As he touched the fish to remove the tefillah from its head, his fingers began to tremble again with desire to draw, like all artists whose hands are eager to work. For if they have succeeded in making one form, they wish to make another lovelier still. And if they have not succeeded, they are even more avid to do so, as many as seven times, a hundred times, a thousand times. As you know, Bezalel Moshe had drawn the sign of Pisces that day, and it had not come out well, because he had never seen a fish in his life. Now that a fish had been shown to him, his soul truly yearned to draw a fish. Out of desire for action his fingers trembled, nor did he take note of the nature of the fish, for it is not the way of fish to absorb color.
He passed the piece of chalk across the fish’s skin the way artists do before they draw. They mark a kind of guideline, and that line shows them what to do. Thus Bezalel Moshe drew a line and went back and drew another line, and between one line and another the form of Reb Fishl Karp emerged, until the image of the fish was effaced beneath that of Reb Fishl Karp. And this is something quite unusual, for Reb Fishl’s head was thick and round, and the head of that fish was long and narrow like the head of a goose.
And how did Bezalel Moshe come to draw the form of a man, when he had intended to draw the form of a fish? When he reached out his hand to draw, the form of the fish was transmuted into the form of Reb Fishl, and the form of Reb Fishl was transmuted into the form of the fish, and he drew the form of Reb Fishl on the fish’s skin. Strange are the ways of artists, for when the spirit throbs within them, their being is negated and they are acted upon. They are directed by the spirit, which obeys the commandment of the God of all spirit and flesh. And why was Reb Fishl transformed into a fish? Because he was a lover of fish.
11
Between an Arm Tefillah
and a Head Tefillah
I return to Fishl Karp — not to the Fishl Karp whom the artist drew, but to the Fishl Karp whom his Maker created.
Even before the time came to eat, his mind was driven to distraction by hunger. This is a virtue of man over fish. A fish can subsist without eating for up to a thousand days. A man can remain without eating no longer than twelve days. And Reb Fishl Karp not even a single day.
Bezalel Moshe heard the sound of passersby. He was frightened lest they ask him, “What is that in your hand?” And that they would see what he had done and tell Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would scold him, and everyone would say that Reb Fishl was saintly, for it is the way of the world that if a householder scolds a poor orphan, everyone joins in scolding him. He quickly concealed the fish and directed his feet toward Reb Fishl’s house.
If the passersby had not interrupted him, he would have removed the head tefillah from the fish and erased the picture of Reb Fishl he had drawn on the fish’s skin. Since the passersby did interrupt him, he did not manage to do even one of the things he ought to have done. He neither removed the tefillah nor erased the picture of Reb Fishl from the fish’s skin, and he trusted that the tefillah would fall off the fish’s head by itself. As for the picture, he expected that moisture would ooze out of the fish’s damp skin and erase it.
Bezalel Moshe arrived at Hentshi Rekhil’s and handed her Reb Fishl’s tallit and tefillin bag. And in the bag lay the fish, glory bound to its head and the face of the fish like that of Reb Fishl. Hentshi Rekhil was of her husband’s mind. She comprehended that if Fishl had sent her his tallit and tefillin bag, certainly something important to eat was concealed within it. The smell of the fish came and told her, You are not mistaken. She quickly took it and hid it so that her neighbors would not notice what had been brought her, and she sent the bearer off without any food, letting him go off far hungrier than when he set out on Reb Fishl’s errand.
The orphan left Reb Fishl’s house hungry, and his hunger walked with him. It would have been good had Reb Fishl’s wife given him some food, which he would have eaten, and then he would have returned to the synagogue and saved Reb Fishl from hunger. But she dismissed the errand boy without food. And since hunger plagued him, he wanted to eat, for he had long since learned that if you put off hunger, it grows ever more importunate.
He had a penny which he had received in payment for drawing a memorial dedication for the abandoned woman’s orphan daughter. He had written her relatives’ dates of death in her prayer book. He had kept the penny in his pocket to buy paper or paints or red ink. Now that hunger seized him, he put his victuals before his art.
He went to buy bread. A peddler appeared with baskets of his fruit. The orphan thought to himself: Half the summer has already passed, and I still haven’t tasted a fruit. I’ll buy myself a few cherries. He bought a penny’s worth of cherries and went out of the city, sat under a tree, and ate the cherries and threw the stones at the birds, watching to see how they flew. He forgot Reb Fishl and the fish and delighted his eyes with the birds’ flight. He began to perfume their flying with the verse “As the birds fly,” to the melody of Rabbi Netanel the Cantor. His heart filled with the force of the melody, and he began to think of the power granted to human beings. Some are given a melodious voice, like Rabbi Netanel, who stirred people’s heart with love of the Lord when he opened his mouth in song, and some are given power in their fingers to make skilled handiwork, like Israel Noah, his father. Rabbi Netanel had the merit of emigrating to the Land of Israel, and Israel Noah his father had enjoyed no such merit but had fallen from the church roof and died. Some people say that the non-kosher wine that he had been given made him fall down and die, and others say he went out to work without eating first, because they had finished all the bread in his home, and hunger had seized him, and he had collapsed and died.
His father’s death oppressed his heart, and he was sad. The birds came, and with their flight they carried his mind away from its gloom. He looked at the way the birds fly and sing and how they trace shapes in the sky with their flight. Although the shapes were not visible, nevertheless they were engraved before his eyes and upon his heart. The birds are beloved, since the power to fly is given to them. If the power to fly were given to man, his father would not have died. Now that he was dead, other artisans had come and painted the walls of the Great Synagogue.
The orphan set aside his grief over his father for grief over the Great Synagogue. Ugly drawings had been imposed upon its walls. Far worse were those that had been imposed upon the Tailors’ Synagogue, where they had heaped up pictures of birds that did not even look like a likeness. If the painters had raised their eyes upward, they would have seen what a bird was. If so, why did the people of Buczacz praise the artists and their paintings? Because the people of Buczacz walk stooped over all their lives and never raise their eyes above their heads, and they do not see the creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He, except for the fleas in their felt boots. Therefore those drawings look pretty to them. But I shall show them how the creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He, look and how it is fitting to draw them.