A Journey to the End of the Millennium (36 page)

It was only the sound of hammers that Sunday afternoon that
finally
woke Ben Attar from his yellow slumber. In the delicious misty languor of awakening, it seemed to him that he had never set sail on his ocean voyage, neither with the first wife nor with the second, but that he was lying comfortably on his big bed in his azure house, and the sounds issuing from the inner courtyard informed him that his older children were hastening to fulfill the command to build a
tabernacle
for the approaching festival. But as the coils of his deep slumber detached themselves, he became aware of the hardness of his bed, and through the screen of russet leaves that stirred before his eyes he was joined to the gray sky of Europe, which had turned repudiation to interdict and interdict to death.

In an instant memory assaulted him and a sharp pang of hunger and loss pounded in his head, and he rose to his feet and went to a nearby stream to wash his face. As he did so, a smell of burning reached his nostrils, and he saw that his living wife, who had probably
remained beside him all the time to watch over him lest anyone disturb his sleep, had also succumbed to slumber, and was lying in her
rumpled
robe beside some smoking logs on which his dinner was keeping warm. In the silence of the wood, without seeking out the rabbi or anyone else, he fell like a wild beast upon the slightly burned food, which was seasoned by the supreme condiment of two days’ hunger. And without waking the wife of his youth, he turned to the physician’s house, from which bluish smoke was rising, to see if by some miracle someone had sprung back to life there.

Entering that house, which in the past two days he had entered and left as freely as if it were his own, Ben Attar saw the physician’s wife standing beside the stove, stirring the supper with a large wooden spoon. Her little blue eyes looked at him with a hint of reproach, as if to say,
And
a
fine
time
to
he
waking 
up.
Guiltily he hung his head, and with an aching heart he entered the other chamber, where he was startled to see his second wife wrapped in her shrouds like a parcel ready for dispatch. He did not know who had dared to dress his dear one so without asking his consent. Was it the physician, or the
Andalusian
rabbi, impatient to resume the journey?

Without further thought, he hurriedly closed the door of the
chamber
behind him and feverishly unbound his second wife and looked again on that splendid face, which had become sharper during the night that had elapsed, so that it seemed now like that of some large quaint bird. His trembling hand hesitated to raise her eyelids gently and look for the last time at that old, dear emerald sparkle, which had never failed to set his heart aflame. And while he was taking his leave, slowly, with a kiss and a caress of the body that had given him so much pleasure and joy, he heard behind him the rabbi, who had entered without knocking and was gazing with total freedom at the woman laid out before him, as though her death had made him at last into a second husband.

At once the rabbi gave Ben Attar an account of his actions during the day, without excuse or apology, as though it were natural that he should assume authority while his lord slept. Again, as when he had decided to travel to Worms for a further judgment, Ben Attar stood stupefied at the little rabbi’s audacity, not only because he had taken it upon himself to remove the anklets from the North African’s wife’s feet
with his own hands and give them to the Jews from Metz, whose destruction might well be nigh, as a recompense for their trouble and pain, but also because he had authorized himself to give the mule that they had bought in Speyer to the physician, in payment for his simples, his hospitality, his yellow potion, his bloodlettings, and his
accommodation
of the corpse. But Ben Attar did not utter a word of reproach, for he was pleased and grateful to discern that Rabbi Elbaz had
consented
to his request to postpone the burial. Indeed, the Ishmaelite seaman and the slave had already been told to hasten and make a strong sealed coffin.

So the North African expedition lingered no longer within the walls of Verdun. At midnight, when Abd el-Shafi returned from Metz with the large wagon, the coffin was loaded onto it and Ben Attar and the rabbi arranged comfortable seats for themselves on either side of it, so that they could accompany the deceased during the journey with verses of psalms, which might console and strengthen her soul, which merited a final rest. Meanwhile the two Ishmaelite wagoners were checking the horseshoes and adjusting the harnesses, while young Elbaz greased the wheels. The young African, whom Abd el-Shafi had not yet released from the bonds of Judaism, was packing the cooking pots under the supervision of the only wife and loading them onto the smaller wagon. Meanwhile, the physician, who had tethered the mule to a tree near his house, seemed to be having some trouble composing himself sufficiently to take his leave of the Jewish travelers.
Ceaselessly
he roamed among them, sketching on the ground the best and safest way to Paris, and a tear welled for an instant in his eye. With the first light of dawn, just as the first crack of the whip sounded out, he suddenly exclaimed with emotion,
You
shall
live.
In flowing Latin he assured the travelers,
You
shall
return
to
your
Ishmaelites,
and
there
you
shall
live.
And to reinforce his words he repeated the last phrase in the holy tongue:
There
you
shall
live.

With the slow motion of the wheels of the wagons as they moved westward, Ben Attar’s soul was pierced with sadness as he took his final leave of the place where his second wife had smiled her last smile. On hearing the rabbi’s voice beginning what was necessary and urgent for a journey, the first tears rolled down his cheeks:
I
lift
up
mine
eyes
to
the
hills,
whence
shall
my
help
come.
My
help
is
from
the 
Lord,
who
made
heaven
and
earth.
He
shall
not
let
thy
foot
stumble,
thy
guardian
shall
not
slumber.
Behold,
he
that
guardeth
Israel
shall
neither
slumber
nor
sleep.
The
Lord
is
thy
guardian,
the
Lord
is
thy
shade
upon
thy
right
hand.
By
day
the
sun
shall
not
smite
thee,
nor
the
moon
by
night.
The
Lord
shall
guard
thee
from
all
evil,
he
shall
guard
thy
soul.
The
Lord
shall
guard
thy
going
forth
and
thy
coming
in,
from
now
and
forever-
more.

And so they journeyed from Verdun to Chalons and from Chalons to Rheims and from Rheims to Meaux and from Meaux to Paris. The route was well etched in the memory of the wagoners and in the idolater’s nostrils. Since the nights were chilly and on occasion they were lashed by the rains of autumn, they preferred this time to lodge in wayside inns or peasant cottages. But they never left the second wife’s coffin alone under the sole care of Ishmaelites; there was always at least one Jew beside her, Ben Attar or the rabbi, the first wife or the Elbaz child. By the third day, which was the eve of Tabernacles, a heavy, cloying smell had begun to come from the sealed casket, and looking up they could see a black vulture circling patiently in the sky overhead. Out of respect for the dear departed one, who longed to return to the dust, the rabbi from Seville decided to exercise rabbinic license and to deem the dry land sea and the wagon to be the equivalent of a ship, and in this way they did not have to rest from their journey on the festival but could recite the festive prayers and fulfill the obligation to construct a
tabernacle
while moving. They pressed on with all speed to the Île de France, abbreviating their meal stops and making do with little sleep. Even when Abd el-Shafi discovered a peasant on the way using a new kind of plow that had an additional, curved blade, which turned the earth by its side, thus cutting a wider and deeper furrow, Ben Attar did not allow him to linger long enough to study it or sketch it for the benefit of the peasants of Tangier and its hinterland, but insisted that they crack the whip and urge the horses on.

By the morning of the second day of Tabernacles, as in the course of their morning prayers they crossed the bridge over the Marne and turned westward to join the busy north bank of the Seine, they were compelled to fold back the dark cover of the larger wagon and expose it to the world, so that the fresh smell of the riverbank vegetation might relieve the fetid air coming from within. Even though this exposure
obliged them to fend off an occasional vulture or crow that alighted on the coffin, their spirits rose at the sight of the familiar island of the little Frankish city, resting gracefully in the middle of the river in a riot of roofs and towers beside its little white uninhabited twin. A pleasant warmth surrounded the North Africans as they entered Paris, as though their brief stay a full month before had attached them to the city with proprietorial bonds. As they approached in the light of the setting sun, they were more and more eager to see among the craft clustered in the port the green flag of the old guardship.

It was not until the horses drew up right alongside that they
managed
to recognize her. Even the captain’s face fell on beholding the change that had overtaken his ship. In the thirty days that they had been away, the partner Abu Lutfi, left with nothing to do, had decided to change from a buyer to a vendor, in order to test the worth of the desert merchandise among the local inhabitants. To this end he had dressed the old guardship in multicolored rags and clothed the five crewmen in finery to attract the Parisians. Indeed, the burly seamen were running around among the olives and the heaps of dried fruit, the pale honeycombs and heaps of copper pans like so many salesmen, adorned with silken scarves and rainbow-colored turbans, and they even seemed to have mastered some words of enticement in the local language.

For his part, Abu Lutfi also seemed to have some difficulty in recognizing his Jewish partner as he stood on the riverbank with his company, pale and gaunt and dressed in threadbare clothes, for he ignored him and continued haggling with a local merchant,
gesticulating
expressively. But when he felt the warm hand of the black slave, who had lithely climbed aboard, his breath was taken away, and
dropping
the copper jug he was holding, he fell to his knees and prostrated himself in thanksgiving to the god of the Jews, who had not prevented great Allah from bringing his dear ones back safely, Jews and
Ishmaelites
alike, from the Black Forest of the Rhineland. To judge by the bows and embraces and kisses and rapturous praises of destiny, which had spared the adventurers its blows, it seemed that Abu Lutfi was not interested in knowing about the fate of the expedition, or whether his Jewish partner had succeeded in trouncing his adversaries with the rabbi’s help in the further contest on the Rhine. The Ishmaelite
evidently
clung to his view that the whole of this great journey, on sea and by land, was totally unnecessary, for Jews by their nature are incapable of achieving a final and decisive judgment.

Therefore, to tell Abu Lutfi about the judgment that really had befallen, although not by virtue of speeches, Ben Attar took him to the stern, where, amid sacks of condiments and crates of dried fruit,
before
the opening that led down to the hidden cabin of a wife who had not returned, he recounted in a roundabout way the tale of the angel of death who had struck them, and even gestured toward the sealed
coffin
that lay all alone on the quayside, with the Elbaz child standing guard beside it. Although Ben Attar had supposed that the news of the young wife’s death would be hard and painful for his partner, who had gone to great lengths each year to find her some special gift in the desert, he had not imagined that Abu Lutfi would be so distraught that he would suddenly wave his hands in the air and hold his head in despair, as though the death that had made so bold as to snatch off such a beloved passenger could cut off such a great and hairy head. On witnessing the grief of the Arab, who drew a small dagger and made a cut in his robe as a token of sympathy, Ben Attar too let loose, perhaps for the first time, a cry of terrible loss, which had been reined back until that moment.

But the pleasant autumn sun of Paris did not stand still in the sky to wait for all the grief, pain, joy, and hope that mingled in that great meeting on board the old ship to be expressed and stilled. Rabbi Elbaz, already impatient at the sight of the two partners comforting each other as though they were two husbands of a single wife, canceled all the license to delay the burial that he had granted since they had set forth from Verdun and stood resolutely before Ben Attar demanding immediate interment. To this end they must proceed instantly to the house on the opposite bank of the river, to announce to the kinsfolk who had issued the repudiation and the ban that all they had held to be settled and sealed was undone, and that they were to prepare a plot of ground that very evening for the departed wife.