Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam (14 page)

The sand was damp and firmly packed; the moon lay on the dim beach, and the dim beach was its mirror. Like drawn bows to which the arrows had not yet been fitted stood the six girls, each waiting for the word that would set her off. But the word was still unspoken; it seemed that Rechnitz had forgotten all about their agreement of a moment ago, or perhaps he had not forgotten and that was the cause of his delay. One girl asked, “Why is he taking so long?” And another said, “Come on, Dr. Rechnitz, say the word!”

Then Jacob, in fear and trembling, called, “One!” To left and right of him the girls quivered with excitement, so that the very sands beneath their feet quivered too. As for Rechnitz, he too was trembling, and perhaps more than they. Suddenly Rachel cried, “Wait, Jacob, wait!” She left her place, knelt down in front of Rechnitz, took the wreath from her arm and passed it to him before going back to stand with her comrades. “Now, Doctor,” she said, “you can say, ‘two, three.’ ” Rechnitz heard her but did not heed, or heeded her but did not hear. Then abruptly the words broke from his lips of their own accord and a voice was heard saying, “One, two, three!” and the girls shot off on their run.

XXXII

Jacob held the garland that Rachel Heilperin had plaited from the dried seaweeds she had found on his table. He looked about him, uncertainly. The six girls raced side by side until one went twisting ahead, like a ball of twine that has dropped from the hands of the knitter. Then she was caught up and returned to the cluster of her companions. Again the rank was broken, by one here and one there, until one girl outpaced all the rest for a time, only to be overtaken; and again the group came together and again broke up. His eyes began to burn painfully; still he watched the running girls. He pricked up his ears to hear the sound of their feet, though this was difficult to catch, for now the tide was rising and the noise of the waves kept breaking through.

At the sound of the waves, at the sight of the limitless expanse of sea, Rechnitz closed his eyes. And now he saw his mother kneeling down before him. He was a small boy; she was threading a new tie round his collar, for it was the day Shoshanah was born and he was invited to the Consul’s house. But surely, thought Jacob to himself, she can’t be my mother, and it goes without saying that she isn’t Shoshanah’s mother either, because one is far from here and the other is dead; if I open my eyes I shall see that this is nothing but an optical illusion. The illusion went so far as to present him at once with his own mother and with Shoshanah’s; and since one object could not be two, it followed of necessity that here was neither his own mother nor Shoshanah’s. But if so, who was she? Shoshanah herself, perhaps? Of course not, for Shoshanah was ill in bed.

He opened his eyes and saw that all was but the shadow of an image, what a man compares to what he actually sees. Of course this was neither his mother nor Shoshanah’s mother nor Shoshanah, but Leah and Rachel and Asnat and Raya and Mira and Tamara. Jacob shifted the wreath from one hand to the other and looked across at the girls who were racing side by side, or one close after the other, each trying to outstrip her companion. Rachel was as light-footed as a gazelle; it seemed likely that she would outrun the rest. But Leah, the deliberate one who measured all her movements, now passed Rachel, and Mira overtook Leah, naturally enough, since she was so accustomed to exercise and running. Finally she was left behind Asnat, with Rachel and Raya outstripping them both. Little Tamara vanished into thin air, she was swallowed up in space; but again she appeared, only to be swallowed up again and vanish from sight. Yet apparently she had managed to pass her companions. At first it had made no difference to Jacob who would outrun whom; now he felt some regret as he saw Tamara beating them all. At least there was some comfort in the thought that the old cemetery was far away and that one of her friends would probably get ahead before she could reach it. Indeed, a figure was now to be seen running ahead of Tamara, but since she was a good way off one could not tell quite who she was. Jacob shut his eyes and left it for time to decide. But time waited and did not defer to Jacob.

A good while passed. Rechnitz stood motionless. What has happened? he wondered. By now they should have returned, but they are not here yet. He looked around him. Heaven and earth, land and sea, were all confounded, and the waves of the sea were raised on high, the waves crashed like thunder, and the sound of the girls’ running feet could not be heard. Why haven’t they come back? he asked himself. The sea grew even vaster, its waves rubbed against the dry land, but there was no sound of the girls’ feet, no sight of the girls themselves. Where had they gone, where had they vanished?

Rechnitz hung the wreath over his arm and began to run. He ran until he reached the place and found them all there, as well as one who had not been with them at the start. She was in her nightgown, like a maiden suddenly alarmed in her sleep. Silent and fearful stood the girls, and with them stood Shoshanah Ehrlich, who had outstripped them all in the race. Neither Leah nor Rachel nor Asnat nor Raya nor Mira nor Tamara had seen her running, yet each of them had been aware in the course of the race that someone was ahead of her, without knowing this someone as Shoshanah Ehrlich, Jacob’s friend, who for many days and weeks had been asleep, never rising from her bed. With fear in their souls they forgot the garland and their agreement with Jacob. And Jacob, too, forgot all this as he stood before Shoshanah.

Suddenly there was a voice calling him by name, a voice that came, as it were, from beneath Shoshanah’s eyelashes. Jacob shut his eyes and replied in a whisper, “Shoshanah, are you here?”

Shoshanah’s eyelashes signaled assent. She put out her hands, took the crown from Jacob’s arm and placed it on her head.

Here, for the time being, we have brought to an end our account of the affairs of Jacob Rechnitz and Shoshanah Ehrlich. These are the same Shoshanah and Jacob who were betrothed to one another through a solemn vow. Because of it, we have called this whole account “Betrothed,” though at first we had thought to call it “The Seven Maidens.”

Annotations to “Betrothed”

3. Jaffa / An ancient port city, and main center of the Second
Aliyah
and Jewish settlement in the early 20
th
century; today the southernmost part of the modern municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Agnon lived in Jaffa when he first arrived in the Land of Israel in 1908, roughly the same time as the setting of this story.

3. Daily cover / Cf. Deuteronomy 33:12.

3. Ishmaelites / Muslims.

3. Jacob Rechnitz / As with many of Agnon’s characters, it is likely that the author has encoded a form of “midrash” into our protagonist’s name. Jacob is reminiscent of the Biblical forefather, whose name (
Ya’akov
in Hebrew) carries a meaning of “to circumvent” or to be “crooked” (Genesis 25:26, but also 27:36). Recall that the Biblical Jacob was manipulated to marry a woman against his will (Genesis 29), as is that other scholar in Agnon’s writing, Akavia Mazal – whose first name is etymologically identical with Ya’akov/Jacob – in “In the Prime of her Life” in
Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town and Other Novellas
(Toby Press, 2014). Rechnitz is a town in Austrian Burgenland, near the Hungarian border, but may evoke
“recht”
meaning right or proper. If so, Jacob Rechnitz’s name embodies the coincidence of opposites: a crooked uprightness, and may recall Agnon’s early novella of misaligned love, “And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight” (
VeHaya He’Akov LeMishor
, cf. Isaiah 40:4), forthcoming in translation from Toby Press. Avraham Holtz suggests that Rechnitz might be a Hebrew anagram for
nitzrakh
– meaning “needy”.

Ze’ev Tiomkin

4. Fever of land speculation / Wave of land speculation in and around 1891, coordinated by
Hovevei Zion
leader Ze’ev (Vladimir) Tiomkin (1861–1927), leading to the Ottoman Government forbidding land sales in Palestine to Jews, resulting in widespread bankruptcies.

4. Turk / The Ottoman Turks ruled the Land of Israel from 1517 to 1917.

4. Council of the Lovers of Zion in Odessa / The
Hovevei Zion
(Lovers of Zion) were European Zionist groups, founded in the 1880s to promote Jewish immigration and agricultural settlement in Palestine. The Odessa Committee was the branch of the movement in Russia, recognized as an official charity by the authorities.

HaShilo’ah

5.
HaShilo’ah
/ Monthly Hebrew journal founded by Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha’Am) in 1896, covering Jewish life, literature and culture.

5.
Razsvyet
/ “The Dawn”; Russian-language Zionist weekly, published in St. Petersburg between 1907–10.

Caulerpa prolifera

6. My vineyard / Cf. Song of Songs 1:6.

6. Caulerpa / A genus of seaweeds in the family Caulerpaceae, the name means “creeping stem”.

6. Cryptogam / A plant that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds.

7. Hovered over the face of the waters / Cf. Genesis 1:2.

7. Ehrlich / German family name meaning “honest” or “honorable” or “upright”; cf. meaning of Jacob Rechnitz’s name, above.