A Journey to the End of the Millennium (34 page)

In the course of the morning prayers, the seven Jews from Metz
realized
from the deep anxiety the North African displayed for the health of the young woman inside the little house that she was someone special to him, someone he held in particular affection. But as they were unable to interpret what they saw, it was hard for them to avoid thinking that it was a question of carnal sin—in other words, that the sister-in-law was also a secret, beloved concubine. At once they began to investigate, and once they had manage to persuade the young Elbaz to speak, the patient’s true position was revealed—namely, that she was neither sister-in-law nor concubine but an additional wife, a legal wife but a second wife nonetheless. What troubled the contingent from Metz, it emerged, was not the truth now revealed, but the
untruth
the rabbi had told them when he had solicited them to come. Before they consented to proceed with him to the solemn service of the high priest of old, according to his own rite, the great Babylonian master, they withdrew for a consultation in a corner of the woods, not far from the wall of a convent, and eventually the little Andalusian rabbi was invited to join them to explain why he had lied to them. At first the rabbi was evasive, fearing to disclose the matter of the ban in case, tempted to associate themselves with their brethren of Worms, the Jews of Metz dissolved the congregation in the middle of the prayers and departed with the scroll of the Torah that they had brought with them. Being uncertain, however, whether the forgiveness granted on the Day of Atonement would extend to a lie pronounced in the course of the worship, he yielded and disclosed the whole truth, though in a terse and laconic fashion.

The seven Jews of Metz, hearing with astonishment and a whit of pleasure how much firmness their brethren of the Rhineland had
displayed,
were fearful of rendering null and void the prayers they had prayed so far in the company of a banned Jew and a lying rabbi, for they knew that they would have no opportunity to repeat the holy Day of Judgment and put right whatever might have been disqualified in
the prayers. So they decided to see themselves as people who had heard but not understood, postponing the full explanations until after the conclusion of the service, which they wished to press on to swiftly. But now one of the ten was missing—the banned man himself, who took advantage of the short pause in the prayers to hurry to the bedside of his second wife, eager to see how she fared. Since dawn he had entrusted the bedside vigil to his first wife, but he was not certain that it was fitting for the latter’s face to be the last image his second wife saw if the angel of death came to her.

Since midnight Ben Attar, abandoning false hope, had no longer held back from pronouncing the name of the foe who had insinuated himself into the bosom of his family. Indeed, since the early hours he had had the feeling that here in Verdun it was not a single fiend that threatened them but a whole band of fiends, gliding easily through the cold gray mist that wafted through the narrow streets and over the meadows, stealthily attaching themselves to the little congregation of Jews, and gathering around the new, temporary Jew, who stood wrapped in his prayer shawl, attending earnestly to the strange words evoking the service in the holy of holies in the ruined temple in
Jerusalem:
O
Lord,
I
have
sinned,
I
have
done
iniquitously,
I
have
transgressed
against
thee,
I
and
my
household.
I b
eseech
thee
by
thy
name
to
pardon
the
sins,
the
iniquities,
and
the
transgressions
that
I
and
my
household
have
committed
against
thee.
As
it
is
written
in
the
Torah
of
Moses
thy
servant,
from
thine
honored
mouth,
“For
on
this
day
he
shall
make
an
atonement
for
you
to
cleanse
you
from
all
your
sins
before
the
Lord.”

Unable to contain his impatience and wait for Rabbi Elbaz with his soft, wavering voice to conclude the high priest’s confession, Ben Attar had slipped away once more to the physician’s house. The doctor had left his Jewish patient alone and gone to do his rounds of peasant huts and noble houses, perhaps to avoid the suspicion caused by excessive and prolonged contact with the company of Jews. Thus, in the
half-darkness
of the inner chamber, whose window was veiled by a prayer shawl, the twice-wed merchant’s eyes encountered only those of his first wife, who was afraid to utter any word of protest or despair in the presence of this good, devoted man, who realized as soon as he entered the room that his young wife’s condition had deteriorated further.

Indeed, in addition to having her head thrust back in pain, her eyes
veiled against the light, and her ears plugged with wax, her breathing was now labored. A terrible dread filled Ben Attar’s heart, for he did not know what he would say or how he would excuse himself to her father, his childhood friend, who had trusted him and given her to him as a girl in the tender first flower of youth. Now he could not even offer her father a grave upon which to prostrate himself. And how would he comfort his son? Not the fetus in her womb but his elder brother, who had been left with his grandfather and grandmother in Tangier and who would require satisfaction from his father for the many days he had dreamed of his mother’s return, when she had already departed this life.

The North African merchant scrutinized the countenance of the mistress of the house, the physician’s wife, who had crept into the room, to learn from her experience whether the terrible despair that had seized hold of him was justified. But the pale little woman’s eyes gave him no clear hint, but only reminded him of the blue eyes of another, of the new wife whose repudiation had begotten death, which was groping its way toward his second wife’s bed. For the first time since Ben Attar had heard of the existence of that woman, beside the campfire by the Bay of Barcelona, he felt how heavy was the hatred he had borne her in his heart for so long, and how deep his vengeance would be. But on account of the sanctity of the day of forgiveness and atonement, he forced himself to stop the feelings that were rising up within him, and gently and compassionately he approached the
patient’s
bedside.

There, beside the physician’s colorful flasks, he removed the fine veil from her pure, emaciated face, so that she could see the
tenderness
and sadness in his eyes. He removed the soft wax from her ears, so that she could hear the sound of the prayers coming from the little wood next to the house. All so that she might be certain that neither he nor any other member of the company intended to abandon her in this terrible moment, but on the contrary, they were all joining together in body and soul in the fight against the angel of death, who, even if he was close to the house, was still motionless in the doorway, listening in as much astonishment as the Lotharingian worshippers to the
wonderful,
richly colored description, full of poetic eloquence, flowing from the mouth of Rabbi Elbaz as he sang the service of the high priest on the terrible and awesome day.

So as not to fail the congregation that had gathered for him alone, Ben Attar cut short the words of affection and comfort that he was heaping upon his second wife, and with profound yet unspoken
gratitude
he nodded to his first wife, who was covering the patient’s eyes again with the fine gauze veil and stopping her ears again with pieces of soft wax, and hurriedly he left the small chamber to rejoin the other worshippers. It was as well that he hastened back, for Rabbi Elbaz needed southern reinforcement. He was motioning to the seven
northern
Jews not to hold themselves back and content themselves with a polite genuflection, like Christians, but to prostrate themselves
devoutly
upon the ground, as though the holy of holies had merged with the physician’s house that stood before them, and the little wood had been transformed into the Temple court and Verdun into the beloved City of David. Thus they could join not in spirit alone but in body too in the memory of
the
priests
and
the
people
who
stood
in
the
court,
who
when
they
heard
the
honored
and
awesome
Name
spoken
distinctly
by
the
high
priest
in
sanctity
and
purity,
bent
the
knee,
prostrated
themselves,
and
fell
on
their
faces,
and
said,
“Blessed
be
his
honored,
majestic
Name
for
ever
and
ever.”

At first the northern Jews had difficulty joining in the full-length prostrations of Rabbi Elbaz and his son, and of Ben Attar and the young barbarian, who extended themselves lithely on the ground like Muslims at prayer. But slowly their souls were won over by the
splendor
of the rhymed and ornamented verses, and obeying the passionate rabbi’s gesture, they rubbed their foreheads repeatedly, if cautiously, on the reddish soil of Verdun, in the hope that such deep and humble prostration in the company of one banned Jew, one lying Jew, and one black Jew of doubtful Judaism might be added to the afflictions of the fast and fortify the virtuous act they had committed in making up ten for prayer. So might their purity be strengthened on this strange Day of Judgment, and their powers of resistance be doubled in the new year that was beginning, a gentle Jewish year that held in its womb the dragon of the frightening millennium.

As though to reinforce the newfound self-righteousness of the northern Jews, who dispersed at the end of the service to rest for a while under the trees, the overcast sky suddenly parted and the
autumn
sun exposed a bare patch of sweet blue sky which stabbed Ben
Attar’s entrails with a sharp pang of longing for his children, his
kinsfolk,
and his friends in Tangier, who must be enjoying an afternoon rest at this very moment, reclining on gleaming white couches in large, calm rooms. The next instant his nostrils were assailed by a foreign smell of forbidden meat emanating from the smoke curling up from the chimney of the small house. Was the apostate physician about to
return
home, and was his wife preparing his dinner? he wondered as he hastened to the corner of the convent wall to see whether he could see the eagerly awaited figure of the renegade. And indeed, Karl-Otto the First, as he styled himself could be seen approaching, holding his medical bag. Ben Attar hurried to meet him, ostensibly to hasten the physician’s footsteps, but perhaps unwittingly he was also attempting to postpone as long as possible the moment of his own return to the inner chamber, to his accursed holy of holies, where the rites of death might already be commencing.

Will
the
woman
live?
Rabbi Elbaz asked again fearfully, in his quaint Latin.
Yes,
she
will
live,
the physician assured him, with the same confidence he had displayed the previous day.
But
they,
he
insisted
on adding, gesturing toward the Jews of Metz, who were dozing beneath the trees,
will
not
live,
neither
they
nor
their
children.
He pursed his lips with a look of grim resolve, and entering his house, he embraced his two children firmly, perhaps to comfort himself for
having
exchanged such a holy day for an ordinary working day. Then he washed his hands to remove the dust of the roads and the blood of peasants and nobles which he had let all morning, dried them on a soft towel, and prepared to eat the roast meat that his wife had cooked for him. But disturbed by Ben Attar’s looks, he set down his knife and went into the inner chamber, making a sign to the first wife to give up her place beside the second wife, whose head was still tilted back and whose mouth gaped wide open as though she were short of air.

For a moment it looked as though the physician were at a loss for what to do, but then he rummaged in his little wooden chest and
extracted
a soft reed tube, which he proceeded to insert carefully in the second wife’s throat. He poured down it some of the yellow potion that was so efficacious at soothing pain, and indeed, in a moment the strung bow relaxed and the amber-colored eyes opened wide. Gradually the
eyelids
drooped wearily and the lips parted in a faint smile, as though now,
at the height of her torments, she had been vouchsafed a moment of acute pleasure. The alert physician seized this moment of grace, and before she sank into slumber he took out his knife and needle, bared a lovely shoulder, and let out a further quantity of tainted blood into the basin, which now contained fresh white river pebbles.

The second wife’s body now seemed to find relief, and the painful spasm relaxed and disappeared within her sleep. Ben Attar judged that this was an opportune moment for him to elude the savours of the dinner that the physician’s wife was serving to her apostate husband and join the others for a rest in the little wood, until the daylight had mellowed enough for the afternoon prayers to commence. When Abd el-Shafi and his friend brought the four horses and the mule back from pasture, proudly waving their tails, washed and gleaming from the rest and grooming they had received on this holy day, and the physician emerged from his house for another round of bloodletting inside the walls of Verdun, Ben Attar went to rouse the young slave, the
temporary
Jew, who had remained kneeling all this time before the scroll of the Law, which had been placed in the branches of a tree. He made him join the rabbi, who had assembled the other worshippers together so he could pronounce the prayer that opened the afternoon service, which stabbed Ben Attar’s innards with renewed dread:
The
men
of
faith
who
were
strong
in
good
works
have
passed
away.
Valiantly
wielding
shield
and
buckler,
they
averted
calamity
by
their
supplication.
They
were
to
us
like
a
fortified
wall,
and
like
a
protection
in
the
day
of
wrath
and
affliction.
They
appeased
anger
and
fury,
they
restrained
ire
by
their
peti
tions.
Before
they
invoked
thee
thou
didst
answer
them,
for
they
knew
how
to
implore
and
propitiate
by
their
supplications
…