They tried one place, but it was crowded. Here, there were young men with pipes in their mouths; there, old men with canes in their hands. Here, there were young women waiting for young men; there, young men waited for young women. Here and there, young men and women sat together, engulfing each other in clouds of smoke. “Look,” Weltfremdt said to Herbst. “Look — every face is clean-shaven, every mouth holds a pipe. They all talk out of the corner of their mouth, like native Englishmen. If France had the mandate, our boys would grow beards and start whistling like birds. Get moving, man. Let’s go to the place I mentioned before.”
The café owner recognized Herbst, brought their order, bowed, and then retreated, so as not to give the gentleman who had been there the previous evening the idea that he intended to bother him. The two friends sat. They sat, and Weltfremdt talked about the university, about its professors, about other matters, talking, as the saying goes, about everyone and his wife, while Herbst stared straight ahead, wondering: Where was that space, the space he had seen here the night before? Weltfremdt sensed that Herbst was preoccupied. He assumed that he was worried. He certainly had cause for worry, with another daughter in addition to the first two. Feeling sorry for his friend, he insisted on paying the check.
After they took leave of each other, Herbst went to the jeweler to buy a new strap for his watch. While the worn strap was being removed, he looked at the watches, designed for a single purpose yet made in many forms. Time is constant, yet manifest in varied forms. All things are like time, even rumors, even words. A single lesson can be learned from many texts. Herbst had once said to Lisbet Neu, “I’m old enough to be your father.” She had said, “I don’t know your age, but I see your face and you look young.” At the time, he had thought she was being generous. Now he viewed her words differently.
So much for the parable of the clocks. After fastening the new strap around his wrist, he stuck in his finger to stretch it. All of a sudden he felt bewildered. Where was the pure spirit that used to be invoked by the mere mention of Lisbet? One thought led to another, as thoughts do, and he had another thought: What if I had a son and this son was drawn to Lisbet? One thought led to still another: Henrietta will, undoubtedly, be unable to nurse the baby, so we’ll have to hire a wetnurse, which will mean extra expense and put us even more in debt. Moreover, while the baby is young, wherever we put her to sleep, I will hear her and be distracted from my work, which requires concentration. My paper will remain a mess of notes, and I will remain a lecturer, with a lecturer’s salary, rather than that of a professor or even an associate professor.
I will now convey some of what was implicit in Herbst’s thoughts. The author of a thorough and comprehensive work on Leo iii, the Byzantine ruler, a work that established his academic reputation, so that, when our university was opened in Jerusalem, he was recommended by Professor Neu and appointed lecturer — such a man should have produced another book. But days and years had passed, and he had produced nothing. When he was a student, still single, and the university was full of German women, Russian women, Jewish women — among them, some who sought his company — he turned away, out of devotion to his studies. Now that he was married, all the more reason to avoid distractions. Yet, in the end, it was he who pursued them. Who was to blame? Certainly not Henrietta. I doubt there are many like her. In terms of intelligence, beauty, and competence, Henrietta has no peer. Without regular help, without her husband’s assistance, she did all the household chores. She cooked, baked, sewed, ironed, even made her own clothes. And when the girls were young, she chose to take care of them herself, without a nursemaid. As for their house — when the Herbsts came up to Jerusalem, they couldn’t find a place to live. Talpiot and Beit Hakerem were new neighborhoods, and there were no apartments to be had there. Rehavia was in the planning stages. This left the Bukharan Quarter, which in those days was as important and as lovely as Rehavia is now. And there were areas that were free of flies and mosquitoes, but every space was occupied, taken over by intellectuals from abroad. In Baka, however, Henrietta found a hovel filled with garbage, considered unfit to live in. She rented this hovel, got rid of the garbage, and fixed it up. We were astonished; the hovel was transformed into a delightful, even glorious house. Henrietta made herself a garden, too. She made it with her own hands. Without the help of a gardener, without the help of her daughters. Tamara, as you know, loves flowers that come from the store rather than from trash and dung. Her sister Zahara has many tasks to perform for her teachers — she collects money for the Jewish National Fund’s land-reclamation projects, sells ribbons for charitable causes, et cetera — and, because of all these tasks, she has no time for homework and never eats at mealtimes. Henrietta’s only helper is Manfred, who waters the garden. Not that Henrietta needs him to do this, but it gets him out of his room and gives him a chance to exercise, rather than acquire a belly, like Professor Weltfremdt and Professor Lemner, who are all belly, below their middle and above it — a mound of neck topped by a tiny head.
Having referred to Herbst’s study, let me say a word about the room. It was the largest and most spacious room in the house, but its dimensions were not apparent because of the books lining its four walls. The wall opposite the door had a square window in it that looked onto the street, bringing the outdoors in. There was no end to what went on outside or to the shifts of scene from day to day, from hour to hour. There was another window in the south wall, and, if not for the tall piles of books on the floor, it would be possible to get to the window and see the earth’s marvels: rocks rising from the ground, looking like shepherds with their flocks. Or are those shepherds with their flocks that look so like rock? Either way, there are rocks in Jerusalem that look like sheep, as well as sheep that look like rocks, and the shepherds look equally ambiguous.