As soon as he began reading, he forgot why he was reading and found himself reading for pleasure. He read on, smiling every so often and shaking his head at the book, as if to say: How innocent this author is! Doesn’t he know that even the greatest human being sometimes hits bottom and is flung from soaring heights to earth’s deepest abyss? I am not a great man, nor do I have the arrogance of the great; I am, furthermore, grateful to those powers that didn’t endow me with a sense of my own greatness. But I would guess that even the great men of the world were not always so wise, that their actions were not always a credit to them, that they were careful to conceal unbecoming actions and not to make them public except, perhaps, when their very faults were praiseworthy.
Very slowly, his rational processes were suspended, and his critical faculties were replaced by a sense of pleasure. He read with utter pleasure and with a yearning that added a physical dimension to his sensual pleasure. His soul was transported from one realm to another, and he began to feel as if he were the character he was reading about. This crossing of souls and spirits was accompanied by envy, the envy scholars indulge in. Tears filled his eyes as he considered his empty, wasted life. But his envy was fruitless, his tears futile, for neither led to action. His notebooks, lists, notations, and manuscript were like an abandoned egg that would never hatch. Herbst put down the biography of some great man and returned to his box of notes, putting one in, taking one out. If Henrietta were watching, she would assume he was busy with his book. Actually, only his hands were busy, like a card player who keeps shuffling the deck even when he is alone, out of sheer habit.
Chapter two
As it happened Herbst was at his desk, occupied with his notes, not thinking about anything. He looked at the notes and discovered that the material seemed to fit together to form a discrete chapter. What was not the case with Homer’s poems — which, as one scholar has noted, are not mere letters arranged at random — was the case with the book about burial customs of the poor in Byzantium. All of a sudden, at random and inadvertently, an entire chapter had put itself together. Herbst had worked on it for many years; suddenly, it took care of itself. What needs to be done now? It needs to be edited, erasing what should be erased, adding what should be added, correcting the language, explaining abbreviations and the like, until the chapter stands on its own — since, to a great extent, it is a subject in itself.
How is it a subject in itself? In their legal code, a husband cannot divorce his wife, nor can a woman divorce her husband, since the Torah declares, “They became one flesh.” Their lawmakers took this to mean that what the Creator has combined into one flesh, no man may put asunder, adding that in some cases a man is allowed to divorce his wife, but a woman may never divorce her husband. The Byzantine emperor, Leo the Isaurian, however, introduced four situations in which a woman could rid herself of her husband; should he get leprosy, for example, the woman could rid herself of him. This ruling, along with related material, formed a chapter in itself for Manfred Herbst. As he looked it over, he decided to copy it out; as he copied it out, he corrected and rewrote. Once it was edited, written, and rewritten, he sent it abroad to the editor of the journal of research in Byzantine antiquities in which all the great Byzantine scholars are published. Believe it or not, although anti-Semitism was intense, and most gentile scholars lent support to our enemies, they welcomed this article by Dr. Herbst of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Scholarship has its own dominion, which villainous hands fail to rock.
It was only a few months before the journal arrived in Jerusalem. Believe it or not, even the scholars on Mount Scopus took note of Manfred Herbst’s chapter and said, “This makes sense.” Sometimes the world tires of its follies and begins to smile on its creatures. Everyone was certainly astonished: this Herbstlein, whom they tolerated because he was such a modest man and because he made no effort to advance himself, took everyone by surprise with this article. Herbst had already published a book of more than six hundred pages, so why the uproar over a single article? If you like, I will tell you. Whatever a scholar wrote in his youth is prehistoric. If you like, I will tell you more. Herbst had already cashed in on his book, having won his appointment because of it. Eminent faculty members now talk about him in favorable terms. Those who seldom speak positively about anyone have nothing negative to say about him. If one of them is forced to mention him, he is sure to add, “Too bad he didn’t show me his article before sending it out; I might have made some comments.” Saying this, he thinks to himself: If I read it again, I will surely have something to add. In short, suddenly, with very little warning, Herbst’s star began to rise.
Let me say a word about envy. A person who develops step by step gives his friends a chance to observe him and become envious, which is not the case when a person’s talents emerge suddenly, in full power. Friends, having had no time to observe him, have had no time to become envious. They don’t seem to mind that he has achieved a measure of happiness. They even seek his welfare on occasion, and, if he takes the world by surprise with a great book or an important article, they treat him as they always have, for habit goes a long way. As for those who didn’t know him before, they are obviously not susceptible to envy or hatred, envy being reserved for intimates or acquaintances.
Since Manfred Herbst didn’t arouse the envy of colleagues, what began as a somewhat favorable response to him escalated, becoming intensely favorable. When the board of governors, or the senate, met to consider his promotion, no one objected, except Professor Bachlam, who was always grudging, all the more so toward scholars from Germany, who tended to disparage him and disregard his scholarship, although he had produced books that were on a par with theirs. In brief, it was suddenly the consensus that Manfred Herbst deserved to be promoted — for the moment, to the level of associate professor, not full professor. Though there was no additional salary involved, there was added prestige. Sometimes a lecturer is promoted but makes do with a lecturer’s salary, since the university cannot afford to pay a professor’s salary to every instructor who is promoted; the university’s expenses are soaring rapidly, and its income doesn’t grow proportionately. Its employees no longer receive their monthly salary three days early; now they’re lucky to be paid three days late.