We used to stroll in the streets and neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Mr. Klein straight as a cedar and I swaying like a reed. As he walked, he would lift his stick and point to a house or a ruin, and tell me how much money had been sunk in the ruin, or how often the house had passed from hand to hand, from bank to bank, from speculator to speculator, from creditor to creditor, and it was still doubtful whether the creditor had acquired permanent possession, for one of the ten things said of Jerusalem is that no house can be held in absolute ownership there. So in every neighborhood he used to tell me how many lives had been spent there and how much Jewish money had gone down the drain. This is how it used to happen: When a Jew wanted a plot of land, the speculators would immediately raise the price. But Jews are stubborn by nature, and stubborn by heredity; they say that real estate can never be overvalued. So they go to the owner of the land and raise their bid. But the trouble is that the speculators are also Jews, stubborn by nature and heredity; so they raise their bids too, until a speck of dust costs a golden pound. Humble people have no option but to withdraw from the deal in disappointment, and but for him there would be no neighborhood here, not even a house. But this is a story within a story, and every story is longer than the earth — and any one of them would take a thousand and one nights to tell. And as he told me about the building of Jerusalem, so he would talk to me about the land and its worthies. Mr. Klein used to say that by the nature of things every great man was small to begin with, so small that he needed a godfather at his circumcision, and he had been privileged to be godfather to most of the leaders.
During the year in which Mr. Gedaliah Klein died, and half a year before as well, I had been separated from him somewhat by reason of distance, because he lived in town and I had gone out to live in a distant neighborhood, and when I came to town I did not happen to see him. Now that he had passed away I said to myself: I will write a letter of condolence to his relatives.
2
When I sat down to write I did not know whom to write to, for of all his household I knew only one daughter, and she had no great respect or regard for me, for she remembered the early days when I would shuffle my feet on the threshold of her father’s house and he would pay me no attention, though she did not know that in the meantime Mr. Klein had changed his attitude to me. So I girded up my intellectual loins, as the literary men say, wrote a few words of condolence, and put the letter aside till the next day to check it.
I felt depressed and sad. I always feel sad whenever I am distracted from my work. Some people can do many things at a time without worrying, but as soon as I interrupt my work my heart feels sad, like a bookcase empty of books, or a field riddled by ants. For a year and a half I had set aside every other occupation to study the works of our later sages. I gave up the pleasures of the time and cut down my sleep, but not all dreamers see in sleep the good dreams I saw in waking. Days gone by and communities uprooted would come and appear before me, as at the time when Israel clung to the fear of God and were deeply in love with the wisdom of the Torah. And sometimes I was privileged to see the great men of Israel, the princes of the Torah in that generation; to perceive, if not the depths of their words, at least the fragrance of their teaching. There were times and periods when we had patriarchs and elders, judges and kings, heroes and men of war, seers and prophets, men of the Great Synagogue and Hasmoneans, sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud, scholars and eminences, nobles and princes, rabbis and codifiers, hymnalists and poets, who exalted the glory of Israel and sanctified the Divine Name in the world. But I love our later sages. Like a child in the darkening Sabbath, who comforts himself with the thought that the Sabbath still delays its departure, so I would comfort myself with the words of our later sages, which showed that there was still a little left of the Torah. For love of the Torah I would sit and study until the second watch of the night, and if I went to bed I would rely on the Divine Mercy to raise me up in the morning so that I could go back to my studies. Until the affair of that letter, when I put aside my studies.
I took a book, to restore my equanimity with the study of the Torah. The book slipped and fell out of my hand. I picked it up and opened it, but forgot what I had opened it for. When I remembered and looked into it, the letters skipped about in confusion and did not combine to make any sense. And I, too, skipped from one subject to another until I returned to the subject of Mr. Klein. The image of Mr. Klein rose before me, as when he and I used to stroll in the streets and neighborhoods of Jerusalem. I said to myself: I will go out and stroll a little, and recover my peace of mind.
3
I had not managed to cross the road before Mr. Gedaliah Klein tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Where have you been and where are you going?” “I am having a stroll,” I replied. Mr. Klein stroked his handsome beard and said, “I only came out to stroll too. So let us stroll together.”
The sunny days had passed; and a cold wind was blowing. No rain had fallen as yet, but clustering clouds in the sky foreboded the approach of winter. Mr. Klein was dressed in a fine fur coat, with a collar of silver fox over his shoulders and around his neck, and a fine cane with a silver knob in his hand. The white hair of his head and his white beard gleamed like the silver knob in his hand, and his face gleamed out of the collar of his coat like polished copper.
I began to apologize for not having come to see him for several days. He held up his hand to my mouth, as a person does who wants to speak and bids his companion be silent. And immediately he started talking and talking. Even if a bird had come from Paradise to teach us its talk, he would not have stopped his. Many things Mr. Klein told me on that occasion, and more than he told he hinted. From all he said I understood that, had he not raised up Jerusalem out of the dust, nothing worth a row of buttons would have been done.
The sun stood on the tops of the hills and enveloped the rocks with clouds of gold. Mr. Gedaliah Klein’s beard glowed even more than that gold, and so did the silver knob in his hand.
So we strolled. He talked and I listened. The streets darkened, and the houses hid in their shadows. Old men and women ran by, as they do close to the time of the afternoon prayer. As they passed, they looked at Mr. Klein in wonderment and moved their lips. I looked after them in surprise, for they and their clothes were different from those of the other old people of Jerusalem.
After we had made the rounds of several places we came back to my house.
I began to be afraid that Mr. Klein might want to go up to my room — and the letter of condolence I had written to his daughter lay open on my table.
I began to shiver.
“Are you worried about anything?” he said. I was silent and did not answer. “I see you are shivering,” he said. I thought it would not be polite to tell him what I was worried about, so I said to him, “Yesterday my grandfather appeared to me in a dream.” “Is your grandfather dead?” said he. I nodded in assent. “Well?” he said. “I will go and kindle a light in the House of Study,” I replied. He put his hand to his forehead and said, “You have reminded me where I was going.” He stretched out his cane, made a kind of circle in the air, and whispered, “I am going to the House of Study too.”