“So she wants to move?” Herbst asked. Shira said, “Whether I want to or not, I won’t change my place. And any night, whenever I’m not working, you can find me in my room.” “And tonight?” “Tonight, as you can see, I am walking with Dr. Herbst in this new neighborhood.” “And then?” “Then we’ll go to a restaurant, where you will eat your fill, as Mrs. Herbst requested.” “And after we eat, what then?” “After we eat, the eminent professor will return home, climb into bed, and have good dreams about his good wife.” Herbst asked Shira, “Why did you mention my wife?” Shira said, “Why shouldn’t I? I might as well tell you that I am fond of Mrs. Herbst, and I don’t intend to cause her grief. Now let’s get back to town, go to a restaurant, and eat.” “Good, good,” Herbst answered, irritated. Shira said, “After a good meal, you’ll cheer up, and when you say, ‘Good, good,’ it will be from the goodness of your heart. Why so silent?” Herbst said, “Not at all.” Shira said, “But, you’re not talking.” Herbst said, “You talk like a logic teacher.” Shira asked, “What is logic?” Herbst said, “You did go to school, and you studied logic.” Shira said, “Since the day I left school, I’ve managed to forget everything they taught me. You want to know how many years I’ve been out of school. That I won’t tell. If I did, you’d know my age.” Herbst said, “Even if you don’t tell me, I can figure it out.” “How?” “You were about seventeen when you married, after which, you didn’t return to school. But I don’t know how long it was between the divorce and your second arrival in this country.” Shira laughed and said, “So — despite all your calculations, you aren’t sure.” Herbst said, “You are dear to me even if you’re forty.” Shira said, “I’m not yet forty.” Herbst said, “I didn’t mean to provoke you.” Shira said, “What do you gain by provoking me?” Herbst said, “Forgive me, Shira, far be it from me to provoke you.”
From here on, whenever the two of them were alone, Herbst and Shira addressed each other in the familiar second person.
Shira said, “We’re already at Jaffa Road. Where would you like to eat?” Herbst said, “As long as it’s not where I ate this afternoon.” “Why? Didn’t you like the food?” Herbst said, “Not only did I find good food, but I also found a lovely waitress.” Shira said, “Then let’s go there.” Herbst said, “Aren’t you jealous?” Shira said, “It’s not time for jealousy yet.” Herbst took her hand in his and said, “Forgive me, Shira. Forgive me.” Shira slipped her hand away and took out some powder, which she sprinkled on the tip of her nose. When she returned the powder to her purse, she straightened her eyeglasses and held on to her necklace with her left hand. The moon was bright, and Shira’s face was melancholy.
Chapter fourteen
Henrietta came home from the hospital, bringing an additional daughter. The little one occupied minimal space, but her presence filled the house. Herbst tried to get back to work and to prepare lectures for the winter term.
He was busy preparing his lectures, and his wife was busy with her child and with the wetnurse. The Fashioner of All Things creates many needy souls with a symmetry that maintains life, giving this one a daughter and that one a daughter. One has no milk for her child; the other has no way to support her family. He brings them together. One nurses the other’s child and is paid for the service, so that each one lives off the other’s flaw. One is from Kurdistan, the other from Germany. Kurdistan and Germany being far from each other, what does He do? He brings them both to Jerusalem, for a Jew’s eyes look to Jerusalem.
Sarini, the Kurdish wetnurse, is a handsome, healthy woman. Her face is dark brown, her hair dark gray. Her shiny eyes are green, her teeth like peeled garlic cloves and harder than rock. She is always laughing, and every year she gives birth. She has already produced eight male children, apart from the daughter we mentioned, all of them alive and healthy. They are no trouble during pregnancy or birth, being aware that none of them is an only child, that, should she wish to, she can produce many more. They don’t trouble her for another reason: it is she who supports them. Their father — which is to say, their mother’s husband — has many trades, none of which provides much income. There are times when he is a scholar in the yeshiva, times when he ties a rope around his waist to be a porter, times when he sells books, times when he does magic. He can look into a glass of clear water and tell if a particular woman was a virgin when she married. And, whispering gently over a pinch of salt and a sugar cube, he can cause you to forget to say the prayer for the new moon. He has many other accomplishments, foremost among them the fact that he is the husband of this prolific, powerful, shrewd woman who supports a houseful of children, besides two sets of parents, and is at war with the Mandate government for obstructing immigration. And, of course, she does her bit at home, so that the seed of our father Abraham will not vanish from the earth. Although Sarini has intelligence and good deeds to her credit, Henrietta has to exert considerable effort to get her to bathe and wear clean clothes, and to provide her with a wholesome diet, since she comes from a neighborhood of tin huts and lives in a dingy room with straw mats for bedding, coarse food, and foul water.
Henrietta is busy with other matters, apart from the wetnurse and the kitchen, such as driving away the goats the Arab shepherds send into the garden. While in the garden, she picks three or four flowers to put in a vase. If they are especially nice, she brings them to Manfred and sets them on his desk. She tiptoes in and tiptoes out again, going back to her pots and her stove until lunch is ready. After lunch, she has a short nap and tends to the remaining tasks, such as mending, ironing, and collecting milk so the baby won’t be hungry when the wetnurse is gone. Since Sarini can’t support her family on what Herbst can pay she has to supplement her income elsewhere. When Henrietta has an extra bit of energy, she goes into town on other business, such as obtaining certificates for her relatives in Germany, and making bank payments. On the way, she stops at the doctor to consult about the baby, at the dentist to have her teeth checked, at the tinsmith to have the kettle repaired, and at Krautmeir, the gynecologist. With all this business to attend to, Henrietta has no time for her husband. Similarly, he, with all his business, has no time for Henrietta. New students from Germany cannot be offered the usual fare; you have to be well prepared, for they come from German schools, where scholarship is serious. They each go their own way: Manfred doesn’t intrude on Henrietta’s domain, and Henrietta doesn’t intrude on Manfred’s.
Herbst is at his desk, which is filled with open books, reading a page here and a page there, writing, copying, adding to the pile of notes and comments, to the series of lectures on such-and-such an emperor — a Byzantine whose name I forget, a very short fellow who required that all his ministers stoop to a level below his shoulders. Herbst takes no shortcuts. He consults every book in Jerusalem pertaining to his field and orders books and photographs from abroad. Though the books are numerous and there is no shortage of scholars, there is room for innovation. If he had more books, he would make more discoveries, for it is in the nature of books that each one offers a different theory, and a reader with the capacity to innovate adds his own opinion. If his wisdom is significant, what he adds is significant. Whether you know it or not, Dr. Manfred Herbst is an expert on the Byzantine period, and, when Byzantine scholars are mentioned, his name is always included. So he has reason to be pleased with himself.