A Journey to the End of the Millennium

by A. B. Yehoshua

  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.

  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.

  At once, however, a doubt arose as to whether the kinsfolk in question had returned to Paris, or whether they had decided to remain on the banks of the Rhine to keep the Day of Atonement and the feast of Tabernacles in Worms, so as to rejoice with their holy congregation over the ban that had been declared. While the rabbi thought about whether to send his clever son secretly to the other bank with one of the crewmen to find out who was in the house, Abu Lutfi testified that there was no need, as he had seen Abulafia a couple of days before among the throng of Parisians on his deck, looking pale and miserable and disguised as an elderly peasant woman.

  That being so, said Abu Lutfi, who knew their younger partner’s disguises from the meetings in the Spanish March, there was no sense in further delay; they should set out at once. It was decided that the rabbi should lead the cortege, while the banned husband should remain concealed some way off, to avoid a further, irreparable repudiation. At once the five seafaring salesmen were ordered to take off their colorful garb and replace it with clean, somber robes, so that they could carry the gray wooden coffin in a dignified manner through the narrow streets of the Cité to the Jews’ house on the south bank, or left bank, according to the river’s flow. And in the Rue de la Harpe, near the statue of David staring at Saint Michael’s fountain, in the last of the evening twilight, the Andalusian rabbi on his own entered the thick iron-studded door that he remembered well having had difficulty opening. In the courtyard, near the well, he found a small hut constructed of twigs and branches, in which the opposing party was eating its festive meal by the light of a small lamp. He did not enter the tabernacle, but announced his presence by clearing his throat. Mistress Esther-Minna was the first to hear him, and she peered out of the hut. Not recognizing him, she called Abulafia, who emerged wearing a hat with a horn of black velvet in the Worms style and black robes, as though he had anticipated the imminent mourning. Despite the darkness he recognized the uninvited guest as the Andalusian rabbi, and he started to shake, as though realizing that something had occurred. Without a moment’s pause he hurried over to the little rabbi and embraced him warmly. But on this occasion Elbaz was seeking neither greeting nor embrace but merely information about the location of the nearest Jewish cemetery where they might inter a coffin they had brought with them. A coffin? Abulafia asked apprehensively. What coffin? And the rabbi drew him into the street, where the five seamen were standing around the coffin, which was lying on the pavement.