A Journey to the End of the Millennium (25 page)

But Mistress Esther-Minna not only did not want to dream now, she flatly refused to go to sleep. Despite the shadows crowding in on her, she realized that the Kalonymos family, who had exchanged few words with her, had chosen for her the bedchamber of her youth, where her first husband, a sensitive scholar, had tried in vain to bring a child into the world with her, until he had given up in despair and died. Was this the hand of chance, she asked herself, or had her
husband’s
kinsfolk known how deeply she yearned for this dear chamber? It was said to have served as the sleeping quarters for the first
generations
of Jews to come at the king’s command from Italy, who had brought with them from the Alps some fair-haired, blue-eyed pagan servants who were so devoted to their Jewish masters that they had eventually cast off their strange idols and adopted their faith. Who had vacated his big bed for her? Mistress Esther-Minna wondered with excitement tinged with a hint of fear. Was it possible that this was the bed of her brother-in-law, Master Isaac son of Kalonymos, whose mother, her own mother-in-law, had not been willing after the death of her firstborn for her childless daughter-in-law to wait until her other son came of age but had firmly insisted that she should ceremonially withdraw the handsome youth’s little shoe and spit on the ground before him, as the law demanded, before going to seek consolation in the home of her younger brother in Paris.

Although Mistress Esther-Minna was well acquainted with the character of her fellow countrymen, who clothed even the most
delicate
and affectionate sentiments in sternness, yet she was
disappointed
and bewildered, for she had expected a warmer reception. She had innocently hoped that her townsfolk would be impressed by her devotion and resourcefulness in bringing such stubborn foreign Jews all this way to submit themselves to local justice, which she had come during her long years of absence to imagine as being the very acme of perfection. But she had overlooked one thing—that the great strength of the Jews of Worms was that they never considered their justice perfect, and that during the ten years since she had left her kinsfolk and her friends, they had exerted themselves constantly to improve and
perfect it. Today, on the eve of the double day of jubilation, they were not prepared to be impressed by her bringing into their midst such a disturbing case for adjudication; on the contrary, they were inclined to view her with suspicion and distrust, like excellent judges who, in a conscious effort not to favor one side or the other, view both, before the case is heard, as sinners.

The woman returning to her homeland felt all this in the cool looks her former kinsfolk vouchsafed her. In the night, in this bed where she and her late husband, for all their passion, had failed to make a child, her heart was so anguished that a single drop of sorrow could flood it with fear. Suddenly even the impossible seemed possible. Perhaps here too, in the place that had seemed to her most safe and pure and decent, she was liable to be surprised again, for in the conscious effort not to favor one side or the other, and out of compassion for the simplicity of the southern Jews who had traveled such an awesome distance, the sages of her town might, like the court in Villa Le Juif, allow themselves to be led astray by the seductive words of the
Andalusian
rabbi and pronounce a verdict against her, which would not only renew the partnership forever but imprint a humiliating fantasy with a double stamp of propriety, northern and southern.

She longed to wake her brother and tell him of her new fears, but she did not know where he was sleeping. She felt a sudden upsurge of anger against the effrontery of her townsfolk, who had scattered and isolated the travelers like witless babes. She also felt a momentary regret that she had submitted herself to a further legal contest, and like Rabbi Elbaz, who had groped his way through the darkness of her house in Paris two weeks before, seeking to escape from it, she
abandoned
her goose-feather bed and tried to find her way out of the crooked wooden house, which although she knew it so well, suddenly seemed to her like a ship that had run aground on a sandbank. But as she was wrestling with a new, unfamiliar bolt, which had been fitted to the outer door against the menace of the approaching millennium, the master of the house, young Kalonymos, her husband’s brother, heard her. Not daring to approach her alone in the darkness, he hurriedly roused his wife to calm his former sister-in-law’s distress.

This young and charming Mistress Kalonymos, one of whose early ancestors had endowed his descendants’ eyes with a remarkable
greenish
sparkle, succeeded not only in calming Mistress Esther-Minna’s panic but in filling her with renewed enthusiasm for the penitential prayers that awaited them all. Gently she led the woman who, if not for her childlessness, would have been her own husband’s first and only wife back to her old matrimonial bed, and compassionately covered her with the quilt that she had thrown off in a fit of rage, so that she could enjoy a few hours’ rest before she was awakened to attend divine
worship.
A synagogue for women only had been built in Worms in these latter years, and there a female cantor intoned the chants and put on the phylacteries for the recital of
Hear
O
Israel.

This surprising news soothed away Esther-Minna’s fears in a
miraculously
gentle way. The hope that the women in her native town might have enough good sense to put right what the ignorant, barefoot women in the winery near Paris had done wrong cooled her desperate thoughts and brought on Esther-Minna the slumber that her body so longed for. In fact, four hours later Mistress Rachel daughter of Kalonymos had to exert herself considerably to rouse the dear and honored guest from her profound sleep, so that she should not miss the women’s prayer in the
Frauenshul,
seeking pardon and forgiveness on this last day of the dying year not only for their own sins but perhaps also for those of all other women, wherever they might be.

These women included Ben Attar’s two wives, who were not spared by the exigent people of Worms. In the darkness of the last watch of the night, with a misty breeze blowing off the river, they were led forth from their separate houses, wrapped in heavy capes but without veils or jewelry, to be taken with their faces exposed to public gaze to that modest chamber abutting the synagogue of the men, who were also converging now like ghosts from all directions for the penitential prayers. Among them were the other travelers, who stood in the narrow lane in a state of utter exhaustion: Abulafia, Ben Attar, and Rabbi Elbaz, who had just remembered to ask where his boy was. They were all dressed in black cloaks on the instructions of their hosts, either to warm their southern bodies and protect them from the cold, dank breeze blowing off the river or to conceal their crumpled, threadbare traveling robes. All three of them were befuddled by deep but
insufficient
sleep and by an evening meal whose taste they still had not identified, and at first they had difficulty recognizing one another, as
though being separated by their hosts had wrought some profound change in them.

Now Master Levitas appeared, lucid and wide awake and in full command of himself. He looked affectionately at his fellow townsmen, who were so carried away by religious fervor on this occasion that they did not even spare the three Ishmaelites, but seated them on a bench in the court of the synagogue, so that sparks of sanctity escaping from the Jews’ prayers might lighten their gentile darkness. Ben Attar’s heart suddenly went out with painful longing to his two wives, who were being led to the prayer through a tangle of trees and long grass like a couple of bears, their beautiful faces, revealed now for all to see, turned to him with an expression of wonder rather than anger, as though they were asking him, Will your mind know no rest until you have demanded a last and final test of your double love even here in this grim, benighted place?

The little Andalusian rabbi had not ceased to think about this test from the moment he had entered the walls of this small town. On seeing Mistress Esther-Minna, his adversary, wrapped in a light pelisse and surrounded by townswomen who were leading her with respect and devotion to their little synagogue, perhaps to fortify her by binding the straps of the phylacteries on her arm, he intuitively knew that he must beware here not only of the women but of the whole
congregation,
which was united and tempered by religious zeal. Unlike what had occurred in the winery at Villa Le Juif, here he would have to demand not a broad panel of jurors but a single judge, who would have the wisdom and vision to see from the depths of the marshes of the Rhineland what he, Rabbi Elbaz, had long since seen among the blooming gardens of Andalus.

While the morning prayer was being recited, after the end of the
nocturnal
penitential prayers, Rabbi Elbaz forced himself to scrutinize the faces of the worshippers around him in order to find a man who might be fit to serve as sole arbiter in the engagement that was about to be
joined. His surprise victory at Villa Le Juif had taught the Andalusian rabbi one simple lesson—that in a court of law, whoever selects the judges controls the verdict, without any need of subtle speeches or scriptural proofs. Still, he could not forget how, in the half-darkness of the winery, with the torchlight shining on the little must-stained feet of those women, he had managed to astound even himself with his
bilingual
oration. During the nights of the journey from the Seine to the Rhine he had repeatedly tried to polish that speech in his mind. But he was also mindful of the saying attributed to the imam of the great mosque of Cordoba: “Never repeat the winning tactics of a previous war.” A speech that had captured the hearts of emotional, tipsy Jews in the Île de France would not succeed with these sober-minded Jews of the Rhineland, who were now scrutinizing the new rabbi from Seville over their prayer shawls no less than he was inspecting them.

Before finding new tactics that would finally remove the
conditional
status hanging over the partnership between north and south and force the stubborn new wife to reconcile herself to her duo of aunts from the golden shores of North Africa, he sought to assess the spirit of the scholars praying all around him, so that he could select from their midst a man whose spirit was free from the tyranny of the congregation. He decided to decline his hosts’ offer to take him home after the service, like the other travelers, and put him back to bed, to make up for his lost sleep and garner strength for that evening’s prayers. Instead he asked to be taken, just as he was, in his tattered Andalusian robe, for a walk through the muddy lanes of Worms, so that he could become well acquainted with the place and everything in it, Jews and gentiles, dark house of study and grim church alike.

While Ben Attar was wondering whether to join the inquisitive rabbi on his walk through the town, which was now steeped in a milky light, or to go and demand that he be given back his two wives, who at the end of the women’s prayers (which were shorter than the men’s) had been taken back to their hosts’ homes, a pair of armed, mail-clad horsemen entered the synagogue, holding the inventory sent by the customs officer of Verdun. These men had been given the task of overseeing the
distribution
of goods not only to the descendants of the Christ-killers but, according to a new and generous interpretation of the ducal authorities, also to those who revered the Christ. The two wagons, which were
standing outside the synagogue with empty shafts, were soon cleared not only of the bags and bolts, reduced and multiplied by the first wife’s resourcefulness, but of the rest of the travelers’ personal effects, which had also been changed into gifts by the generous order. So on this festive night the local folk seasoned their pork chops and their wolf stew with new spices from the desert, poured olive oil from Granada on their salad, and decorated the walls of their homes with brightly colored strips of silk embroidered with threads of gold torn from the robes of Ben Attar’s wives, while ragged urchins in the church square unpicked the Ishmaelite sailors’ big sandals to make a long rope. It was just as well that the Jews of Worms hastened to compensate the distressed litigants with matching gifts, and instead of the bright robes that had been torn to shreds by the excited Christians they dressed them all, Jews and
Ishmaelites
alike, in dark robes tied with shiny black belts with fringed tassels, and put pointed hats on their heads, so that it was not easy to distinguish them from the local Jews, who would soon scan the skies in search of the new moon, which was believed to draw with a golden thread not only a new month but a new year.

But before the fine crescent appeared at the twilight hour,
threading
its way rapidly through the dark tatters of cloud, and a satisfied sigh arose at this confirmation that the calendar from the hills of Jerusalem was still operating so accurately, they honored the rabbi’s wish to stroll around their town and patiently replied to his questions. The sages, who as they walked had accustomed themselves to his unfamiliar, difficult way of uttering Hebrew from the depths of his throat, invited him to a chamber in the synagogue where there was a chest stuffed with obsolete texts and broken remains of twisted yellowing rams’ horns, to hear him deliver a little homily on the subject of the sanctity of the coming day so that they could make an assessment of the
intellectual
acumen of the southern visitor, of which Master Levitas had given them prior warning.

Elbaz hesitated at first between a wish to lull his adversaries’
concern
about the danger he represented and a desire to make them aware of the pitfalls of the battlefield. He started with some trite generalities about the binding of Isaac, but he allowed himself to expatiate on the shape of the small gray horns of the original and authentic ram of the Land of Israel, which was offered up in place of the beloved son who
was not indeed an only son. As though with the intention of warming the hearts of the local Jews toward the Ishmaelites who had come with them, he addressed to his curious hearers a few kind sentences about Abraham’s elder son, who had been cast out thirsty behind a bush in the desert of the Beautiful Land, where all of Abraham’s descendants were destined to meet on the day of final redemption, whether they wished it or not. And the rabbi contented himself with this little
sermon,
after noting that what he had said about a messianic meeting with Ishmaelites in a desert land had surprised his hearers greatly.

But there was no time to explore the subject further, for the festive service was close at hand and they needed to hasten to prepare the body so that it might not disturb the soul during the prayers. One of the scholars who had listened to the short homily, however, could not find any rest, and would not leave the Andalusian alone, for he was eager to hear more about the shape of the small gray horns of the original ram of the Land of Israel, whose slaughtered cries the Jews were said to reproduce each year at this new moon of the month of Tishri. This red-haired scholar had a special reason, for he was the one who would lead the prayers and blow the ram’s horn, so it was no wonder that his imagination was captured by the story of a simple small dark ram’s horn that trumpeted forth sound without unnecessary twists and spirals.

The thought suddenly flashed through Elbaz’s mind that this
curious
man might be a suitable arbiter in the matter of double matrimony. He resolved to pay special attention to him. He withdrew into a corner with him, and took from the innermost pocket of his baggy trousers a small black ram’s horn that he had borrowed at the last moment,
before
boarding the ship, from the synagogue in the port of Cadiz, for according to the original calculation of the journey, without the
overland
extension, they should have heard the sound of the horn on their way home, somewhere on the ocean between Brittany and the Bay of Biscay. While the astonished scholar of Worms was feeling the simple Andalusian horn, which to judge by its fineness had evidently been taken from a mountain goat rather than a ram, Rabbi Elbaz attempted unobtrusively to take stock of the man’s character with a few test questions well directed to his purpose, which he was keeping hidden until he had had an opportunity to consult Ben Attar.

But where was Ben Attar? And where were the other travelers? Jews and Ishmaelites, white, dark, and black-skinned, had been
swallowed
up by the wooden houses of the Jews of Worms who now emerged into the drizzle of eventide to assemble in the synagogue, which, even though it was still under construction and the whole
western
wall was missing, seemed to be as dear to the worshippers as though it were whole. They pressed together in the united brotherhood of a proud congregation, dressed in festive clothing and raising their eyes in satisfaction to three large oblong windows, above which were three circular lights like portholes, glazed with thick yellow panes, which, since they were not adorned with any image, of angel or man or even floral designs, shone into the darkness of the synagogue with the charm of three bright suns.

Master Levitas insisted that the Andalusian rabbi and his son, who had emerged from somewhere or other with a pointed hat on his head, should be seated against the eastern wall, beside the holy ark, so that the rabbi could be impressed by the excellence of the congregation standing facing him—a congregation that would scrub away at its sins on Thursday and Friday, continue to afflict itself on the Sabbath of Repentance, and then mark a slight pause on Saturday evening to ascend the judgment throne and to decide between north and south, between Abulafia and Ben Attar. These two were now standing side by side, swallowed up in the worshipping congregation, shivering slightly in the cold damp wind that in Europe accompanied the evening prayer of the New Year, whereas in Tangier, their birthplace, they both
recalled
sorrowfully, it was always said under a warm, star-studded sky.

Ben Attar customarily spent the first night of New Year with his first wife and the second night with his second wife. His first wife prepared the meal before the Day of Atonement, and he broke his fast afterward with the second wife. He built the tabernacle first at the first wife’s house, and he carried the small scroll to the second wife’s house at the Rejoicing of the Law. And so for the other festivals of the year, whose naturally double nature invited and demanded at least two wives, always fresh to help the man, who might otherwise be
overwhelmed
by the many complex regulations of his faith.

But this evening, in the dark synagogue on the bank of the Rhine, where the service followed the abbreviated rite of Amram Gaon rather
than the long Babylonian rite of Saadia Gaon, the worshippers had time to embellish the chants and repeat their favorite passages, and since they all knew the prayers by heart, they were not too troubled by the lack of light. Ben Attar stood holding a parchment text that he would have had difficulty reading even in daylight, let alone in the dark, wondering at himself. So many hours had passed since he had been separated from his wives, and yet he was in no hurry to be reunited with them, and had not even asked after them. Was this only because he was confident that their hosts would be treating them with generosity and respect, as he himself was treated, or because for the first time in his life he felt relieved that they were not with him, as though his soul were sated with them?

In truth, throughout the many days that had elapsed since he had set out, not a day had passed without his two wives’ being within reach or at least within eyeshot. Surely the whole strength and purpose of dual love was that it forced each of the parties to be separated
occasionally
from their partner, so that they could digest thoroughly what they had been given before asking for more. But in the darkness of the swaying wagon driven by Abd el-Shafi’s tattooed arms, on the long road from the Seine to the Rhine, when he saw his two wives lying wearily side by side or occasionally, when the going was particularly hard, in each other’s arms, he had begun to fear that in the fantasy of his desire he would be liable henceforth to fuse them into a single woman, and so it was fitting now that he did not see them and did not even know where they were. Were they on the other side of the wall, in the little women’s synagogue? Or caged among curtains in the wooden houses raised on stilts, listening through the window to the chorus of frogs croaking across the wide marshes of the Rhineland?

It was a rich and insistent croaking that the leader of the prayers tried to drown out with his loud yet steady voice, steering the prayers confidently, without yielding to the whims of worshippers who tried to slow or speed the pace, to skip or repeat some passages. Rabbi Elbaz was confirmed in his belief that one who was accustomed to leading the prayers of such a pious and learned congregation every day with such confidence would also make a single and final arbite in the appeal that was ahead of them, even if he was not considered the greatest and best of scholars. The rabbi from Seville already felt as close to his
chosen one, with his yellow beard and his bloodshot eyes, as though he had discovered a twin soul. But at the conclusion of the prayers, when Master Levitas hurried over to the rabbi and Ben Attar with an
expectant
smile on his face, hoping to hear from the two southern litigants some words of praise and admiration for the spiritual excellence of his native town, the rabbi cautiously refrained from revealing to his
adversary
even by a hint his intention of demanding a single judge instead of a panel of several judges. For the moment he contented himself with a cautious question about the character of the prayer leader, who was folding his prayer shawl slowly and reluctantly, as though he were sorry the prayers were over.

It transpired that Master Levitas, who knew and remembered
everybody,
could tell him all about this man, Joseph by name, who
although
he was also called son of Kalonymos, like the majority of the folk of Worms who had come from Italy at the bidding of Emperor Otto, was only partly a Kalonymid, on his father’s side; on his mother’s he was descended from an ancient local family that had belonged, according to legend, to the legions of Julius Caesar, who had fought here more than a thousand years ago. He was a widower, but unlike Rabbi Elbaz he had not remained single but had speedily married a widowed kinswoman, so that they could raise their orphaned children together. Perhaps it was because there were so many children in his home that Master Levitas had chosen to house the youngest traveler with him.