Whom did one thank when the sun went down?
What could he thank, indeed?
For it was pleasure to occupy his mind with philosophy, or conjugations of a verb, or to make lists. He would list the cities he had visited, the books he had read—the novels of Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, or Anthony Trollope. When he could not sleep he would have the books. And he would hoard them, as he thought of it, the more memorables titles till the end; sometimes, of course, he would forget them—the memorable ones—as he made his list. At two, three, at any hour of the morning, he would be anxious to keep in his mind, in his sleepy mind, the well-known titles, and use them to swell his total.
Saying, yet not saying them, to himself, as he listed the lesser-known works. But the effort preoccupied him. He was anxious lest he lose those bonus titles, as he thought of them, as he made his list. And this anxiety limited his ability to range freely. As a man carrying the armful of kindling cannot bend to pick up the one more stick.
He felt these bonus titles impeded his effort to swell his total.
And, if he were to count them at the end, had he not, efficiently, in “saving” them counted them already?
And, indeed, he felt, each time he employed the device, that it would be better to enroll at the outset these better-known books in his list and get on with it.
But he never did. And he felt that it was a stupid exercise, as the effort, designed to distract him—this making-of-a-list—rendered him worried and that much less disposed to sleep.
For there were forty-seven of Trollope’s novels in the prison library. And over the months he had read them all, but he never could remember more than thirty, and he strove for these, and, at the end of his memory, berated himself.
The verbs were better. For he told himself there was some purpose in their re-enumeration.
But even with the verbs, he rehearsed them not to impress them on his mind, but to distract himself.
If he did not so muse, evenings, his mind recurred regularly to the moments at the trial when he’d felt most humiliated.
And he could not discharge these memories from, as it were, attendance on him.
Like a scab at which he picked.
He could not help the exercise of his obsessed recitals, nor could he forgive himself for what he felt was his shame in being humiliated.
But work would help, and time would help, and the Rabbi told him the Torah would help.
His other exercise was philosophy.
He wondered, in those nights, if the Torah was given man to serve man or if man was, to the contrary, put upon earth to serve God, and our comfort or even compliance of no account thereto whatever.
And what was strength, finally, but ability formed through repetition—in the fields, with the books, in his memory, in his mind?
He rejoiced when he read: “What is he who conquers a city compared to him who conquers his own nature?”
The despised Jew. The Kike.
The stories that they told about the Jew in prison, on the streets, and in the novels. In each of his books there was the Jew, the moneylender, the Shylock, the figure of fun.
Was it worthwhile to throw the book away at that inevitable gibe, or could one not shrug and say, “For the sake of the ten I will spare the town”? And, so, read on, and obtain the amusement or diversion one contracted for? As in the book before him now “recoiled at the touch of the greasy moneylender’s hand, as he counted the bills, one by one, into Phillip’s possession—the smile on his face a presumption barely to be borne.”
He thought again of the men at the Coffee Corner, in the morning. Eating their roll, their fresh bread roll, and drinking their coffee with chicory.
Thick men, freckled forearms, wide faces, smiling at each other. Smiling. Good, slow smiles, full of that sweetness of the South.
It was not false. It was real.
He’d seen it. Though he’d never felt it directed toward him.
Like circumcision itself, his appearance debarred him from any option of mistake on their part.
He was The Jew, and that was the end of it.
And had he decried it? He had not. At the Coffee Corner, in the court?
At home? At no time.
Then was he so weak as to expect a reward? For the mere performance of his duty, in forbearing? Forbearing what? There was no choice in it.
Well: man was weak. But it was his task, now, to overcome weakness.
No. No. It was not his job to have been born with that capacity.
It was his duty to repeat his efforts in spite of his inabilities. And time would give strength to his operations, but it would not feel like strength. And when he looked back, to compare today with the past, he would feel not pride but sadness. It was this feeling, the Rabbi said, which was called wisdom.
He read the novels, he studied the verbs, he ruminated on philosophy, in prison, where he was awaiting execution for the crime of murder.