Only Yesterday (4 page)
The discussion of the specific Hebrew substance of the novel, its ascetic minimalism, focusing on a nonintellectual, non-ideological antihero, must not obstruct our view of its deep European roots. Agnon was the last Mohican of Diaspora Hebrew literature, still able to invoke and visualize the religious world of the simple folk in East European Jewry, looking back from the territorial context of the Zionist revival in Palestine. Furthermore, Agnon did it while hav-ing read a library of European novels, though masking his modern concerns in the naïve language of the traditional Library and its “naïve” readers.
Boaz Arpali, who analyzed the genres intersecting in Agnon’s novel, called it a “Master-Novel” or “Super-Novel,” written by a “Super-Master”: “
Only Yesterday
is a Super-Novel, for it includes several models and central aspects of the European novel since its inception. It is a conglomerate in which those models and aspects obtain new meanings and functions both in themselves and one vis-à-vis the other, thus creating new and exciting relations among them.” The plot of the novel, too, is at least a double plot: “On the one hand, from its very inception, it is mainly a picaresque, panoramic, episodic and comical plot with a strong social orientation. On the other hand, it is a plot of character and destiny (or, perhaps preferably: character that is destiny), a dramatic-tragical plot, whose links derive from one another in a tight causal chain with a psychological-existential orientation. The first story emerges in a consecutive reading from the beginning onward, while the shock brings us to the second story, in a retrospective reading from the end to the beginning.”
I
The Life of S. Y. Agnon
Agnon was born as Shmuel-Yoysef Tshatshkes in the town of Butshatsh in eastern Galicia, formerly a part of the great Kingdom of Poland, and between 1772 and 1918 incorporated in the Austro-Hun- garian Empire (today in the Ukraine). The Polish spelling of his and his town’s name—Czaczkes of Buczacz—sounds almost grotesque, and his flight from the name was a symptom of his flight from the shtetl world.
6
In local parlance, the Jewish name of the town was Bitshu’tsh, and Agnon imitated the name in his fictional Shibush, a decaying, valueless, dying world, as portrayed in his novel
A Guest for the Night.
Hebrew critics made a great deal of this symbolic name, for its dictionary meaning is: breakdown, disruption, blun-der—and this sounded like a death sentence on the Jewish Diaspora. Furthermore: breakdown is a cognate of Tomas Mann’s
Bu-denbrooks,
representing the breakdown of the bourgeois world. Yet in the living language—the Hebrew incorporated in Yiddish— Shi’bush (pronounced: Shibesh) means: a worthless thing, a negli-gible value; if something costs a shibush, it practically costs nothing (derived from a worn-out penny, the smallest coin with the Emperor’s face rubbed-of). And this perception evokes Y.L. Peretz’s Yiddish romantic poem “Monish”: “In kinigraykh Poyln
Nit vayt fun der grenets
ligt zikh a shtetele
groys vi a genets” (“In the Kingdom of Poland
Close to the border
Lies a tiny town
As big as a yawn.”).
6
The facts on Agnon’s life are based primarily on Dan Laor’s
S. Y. Agnon: A Bi-ography
[in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishers, 1998); and on the still-classic biogra-phy of Agnon by Arnold Band,
Nostalgia and Nightmare
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).
In fact, considering the demographic structure of that time, Butshatsh was not a small shtetl but quite a large town, a center of a whole district, well connected to a network of similar towns around Galicia. It sent a delegate to the Galician Sejm and later to the Par-liament in Vienna, as well as a delegate to the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. In 1890, when Agnon was three years old, the town counted 6,730 Jews, about 70 percent of the total population, as was typical for towns in Eastern Europe. Since 1874, the town had an elected City Council (12 Jews, 9 Ukrainians, 9 Poles) and between 1879 and 1921 Berish Stern, the son of the head of the Jewish Kehi-lah, was mayor of Butshatsh—not quite a Jewish exile. The Jews en-gaged in trade (indeed they conducted the trade of agricultural products for the whole region) and in crafts: they were the tailors, furriers, carpenters of the area. There was also a vigorous political and cultural life: Hasidim, Misnagdim and enlightened, semi-secular, and worldly Maskilim, a Socialist party and a Socialist-Zionist party, and so on. Keep in mind that the language of the Austrian state, army, bureaucracy, and university was German (which was relatively easy for Yiddish-speaking Jews to acquire, especially when they had ties to German market cities, such as Leipzig), while Polish had an au-tonomous status in Galicia and many Jews studied in Polish Gymnasia. On the other hand, the Jews spoke Yiddish and had close relations to their brethren on the Russian side of the nearby border, and infused it with the two languages of study, biblical Hebrew and talmudic Aramaic (both together were called “The Holy Tongue”). Thus, the minimal education of boys was in five languages (girls often studied French, too).
Agnon was born on 8/8/1887, yet he claimed he was born on the 8/8/1888 (lucky number) which fell on Tish’a Be-Av, the ninth of Av in the year 5,648 since the creation according to the Hebrew calendar (which is simply wrong, because that date fell on August 17, 1888). The ninth of Av is a most significant date: it is a day of fasting to commemorate two events of apocalyptic proportions in Jewish history: the Destruction of the First Temple and the Destruction of the Second Temple. It is also, according to one tradition, the day the Messiah will be born. Agnon lived in a mythological universe, in
the ahistorical world perception of Talmudic Judaism, where dates were less important as points in a chronological narrative but rather as significant moments in a universe of meaning.
In a similar way, Marc Chagall, who was born a few weeks before Agnon on the other side of the Russian border, claimed he was born on 7.7.87 (the actual date was June 24 1887, according to the old Russian calendar, which is equivalent to July 6 in the new calendar). But for Chagall, the magical number seven was an omen of his chosen destiny as an irrationally creative artist (see his “Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers”), while Agnon’s fictional birthday was linked to the two great Destructions of the Jewish nation in the land of Israel (and perhaps, to the nation’s Salvation, as mentioned in the first sentence of this novel). Did Agnon see himself in his innermost soul as the Messiah, the visionary prophet who would find the lost key of Jewish destiny or perhaps as the witness to two final destruc-tions (as represented in his two great novels)?
Agnon received a traditional Hebrew education from the age of three until the age of ten, then was guided by several private teachers and embarked on an intensive course of study and reading. His father was a furrier, steeped in traditional Jewish learning, and praying in the prayer house of the Tshortkov Hasidic sect, whereas his maternal grandfather was a Misnaged (opposed to Hasidism). His mother was an avid reader of German literature, and at an early age, along with extensive readings in the traditional Jewish Library, Agnon learned Polish and German, read modern Hebrew secular literature as well as European fiction, as mediated through Yiddish and Hebrew translations, and read German literature as well as the fash-ionable Scandinavian novelists Ibsen, Biörensen and Hamsun in German translations.
He began publishing in Yiddish in 1903 and published stories and poems in Yiddish and Hebrew. When he reached the age of twenty-one, rather than being drafted to the army, Agnon left Butshatsh. After visiting Lvov, Cracow, and Vienna, in June 1908 he immigrated to Palestine, settled in Jaffa, in the new Jewish neighborhood of Neve-Tsedek, and worked as an assistant editor of a literary journal. Here, his first story, “Agunot” (“Abandoned Women”) was
published, signed: Sh-Y Agnon (“the teller of ‘Agunot’“). In 1912, he lived for several months in Jerusalem, where Yosef-Hayim Brenner, the highest literary and moral authority among the Labor-Zionist settlers, published at his own expanse Agnon’s most important early novella,
And the Crooked Shall Be Straight.
In October 1912, like most members of the Second
Aliya
, Agnon left Palestine and returned to the Diaspora. He settled in Berlin, where he met Sh.Z. Schocken, a well-known German busi-nessman, Zionist, and publisher, who became his lifelong patron. In 1918
Und das Krume wird Gerade
was published in German. In 1920, Agnon married Esther Marks from Koenigsberg, with whom he had a daughter and a son. In 1921 they settled in Bad Homburg, but in June 1924 the house burned down, along with Agnon’s library and manuscripts. In October 1924, Agnon returned to Palestine and settled with his family in Jerusalem. During the Arabic pogroms against Jews in 1929, Agnon was moved to the center of Jerusalem and his house in Talpiot was badly damaged. In 1930 he traveled to Leipzig, where his collected writings were being edited in Hebrew (published by Schocken in four volumes in 1932). In the summer of 1930 he also visited Poland and his hometown Buczacz, which served as the basis for his novel
A Guest for the Night
(published in 1939). In 1945, the novel
Only Yesterday
, written during the war, appeared in Hebrew. He was twice awarded the prestigious Bialik Prize for literature and twice (in 1954 and 1958) the highest Israeli award, the Israel Prize. In 1966, Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, together with the Jewish-German poetess Nelly Sachs. Agnon died on Febru-ary 17, 1970 and was buried on Mount of Olives in a State funeral.
This translation has enjoyed the generous support and assistance of many friends. I had the good fortune to work with the intelligent and supportive Dr. Brigitta van Rheinberg of Princeton University Press. Once again, James Ponet, “the Hillel rabbi” at Yale, was an eager par-ticipant in my search for sources. Parts of the manuscript were read by Robert Alter, Carol Cosman, and Michal Govrin; Esther Fuchs carefully read the entire book. All of them contributed helpful sug-gestions and comments. And, as always, Benjamin Harshav makes it all possible.
I attempted to discover allusions in the text to sources in the “Jewish library,” and to track down their accepted English translations. In only one instance did I deliberately deviate from the original: in Book Four, Chapter One, the author presents an elaborate wordplay using biblical and talmudic passages to interpret the dream of a Hasid. Agnon used Deuteronomy 32:42 and Shabbat 12, while I used Exodus 6:1 and Miqvaot 5:5 to achieve the same effect. If there is some other world, where translators can discuss “deviations” with authors, I hope Agnon will understand.
Barbara Harshav
s e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 9
I
xxxi
I
Like all our brethren of the Second Aliya, the bearers of our Salvation, Isaac Kumer left his country and his homeland and his city and ascended to the Land of Israel to build it from its destruction and to be rebuilt by it. From the day our comrade Isaac knew his mind, not a day went by that he didn’t think about it. A blessed dwelling place was his image of the whole Land of Israel and its inhabitants blessed by God. Its villages hidden in the shade of vineyards and olive groves, the fields enveloped in grains and the orchard trees crowned with fruit, the valleys yielding flowers and the forest trees swaying; the whole firmament is sky blue and all the houses are filled with rejoicing. By day they plow and sow and plant and reap and gather and pick, threshing wheat and pressing wine, and at eventide they sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, his wife and his sons and daughters sitting with him, happy at their work and rejoicing in their sitting, and they reminisce about the days of yore Outside the Land, like people who in happy times recall days of woe, and enjoy the good twice over. A man of imagination was Isaac, what his heart desired, his imagination would conjure up for him.
The days of his youth departed in his yearning for the Land of Israel. Some of Isaac’s friends had already taken wives and opened shops for themselves, and they’re distinguished in the eyes of folks and are invited to all public events. When they enter the bank, the clerk sits them down on a chair; when they come to a government office, the dignitaries return their greetings. And others of Isaac’s friends are at the university studying all manner of wisdom that sustains those who possess it and magnifies their honor. While Isaac
I
3shortens his life and spends his days and his years selling
Shekels
to vote for the Zionist organization and selling stamps of the Jewish National Fund. His father wished to extricate him from his folly and set him up in a shop so he would be occupied in trade and become a man, but as soon as he entered the shop, the whole shop turned into a branch of Zionism. Anyone who didn’t know what to do with himself went there. There were those who came to talk and those who came to listen, and those who just came and stood leaning on their walking stick and chomping on their beard, and the customers were dwindling and dropping away to other shops.Even though there is a Society of Zion in the city, the talk-ers were fond of that store, because at the Society, you have to pay monthly dues, while here you entered and didn’t pay. At the Society, everyone who comes in is dubbed a Zionist, and not everybody wants to be known as a Zionist, while here you were entitled to split hairs about Zionism to your heart’s content and nobody called you a Zionist. And why are they afraid to be counted among the Zionists? Because the Sages of the Generation did not yet grant their seal of approval to Zionism and were hostile to the Zionists who make Societies for the Land of Israel thus annulling the Salvation that has to come by a miracle. All those who fear their words or are in awe of them are afraid to be called Zionists, but obstreperous individuals permit themselves to split hairs about it. They gather in Simon Kumer’s store and find people like themselves and fire each other up with words that are food for the soul.
Thus passed the days of Isaac’s youth, days that should form the foundation of a man’s future. He didn’t notice that he was spend-ing them idly, or he did notice and wasn’t worried, because his dwelling Outside the Land wasn’t worth anything in his eyes, for all of Isaac’s desire was to be in the Land of Israel. He remained alone in the shop, sitting and counting the Zionist Shekels he sold and making calculations, such as, if every single Jew gives a penny every day to the Jewish National Fund, how many acres can you buy with that small change and how many families could be settled on them. If a customer comes in to ask for some merchandise, Isaac glances at
him like someone who is sitting on a treasure trove and people come and bother him.
I
When Simon, Isaac’s father, saw Isaac’s activities, he was bitter and depressed and worried. He would stand in the door of his shop and wring his hands in grief, or would sit on the chair and lean his head back and blow out his lungs inside him. If you haven’t seen Simon Kumer, the father of Isaac Kumer, sitting in front of his son you never saw a father’s grief. Before his son Isaac was grown up, his wife was his helpmate, and when she passed away leaving behind her a house full of orphans, Simon expected his son would help him. And what does the son do? Is it not bad enough that he doesn’t help him, but he also drives the customers away to other shops? Simon neither quarrels with his son nor consoles him, for he has learned that neither quarreling nor conciliatory words will do any good. A curse has descended on the world, sons do not heed their fathers and fathers do not rule their sons. And Simon has despaired of getting any joy and satisfaction from his son and has started worrying lest his other sons learn from Isaac’s deeds. He pondered the matter and agreed to send Isaac where he wanted to go. True, there is no prospect for the Land of Israel, but at any rate there may be some profit in that, for when he sees there is really nothing there, he’ll come back to his hometown and settle down like everybody else, and the other sons will be saved and won’t get dragged into this nonsense.
Simon didn’t spare his son’s dignity and would joke, For what reason do I agree to his journey? So he’ll see with his own eyes that the whole business of the Land of Israel is a fiction the Zionists made up, and he’ll remove it from his heart. Isaac heard and wasn’t vexed. For the sons of Israel, if they aren’t the sons of rich men or geniuses, grow up meekly, hear their disgrace and keep silent. And Isaac said to himself, Let Father say what he wants, in the end he will see that my way is the right one. Thus Isaac received his father’s consent to the journey. From the day he was born not a thing had been done to his desire until that thing came and was done to his desire.
I
So great was the power of Isaac’s trust in the Lord that even the town wags who make a joke of everything didn’t laugh at him. His father began to think that perhaps God sent him to be a sustenance and a refuge for us. When Simon considered the journey, he started worrying and groaning and sighing, May I drop dead if I know where I’m going to get the money for the trip. Even if I sell all my wares it won’t be enough. And even if it is enough, nobody comes in to buy, for Isaac has already made the customers forget the way to my shop. And even if my customers do come back they don’t pay cash. All Simon Kumer’s days were worries about money. Three generations had drawn their livelihood from the treasures their ancestor Reb Yudel Hasid had discovered, and the fourth generation finished off that wealth and didn’t leave Simon Kumer, father of Isaac, son of the son of the daughter of Reb Yudel’s daughter, even the remnants of remnants of those treasures. And now that he is pressed for money, no miracle occurred to him, and he didn’t find a treasure as his ancestor did. Reb Yudel who had perfect trust in God was paid by the Holy-One- Blessed-Be-He to match his trust, while Simon his descendant placed his trust in trade, and trade sometimes brings honors to those who practice it and sometimes brings horrors on those who practice it.
Now a new worry was added to his worries, finding money for the journey. In those days there was some idle money among the well-to-do men of the city, for the royal authority had issued a decree against pawning, and they were afraid to lend to a Gentile who might report it to the government, yet they did take the liberty of lending to Jews at a fixed rate of interest. But where will a poor Jew get money to pay? And there’s another problem here too, for Isaac won’t find any work in the Land of Israel, and by the time his departure is paid for, he’ll need to borrow to pay for his return.
Meanwhile, the time came for Isaac to be drafted into the army, and there was not a chance that he would be excused, for he was a healthy fellow and without the wherewithal to bribe the army commanders, and serving in the army meant profaning the Sabbath and eating forbidden foods. In spite of himself, Simon went back to pondering the journey.
Thus he went to the pawn shop and borrowed money for travel expenses and for clothes and footwear, for Isaac’s clothing had laid him bare and his footwear wore him down because it was patched. He bought him clothes and ordered him shoes and a hat. Clothes of wool, shoes of sturdy leather, a hat of black felt, for they weren’t yet experts on the climate of the Land of Israel and didn’t know what clothes that Land demanded. True, they heard that the Land of Israel was a
hot land,
but they thought hot means beautiful, an in the poem of our bard,
the marvels of a land where spring blooms eternal.
For he is going to a place where they didn’t know him and his clothes will show that he is from a fine home. Then Simon has six shirts sewn for him and ironed meticulously, because the ones he had showed more rips than patches, for ever since the day his mother died, no hand had mended them. If Simon had been blessed with wealth, he would have provided wedding garments for his son, but now he wasn’t blessed, he provided him with supplies for the road. And he took a pillow and a featherbed from his wife’s bed and gave them to Isaac. Then he took a valise and a sack, a valise to put the clothes and shirts in, and a sack to put the pillow and featherbed in.I
Isaac parted from his father and his brothers and his sisters and all his other relatives and set out on the road. To the disgrace of his hometown, we must say that he parted from it without pain. A city that didn’t send a Delegate to the Zionist Congress and was not inscribed in the Golden Book of the Jewish National Fund is a city you leave without pain.
Isaac came to the railroad station and bought himself a ticket, and boarded the train. He squeezed his sack under the bench and the valise he held in his hand and sat down wherever he sat down, his heart beating like those wheels beating their rhythm beneath his feet, and like those wheels, when they beat they travel on, so did Isaac’s heart travel on. Yesterday he had worried lest there be some obstacle and he wouldn’t go. And lo and behold, there was no obstacle and he is traveling. He had already left the borders of his hometown and was entering the limits of another city, and from that
city on to another city. And if no mishap befell him on the way, in two days he would reach Trieste and sail on the sea to the Land of Is-rael. In his ruminations on the Land of Israel, he cleared his mind of every other matter, and even the Land of Israel itself seemed to grow more and more vague, for the pounding of his heart blurred his thoughts and the pictures of his imagination slipped away. Only in the moorings of his soul did Isaac see that he was transported from simple concrete things to a pleasant state of being.
The car was full of people from his hometown and people from other towns. Some were traveling for their own trade, and oth-ers were traveling for other kinds of business, and on their journey they started getting close to one another, as human beings would who chance to be in the same place and see one another as partners, if not in reality, then in conversation. Some talked about matters of trade and others talked about matters of state, some told news from their hometown and some skipped from one issue to another, like travelers who get excited about everything but don’t linger long over anything. Unlike all of those, others sat in silence, because of the bad deals that got them in trouble. Some time ago the whole world rejoiced before them and now the whole world was sad. Maybe they will be exempt from a harsh judgment—from a light one they will certainly not be exempt. By the time you’ve got those deals in your hands, you’re already in their hands. Isaac neither rejoiced with the rejoicers nor grieved with the grievers. Those businesses brought about by Exile were not worth either rejoicing or grieving about. Isaac had already shaken them off his hands and he would soon shake off the dust of Exile, like a man shaking something repulsive off his feet.
The train rolled on between villages and hamlets, cities and towns. Some were known for their great rabbis and others were known for their famous cemeteries. Some earned a name with the produce of their fields and the fruit of their trees, the fish in their rivers and the minerals in their mountains; and others earned fame with their poultry and livestock and other things in heaven and on earth. And yet other places have neither learning nor earning, but do have a Quarrel. Some sanctify the Name of the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He with the Kedushah,
We shall sanctify You
, and others sanctifyHim with
We shall bless You
, and they wrestle with each other and create a Quarrel. And another Quarrel, between Assimilationists and Zionists. The former want to be like all the other nations, and the lat-ter want to be Jews, so they wrestle with each other and create a Quarrel. And yet another Quarrel, between those who want Salvation by miracle and those who want a natural Salvation, so they wrestle with each other and create a Quarrel.From time to time, the train stopped. Some got off and some got on. Some of them glanced at Isaac, for he had a pin stuck in his tie with the name of Zion engraved on it. Isaac didn’t notice them, and if they said anything to him—he was silent. Isaac had removed himself from all arguments, and his heart was not moved by talk. Only yesterday, he was willing to argue about every Zionist issue, but today, since he is going to fulfill his words in deeds, all words are su-perfluous and supercilious.
Night began departing and the buds of morning started to appear. The train was approaching Lemberg, the capital of Galicia, home of most of the great Zionists of the Empire. Isaac broke up his trip and made a stop in Lemberg, to appear before our leaders and get their blessing before his ascent to the Land of Israel.
I
So Isaac picked up his valise and his sack and entrusted them to the guards. He smoothed the wrinkles in his clothes and entered the city. From students in his hometown, Isaac had heard of the coffeehouse where our leaders hold their meetings. A big city is not like a small town. In a small town, a person goes out of his house and immediately finds his friend; in a big city days and weeks and months may go by until they see one another, and so they set a special place in the coffeehouse where they drop in at appointed times. Isaac had pictured that coffeehouse, where the great Zionists gather to discuss the needs of the nation, as the most exquisite place, and he envied those students who could go there any time, any hour. Now that he had arrived in Lemberg, he himself went to see them.
And so Isaac came to Lemberg, capital of Galicia. Tall buildings rise high and higher and carriages move without horses, and
bronze horses stand erect with bronze dignitaries astride them. And there are gardens planted in the city and stone figures spraying water from their mouth, and big synagogues built on stone pillars, and an old Jewish cemetery full of saintly and righteous ancestors protects the city. This city is a paragon of beauty, the joy of the whole land. Here sat the masters of the Torah, the interpreters of the sea of the Talmud and the interpreters of the
Shulhan Arukh
, and from here went forth most of the first Maskilim who wanted to rejuvenate our spirit, and here sat the Shepherds of Israel, the Champions of the Holy who could stop evil decrees, and like them were their righteous wives who, with their righteousness and their grace, overcame the persecution. If our misfortune is as wide as the sea and our troubles as multiple as the sand, there are pearls in the sea and jewels in the sand, the former are the Chiefs of Israel the Leaders of the Generation, and the latter are their proper wives who were given them by God for grace and mercy even in the land of our foes. Two cities there are in Galicia whose fame goes far and wide, Brod and Lemberg. The glory of Brod, her glory in the days of Reb Yudel Hasid, Isaac’s ancestor, is departed now, but Lemberg still stands in her splendor. From the day the Jews came to Lemberg six hundred years ago until now, her light has not grown dim. Wherever you turn, in whatever corner you look, you find her greatness.So Isaac walked along the streets of Lemberg. Before him and behind him, men and women are wearing expensive clothes like guests at a wedding, and heavy carriages run hither and yon, and peo-ple who look like Bishops walk around like ordinary human beings, and if not for the schoolgirls pointing at them you wouldn’t have known that they are famous theater actors. And shops filled with all the best are wide open, and clerks in uniforms come and go. And a lot of other things can be seen in the streets of Lemberg and every single thing is a wonder unto itself. Isaac looked neither here nor there. Like that Hasid, his ancestor Reb Yudel, who blindfolded himself with a handkerchief a few years before his ascent to the Land of Israel because he didn’t want to please his eyes with the beauty of Outside the Land, so did Isaac walk around with eyes shut tight. Be-fore long he found himself standing in front of a splendid palace with
several thick glass doors, running one behind another and turning nonstop, and a boy stands between the doors, dressed in blue and gold, and dignitaries and gentlemen come in and go out with thick cigars in their mouths. So Isaac stood still and didn’t budge, trans-fixed by a spell. Who knows how long he would have stood like that if a man hadn’t come along, spotted him as a provincial who wanted to come in, and brought him in.
Suddenly Isaac found himself standing in a splendid temple with gilded chandeliers suspended from the ceiling and lamps shining from every single wall and electric lights turned on in the day-time and marble tables gleaming, and people of stately mien wearing distinguished clothes sitting on plush chairs, reading big newspapers. And above them, waiters dressed like dignitaries and like lords on the king’s birthday, holding silver pitchers and porcelain cups that smelled of coffee and all kinds of pastry. Everything Isaac had pictured in his imagination was nothing at all compared to what his eyes saw, and everything he saw with his eyes was nothing compared to the terror he felt at that moment. He began shriveling and shrinking until nothing was left of him but his hands, and he didn’t know what to do with them. One of those dignitaries waiting on the guests came up and bowed to him. Then a miracle happened to Isaac and he started talking.