A Journey to the End of the Millennium

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Indeed, in addition to having her head thrust back in pain, her eyes veiled against the light, and her ears plugged with wax, her breathing was now labored. A terrible dread filled Ben Attar’s heart, for he did not know what he would say or how he would excuse himself to her father, his childhood friend, who had trusted him and given her to him as a girl in the tender first flower of youth. Now he could not even offer her father a grave upon which to prostrate himself. And how would he comfort his son? Not the fetus in her womb but his elder brother, who had been left with his grandfather and grandmother in Tangier and who would require satisfaction from his father for the many days he had dreamed of his mother’s return, when she had already departed this life.

  The North African merchant scrutinized the countenance of the mistress of the house, the physician’s wife, who had crept into the room, to learn from her experience whether the terrible despair that had seized hold of him was justified. But the pale little woman’s eyes gave him no clear hint, but only reminded him of the blue eyes of another, of the new wife whose repudiation had begotten death, which was groping its way toward his second wife’s bed. For the first time since Ben Attar had heard of the existence of that woman, beside the campfire by the Bay of Barcelona, he felt how heavy was the hatred he had borne her in his heart for so long, and how deep his vengeance would be. But on account of the sanctity of the day of forgiveness and atonement, he forced himself to stop the feelings that were rising up within him, and gently and compassionately he approached the patient’s bedside.

  There, beside the physician’s colorful flasks, he removed the fine veil from her pure, emaciated face, so that she could see the tenderness and sadness in his eyes. He removed the soft wax from her ears, so that she could hear the sound of the prayers coming from the little wood next to the house. All so that she might be certain that neither he nor any other member of the company intended to abandon her in this terrible moment, but on the contrary, they were all joining together in body and soul in the fight against the angel of death, who, even if he was close to the house, was still motionless in the doorway, listening in as much astonishment as the Lotharingian worshippers to the wonderful, richly colored description, full of poetic eloquence, flowing from the mouth of Rabbi Elbaz as he sang the service of the high priest on the terrible and awesome day.

  So as not to fail the congregation that had gathered for him alone, Ben Attar cut short the words of affection and comfort that he was heaping upon his second wife, and with profound yet unspoken gratitude he nodded to his first wife, who was covering the patient’s eyes again with the fine gauze veil and stopping her ears again with pieces of soft wax, and hurriedly he left the small chamber to rejoin the other worshippers. It was as well that he hastened back, for Rabbi Elbaz needed southern reinforcement. He was motioning to the seven northern Jews not to hold themselves back and content themselves with a polite genuflection, like Christians, but to prostrate themselves devoutly upon the ground, as though the holy of holies had merged with the physician’s house that stood before them, and the little wood had been transformed into the Temple court and Verdun into the beloved City of David. Thus they could join not in spirit alone but in body too in the memory of the priests and the people who stood in the court, who when they heard the honored and awesome Name spoken distinctly by the high priest in sanctity and purity, bent the knee, prostrated themselves, and fell on their faces, and said, “Blessed be his honored, majestic Name for ever and ever.”

  At first the northern Jews had difficulty joining in the full-length prostrations of Rabbi Elbaz and his son, and of Ben Attar and the young barbarian, who extended themselves lithely on the ground like Muslims at prayer. But slowly their souls were won over by the splendor of the rhymed and ornamented verses, and obeying the passionate rabbi’s gesture, they rubbed their foreheads repeatedly, if cautiously, on the reddish soil of Verdun, in the hope that such deep and humble prostration in the company of one banned Jew, one lying Jew, and one black Jew of doubtful Judaism might be added to the afflictions of the fast and fortify the virtuous act they had committed in making up ten for prayer. So might their purity be strengthened on this strange Day of Judgment, and their powers of resistance be doubled in the new year that was beginning, a gentle Jewish year that held in its womb the dragon of the frightening millennium.

  As though to reinforce the newfound self-righteousness of the northern Jews, who dispersed at the end of the service to rest for a while under the trees, the overcast sky suddenly parted and the autumn sun exposed a bare patch of sweet blue sky which stabbed Ben Attar’s entrails with a sharp pang of longing for his children, his kinsfolk, and his friends in Tangier, who must be enjoying an afternoon rest at this very moment, reclining on gleaming white couches in large, calm rooms. The next instant his nostrils were assailed by a foreign smell of forbidden meat emanating from the smoke curling up from the chimney of the small house. Was the apostate physician about to return home, and was his wife preparing his dinner? he wondered as he hastened to the corner of the convent wall to see whether he could see the eagerly awaited figure of the renegade. And indeed, Karl-Otto the First, as he styled himself could be seen approaching, holding his medical bag. Ben Attar hurried to meet him, ostensibly to hasten the physician’s footsteps, but perhaps unwittingly he was also attempting to postpone as long as possible the moment of his own return to the inner chamber, to his accursed holy of holies, where the rites of death might already be commencing.

  Will the woman live? Rabbi Elbaz asked again fearfully, in his quaint Latin. Yes, she will live, the physician assured him, with the same confidence he had displayed the previous day. But they, he insisted on adding, gesturing toward the Jews of Metz, who were dozing beneath the trees, will not live, neither they nor their children. He pursed his lips with a look of grim resolve, and entering his house, he embraced his two children firmly, perhaps to comfort himself for having exchanged such a holy day for an ordinary working day. Then he washed his hands to remove the dust of the roads and the blood of peasants and nobles which he had let all morning, dried them on a soft towel, and prepared to eat the roast meat that his wife had cooked for him. But disturbed by Ben Attar’s looks, he set down his knife and went into the inner chamber, making a sign to the first wife to give up her place beside the second wife, whose head was still tilted back and whose mouth gaped wide open as though she were short of air.

  For a moment it looked as though the physician were at a loss for what to do, but then he rummaged in his little wooden chest and extracted a soft reed tube, which he proceeded to insert carefully in the second wife’s throat. He poured down it some of the yellow potion that was so efficacious at soothing pain, and indeed, in a moment the strung bow relaxed and the amber-colored eyes opened wide. Gradually the eyelids drooped wearily and the lips parted in a faint smile, as though now, at the height of her torments, she had been vouchsafed a moment of acute pleasure. The alert physician seized this moment of grace, and before she sank into slumber he took out his knife and needle, bared a lovely shoulder, and let out a further quantity of tainted blood into the basin, which now contained fresh white river pebbles.

  The second wife’s body now seemed to find relief, and the painful spasm relaxed and disappeared within her sleep. Ben Attar judged that this was an opportune moment for him to elude the savours of the dinner that the physician’s wife was serving to her apostate husband and join the others for a rest in the little wood, until the daylight had mellowed enough for the afternoon prayers to commence. When Abd el-Shafi and his friend brought the four horses and the mule back from pasture, proudly waving their tails, washed and gleaming from the rest and grooming they had received on this holy day, and the physician emerged from his house for another round of bloodletting inside the walls of Verdun, Ben Attar went to rouse the young slave, the temporary Jew, who had remained kneeling all this time before the scroll of the Law, which had been placed in the branches of a tree. He made him join the rabbi, who had assembled th
e other worshippers together so he could pronounce the prayer that opened the afternoon service, which stabbed Ben Attar’s innards with renewed dread: The men of faith who were strong in good works have passed away. Valiantly wielding shield and buckler, they averted calamity by their supplication. They were to us like a fortified wall, and like a protection in the day of wrath and affliction. They appeased anger and fury, they restrained ire by their petitions. Before they invoked thee thou didst answer them, for they knew how to implore and propitiate by their supplications …

  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.