Riders in the Chariot (21 page)

One of the latter, a gross creature by intellectual standards, whose husband was a haberdasher in a mean street, and who was received on account of a relationship, knew no better than to say outright, "But, Rehalein, it is time you had a child. Why, the duties of the
rabbanim
_ do not begin and end in books. Give me a good, comfortable, family Jew. He may not spell, but he will fill the house with babies."

Two other ladies, one of whom was noted for her readings from the _West-Östlicher Diwan__, decided it was time to break off even forced relations with the haberdasher's wife, who was smelling, besides, of perspiration and caraway seeds.

While Reha Himmelfarb simply maintained, "Who are we, Rifke, to decide what a man's duties shall be?"

And Himmelfarb loved his wife the better for overhearing.

They were brought together closer, if anything, in an effort to express that love of which it seemed no lasting evidence might remain. None would know how Himmelfarbs had rejoiced in each other, unless by an echo from a library, from the dedication in a book:
To my Wife, Reha, without whose encouragement and assistance
_... But words do not convince the doubting soul like living tokens, as the wife of the haberdasher knew, for all her simplicity, or perhaps because of it.

Watching his wife one evening as she lit the Sabbath candles, Himmelfarb would have said: Of all people in this world, Reha is least in doubt. Yet, at that moment, the hands of Reha Himmelfarb, plump and practical by nature, seemed to grow transparent, and flicker in the candle flames.

At the same time she gave a little startled cry of pain.

"It was the wax from the candles! The hot wax, that fell when I was not expecting."

She whispered quickly, and only just distinct, as though she felt her need to explain desecrate a sacred moment.

By then the flames of the candles were standing straight and still, but what should have been the lovely, limpid Sabbath light shone wan and almost sickly, and the faces of the two people reflected by the mirrors could have been soft, sweating wax.

The obligations of other ceremonies prevented him from commenting there and then, but later he came to her, and said, "Reha, darling, I can tell you are badly disappointed."

And took her resisting hand, and put it inside his jacket, so that it was closest to him.

"Why?" she cried. "When our life together is so happy? And soon there will be the Chair. Everybody is convinced of that."

He was half exasperated, half in love.

"But not the babies that your Cousin Rifke advises as the panacea."

She would not look at him. She said, "We must expect our lives to be different."

"Referring in cold abstractions," he answered, "to matters we do not understand. But for our actual lives--for yours, at least--I would ask all that is comforting and joyous."

"Oh, mine!" she protested. "I am nothing. I am your footstool. Or cushion!" She laughed. "Am I not, rather, a cushion?"

She did appear her plumpest looking up at him, happy even, but, he suspected, by her own effort.

Then she put her arms round his waist, and laid her face against his vest, and said, "I would not alter a single detail of our lives."

But at once went on to deliver, in a different voice, what sounded almost a recitative, of the greatest significance and urgency, "On Monday I must start to make the jelly from the apples Mariechen brought from her village. There is an old book my mother used to mention, which gives an infallible method for clarifying jelly. I have the title, I believe, amongst some papers she left. Pass by Rutkowitz's, on your way home, and see whether you can find the book. Will you, Mordecai? He has such a mountain of old stuff, you might come across anything."

She looked up, and was in such apparent earnest, he was both moved and pacified.

On the Monday, as he was preparing to leave, Reha came with the title of the book. As it happened, he had forgotten.

"Don't forget the book!" she kept insisting. "I shall not start the jelly. I shall wait in case you happen to find. At Rutkowitz's. The book!"

It was so important, her face implied.

Then he left, relieved that his wife was such a simple, loving creature. If her words sometimes hinted at deeper matters, no doubt it was pure chance; she herself remained unaware.

Rutkowitz was a quiet, elderly Jew, whose overflowing shop stood in one of the streets which plunged off behind the university at Bienenstadt. Himmelfarb remembered to pass that way before returning home, and rummaged in the stacks and trays for the book his wife so particularly required. Needless to say, he did not succeed in finding it, but discovered other things which amused and interested.

"You deal in magic, Rutkowitz, I see!"

Deliberately he addressed the grave bookseller with inappropriate levity.

The latter shrugged, and answered, very dry, "Some old cabalistic and Hasidic works. They came from a collection in Prague."

"And are of value?"

"There are some who may value them."

The bookseller was a wary man.

Himmelfarb warmed to the characters, and the language moved on his tongue, where the Cantor Katzmann had put it in the beginning. He began, inevitably, to read aloud, for the nostalgia of hearing the instrument of his voice do justice to its heritage.

And so, he heard: "I set myself the task at night of combining letters with one another, and of meditating on them, and so continued for three nights. On the third occasion, after midnight, I nodded off for a little, quill in hand, paper on my knees. Then I noticed that the candle was about to go out. So I rose and extinguished it, as a person who has been dozing often will. But I soon realized that the light continued. I was greatly astonished, because, after close examination, I saw it was as though the light issued from myself. I said: 'I do not believe it.' I walked to and fro all through the house, and, behold, the light is with me; I lay on a couch and covered myself up, and, behold, the light is with me all the while...."

The cautious bookseller was standing a little to one side, the better to disclaim complicity in his customer's private pursuits.

"Do you appreciate the physical advantages of mystical ecstasy, Rutkowitz?" Himmelfarb inquired.

But although they stood scarcely any distance apart, the bookseller had apparently determined to keep his understanding carefully turned away. He did not answer.

Himmelfarb continued to browse amongst the old books and manuscripts. Now he was entranced. The bookseller had left him, or else had ceased to exist. In the stillness of the dusk and the light from one electric bulb, the reader heard himself: "The soul is full of the love of God, and bound with ropes of love, in joy and lightness of heart. Unlike one who serves his master grudgingly, even when most hindered the love of service burns in his heart, and he is glad to fulfil the will of his Creator.... For, when the soul thinks deeply on the fear of God, then the flame of heartfelt love leaps within, and the exultation of subtlest joy fills the heart.... And the lover dreams not of the advantages of this world; he no longer takes undue pleasure in his wife, nor excessive pride in his sons and daughters, but cares only to obey the will of his Creator, to do good unto others, and to keep sanctified the Name of God. All his thoughts burn with the fire of love for Him...."

Himmelfarb found the bookseller seated at his desk in the lower shop, as though nothing in particular had happened--and what, indeed, had? After coming to an agreement, the
Dozent
_ went home, taking with him several of the more interesting old volumes of Hebrew, and one or two loose, damaged parchments.

"Did you find my book?"

Reha had appeared in the hall as she heard her husband mounting the stairs.

"No luck!" he answered.

She did not seem in any way put out, but immediately called back into the kitchen, "Mariechen, we shall start the apple jelly tonight. By the old method. The
Heir Doktor
_ did not find the book."

Almost as though she were relieved.

Her husband continued on his way upstairs. He had debated whether to tell his wife about his purchases, but as she had ignored the books in his arms, he no longer felt he was expected to.

Often now, after correcting an accumulation of essays, or on saying good night to students who had come for tuition, he would sit alone in his room with the old books. He would read, or sit, or draw, idly, automatically, or fidget with different objects, or listen to the sound of silence, and was sometimes, 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.