8
Between One Fish and Another
At the moment when the fish began to depart from the world, Bezalel Moshe was dragging his feet with difficulty because of the weight of his burden and the weight of his thoughts. While he was sitting in the synagogue his heart had been one, bent upon the work of making a lovely mizrah. Once he went outside, his heart become two. Thinking about the mizrah, he remembered his hunger. Thinking about food, he remembered the mizrah.
He nodded his head to himself and said: What is the use of thinking about a mizrah if the mizrah is in the synagogue and I am outside, and what is the use of thinking about eating if I don’t have a slice of bread to sate my hunger? The fish is heavy. Who knows how much it weighs? Certainly the soul of a great Tzaddik has been reincarnated in it.
He went and sat by the side of the road to rest from the effort of carrying the fish. He put down the tallit and tefillin bag, which had become the temporary home of the fish, and he sat, weary of his burden, weary of hunger, and weary of being a poor orphan. If people wished, they gave him food; if they did not wish, they did not. And if he had something to eat, rather than satisfying him, the food only made him hungry, for he feared lest the next day his soul should languish from hunger and ask to depart, and no one would think of inviting him to a meal or of giving him a penny to buy bread. Maybe that is the meaning of the verse “For the earth was full of knowledge”—in the future everyone would be of the same mind, so that if one person asks for bread, the other gives it to him. Bezalel Moshe knew there was no knowledge but the knowledge that there was no bread but the bread of Torah. However, a hungry man removes Scripture from its literal meaning and interprets “bread” as meaning actual bread. The greatness of bread is that even saints who fast constantly cannot live without eating. Some break their fasts on the Sabbath, on festivals, and on days when one is not supposed to fast, and from fast to fast they break their fast with a banquet for the fulfillment of a commandment, such as serving as the godfather at a circumcision. Whereas he fasted without fasting, for even when he fasted all day long, the fast did not count, since he did not fast of his own free will, but rather because he had nothing to eat. Were it not for the drawings that he drew, he would have seemed to himself like a beast whose only thoughts were about eating and drinking.
He began to be ashamed of his thoughts and tried to repress them. When he saw that they were stronger than he, he began to lose himself in them. Since he could not draw food to satisfy himself, though he knew some people can do that, his mind took leave of him and journeyed off to those who eat their fill and do not refrain from eating fish, not even on a weekday, not even when people seek to boycott them. In normal times everyone is used to eating fish, everyone but him, for in his life he had never seen a living fish nor even a cooked fish, except for those in old holiday prayer books next to the prayers for dew and rain. These had provided him with a model to draw fish on the mizrah and had given Fishl Karp reason to open his mouth and laugh at them.
He began comparing one form to another, that is, the fish he had drawn to the fish he was bringing to Fishl’s wife. He admitted without shame that Fishl’s was handsomer than those he himself had drawn. In what way? This is impossible to portray in words, something that needs a visual demonstration. He looked all about. He saw no one. He put his hand into the fish’s dwelling and removed the fish. He picked it up and looked at it. I would be surprised if any fish eater in the world ever looked at a fish the way that orphan did at this time. His eyes began to grow ever larger to encompass the fish, its fins, its scales, and even its head — it and its eyes, which its Creator had made to see the world with.
The fish began to shed one form and don another, until it left behind the image of the fish that Fishl had bought for a tidy sum and began to resemble the fish that had been in the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, to create when He created the fish. But He had not created it. He had left it to artists to draw. And since this is one of those wonders that we are not permitted to interpret, I shall be brief.
9
Torments of the Will
When an artist wants to draw a form, he detaches his eyes from everything else in the world aside from what he wishes to draw. Immediately everything departs except that very form. And since it regards itself as unique in the world, it stretches and expands until it fills the entire world. So was it with that fish. When Bezalel Moshe set his mind to drawing it, it began to enlarge and expand to fill the entire world. Bezalel Moshe saw this, and a chill seized him. His heart began to flutter and his fingers trembled, as it is with artists who quiver with torments of the will and desire to recount the deeds of the Holy One, blessed be He, each in his own way — the writer with his pen and the painter with his brush. Paper he had none. Now picture to yourselves a world whose essence had been blotted out because a single form was floating in space and occupying all of existence, and there was not a piece of paper to draw on. At that moment Bezalel Moshe felt similar to that mute cantor whose heart was stirred to sing a melody. He opened his mouth and moved his lips until his cheeks crumpled and shattered from his torments. The mute cantor was given the inner sensation of a melody and denied its expression with his voice, whereas Bezalel Moshe was capable of drawing, but he was denied paper. His eyes expanded like nets fish are caught in and like ornamental mirrors into which one gazes. The form of the fish came and settled there, taking on an extra portion of life — more than was in the fish while it was living. Bezalel Moshe fumbled in his pockets again. He found no paper, but he did find a piece of black chalk. Feeling the chalk, he looked at the fish. The fish too looked at him. That is, its form rose up and gripped him.
He grasped the chalk and kneaded it with his fingers, like someone who kneads wax with his fingers, which is useful for memory. He looked at the fish and he looked at the chalk. A model for drawing was there. There was chalk for drawing. What was lacking? Paper to draw on. The torments of his will intensified. He looked at the fish again and said to it, “If I want to draw you, I can only shed my skin and draw on my skin.” He could have drawn on the fish’s skin, just as Yitzhak Kummer drew on Balak’s skin, but Balak was a dog, whose skin absorbs color, which is not true of a damp creature full of moisture, where the color spreads in the moisture and will not register a form.
Bezalel Moshe yielded and returned the fish to the bag. He was about to walk to Fishl’s wife, for the time had already come to prepare the fish for the meal.
Without doubt Bezalel Moshe would have brought the fish to make a meal of it, were it not that the fish was destined for greater things. What greater things? Why use words if you can see with your own eyes?
Now when Bezalel Moshe put the fish into the tallit and tefillin bag, his hand happened upon a tefillah for the head. He saw the tefillah and was surprised. What was that tefillah doing here? One cannot say that it had remained in the bag with Fishl’s knowledge, for what would Fishl do without a tefillah for the head? One cannot say that it had remained in the bag without Fishl’s knowledge, for does a man who has a head remove his tefillin in order to pray and take the one for the arm but not the one for the head? You must conclude that Fishl had another. But if so, what was this one doing here? He had found a flaw in it and ceased using it, and perhaps the parchment with the verses had even been taken out, and there was only an empty case here.