To This Day by S.Y.Agnon

The chambermaid told me about the boarding house. Its largest room, she said, was occupied by a wealthy young lady from the provinces who had come to attend finishing school. Across from her lived an official in the Tax Bureau, while next to him was an elderly couple that had fled the war zone. The remaining rooms belonged to lodgers who came regularly to Berlin on business. If I’m telling you things I never asked to be told about, it’s only to explain that I couldn’t switch to a better room because there were no vacancies.

The boarders were well-behaved and quiet. Even the young lady from the provinces made hardly any noise when she had a birthday party and invited all her friends. I don’t believe this had anything to do with our landlady’s grief. It was the war itself that made everyone speak softly. While German artillery was being heard around the world, the Germans were talking in whispers.

When the war broke out, I stopped working. I even put aside my big book on the history of clothing. I couldn’t write a thing as long as the fighting went on; all I wanted was to crumple the days into as small a ball as possible until it was over. In this way, a winter went by, and then a summer, and then another winter.

When spring came again, I could feel my room getting smaller. Half of it was perpetually dark and half was perpetually cold, since there wasn’t any sunlight. There’s a saying that not even the sun likes living in darkness, and I suppose that’s what kept it from my room. And I, who had lived in Palestine and knew what a real sun was like, had a craving for light. Moreover, each time I stepped out on the balcony to warm up I had to retreat inside at once, since there were no street sweepers because of the war and the trees were covered with dust that the breeze blew everywhere. Trees planted to make life better were only making it worse. Man, says the Bible, is a tree of the field. I suppose that’s why the trees join in when men go to war and spread misery.

So much for my room. As for myself, I should mention that I had no summer clothes or shoes. The more war refugees there were, the more appeals there were to donate clothing; I gave away all my summer things and couldn’t buy new ones when the warm weather returned because the tailors and shoemakers left in Berlin only made uniforms and army boots. Although this didn’t matter as long as I stayed indoors, my clothes weighed on me as soon as I went out. And so I spent most of my time in my room, going from its cold half to its dark half, neither of which had any air or light because the trees outside blocked the sun and scattered dust. Even the rain was more dust than water. God knows how long I might have gone on living in the cold, dust, and darkness of Berlin had not Dr. Levy’s widow asked to consult with me about her husband’s books, which she didn’t know what to do with.

Home | Books | Frontlist | Booksellers | Submissions | Press | About Us | Contact Us