one man lying in a puddle of wine and folks were teasing him. Isaac asked what that was. They grinned and said,
Let the young men now arise and play before us
, he’s as drunk as Lot. He felt sorry for him. He put down the glass and went to him. He stood him on his feet and propped him up and took him to hisroom and lay him on his bed and took care of him until he recovered from the wine.
That man, Yohanan Lightfoot by name, was a jack-of-all-trades. And even though we don’t approve of a man who is a jack-of- all-trades, we think differently about that artisan, whose Creator blessed him with blessed hands, and everything he did he did well, either in iron or wood or stone. He was tall and slim and his face was creased. And when he spoke, all his lines laughed, and his small eyes sprayed sparks of laughter and derision. They called him Sweet Foot. Why? Because once he slept in a vineyard in Sarona and a snake came and bit him on the foot. He went to a doctor. The doctor told him, The only thing we can do for you is take off your foot, other-wise the venom will spread throughout your body and you’ll die. He went to the synagogue to pray for himself. On his return, he fell down with arms and legs outspread and wept loudly. An old Arab passed by and asked him why he was crying so hard. He told him. The Arab examined his foot and told him, Wait until I come back. He went and brought a donkey loaded with halvah. He wrapped the swollen foot in halvah. The halvah sucked out the venom and he recovered. They started calling him Sweet Foot until his name stuck.
He lived in the sands near the sea, far from folks, in a hut he had made for himself, and he brought good soil and planted himself a few vegetables and a few flowers, and went to work only when he ran out of food. And whatever work he did, either for himself or for others, he did for his own enjoyment. And sometimes he left his work before he finished and all the coaxing of his employer couldn’t help at all. And even though all Jaffa knew his ways, they showed up at his door and sought him out, for he was an expert artisan and everything that came from his hand was perfect and handsome. He lived without a woman, and sometimes a woman came to his house and sat with him until he said to her, Thus far, my sister, from now on this man wants to scratch his foot. One of those who used to come to his house was a rich woman, the widow of an American rabbi, who married Sweet Foot, and after the feast of the wedding week, they got di-vorced. Sometimes she came to his house to discuss matchmaking and to see if he was alive, because he didn’t eat like other people, but
made do with raw vegetables from his garden or dipped his bread in the juice of figs he had cooked for several days. And when she came she brought two baskets with her, one of food and one of drink, and she sat with him until he told her, Thus far, my sister, from now on this man wants to scratch his foot. And he withdraws and sits in front of his hut and strums an instrument or teaches his dog clever tricks.
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It was not long before Isaac went by Sweet Foot’s place. Sweet Foot saw him and called to him. As they sit, he tells him some of his adventures. His father, a native of Kishinev, was a painter of icons. He left his city and his icons and went to Odessa to paint there in the theaters. Later he returned to Kishinev and opened a workshop for icons, and fifty laborers worked in his shop. His father had a friend who had ascended to Jerusalem after the pogrom in Kishinev. He wrote to Father, Come to Jerusalem and I promise you an abundant livelihood. Father, who was religious and didn’t drink a drop of water without blessing it before and after, when he heard that you could live in Jerusalem the Holy City, he took his wife and sons and ascended. He found a good living in Jerusalem, the Russians bought all the icons he made and paid him nicely, and all the other Christians, guardians of the churches in Jerusalem, would quarrel over him, this one said, Fix my icon, and that one said, Fix my icon. And an Armenian mediated between them, since Father didn’t know all the languages in Jerusalem. There is no church in Jerusalem that Fa-ther didn’t work in, and everybody was satisfied with him because of his skill and because of his integrity. The young Greeks saw it and envied him. They came to him to study, and thought that when they learned the craft, the world would no longer need the Jew. And Fa-ther, who was a good man, consented to teach them. And he wasn’t afraid they would compete with him; on the contrary, he laughed at the competitors, who often did him a favor, for they would come ask him to fix what they had broken, as in the Christian church on the Via Dolorosa and in their churches in Bethlehem and Hekeldama, where they needed Father to fix what was damaged. Now Father doesn’t do anything, but sits and recites Psalms. But before he left his
craft, he painted the Hurbah of Rabbi Yehuda the Hasid, the ruined synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, and did it very very well, as he didn’t do for any Gentile. And he didn’t take money, for everything he did he did for the sake of Heaven. At first, Father hoped his son would be a painter too, but the son didn’t want to, for, ever since he was a child, he was excited by real crafts, and even before he was four years old, when he heard the sound of a hammer, he would put down his food and run to the smithy, and Father swore to expel the smithy from the street. Now Sweet Foot turned his attention to Primus stoves, whose sound no one could resist, since wood and coal had become expensive and everybody started using Primus stoves. And so he invented a vessel like a wreath to put around the top of a Primus that insulates and decreases the noise. Similarly, he is busy making a kind of crown for a candle since, on summer nights, the windows are open and sometimes a wind comes and puts out the can-dle, and if it’s the Sabbath, it’s a double grief. And so he is making a kind of crown to put around the candle to stop the wind. He had started making a lot of other things, but he doesn’t know which to do first, for as soon as he turns to one thing, the other things come immediately and tickle his fingers and want him to tend to them.
Isaac sat at the feet of Sweet Foot and engraved every word on his heart, fearing he would stop talking. Sweet Foot didn’t stop, but on the contrary, went on talking, for it had been a few days since anyone had happened by him, aside from his ex-wife, who pestered him with her matchmaking, and when he got rid of her and a per-son came by to talk with him, his mouth opened like a gushing spring. And there was something special in his conversation, for Isaac learned things from it that he had wondered about, and he was also instructed about matters that hadn’t occurred to him. And when he bid farewell to him, he said to him, When you come by this way, drop in on me.
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Two days later, Isaac came by that way. At this time, Sweet Foot was busy feeding his dog and didn’t look at the guest. Isaac saw that he was in the way and turned to leave. Said Sweet Foot to him, Tomorrow I’ll be working at such-and-such a place. If you want, come and work with me, but I don’t guarantee that you’ll find me. And as he talked, he picked up the dog and lifted him to his face. He looked into his eyes and asked, Had enough? Then he turned his face to Isaac and said, If you find me, you find me, and if you don’t find me, you don’t find me.
The next day, Isaac came and found him busy at work. He squinted his small eyes and laughed. He put down his brush and said, I knew you’d come, and you came. And you even brought the tools of your trade with you. Brave man. I see that you have understood the nature of human beings, that if they put doubt into your heart you know there’s no room for doubt. Now take your brush and dip it and we’ll learn from one another what to do and what not to do. In truth, I like to do what others don’t do and I don’t do what others do do. But I advise you to do as every artisan does.
Isaac picked up his brush and worked with him. Sometimes he would take his brush out of his hand and correct the spot and sometimes he would laugh and say, You seem to have learned from all the painters in the world. I am sure you will become a smearer like them. In the evening, he took him to his hut and shared his food with him, as they sat in the light of a concave lamp without glass, for glass is wont to break, and he gave up on it before it broke. And as they sat together, he told him about all kinds of work and about all kinds of human beings, and about the kinds of women who think a man can’t get along without them. Indeed a man should stay away from them. And if he doesn’t stay away from them, it’s a sign that he’s like them. And if he’s like them, he’s certainly superfluous. One fe-male sex is enough for the world.
The second watch of the night had passed and Sweet Foot was still sitting and talking. The sound of the sea grew louder and its waves crashed noisily as if they were knocking on doors that didn’t open, and a damp, chilly wind began to blow. A bluish light mixed with sulfur glittered, and sea and land seemed to jolt. The dog barked in his sleep, he scratched his skin and pulled in his scared bones. And once again a terrifying light flashed from one end of the sky to the other and the sea roared a mighty roar. Isaac felt his bones dozing off,
but his heart was awake. The lamp suddenly went out and Sweet Foot broke off and said, Tomorrow we shall not go to work. He stood up and offered him his bed. Isaac went home. Sweet Foot called after him, But tomorrow after tomorrow we will work.
Two days later, Isaac got up early in the morning and went to him. He found him standing and warming up some drink made of fruit juice. Sweet Foot saw Isaac and said to him, Since you’ve come, sit down, and since you’re sitting, drink. Isaac reminded him of what he had said the day before yesterday. Sweet Foot began laughing and said, You’ve got a memory, just like a calendar. And as he spoke, he pulled the dog’s ear and asked him, What do you think, Sweetiepie, about that gentleman? Then he picked up some junk, and about every single piece of junk he told a few tales. Just as Isaac resigned himself to the fact that the day would be wasted, Sweet Foot took him and said, Let’s go.
He locked the door and put the key in front of the dog and said, Run. Put it away. The dog took the key in his teeth and ran wherever he ran, and came back and rubbed his head on Sweet Foot’s shoes. Sweet Foot patted his head and scratched his neck and lifted him up to his face, opened his mouth and looked at his teeth, put him back down on the ground, and said, Now run and don’t be too wild. He tapped him on the back affectionately, and said to Isaac, Let’s go.
They walked until they came to a big house, a kind of man-sion. The owner stood on the doorsill of the house and it seemed that he was about to take out all his wrath on that artisan who was late in coming. Sweet Foot rubbed his nose like a man who came to survey his property and found a man there he didn’t need. The owner lowered his shoulders and began flattering the artisan. Sweet Foot paid no heed to him and said to Isaac, If you want to start, let’s start.
They worked there two days, at last Sweet Foot got fed up with working. He dropped it and said to Isaac, You work and I’ll come and fill in after you. When he came back Isaac asked him, Have I done well? Sweet Foot looked at him and said, A man should know that by himself. He saw that he was sorry. He picked up the brush and passed it back and forth until he had smeared over everything
Isaac had done, and he stayed there until midnight painting the whole thing over. When he summoned him the next day, Isaac asked him in a whisper, What can a person do to satisfy you. Sweet Foot laughed affectionately and said, What do you care? No matter what, I won’t be satisfied with your work.
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