by Noah Gordon
The rabbenu made Rob a gift of the old leather hat and loaned him, for study, a tiny section of the Talmud. The Hebrew Book of Laws had been translated into Parsi. Though Rob welcomed the opportunity to see the Persian language in another document, the meaning of the segment was beyond him. The fragment dealt with a law called shaatnez: although Jews were allowed to wear linen and to wear wool, they weren’t allowed to wear a mixture of linen and wool, and Rob couldn’t understand why.
Anyone he asked either didn’t know or shrugged and said it was the law.
That Friday, naked in the steamy bathhouse, Rob found his courage as the men gathered about their sage.
“Shi-ailah, Rabbenu, shi-ailah!” he cried. A question, a question!
The rabbenu paused in soaping his great sloping belly and grinned at the young stranger, and then spoke.
“He says, ‘Ask it, my son,’” Simon said.
“You are forbidden to eat meat with milk. You are forbidden to wear linen with wool. You are forbidden to touch your wives half the time. Why is so much forbidden?”
“To necessitate faith,” the rabbenu said.
“Why should God make such strange demands of the Jews?”
“To keep us separate from you,” the rabbenu said, but his eyes twinkled and there was no malice in the words, and Rob gasped as Simon poured water over his head.
* * *
Everyone participated when Rohel, the granddaughter of the rabbenu, was married to Reb Baruch’s grandson, Meshullum, on the second Friday of the month of Adar.
Early that morning everyone assembled outside the house of Daniel ben Shlomo, the bride’s father. Inside, Meshullum paid a handsome bride price of fifteen gold pieces. The ketubah, or wedding contract, was signed and Reb Daniel presented a handsome dowry, returning the bride price to the couple and adding an additional fifteen gold pieces, a wagon, and a span of horses. Nathan, the groom’s father, gave the fortunate couple a pair of milch cows. When they left the house, a radiant Rohel walked past Rob as if he were invisible.
The entire community escorted the pair to the synagogue, where they recited seven blessings under a canopy. Meshullum stamped on a fragile glass to illustrate that happiness is transient and Jews must not forget the destruction of the Temple. And then they were man and wife, and a day-long celebration was under way. A flutist, a fifer, and a drummer provided music and the Jews sang lustily, My beloved is gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies, which Simon told Rob was from the Scriptures. The two grandfathers spread their arms in joy, snapped their fingers, closed their eyes, threw back their heads and danced. The wedding celebration lasted until the early hours of the morning and Rob ate too heavily of meat and rich puddings and had too much to drink.
That night he brooded as he lay on his straw in the warm blackness of the barn, his cat at his feet. He remembered the blond woman in Gabrovo with less and less disgust and willed himself not to think of Mary Cullen. He thought resentfully of skinny young Meshullum, lying at that moment with Rohel, and hoped the boy’s prodigious scholarship would enable him to appreciate his good fortune.
He woke well before dawn and felt rather than heard the changes in his world. By the time he had slept again and awakened and risen from his bed, the sounds were clearly audible: a dripping, a tinkling, a rushing, a roar that grew in volume as more and more ice and snow gave way and joined the waters of the unlocked earth, sweeping down the mountainsides and signifying the coming of spring.
31
THE WHEAT FIELD
When her mother died, Mary Cullen’s father had told her he would mourn Jura Cullen for the rest of his life. She had willingly joined him in wearing black and avoiding public pleasures, but when a full year of mourning ended on the eighteenth of March, she told her father it was time for them to return to the routines of ordinary living.
“I continue to wear black,” James Cullen said.
“I shall not,” she said, and he nodded.
She had carried all the way from home a bolt of light woollen stuff woven from their own fleece, and she inquired carefully until she found a fine seamstress in Gabrovo. The woman nodded when she conveyed what she wanted, but indicated that the cloth, of a nondescript natural color, had best be dyed before cutting. The roots of the madder plant could give red shades, but with her hair that would make her stand out like a beacon. The center wood of oak would give gray, but after her steady diet of black, gray was too subdued. Maple or sumac bark would give yellow or orange, frivolous colors. It would have to be brown.
“I’ve gone all my life wearing nut-husk brown,” she grumbled to her father.
Next day he brought her a small pot of a yellowish paste, like slightly turned butter. “It is dye, and fiercely expensive.”
“Not a color I admire,” she said carefully.
James Cullen smiled. “It’s called India blue. It dissolves in water and you must be careful not to get it on your hands. When the wet cloth is taken from the yellow water it changes color in the air and thereafter the dye is fast.”
It produced a rich, deep blue cloth such as she had never seen, and the seamstress cut and sewed a dress and a cloak. She was pleased with the garments but folded them and put them away until the morning of the tenth of April, when hunters brought the news to Gabrovo that the way through the mountains was open at last.
By early afternoon, people who had been awaiting the thaw throughout the countryside had begun to hasten into Gabrovo, the departure town for the great pass known as the Balkan Gate. Provisioners set up their wares, and milling mobs began to shout for the right to buy supplies.
Mary had to make the innkeeper’s wife a gift of money to persuade her to heat water over the fire at such a frenzied time and carry it upstairs to the women’s sleeping chambers. First Mary knelt over the wooden tub and washed her hair, now long and thick as a winter pelt, then she squatted in the tub and scrubbed herself until she glowed.
She dressed in the newly made garments and went to sit outside. Drawing a wooden comb through her hair as it dried sweet in the sun, she saw that the principal street of Gabrovo was crowded with horses and wagons. Presently a large pack of men, wildly drunk, galloped their horses through the town, uncaring about the havoc caused by the pounding hooves of their mounts. A wagon was overturned as horses bucked and shied, their eyes rolling in fright. While men cursed and fought to hold the reins and horses whickered and screamed, Mary ran inside before her hair was fully dried.
She had their belongings packed and ready by the time her father appeared with his manservant, Seredy.
“Who were the men who stormed through the town?” she asked.
“They call themselves Christian knights,” her father said coldly. “There are almost eighty of them, Frenchmen from Normandy on pilgrimage to Palestine.”
“They are very dangerous, lady,” Seredy said. “They wear mail vests but they travel with wagons laden with full armor. They stay drunk and …” He averted his eyes. “They ill-treat women of all sorts. You must stay close to us, lady.”
She thanked him gravely, but the thought of having to depend upon Seredy and her father to protect her from eighty drunken and brutal knights would have been amusing were it not grim.
Mutual protection was the best reason for traveling in a large caravan, and they lost no time in loading the pack animals and leading them to a large field on the eastern edge of the town, where the caravan was assembling. When they rode past Kerl Fritta’s wagon, Mary saw that he had already set up a table and was doing a brisk business in recruiting.
It was something of a homecoming, for they were greeted by a number of people they had known on the earlier portion of the trip. The Cullens found their place well toward the middle of the line of march because so many new travelers had formed up behind them.
She kept a careful watch, but it was almost nightfall before she saw the party for which she’d been waiting. The same five Jews with whom he had left t
he caravan returned on horseback. Behind them she saw the little brown mare; Rob J. Cole drove the garish wagon toward her and suddenly she could feel her heart beating in her chest.
He looked as well as ever and appeared glad to be back, and he greeted the Cullens as cheerfully as if he and she had not walked angrily away from one another last time they had met.
When he had taken care of his horse and came into their camp, it was only neighborly of her to mention that the local merchants had scarcely anything left to sell, lest he was short of provision.
He thanked her kindly but said he had bought supplies in Tryavna with no difficulty. “Do you have enough yourself?”
“Yes, for my father bought early.” She was vexed that he made no mention of the new dress and cloak, though he studied her for the longest time.
“They are the exact shade of your eyes,” he said finally.
She wasn’t certain but took it for a compliment. “Thank you,” she said gravely and, as her father approached, forced herself to turn away to study Seredy setting up the tent.
Another day went by without the caravan’s departure, and up and down the line there was grumbling. Her father went to see Fritta and came back to tell her the caravan master was waiting for the Norman knights to leave. “They have caused great mischief and Fritta wisely prefers to have them ahead of us instead of harrying our rear,” he said.
But the following morning the knights hadn’t departed and Fritta decided he had waited long enough. He gave the signal that started the caravan on the last long leg toward Constantinople, and finally the ripple of forward movement reached the Cullens. The previous autumn they had followed a young Frank and his wife and two small children. The Frankish family had wintered away from the town of Gabrovo; it had been their declared intent to resume the trip with the caravan, but they hadn’t appeared. Mary knew that something terrible must have occurred and prayed Christ to watch over them. She now rode behind two fat French brothers who had told her father they hoped to make their fortunes buying Turkish rugs and other treasures. They chewed garlic for health and often twisted in the saddle to stare stupidly at her body. It entered her mind that, driving his wagon behind her, the young barber-surgeon might be watching her too, and at times she was wicked enough to move her hips more than demanded by the motion of the horse.
The giant serpent of travelers soon wound to the pass that led through the high mountains. The sheer mountainside fell away below the twisting trail, down to the glittering river, swollen with the melt of snows that had imprisoned them all winter.
On the other side of the great defile were foothills that gradually turned into rolling land. They slept that night in a vast plain of shrubby growth. Next day they traveled due south and it became clear that the Balkan Gate separated two unique climes, for the air was softer this side of the pass and with every hour they traveled it grew warmer.
That night they stopped outside the village of Gornya, camping in plum orchards with the permission of the farmers, who sold some of the men a fiery plum liquor as well as green onions and a fermented milk drink so thick it had to be eaten with a spoon. Early the following morning, while they were still encamped, Mary heard a rumbling as of distant thunder. But it quickly grew louder and soon the wild screams and shouts of men were part of the noise.
As she came out of the tent she saw that the white cat had left the barber-surgeon’s wagon and stood transfixed in the road. The French knights galloped past like demons in a nightmare and the cat was lost in a dust cloud, but not before Mary had seen what the first hooves had done. She wasn’t conscious of screaming but knew she was running toward the road before the dust had settled.
Mistress Buffington no longer was white. The cat had been trodden into the dust and Mary lifted the poor broken little body and for the first time became aware that he’d come out of his wagon and stood over her.
“You’ll ruin your new dress with the blood,” he said roughly, but his pale face was stricken.
He took the cat and a spade and went away from the camp. When he returned she didn’t approach him, but she noted from afar that his eyes were reddened. Putting a dead animal into the ground wasn’t the same as burying a person, but it wasn’t strange to her that he was able to weep over a cat. Despite his size and strength, his vulnerable gentleness was the quality that drew her.
For the next several days she let him be. The caravan stopped heading due south and turned east again, but the sun continued to shine hotter each day. It was already clear to Mary that the new clothing which had been made for her in Gabrovo was largely a waste, for the weather was too warm for wool. She rummaged through the summer clothing in her baggage and found some lighter garments but they were too fine for traveling and would quickly be ruined. She settled on a cotton undergarment and a rough, sacklike work dress to which she gave a minimum of form by knotting a cord around her waist. She placed a broadbrimmed leather hat upon her head, although her cheeks and nose were already freckled.
That morning, when she got off her horse and started to walk for exercise as she was wont to do, he smiled at her. “Come ride with me in my wagon.”
She came without fuss. This time there was no awkwardness, just a deep gladness to sit on the seat next to him.
He dug behind the seat and came up with a leather hat of his own, but such a head covering as the Jews wore.
“Wherever did you get it?”
“It was given me in Tryavna by their holy man.”
Presently they saw her father sending him such a sour look they both began to laugh.
“I’m surprised he allows you to visit,” he said.
“I’ve convinced him you are harmless.”
They looked at one another comfortably. His was a handsome face despite the homely fact of his broken nose. She realized that however impassive his large features might remain, the key to his feelings was his eyes, deep and steady and somehow older than his years. She felt in them a great loneliness to match her own. How old was he? Twenty-one years? Twenty-two?
She realized with a start that he was speaking of the farming plateau over which they were passing.
“… mostly fruits and wheat. Winters here must be short and mild, for the crops are advanced,” he said, but she wasn’t to be robbed of the intimacy they had gained in the last moments.
“I hated you that day in Gabrovo.”
Another man might have protested or smiled, but he made no response.
“Because of the Slav woman. How could you go with her? I hated her, too.”
“Don’t waste your hatred on either of us, for she was pitiable and I didn’t lie with her. Seeing you spoiled such for me,” he said simply.
She never doubted he would tell her truth, and something warm and triumphant started to grow in her like a flower.
Now they could talk about trifles—their route, the way animals must be driven to make them endure, the difficulty of finding cooking wood. They sat together all afternoon and talked quietly about everything except the white cat and themselves, and his eyes said other things to her without words.
She knew it. She was frightened for several reasons but there was no place on earth she would rather be than sitting next to him on the uncomfortable, swaying wagon under the battering sun, and she went obediently but reluctantly when at last her father’s peremptory call summoned her away.
Now and again they passed a small flock of sheep, which were mostly scruffy, though her father invariably stopped to inspect them and went with Seredy to interrogate the owners. Always the shepherds advised that for truly wonderful sheep he must go beyond to Anatolia.
By early May they were a week’s travel from Turkey, and James Cullen made no attempt to conceal his excitement. His daughter was dealing with an excitement of her own, but she was making every effort to conceal it from him. Although there was always a chance to cast a smile or a glance in the barber-surgeon’s direction, sometimes she forced herself to steer clear of him two days in a row, fo
r she was afraid that if her father sensed her feelings he would order her to stay away from Rob Cole.
One night as she was cleaning up after supper, Rob appeared in their camp. He nodded to her politely and went directly to her father, holding out a flask of brandy as a peace offering.
“Sit you down,” her father said reluctantly. But after the two men had shared a drink her father became friendlier, no doubt because it was pleasant to sit in fellowship and converse in English, and also because it was difficult not to warm to Rob J. Cole. Before long, James Cullen was telling their visitor what lay before them.
“I’m told of a breed of Eastern sheep, lean and narrow-backed, but with tails and rear legs so fat the animal may live on stored reserves when food is scarce. Their lambs have a silky fleece of rare and unusual luster. Wait a moment, man, let me show you!” He disappeared into the tent and came out with a hat made of lambskin. The fleece was gray and tightly curled.
“Finest quality,” he said eagerly. “The fleece stays this curly only until the fifth day of the lamb’s life, but then the fur remains wavy until the beastie is two months old.”
Rob inspected the hat and assured her father it was a fine skin.
“Oh, it is,” Cullen said, and put the hat on his head, which made them laugh because it was a warm night and a fur hat was made for snow. He put it back in the tent and then the three of them sat before the fire and her father gave her a sip or two from his glass. The brandy was hard to swallow but made the world safe for her.
Thunder rumbled and shook the purpled sky and sheet lightning illuminated them for long seconds during which she could see the hard planes of Rob’s face, but the vulnerable eyes that made him beautiful were hidden from her.
“A strange land, with regular thunder and lightning and never a drop of rain,” her father said. “I well mark the morning you were born, Mary Margaret. There was thunder and lightning then as well, but there was a teeming Scots rain that fell as though the heavens had opened and were never to close.”
