The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  Jesse …

  A name he remembered from Mam’s reading the Bible aloud. A strong name he could live with, the name of the father of King David.

  For his patronymic he chose Benjamin, in honor of Benjamin Merlin, who had, albeit unwillingly, shown him what a physician could be.

  He would say he came from Leeds, he decided, because he remembered the look of the Jewish-owned houses there and could speak in detail of the place if need should arise.

  He resisted an urge to turn and flee, for coming toward him were three priests and with something akin to panic he recognized that one of them was Father Tamas, his dining companion of the previous evening.

  The three proceeded as unhurriedly as pacing crows, deep in conversation.

  He forced himself to walk toward them. “Peace be unto you,” he said when they were abreast.

  The Greek priest slid his glance disdainfully over the Jew and then turned back to his companions without replying to the greeting.

  When they had passed him, Jesse ben Benjamin of Leeds indulged in a smile. Calmly now and with more confidence he continued on his way, striding with his palm pressed against his right cheek, as the rabbenu of Tryavna had been wont to walk when deep in thought.

  PART THREE

  Ispahan

  34

  THE LAST LEG

  Despite the change in his appearance he still felt like Rob J. Cole when he went to the caravanserai at midday. A large train to Jerusalem was in the process of organization and the great open space was a confusing maelstrom of drovers leading laden camels and asses, men trying to back wagons into line, riders on horseback milling dangerously close, while animals screamed their protests and harried humans raised their voices in condemnation of the beasts and one another. A party of Norman knights had claimed the only shade, on the northern side of the storehouses, where they lounged on the ground and hurled drunken insults at passers-by. Rob J. didn’t know if they were the men who had killed Mistress Buffington, but they might well have been, and he avoided them with distaste.

  He sat on a bale of prayer rugs and watched the Chief of Caravans. The kervanbashi was a burly Turkish Jew who wore a black turban over grizzled hair that still contained traces of its former red color. Simon had told him that this man, name of Zevi, could be invaluable in helping to arrange safe travel. Certainly, all quailed before him.

  “Woe be unto you!” Zevi roared at an unfortunate drover. “Hie you from this place, dullard. Lead your animals away, for are they not to follow the beasts of the merchants of the Black Sea? Have I not told you twice? Cannot you ever recall your true place in the line of march, O misbegotten?”

  It seemed to Rob that Zevi was everywhere, settling arguments between merchants and transporters, conferring with the caravan master concerning the route, checking bills of lading.

  As Rob sat and watched, a Persian sidled up to him, a small man, so skinny he had hollows in his cheeks. From his beard, to which flecks of food still clung, it was evident he had eaten millet gruel that morning, and he wore a dirty orange turban, too small for his head.

  “Where do you travel, Hebrew?” “I hope to leave soon for Ispahan.”

  “Ah, Persia! You wish a guide, effendi? For I was born in Qum, a hart hunt from Ispahan, and I know every stone and bush along the way.” Rob hesitated.

  “Everyone else will take you the long, hard way, along the coast. Then through the Persian mountains. That is because they avoid the shortest route through the Great Salt Desert, fearing it. But I can take you straight across the desert to water, avoiding all robbers.”

  He was strongly tempted to agree and leave at once, remembering how well Charbonneau had served. But there was something furtive about the man and in the end he shook his head.

  The Persian shrugged. “If you change your mind, master, I am a bargain as a guide, very cheap.”

  A moment later one of the highborn French pilgrims, passing the bale where Rob was sitting, staggered and fell against him.

  “You shit,” he said, and spat. “You Jew.”

  Rob stood, his color mounting. He saw that the Norman was already reaching for his sword.

  Suddenly Zevi was upon them. “A thousand pardons, my lord, ten thousand pardons! I shall tend to this one,” he said, and shoved the astonished Rob away before him.

  When they were clear, Rob listened to the rattle of words that came from Zevi and shook his head.

  “I don’t speak the Tongue well. Nor did I need your help with the Frenchman,” he said, searching for the words in Parsi.

  “Indeed? You’d have been killed, young ox.”

  “It was my own affair.”

  “No, no! In a place crowded with Muslims and drunken Christians, killing a single Jew would be like eating a single date. They would have killed many of us and therefore it was very much my affair.” Zevi stared at him furiously. “What kind of Yahud is it who speaks Persian like a camel, doesn’t speak his own tongue, and seeks to brawl? What is your name and where are you from?”

  “I am Jesse, son of Benjamin. A Jew of Leeds.”

  “Where in hell is Leeds?”

  “England.”

  “An Inghiliz!” Zevi said. “Never before have I met a Jew who was an Inghiliz.”

  “We’re few and scattered. There is no community there. No rabbenu, no shohet, no mashgiah. No study house or synagogue, so we seldom hear the Tongue. That is why I have so little of it.”

  “Bad, to raise your children in a place where they don’t feel their own God or hear their own language.” Zevi sighed. “Often it is hard to be a Jew.”

  When Rob asked whether he knew of a large, protected caravan bound for Ispahan, he shook his head.

  “I have been approached by a guide,” Rob said.

  “A Persian turd with a little turban and a dirty beard?” Zevi snorted. “That one would take you straight into the hands of evil men. You would be left lying in the desert with your throat cut and your belongings stolen. No,” he said, “you will be better off in a caravan of our own people.” He thought for a long moment. “Reb Lonzano,” he said finally.

  “Reb Lonzano?”

  Zevi nodded. “Yes, it may be that Reb Lonzano is the answer.” Not far away an altercation broke out between drovers and someone called his name. He grimaced. “Those sons of camels, those diseased jackals! I have no time now, you must come back after this caravan has departed. Come to my office late in the afternoon, in the hut behind the main hostelry. All things may be decided then.”

  When he returned a few hours later he found Zevi in the hut that served as his retreat in the caravanserai. With him were three Jews. “This is Lonzano ben Ezra,” he told Rob.

  Reb Lonzano, middle-aged and the senior, was clearly the leader. He had brown hair and a brown beard that hadn’t yet grayed, but any youthfulness gained thereby was offset by his lined face and serious eyes.

  Both Loeb ben Kohen and Aryeh Askari were perhaps ten years younger than Lonzano. Loeb was tall and lanky and Aryeh stockier and square-shouldered. Both had the dark, weather-beaten faces of traveling merchants but they kept them carefully neutral, awaiting Lonzano’s verdict concerning him.

  “They are tradesmen bound for their home in Masqat, across the Persian Gulf,” Zevi said, and then turned to Lonzano. “Now,” he said sternly, “this pitiable one has been brought up like a goy, all unknowing in a far-away Christian land, and he needs to be shown that Jews can be kind to Jews.”

  “What is your business in Ispahan, Jesse ben Benjamin?” Reb Lonzano asked.

  “I go there to study, to become a physician.”

  Lonzano nodded. “The madrassa in Ispahan. Reb Aryeh’s cousin, Reb Mirdin Askari, is a student of medicine there.”

  Rob leaned forward eagerly and would have asked questions, but Reb Lonzano would suffer no diversions. “Are you solvent and able to pay fair portion of the expenses of travel?”

  “I am”.

  “Willing to share work and responsibilities alo
ng the way?”

  “Most willing. In what do you trade, Reb Lonzano?”

  Lonzano scowled. Clearly, he felt that the interviewing should be directed by him, not at him. “Pearls,” he said unwillingly.

  “How large is the caravan with which you travel?”

  Lonzano allowed the barest hint of a smile to twitch the corners of his mouth. “We are the caravan with which we travel.”

  Rob was confounded. He turned to Zevi. “How can three men offer me protection from bandits and other perils?”

  “Listen to me,” Zevi said. “These are traveling Jews. They know when to venture and when not. When to hole up. Where to go for protection or help, any place along the way.” He turned to Lonzano. “What say you, friend? Will you take him along, or will you not?”

  Reb Lonzano looked at his two companions. They were silent and their bland expressions didn’t change, but they must have conveyed something, for when he looked back at Rob he nodded.

  “All right, you are welcome to join us. We leave at dawn tomorrow from the Bosporus slip.”

  “I’ll be there with my horse and wagon.”

  Aryeh snorted and Loeb sighed.

  “No horse, no wagon,” Lonzano said. “We sail on the Black Sea in small boats, to eliminate a long and dangerous land journey.”

  Zevi placed a huge hand on his knee. “If they are willing to take you, it is an excellent opportunity. Sell the horse and wagon.”

  Rob made up his mind, and nodded.

  “Mazel!” Zevi said in quiet satisfaction, and poured red Turkish wine to seal their bargain.

  From the caravanserai he made straight for the stable, and Ghiz gasped when he saw him. “You are Yahud?” “I am Yahud.”

  Ghiz nodded fearfully, as if convinced that this magician was a djinni who could alter his identity at will.

  “I have changed my mind, I shall sell you the wagon.”

  The Persian threw him a sullen offer, a fraction of the cart’s worth.

  “No, you shall pay a fair price.”

  “You may keep your frail wagon. Now, should you wish to sell the horse …”

  “I am making you a gift of the horse.”

  Ghiz narrowed his eyes, trying to see danger.

  “You must pay a fair price for the wagon, but the horse is a gift.”

  He went to Horse and rubbed her nose for the last time, thanking her silently for the faithful way in which she had served him. “Bear this in mind always. This animal works willingly but she must be fed well and regularly and kept clean so she is never afflicted with sores. If she is in health when I return here, all will go well with you. But if she has been abused …”

  He held Ghiz’s gaze, and the stableman blanched and looked away. “I shall treat her well, Hebrew. I shall treat her very well!”

  The wagon had been his only home for these many years. And it was like saying goodbye to the last of Barber.

  It was necessary to leave most of its contents, a bargain for Ghiz. He took his surgical instruments and an assortment of medicinal herbs. The little pine grasshopper box with the perforated lid. His arms. A few other things.

  He thought he had exerted discipline, but he was less certain the following morning when he carried a great cloth bag through the still-dark streets. He reached the Bosporus slip as light was graying, and Reb Lonzano looked sourly at the bundle that bowed his back.

  They were taken across the Bosporus Strait in a teimil, a long, low skiff that was little more than a hollowed tree trunk that had been oiled and outfitted with a single pair of oars manned by a sleepy youth. On the far shore they were landed at Uskudar, a town of shacks clustered along the waterfront, facing slips whose moorings were crowded with boats of all sizes and descriptions. To Rob’s dismay he learned that they faced an hour’s walk to the little bay where the boat was moored that would take them through the Bosporus and along the coast of the Black Sea. He shouldered his ponderous bundle and followed after the other three men.

  Presently he found himself walking alongside Lonzano.

  “I have heard from Zevi what happened between you and the Norman at the caravanserai. You must keep a tighter rein on your temper, lest you endanger the rest of us.”

  “Yes, Reb Lonzano.”

  At length he heaved a sigh as he shifted his bag.

  “Is anything wrong, Inghiliz?”

  Rob shook his head. Holding his bundle on his aching shoulder as the salt sweat ran into his eyes, he thought of Zevi and grinned.

  “It is hard to be a Jew,” he said.

  Finally they reached a deserted inlet and Rob saw, bobbing on the swell, a wide, squat cargo vessel with a mast and three sails, one large and two small.

  “What sort of boat is that?” he asked Reb Aryeh.

  “A keseboy. A good boat.”

  “Come!” called the captain. He was Ilias, a homely blond Greek with a sun-darkened face in which a gap-toothed grin gleamed whitely. Rob thought him too indiscriminating a businessman, for already waiting to board were nine shaven-headed scarecrows with no eyebrows or lashes.

  Lonzano groaned. “Dervishes, Muslim begging monks.”

  Their cowls were filthy rags. From the girdle of rope tied around each waist hung a cup and a sling. In the center of each forehead was a round dark mark like a scabby callus; Reb Lonzano told Rob later that it was the zabiba, common to devout Muslims who pressed their heads into the ground during prayer five times a day.

  One of them, perhaps the leader, placed his hands to his breast and bowed to the Jews. “Salaam.”

  Lonzano returned the bow. “Salaam aleikbem.”

  “Come! Come!” the Greek called, and they waded into the welcoming coolness of the surf to where the boat crew, two youths in loincloths, waited to help them up the rope ladder into the shallow-draft keseboy. There was no deck or structure, simply an open space taken up by the cargo of lumber, pitch, and salt. Since Ilias insisted that a center aisle be left to allow the crew to manipulate the sails, little room remained for the passengers, and after their bundles had been stowed, the Jews and the Muslims were jammed together like so many salt herrings.

  As the two anchors were lifted the dervishes began to bellow. Their leader, whose name was Dedeh—he had an aged face and, in addition to the zabiba, three dark marks on his forehead that appeared to have been made by burning—threw back his head and cried into the sky, “Allah Ek-beeeer.” The drawn-out sound seemed to hover over the sea.

  “La ilah illallah,” chorused his congregation of disciples.

  “Allah Ek-beeer.”

  The keseboy drifted offshore, found the wind with much flapping of her sails, and then moved steadily eastward.

  * * *

  He was jammed in between Reb Lonzano and a skinny young dervish with a single burn mark on his forehead. The young Muslim smiled at him presently and, digging into his pouch, came up with four battered bits of bread, which he distributed to the Jews.

  “Thank him for me,” Rob said. “I don’t want any.”

  “We must eat it,” Lonzano said. “Otherwise they will take grave offense.”

  “It is made of a noble flour,” the dervish said easily in Persian. “Truly an excellent bread.”

  Lonzano glared at Rob, doubtless peeved because he didn’t speak the Tongue. The young dervish watched them eat the bread, which tasted like solidified sweat.

  “I am Melek abu Ishak,” the dervish said.

  “I am Jesse ben Benjamin.”

  The dervish nodded and closed his eyes. Soon he was snoring, which Rob saw as a sign of his wisdom, for traveling in a keseboy was exceedingly dull. Neither the seascape nor the nearby land ever appeared to change in any detail.

  Still, there were things to think about. When he asked Ilias why they hugged the shoreline, the Greek smiled. “They cannot come and get us in shallow water,” he explained. Rob followed his pointing finger and saw, far out, tiny white puffs that were the great sails of a ship.

  “Pirates,” the Gre
ek said. “They hope perhaps we’ll be blown out to sea. Then they would kill us and take my cargo and your money.”

  As the sun grew higher a stench of unwashed bodies began to dominate the atmosphere in the boat. Much of the time it was dissipated by the sea breeze but when it wasn’t, it was markedly unpleasant. He determined that it came from the dervishes and tried to lean away from Melek abu Ishak, but there was no place to go. Still, there were advantages to traveling with Muslims, for five times a day Ilias brought the keseboy to the shore in order to allow them to prostrate themselves in the direction of Mecca. These intervals were opportunities for the Jews to have hurried meals ashore or to scurry behind bushes and dunes to empty bladders and bowels.

  His English skin had long since been tanned on the trail, but now he felt the sun and the salt curing it into leather. As night fell the absence of the sun was a blessing, but sleep soon threw the sitters from their perpendicular positions and he was pinned between the dead weights of a noisily slumbering Melek on his right and an oblivious Lonzano on his left. When finally he could take no more he used his elbows and received fervent imprecations from both sides.

  The Jews prayed in the boat. Rob put on his tefillin each morning when the others did, winding the leather strip around his left arm the way he had practiced with the rope in the barn at Tryavna. He wrapped the leather around every other finger, bending his head over his lap and hoping no one would notice he didn’t know what he was doing.

  Between landings, Dedeh led his dervishes in prayer afloat:

  “God is greatest! God is greatest! God is greatest! God is greatest!”

  “I confess that there is no God but God! I confess that there is no God but God!”

  “I confess that Mohammed is the Prophet of God! I confess that Mohammed is the Prophet of God!”

  They were dervishes of the Order of Selman, the Prophet’s barber, sworn to lives of poverty and piety, Melek told Rob. The rags they wore signified renunciation of the luxuries of the world. To wash them would indicate abnegation of their faith, which explained the stink. The shaving of all body hair symbolized removing the veil between God and his servants. The cups carried in their rope belts were a sign of the deep well of meditation, their slings were to drive away the devil. The burns in the forehead aided in penitence, and they gave bits of bread to strangers because Gabriel had brought bread to Adam in Paradise.