A Journey to the End of the Millennium (30 page)

But where were Abulafia and his new wife? Had they been
forbidden
to come, or were they trying to spare themselves the pain of the final parting from the grim-faced, discomfited uncle, who was resolved to set out at once on the return journey?

The speed and skill with which the little procession was prepared for the road were amazing to behold. Two or three commands from the southern Jew were enough to bring the three Ishmaelites to a fever pitch of activity and to send Rabbi Elbaz off in search of his son. As for the Jews of Worms, who were already tired from the beginning of the fast and confused by the strange morning’s events, they stood around the two large wagons, sorry to be deprived of such wonderfully colorful and exciting guests, and even though in their heart of hearts they longed to keep them in their midst for the ten days of penitence and for the joyful festivals to follow, they knew only too well that the arbiter’s judgment, however hastily arrived at, was final and brooked no appeal, and so it was best, perhaps, for the banned man and his
company
to go on their way, to soften the pain of parting.

Before Ben Attar set forth on his journey and their sorrow was forgotten, the Jews of Worms hastened to load the wagons with food and drink, blankets and warm apparel, candles and dishes, little
silver
candlesticks and wine for ritual purposes. Although the ban
forbade
them to speak to the women or touch them, they brought
dozens
of small gifts for them, and they also brought sacks of feed for the horses, who were already sniffing the air of the journey ahead. But where was Abulafia? Ben Attar’s heart quivered with pain. Where was his dear partner hiding himself? And where was the blue-eyed woman, who had turned her repudiation into final
rupture?
Did they know that at this moment, in the mist rising from
the river and drifting into the Black Forest, their kinsfolk were
leaving
them forever, vanishing into the west on the first stage of their long journey to the south?

Master Levitas saw it as his duty to hasten and inform his sister of the sudden departure of Ben Attar and his company, and he also stirred himself to obtain special dispensation from a revered scholar, Rabbi Kalonymos son of Kalonymos, for Abulafia to meet his uncle briefly so as to take his leave of him. But Abulafia declined the
generous
offer. Not only did he refuse to leave his chamber, he lay in his wife’s former matrimonial bed and would not even join Mistress
Esther-Minna,
whose throat suddenly choked with tears as she watched from the little window while Ben Attar pleaded with the good folk of Worms not to load any more gifts on his two wagons, which were slowly sinking into the yielding Rhenish clay.

Even if Abulafia was yearning to fall into his beloved uncle’s arms and beg the pardon of the partner who was returning empty-handed to the azure shore of their native land, the soul of this curly-haired man, who had not yet donned his phylacteries nor said the morning prayers, bridled at the thought of a further meeting with his second aunt, the secret basis of whose being he had finally discovered yesterday in his uncle’s passionate and unexpected confession. Even if she replaced the veil on her face and covered herself in layer upon layer of cloaks, she could not conceal from him any longer the form that was hidden within her, the form of that miserable, admired, beloved sinner, naked and drowned, who in vengefully destroying herself had punished him and banished him to a faraway land. Therefore, with all his might he must shut himself up in this former bridal bed which creaked beneath him, for he knew only too well that if he went to take his last leave of his uncle, he would not be able to restrain himself, tender and
sorrowful
as he was, from tearing the second wife away from Ben Attar, ripping out the form that was hidden inside her, and throwing it, if not into the salt sea of their birthplace, at least into his new wife’s
freshwater
river.

Thus Abulafia knew that he had better wait until the rumble of his uncle’s wagons faded away in the distance. The same rumble disturbed the chief wagoner, Abd el-Shafi, who felt the wheels straining. When they pulled up in the square in front of the belfry in Speyer, a town
where no Jews dwelt, they decided to lighten the load and offered a goodly part of the gifts that the community had generously heaped upon them for sale to the local inhabitants, who pressed around them curiously. Although the distance separating Worms from Speyer was not more than fifty miles, the gifts, converted into merchandise, aroused such great interest that Ben Attar was amazed at his ability, with no common language and with no knowledge of the local
customs,
to sell the Worms Jews’ old clothes, jars of honey, dull copper candlesticks, and bottles of ritual wine, accepting in exchange, on Abd el-Shafi’s advice, an elderly but sturdy mule. On this the black youth was at once seated, so that he could ride out ahead of them and sniff out the right road, which they had taken two weeks earlier in the opposite direction.

For they were alone now, in a strange and alien expanse, without Mistress Esther-Minna’s command of the Teutonic and Frankish tongues and Abulafia’s experience of the roads. All they had at their disposal were Rabbi Elbaz’s limping Latin, the young slave’s finely tuned desert nose, and the two expert mariners’ knowledge of the winds and the motion of the stars. The Day of Atonement, which flickered ahead of them like a menacing black beacon, spurred them on to greater speed and effort, so that they would cross the border between Lotharingia and Francia in time to seek refuge in the Jewish congregation of Rheims, who they hoped would not yet have heard news of the ban.

Indeed, there seemed no reason why the master of the little convoy should not realize his modest ambition, for the wagons were more lightly loaded now that they lacked the two passengers who had caused the ban, and now that the gifts had been bartered for the whiskered mule, which walked proudly ahead of the wagons, bearing the lithe form of the master tracker, who was happily sniffing out the right route. Nevertheless, Ben Attar had the feeling that a mysterious
heaviness
had laid hold of the wheels as they advanced between fields and hills toward the silvery furrow of the Saar Valley. In fact, it was hard to explain what was slowing them. At first they suspected the autumn breezes, which occasionally soaked them in gentle drizzle; yet the
spirits
of the wagoners seemed to be revived by each soaking, as they cracked their whips at the drenched horses.

It was only when they made their third night halt, near the small village named Saarbrücken, not far from the octagonal burial church that Mistress Abulafia had excitedly recognized as marking the
approach
to her native land, that Ben Attar understood that the hidden source of their loss of impetus was to be sought not in the mud that impeded their wheels or in any slackness in their manner of driving but in a spiritual cause. At first he wondered if it were not due to gloom brought on by the ban and interdict, which, plausible though they were, were nevertheless particularly irksome because they had been pronounced so abruptly and by such a simple man. But gradually he realized that the thing that was holding them back was not hovering around the wagons but was hidden deep inside them, in the continued silence of the second wife, who sat slumped at the side of the wagon, wrapped in two black cloaks, stubbornly refusing evening after evening to taste the food that the first wife prepared. Indeed, at first sight the cause of her ill humor seemed plain enough—two deep gashes that crisscrossed her slender legs, marked by pearls of dried blood. But was it really only physical pain that prevented her from joining the others for the evening meal, or was it also resentment and anger at all that had taken place?

Even though she was still careful not to reveal her secret testimony on the eventful night of the arbitration, she worried that the truth had become known to her husband, either from Elbaz or from his son, the little interpreter, who very tenderly brought her a steaming bowl of meat stew from the campfire. Therefore the look the second wife
bestowed
upon the little go-between was blank and withdrawn, and she added to the two cloaks that she had brought from Worms the first wife’s black cloak, which lay beside her. She kept her mouth firmly closed, not only against eating any of the food that the first wife cooked for her but also against letting out any cry of despair at what she had said behind the curtain on that terrible night, and at the words she had tried to add next morning in the same place before the same man, who should have listened to her instead of hurting her.

To whom could she now say what would never be understood? Perhaps only to the oceanic fetus, which was cloaked in the envelope of her womb and demanded additional warmth from its mother, who was shivering inside and trying with all her might to hoard what
warmth she could, for its sake and for her own. Again, as at every hour of this journey, there came before her inner eye the wondering face of one who would cease to be her only son in a few more months, the dear child she had left behind with her parents in Tangier, who
although
he might not yet have forgotten his mother had certainly
forgotten
his father, who was now raising the flap of the wagon to inquire after his second wife and see whether she had tasted her food. When Ben Attar saw the bowl lying shamefully where it had been put, his spirit was greatly disturbed, and all the resentment and blame he nursed toward her on account of the counterduality that she had dared to ask for herself—which he mistakenly understood as physical rather than spiritual—burst forth at her refusal to strengthen herself with the stew that had been set before her.

Now she was alarmed, for she had the feeling that he was about to feed her himself, against her will, something he had never done before. She began to sob, but very quietly, so as not to be heard by the
company
gathered around the campfire, particularly the first wife, who was asking Abd el-Shafi to tell her about the movement of the stars in the sky. But the Elbaz child heard the muffled crying inside the covered wagon and his heart curdled within him, and before his father the rabbi could stop him, he had lifted the flap and seen the owner of the ship, the leader of the expedition, raising his second wife and feeding her with the stew made for her by the first wife, who had suddenly fallen silent.

Deep in the night, when the rest of the company was fast asleep, the second wife arose from her bed and went a short distance away, to a tree where a little jackal or dog was tied by a rusty chain. It had come up in the evening to scavenge the remains of the company’s supper and been caught by the black slave, who with Ben Attar’s tacit permission had taken it in as a pet in place of the young camel that had been left behind on board the ship. The little beast, which had already become used to the travelers, whimpered and wagged its tail as the second wife approached, and without a moment’s hesitation lapped up the vomited remains of the stew she had been forced to swallow. Only then did she feel better. Desperately pale and buffeted by successive waves of heat and cold, she gulped the cold air of the autumn night and looked
toward the remote campfire of another company of traders, who were transporting slaves from the east to the west.

Eventually she returned to her bed, wrapped herself in her
sweat-soaked
cloaks, and closed her eyes to seek a little rest, not suspecting that her footsteps had woken the Andalusian rabbi, who had followed her movements through a crack in the canvas cover of the other wagon. For a moment Elbaz wondered if it would be right to wake her husband and inform him that the meal had not reached its destination. But he restrained himself, as though he was in no hurry to reveal to anyone else, even the husband himself, the faint signs of illness that had appeared in the dead of night and that filled his heart, in the depths of darkest Europe, with an old longing for the last days before he was widowed. But in the morning, when he went to wash the sleep from his eyes in the little stream and found the second wife busy laundering her robe, he did not hold back from asking shyly yet affectionately how she was, and even though she smiled in thanks, as though there were no care in her heart, he could sense from the redness that suffused her bare cheeks that the fever in her body was mounting.

Ever since the women of Worms had made them remove their veils, the Moroccan women had been in no hurry to replace them, not only because they had seen how women could stand boldly with bare faces before the Lord himself, but especially because on the return journey the company of travelers had drawn even closer together and become a single family with three attendant servants and a rabbi, who could be considered a kind of kinsman. He had become so concerned for the second wife’s health that he now demanded that Ben Attar halt the wagons at intervals to let her rest, lest a graveyard rather than a
synagogue
await them on the approaching Day of Atonement.

Thus the little procession wound its way more slowly, and by
evening
prayers on the fourth day Ben Attar found himself staring alone at the distant horizon where the fading light glowed pink above the walls of Metz, the town where he had planned to spend the coming night. But could he allow himself to take no notice of the fever? It was sufficient to put a hand to the brows of both his wives by way of comparison, to perceive the growing threat to the second wife, whose handsome face, despite her efforts to make light of her distress and
smile pleasantly, not only at her husband but at anyone who greeted her, undeniably bore an unfamiliar flush because of a disease that had originated in the manure in an old stable and had infected the blood that oozed from the scratches on her legs.

On the morning of the fifth day, the day preceding the eve of the ever-approaching Day of Judgment, after hours of sleeplessness beside the campfire had blackened his love with anxiety, a bold decision seized Ben Attar. Instead of feeling his way in discomfiture and
confusion
among the Jews of nearby Metz to discover whether the news of his ban had preceded him, he would press on before the coming of the holy day to the next halt, the little border town of Verdun, so that in the event of any mishap they would be close to the home of that strange apostate physician who had shown such interest in them on their way to the Rhineland. It was even possible, Ben Attar continued to himself, by way of strengthening his resolve, that before the
physician’s
solitary house beside the church they would hear once again that wonderful song, with two distinct yet intermingling voices, which had so entranced the second wife and might now revive her spirits. But as Ben Attar did not know whether there were Jews in Verdun who would welcome them into their congregation, he divided his little company in two. He himself would take the smaller wagon, with the feverish wife and the cool-headed one, to the little border town, while he would dispatch Rabbi Elbaz and his son to Metz, the favorite town of
Emperor
Charlemagne, to gather, in exchange for gold coin but also under constraint of pious duty, eight qualified Jews to make up a company of ten males, like the eight Jews whom Benveniste had used to bring up from Barcelona to the ruined Roman inn to celebrate the ninth of Ab. Thus he might mark the holy day in a private, if temporary,
congregation,
hired by his own gold and untroubled by any ban.