Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter (12 page)

He shook his head. “He wasn’t coming for me.”

“If you knew he was there, why didn’t you try to stop him?”

“I wanted to, for Abaye’s sake.” Rava sighed. “But Samael told me it wasn’t like when you were so ill. This time there was nothing anyone could do. It was her fate to die then.”

I gasped. “You spoke with the Angel of Death?”

“He respects me for having defeated him in Sepphoris.” Until now we hadn’t moved from where I’d stopped us, but Rava started walking and I followed along with him.

I had so many questions I didn’t know where to begin. “Obviously it wasn’t my fate to die last year, yet if you hadn’t been there, Samael would have taken me. And what about all the other people who die from the Evil Eye? Was that their fate?”

“Length of years, wealth, and children are dependent on fate, not merit.” Rava said solemnly. “Look at your father and Abaye’s uncle, both so pious that rain came when they prayed for it. Your father is over eighty, while Abaye’s uncle died at forty. Your household has celebrated sixty weddings and even slaves eat fine wheat bread, while his household suffered sixty bereavements and sometimes couldn’t afford barley bread.”

“We haven’t had sixty weddings,” I protested. How could he provoke the Evil Eye that way?

“I meant that you’ve had too many to count.” He frowned at my interruption. “However, even if fate originally decrees a long life, things can still happen to shorten it—such as the Evil Eye and accidents. Sometimes Samael makes a mistake.”

“The Angel of Death makes mistakes?”

“Once he told his agent to bring Miriam, a hairdresser, but the agent erred and brought a Miriam who cared for young children instead,” Rava said. “Samael was angry, but he couldn’t very well send her back.”

“But if it wasn’t her time, how could he take her?” This was terrible. What use was a horoscope that foretold a long life if such things could preclude it?

“She’d dropped a hot poker on her foot and burned herself,” he explained. “With her
mazal
thus impaired, Samael’s agent could claim her.”

Rava sounded so confident; perhaps he could help me. “When I told you about seeing Samael, I didn’t say that watching Babata die frightened me so much I can no longer bear to be in the same room with someone in such pain.” My voice rose in despair. “I can still adjure demons when I write an amulet or
kasa d’charasha
, but when I attend these difficult births and see such agony, I lose my
kavanah
. Yet those are the only births Em gets called in for, not the easy ones.”

“Have you told her?”

“She knows it’s hard for me but encourages me to try, reminding me that their situations are so desperate that only our skills might save them.” Now that I’d opened the subject, my words just poured out. “Many merchants returned from journeys at Pesach and impregnated their wives, so all those women are going into labor this month. Em says I’ll gain much experience in a short time, but I can’t do it. All I think about is how soon I can escape.”

Rava gazed at me with shared anguish. “When you’re trying to gain strength, you can’t start with something too heavy. You have to build up to it.” He looked off into the distance. “I never could have fought Samael if I hadn’t studied with Rav Oshaiya for all those years.”

I knew that no amount of building up to it would inure me to such screaming and suffering. It was not something I wanted to be inured to either.

It was starting to drizzle. Rava had kept our walk confined to Em’s neighborhood, and our pace quickened as we headed toward her street. Suddenly an astonishing notion occurred to me.

“Speaking of Samael and mistakes,” I said. “What if Bar Hedaya mixed up his dream predictions? After all, they weren’t your real dreams.” I spoke more rapidly as the idea grew. “Perhaps the wife who would die was actually Abaye’s, not yours, and his children are the ones who will be raised by a stepmother.”

Despite the rain, Rava’s steps slowed as he considered this. “To refute you, I could say that his predictions about the two blows I took and my being arrested for that robbery were true,” he said. “However, that I have no children and therefore none to be raised by a stepmother supports you. It is an intriguing idea.”

 • • • 

After
sheloshim
for Babata was done, life at Abaye’s resumed almost as if she had never existed. He and Rava went back to their studies, Homa continued to tutor Elisheva, and I returned to my training with Em.

Previously, being
dashtana
was merely a nuisance. I had to contend with regularly changing my
mokh
and the cloths I wore as protection in case the
mokh
leaked. But now I was frustrated that it kept me from performing my normal
charasheta
tasks. Anything that involved invoking Elohim or His angels required purity.

One thing I could still do was help in Em’s garden. Recent rains had caused a growth spurt in both her medicinal plants and the weeds among them, and it was soothing to sit in the warm sun and restore order to the herb beds.

As I was weeding, Em came to me with a new request. “Are you familiar with love spells?” she asked.

Intrigued, I nodded. “I have inscribed them on
kasa d’charasha
.”

“Good.” Em rubbed her hands together in approval. “I want you to inscribe one as soon as you’re pure again.”

I pulled out a weed and tossed it onto a growing pile nearby. “You should know I do not perform this type of incantation unless the man and woman named are permitted to marry.”

“That will present no difficulty, as they are currently betrothed to each other.”

“Then why do they need a love spell?”

“Though the betrothal agreement has been witnessed, the two fathers have not written the document of allocation,” Em replied. “And from what I’ve heard, the groom’s father has no intention of doing so. He prefers that his son Dakya divorce this girl, Chatoi, and marry another.”

“So Chatoi’s family needs my services.”

“Also Dakya’s mother and Dakya himself. Apparently he and his father have battled to a stalemate, with Dakya refusing to marry anyone else and his father threatening to disinherit him,” Em said. “I was hoping that you had some experience in these matters.”

“I need to meet with the couple and both mothers first. They must all understand the risks involved.”

“What risks?”

I tugged hard on a recalcitrant weed, and it snapped off in my hand. “Since it is Dakya’s father who needs to be persuaded, Dakya must be the object of the spell. So if the couple does not marry, he will be the one to suffer when the curse takes effect.”

“I fear that Chatoi will suffer as well. For unless I am mistaken about this”—there was glint in Em’s eye —“Chatoi is carrying his child.”

 • • • 

Seven days after I became
dashtana
, I got up early to go to the
mikvah
. The water would be cold, but I hadn’t inscribed a love spell in years and wanted to have as much light as possible on this short winter day. I considered it auspicious that I should both prepare the bowls and install them on Sixth Day, the day ruled by the planet Venus.

The route to the nearest
mikvah
was one I knew well, and with my mind focused on the spell I intended to write, I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings.

So it was a shock when a familiar male voice called out to me, rudely I thought, “What are you doing here at this hour?”

True, most women used the
mikvah
in the afternoon. Brides immersed while it was still light on the day before their wedding, and wives resuming relations with their husbands came just after sunset. I was neither of these, yet custom called for a degree of privacy for those visiting the
mikvah
.

I turned to face Rava, whose dripping hair gave evidence of his recent immersion. “I am installing a
kasa d’charasha
today, so I need to be pure.”

There was only one reason a man such as Rava would use the
mikvah
early in the morning—he was a
baal keri
, one who had become impure from a seminal emission.

With the Holy Temple destroyed, most Jewish men no longer followed the ancient purity laws, but rabbis and their students strove to study Torah and recite its words in purity. Some, like my father and Rav Nachman, thought requiring a
baal keri
to undergo immersion discouraged their students from procreation, and thus were lenient in allowing the married ones to wash with nine
kavim
of water instead. Unmarried students, or those separated from their wives, were a different matter, as their emission was wasted seed, the result of lustful thoughts or dreams. Such pollution required full immersion.

I said nothing, but Rava must have understood what I was thinking because a deep blush suffused his face as his expression altered to one of utter mortification. His gaze avoided mine, and he mumbled something about not wanting to delay me. Then he was gone.

I confess that his reaction gave me some satisfaction, as there could be no greater proof of Rava’s failure to subdue his
yetzer hara.
I suspected, and hoped, that he’d been dreaming of me. All I had to do was be patient, and eventually Rava would see that his only remedy was for us to marry.

Still savoring these reassuring thoughts after I immersed, I went to the potter to pick up the unfired bowls I’d soon be inscribing. Unlike other incantations, love spells were etched into wet clay before the
charasheta
fired the bowls herself. The potter had included an extra bowl as a precaution.

My work area was set up in a shady spot near to where the kitchen slaves were hard at work preparing sufficient bread for Sixth Day and Shabbat. Normally I preferred an open area with better light, but I was worried that the clay might dry before I was finished. I sat for a moment to compose myself, picked up a bowl and stylus, and scored the clay with several deep lines, along which the fired bowl would be broken into shards.

I brought an image of the two lovers to mind and directed my
kavanah
toward imagining them together, under the huppah, in their marital bed. It was difficult at first, because I was distracted by similar thoughts involving Rava and me. But eventually I began to write.

“I invoke You, Adonai Savaot, the Eternal. I invoke You, Who created the heavens and seas. I invoke You, Who separated light from darkness. Just as these shards burn, so shall burn the heart of Dakya, son of Gerbita, for Chatoi, daughter of Kiomta. I invoke You, Who made the heavenly light and stars by the command of Your voice. In the name of Abrasax the great angel who overturned Sodom and Gomorrah, bring Chatoi, daughter of Kiomta, and unite her as wife with Dakya, son of Gerbita, whose heart, liver, and kidneys shall burn for her. Unite them in marriage and as spouses in love for all their lives. Amen, amen. Selah. Hallelujah.”

I surveyed the bowl, whose incantation did not entirely cover the inner surface, and resolved to use slightly larger letters on the next one. I finished my inscribing, including the extra bowl, with just enough time to place them in the oven and wash the clay from my hands before the midday meal.

Rava was still embarrassed from our morning encounter. He avoided looking at me for nearly the entire meal, and when our eyes did meet, he reddened and promptly looked away. Anxious about my bowls, I ate hurriedly and rushed outside to the oven. Taking up the tongs, and recalling how the Angel of Death had been able to take the wrong woman after she burned herself, I cautiously removed the first bowl.

Careful not to touch it or drop it, I tapped the bowl against a stone to test the clay’s hardness. Satisfied, I took out the rest of them. Next I held one over the oven’s fire until much of its surface was black with soot. Then I rapped it against the stone and watched with gratification as it broke along the lines I’d scored earlier, so that each word was still whole.

I was not so lucky with the second bowl, which shattered instead of breaking where I wanted it, but the other three bowls broke as expected. I let out my breath and sat back to appreciate my work, only to become aware that I was being watched.

SEVEN

I
was startled to find Rava standing behind me.

“What is the purpose of charring the bowls like that?” he asked.

“Here.” I handed him the tongs. “The incantation will explain it.” Love spells would be an awkward subject to discuss with him.

Once he’d arranged the pieces in the proper order, his face darkened with anger. I stood up and prepared to defend myself.

But Rava didn’t care about Dakya and Chatoi. He closed the distance between us and pointed his finger at me as if it were a dagger. “You . . . You . . .” He was almost too furious to speak. “You did this to me. That’s why I can’t fight my
yetzer.
 . . . You cast a spell . . . like this one . . . on me.”