Mr. Zommer rose, turned to face the corner and, leaning on his stick, started to recite the Evening Service. Mrs. Zommer entered quietly and went out quietly, nodding to me as she entered and as she went out.
I blew into my glass and said to myself: Perhaps Mrs. Zommer wanted to tell me something, but when she saw her husband at his prayers she went out. What did Mrs. Zommer want to tell me, and why did she look sad? Surely Rachel is hale and hearty.
It was many days since I had thought about the people in the hotel — first, because nothing new had happened there, and second, because thinking is tiring.
Thinking is tiring. Forty-one years had passed over me and I had still not realized this; then along came Schutzling and said it, and his words keep beating on my heart every day, every hour, every moment.
Mr. Zommer took too long over his prayers. After he had finished, he loosened his sash, rolled it up and put it in his pocket, came and sat down at his table, took his pipe and filled it, got up and went off, came back and sat down again, screwed up his eyes and opened them again, and looked at me as if he wanted to ask something.
I wondered where Mrs. Zommer was and why she had not returned. I thought she wanted to tell me something. Everyone here is more silent than usual today, though it can be felt that they want to speak.
Babtchi came in, greeted us with a nod, and offered her father a newspaper. Mr. Zommer took the paper, read the whole page that was in front of him, turned over and read on. This was a change for Mr. Zommer: he had turned over the page, though usually he does not turn it even if he is in the middle of a story. It is good for a guest when his host is a silent man. If I have no home of my own, it is good that I have found a hotel whose owner does not trouble me with talk. In any case, it would be a good thing if Mrs. Zommer came and told me what she wanted to say when she entered the dining room and found her husband at prayer.
A short time passed, and then another short time passed. Both of them combined to make a long time, and nothing at all changed in the hotel. Mr. Zommer sucked his pipe and read the paper. What was written in the paper that was so worth reading? But in any case, I bless Mr. Zommer for not stopping to tell me.
Before going to sleep I took a piece of paper, wrote on it, “Do not wake me,” put the paper in one of my shoes and left my shoes on the threshold behind the door, so that if Krolka should come to polish my shoes she would find the notice and not waken me. This I did although I had no hope or expectation of sleeping long, and moreover I took a second piece, wrote the same words on it, and left it in my second shoe, so that if Krolka should forget the first note, the second would remind her — perhaps the Almighty would give sleep to my eyes and people would not come and waken me.
Indeed the Almighty gave me sleep, and I slept till nine, and I too gave myself sleep and slept again for another hour. After I had made up my mind to get up, I put aside the blanket and lay down, as if trying to decide whether one needed a blanket. In the meantime, I fell asleep again.
Chapter two and sixty. Awake or Dreaming
I do not remember whether I was awake or dreaming. But I remember that at that moment I was standing in a forest clearing, wrapped in my prayer shawl and crowned with my tefillin, when the child Raphael, Daniel Bach’s son, came up with a satchel under his arm. “Who brought you here, my son?” said I. “Today I have become bar mitzvah,” said he, “and I am going to the Beit Midrash.” I was overcome with pity for this pitiful child, because he was docked of both his hands and could not put on tefillin. He gazed at me with his beautiful eyes and said, “Daddy promised to make me rubber hands.” “Your Daddy is an honest man,” said I, “and if he has made a promise he will keep it. Perhaps you know why your father saw fit to ask me about Schutzling?” Said Raphael, “Daddy has gone to war and I can’t ask him.”
“Between ourselves, Raphael,” I said to him, “I suspect that your sister Erela is a communist. Doesn’t she mock your father?” “Oh, no,” said Raphael, “she cries over him, because he can’t find his arm.” I asked him, “What does it mean, ‘he cannot find his arm’?” “He lost his arm,” said Raphael. “If so,” said I, “where does he put on his tefillin?” “Don’t worry about that,” said Raphael, “those for the head he puts on his head, and those for the hand he puts on someone else’s arm.” “Where does he find someone else’s arm?” said I. “He found a soldier’s arm in the trench,” replied Raphael. “Do you think he can meet his obligations with that one’s arm? Isn’t it written that the dead are free? When a man becomes dead, he is exempt from religious precepts, and anyone who is exempt from a precept cannot exempt anyone else.” “I don’t know,” he replied. “You don’t know,” said I, “so why did you pretend you knew?” “Until you asked me I knew,” replied Raphael, “once you asked me I forgot.” “From now on,” said I, “I will not ask. Go, my son, go.”
“And what about you?” he said. “I have not thought about it yet,” I answered. “Leave off thinking,” said he. “And what about you?” said I. “Don’t you think?” “If I think, I don’t see,” he replied. Said I, “And is there anything here worth seeing? Perhaps the notes I put in my shoes?” “The postman has come and brought a lot of letters with a lot of stamps on them,” he said. “I will go and see,” said I. Raphael looked at me: “How can you go, when you have no shoes?” “I have no shoes,” said I, “do you think that Leibtche’s wife has taken them off so that I should not run away?”
Along came Genendel and said, “Shut your mouth and write your poems.” “Do you think, Genendel, that I am Leibtche?” I said. “If so, you are wrong, Genendel, you are wrong.” Said Leibtche, “My dear sir, how happy I am that you have come here. Last night I saw you in a dream.” “How did you see me?” “Quite simply, as you appear,” said Leibtche. “You think it is simple, but I do not think it simple,” said I. “What was it that happened with the succah?” “I was not to blame,” said Leibtche. “You were to blame, my dear sir,” said I, “but I am not angry with you.” Have you heard what this Leibtche did to me? If not, I will tell you.
Before the Festival of Tabernacles, Leibtche came to me and said, “I will make a succah on top of yours.” “Make it,” said I. Had I any choice to tell him, “Don’t make it”? Better if he made the succah somewhere else, or if he did not make one at all, for this Leibtche, though he turns the Torah into rhymes, does not strictly observe the religious precepts. In any case, even if he made his succah on top of mine, I did not care, for, after all, he would not sit in it. So he came and made his succah alongside mine, until both of them looked like one, but his part was bigger than mine, and more beautiful than mine. I was surprised, first, because it was impossible to tell where his succah ended and mine began, and second,… but I have forgotten what the second point was. Said Leibtche, “I will cover both of them.” I relied upon him and went back to my work. On the eve of the festival, as darkness was falling, I came and saw that he had spread over the succah a sheet with holes in it, and had not covered it with branches according to the law. Said I, “Look, that just won’t do as a covering: it doesn’t grow in the soil and it hasn’t been picked; instead it is something fastened which can become unclean.” Leibtche looked at me with a straight face and said, “For me — it’s good enough.” I asked myself; Where shall I have my meal, when I have no properly built succah? Said my wife, “Eat in the hotel.” “You here?” said I. “I have not yet bought the four species and I am afraid the shops may be shut, for this is the eve of the festival and Sabbath eve as well, and they close early. What do you think? Perhaps, since the first day of the festival falls on the Sabbath, I shall not buy the four species at all, and fulfill my obligations with the congregational citron, saving a few shillings. Times are bad and whatever we save is saved, especially as my hotel bills are heavy.”