A Journey to the End of the Millennium (35 page)

The fervent murmur of the Jews’ devotions entered the window of the physician’s little house and penetrated the clouded consciousness of the second wife, and with it the spasm returned to her spine,
drawing
her head back again like a bent bow. With a great effort she opened her eyes, in which there flickered now the grim mane of the angel of death, who had crept in stealthily and now lurked behind the first wife’s back, pretending to share in her light sleep.

Surprisingly, a renewed slumber came over her, as though the
remote
wailing chant of the men in the nearby wood were soothing the fear that was sapping her spirits. In the midst of the painful spasm that
had laid hold of her back like a vampire, she suddenly felt a tender longing for the women’s prayer house in Worms and that female cantor who had stood wrapped in a prayer shawl, wearing leather phylacteries.
Behold,
thus
I
shall
not
prevent
you
taking
me
out
of
this
world.
She was flooded with sadness and self-pity, which were blended, miraculously, with a gentle flush of pride. And in the twilight of this new thought, which stubbornly darkened within her, she tried to understand to whom that
you
was addressed—whether to her husband, or to that
red-haired
arbiter at whose feet she had sunk, to the rabbi from Seville, who was chanting the pentitential prayers in a tired, hoarse voice, or perhaps to the angel of death, who had disguised himself in the plump form of the first wife, who was bending over her affectionately and nodding to show not only that she understood the good new thought that had been born but that she agreed with it.

While the second wife struggled with all her might to expel the breath that threatened to stifle her, and a ray of light that had managed to infiltrate through the curtain revealed in her motionless eyes a glint of satisfaction at the sobbing of her angel of death, two young nuns came forth from the Benedictine convent, sent by the abbess to ensure that the Jews were not so carried away by their devotions that their vain thoughts defiled a world that was preparing itself for vespers. Surprisingly, the mere appearance of the proud, self-confident sisters was enough to halt the Jews in their prayers, so they could hear a clear demand in the local language that they should move their worship from the little wood toward the bare, tomb-strewn field, and should also lend the convent the young slave, whose slim build and dark skin rendered him suitable for shinning down into the well and fetching up a lost bucket. The Jews from Metz, who understood only too well with whom they were dealing, declined even to translate the sisters’ strange request for the benefit of the rabbi and Ben Attar, but took it upon themselves politely but firmly to refuse to lend a temporary Jew, who by his patient but fervent presence was contributing to making up the ten required for worship. They offered the women instead the two burly Ishmaelites, who were checking the wheels of the wagons for the next stage of the journey.

The two nuns smiled at each other on hearing the generous offer, knowing perfectly well that it was utterly unacceptable to introduce
two such strong men into a convent of women who led a constant struggle against delusions and fantasies. They abandoned their
impertinent
request and disappeared through the gateway of the convent, not before making sure that the worshippers had indeed taken the scroll of the law and were heading toward the graveyard, where they would conclude their prayers.

When the tops of the trees of the abandoned wood were stabbed by shafts of light, the seven Jews from Metz were seized by fear and trembling at the approach of the concluding service, when the gates of repentance in heaven would be closed, and they sought to remove the rabbi from the office of cantor and chant the all-important concluding prayers themselves according to the rite and melodies of their own dear, distant congregation. Ben Attar made a covert sign to the rabbi from Seville not to resist but to yield his place to a local Jew, whose prayers might help to avert the harsh decree that menaced him. He also told the young African to approach him, so that he could seek consolation in the desert scent that rose from his body, a fragrance of dried thorns and smoke of ancient campfires, which the long ocean voyage and the additional journey overland had not been able to erase.

Then as the local cantor began to wail the prayer in a tune familiar to the city guard of Metz:
What
shall
we
say
before
thee,
O
thou
that
dwellest
on
high,
or
what
shall
we
recount
before
thee,
O
thou
that
inhabitest
the
heavens,
for
surely
thou
knowest
all
the
hidden
things.
Ben Attar, as he swayed in distress, knew that from now on he would have to increase his dependence on his God, for his first wife, the wife of his youth, emerged wearily from the physician’s house and collapsed on the threshold in a posture of mourning, indicating wordlessly to her husband, who was wrapping himself in the concluding prayer, that the days of his double marriage were ended.

Although it was clear to the North African merchant that the
confession
of the closing prayer had no power to eradicate the guilt of the death he had brought upon his wife, not because of a stubborn journey made to demonstrate dual love but because of a desperate attempt to justify it, he did not forsake his place among the other worshippers to run to his dead wife. Instead he importuned the Lord of forgiveness to pity and to inscribe in the book of life his only remaining wife, who
would soon need not only comfort for the death of her companion but also renewed assurance.

It was only when the end of the evening service marked the
conclusion
of the holy day—which was also the Sabbath day, when lamps must be lit and spices sniffed, and the appropriate blessings
pronounced
over sweet wine so that they might safely cross the frontier between sacred and profane—that he hastened to the little house, at whose doorway the physician’s wife stood, barring the entrance to her two children so they would not find themselves standing in the dark in the presence of a corpse. A little way away stood Abd el-Shafi, sea captain and chief wagoner, waiting respectfully for his lord, his eyes running with tears. He knew only too well how hard and sad their journey would be from now on, without the second wife. He embraced the Jewish merchant and uttered words of condolence to him, saying how fine and wonderful was the destiny of the one who at this moment was ascending with her little bare feet the golden staircase of paradise, and how harsh was the lot of those who must continue to plod their weary way through this world. Since all day long he had watched the Jews fasting, he forced Ben Attar to taste a morsel of the warm bread that he and his companion had baked for them, before the
merchant
went in to take his leave of the one who had departed without permission.

Then Ben Attar stood silently in the total darkness beside the young woman’s body, his eyes roving over the gray outlines of a stilled arc and a startled gaping mouth, and pondered the final leavetaking on this narrow cot in this strange house in this grim and gloomy Christian town, whose terrible memory he would carry with him all his life, even if he never returned here. Surprisingly, he thought also of Abulafia, his nephew and protégé, who could not imagine at this moment, wherever he might be, that the failure of the partnership of heart and body that his uncle had taken upon himself, to atone for the sin of Abulafia’s previous wife’s drowning, had now renewed, amid rage and wrath but with redoubled force, their severed partnership, and annulled not only the ban and interdict of Worms but even the repudiation of Paris. When Ben Attar sensed Rabbi Elbaz’s presence beside him in the darkness, removing the prayer shawl that had been hung up as a
curtain
at the window, not so as to grace the departed by letting in the gentle moonlight but to use it to hide the slowly whitening face under the cloth and thus begin to separate the second wife from her
husband,
he turned sternly to face the little rabbi to tell him that he had no intention of either holding a funeral service or burying his dear second wife in this accursed town. Instead, he meant to take her body back to Paris, to prove incontestably to the stubborn repudiatrix and her brother, Master Levitas, that he stood before them now as a fit and proper business partner, the husband of a single wife, and that
consequently
the severed partnership could now be renewed, although in the midst of wrath and pain, and indeed it could be confirmed forever by the testimony of a grave and a monument set up in the very courtyard of their home.

Ben Attar, feeling that the rabbi was moved to anger and might even break the bonds of loyalty and assail him with harsh words about a journey that would be so disrespectful of the departed one, and refusing to entertain a reply that might contradict his resolve, even if it were embellished with a scriptural citation or a legal precedent, took down from the shelf the flask containing the yellow potion and
swallowed
the entire contents at a single gulp. Then he left the little house somewhat unsteadily, bumping into the apostate physician, who was arriving with his catechist, the priest. Without saying a word, with an air of utter desperation, Ben Attar thrust the two of them aside and strode as though sleepwalking toward the Jews from Metz, who were standing in terror, unobtrusively eating their meager meal. Pressing right into the middle of the little wood, he stumbled and fell in a heap among the trees, desiring not to die but to sleep and then to sleep.

She
is
dead,
the rabbi bitterly taunted the physician, who appeared neither disconcerted nor repentant over the false hopes he had
persisted
in raising during the previous day. He turned calmly to the ecclesiastic and translated the news of the death into the local dialect, to demonstrate to him that he had attended to this Jewish wayfarer from a sense of medical duty alone, not as a mark of any special favor, and that Jews too, and not Christians only, might expire upon his bed.

By way of reinforcing his words he invited the learned man into his home, into the moonlit inner chamber, to show him the patient whom the angel of death had mercifully put out of her suffering. The little
Andalusian rabbi followed on their heels, to ensure that they did not take advantage of the dead woman’s helplessness by any unseemly or disrespectful action, such as making the sign of the cross or
pronouncing
alien prayers for her repose. It seemed, however, as if the
ecclesiastic,
lacking the power to evangelize and thus admit to heaven one who was already dead, had lost interest in the infidel soul that had already departed to its fate, and demanded to hear instead the tale of the body that had failed, and the mystery of that powerful spasm, which the physician named in the learned tongue of the ancient Greeks
tetanus,
thus ascribing to the illness grandeur and beauty in addition to its seriousness.

Rabbi Elbaz, brokenhearted at the sight of the departed woman’s motionless little foot, once more reproached the physician for his false promise, in a voice stifled with tears, but this time not in the broken Latin he had learned from the Christians of Seville but in the ancient tongue of the Jews, which had the power of giving particular force to whatever was spoken in anger or frustration. The apostate seemed to be deeply disturbed by the antique garb of the reproach being
repeatedly
hurled at him, and as though to defend the angel of death, who appeared to have made a mistake, he went over to the window and opened it wide and looked at the seven Jews of Metz, who were
standing
weary and perplexed around the first and now only wife, who was handing them slices of the bread the Ishmaelites had baked. Indicating them all with his finger, the physician repeated, this time not in Latin but in strange, crushed Hebrew, the second limb of his accursed prophecy:
But
these
will
not
live.
And the rabbi, although he had heard these words more than once already, trembled all over, as though the utter failure of the comforting part of the physician’s prophecy
reinforced
the effect of the baneful part.

Noticing that his son, the neglected orphan, was standing at the doorway with his dark eyes fixed on the body of the dead woman, near whose cabin on board ship he had sought the sweetness of sleep, the rabbi pulled himself together. He hurriedly pushed the child out of the chamber so that he would not merge the death of this strange woman with that of his mother in his imagination. He handed him over to the first wife, so that she could give him some of the warm black bread that the goodhearted Ishmaelites had baked, and although he himself
felt not the slightest pang of hunger, he forced himself to eat some of the warm, sourish bread too, and to recover some strength, for now, faced with a lord who had permitted himself to fall so soundly asleep, the Andalusian rabbi would have to change from counselor to
associate,
and who knew, perhaps also into a leader.

Because the North African merchant had neither spasm nor pain to disrupt his sleep, the yellow potion acted on him with double force, and for hour upon hour he lay so motionless in the little wood beside the convent that it seemed as though the sleep of God itself were enclosing him on every side. In the morning, when Abd el-Shafi was harnessing two of the horses to the larger wagon as arranged, to drive the seven Jews of Metz home, Rabbi Elbaz suddenly decided to
remove
two fine gold anklets carefully from the dead woman’s smooth, cold feet and give them to the borrowed congregants, not, heaven forbid, by way of recompense for a virtuous action that was its own reward, but merely as a token to sweeten their return. Knowing how firm was Ben Attar’s resolve not to bury his beloved wife in a bare field, he instructed the black temporary Jew, who was the last remnant of the dissolved congregation, to gather some gray planks of wood for the construction of a strong sealed coffin in which the second wife might be transported respectfully and safely to the burial ground in Paris.