But Mistress Esther-Minna could not wait for the master of this secret to return, for he was busy now, on the orders of the city guards, cleaning the caliph’s ancient guardship of any old military insignia or accessory, real or imaginary, so that it would have the appearance of a civilian ship alone, qualified by its nonmilitary character to anchor in the port of Paris. Dinnertime came, but despite her sternness, Mistress Esther-Minna did not disturb the rabbi from Seville, who instead of waking his son had joined him in slumber. So only the two freshly bathed wives were summoned to table. And since Ben Attar had never seen fit to endow his wives with any words of the holy tongue, there was no question of any table talk, which grieved the hostess greatly, for both her dear departed father and her husband of blessed memory had always admonished her that a meal without words of Torah was likened by the sages to eating the sacrifices of the dead.
The three women ate in deep silence. While the two guests, as they tasted cautiously and with wonder the delicious “sacrifices of the dead,” had the feeling that they were floating into a sweet dream, their hostess, who could not dispense with words of Torah, ascended to the upper story and asked permission from her brothers wife to seek among his parchments the faded copy of the last song of Moses, whose ancient reproofs she read slowly, verse after verse, to the two women, who had meanwhile finished eating. They listened in total silence, feeling the heavy drowsiness that had fallen on the adjoining chamber enfolding them too, for it was only now, in this closed, motionless room crowded with dark furniture made from the wood of the Black Forest, that they made the same discovery as the rabbi and his young son—that all the sleep they had known during their long voyage on the sea had not been real sleep, because the waves had never, ever let them forget, for a fraction of a moment, the existence of the world outside their dreams. And so it was best, before the abundant newly washed tresses sank into the empty dishes, to interrupt the reading of the ancient song, say a hasty grace, and hurry the two drowsy women into their separate rooms. Mistress Esther-Minna, who now remained alone at table, did not yet burst into tears of despair, but only because her long years of widowhood had taught her, among other things, the godly quality of patience.
Later that afternoon, when a soft knock was heard at the outer door and the gentile maidservant ushered in the uncle, Ben Attar, who had returned by himself and now stood before his nephew’s wife completely naturally, like a welcome guest who had become used to his place, she rose hurriedly to her feet beside the cleared table, on which there lay only the yellowing parchment bearing the last song of Moses. She trembled at the sudden intimacy that the twice-wed partner had thus forced upon her, after insinuating himself cunningly into her home through an imperfectly sealed crack of guilt in her husband’s soul. She could see that he was in a contented state, his eyes bright and calm, not only because he had found a suitable berth for his ship and her crew, but also because he had noticed how the new merchandise lying in the ship’s hold had attracted Abulafia and rekindled the old spark in his eyes. Now, offering Mistress Esther-Minna a chance to turn the defeat of her repudiation into a new, shared victory of closeness and amity, he smiled and bowed before her politely, as if to say, Even though you have forced me to make this long journey, I forgive you. She, however, could stand the man’s proximity no longer. A wave of fear and disgust rose up inside her, her composure deserted her, and impatiently she left the room.
But Ben Attar’s spirits did not flag. Rather the contrary, as though neither the woman’s sudden abject departure nor even the blue of her eyes convinced him now of its authenticity. But he stood perplexed in the empty room, not knowing where in this house full of narrow dark passages she had hidden his wives. Just as he was hungrily eyeing the strip of parchment, which looked like a sheet of baked pastry, he heard behind a curtain the voice of the first wife, who always woke at his approach, as though even in the depths of sleep she was always ready for him. Was she alone there, or was the second wife with her? Very carefully he drew aside the curtain, and found himself in Abulafia’s marital bedchamber, a room with curved walls dotted with narrow little windows that seemed like eyes squinting in sunlight. The semidarkness and the strange smells seemed to mask the familiar scent of the first wife, who at her husband’s entrance pushed the light bedspread off her large bare legs, which she crossed in a relaxed but explicit posture. From the sound of his footsteps as he entered, she knew that he was in a contented mood, which meant that not only had the door of this house opened easily and even respectfully before her and the second wife, accompanied by the rabbi who would justify her existence, but a fitting resting place had been found for the ship and her crew. In which case, she thought to herself with amazement, it might yet turn out that this crazy journey Ben Attar had forced them to make had not been in vain, and that the business partnership between north and south might yet come back to life. In which case, she continued to herself, I was mistaken to imagine that the gloom and melancholy that have laid him so low these past two years have robbed him of his wits. In the softness of the wide bed and the pleasure of the high ceiling above her, her feeling of regret was combined with a sense of pride in the success of the father of her children, the wise and strong and therefore desired husband, who was now penetrating deeper into the darkness of the curved bedchamber toward the first wife, who was removing her shift so as to offer him her large, washed breasts.
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.
PART TWO
The Journey to the Rhine, or the Second Wife
1.
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 h
er 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.
A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 14
