As we were talking, a bus came from town and the whole neighborhood went out to meet it. Women and children got off, carrying torn and tattered baskets, with a little cabbage, a little beet, a little turnip, a little garlic and onion in them, and a loaf or two on top — all those things a poor man covets. They set down the baskets and sacks, got into the bus again, and threw out bundles of rusty spikes and old iron hoops they had bought in town to reinforce their tottering houses; some brought out crates and some cradles.
The neighborhood began to hum and bustle. Even those who had been hidden in their houses came out and asked what news there was in town and when they would say the afternoon prayer. Little by little, the rest of the people returned from town with their sons, the young ones from the heder and the older ones from the yeshivah. And from end to end of the neighborhood, people came running to the synagogue.
In the meantime, Arabs came by, on their way back from their work in town to the neighborhood villages. They were followed by shepherds with their flocks, who stirred up clouds of dust. The people of the neighborhood pushed their way through the sheep, groaning and panting.
It was time for me to return to town, so I got into the bus. An hour passed but it did not move. I asked the driver when he would start. “What’s wrong with staying here?” said the driver. I said to him, “If you are not going, tell me and I will go on foot.” “Do you think I’m a prophet, that I should know if I’m going?” he said. “If you’re not afraid of tiring out your legs, get up and walk. If I find passengers and start off, I’ll pick you up on the way and take you in; if I don’t, I’ll stay the night here. Nice neighborhood, isn’t it? Refreshing air! Pity you can’t live on air.”
I got off the bus and set out on foot. Fine, big houses accompanied me most of the way. When were they built? We did not read about them in the papers; we were not invited to the dedications, but there they are, sound and solid. Every house is surrounded by a garden, with an iron fence around it, so that no goat can get in. The Lord buildeth Jerusalem, sometimes by means of Jews and sometimes by means of gentiles.
7
Once I was going to and fro, as usual, in the streets of Jerusalem, when I saw large posters announcing a memorial meeting that night on the thirtieth day after the passing of Mr. Gedaliah Klein. Ah, thirty days had passed since the day I wrote the letter of condolence.
I took out my watch to see if the time had not yet come for the commemoration, and I saw that the time had not yet come. To pass the time I went from wall to wall and from poster to poster. I doubt if there was a man in Jerusalem that day who was so well versed as I in the names and titles of the eulogists.
I began to be afraid I might have made a mistake in the order of the days, and the day of the commemoration had passed. I went into a bookshop to buy a calendar tablet.
The shopkeeper said, mockingly, “We are just going to print a calendar for next year and you are looking for yesteryear.”
“I am content with the old tablets,” I said.
To pass the time I bought a newspaper. Since I had the paper, I read all the articles that were printed on the thirtieth day of Mr. Gedaliah Klein’s passing. In the past, all the deeds of men were included in a single verse, such as “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him,” but now that knowledge has expanded and the deeds of men have multiplied, we cannot complete all their praises in one sentence.
It is almost eight o’clock. The shopkeepers are locking up their shops, with double locks, for fear of the thieves who have multiplied in Jerusalem. Buses race by, and so do passersby. As they run, they bump into peddlers and broom-sellers, beggars and flute-players, reformers, crazy men and crazy women, distributors of leaflets and advertisers of merchandise, a dog who has lost his master and a mistress who has lost her dog.
As you escape from these, the shoeshine boys take hold of your feet. While they are sharing out your feet, paperboys offer you their newspapers. As you stand and read, agitators come up and fill your hands with pamphlets. If you get rid of them, women come along and pin all kinds of tags on you. You stop to pay, but your pocket is empty, for in the meantime pickpockets have extracted your purse. As you stand in despair, wanting to go home, along comes a procession of boys. While you wait for them to pass, a bus goes by and runs over an ass. You run to lift it; along come the police and strike you with their batons for obstructing the populace and holding up the traffic. When you run away and find a place to hide, you come across a girl who has been attacked by zealots. While they are punishing her because they saw her going with the English, a young man throws vitriol in another girl’s face and blinds her. The gramophone shrieks, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob,” while the radio sings back, “Happy are ye, O Israel.” Meanwhile, the whole street lights up, revealing the picture of a naked woman, and a loudspeaker proclaims to the heavens, “Come and see the enchantress!”
The streetlamps, square and round and semicircular, illuminate the streets of the city, in addition to the moon and the stars. I walk in their light and read all kinds of placards about new productions of plays like Thy People and Hard to be a Jew. And the gramophone screeches, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob,” while the radio replies, “Happy are ye, O Israel,” and the loudspeakers drown their voices, and the smell of falafel permeates the air. Little by little the street returns to normal. Buses rush and people push; some of their heads are hairy, and some of their chins are double; some of them float on air, and some are always in trouble; men with serious mien and women with delicate hands chatter in all the tongues of all the far-off lands; every stalwart lad and every maiden ripe puffs at a cigarette or pulls away at a pipe. The coffeehouses are full of people young and old; the men make eyes at the girls, and the girls are just as bold; the men drink beer and whiskey, the women paint their faces — O Muse, what have you to do with such peculiar places? The bars are full of soldiers, the British Mandate’s men—“Drink up and then bring up, my lads, and fill your mugs again!” And now I go to mourn a man who is no more — O Muse, be silent now, and do not weep so sore.
8
The platform is draped in black, and a candelabrum draped in black illuminates a picture of the deceased hanging over the platform. His face is the face of a successful man, unmarred even by death.
The assembly hall is full and still the people come. The first arrivals have been seated by the ushers on the middle benches, while the latecomers are seated above, near the platform. Last come those for whom the platform is waiting.
Mr. Schreiholz mounted — he is the principal speaker everywhere. He made a sad face and started in a whisper, like a man who cannot speak for grief. Suddenly he raised his voice and stretched his hand upwards with his fingers spread, seeking a word to express the full depth of his thought. When he found the word he began to spout with growing fluency, declaiming at the top of his voice: “The deceased was…, the deceased was…,” describing, between one “was” and the next, his recollections of where he had seen the deceased, and all the rest of it.