A Journey to the End of the Millennium (5 page)

In the silence that encompassed her, she was unable to feel, as she had hoped, the beating of her husband’s heart. All she could feel was the painful and unfamiliar outline of his ribs. With a strange selfish thrill she reflected that not only had her own body become gaunt from seasickness and meager rations, but her husband’s sturdy frame too was becoming lean from constant worry about the future of his
business
, which was threatened, more than anything else, by his marriage to her. And now a venomous gleam flickered in her beautiful, slightly myopic eyes, which had so far been narrowed to slits and now opened in offense. She looked contentedly at what in her bedroom at home merely appeared and disappeared between her body and the sheets, whereas here it was entirely revealed, shrunk into itself, as though it had changed into a mouse. So sorry did she feel for that part of her husband’s body and for herself that she lifted her head a little, and still without looking at the face of the man who had bound himself before her, she began to speak about the first wife, which she had never dared to do before.

A shiver of fear shook Ben Attar, and his eyes closed. He had become accustomed on this long voyage, in the evening twilight, when the waves swallowed the last traces of the sun, to sometimes finding the two women sitting on the bridge where in bygone days captains had commanded battles. With their gaudy veils fluttering in the sea breeze, they exchanged words without looking at each other, with blank faces, like a pair of spies. He had the feeling that throughout this long sea voyage they were passing to each other the most hidden secrets touching him, and his heart swelled with dread, and also with excitement, at the thought of the horizons of desire that extended before the three of them. And sometimes he went so far as to imagine that he could bring to Abulafia’s new wife in Paris, who was pitting herself against him, not only a living proof that would overcome her opposition but a new, sharp temptation that she would have no
defense
against—a temptation that he could now feel upon his flesh, in his loins, here in the swaying cabin, between the slurping of the water, the smells of the spices, and the quiet groaning of the young camels, as the young wife questioned him about his lovemaking earlier in the night and answered her own questions.

Her answers caught the picture and the feeling as accurately as if she had somehow participated in that lovemaking, and as if even now that she was alone she did not want to let go, at least in speech, of what he had done to the first wife. Panic-stricken, he tried to free his hands, which were coiled in his silver chain, and take hold of her face and stop her mouth. But the coils that had been meant to be symbolic had become all too real, and as soon as she discerned his purpose she started to struggle, as fiercely and desperately as if he were to be made to pay not just for what he had done earlier to the first wife but for all the unrequited excitement that had quickened within her as she watched the sailors wandering around half naked on deck.

Angrily she reached out to catch the minuscule mouse, as though she wanted to strangle it or even to tear it apart, but the mouse
disappeared
, and in its place there reared up a gentle young snake, which soon hardened into a fierce lizard that tried to escape from between her fingers and lay its thin vertical lips upon her eyeballs. Then, from the lust that moved painfully before her, she knew that her husband was regretting having tied himself up, and her spirit began to be
appeased
,
for now that he was bound helplessly, not spontaneously, she was able to remove her shift and take from him slowly and right to the end everything that he owed her, not only since they had set sail on this voyage but ever since her father had given her to him as wife, even if she ended up dragging out of herself a wild moan that would rouse the boy sleeping on the other side of the curtain.

But the loud groan that almost turned into a shriek of pleasure did not even scrape the outer shell of Rabbi Elbaz’s son’s consciousness, so deeply was he immersed in youthful slumber. Instead, it startled the young slave, who had crept back to warm himself against the lordly bodies of the young camels and to remind himself of the smell of the desert from which he had been snatched. Virgin though he was, he understood only too well the meaning of the groans, which flooded his heart, as though through two curtains his master’s rod had pierced him too. He stroked the hindparts of the two camels, who also, to judge by their closed eyes, understood what it was that was echoing around them. Who knew, he thought, if they too would not be slaughtered and cooked before the ship reached the city? He wanted to bow his head and pray to the spirit of the fragrant bones that death would draw out of them, but eventually he gave up and shinned up the rope ladder to disappear before the Jew came out and flogged him, even though this time he had sinned by hearing alone and not by seeing. He was
suddenly
seized with a longing to enter the little cabin in the bow and see the smile of the first wife, whose white body he had seen gleaming earlier in the night. At this time he could go wherever his spirit wished, for the ship was still, every last sailor was asleep, himself excepted. He was kept awake and alert from the start of the night to its end by the divinity that emanated from everything, so that in these last moments of the night he became the true master of the ship, and if he wished he could even weigh anchor and hoist the triangular sail, and instead of sailing east along the river and into the heart of Europe he could head due west and sail beyond the horizon into a new world.

But a little bird striking a rope with its wings proclaimed that dawn was nigh. Before he had time to bow down and worship before its tiny holiness, it gave a chirp and sped off toward a new speck of light moving into the horizon of the new continent. Even though it was but a speck, it was sufficient to wake Rabbi Elbaz, of whom the rhyming
words of the poem that had been swaying all night between his thoughts and his dreams demanded order and logic. But since the fine rays of light drawn slowly from the land were still too faint to
illuminate
the lines rustling on the paper concealed among the sheepskins that were his bed, he took on deck only his quill pen, which soon, as the light grew stronger, he would be able to sharpen and dip into his inkhorn, and then he would be able to insert the correct word in place of the empty space that had been waiting for it for several days. He bowed his head in shamed gratitude to the black slave, who now handed him the morning dish, fat olives drowned in an oily sauce in which to dip pieces of the warm bread that lay beside it. For forty days now he had sailed in this boat, and still he felt embarrassed whenever this slave waited on him, as though he were unworthy of it. After the birth of his only son, his wife had been so weak that he had assumed all the household chores himself. And he had enjoyed the housework that he was forced to do in her place, openly or secretly, so much that since her death he had found it hard to remarry, for where would he find a healthy wife who would consent to be waited on by him?

And so now, as bundles of gray cloud floated in the air, he ate with bowed head, holding the platter between his hands, careful not to make a movement or say a word that might encourage the young slave to continue to wait upon him, lest the slave would get carried away and prostrate himself and kiss the hem of the rabbi’s threadbare robe. He had done this one evening, seized by a powerful religious feeling, and the rabbi had been compelled to complain about him to Abu Lutfi, who had flogged his protégé prodigiously. But no, this time the young man did not seem to be returning to his old ways. As the morning mist thickened, with his master’s two acts of lovemaking and the smell of wine, which still wafted around the deck, a mighty tiredness had
befallen
him, and now, for all his youth, he would have gladly lain down and died upon the sail folded at his feet. But he still had to carry out Ben Attar’s orders and make certain that the rabbi did not toss all his olive stones overboard but hide one in the pouch suspended near his heart, to ensure the correct counting of the days, for it had already happened that the Jews had lost count of their sacred seventh day. This morning the rabbi did not neglect his task as timekeeper, and after sucking the juicy flesh of the last olive he placed the stone with
the five others and smiled cordially at the young slave, who was so exhausted that he could scarcely stagger to the first wife, who had just climbed up, her heavy body draped in a red embroidered robe, onto the old bridge, where she stood as splendidly as though she were the caliph himself. He did not know if she wanted some of the honey drink that he concocted for her each morning, or if she wished first to discover whether all had passed well there in the stern of the ship. He stood motionless for a moment, his weary young body torn asunder by
conflicting
forces. But Abu Lutfi’s stern voice, as he came to rouse the sleeping crew, spurred the slave’s legs on toward the regal woman, around whom the mist that was thickening as the daylight grew brighter wafted like incense. Already he could discern an unfamiliar hint of anxiety clouding her round, bright face, which was lit as always by a pleasant smile, and his soul longed to soothe her care, but he did not know what to say or how to say it, and so he closed his eyes and began to sigh deeply, once and then once more, as though he were trying to transmit to her all the second wife’s sighs of satisfaction and cries of pleasure.

But where would this poem meander to next, Rabbi Elbaz asked
himself
as the sailors toiled in the morning mist to hoist the sail, which had been reduced in size during the night in readiness for the delicate task of sailing up the river. For the rabbi, the mere fact of writing a poem was something wonderful; he had never imagined that he himself would be able or eager to do such a thing. But during the previous week six lines had put themselves together, all in Hebrew, following the meter and rhyme scheme that had been brought to Andalus from the east by Dunash Ben Labrat. Right from the start, from the moment he embarked with his son on Ben Attar’s ship, which had come to the port of Cadiz especially to fetch him, he had had a feeling that his life was about to undergo some great change. At first he had been alarmed and depressed at the sight of the cramped little cabins, the swaying deck fenced around with ropes, and the sacks of condiments and jars
tied together in the dark hold, which gave off unfamiliar, pungent African odors at night. Accustomed as he was to the bright beauty of his home town, Seville, and to the elegant courtesy of its inhabitants, he was terror-stricken at the sight of the half-naked Arab sailors with yellow flaxen ropes wrapped around their bodies, shouting orders gruffly to each other and cuffing the black slave who ran in and out among them. The two veiled women too, sitting on the bridge barefoot in colorful robes, did not reassure the new traveler as he tried in vain to control his son, who shinned blithely up and down the ropes like a little monkey. In the twilight, as the ship set sail slowly into the vast ocean that he had never so much as set eyes on before, and as it began to heave beneath him relentlessly in a previously unknown rhythm, he was overcome with dizziness and nausea. Shamefully, privately, through a small porthole, he cast forth upon the waters illumined by the reddish glow of the sunset the morning meal that the congregation in the house of study in Cadiz had offered him in gratitude for the homily he had delivered to them, and at midnight he spewed out from the depths of his bowels the remains of the farewell dinner that his late wife’s family had held for him in Seville. By dawn, exhausted by a sleepless night, he felt that he might make his peace with the sea, but when he set eyes on the empty eye sockets of the baked fish the black slave set before him, his stomach erupted all over again. He
immediately
vowed to fast. He was accustomed to vows and fasts from the time of his wife’s illness. But still the nausea did not abate. Pale, gaunt, with sunken eyes, he no longer tried to conceal his suffering but openly leaned over the ropes with his mouth wide open and his eyes fluttering, staring wildly, like a fish taken from the sea, dreaming of the day they would reach the port of Lisbon, where he could withdraw from this maritime adventure. He was not made for this. He was just like the prophet Jonah, he said apologetically to the owner of the ship, who had hired him and pinned his hopes on him: the sea was not happy with him. Only God did not summon a great fish to swallow him whole.

Ben Attar was accustoming himself to the idea that he might have to do without the help of religion in the confrontation that lay ahead with the new wife and the sages she mustered on her side, for if he sent the rabbi overland from Lisbon to Paris he would arrive only in the autumn, by which time they would be on their way home, when to his
surprise Abd el-Shafi intervened. Knowing nothing of the part of the rabbi in the expedition, he felt responsible as captain for the suffering that his ship was causing the new passenger. First he took it upon himself to slow the ship, but seeing that the rabbi continued to suffer, he obtained permission from Ben Attar to halt for a whole day. He turned into a quiet cove, furled the sail so that not even the slightest breeze would rock the ship, cast anchor, and fixed the two steering oars opposite each other so the ship would be perfectly stationary. On the old bridge, from which the caliph’s officers had once kept watch on the Christian ships to make sure they did not cross the invisible line that divided the Mediterranean between the two opposing faiths, he set a comfortable couch stuffed with wool and straw and draped with soft, gently colored rugs for the thirty-three-year-old rabbi, whom he saw as ringed around with a fine aura of sanctity. There they settled the
suffering
passenger, whose very beard had turned green. Then the captain began to boil up a special brew that the Vikings had used to allay the panic of those captives whom they did not kill: a decoction of fish fins flavored with finely ground scales, quenched with lemon juice, to which was added green seaweed that a diver brought up from the sea bed. When it was ready, the patient’s hands were bound, and Abd
el-Shafi
insisted on personally pouring the acrid, steaming liquid down the convulsed rabbi’s throat with his own wooden spoon. Indeed, by evening the vomiting had begun to cease, and the rabbi’s son, Samuel, who had taken the opportunity afforded by his father’s illness to climb to the top of the mast, was able to see from his aerie the pink gradually returning to his father’s broad brow. As for the rabbi, he had a clear sense of the purgative and even spiritual quality of the Viking broth that had been poured inside him.

And so, on board a stilled ship not far from the port of Lisbon, a deep sleep fell upon Rabbi Elbaz, and so peaceful was his slumber that the captain did not wait for dawn but gave orders for the sail to be hoisted and the anchor weighed, so that the ship would forge ahead and when the rabbi awoke after a day’s sleep he would feel the rocking of the waves beneath him to be a natural and even necessary part of the world’s being.

Indeed, the vomiting did not return to plague the rabbi from
Seville
,
even on stormy days, and from that time on he learned to take pleasure in sailing on the sea. He preferred, even at night, to remain on deck so as not to miss the movement of the glittering sky as it led the ship on. At midnight, when Abd el-Shafi turned in in his own
hammock
, leaving a sailor or two to navigate by the stars, the rabbi would take a leopard skin and a sheepskin and lay them one on top of the other on the old bridge, which was warmed by the bodies of the two barefoot women who had sat there during the day, and there he would sink into an open-air sleep in search of a dream—either a real dream, if one came, or if not, then at least a waking dream combining snatches of memory with bundles of wishes. All unawares, his mind began to shed layer after layer, losing some of its scholarly clarity and curiosity in favor of a new philosophical introspection blended with a certain sentimentality.

The sharp-eyed owner had begun to notice signs of lethargy and indolence every time he told the slave to take the rabbi the ivory casket crammed with strips of parchment inscribed with the teachings of the sages and sayings of local saints, which had been selected especially for him by the famous uncle, Ben Ghiyyat, to season Andalusian
scholarship
and wisdom with North African wit and mystery. It did not seem as though the rabbi was interested in reading or studying anything new on the issue of dual marriage, which he had been hired to defend. The arguments he had prepared back in Seville seemed
perfectly
sound, and if there were any need to reinforce them, it was preferable not to use the Scriptures but the unwritten law, which
billowed
up first in the mind, then turned sometimes into chance,
long-drawn
-out conversations with Ben Attar, who may perhaps only have been waiting for an encounter with a bored sea traveler to speak openly about himself and his life. Whatever Ben Attar did not or could not tell, his two wives sometimes related, especially the first, but
sometimes
the second too, who for some reason was still somewhat afraid of the rabbi, who was only seven years her senior. And whatever the wives were unable to see or understand, the partner, Abu Lutfi, could add from his own Ishmaelite perspective. If even he omitted or concealed some detail, perhaps from an excess of loyalty, the captain or some clever sailor could often supply it, for anyone, if he is compelled, is
able to deduce one thing from another. Even the black slave would have been regarded by the rabbi as a qualified witness, if he would only cease kneeling before him in the heart of the night.

But some ten days before, as the ship began to sail past the jagged coves of Brittany, Ben Attar had noticed that the rabbi was holding
between
his fingers a goose quill that he constantly sharpened with a
penknife
, licking the sharpened tip with an expression of wistful shrewdness on his face, as though his soul had been stung by a genuine idea. Not a day had passed before Ben Attar observed that the rabbi was using it to inscribe words upon an unfamiliar strip of parchment. The slowness of the writing, on the one hand, and the speed with which the parchment was concealed whenever Ben Attar approached, on the other, attested to the fact that it was not some new homily that was being indited, or a commentary on a difficult text, or an elaborate ethical argument, but something else. Ben Attar kept watch from a distance and noticed how a line was added or deleted and replaced by another, which was crossed out in its turn. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him, and he instructed the son of the desert to approach the rabbi’s bed while he slept and extract the parchment. What he saw confirmed his fears. He discovered the disjointed lines of a poem or hymn, which began in Arabic and continued in the holy tongue.

Secretly, by the light of a candle, Ben Attar attempted to decipher the writing, at first word by word and eventually line by line. What he read filled him with sadness. The hints of the rabbi’s desire for Ben Attar’s wives in the last two lines impugned his honor, but as he was about to tear up the parchment and throw it overboard, he remarked to himself that a poem composed so laboriously was indubitably etched on the mind of the author, who would write it out again and take all the more pains to conceal it. So he had the parchment restored to its place, so that he could continue to watch over it. While the black slave unfastened the robe of the sleeping poet so as to reinsert the poem furtively in the inside pocket and in doing so perhaps absorb some of the heat that the unseen god vouchsafes to those who believe in him, the ship’s owner continued to reflect on the rabbi whom his uncle had attached to him. Would he really be of any help? Surely he was supposed to pay him not for writing verses of unrequited longing, but for compiling subtle and persuasive textual arguments against his partner
Abulafia’s new wife, who had come between them and had left him in a spot, with no buyers for his merchandise. Overcome once more with pity for his rejected wares, he found himself making his way under the triangular canvas of the sail to peer into the hold. Here, in the fragrant darkness pierced by rays of moonlight filtering through the timbers of the deck, the ropes binding the great jars and sacks seemed to have dissolved, and the containers stood before him like a company of men possessed by a sense of fellowship in the face of common misfortune, for which their master would soon be called to account. One of the great sacks suddenly stood erect and strode toward the trembling Jew, who strangled a scream. But it was only Abu Lutfi, who liked to sleep close to his hidden store of daggers encrusted with precious stones. He too was unable to sleep, as in the Roman inn in the hills above
Barcelona
on those summer nights of the years 4756 and 4757 of the
creation
of the world, according to the Jewish way of reckoning, when Abulafia was arriving later and later for their appointed meetings.

It was only two years later that Ben Attar had realized that if he had only taken the trouble to understand the cause of the delays, he might have reached an earlier appraisal of the repudiation that was taking concrete shape in the north. For it was during those years that the first threads were being spun that were to tie Abulafia to a new woman, a widow who had come to Francia from a small town on the banks of the River Rhine. At that stage Abulafia was mentioning her only as a loyal customer, not as a possible bride, but by reading between the lines it should have been evident that a new hand was involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in Abulafia’s ever-lengthening delays. Abu Lutfi, to his credit, did not delude himself, and was skeptical from the outset about Abulafia’s pretexts and explanations. Right from the start of the partnership he was convinced that sooner or later a day would come when Abulafia would vanish with the goods. So strong was this belief that the delays only seemed to him like a foretaste of the eventual
disappearance
that the northern partner was preparing for his associates.
Consequently
, when Abulafia recounted the hardships of his journey owing to new conflicts between warring duchies, which kept altering the frontiers and so delaying his progress, Abu Lutfi would turn his eyes away from the speaker and fix them on the flame of the campfire to purge them from the polluting falsehood. If Abulafia embroiled himself
in further complexities, the Ishmaelite would wind his headscarf around his head and ears and move even closer to the flames, which almost scorched his clothes, as if to say,
And
this
is
a
partner!
Go
to
someone
who
is
willing
to
believe
whatever
you
say!
Indeed, Ben Attar was so excited and happy at the appearance of his beloved nephew, whom his anxiety and fear had already depicted in his imagination as—heaven forbid—dead or injured or taken captive, that he strained his hardest to believe every word of Abulafia’s explanations. To strengthen his faith he would inquire repeatedly about the signs of the famous millennium, which was already suspended, Abulafia claimed, in the heavens like a huge cloud containing a great glimmering red cross. Even though it was still a few years off, men’s minds were already confused from thinking about it. Even Abulafia should have known that one who had failed to rise from the dead a thousand years ago would not suddenly come on a visit a thousand years later. In any case, Jews had nothing to fear from thunders and lightnings in the sky, since they had been promised from time immemorial that heaven would always stand at their right hand. But still, there was no certainty that on the face of the earth they would be able to abate the zealots’ fury at not being permitted to eat the messianic banquet for which they had been toiling for so many years.