A Journey to the End of the Millennium (29 page)

Even though at this moment the inquisitive judge knew that his professional curiosity might have made him go too far, he still could not stop himself. And even if Joseph son of Kalonymos was not yet
entirely convinced that his young interpreter—who was doing his best by means of frantic gestures and broken Hebrew, eked out by
half-remembered
roots and fragments of words from the prayerbook—was really translating correctly the words of the woman who was standing so boldly before him, he sensed, from the fierceness and bitterness echoing around the little court room, that it was not
duality
that the second wife perceived as a threat but
singularity.
Consequently he could not restrain his curiosity and was sufficiently carried away to put a strange question:
A
second
husband?
Like
whom
,
for
example?
And while he was still regretting his unnecessary question, the young
translator
was already relaying the answer, whether on his own initiative or out of the heart of the Ishmaelite storm that was raging before him:
Like
you,
my
lord,
like
you,
for
instance
…

This was a real arrow loosed against him, and it both pierced his soul with a strange desire and poisoned it with a new fear, as though it were only now that he understood, on his own account, the profound source and the true meaning of the prohibition that the whole
community
was attempting to transmit to him from behind the curtain:
Dupli
cation
inevitably
leads
to
multiplication,
and
multiplication
has
no
limits.
His whole body was trembling and his face paled at the thought that this woman might attempt to put her claim, outrageous yet correct according to its own logic, into effect, and divest herself also of her Mediterranean robe. Without wasting time on further reflection, he picked up the loose black cloak from the floor and gently but firmly placed it around the young woman’s shoulders as though covering an invalid, before wrenching aside the curtain that divided him from his congregation.

As though the time had come for the standing prayer, the whole community rose to its feet. Already Rabbi Elbaz was hurrying toward Joseph son of Kalonymos, and after a slight hesitation he was joined by Ben Attar and by Master Levitas. Only Abulafia continued to stand where he was, his face blank, even though he could have no doubt that the moment of decision had come. The ruddy-faced judge asked the rabbi from Seville to lend him the little black ram’s horn before he announced his verdict. Elbaz hesitated for an instant, as though
sensing
the approaching disaster, but he could not refuse one whom he himself had elevated to a position of distinction only a short while ago.
As though waking from sleep, the prayer leader took the dark
Andalusian
horn as it appeared from its hiding place in the folds of the rabbi’s robes, and closing his eyes, he put it to his lips, as though to reinforce his coming pronouncement with a blast from heaven. He blew three southern notes, long and sadly tender, followed by a still small sound, and then, with closed eyes and with fear and trembling, he pronounced not merely repudiation against the southern partner but a ban and an interdict.

To make his meaning plainer, Joseph son of Kalonymos had
recourse
to two languages—first, to admonish and encourage his friends, the muddy local Teutonic tongue, mingled with a few flattened,
lugubrious
Hebrew words, and then the holy tongue itself, with a clarity that brooked no appeal. He sealed his pronouncement with a rapid sequence of short sharp notes on the ram’s horn, which he then
returned
to its stunned owner. Only then was the pregnant silence
broken
by murmurs of approbation tinged with admiration for this modest prayer leader, who had dared to lead his flock to a distant but clear horizon. While a furious Rabbi Elbaz was explaining the verdict in rapidly whispered Arabic to the crestfallen merchant, Abulafia’s head spun and he sank as though in a faint. As Mistress Esther-Minna cried for help, Master Levitas, true to the spirit of the new decree, carefully interposed himself between her and the outlawed uncle, not yet
certain
whether the interdict that had just been pronounced so decisively also embraced the two wives, who were now once more standing side by side.

Until one of the true scholars of the community could explore the full implications of this arbitration, from which traditionally no appeal was possible, the Jews of Worms preferred to segregate their banned guest speedily from the rest of the people. It seemed that someone with singular wisdom and foresight had already rented a small room for the vanquished disputant in the home of a gentile widow in a narrow street not far from the church. In the dark of night, by the light of a flaming torch and to the accompaniment of the chorus of frogs in the river, Ben Attar was conducted there together with the black slave, who was deemed by the community a suitable companion for a man under ban. But Rabbi Elbaz, the furious, desperate complainant,
adamantly
refused to abandon the owner of the ship that was to carry him
home to Andalus and followed after him and climbed the
rickety
wooden steps at his heels, not only to bring him comfort and to seek advice but also to demonstrate publicly his utter contempt for the ban that had been pronounced here. Indeed, he even vindictively contemplated pronouncing a counterban of his own upon the whole community.

But in the little room belonging to the gray-haired, blue-eyed gentile woman, who offered the banned Jew no more than a bed and a crust, the rabbi felt that he owed his Moroccan employer, who had trusted him and brought him from Andalus to help him
repair
the broken partnership, a greater consolation than a public
outburst
of anger or wild visions of revenge. Although he could only guess what had happened during the private interrogation of the second wife in front of the holy ark behind the curtain, he felt he did have a real solution for the banned merchant, who was left with a ship full of merchandise in the heart of wild and desolate
Europe—a
solution that might be temporary but that would enable him, despite everything, to renew his partnership with his dear nephew, who had collapsed in a heap as if he were a young woman at the news of the interdict.

But would the little Andalusian rabbi, who was now groping in the thick darkness of a crooked Rhenish room with only three walls—one of which might still have a crucifix hanging on it—have the courage to speak out and explain the plan that he had thought up as a possible escape route even before he had persuaded Ben Attar to set out for a second legal confrontation on the Rhine? Tears of sorrow and
compassion
but also of secret longing stung Elbaz’s eyes at the startling but generous thought that he himself might free the banned man from the double marriage that was his downfall, not only by releasing the second wife from her marriage vows but by wedding her himself and taking her into his home in Seville, so that she should not remain alone.

But while Rabbi Elbaz was floundering and longing for an
opportunity
to explain his new plan, Ben Attar asked him to hasten and
demand
from the Jews of Worms the return of his vanished wives, for it was his intention to bring them both to him, even in this tiny room in a gentile house. All the concern of the banned merchant was not for himself or his merchandise but only for his two wives, his only ones,
lest they were assailed by anxiety that he might be thinking of
betraying
his dual love. So hard and stern was Ben Attar’s voice as he commanded the startled and disappointed rabbi that the man of God felt that since he had failed in his mission, the North African Jew valued him no more highly than the black slave who was now removing his master’s shoes.

In the third watch the second wife thought she heard a faint blast on the ram’s horn, and her heart sank in fear. While she was trying to compose herself in the unfamiliar, alien silence, there floated before her the bloodshot eyes of the arbiter, to whom she had weak-mindedly allowed herself to reveal the secrets of her heart. Again she tormented herself, not for anything she had said but for what she had not
managed
to say. Rabbi Elbaz, who earlier that night had had to contend for a long time with the excitable hostesses of the two southern women in order to gain their return to their banned husband, had tried to calm the young woman and console her over what she had said, some of which he had learned vaguely from his son, the little interpreter. But it had seemed to the second wife as though the rabbi’s words of comfort had been spoken faintly and halfheartedly. Had he been secretly trying to bind her to him in a compact of guilt, in the knowledge that he too would be called to account not only for the failure of his apocalyptic speech but also for his mistaken choice of judge, a man who had disguised his weakness with an overhasty and cruel verdict? Or had he conceived some strange idea of encouraging the young woman with soothing words to continue to cling to the right of counterduality that she had demanded for herself, to see how far it might go?

One way or another, his words of comfort had only served to
confuse
her, and now, as she silently rose from the pallet that was all the Christian landlady could offer her unexpected guests, she hastily wrapped herself in the rough black cloak that the local women had given her and slunk past her husband, who had curled up in a fetal position between two large logs that he had rolled out from a corner.
Stepping over the first wife, who was sleeping as peacefully as a corpse, with her hands joined, facing a long, sharp-edged, sloping iron bar that supported the ceiling of the triangular cubicle, the second wife entered the other chamber. Wishing not only to escape the curse of the ban but to try to put right the wrong she had done by her rash words, she held her sandals in her hand and slipped noiselessly past the Christian landlady, who was spending the night in a large chair, covered by the pelt of a black bear, whose stuffed head hung on the wall beneath the figure of the Crucified One, who bore his sufferings even in the dead of night.

Although the old woman sensed the shadow flitting past her and momentarily opened an eye, she did not stir at the flight of the Jewess, who descended the creaking, swaying wooden steps toward the
darkened
narrow alleys of the sleeping town. The foreign woman was alert to the silence all around her and to the huge silhouette of the church, wrapped in a yellowish mist, and yet she clung resolutely to the aim she had set herself, to seek out among the little houses the home of the hosts who had cared for her so generously since she had come to Worms so that they could take her to the arbiter and she could plead with him to listen to what she had not managed to say, in the hope that he might retract the interdict that he had pronounced because of her. And despite the darkness and the marshy vapors, which made her lose her way in the narrow streets of the little town, she recognized the right door and promptly knocked upon it.

But nobody, either in that house or in those on either side, heard the second wife’s light knocking, for the Jews of Worms were fast asleep, having found peace of mind after the days of turmoil, as though the interdict and the ban had swept from their hearts the wonderfully sinful new thoughts brought to their town by the southern disputants. And so the second wife, whose shouting had no effect either, had no choice but to grope her way to the synagogue itself, first to the modest little women’s synagogue, where she knelt for a while after the manner of the Ishmaelites, who manifest total submission before making any request, and then hesitantly entering the men’s prayer hall by the
unfinished
western wall, slipping between the empty rows, and finally pressing herself into the narrow recess between the holy ark and the eastern wall.

Was it possible that the North African woman’s tormented heart had divined that the judge, Joseph son of Kalonymos, would also be unable to sleep in the coils of this night, and that he too, whether from an access of new strength or from a hint of remorse, would be unable to prevent himself from rising early and coming to his pulpit, either to prepare himself for the morning prayers of the Fast of Gedaliah or to join his body and soul to the place where three women had stood the previous night, waiting for the words to fall from his lips? Therefore, as he picked up the fallen red curtain and drew its corners together, piously pressing his lips to the golden letters embroidered on the faded velvet, then folded it carefully away and put it back in its proper place, no cry of alarm escaped from his mouth when yesterday’s witness suddenly appeared before him. It was as though it were self-evident that after such a stern verdict those who lost would come back to plead, like this young foreign woman, who knelt before him like a primitive pagan.

While her narrow, fin-shaped eyes sought to meet those bloodshot eyes that had hovered before her in her nightmares, she began without delay to speak. Since she had no interpreter to assist her, she mixed into her rapid Ishmaelite speech a few words that had been
pronounced
repetitiously in the New Year’s prayers, so that for a moment she imagined that the man who leaned toward her compassionately would also understand in the dawn light that was scratching at the yellowish windows the nature and spirit of the counterduality that she claimed not only for herself but for women in general. For while a man demanded duality of body, a woman demanded duality of soul, even in the form of the tiny soul that was encased in her womb.

But could a fearful, confused man, even if he were assisted by the best of interpreters, understand at dawn the new explanation of the obscure testimony of the previous evening? In his terror that some early-rising worshippers whom three successive days of
intensive
prayers had left unsated would enter the synagogue and find their prayer leader closeted in uncompromising and utter intimacy with another man’s wife, albeit one of a pair, Joseph son of Kalonymos did not even begin to try to understand what the second wife was attempting to say to him in her Ishmaelite tongue, but
hastened
first of all to raise the form that was kneeling before him
cautiously
but firmly to its feet and expel it from the sacred place that was forbidden to it.

But the second wife resisted, and with arms still tanned a deep brown from the long sunny days at sea, she clung to his pulpit with all her strength, until the judge, realizing that his arbitration had not been completed, was forced to his embarrassment to unclench her hands by force. Seeing that she still persisted in kneeling and holding on to his knees, he bent over, trembling and blushing, and attempted vainly to free himself. Then, feeling how tightly the southern woman was
holding
him, he knew that he must take her out of his prayer house, and very firmly he began to walk outside, dragging the young woman into the back yard of an old stable. Only there, under an overcast sky, in the pungent manure, did he manage to free himself at last from the grasp of her hands and from her struggling legs, which were now scratched from the synagogue’s rough wooden floor. In stammered Hebrew he asked forgiveness from God and also from her, not for dragging her but for daring to touch her at all. Since terms of pardon and forgiveness were so familiar from the prayers for the New Year that had just passed, the second wife guessed the meaning of this man who was speaking to her so distractedly. He was demanding forgiveness only, with no regret or understanding, as he left her alone in the morning mist laden with cold drops of fresh rain.

Exhausted and abandoned, her hands and knees grazed by the roughness of the black wooden floor, the second wife began to make her way back between the small wooden houses, whose crookedness gave them a dizzy air. Although the black cloak protected her from the lashing rain, it could not allay the indignation of the little fetus that had been dragged along with her, and was not prepared to accept pardon from anyone, so for a moment she felt that it was demanding to be spewed forth instantly. Assailed by weakness, she turned aside
between
the piles that supported one of the houses, and there, in the shadow of the long grass and bushes that grew from the lush, marshy soil, beside a stream whose cold water gurgled among discarded
household
utensils, she began to vomit up everything that was within her—determined, however, not to lose the new little soul that had been conceived by the dutiful desire of a man making his way at night between the bow and the hold of an ancient guardship.

That man, who did not yet know what he had or had not brought forth, was still sunk in deep sleep, which dimmed, even if it could not wholly cancel, the interdict that lay upon him. The first wife, who had woken and taken stock of the other’s disappearance, hesitated to wake the husband whose face was buried in the fresh dry straw of the pallet. Although more than twenty years had passed since their first night together and she had often watched while he slept, she had never felt so tender toward him, seeing him for the first time bury his face in the bedding to hide it as he slept. She stared through the open doorway, cocking an ear to catch the returning footsteps of the second wife, so that on her return she could waken their husband to a single trouble rather than two.

But the footsteps of the second wife did not come, and the first wife began to understand that she must be stopped before she reached a point from which there was no return. Yet still she pitied Ben Attar, and granted him a few more moments of blessed ignorance before reaching out and carefully removing the blades of straw that clung to his beard and hair. For a moment the waking North African’s eyes were as bloodshot as those of the arbiter who had pronounced judgment against him. But it seemed that he remembered well where he was, and why he was here. As he rose from his bed, his sharp eyes noticed the second wife’s absence.
She
has
gone
,
the first wife said very quietly.
I
have
waited
for
her,
but
she
has
not
come
back.

The merchant of Tangier, who remembered only too well the rapid loss of one young woman, knew that they must hasten to stop her before she reached the riverbank. Since today was the Fast of Gedaliah, he did not need to consider whether the black bread brought by the gentile landlady was fit for eating, but inclined his head politely and thrust it away, and donning a local black cloak over his bright robes he hurried in search of the missing woman. He did not have to go far before he met Jews hurrying to prayer, who had not expected to come across the banned visitor so early in the morning. Despite the distress and embarrassment that urged them to avoid him, they could not disregard the real panic that marked his countenance as he
appealed
in broken Hebrew and with frantic gestures for help.

Since they feared to enter into a conversation that would shatter the newly pronounced ban, the Jews retreated in confusion, but
instead
of fleeing they hastened to summon Rabbi Elbaz, so that with his Andalusian virtue and learning he might cushion the Rhenish ban and explain what was troubling the peace of the southern Jew, for whom they had come to feel a strong affection. When the Jews of Worms learned of the disappearance of the second wife, panic spread through the community, and a demand arose that the morning prayers might be shortened so they could gather a large company to search for her and restore her to her husband, even if she was the cause of the ban and the interdict. News of her disappearance soon reached the synagogue and crept up to the reading desk, causing Joseph son of Kalonymos to cut short his chanting and boldly confess to his comrades what had happened beside the holy ark a short time before.

The Jews drew some comfort from his words, which seemed to rule out abduction, a thought that pierced every Jewish heart with double dread, leaving only the fear that she might have become lost or fled. So little time had elapsed since the woman’s dawn meeting with the judge that there was some hope that she had not managed to go too far. But before the search began, some punctilious Jews still demurred, wishing to assure themselves that the ban pronounced the previous night had referred to the husband alone and not to his wives; otherwise they might run the risk of seeking a forbidden object, and it would be better to invite the participation of gentiles, even the Ishmaelite guests, who had not yet risen for their own morning prayers. For added security, they too were summoned. First the two burly wagoners, Abd el-Shafi and his mate, were brought from their respective billets, and then they fetched the young pagan, who at once and without hesitation set off in pursuit of the missing woman, whose scent he had absorbed deep within himself during the long journey. Before much time had passed he found the secluded spot where she had collapsed, in a dark space choked with long grass and discarded household objects, framed by the piles that supported one of the houses.

She was brought forth at once, very weak but safe and sound, apart from some bleeding scratches on her hands and legs. Even though the Fast of Gedaliah had commenced, the Jews tried to make her drink something as they dressed her wounds, and the women of Worms desired to take her into the house beneath whose piles she had hidden herself, to help and strengthen her before sending her on her way. But
Ben Attar allowed nobody to touch his second wife, and since the interdict forbade anyone to speak to him, it was impossible to persuade him otherwise. Sternly and proudly, he stood and ordered his
Ishmaelites
to ready the wagons and harness up the horses. For an instant it seemed as though it were he who had placed the local Jews under a ban and not the other way around, for he seemed to avoid meeting the gaze of those around him, even the blue eyes of Master Levitas, whose habitual thin smile was wiped off his face the moment he was
summoned.