, it seemed, transported in divers directions. On one occasion his wife interrupted. "I cannot sleep," she explained. She had released her hair, and brushed it out, with the result that she appeared to be standing against a dark and brittle thicket, but one in which a light shone. "I am not disturbing you?" she asked. "I thought I would like to read something." She sighed. "Something short. And musical." "Mörike," he suggested. "Yes," she agreed, absently. "Mörike will be just the thing." As the wind her nightdress made in passing stirred the papers uppermost on her husband's desk, she could not resist asking, "What is that, Mordecai? I did not know you could draw." "I was scribbling," he said. "This, it appears, is the Chariot." "Ah," she exclaimed, softly, withdrawing her glance; she could have lost interest. "Which chariot?" she did certainly ask, but now it might have been to humour him. "That, I am not sure," he replied. "It is difficult to distinguish. Just when I think I have understood, I discover some fresh form-so many-streaming with implications. There is the Throne of God, for instance. That is obvious enough-all gold, and chrysoprase, and jasper. Then there is the Chariot of Redemption, much more shadowy, poignant, personal. And the faces of the riders. I cannot begin to see the expression of the faces." All the time Reha was searching the shelves. "This is in the old books?" she asked. "Some of it," he admitted, "is in some." Reha continued to explore the shelves. She yawned. And laughed softly. "I think I shall probably fall asleep," she said, "before I flnd Mörike." But took a volume. He felt her kiss the back of his head as she left. Or did she remain, to protect him more closely, with some secret part of her being, after the door had closed? He was never certain with Reha: to what extent perception was revealed in her words and her behaviour, or how far she had accompanied him along the inward path. For, by now, Himmelfarb had taken the path of inwardness. He could not resist silence, and became morose on evenings when he was prevented from retreating early to his room. Reha would continue to sew, or mend. Her expression did not protest. She would smile a gentle approval-but of what, it was never made clear. Some of the old books were full of directions which he did not dare follow, and to which he adopted a deliberately sceptical attitude, or, if it was ever necessary, one of crudest cynicism. But he did, at last, unknown, it was to be hoped, to his rational self, begin fitfully to combine and permute the Letters, even to contemplate the Names. It was, however, the driest, the most cerebral approach-when spiritually he longed for the ascent into an ecstasy so cool and green that his own desert would drink the heavenly moisture. Still, his forehead of skin and bone continued to burn with what could have been a circlet of iron. Or sometimes he would become possessed by a rigid coldness of mind, his soul absorbed into the entity of his own upright leather chair, his knuckles carved out of oak. Mostly he remained at a level where, it seemed, he was inacceptable as a vessel of experience, and would fall asleep, and wake at cockcrow. But once he was roused from sleep, during the leaden hours, to identify a face. And got to his feet, to receive the messenger of light, or resist the dark dissembler. When he was transfixed by his own horror. Of his own image, but fluctuating, as though in fire or water. So that the long-awaited moment was reduced to a reflection of the self. In a distorting mirror. Who, then, could hope to be saved? Fortunately, he was prevented from shouting the blasphemies that occurred to him, because his voice had been temporarily removed. Nor could he inflict on the material forms which surrounded him, themselves the cloaks of spiritual deceit, the damage which he felt compelled to do, for his will had become entangled, and his nails were tearing on the shaggy knots. He could only struggle and sway inside the column of his body. Until he toppled forward, and was saved further anguish by hitting his head on the edge of the desk. Reha Himmelfarb discovered her husband early that morning. He was still weak and confused, barely conscious, as if he had had a congestive attack of some kind. After recovering from her fright, during which she had tried to warm his hands with her own, and was repeatedly kissing, and crying, and breathing into his cold lips, she ran and telephoned to Dr Vogel, who decided, after an examination, that the _Herr Dozent__ was suffering from exhaustion as the result of overwork. The doctor ordered his patient to bed, and for a couple of weeks Himmelfarb saw nobody but his devoted wife. It was very delightful. She read him the whole of _Effi Briest__, and he lay with his eyes closed, barely following, yet absorbing the episodes of that touching, though slightly insipid story. Or perhaps it was his wife's voice which he appreciated most, and which, as it joined the words together with a warm and gentle precision, seemed the voice of actuality. A second fortnight's leave, granted for convalescence, was spent at a little resort on the Baltic. Grey light and a shiver in the air would only have intensified for Himmelfarb the idyll of impeccable dunes and white timber houses, if it had not been for an incident which occurred at the hotel. They had come down early the first evening into the empty dining-room, where a disenchanted apprentice-waiter sat them at any table. Soon the company began to gather, all individuals of a certain class, of discreetly interchangeable clothes and faces. The greetings were correct. The silence knew what to expect. When something most unexpected, not to say disturbing, happened. A retired colonel, at whose table the new arrivals had been seated, marched to his usual place, seized the paper envelope in which it was customary for a guest to keep his napkin, and after retreating to the hall, passionately yelled at the reception desk that it was not his habit to sit at table with Jews. Nothing like this had ever happened to Himmelfarbs. They were shaken, trembling even. It was obvious that most of their fellow guests were embarrassed, though one or two had to titter. All necessary apologies were made by the management, but in the circumstances, the newcomers agreed they had no appetite, and left the room after a few spoonfuls of a grey soup. During the night each decided never again to mention the incident to the other, but each was aware that the memory of it would remain. However conciliatory the air of Oststrand became, and however punctiliously, in some cases ostentatiously, the more liberal-minded of their fellow guests bowed to them during the rest of their stay, the little, lapping waves continually revealed a glint of metal, and the cries of sea birds drove the mind into a corner of private melancholy. Yet, the sea air and early hours restored Dr Himmelfarb's health, and he returned to Bienenstadt with all the necessary strength to attack the immediate future. For soon, those who had been whispering about the _Herr Dozent's__ peculiar breakdown were openly discussing his promotion and departure. He was, in fact, called to an interview at Holunderthal, and shortly after, it was announced that he had been offered, and had accepted, the Chair of English at the university of his home town. So the couple had plenty to occupy them. "The books alone are a major undertaking!" Frau Himmelfarb was proud to protest. "I shall look through them," her husband promised, "and expect I shall find a number that I shan't miss if we leave them behind." "Oh, I am not complaining!" his wife insisted. "Then," he replied, with affection rather than in censure, "your intonations do not always convey your feelings." In the end, all was somehow packed. At a last glance, only the wisps of straw and a few sentimental regrets appeared to linger in the house with narrow rooms on the edge of Bienenstadt. Professor Himmelfarb, the son of Moshe the furrier, was by now a man of private means, and might have led a life of pomp, if he had been so inclined. But was prevented by a sense of irony, as much as by lack of enthusiasm. They did, certainly, open up the family house on the Holzgraben. However forbidding the façade, in the Greco-German style, with stucco pediment and caryatids, at least the interior preserved a soft down of memories along with the furrier's opulence of taste. In the beginning the _Frau Professor__ had been somewhat daunted by the total impact of her establishment and surroundings. For, quite apart from the pressure of monumental furniture, the house faced the more formal, or park side of the _Stadtwald__, with the result that the owners, standing at a first-floor window, looked out over shaven lawns and perfectly distributed gravel, across the beds of tuberous begonias and cockscombs, or down a narrowing _Lindenallee__, lined with discreet discus throwers and modest nymphs, to the deep, bulging, indeterminate masses of the _Wald__ proper. The public setting, however incidental, increased the value and importance of the solemn property, and in the years which followed the migration from Bienenstadt, while an illusion of solidity might still be entertained, it was only his sense of irony which saved Professor Himmelfarb from being impressed by his material condition, in particular when, returning from his walks in the _Wald__, he was confronted with the gradually expanding façade of what was apparently his own house, reared like a small caprice of a palace, at the end of the _Lindenallee__. Thus exposed to the danger of complacency, a noise, half ribald, half dismayed, seemed to issue out of the professor's nose, and he would be forced to glance back over his shoulder, embarrassed by the possibility that someone had heard, amused to think that someone might have. In time, and his responsible position, he grew greyer, thicker, deeply scored, until those who watched him on the podium were sometimes less conscious of his words, however subtle and illuminating, than of his rough-hewn, monolithic figure. On his regular walks he took to carrying a stick-it was thought to be an ashplant-for company rather than support, and was always followed by a little, motheaten dog called Teckel, whom he would address at intervals, after turning solemnly round. He dressed usually in a coarse, and if truth were told, rather inferior tweed, but was clothed also in an envelope of something more difficult to assess, protective and provocative at once. Those who passed him would stare, and wonder what it was about the large and ugly Jew. But, of course, there were also many to recognize and greet a person of his standing. Until the decade of discrimination, Germans as well as Jews were pleased to be seen shaking Professor Himmelfarb by the hand, and ladies would colour and show their teeth, no doubt remembering some story of his disreputable youth. As for his wife, the _Frau Professor__ never on any account accompanied him on his walks through the _Wald__, and was only rarely seen strolling with her husband over the red, raked gravel of the park. Her upbringing had not accustomed her to walk, except to the approved shops, where in a light of bronze fish and transparent oils she would celebrate the mysteries of which she was an initiate. In her middle age, she had grown regrettably heavy of body, while preserving a noticeable gaiety of mind. And would lift up many who were cast down. On occasions, for instance, when the women sat and sewed garments for those of them who had been taken too soon, when young girls trembled and pricked their fingers over the _tachriechim__, and older women grew inclined to abuse their memories, it was Reha Himmelfarb who restored their sense of continuity, by some remark, or simply by her presence. That which the women knew, all that was solid and good, might be expected to endure a little longer, in spite of the reminder of the white linen garments in their laps. "Fat people have an advantage over thin; they float more easily," was how the _Frau Professor__ chose to explain her powers. Although her own doubts and fears would sometimes rise, as perhaps her husband alone knew. Returning from a walk he would catch sight of her standing at a first-floor window. Looking. Then she would notice, and lean out, and wave, with her rather dark, plump hand, breathless, it seemed, with happiness and relief that she had not been called away before he had returned. Then, in the distance between the window and the street, their two souls were at their most intimate and loving. "What did you see today?" Frau Himmelfarb would often ask. "Nothing," her husband would usually reply. Though by this time he suspected that she, too, was not deceived by the masks of words. Indeed, all substances, of which words were the most opaque, grew more transparent with the years. As for faces-he was moved, touched, amazed, shamed by what he saw. In all his dealings with his colleagues of the faculty, in the lectures to his students, in the articles he published, and the books he wrote, Professor Himmelfarb appeared a man of straightforward character, of thorough, sometimes niggling intellect, and often epigrammatic wit. Nobody watching him tramp slowly, monotonously, over the fallen leaves of the _Stadtwald__, or along the well-kept pavements of the town, would have suspected him of morbid tendencies and reprehensible ambitions. For he was racked by his persistent longing to exceed the bounds of reason: to gather up the sparks, visible intermittently inside the thick shells of human faces; to break through to the sparks of light imprisoned in the forms of wood and stone. Imperfection in himself had enabled him to recognize the fragmentary nature of things, but at the same time restrained him from undertaking the immense labour of reconstruction. So this imperfect man had remained necessarily tentative. He was forever peering into bushes, or windows, or the holes of eyes, or, with his stick, testing the thickness of a stone, as if in search of further evidence, when he should have been gathering up the infinitesimal kernels of sparks, which he already knew to exist, and planting them again in the bosom of divine fire, from which they had been let fall in the beginning. So he would return home, and, knowing himself to be inadequately equipped, would confess in reply to his wife's inquiries, "Nothing. I have seen, I have done nothing." And she would hang her head, not from annoyance at his concealing something, or because there were matters that she did not understand, but because she sensed the distance between aspiration and the possibility of achievement, and she was unable to do anything to help him. Yet, in their relationship, they shared a perfection probably as great as two human beings are allowed to enjoy together, and would spend whole evenings of contentment in the library of the house on the Holzgraben, while Professor Himmelfarb read, or corrected, inclined at his characteristic angle, and his wife occupied herself with sewing, or knitting, usually for the family of some Jew whose circumstances had been brought to her notice. One evening when they had sat silently absorbed to the extent that the clock had withheld its chiming, Reha Himmelfarb suddenly scratched her head with a knitting needle-an act which many people might have considered coarse, but which her husband found natural-and broke their silence. It was unusual behaviour on her part. "Mordecai," she asked, "what became of the old books?" "Books?" He could have been contemptuous, as he stared back at his wife through the thick glass of his spectacles. "The Judaica." She sounded unnaturally jovial. Like some woman who, for secret reasons, was trying to insinuate herself into her husband's mind by matching his masculinity. "You don't always express yourself, Rehalein." Because, by now, he was annoyed. He did not wish to answer questions. "You know what I mean," Reha Himmelfarb replied. "The old cabalistic volumes and manuscripts in Hebrew, which you found at Rutkowitz's." Professor Himmelfarb put aside the book he had been reading. He was cruelly interrupted. "I left them in Bienenstadt, " he answered. "I had no further use for them." "Such valuable books!" "They had no particular value. They were, at most, intellectual curiosities." Then Reha Himmelfarb surprised her husband. She went so far as to ask, "You do not believe it possible to arrive at truth through revelation?" Himmelfarb's throat had grown dry. "On the contrary," he said. "But I no longer believe in tampering with what is above and what is below. It is a form of egotism." His hands were trembling. "And can l