It was nearly midnight when they brought the Herbsts to the house in which they were going to spend the night. It was set on a hill at the edge of the village, away from the other houses, and had two rooms, one an infirmary, the other for the nurse. It had been built by the engineer who planned the kvutza, for himself and his new wife, with the idea that they would come for weekends and vacations. He didn’t spend much time there, so he sold it to the National Fund. The National Fund gave it to the kvutza, and it served as an infirmary, as well as a place for the nurse to live. The house was sold because of something that happened. The engineer and his wife were once on their way to Ahinoam, looking forward to a quiet and pleasant Shabbat. They met up with an Englishman, a government official whose car had broken down on the road. They offered him a ride. He accepted. The engineer invited the Englishman to stop in Ahinoam and have tea with him and his wife. He agreed to join them. Over tea, he told his hosts that he had been living in the country for six years and had never been invited to anyone’s home. The engineer said to his wife, “We ought to make up for all those years of loneliness.” The woman said, “We’ll do our best.” The Englishman spent all of Shabbat, as well as the following day, in the engineer’s house, and his hosts did their best to make his stay pleasant. He grew fond of them and became a frequent caller, almost a member of the household. One day the woman said to the Englishman, “I’m tired of this deception. Rather than cheat on my husband, I’m going to move in with you, and we can always be together.” The woman left her husband’s house and went to live with her lover. The engineer began to detest his country house. He sold it to the National Fund, and it was passed on to the kvutza. That night, it was unoccupied. The nurse who lived there had gone to Jerusalem in the morning, to see the psychiatrist Dr. Heinz Hermann about a young woman who had been attacked by an Arab shepherd and was in emotional shock. Herbst didn’t know that the quarters he and his wife were occupying belonged to the nurse he had met at Shira’s. It’s good that he didn’t know. Had he known, he would have been afraid Zahara would discover that the nurse knew him and that they had met at Shira’s. One further detaiclass="underline" when the nurse returned to the village and heard that Dr. Herbst had stayed in her room, she said, “I’m sorry I missed his lecture,” but she didn’t mention the fact that she knew him.
Zahara hadn’t informed anyone that her parents were used to sleeping in separate rooms. The two of them were given one room, the nurse’s room. The infirmary couch was brought in, and the two beds were set up side by side. The Herbsts came into the room. The scent of flowers, along with that of fresh linens, conveyed the fact that these were welcome guests. Henrietta put down the myrtle, undressed, took the flowers out of the room, got into bed, said good night to Manfred, lowered her eyelids, and succumbed to sleep.
Manfred found it odd to be sleeping in the same room as Henrietta, which he hadn’t done for many years. From the time she became pregnant with Sarah, they hadn’t slept in the same room even once. Now, all of a sudden, they were in the same room, and their beds were so close they were within arm’s reach of one another. Henrietta paid no attention. As soon as she got into bed, she dozed off, and, now that she was covered by the light blanket Zahara had brought her, she succumbed to the deep sleep decreed by the day’s activities.
Fearing the sand flies, Herbst went to bed without light and without a book. Since his return from the war, he would never lie down without a book. Even in bad times, during the unrest that followed the war — when municipal lighting, both gas and electric, was suspended — he had read by a small candle or a carbide lamp. Here, he lit neither a candle nor a lamp. For a time, the moon lit up the window and shone into the room. It vanished, appeared, vanished, and didn’t appear again. It may have reappeared after he dozed off. Anyway, he wasn’t asleep now. He was very alert, because of the fresh air, because of the lecture, because of his conversations. The lecture was a success. It wasn’t new; he had given the same lecture when he was first appointed to the university. But new elements were introduced tonight. As he presented new insights, many eyes shone responsively, unlike that first night, when the evil eye lurked everywhere, awaiting his downfall. Not that he had been usurping anyone or that there were other candidates for his position, a position that was created for him because of Professor Neu. But the primal law holds; for every Abel there is a Cain, if not to commit actual murder, then to invoke the evil eye that destroys one’s spirit. Another thing about the lecture in Ahinoam; it was spoken rather than read.
Herbst lay in bed recalling the people who had been in his audience this evening. Herbst was attached to his university students, knew each one of them, with their particular spiritual qualities, and was fond of them, perhaps more than they realized. But how many were they? Five or six a semester. Here in Ahinoam, fifty or sixty young men and women came to his lecture, healthy, vigorous, lively. And that Byzantine girl — if I were going to add pictures to my book, hers would be the first. All of these youngsters, males and females alike, invest their youth, designed for joy and pleasure, in work and drudgery. They sacrifice much-needed sleep to hear a scholarly lecture on a subject remote from their lives. As for me — the lecturer, for whom scholarship is, presumably, the axis of life — I waste my time on…Lo and behold, what he failed to do on all other nights, he succeeded in doing on this night. He took charge of his thoughts and did not dwell on Shira.
That night, as was always the case when his mind was stimulated by work, he resolved to devote all his energies to completing his book, fortifying his conclusions, leaving no grounds for the charge that the author was inventive but unconvincing. Convincing, convincing…Who invented that ugly word, and what is it doing in a scholarly context? Are we political agitators? Scholarship involves going with the data. Whatever conclusions this forces upon us, we are required to present them without equivocating, even if they are contrary to what we had in mind. I don’t specialize in the Hasmonean period, but, if I were to deal with it, I would conclude that much of what Antiochus demanded of the Jews, the Hasmonean kings did willingly. And I wouldn’t hesitate to make this fact public, although it detracts from our glory, demonstrating that, given the chance, we behave like any other nation. Similarly, if I were to write a book about national character, I wouldn’t hesitate to generalize about Jews, to declare that it isn’t a state and political life that Jews are after, but the opportunity to serve God and support themselves. Which is what Mattathias and his sons were after when they were pressed to violate the rules of their religion. When the Hasmonean kings behaved corruptly, many leaders in Jerusalem chose to give up the kingdom and beseeched Pompey to protect them from the rule of the Hasmoneans. I know that such ideas are a challenge to Zionism, and Zionism has, after all, saved my life and brought me here, at a time when so many fine and prominent individuals are in mortal danger. I am repaying a good turn with a bad one. But those who engage in scholarship value it, and we must stand by its truths. As for my book, I must get back to work and finish it. Should new material fall into my hands, it would be wise to ignore it. It is sometimes better to close one eye than to add material that pretends to add to the substance but merely doubles the bulk.