A Journey to the End of the Millennium (18 page)

But his fears were unfounded. His sister’s opening words gave no hint of pride but merely a faint hint of shrewdness, borrowed this very moment from her southern adversary. And just as Ben Attar had begun his accusation not with his own pain but with that of his Arab partner, so she too sought to ground her defense not in herself or her abhorrence
of double marriages but in the story of Abulafia’s unfortunate daughter, who was still tormented by the puzzle of being abandoned by her young mother, a beautiful and beloved woman.

Here Master Levitas touched his sister lightly, not because he
objected
to her line of attack but to remind her that it was right and proper to give her opponents an opportunity to understand the words that would soon, with God’s help, defeat them. Once more Abulafia, the accused, had to be asked to serve as interpreter, this time in the opposite direction, from Frankish to Arabic. Even though he now stood between his uncle and his wife, the two beings who were dearest to him in the world, he turned his gaze toward Rabbi Elbaz, who was standing facing him in his rabbinical robe, which was worn out by the nights and days on board ship, nodding his head slightly as though in prayer and swallowing every word that was uttered as if it were a sweetmeat. As earlier the younger partner’s life had been conjured up in the deposition of his senior partner, now it continued to be
recounted
through the startling thoughts of his new, vivacious wife, who so embellished her argument with every small detail of her husband’s life, even some he had forgotten himself, that at times he had to halt the spate of words in order to examine, before translating, whether what his wife was saying about him had really happened.

But what could such an examination avail, when it was only now, in the semidarkness of the winery, that he understood that his wife had devotedly collected every detail he had told her about his life and his travels, like someone compulsively gathering oysters on the seashore in the belief that each one must contain a small pearl? At their first meeting in Orléans, before that blazing hearth, when the proper widow had been startled by the willingness of this dark-skinned, curly-haired young merchant from North Africa to talk to her shyly but frankly about himself, she had asked herself how it was that this good-looking, easygoing man had been roaming the forests and villages of a strange land for seven years without attempting to marry and set up a home. On that first night, Mistress Esther-Minna explained, she had
understood
that only a man whose love for his wife continued to well up inside him like a gushing spring, even if that wife no longer existed, could behave in this way. But if that was truly so, she had continued to ask herself, how was it possible for that drowned wife, who had
received
such great love from her husband, to get up one day, dismiss so easily everything that had been lavished upon her, abandon her
husband,
pluck colored ribbons from the clothes of her baby daughter, who needed her so much, and bind her hands and feet and throw herself into the sea?

That night in the inn at Orléans, the new Mistress Abulafia did not hesitate to confess before the court, she had already experienced a great feeling of compassion for this child, abandoned with an
Ishmaelite
nurse in a small house in the street of the Jews, close to the castle in Toulouse. She felt a powerful urge not only to understand the
mystery
of what had happened but to share her understanding with the widower, who was continuing to wander the roads, confused by his own lack of understanding. A new love was needed to overcome the old, Mediterranean one—not, heaven forbid, to drive out the memory of the earlier love, but to enable Mistress Esther-Minna to reflect from close up on the secret of its vitality and also of its weakness and failure. But it was only at her second or third meeting with the young
merchant,
when the winter was past and the spring too was nearly over and gone and when Abulafia had innocently disclosed the existence of polygamous marriages in the lands of the Ishmaelites, not by way of metaphor but as a known fact, and even as a family matter, since the subject of conversation was his own uncle, the senior partner in the glorious partnership, that she had had a feeling that the nub of the secret that had caused the disaster had slipped out. But still she had said nothing, waiting until she was united body and soul to Abulafia, so as to satisfy herself that there was nothing weak in the man’s powers of love, neither in respect to his new wife nor evidently in respect to his first wife, who, according to his testimony, had always known how to receive his love and believe in its faithfulness. It was only then that she had begun to draw a connection between the terrible, desperate deed of that dead wife and the threat that he might take a second wife, which would apparently neither require nor demand any break in or lessening of his love for his first wife. Yes, it was precisely when a second wife entered a household, through simple duplication, like the birth of another child, that she contained within herself a terrible destructive power, especially for a first wife who believes she has a curse on her womb. And so, did Esther-Minna have any need to justify
herself for the repudiation that had spread within her? It grew greater with time and sharpened like a spear which could not only defend her new husband against the disgrace of discovering among the sacks of spices and the copper vessels in Benveniste’s stable an additional wife, brought for him in the ship by his uncle, but also, yes indeed, to avenge, however inadequately, the sorrow and fears of the drowned wife, who had been taken naked from the watery depths.

Here Mistress Esther-Minna’s face suddenly reddened, and she lowered her head and fell silent. This not only gave the stunned
interpreter
time to digest the secret of his life before conveying it in Arabic to the other members of his household, but also evaded Ben Attar’s openly offended look and the enigmatic veiled glances of his two wives, who were still sitting erect, calmly and submissively, where they had been placed. She had no way of telling whether the translation was able to penetrate their consciousness or whether it simply fluttered around them like a butterfly. Then Mistress Esther-Minna felt the feather-light touch of her brother’s hand as he sought to give her a sign of encouragement, even though in his heart of hearts he would gladly have foregone the subtleties of her argument in favor of a short statement about the existence of a new rabbinical ordinance, stern but simple, which even though it had originated in the marshy swamps of the Rhineland was destined to enlighten and reform society everywhere.

It was this ordinance that the rabbi from Seville had been waiting for all along. He longed to speak about principles rather than details. His thoughts had turned so often to this ordinance in the course of the journey that he had begun to envisage it as a small, curved dagger of yellowish brass that needed to be kept firmly planted in the ground lest it take wing and fly away. But now, with the breeze of evening, he was assailed again by faint pangs of hunger, like a kind of echo of the powerful attack that had disturbed his senses in the middle of the night. Helpless to prevent himself, he held his hands in front of his face to see whether they held any lingering odor of the sweet fish that the black slave had cooked for him before dawn. Still, it was not a bad thing, he thought, to commence a discourse in a state of hunger, which sharpens the spirit and the wits. Moreover, Mistress Abulafia’s forceful and unusual words had alerted all his senses.

Now the silence all around him seemed to become purified. Ben Attar’s look was darkly suspicious, as though after Mistress
Esther-Minna’s
virulent speech he had lost faith in what he would receive from the rabbi in exchange for the promised honorarium. And Master Levitas was touching his shoulder gently, to indicate that his moment had come. The rabbi had already noticed that this cold, reserved man always treated him with respect, as though any scholar, even if he hailed from the distant south and came with the obvious intention of aggressively disputing, were an important person. But were these strange, uncultivated Jews really capable of following the intricacies of his Andalusian thought? How was it possible that in all the dark
expanse
surrounding him there was no true sage to be found who might sit with him face to face and settle the matter? What could they really understand, these vintagers and winemakers, or these women whose bare feet as they sat facing him on the wooden dais were so stained from stomping the grapes that he had an urge to rinse them with clean water before he began to speak? Then his eyes happened upon his own son, who was sitting without sandals, slowly picking grapes off a large bunch and watching the fine stream of juice dribbling from the wine press into the inner tank. It was already two months since the child had been taken from his home, and it was unlikely that he would learn in the rest of his life as much as he had learned on this journey.

Then Ben Attar’s second wife, unable to contain herself, rose to her feet, as though to see and hear the rabbi better. He said to himself excitedly that if she was so intent on his words that she was prepared to break the law and propel herself beyond what her own honor and that of the first wife demanded, it would be better if he began his speech not in the ancient holy tongue, as he had intended to do to attract the brother and sister, but rather in Arabic, so that the naked, untranslated words would reach straight into the heart of the young woman, who had hidden the ivory casket between the silken robes he had caressed last night with his hands. He did this not only to fortify and encourage the second wife but also for the sake of the first wife, who had raised her head, startled at her friend’s sudden movement. By speaking in clear, intelligible Arabic, the rabbi may also have sought to erase something of the grimness that had taken hold of Ben Attar, who was behaving as if he genuinely believed the accusation he had
launched against his nephew. Who could tell, the rabbi mused,
perhaps
his words could even persuade his skeptical son, if the boy was willing to listen to his father.

Once again the accused man had to be called on to interpret. It appeared that Abulafia would not manage this evening to utter a single word of his own or in his own favor, but would only transfer from one language to another what others said for or against him—if what his wife had said was indeed in his favor, rather than in favor of his
previous
wife. He had never imagined that his new wife might be
concerning
herself with the riddle of his first wife’s death by drowning, as though this riddle threatened her too, even in a place where there was no sea but only a river. So even though Abulafia knew that the rabbi who had been brought from Seville was about to reprove him, to attack his wife’s repudiation and condemn his sudden disappearance, he
nevertheless
felt a certain warmth toward him, not only because of the affection aroused by his slim, childlike figure, hardly taller than his own child, but also because of a hope that a rabbi’s chastisement would always be wise and would therefore placate everyone. He
therefore
resolved not only to be as faithful as possible to the rabbi’s actual words but also to be careful to preserve their spirit.

At first, however, there was no spirit in the rabbi’s words, for thirst for that liquid whose fragrance scented the night air dried up the words in his mouth. While the owner of the winery was still trying to decide whether to serve the speaker a single glass or whether to open a cask for the whole company, Master Levitas, with the generosity of a guest who was also in some sense a host, decided for him: a cask. But a small one. It then transpired that the wine deemed most appropriate to the time and place was contained in the small barrel on which the child was seated, so that apparently it was no accident that he had been led to seat himself upon it. At once young Elbaz was made to stand up, and the barrel was rolled into the center of the hall and arranged so that it was possible to pour wine for all the sacred congregation
without
spilling a single drop wastefully on the ground. The first to be served was the rabbi, who pronounced aloud the blessing over the fruit of the vine, and he was followed by the judges and the disputants. While the first wife drank discreetly behind her veil, the second rolled hers back as though she had made up her mind to do without it, and
with a new smile that lit up her finely sculpted features she drained her glass and waited for another.

Then it was, and only then, without any warning and still clutching his goblet that the rabbi began to speak in hope that the pink wine
slipping
down their throats would soften the thoughts of the Jews of Villa Le Juif and even stretch them to new and hitherto unknown horizons. For if the rabbi were to speak only in simple terms, using well-known and accepted notions, he need not multiply words but would merely state directly,
Frankish
Jews,
distant
and
strange,
why
are
you
so
amazed?
Why
are
you
so
alarmed?
With
all
due
respect,
read
in
the
rolled
Scripture
to
whose
holiness
we
are
all
in
thrall
and
you
will
discover
that
the
great
patriarchs,
Abraham,
Isaac,
and
Jacob,
each
had
two,
three,
or
even
four
wives.
Continue
reading,
and
here
is
Elkanah
with
his
two
wives,
and
this
is
before
we
reach
the
kings
with
their
numerous
wives,
and
who
was
as
great
as
Solomon?
But
if
you
object
that
these
ancients
were
greater
and
mightier
men
than
we,
and
able
to
discern
between
good
and
evil,
then
open
the
book
of
Deuteronomy,
and
there,
not
long
before
the
end
of
the
book,
you
will
find
the
verse
“If
a
man
have
two
wives
…”
Any
man.
Everyman.
Not
a
patriarch,
a
hero,
a
king,
or
an
ancient.