By the time the Jew had finished his story, the day was already relenting. The plum tree, which had, in the beginning, promised protection from the narrative, and finally intensified, if anything, a common agony of mind, began again to demonstrate its natural subtleties of form and sound. The shadows inside its brocaded tent lay curled like heavy animals, spotted and striped with tawny light. Although the blossom had become by now a rather frowzy embroidery against the depths of a whiter sky, an always increasing motion and music freshened the limp folds of branches. For an evening breeze was flowing down across Sarsaparilla to Xanadu, lifting and feathering in its course, trickling through the more suffocating scrub, laving the surfaces of leaves, and at last lapping on the skins of the two survivors seated at the roots of the tree. Miss Hare might have shuddered if her body had not been so recently released from the rack. In the circumstances, the least movement was painful. When she had got to her feet, she mumbled, "I must go home, or a certain person, whose name I shall not mention, will cause a disturbance." The Jew was also struggling awkwardly up, testing his legs to learn whether they were sound. Neither he nor his audience had any apparent intention of referring to what they had experienced together, nor was it suggested they should meet again, though both expected that they would. "I must leave you at once," said the Jew, glancing with some concern at the sun. "It is very, very late." So they parted in the tender light. The smaller their figures grew, the more they appeared pressed. Bobbing and thrashing, they swam against the tide of evening, their movements cruelly hampered by anxiety and grass.
PART THREE
8
THE HOUSE at Sarsaparilla to which Himmelfarb now returned did offer advantages, but of its own, and not all of them obvious. Certainly its boards held together, and resisted the inquiring eye. There were the willows, too, which stood around, lovely when their wire cages first began to melt in spring, more beautiful perhaps in winter, their steel matching the more austere moods of thought. Otherwise there was little to enhance the small house, nothing that could have been called a garden. To plant one would not have occurred to the actual owner, who, in his state of complete disinterest, was unable to conceive of any hierarchy of natural growth. So, at evening, when he was not otherwise employed, he would sit on his veranda, at the very edge, as if it did not belong to him, gratefully breathing the rank scent of weeds. He would sit, and at a certain point in light, as the green leaped up against the dusk, the pallor of his face appeared to form the core of some darker, greener flame. Now, on the evening of his parting from Miss Hare, the Jew was hurrying to reach his house. Dust floated, seed exploded. The backs of his hands met the thrust of thorn and nettle. Stones scuttled. Yet, his breathing had grown oppressed, and, in spite of his positive, not to say triumphant advance, began to rattle as he climbed the slope. When he arrived. When he touched the mezuzah on the doorpost. Then, when the Shema was moving on his lips, he was again admitted. He went in, not only through the worm-eaten doorway of his worldly house, but on through the inner, secret door. Silence was never silence in the Jew's house. Speculation alternated with faintest scratching of boughs on timber. Nor were the rooms bare which he had furnished with the utmost simplicity of worship. Now he moved in a wind of purpose over the dry, yielding boards, as far as the cell where necessity had bullied him into putting several sadly material objects: a bed, a chair, the pegs for clothes, and a washstand such as those which clutter country auction-rooms with yellow deal and white, sculptural china. There was nothing else. Except that one wall included a window, opening on green tunnels, and the obscurer avenues of contemplation. Arriving in this room, and centre of his being, the Jew appeared to hesitate, his hands and lips searching for some degree of humility which always had eluded him, and perhaps always would. There he stood on the faded flags of light, his knees still trembling from their recent haste, and in the absence of that desired, but unattainable perfection, began at last to make his customary offering: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe…" He flung his rope into the dusk."… who at Thy word bringest on the evening twilight, with wisdom openest the gates of the heavens, and with understanding changest times and variest the seasons, and arrangest the stars in their watches in the sky, according to Thy will…" So he twined and plaited the words until his ladder held firm. "With everlasting love Thou hast loved the house of Israel…" So he added, breath by breath, to the rungs of faith."… and mayest Thou never take away Thy love from us. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who lovest Thy people Israel." By the time night had fallen, dissolving chair and bed in the fragile box in which they had stood, the man himself was so dispersed by his devotions, only the Word remained as testimony of substance.