A Journey to the End of the Millennium (15 page)

At first he recoiled from her, not only because he did not feel ready to make love so precipitately, and in a strange room, on the bedding of his hosts, his kin, with whose hearts and minds he still had to engage in battle, but also because he did not know where or how far away the other wife was. But when he tried to push her away with a strangled whisper of affection, she caressed him all the harder and her sighing turned into moaning, so that he was obliged to stop her mouth with one hand while the other tried to soothe with caresses the heavy, inflamed breasts that pressed against his face and flooded him with a fresh smell of soap. But now, in this curved chamber in this strange city, he discovered that the long voyage had made the first wife, like the second, stronger than he. While the anxieties of the journey had sapped the marrow of his bones day and night, the two women sitting on the old bridge had been freed of all responsibility, and with nothing to do, poised between sea and sky, they had accumulated strength flavored with a hint of wildness, so that this woman now grabbed handfuls of his hair and pulled them hard toward her, not only to force
the obstructing hand to release the sounds of her desire but also to enable her more easily to remove the robe that covered his virility. Because of the existence of a second wife, he owed her more than if she had remained the only one.

Dazed and unready, at first he struggled silently with the desire of his first wife in the darkened room, until his heart longed for her and he took her, placing his mouth on hers in place of his hand to confine her moans. Afterward he hastened to cover her, wondering about the whereabouts of the second wife and thinking of what he had to do and wanted to do to preserve the perfect love that he had been forced to demonstrate here in double proof. But when he attempted to rise, he discovered that the creeping fatigue that had overcome the other
travelers
since last night had reached him too. So again for a while he laid his head between the first wife’s strong thighs, inhaling once more with surprised curiosity the smell of Mistress Esther-Minna’s soap. Within the curved walls of the chamber, whose tiny windows admitted the pink light of the Parisian sky blended with a gay, guttural babble from the nearby riverbank, he closed his eyes, taking care not to fall asleep, so as not to lose control just now, when the babble outside was joined from inside the house by the clear voice of its excited mistress.

Gently, Ben Attar released himself from the warm, warming trap. While the first wife, thus innocently released, curled up and went back to sleep, he rose and dressed, trying to smooth his crumpled robe, and crept in quietly for his next encounter with Mistress Esther-Minna, who was sitting red-faced where she had been before, with her old maidservant, the yellow parchment of the song of Moses spread
between
them as though the shared contemplation of the Jewess and the gentile might soften the angry menace of the words. Now the mistress of the house did not hasten to rise and retreat from her guest, perhaps in part because she realized that her generous hospitality had left her no private corner of her house to withdraw to. And so she remained, looking at him. Had she been able to, she would have made him too, wash his body, which smelled not only of the salty ocean but also of a heady reek of spices and animal skins. Moreover, from the soft, thick look that clouded his eyes, and perhaps also from the presence of a telltale stain on the edge of his robe, she was suddenly pierced, as by a painful knife thrust, by the knowledge that, having just made love on
her own bridal couch, he was now roaming in search of his second wife, so as to prove to the mistress of the house that she was both misguided and ignorant.

A powerful shudder shook her, as though the vengeful desert god who had just cursed the world in the last song of Moses were trying to test her too, not in the faraway desert but here in her own home, in her innermost chambers, revealing to her what was forbidden and
outlawed
in the new edict from the Rhineland as one might expose a child to a sexual act. She lowered her head and put her fist to her mouth in a childlike gesture. And the blue of her eyes shone in deep amazement, which made them sparkle like true sapphires among the fine wrinkles that adorned the corners of her eyes. As Ben Attar looked at her, he could feel her shudder with moral revulsion against him, but when he remembered what Abulafia had told him by the campfire in the
Spanish
March about the pleasure that he extracted from her, he said
nothing,
except to ask her gently for the whereabouts of the second wife.

From here he strode along a narrow, very dark passage to a cubicle between whose bare gray walls the girl’s bewitched spirit still wafted, even though she herself had been taken away that morning. The
twilight
that was beginning to descend on the island played slowly on the profile of the young second wife, who had been caught up in the universal slumber. Although Ben Attar had neither the strength of spirit nor the desire to draw her up from the depths, he did not relent, because he knew that on the other side of the door a woman who was seeking to convert her failed repudiation into a full-blown ban was waiting for him, and until the rabbi from Seville should wake from his sleep and know what to say to her, it was up to him to show her with deeds, not with words, that she was mistaken, and that love was
possible
at any time or at any place where the lover was present. And so, exhausted as he was, he roused himself to rouse the woman who was lying before him. But the second wife was young enough to cling fanatically to her sleep, and when he tried to wake her with his kisses, she pushed him frantically away, apparently still unconsciously,
defending
her slumber with as much determination as though it were her virginity.

He did not relent, despite being so tired and hungry, for his desire for food was greater now than his desire for a woman. Since through
the haze of tiredness he imagined that he had been ravaged by the first wife, he allowed himself to ravage the second one, and slowly he
struggled
with her while dragging her up from her depths, kissing every part of her body that might be kissed, which meant every part of her body. At last she took pity on him, licking his eyeballs to make him close his eyes and enter into her slumber and be embraced in her breathing, so that when he took her he would not know whether it was reality or a dream.

Meanwhile, Mistress Esther-Minna remained seated in the next room beside her parchment, which seemed even more severe in the evening shadows, impatiently waiting for the return of her husband, who was wandering around on the right bank with Abu Lutfi, who had come ashore to discover what did or did not attract the notice of the Parisians in the market of Saint Denis. Ever since the partnership had been disbanded, Abulafia had nurtured a sense of guilt not only toward his good uncle but also toward the partner from the desert, whose weeping at their parting he could not forget, and so he now treated the Ishmaelite with great patience. He showed him every stall, every
object,
translated every remark, as though he did not have important guests at home who might forgive his absence only because they were all wrapped up at the moment in their sleep. His wife, however, did not forgive him, and she went down to the front gate to see who would arrive first, her young husband or her young brother. As time wore on and the darkness deepened, the space carved out inside her by worry increased, and for an instant she was seized by a terrible fear that neither of the men would ever return and that she would become the third wife of the North African merchant who had settled in her house. When the rabbi’s son woke from his powerful sleep—for it was fitting that the first to wake should be he who had fallen asleep first, young though he was—and, approaching her in a daze, unthinkingly clung to her apron, she could not prevent herself from bursting into bitter tears, which were only assuaged by the whinnying of her brother’s horse. She permitted herself to dispense with courtesies and announced to him at once what had taken place in the house from which he had been absent for a whole day. Her trusty brother listened expressionlessly, as usual, maintaining his inner peace and his clarity of mind so as to calm his distraught older sister with well-weighed words of moderation.
What was there to fear? The decrees were clear, and natural justice rendered them irreversible. And if those dusky Jews demanded a
judgment
according to the law of God, they would have it, and with great clarity too. For in between pearls—there had turned out to be two pearls, not one—he had managed to convene a special court at Villa Le Juif, which would convert the indecisive repudiation of the past into the definite ban of the future.

In the second watch of the night, Rabbi Elbaz awoke, suddenly feeling so hungry that the heavy sleep fell away from him even before he realized where he was. At sea the stars in the heavens had caressed his opening eyes and helped him remember, whereas now his eyes were filled only with thick, coal-black darkness. But as he got up and groped at the world around him, he was startled by the warmth of the boy sleeping next to him. He had become accustomed to sleeping without him ever since the child had insisted on descending into the bowels of the ship at night and spreading his bedding near the second wife’s curtain. But here he was beside him, just like in their little house in Seville, curled up lean and fetuslike and sighing occasionally like an old man.

Even though the chamber was warm, the rabbi piled his own
coverlet
on the young sleeper, then set off in search of something to quell his hunger before he went outside to feel the dome of heaven over his head and relieve the sense of suffocation. Where was Ben Attar? he asked himself, drifting like a sleepwalker along the long winding
corridors
of this large, complicated house in the hope of finding a stray crust of bread. Had his employer managed to arrive in the wake of his wives, or was he still being compelled to prove to the Parisian guards the innocence of his ship’s intentions? For a moment he tried to locate the merchant by the odor of his clothes, but the new smells of the strange house had dulled the memory of the familiar scent of his fellow travelers. Then, inadvertently and in all innocence, he touched the soft plump back of the first wife, who responded by turning over on her bed with a luxuriant grumble.

When he finally found the kitchen, there was neither a crust of bread nor any other forgotten morsel on the table, but only a pile of bright iron cooking pots and a display of polished copper pans hanging on the wall, reddening with their gleam the pallid glow of the
moonlight.
But if the kitchen offered no hope of food, there was at least a spiral staircase leading down to the lower story. Only here the darkness was so dense that great resourcefulness was required not only to locate the outer door, which unlike the gracefully ornamented doors of the
houses in Seville was clad in crude iron, but also to draw back silently the numerous bolts that restrained it, so as to escape from the hard darkness into the night with its caressing breeze and soft sounds.
Despite
the lateness of the hour, Paris was not entirely still between her twin banks, and even here, on the deserted southern bank, there could be heard a guttural gurgle of conversation between a man and a woman, who, to judge by the slow yet urgent pace of their talk, did not find the hour too advanced to lust after each other. For a moment the rabbi from Seville was tempted to approach them silently and perfume himself with their love, even if it was couched in a foreign tongue, but fearing that his sudden appearance might be misconstrued, he drew up a large log from the woodpile standing ready for winter and sat to enjoy the pleasant moonlight, first picking off a few pieces of soft bark to chew to still his hunger.

A light hand landed upon him. It was the child, who had woken and come out in search of him. He too pulled out a log, sat down on it, and began to ask questions, which came bursting out of him now, at the tail end of the second watch. Was this the house, were these the people for whom they had bobbed on the ocean waves for so many days and weeks? And would this really be their final stop, or would they sail on upstream to some other destination? Up to now the boy had seemed to ignore the purpose of the journey his father had
imposed
on him, surrendering his young being enthusiastically to the ship and her crew. But from the moment they had disembarked onto dry land his old nature had returned, and he felt homesick for his little house and everything else—his cousins and his friends, and the earthen flowerpots hanging on the bright blue-painted walls. Why had they gone onto that ship, he asked his father grumpily, and what was their business in this gloomy house? And if Ben Attar did decide to stay here with his wives, who would take them back to Andalus? Would another ship come to fetch them? Or would they go home overland? The father tried to revive his son’s flagging spirits, and after promising him that the day was not far off when they would return to Seville, he tried to explain again the purpose of the expedition, telling him about the partnership that had been built up in the course of many years, and its disruption on account of Abulafia’s remarriage and his new wife’s alarm at the idea of two women being married to one
man. When he saw that his son had difficulty comprehending Mistress Esther-Minna’s animosity toward Ben Attar, Rabbi Elbaz drew the child’s bowed head toward him, to look into his eyes and see whether, despite his youth and innocence, he was capable of both
understanding
the new wife’s fears and guessing the meaning of the replies his father was preparing. Surely he had spent so many days close to the merchant and his two wives, both on deck and in the hold, that he would be better placed than anyone else to testify whether there was any suffering or sorrow there.

What
sorrow?
What
suffering?
the boy whispered to his father in astonishment.
That’s
just
the
Point,
his father replied immediately with a smile. This was exactly how he must explain it to Abulafia’s new wife, so that she would rescind her repudiation of the partnership. That was why Ben Attar had ventured upon the ocean waves and, not content with coming himself, had brought both his wives with him, so they too might testify in his favor. And that was why he himself had been hired for the journey, to bear witness that in the eyes of God too this double bond was pleasing. This new wife set great store by the will of God. And if—here the father winked at his son—the child too would testify to the easy and affectionate relations prevailing between the two wives … But the boy, alarmed at his father’s intention of involving him, was seized by a vague terror, and with a new stubbornness he ducked out from under his father’s caressing hand. No, he wouldn’t say a word. He didn’t know a thing. He would say nothing. The father’s smile froze now on his face, not only because of his son’s dogged refusal but at the sight of a line of black-clad, singing monks processing calmly down the narrow street, waving billowing censers, either to atone for the sins of the day that was past or to send abroad a fragrant enticement for the day that was to come. The sudden sight of two strangers sitting beside the door of the Jews’ house in the middle of the night startled the monks so much that for a moment they stood rooted to the spot, before hurriedly crossing themselves and departing.

The child trembled at the sight of the monks vanishing toward the nearby monastery of Saint Germain, whose bell rang to greet them, and he entreated his father to go indoors. The father, however, was
troubled
by a new thought on account of the boy’s firm refusal to support him in his testimony in favor of Ben Attar’s double marriage. Is it
possible that the boy can see what I am not willing to see? he thought to himself, and he decided to take another look at the texts that Ben Attar had brought from Tangier in the name of the sage Ben Ghiyyat, in the hope of finding an apposite verse or a telling parable from the words of the sages and ancients to strengthen their case. Before the day dawned, he resolved to return to the ship and rummage in the ivory casket that had been left behind, and at the same time to relieve the hunger occasioned by his long sleep.

But the child refused to return alone to the strange dark house and insisted on going with his father, saying that he remembered the way back very well. Because he did not know that the ship he had left two days earlier had meanwhile been brought closer to the island, at first he denied it was the same one and insisted that it was a different one that simply resembled their own, which was moored farther away. Elbaz had difficulty in getting the boy to admit his mistake, perhaps because the old guardship really had changed and seemed to have shrunk in the intervening hours. The large triangular sail had
completely
disappeared, and the old shields and ornaments that had adorned the ship’s sides had been removed. But when Abu Lutfi,
hearing
the sounds of argument breaking the still of the night, called to them from the deck, the boy was forced to admit that it really was the selfsame ship whose mast had slid between his skinny legs for so many days that it had become like a part of his body.

At once the black slave was sent ashore in a dinghy to fetch the returning passengers. Despite the short time that had elapsed since their last leavetaking, Abu Lutfi was glad to have the rabbi back on board, hoping that his holy presence might restore some order to the ship—for from the moment she had reached her final berth and been tied up on the northern shore of the Seine a certain licentiousness had begun to proliferate on board, not only because her owner was away but because of the absence of his two wives, whose quiet, courtly presence had held the winds in check. When the rabbi and his son climbed on board, they were confronted by a mess of dirty plates and a group of sleeping drunkards sprawled before Abd el-Shafi, who was seated aloft on the old bridge, wrapped in a leopard skin that he had helped himself to from the hold and humming an old tune that had probably been sung by the Vikings when they had attacked this town a
hundred years before. Seeing the rabbi walking across the deck, the captain let fly a vulgar expression that he would never have used during the long journey. But the rabbi ignored it, hesitating as he was between looking for the ivory casket and quelling his hunger pangs. Fearing that immoderate eating might shed reproach on the hospitality of Abulafia and his wife, he decided to descend into the hold and slake his craving with dried figs and carobs. But Abu Lutfi, observing how hungry he was, gave orders for a meal of fish from the new river to be prepared for the two visitors.

While awaiting this meal of the third watch, which was already introducing a fine sliver of light into the sky over the darkened city, the rabbi went in search of the ivory casket. When the muse had taken hold of him off the rugged coast of Brittany, the casket had vanished, and he had completely forgotten about it. He could not locate it amid the jumble of clothes and objects in his cabin, nor was it in Ben Attar’s. Climbing back up to the old bridge, he sought the little casket among the bundles and under the leopard skin that adorned Abd el-Shafi, who stared at him drunkenly, but there was no trace of it. Had Abu Lutfi included it among the merchandise to be offered for sale? Cautiously he questioned the Ishmaelite partner, who instantly swore that he would never dare to touch a casket containing holy words. Had one of the women taken it, then? the rabbi wondered. But they could not read. Out of respect, the rabbi considered sending his son to search their cabins, but eventually he mustered the determination to go
himself
, in case the search brought him some further helpful
understanding
. Entering first the first wife’s cabin in the bow, he saw at once that it had been completely cleared, leaving behind nothing but a faint lingering hint of her fragrance in the air. Had she taken her clothes and possessions with her for fear of losing them, or was she preparing herself for a long stay ashore? Either way, most of her belongings had gone, and what little remained was neatly bundled and tied with a red cord and stowed beside her carefully folded bedclothes. The rabbi headed for the hold, where the young camel stood all alone, staring sadly between his front legs at a new Parisian mouse. Before the rabbi found the little cell draped with a curtain, he lost his bearings among the large sacks, but eventually with trembling hands he moved aside the rope mat, and with a lighted candle he stooped and entered and
excitedly encountered the second wife’s bed, which had been left
covered
in a mess of her clothes and other belongings, as though she had fled in a panic with the intention of returning at once. And here, among the smooth silk robes that perfumed his hands, he found the ivory casket, which might have been casually abandoned here or
carefully
concealed for the purpose of some secret ritual.

Elbaz had not been so close to a woman’s clothes and objects since his wife’s death, and for a moment he was shaken by desire. So he hastily departed, clutching the casket inside his robe and stroking the camel’s delicate narrow head as he passed, out of compassion, and perhaps by way of atoning for the sinful thoughts that had flitted through his mind a moment earlier. On deck he found Abd el-Shafi, who had come down from his seat on the bridge to show the boy how to fillet a fish without damaging it. So well had the rabbi’s son learned his lesson that without being asked he filleted the rabbi’s fish too, and the rabbi, unable to contain himself any longer, threw himself upon the tender white flesh.

Only as dawn was breaking did the rabbi, sated and a little tipsy, manage to reexamine the parchments that Ben Ghiyyat had sent him and understand why he had so neglected them during the last days of the journey that he had almost lost them. The verses from the stories of the patriarchs, judges, and kings that the North African sage had selected and copied in his large, fair hand seemed childish and
irksome
, far removed from the nobility of the three-cornered love that had sailed beside the rabbi for so many days. Thus he asked Abu Lutfi, who had not taken his eyes off him, to replace the parchments in the ivory casket and keep it under his protection, hidden in a safe place beside his couch. While the Arab reverentially picked up the pieces of
parchment,
smoothed them, and arranged them in order of size, the rabbi screwed up his eyes in the brightening light and sensed the traces of the couplings that had taken place on the ship now riding quietly on the river. Suddenly he was assailed by a vague excitement, and he swore to himself by the beloved memory of his wife to devote all his power and wisdom to the defence of the integrity of his employer’s family.