A Journey to the End of the Millennium (42 page)

She was not the only passenger joining the ship, whose sail was beginning to fill, for in the first broken rays of daylight Ben Attar could make out to his surprise the small, familiar form of Rabbi Elbaz. It turned out that although the rabbi had remained true to his resolve not to endanger his son with the sea voyage, even if he was only a feigned invalid, and to trust the promise given by Abulafia and his wife to return him to Andalus overland and to receive in return their
unfortunate
little girl, so far as he himself was concerned he had changed his mind and was determined to rejoin the old guardship, not only in order to return to Seville as fast as possible and receive the promised fee, but to prove to the North African Jew who had hired him that he would neither abandon nor betray the mission he had accepted, to defend the status and propriety of a second wife. Even if God had decided to take her to himself and to bury her on the left bank of faraway Paris, her erect, noble form was deeply engraved in the rabbi’s soul, and her robe and veil still floated before his eyes. No, Elbaz would never forget her, and the speeches he had made for her and about her, both in the winery at Villa Le Juif and in the synagogue of Worms, shone like diamonds in his memory, side by side with the legal texts and moral sayings that he had not managed to weave into his speeches but that he kept ready, if needed, for a further contest of wits in the case of a second second wife.

Thus, confused, excited, and even a little frightened, Elbaz boarded the ship with his bundle and fell into Ben Attar’s arms, burying in his lord’s chest both his loyalty and his apprehensions about the coming journey. It looked for a moment as if they were silently exchanging tears. Since he would be alone in his cabin near the bow and it was out of the question for the girl to be put in the hold, the bewitched young passenger was put next to him, after a light wooden partition had been
erected. Already Mistress Esther-Minna was hastening to make both his bed and that of the quaking child comfortable with thick covers, and she hugged the girl tight to quell her fears while Abulafia acceded to Abu Lutfi’s request to go belowdecks to peer at the cargo of slaves, who were shifting restlessly, waiting for the ship to sail. But when Abulafia came up on deck again, flushed and confused by what his eyes had seen, he said nothing, either to his new wife or to his uncle, in order not to delay the long-awaited moment of departure.

When the moment did come, it was not quiet but tuneful, for before they weighed anchor and disembarked those who were staying behind, Abd el-Shafi placed his hands on his ears to hear only the silence of his God and began to wail like the muezzin of the great mosque in Tangier, issuing the call of the Prophet to the faithful to fall on their faces and beseech Allah to turn all adverse winds to fair ones. Although there were too few Jews to compete with the eight prostrate Muslims, they could still muster a company, numbering not three but four, for Master Levitas, not neglecting the sacred duty of leavetaking, had risen early and stood now on the bridge of the ship to reinforce the parting prayers of the southern Jews. When both the Muslims and the Jews had concluded their prayers and the neighboring Christian seamen had added their blessings, there was nothing whatever to
prevent
the ship from retracing its route to its point of departure.

Back again came the slight rocking motion, which seemed to have been forgotten during the forty days on land. Although it was the gentle motion of the river rather than the violence of the ocean, the current was still surprisingly rapid, either because they were now going downstream or because of the autumn winds. No sooner had the
travelers
remembered to turn around to take their leave of the little
Parisian
isle than it was gone, hidden by the first bend of the river and swallowed up in the brilliance of the eastern sun soaring relentlessly behind them, soon to dance before the prow of the ship as she
gathered
speed. But the calm presence of the beauty of nature on either bank no longer soothed the Jewish travelers’ hearts as they leaned silently on the ropes that fringed the deck, but a faint dread forced them to scan the undergrowth for a human figure with whom they could at least exchange a parting wave. The chill and gloom of the European autumn seemed to intensify the silence of the world, and
since there was no child at the masthead to survey the world beyond the vegetation on the riverbank, anyone wishing to make some contact had no choice but to seek a sign of life in the beautiful purple leaves that fell slowly and soundlessly from the boughs of the great, sad trees that cast their shadows deep on the fast-flowing water.

Although the captain, who had once more bound himself to the mast and attached crewmen to his traces to navigate better, clung resolutely to his decision to press on night and day toward the great ocean, he could not fail to accede to a firm request from Abu Lutfi, whose authority on board was growing hour by hour, to put in briefly at the port of Rouen. Perhaps the duke who had bought the little
she-camel
from them had realized that for the sake of the health of the young desert creature in his care it would be best for him to furnish her with a male partner, at a modest price. Thus, in the twilight of the second day after the tawny ship pulled out of the port of Paris, the anchor was lowered again not far from the little houses of Rouen. Abd el-Shafi, who was unwilling on any account to detain the ship until daybreak, had a dinghy lowered into the dark water and sent the
Ishmaelite
merchant, with the Andalusian rabbi as interpreter, in search of the duke or his Jewish counselor, to make them the astute offer. But before much time had passed Abu Lutfi returned despondently to Ben Attar, clutching some yellowish tatters in his hand. The she-camel had not endured for long in her new owner’s care, and because of neglect or pining for her mate, she had breathed her last and collapsed in an open space behind the cathedral. Instead of wrapping the noble desert beast in a shroud and giving her decent burial until the millennium arrived, with its promise of universal resurrection, the Christian duke had exposed her to the curiosity and greed of the local inhabitants, who had soon cut her up into little pieces and realized whatever they could for them, so as to recover something of the purchase price. They had not spared even her hide, but had stripped it off and tanned it, and discovered its wonderful property of restoring the shine and sparkle to tarnished gold or copper.

But Ben Attar paid no attention to the plaints of his old partner, who since the disappearance of the black pagan had become bitter and domineering. Without saying a word, he took a strip of soft, yellowish hide from the remnants of the she-camel and brought it close to his
face, to see whether the little tatter of skin still retained the smell that used to assail his nostrils each time he made his way through the hold on his way to the second wife’s cabin. While the captain gave orders in the dead of the night to weigh anchor, light a great lantern at the prow, and sail on, the North African Jew was so overcome with the sadness of sweet longing for the wife he had lost that he could not resist descending into the bowels of his ship to take a brief look at the abandoned cabin.

In the semidarkness, beside the outline of the he-camel, whose fate was apparently sealed since the death of his mate in Rouen, the Jewish proprietor discovered that his captain had cleverly given the new slaves oars that protruded outward through ancient openings in the side of the ship, which had been closed up and now had been reopened. As he groped his way amid the creak of oars and the splash of water, he observed, from the number of the shapes moving around him, that his partner had increased and reinforced the stabilization of the ship.
Feeling
a new excitement rising up and shaking his guts and his loins, he approached to inspect the nature of the new arrivals, who were
huddled
in the cabin where he had sat as a mourner. But before he could lower his eyes he was pierced by the frightened, curious looks of three flaxen-haired, blue-eyed women shackled to each other by their long legs. Abu Lutfi explained with a conspiratorial smile what a good
bargain
he had made just before they set sail, but he was pushed away impatiently by the Jew, who hurried up on deck to discover that
despite
the late hour, everyone was awake—not only the captain and his crew, but even his wife, who was sitting swaddled in several layers of clothing on the old bridge, listening to the chatter of Rabbi Elbaz, who was still wondering if he had been right to leave his only son, an orphan, in the care of a strange woman, an obstinate adversary and childless contestant.

Even though Ben Attar knew that it would be impossible to conceal from his wife and certainly from the rabbi what his eyes had just beheld belowdecks, he tried to delay giving the news, and wordlessly, with a weary gesture, he gently indicated to his wife that she should leave the rabbi from Seville and return to her cabin. Right then, as an improper and unworthy suggestion rose up to him from the bowels of the ship, he needed to discover again, with a fearful body, how far one
could push the limits of a sole wife in carnal knowledge, which always contained some spiritual knowledge as well.

But when he left the cabin at the close of the third watch of the night, while the indefatigable Abd el-Shafi, full of the excitement of being under sail again, looked down on him from the mast, he knew what he had always known—that one woman could never fulfill the promise of another. His eyes sought in vain for the black slave, who would always emerge from a corner and between watches, between wives, would prostrate himself and touch the hem of Ben Attar’s
garment
submissively before handing him the steaming herbal brew. Where was the idolater? the Jew asked himself longingly. Who had detained him? Was he alive? Had the new slaves so turned Abu Lutfi’s head that he had so easily abandoned his faithful servant? For if Ben Attar were to exert his imagination to the utmost, he could not imagine that he could never track the slave down, even if he exercised the full weight of his old authority and managed to stop the ship and turn her around to search for the lost African all over the Île de France. This was not only because the black youth was too well hidden in that faraway cottage, secure in the clutches of three women who were determined, as the millennium drew nigh, to satisfy the desire of the old woodcarver to add the lines of an alien race to his vision, but also because the captive himself, the gleaming black youth, had fallen in love with his captivity, within which the spring of his passion flowed so strongly.

So Ben Attar strode off dejectedly to seek out another co-
religionist,
who would stand with him against a loneliness that he had never acknowledged before and that now flooded his whole being. Since the rabbi was fast asleep, he drew aside the thin partition to inspect the girl, his own kin, who was sailing back to her birthplace as a
counter-pledge.
Only now, in the silent moonlight that contended with the first rays of dawn, did he observe how the baby who had crawled on board the first boat to Barcelona had grown and filled out. A strange idea gripped him—to surprise Abulafia and his wife and to give them back at their meeting in the Spanish March a little girl who was betrothed, if not actually wed. If he persisted, there was no doubt that despite the enchantment or, who knew, even because of it, he would be able to find someone who would want to make love with the heavy but lush
and youthful form that was now sleeping, cramped and curled up, in the tiny cabin. Despite her accursed enchantment, she recalled the beauty of a young woman who had abandoned her and disappeared into the depths of the sea.

Now he rose, so surprised at the new thought that had been born in him that he could not find rest or return to his bed before descending into the belly of the ship, of which he still considered himself the sole master, to check not only whether Abu Lutfi was really keeping watch but also whether the three blue-eyed women were still attached
together
at their long legs. There in the bowels of the ship, it turned out that one of the women had fallen suddenly sick and had been loosed from her bonds, and was sitting in a corner, pale and trembling, with her head thrown back, covered in a soiled and torn silk robe that had been found among the sooty timbers. Ben Attar, recognizing with pain the source of the torn robe, stood silently staring at the blue eyes, which opened and turned in defeat to his feet, and at the thin hands of the idol-worshipper, who was clutching the image of an animal.
Because
he knew that he would never, ever touch her, or her
companions,
he went back up on deck.

The North African Jew thought to himself, This is what the new wife and all her wise friends who dwell on the Rhine desire—that from now on I shall take on every day anew, but only in my mind will there be crumbs and tatters of a second wife who has vanished. He was enfolded in such deep sorrow that he could not resist waking Rabbi Elbaz to look him straight in the face and tell him how great was the defeat he had suffered, for the renewed partnership between north and south could never atone or comfort him for what he had lost forever on this journey.

But the rabbi from Seville, caught up in his own sleepy thoughts, heard the words of the ship’s owner as he lamented for what he had lost as if all the troubles of the world were subsumed in this sorrow. It was as if they would not soon have to face the waves of the raging ocean, where the river flowed into the sea and an ancient sunken Viking ship stood like a great bird, and fierce northern winds would turn the fate of the second wife into a gentle, easy story compared to the story of what awaited her husband and his party. Suddenly the little rabbi was filled with joy at having agreed to leave his son with
Mistress Abulafia, so that despite the millennium he could return safely overland to his home. He already imagined Master Levitas and his sister clothing the child in the black garb of the people of Worms and placing a hat with a horn on his head, and waking him in the morning, a little feverish, to sit and study an ancient text and a new law. Then tears welled in his eyes for the child who was saved, and once more the poetic urge woke within him, to write one more poem, the fourth. He felt around him to see whether that old quill pen and inkwell were still there among the timbers of the cabin. But he found nothing. And so he was compelled, to the accompaniment of Ben Attar’s long drawn-out keening, to save in his head the first line that had composed itself inside him:
Is
there
a
sea
between
us,
that
I
should
not
turn
aside
to
visit
thee
…