The air was clear; the moon and the stars shone. The earth was soft; it would have been easy to open it and cover oneself up with it like a blanket. How tired I was, how I wanted to rest. The coachman came back and rode around me with his coach. I looked up at him, hoping that he might take me into the coach, but he took no notice and did not take me in. The horses lifted their feet; not a sound was heard as they moved, but the echo quivered in my ears until I reached home and went in.
9
When I entered, I found Mr. Gedaliah Klein sitting at my table. His head was bowed toward his breast, and his cane lay between his knees. He stirred, raised his head, and whispered: “You here?” “I have just come,” I replied in a whisper. He rubbed his eyes. “I felt sleepy and dropped off,” he said.
His face was weary and aged. Since I last left him, he had suddenly become very old. Apart from the fox-fur coat he wore, there was nothing about him that was not old.
I pretended not to notice that he had aged considerably, for Mr. Gedaliah Klein desired the honor of age coupled with the vigor of youth, and not the old age which is a burden and a shame. He looked at me and said, “I have not seen you for decades. Tell me now, my dear friend, why do you not come to visit me? Or perhaps I have seen you in the meantime? Where have you been all the time? And where, for instance, did you spend the whole evening?” I could not bring myself to tell him where I had been, so I was silent.
He pricked up his right ear, supported it on his right hand, and said, “I did not hear what you said. Now for another matter: Where did I leave you that night I saw you last? If I am not mistaken, there was an old courtyard, and candles were burning low, and some man, a sexton, pestered me. Don’t you remember, my dear friend?” I told him.
“One thing is clear,” said Mr. Klein; “there was a House of Study there. You see, my dear friend, I forget nothing. What did we go to that House of Study for? If I remember rightly, you wanted to kindle a light for the repose of your grandfather’s soul. I hear the sound of horses. Did you come home in a carriage?”
“No, I came on foot.”
“So what is the carriage doing here?”
I said to him, “Perhaps you know where that House of Study is? I am looking for it but cannot find it.”
Mr. Klein smiled at me as people do at a child who is trying to get something easy. He raised his hands to his eyes to settle his spectacles. Then he pried open his eyes with his fingernails and looked straight at me. “Did you put out the light?” he said. “You didn’t? So why don’t I see? What did you say? You are looking for the…What are you looking for? Speak into my ear. When one’s eyes are affected, all one’s limbs are weakened.”
I went up close to him and said, “I am looking for the House of Study.”
“You are looking for the House of Study?” he repeated in a tone of surprise. “Which House of Study are you looking for? Perhaps the one where you were with me? Give me my cane and I will draw you where it is.”
I took his cane from between his knees and put it in his hand.
He took the cane and began to grope with it like a blind man in an unfamiliar place. The cane in his hand quivered, his hands quivered, and he quivered with the cane. He gripped the cane with all his strength, but his strength was gone. His face was no longer the same, and he, too, began to change, until he was entirely changed, and no longer resembled himself. And perhaps it was not he, but that old man, that blind old man who had kindled the memorial light for my grandfather, may he rest in peace.
I waited for him to look kindly on me, as he had done at first in the Great Synagogue when he whispered verses from the psalms. But his face was frozen and his eyes devoid of laughter. I felt it hard to stand in front of a man who used to be courteous to me but now paid me no attention, so I turned my face away from him. When I turned my face away, he stood up over me with his cane. I felt afraid of him and closed my eyes. He took hold of the cane and began to draw with it, making six marks. A house emerged and rose up, like that House of Study. I tried to enter but could not find the door. The old man raised his cane and knocked twice on the wall. An opening appeared, and I went in.
Fernheim
1
When he returned he found the house locked. After he rang once, twice, and then a third time, the doorkeeper appeared, folded her hands on her stomach, leaned her head on her shoulder, and stood gaping a moment. “Well,” she said, “who do I see? Mr. Fernheim! Bless my soul, it is Mr. Fernheim. So, then, Mr. Fernheim’s come back. Then why did they say he wouldn’t come back? And all this ringing — it’s really quite useless, because the house is empty and there’s no one to open it for him, because Mrs. Fernheim left and locked the house and took the keys with her. She didn’t imagine there’d be any need for keys, like now, for instance, that Mr. Fernheim’s back and wants to get into his house.”
Fernheim felt he had better say something before the woman inundated him with more derision. He forced himself to speak, but his reply was short, stammering — and meaningless.
The doorkeeper went on, “After the baby died, her sister Mrs. Steiner came, and Mr. Steiner with her too. They took Mrs. Fernheim with them to their summer home. My son Franz, who carried her bags for her, heard that the Steiners plan to stay there in the village until the big Israelite holy days at the end of the summer, right before the fall, and I’d guess Mrs. Fernheim won’t come back to the city before then. Why should she hurry, now that the baby’s gone? Does he need a kindergarten? Poor little thing, he kept getting thinner and thinner till he died.”
Fernheim pressed his lips together tightly. Finally he nodded at the doorkeeper, stuck his fingertips into his vest pocket, took out a coin, and gave it to her. Then he turned and left.
Fernheim spent two days in the city. He left no cafe unvisited, nor did he neglect to speak to each and every one of his acquaintances. He went to the cemetery to his son’s grave. On the third day he pawned the present he had bought for his wife, went to the railroad station, and bought himself a round-trip ticket to Lückenbach, the village where Hans Steiner, his brother-in-law, had a summer home. There, years back, Fernheim had met Inge when he was friendly with Karl Neiss, who had brought him along to see her. But Karl Neiss had not realized what was to come of it all.
2
When Fernheim entered the villa, Gertrude, his sister-in-law, was standing on the porch in front of a basket of laundry, folding linens she had taken down from the line. She greeted him politely and poured him a glass of lemonade, but without the least show of joy, as if he had not returned from prison camp, as if years had not passed without her having seen him. When he asked her where Inge was, she looked shocked, as if that were too personal a question. Finally, when he looked at the door opening to another room, Gertrude said, “You can’t go in; Zigbert’s bed is there. Remember Zigbert, the child of my old age?” As soon as she mentioned Zigbert she smiled inwardly for calling him “the child of my old age” when at that very moment a new child was stirring inside her. As she was speaking, Zigbert entered.
Gertrude stroked her boy’s head, arranged the curls tumbling over his forehead, and said, “Moved your bed again? Now didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t move the bed’? But you, Zigbert, you don’t listen, and you went and moved it again. You shouldn’t have done that, my son.”
The little boy stood wondering what bed his mother was talking about. And if he had moved the bed, why shouldn’t he have moved it? But there wasn’t any bed in the first place. And if there really had been a bed and he had moved it, why, his mother should have been proud that he was big and strong enough to move a bed if he wanted to! But everything that Mother was saying was strange, because there wasn’t any bed. Zigbert wrinkled up his face at this yoke he had to bear. Nevertheless, he was ready to overlook it if there were the least bit of truth in what his mother had said.