A Journey to the End of the Millennium

by A. B. Yehoshua

  The woman’s open display of desire, instead of making her friends snigger in embarrassment, swept away any anxiety over pleasure at the sight of this nocturnal tempter standing in all the splendor of his youthful manhood. The innocent devotion with which the African stranger stripped himself before the old craftsman inflamed the lascivious imagination not of one woman alone but of all three, opening a dark breach to a new, disturbing, but infinitely degenerate horizon.

  Already a flash of lecherous complicity passed from one woman’s eyes to the others’, and was silently aimed at the elderly master of the house, to check whether he still needed the visible image standing motionless before him, or whether the young man might now be requisitioned for another need, neither artistic nor religious but full of the wonderful sap of life. The old woodcarver, whose spirit was so amused by the women’s excitement filling his cottage that it seemed to be infecting him too, laid down his chisel, dusted the wood chips off the block of wood struggling to find its wounded identity, then covered it with a piece of cloth as though to hide from its view the orgy that was about to break out. Then he withdrew to his cot in a dark little corner, but he did not cover his face before he knew which of the three women was favored by fate in the draw.

  It emerged that the three women were unwilling, or unable, to wait to draw lots, preferring to cast in their lot together in unbridled licentiousness. Before they could strip off their garments they approached the youth, whose black flesh gave them the freedom to pass him from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, from lust to lust, as though he were an animal rather than a human. The more the triangular desire raging in the third watch of the night intensified in its brazen savagery, the more the wonderful thrill that transported the crumbling virginity of the son of the desert became blended with sorrow and pain. From the groans of pleasure bursting from his mouth, resembling the sound of a wild camel, he knew that to the end of his days he would have no rest from the fury of his longings, which would always draw him and his descendants to make their way from the south to the north.

  Surprisingly, with the first glimmer of daylight on the horizon, the same tones of sorrow and pain were intermingled also in the thoughts of Esther-Minna, whose heart was pierced by a fine new longing. Unlike the slave who was being tossed about in the old woodcarver’s cottage on the right bank with the kisses and bites of three unbridled women, the painful longing in the Jews’ house in the Rue de la Harpe next to Saint Michael’s fountain aimed gently and compassionately in the opposite direction, from north to south. Ever since that night when Ben Attar first appeared in her house with the boy, she had ostensibly been waiting only for the moment when she would finally be freed from the nightmare of the southern expedition that had come to turn her world upside down, but now, as the moment of their departure came closer and closer, Mistress Abulafia felt a certain sadness at losing her discomfited visitors, perhaps especially because of her new anxiety about the Andalusian child who had finally sunk into a deep sleep in her husband’s bed. For after he had finished mumbling and groaning his confession in the outlandish, impenetrable language of the Ishmaelites, he began, this time in the familiar and holy tongue of the Jews, to recount his fears concerning the imminent sea voyage.

  Esther-Minna had never before had a real child whom she could train in the paths of righteousness by day and watch over by night, and so when Rabbi Elbaz’s outline appeared in the doorway of her bedchamber with the first breeze of morning, she hurried out to meet him, to prevent him from depriving her of this graceful, curly-headed little boy who had finally found rest in sleep. She intensified her description of the past night’s fever, and made the father promise to let her atone for what she had occasioned with devoted nursing and suitable vigils. Yes, now she felt regret for the obstinacy of her repudiation, if not for any sin. And the rabbi from Seville rubbed the sleep from his eyes in amazement, for ever since he had first disembarked from the old guardship in the port of Paris, he had never heard a word of regret from his elegant opponent, whose blue eyes now reminded him of the blue sky of distant Andalus, which he did not know if he would ever see again.

  Mistress Abulafia hastened to the tabernacle to waken her brother from a night’s sleep sweetened by the command to dwell in booths and by the rustle of the breeze in the greenery and the scent of the citron that lay beside his couch. With unusual firmness she asked the befuddled Master Levitas to allow the rabbi to lead the prayers for the day of the Great Hosanna, so that he could be the first to strip the willow by beating it with all his might in memory of the ruined Sanctuary and its worship. And so it was. To the accompaniment of the raindrops that had been skipping on the surface of the Seine since dawn and the voices of the Frankish travelers on the river, Rabbi Elbaz was the first to begin the recitation of the hosanna: May you be delivered and saved from war and from famine, from captivity and from pestilence, and from all manner of destroyers and from all manner of punishments that are experienced in the world. May you all go up to Jerusalem the pure, and may your feet trample upon those who hate you, and may your feet dance in the court of the sanctuary, and may you raise in your hands the fruit of the citron tree, palm fronds, myrtles, and willows of the brook, and say, “Hosanna, Lord save us!”

  But the rabbi’s hosanna did not penetrate into the bowels of the old guardship tied up on the northern shore and swaying now under the feet of the Ishmaelite crew, woken from their slumbers by the rain. Even less could the recitation that shook the tabernacle on the left bank reach as far as the old artisan’s cottage at the bottom of the hill of the white smudge. But while the idol-worshipper’s body was still lying wearily among the idols at the feet of his own shrouded image, bitten by the greedy desire of the Gallic women and stained by the endless outpourings of his seed, Ben Attar too was woken by the rain, and accompanied by the sound of the camel shuffling around in the belly of the ship and the smell of the remains of the condiments, which had spilled from the sacks and mingled with each other, he began to stroke, kiss, and squeeze with all his strength the only wife he had left. And the first wife hastened to respond to the wakening man with all the power of her love in a perfect and unique congress that was free from all extraneous thoughts and from any remnant.

  8.

  Had the time not come at last to unfurl the triangular lateen sail on the tall mast of the old guardship and raise the anchor from the bottom of the Seine? Had the time not come to depart from this Europe with its darkening sky and sail back to the safety of home? Even the patience of such a hardy and experienced captain as Abd el-Shafi was strained at the sight of the wind and rain lashing the Île de France on the Day of Rejoicing in the Law, for who knew as well as he how urgent it was to set sail and leave before the northern winds grew stronger on the ocean? So anxious was the captain that he was prepared to protest against the calm Ishmaelite fatalism that left it to Allah to govern the infinite world according to his mysterious will, and he demanded urgently that Abu Lutfi stir his Jewish partner from the hesitations of his grief and force him to put off the torn robe of mourning and bring himself up from the bowels of the ship to the old bridge, to pronounce there the order that all the Ishmaelites had been so eagerly awaiting—to leave desolate Europe behind and return to luxuriant Africa, to hear once more the sweet sound of the muezzin’s call.

  Perhaps it was the blood of Abd el-Shafi’s grandsire’s sire, who had been taken captive by the Vikings more than a century before and had spent many years as their prisoner, that sharpened the captain’s senses to perceive the dangerous, unhealthy hesitancy that was spreading like ivy over all Ben Attar’s thoughts and deeds. This fear concerned not only the voyage, which had lost the charm of novelty and adventure and was left mainly with the memory of hardships and distress, but also a deeper doubt about the leavetaking, both from the nephew, whose partnership had been renewed through blood and suffering, and from his blue-eyed wife, whose stern elegance had suddenly changed her old repudiation into a powerful new attraction.

  In
truth, a strange new attraction emanated from this woman toward the sorrowing uncle, the extinction of whose duality had left around him, or even within him, a new, unclear space, like that left by the loss of a severed limb. There was no way of telling whether Esther-Minna herself was in command, or was even aware, of the new quality emanating from her toward the uncle, who consented in honor of the closing days of the autumn festivals to emerge from his close mourning in the bowels of the ship, bathe and dress his beard and hair, and exchange his rent robe for a fresh one, so that he could clasp to his breast in holiness and purity the soft little scroll of the Law that was handed to him by Master Levitas and execute the modest dance ordained by custom.

  What precisely was the secret of this strange new attraction passing between the northern woman and the southern man, which was able to delay the moment of parting despite the impatience of the Ishmaelite seamen? The North African’s enmity toward Abulafia’s new wife still blazed within him, and if his young wife had not departed to what was supposed to be a better world, it would not have occurred to Ben Attar to withdraw from the campaign he had launched, and despite the ban and interdict pronounced against him by the prayer leader in Worms he would have sought out another river on the European continent and challenged the woman to a third round. There, on the north or south or west or east bank, he would not have allowed the rabbi from Seville to appoint a court or a judge, but he would have taken the stand himself, alone and face-to-face with the stubborn woman, and overwhelmed her repudiation with a speech woven not of texts of the sages but of the wisdom of life.

  His second wife’s unexpected death had indeed brought him a victory, but it was a hollow and bitter victory that had not extinguished his anger. Thus the nature of the new attraction that joined the two adversaries was unclear. Surely it was not possible that now, on the brink of the departure from Europe and the parting of north from south, the mind should be expected to endure the mounting suspicion that the extended intimacy enforced upon these two who had traveled together from Paris to Worms had kindled in one, or even perhaps both, a demented, forbidden fantasy, and that the hope of realizing it was delaying the departure? The date had already been set for the summer meeting of the renewed partnership in the Bay of Barcelona, and there remained nothing for Ben Attar to do at the close of the festival but to give the order for the Ishmaelite crew to spread the sail, weigh anchor, and glide downstream to the mouth of the river and out onto the great ocean, which, who could tell, might be longing to rock the old guardship on its waves.

  Ostensibly what delayed them was the sickness of the rabbi’s son. This sickness Mistress Abulafia fomented with dark potions, so that she could plead with the rabbi and more particularly with the leader of the expedition to take pity on the little invalid, and instead of exposing him to wind and rain linger a little and let him recover in the comfort of her bed. But a sixth sense told the merchant of Tangier that behind his new niece’s pleas there lurked a brazen wish from which he himself might draw some advantage. Therefore, before determining what reply he should give, he sent his only wife to the sick child to discover, by questioning and feeling him, what was real and what was feigned in his body and his soul. The experienced, sensitive woman returned with news for her husband. Although it was almost certain that the eating of abominable flesh, which had so upset the child and infected him with guilt, was no mere fantasy, it had touched his soul alone and not his body. In other words, the sickness itself was entirely feigned.

  Still Ben Attar held back from speaking ill of the feigned invalid, who had been taken under such a gentle yet enthusiastic wing. Since he even felt a certain compassion for the desire for a child that had suddenly arisen in the bosom of a barren adversary who was no longer young, he tried to think afresh how he might turn the pretended malady into a further pledge to fortify his partnership. Precisely because of its dramatic rupture, there might still lurk in the renewed partnership some hidden cracks through which that accursed repudiation might grow back, by attempted prevarication, by dispatching a strange agent, some private local associate instead of Abulafia to the summer meeting in Barcelona to bring the North Africans their money and take the new merchandise. Although it would not occur to Ben Attar to postpone the sailing on account of a woman’s desire for a curly-haired child, it seemed that he would be willing to abandon the young passenger and leave him behind in Paris until the following summer, so that he could recover body and soul. This he would do on condition that Abulafia would give an explicit promise, backed by an oath on the soul of his wife—not the living one but the first, drowned one—not only to watch over the child as the apple of his eye but to join him to the purse of money that he himself would bring to the ancient inn overlooking the azure bay of the Spanish March. Only when they had finished chanting the lament for the ruined shrine together would they hand the child over to Abu Lutfi, who would choose a young horse for him from Benveniste for the night ride by way of Tortosa, Toledo, and Cordoba back to his waiting father in Seville.

  It was surprising that Ben Attar, who was already enthusiastic about Esther-Minna’s excitement at taking under her wing, without the pain or trouble of childbearing, a full-grown, black-curled, clever child, whom she might take by the hand and promenade through the lanes of the little island without shame or reproach, did not take the trouble to obtain Rabbi Elbaz’s assent to having his young son expropriated in order to buttress the partnership between north and south, which had been renewed by dint of a death alone. Indeed, on the basis of the familiarity acquired in the course of the journey, the merchant suspected that the rabbi he had hired in Andalus would not only be pleased to spare his only child the hardships and dangers of the return sea voyage, but would even seek to join him. But Ben Attar, unwilling to dispense with the rabbi’s company and learned conversation on the ocean waves and unwilling to be left alone with his only consort in the midst of alien Ishmaelites, chose to keep his own counsel for the time being. He spoke not a word to the anxiously waiting Jews, but went first to the ship to consult his faithful old Ishmaelite partner about his new plan.

  But Abu Lutfi turned out to be not so faithful, for during the proprietor’s absence he had taken it upon himself to give permission to the ship’s captain not only to prepare the ship for sailing but to embark a new cargo in place of that which had been discharged, so as to stabilize the ship on the ocean. A new cargo? exclaimed the amazed Jew, who since his second wife’s death had let his commercial vigilance slacken. Is there anything fit to buy here in this godforsaken land that might interest people in the South? Abu Lutfi made no answer, but merely winked and led his partner into the hold, from which there rose a strange and unfamiliar smell mingled with a new sound. There, in the darkness of the space that had been cleared of its cargo, Ben Attar saw human beings attached to the timbers of the old guard ship.

  Slaves? the Jew whispered in horror, and at once he asked himself whether there were not a disturbing sign here of things to come, for Abu Lutfi, who had begun as a humble assistant in Ben Attar’s shop in Tangier, had never before dared to act on his own initiative without obtaining the blessing of his Jewish master. Was this the price the Ishmaelite was levying for his participation in the vicissitudes of the conflict of the Jews, a conflict that despite its hardships had incidentally broadened and strengthened the Arab’s mind and perhaps his soul as well? Or was it merely evidence of a new contempt or even anger that the Ishmaelite felt for the weakness of a husband who had allowed his young second wife to depart this life in her prime, only to please a new woman, whose hair was fair, her eyes blue, her countenance pale and sad?

  Come and see close up, whispered Abu Lutfi to his partner, who was still hesitating to advance into the bowels of his ship, from which a new menace seemed to emanate. But the Ishmaelite relentlessly compelled the Jew to inspect the new, disturbing human cargo, which froze at the sight of the new master, who was wondering about its nature and also its value. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, Ben
Attar could discern the slaves and distinguish them one from another. His heart pounded as he saw that there were five tall, thin males dressed in long leather tunics. And his breath stopped for an instant as he noticed that the slivers of daylight filtering between the timbers glinted on yellow hair and blue eyes, whose sadness and sub-missiveness the darkness was unable to disguise. With a rush of excitement whose strength caused him real distress, he sighed, closed his eyes, and turned a grim face toward Abu Lutfi, who was smiling proudly, to inquire not only as to the price of the disturbing cargo shackled in the hold of his ship but also as to its faith.

  It was remarkable how his natural commercial instincts had led this Jew with no previous experience of slave trading to make precisely the right connection between the two questions. Abu Lutfi proudly recounted how, while the Jews were praying for remission of their sins in Verdun, Abd el-Shafi had made the first contact with a slave dealer, and how after the death of the second wife they had covertly agreed that in return for five sacks of fragrant condiments and ten copper caldrons he would receive five northern slaves, whose modest price was due not to any mental or bodily defect or weakness but purely to a defect in their faith, or, it would be truer to say, in their lack of faith. For their origin was in the wild remote regions in the extreme north of this gloomy continent, where even a thousand years had not sufficed to bring the good news of the birth, death, and resurrection of the crucified god. In simple speech, these were also idol-worshippers, albeit fair northerners rather than dark southerners, whose inscrutable and unsteady thoughts and deeds made them unpredictable and therefore dangerous, so it was no wonder that their price on the local slave market was so low.