The Big Hand...!

— What a fool you are! Don't you know how to stop when you see a car coming?
— "Stop! I nearly ran you down and flung you to your death."
Angry, raging shouts leap at him from the belly of the street; he trembles and draws back from the wheels, his head lowered...
"Wheels... a car, then another... shouting... then death... What is this man staring at?"

He counted the words, then understood what they meant, and turned slowly and moved away... He hates the noise and the city and the people; he hates cars and bicycles and everything on wheels — and even himself he hates! He felt a crushing, heavy weariness moving through his blood, so he turned toward the sea, led to it by its fresh, gentle breeze; and on the sand he stood contemplating the waves in their rising and falling, in their approach to the shore, surging and strong, and their retreat from it, spent and slow... And he dragged himself to a nearby café and sat at the nearest table, watching the blue from afar... The roar grew confused in his ears, and he went back to listening, straining to hear... wheels... a car, then another... shouting... then death...

"Where are you?... Where is she?... O God... what shall I do to know..."
Strange! He who asks should be met with an answer — and here he asks and answers himself with the same question!

He was with her, at her side, in a car racing them toward the capital... She wanted to buy clothes for herself and things for her little house... She was laughing as she pulled her hair from the hand of the playful wind, smiling into his face and looking into his eyes... She was his wife and his bride and everything of him and for him...

And he hid his eyes with his hands... Yes, she was laughing with the gaiety of a happy child... She was happy, secure in his nearness and his arm... He felt his arm, and heard her again whispering to him:
This is how I want my life to remain — fragrant with your breath, beautiful with your presence. And a big tear glistened in his eyes; she saw it and said: "How precious it is — it is the juice of your great love..."

Then one of the passengers gave a faint, frightened cry, and the wheels spun and something crashed into something... The shouting merged in his ears with the din; then the din subsided and the shouting went on, and he passed away from everything around him...
He stayed in the hospital a week, waking to sink away and sinking away to wake from a deep, heavy slumber; then his mind cleared a little, and he started up, raising his wounded body and crying:

"For God's sake, what has happened to my wife, and where is she?"

They said: "Do not put the weight of your body on your hand like that... You are suffering from serious injuries as a result of that terrible accident..."
The muscles of his face contracted, his eyes flashed with the gleam of a great fear, and he cried again:

"But my wife — has any harm come to her?"

Then the doctor among them spoke, saying, as he tried to lay his head back upon the pillow: Take courage and be a man. Try to forget everything, so that you may soon be healed...

A mad rage took hold of him and he struck the doctor a slap that stunned him; then he fell back on his pillow, his strength gone, hiding his face in his hands and weeping... weeping big tears, one upon another, and not just one big tear... They left him after a thick needle had pricked him; he fought sleep, then surrendered to it... And the struggle began — the struggle of waking and slumber, waking with its pain and its violence, and slumber with its mercy and its stillness... Once he tried to swallow all the pills of his medicine; the nurse came running and the doctor came frowning, marveling at his weakness and the smallness of his manhood... He drew back his hand and slapped no one, and turned his face toward the wall to wait for the thick needle so that he might sleep... Her father visited him many times... He wept when he saw him, then wept when he described her grave to him... She, in a grave?... Impossible... She is alive — the collision of car with car did not cut off her breath! And he ground his teeth, strengthening in himself the faith that she was still among the living... So he began to resist after weakness — to resist along with the treatment and the doctor against the disease — and he was healed after a struggle, and left the hospital after it had swallowed what money he had with him... the money with which she had wanted to buy clothes and things...

And he returned to life, seeking a livelihood so as to live and to search for her... He went back to look for his work in fear and trembling, and the director shook his hand warmly, his voice trembling as he said:

"Your work awaits you, and so do we. I am happy to see you receive your life anew. Such is life: pages in a book, folded shut and opened..."

So he went back to his work, but he came back unequal to it, unable to carry it out. He came back working in order to live for the sake of the search for her, and not merely to live. Errors mingled with what he wrote, and his absent staring spread over everything he saw. The director spoke to him kindly, warning him; his forehead grew damp with sweat and he promised to correct every mistake. But how could he correct, when pain possessed the soundness of his thinking? He despaired of the failed attempts and hated to see himself hanging by a thin thread which the director, out of pity for him, would not cut... So he braced himself and went in to his director, saying:

"Sir, I am no longer strong as I was... Incapacity and errors of work are defeating me; it is better that I look for easier work for myself."

The director bowed his head and murmured something; then he raised his hand to him with an envelope he took from his pocket. He stared at it, and at a white spot upon it in which he recognized a big tear... a man's tear, and a big gift...

And he went looking for new work and found it — work as a salesman in a large store... He applied himself until he grew used to understanding what the buyers said to him and giving them what they asked for, fastening his eyes upon every daughter of Eve, searching in her for his lost one... One day he saw her back and ran to where she stood; and disappointment struck him when he saw her face, and he fell back, yellow of face, sorrowful of glance, swallowing the morsels of pain anew, hard as iron...

He saw her often, but he would see only something of her — two eyes, or a figure, or hair... And despair began to batter him with two hands that knew no tiring; the last grain of hope that had once dwelt in his soul melted away, and he went back to drifting and blundering, changing work for work, descending the steps without feeling the descent — and going down is like going up for one whom life drags along behind it, so that he walks along its edge, weak and panting...

— "What will you have, sir?"
— "Eh?" And he raised his eyes to the café

waiter, counting the words he had said, and understanding,
"Ah — a cup of coffee..."

He drank one cup, then another, paid the price, and went out walking toward the shore... It seemed to him that its clear blue was turning into a strangling blackness with two thin arms stretching out toward him, and a feeling took possession of him of loneliness and of separation from every living, moving thing; so he began to call back the images of friends and acquaintances and relations, and the images passed before him, meager and pale, walking behind her image — her image as she laughed and pulled her hair from the hand of the wind before she died...

Why should he not die? Why not throw his spent, weary body between the arms of this great blue? Why not breast the waves and walk into its belly, spreading the water for his bed, and sleep? And what is death but a long sleep untroubled by the dreams of the earth? He did not need to steel himself, since he was not afraid — it is the frightened man who resolves and steels himself — and he saw in the bottom of the sea a world of stillness and calm, a world of silent seclusion, empty of staring eyes and muttering lips... And he walked along the shore on the soft sand, taking from life a last handful of its air for himself, and raised his eyes to the sky, to where he would be going, and smiled with peace of mind, for the first time since he lost her... No, he was not afraid, but happy, trembling with longing for the unknown where she was...

And suddenly he started back and stood staring at something silent crouched upon the sand... It was another human being, talking to the sea — yes, another tormented soul, a young, handsome boy... He wanted to flee from him, and he wanted to bend over him to learn whether he was alive or dead... At last he bent down and touched his shoulder gently; the boy turned and looked at him slowly, and the two gazes embraced — one despairing gaze embracing another; then the boy bowed his head and closed his eyes, and a tear came out from between his lids, small and faint, like a prisoner coming out from behind the bars of a prison...

He stretched his hand to the closed lids and wiped them; then he felt the disheveled black hair and pushed back a lock of it that shaded the forehead, and said, his voice like a whisper amid the roar:
"What is it, my son? Has life struck you too?"

The crouched body shook first, then the boy burst out weeping; so he drew him to himself, and the poor boy cried out, asking:

"Is it cowardice, sir, to seek death? Is it shameful to flee from life? Yes — it struck me first in my homeland and my father, there in Palestine, upon the sweet, holy soil; and it struck me here in my mother. But I was brave, sir — brave and patient. I buried my father and did not weep; I bade farewell to my soil and did not weep; I buried my mother and did not weep, despite the emptiness I thought would strangle me. And I stretched out my hand to life — I stretched out a soft, tender hand that asked for strength and hardness, the strength of a firm, solid man; but it failed me, sir, as the miser fails the feeble beggar. It abased me in people's contempt for me; it weakened me in the stubbornness of livelihood against me; it struck me in life's enmity toward me!

It does not want me and has no room for me — I, the destitute pauper living in a little patch of it, a cold, bare room, an open door to sickness... It has driven me back, and I have come to beg help of one who will not be cramped by me... I have come to beg help of this wide, broad one...

He fell silent a little, then asked quietly:

"And you, sir — have you come to it begging help too?"

And fear crept into his soul, so he was silent — the fear that had lain silent and asleep within him. But fear of what fearful thing? Of life, or of death? No — neither of the one nor of the other, but of this mighty blue, rescuer of the weak, lurer of the wretched! Yes — the weak like himself, and the wretched like this deprived refugee!

And he grew angry, and did not know why he was angry, or why he shouted at the boy as he lifted him by the shoulders from the sand:

"Get up! It is no merciful rescuer. Its bottom is colder than your room and darker than my heart. We do not want to end in a deep bottom, but in open space. Get up, and let us both search — you for a remnant of courage and I for a remnant of manhood... Give me your hand... Do you see? It is steady; it does not tremble...

The boy stared at him and murmured:

"Do you mean — do you mean that I..."

— Yes. You will stay with me, and I shall find you work, and we shall be together..."

And he felt the blood welling from the wound of his heart, hot and seething, as he watched hope open its eyes in the withered face staring up at him... The doctor had stitched the wounds of his body; it was for him to stitch the wound of his heart, his great wound — to stitch it with a strong thread of God's help and of faith... He would beg help of the big hand of God, which is bigger than everything big...

And it seemed to him that her feet were treading the sand with him, carrying him and the boy away from the roar — her gentle, light feet, dissolved in the dust beneath the earth — and his soul cried out within him:

"Do you see where she is? She is with you, walking at your side and laughing for you. Walk on, man — she is with God and with you..."