It is in the nature of such celebrations that, when they are over, no one is really satisfied, so one goes out for coffee and conversation. Herbst was not a conversationalist. Those who are silent in company are always pressed to talk. Herbst was asked for his response to the speeches made in the poet’s honor. He answered, “Literature is not my field, so whatever an ignoramus like me says will neither add nor detract.” Because they pressed him, he said, “Modern poetry may be good, it may even be very good, but it can’t be compared to medieval poetry. And medieval poetry can’t be compared to even the most minor poetry of the Bible.” Someone laughed and said, “If you mean the Bible as emended by professors, even newspaper articles are preferable, so long as they weren’t written by those professors.”
Herbst was silent. He considered what he had said and was surprised that it had been so easy for him to speak from his heart. He was also surprised at his colleagues for not taking him seriously. He turned to them and said, “I should have remained silent, but, having begun, I will finish. If you want to hear, I’m ready to speak. For a people to have been granted such a book is quite enough, and it’s reckless to turn away from what is granted once in thousands of years in favor of what’s granted every day.”
These were some of Herbst’s attempts to master the Hebrew language. Now I will go back to where I was and recount what happened after that sleepless night.
Chapter ten
I took a break between Herbst’s dream and Herbst’s actions, interjecting some personal history. Now I’ll go back and relate events in sequence, as they evolved, recounting one thing after another, incident after incident, as it occurred, as it unfolded, as it fell into place.
By morning, Herbst had recovered from the nightmares that accompanied that mad slumber. A small parcel arrived from the post office, along with other written and printed matter. The parcel was so small that he could have ignored it. But something made him take note of it immediately. After examining what else the mailman had brought, he turned to investigate the parcel.
He took a pencil and slipped it under the string, hoping to loosen it without letting it snap, so he would be able to pass it on to Henrietta in one piece. Good, strong string was no longer available, and what could be bought was rough and ineffectual, like most of the defective merchandise that came in with the war.
He slipped off the string and then the wrappings, treating the paper with the same care. He removed the paper slowly and carefully, so it wouldn’t tear in his hand. Good, strong paper was no longer available in stores, and what could be bought was as ugly as all the other defective merchandise that came in with the war. When the package was unwrapped, he found a book inside, one of those books that, as soon as you see it, you feel you have always been waiting for. The book was by Alfred Neu, a distillation of all his articles and papers.
After glancing through the book, Herbst sat down at his desk, as he did when he was about to work. He sometimes sat down to work wishing that he would be interrupted, for even a zealous and diligent worker has to stop. Ideas don’t always fly into his pen, and he has to take a break and be idle. No one likes to take this on himself, to admit that he himself is responsible for the fact that he is idle. If he is interrupted, he has someone to blame for his idleness, and he can believe that, if he hadn’t been interrupted, he would be working diligently.
Now he was afraid he might be interrupted. He read two or three pages, then sat up in astonishment. He was, after all, well versed in Neu’s theories. He knew them by heart, so that, even were he to be wakened from sleep, he could have outlined them without faltering. Still, he found new material in the book. That is the secret of a good book: whenever you read it, you find things you hadn’t noticed before. As for this book, there really was new material in it. Some of Neu’s conclusions, which had seemed a bit flimsy, were reinforced here. Herbst, who already accepted Neu’s theory and was deeply involved with it, made no distinction between what was previously implied and what was now stated with certainty. In either case, he approached the book as a new reader.
I have mentioned Neu on many occasions without mentioning what he does. I have made fleeting references, as if he were a figure that flits from void to void. If he has assumed any substance at all, it derives from Manfred Herbst, who owed his position to him and was introduced to Lisbet Neu because of him. Now I will tell a little something about him, as well as his books. I’ll begin with his forefathers, as I did with Herbst, having learned from experience that, if you want to ascertain a man’s character, it’s worthwhile to consider the preceding generations, to know the quarry whence he was hewed. Also, it is good to begin with childhood, before one has learned to camouflage his actions, a time when everything is still exposed. I will deal only with his early years, before he became famous, because whatever transpired afterward can be found in the monographs written about him.
Alfred Neu was the son of financiers whose business was linked with commerce and industry in several German cities. In the memoirs of the elders, printed only for the family and never made public, there is a detailed account of how the business developed and acquired such a reputation that it became connected with leading banks in almost every country. It was not their wealth that made them famous, for they were not rich, but their loyalty and integrity, for they were scrupulous and rejected any questionable enterprise, any hint of speculation. Whoever preferred loyalty and integrity to avarice did business with them. Until the enemy took over, annihilating them and their business.
In the beginning, it was assumed that Alfred Neu would also go into the family business. It was the custom in the Neu family that, when a son completes his secondary education, he learns banking. This was the rule: he begins at the lowest level. If he is worthy, he is promoted. When he becomes more proficient and more worthy, he is made an assistant branch manager. When he becomes still more proficient and worthy, he is made a branch manager. If there is no vacancy, he waits until there is a spot for him, or another branch is opened with him at its head. So it was with each member of the Neu family, Alfred Neu included. When he finished his secondary studies, he was sent to work in a branch of the bank located in some small town. He spent a year there. He did well, and everyone predicted that he would become a competent financier. No one realized that, what his fathers had done eagerly and willingly, he was doing only out of a sense of duty. He was not yet aware of what his heart was demanding of him, but, unconsciously, he was pursuing its mission. The Neu family, being observant, was careful not to violate the Shabbat, and, since all work stopped on the Christian Sabbath too, he had two free days every week. He used to spend Shabbat studying Torah, philosophy, and science. He spent Sundays hiking, rowing, catching grasshoppers, collecting plant specimens, or fishing, according to the season and the weather. Because it was a small town with a tight economy, in which everyone was worn out by work and the pressure of taxes, because it was becoming more and more difficult to engage in matchmaking because most young men were going off to the big cities, no one was free to invite young Neu for an evening meal, a cup of coffee, or simple conversation, even though he was a bachelor and they were encumbered with daughters. In any case, it seemed clear that a young man from such a wealthy family was not meant for the daughter of some local businessman. So Neu’s time was his own to spend as he wished. He reserved the free days for trips and the like, the nights for books. He read all sorts of things that year. I would be surprised if there was a subject he didn’t explore, ranging from the origins of the world and its development to the history of man and all living creatures. Whatever he saw, heard, or read, he summarized in his notebook. The order and precision to which he was accustomed in the bank characterized all his endeavors. On the face of it, what Neu wrote was a diary, the sort a young person writes out of idleness, when there is no one to talk to. But the intelligence for which he later became renowned was already apparent in those notebooks. What did he include in them, and what did he exclude? Conversations, epigrams, fables, the chatter of children, jokes, riddles, hyperboles, incantations, slips of the tongue, legal verdicts — whatever struck him as special — along with fundamental theories and assumptions. His basic assumptions about sight, sound, and smell were already apparent in those notebooks, as were his opinions on the influence of smell on human behavior. Before Neu achieved what he achieved, he followed many blind alleys.