Hold on to the Sun (19 page)

HOLD ON TO THE SUN

Some of the old neighborhoods of Jerusalem give me rather a strange feeling as I pass through them, as if they existed only for as long as I traverse them, springing up mysteriously from somewhere or other, my own imagination, perhaps, or even memories predating my birth, to stand there before I enter. Quickly the laundry is hung out on the long balconies, and children in black caftans come out to resume their games. The silence that always prevails after I pass has led me to the peculiar conclusion that behind my back, alley by alley, the neighborhood vanishes. This, too, is the reason for the habit which I have formed of never turning my head, and never looking back at these places.

For years I have refrained from expressing this feeling, even to myself, and when it sometimes awoke in me, even after I had emerged from these neighborhoods into other streets, I would reject it as firmly as a man dismissing the legends of some distant land and time. What finally led me to spend days on end examining it—without, however,
solving the riddle—was the following incident, which did not, apparently, happen by chance nor was it by chance that it happened where it did happen.

 

At the time I was busy working on my study of the history and sources of Jewish liturgy, comparing ancient versions of the daily evening prayer. I was vaguely aware of the existence of another old Prayer Book, which I had grounds to believe might contain, if not exactly a different version, at least a rare interpretation of the evening prayer and the time appointed for its recitation. The reference was hastily jotted down on an old index card, dating to a period before I undertook my study, which accounts for the slipshod nature of the notes. I may have copied them inaccurately from a manuscript, or taken them down during one of the lectures given by my late teacher who passed away many years ago.

According to my notes, this interpretation of the evening prayer refers to the light of the moon as it was before it was shrunk, and instructs believers to say the prayer with special rejoicing, “You should follow the sun in its sinking and the moon in its rising,” and say with devout intent: “With wisdom Thou openeth the gates of the heavens, and with understanding Thou altereth the seasons.” And when you say, “Thus hast Thou created day and night,” you should concentrate intently on the words ‘Day’ and ‘Night,’ and attach all your joy to layla, Night, which is a resorting of the Hebrew letters of yahal—“He will illuminate”—and
the extra letter “L.” And you should attach your joy chiefly to that “L” of layla, which has the numerical value of thirty and stands for the darkness in the moon on the thirtieth day of the lunar month. The above is the secret of the impregnation of darkness by yahal, which is the light of the Seven Days of Creation, the Everlasting Light.

And the interpretation states furthermore that a believer should perform this deed in great secrecy, so that nothing at all of it be divulged. And he should exert himself greatly in its performance, so that he gain the upper hand over others who conspire falsely and delay the opening of the gates of Heaven. Such ones give rise to dissension between the sun and the moon and seek in their sin to stop the seasons in their appointed rounds and to bring, God forbid, a different light into the world.

And at the end of these notes I found, to my great astonishment, the following: There are some who say that a believer should start right now combining the morning, afternoon, and evening prayers. As if the words of the Prophet had already come to be, “The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: But the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light.” And I do not know whether these words actually figured in the old Prayer Book or were no more than a supposition on the part of my late teacher, or perhaps even my own part in those distant days.

For a long time I postponed going into the matter, but as I approached the conclusion of my study I realized that I would betray the truth if I failed to track down that Prayer Book and quote the relevant passages. My search in the National Library came to naught. Neither there, nor among the microfilmed manuscripts did I find any trace of it. Nor did I succeed in eliciting from the few friends of my university days any further details regarding my teacher’s lectures on the subject of “Interpretations of the Evening Prayer.” In the end, I came to believe that I had not only made a mistake in copying down the title of the Prayer Book, its date of publication, and the place where it was printed, but that the whole business was no more than barren speculation which I had once entertained . . .

Nevertheless, one day after completing my daily quota of writing, I set out to search for the missing Prayer Book in the book shops of the city’s old neighborhoods. I went from shop to shop and to my repeated questions the booksellers replied—whether out of laziness, resentment, or because they were too busy to be bothered—that they did not know if they had it in their stock. They went on to recommend, however, that I look for myself since it was always possible that an old, forgotten volume might turn up somewhere in the shop. In this way I searched through many a dark backroom, where books in black bindings climbed to the ceiling, without finding what I was looking for.

I walked on, down narrow alleys and under stone arch-ways,
distracted both by the vertigo which always grips me when I spend hours reading the titles of rows of books upside down—climbing up and down the ladders does not improve matters—and by my suspicion that all my efforts were in vain. In the meantime it grew late, and as always in these old neighborhoods, I was filled with anxiety lest I should not be able to find my way out. As I was trying to decide whether to continue my search or whether it might not be wiser to stop now and attempt to retrace my steps, I saw, near the place where I was standing, a gap between two houses leading to a narrow passage. A shaft of light from the sinking sun penetrated the entrance, and but for the fact that it was thus illuminated, I have little doubt I would not even have noticed it, let alone entered.

To my surprise the passage led to a rather long quadrangle, lined on both sides by one or two storied buildings, all of whose entrances, both upstairs and down, housed little shops and market stalls. Because of the large space opening up between the houses, a broad, white band of sky was suddenly revealed. At its edge, above the tin roofs of the balconies, the moon was already hanging, waiting lightless like a pale assassin for its appointed time.

I had almost given up hope of finding the Prayer Book. And it was only a sense of duty which impelled me to go into the shops selling secondhand articles and ritual artifacts to inquire if by any chance such and such a Prayer Book, printed at such and such a date, in such and such a place,
had not remained in their stock from times gone by. Finally, however I reached a cul-de-sac, with a synagogue wall on one side and various dilapidated objects, stools, cupboards, and sky-blue painted prayer stands on the other. At its bottom stood a little shop selling secondhand books, old brochures, and postcards with engravings of landscapes.

I could not see the bookseller and assumed that he must be busy arranging shelves in the inner rooms, which to judge by the confusion reigning in the front of the shop must have been totally chaotic. While I waited for him, I was happy to discover, after my wearisome search, the shop’s engraved postcards and illustrated brochures. I leafed absentmindedly through some of them which I took from a shelf in one of the corners.

(When I think now, it is clear to me that I stood in precisely that corner only because the faint light entering from the cul-de-sac fell there, while the rest of the shop, apart from this narrow rectangle of light, was already in semi-darkness.)

I must confess that at first the album in question did not attract my attention. I was in the middle of perusing an illustrated pamphlet about road construction in the Ottoman Empire, when the gleaming spine of one of the books caught my eye. When I took it down, I saw that its cover, which must have been magnificent in its time, was made of red paper, and it was apparently the glistening of this red color which had attracted me.

It was an album of exquisitely beautiful photographs of landscapes at sunset. Although the old photographs had already faded, an almost dazzling light still emanated from them. It was obviously an artist’s eye which had perceived and immortalized these sights.There was no word of explanation accompanying the pictures, yet at the same time it seemed to me, as I paged through them, that these many and varied sunsets were connected by some deliberate intention which would surely be revealed at the end.

The photographs at the end of the book showed, over and over again, with a particular kind of insistence, the same mountain looming out of a dense tangle of southern vegetation, like an oblong fruit, or the protruding breast of an island maiden, with the sea stretching flat and solid behind it. But it was only after looking at a number of pictures of this oblong mountain that I realized what it was that had aroused my astonishment: although all the surrounding landscape was covered by a luxuriant growth of palms, banana plants, and gigantic ferns of a species unfamiliar to me, the mountain itself was unnaturally bald, so that the light streaming from the low sun onto its slopes seemed brighter than ever.

The last photograph showed the same mountain again, with no change whatsoever. The album was finished, and I was left with the feeling that I still did not possess the key which was to have been revealed at the end. I went on paging disappointedly through the index of sites where the photographs had been taken, and as I glanced through it, a
number of pages which had been stuck into the index (and which apparently had been printed separately, since neither the paper nor the print resembled those of the rest of the album), slipped into my hands. As soon as I saw the title on top of the first page: “From the estate of P., Artist-Photographer,” I began eagerly reading in the fading daylight which still illuminated the corner where I was standing what follows here:

 

“I was engaged upon the final preparation for publishing the album. I had already sent the material to the printers to make the impressions, and all that now remained was the last photograph, upon whose completion everything—yes, everything—depended. I was about to embark upon my seventh and last voyage to the island of G. in South Asia, and this time I was confident that I would be able to take the picture.

“In the meantime my affairs brought me to the little town of M. in the Midwest, where I was invited to a garden party on the lake. I was excited at the thought of my approaching journey, and since I knew none of the other guests, and my host was preoccupied by his duties, I seated myself on the lawn facing the lake and abandoned myself to my reflections. As I gazed at the white sailing boats, I busied myself with making a mental list of the things I’d still have to take care of when I stopped over in the city to pick up the filter I’d specially built for the last photograph.

“While I was enjoying the respite from the noisy party, someone suddenly bumped into me. It was a young man of about thirty in a state of such extreme agitation that he lost his balance and almost spilled the contents of the plate on me. I expected him to apologize and continue on his way, instead of which, to my astonishment, he addressed me by my name which he kept repeating incredulously, even after I’d more than once affirmed that I was indeed he, and that my peculiar profession was, indeed, that of photographer. Without so much as a by your leave, the young man sat down next to me, seized hold of my hand as if to prevent me from getting up, and speaking rapidly, with hardly a pause for breath, embarked upon the following story:

‘At that time, I was busy completing my studies on the West Coast, and all my hopes were pinned on the future. My wife, A., encouraged me during those long nights of burning the midnight oil and gladdened my heart with the happy details she kept adding to our castles in the air. One day we were strolling through the old quarter of the city, when we chanced upon a shop selling books and
objets d’art
, where a selection of your photographs of sunsets was exhibited.’

(When I heard this, my annoyance at the young intruder instantly melted away, and the old fears suddenly seized hold of me, the fears which had haunted me ever since I’d been tempted by my publisher to agree to holding an exhibition, even before the last picture was ready. However, I skillfully disguised this violent reaction, and the young man, who’d
noticed nothing, continued his story with the same agitation as before and without letting go of my hand.)

‘A. and I had always loved the sunset, even more ardently since becoming acquainted with its hues in that city on the coast. But your photographs enchanted us anew, and when we discovered among them a picture of our favorite view, from the hills opposite the shore, we decided in our enthusiasm that I would take more time off from my studies and that leaving the exhibition, we would set out immediately for the hills. The sunset that evening was hazy, with the sun descending through a vaporous sky. But thanks to your picture, the view held us spellbound. A. was particularly affected by the sight, and she declared, with a firmness uncharacteristic of her that we would have to come back to see the sunset there on the longest day of the year.

‘Since I was completely absorbed during those spring months in preparing my final exams, I paid no attention to the changes in the weather and failed to see to it that A. was properly dressed when she left the house. For ever since that day she’d been overcome by restlessness, and she’d spend hours on end walking, in order to quiet herself and refrain from disturbing me. And thus, when she was out walking one afternoon, she caught a chill and fell ill.

‘I divided my days between my books and the preparation of her medicines and shared in the astonishment of the doctors at the strange stubbornness with which the illness took hold of her. In the middle of June she was still bed-ridden,
but this didn’t stop her from reminding me of our decision to go out to the hills at sunset on the longest day of the year. When her fever rose, she’d become delirious and say strange things about
holding on to the sun
, which at the time I thought was a hallucination. When the longest day came, none of my pleas or the doctors’ orders availed, and she insisted on going out to the hills facing the ocean.