A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 3

  They had been to the Bay of Barcelona once a year for the past ten years, at the beginning of August, in sailing ships laden with merchandise, to meet Abulafia, partner and nephew to Ben Attar, who came to meet them from Toulouse. He crossed the Pyrenees on his own, disguised sometimes as a monk, sometimes as a leper, the better to conceal in the folds of his robe, whether from the extortionate customs men of the little duchies on his way or from genuine robbers, the silver coins and precious stones that he had received in return for the merchandise he had distributed the previous year throughout Provence and Aquitaine.

  These meetings were very pleasant for Ben Attar, because the joy of seeing his dear nephew was combined with the flash of gold and silver coins from the Christian states in the north. Abu Lutfi too was excited each time to discover afresh how the brassware, jars of oil, camel skins, perfumes, and condiments that he had gathered so busily in the villages and hamlets of the Middle Atlas had been transformed in the space of a year into shining silver and gold coins. No wonder, therefore, that year by year the two partners became more and more impatient. So fearful were they of leaving Abulafia alone for a single minute in the meeting place with his hidden treasures that they brought forward their departure, leaving Tangier before the end of July, and covered the intervening miles in six or seven days’ travel, with short night stops in deserted coves along the Iberian coast. As soon as they reached the Bay of Barcelona, they left the new merchandise in a stable adjoining a tavern belonging to a local Jewish trader by the name of Raphael Benveniste, and paid the sailors’ wages with a cargo of timber that they loaded onto the ships for the return journey. Not only did the partners not entrust their return to the same sailors who had brought them, but for fear of treachery they refused to return by sea at all. Lightened of their merchandise, they would hire a pair of fine horses and ride up a nearby hill. There, in a charming, secluded wood, stood the ancient, partly ruined inn where they would meet Abulafia. Some said that the last Roman emperors, six centuries earlier, had passed the autumn there. In the darkness of its large dank rooms the two partners first tried to sleep, exhausted as they were from the fierceness of the sun, which had scorched their eyes and seared their flesh during the long hours they had spent suspended between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea. But this sleep did not last long, for all too soon their anxiety for Abulafia woke them, dispelled their tiredness, and sent them running to the paths all around, trying to determine by which route he would come. After five or six years, this good-hearted man had taken to being not only a day or two but three or four days late, generally with the pretext of real or imagined fears that had forced him into hiding or made him change his disguise repeatedly so as to evade whoever it was who was secretly planning to harm him, or so he thought.

  So strong had Abulafia’s love of disguise become that he began to deceive not only menacing strangers but even his two anxiously waiting partners. He tricked them not only with his disguises but also with his angle of approach to the meeting place. Even though Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi would comb every possible path to intercept their partner, he would outwit them and slip past without their spotting him, so that it was only in the evening, when they returned, disappointed, to the inn, their souls consumed with fear for his safety and that of the gold and silver he was carrying, that they discovered to their amazement that he had already arrived and had even finished his supper and was now resting from his stratagems, sunk in a deep slumber. But later in the night, unable to restrain himself, Ben Attar would creep into the sleeper’s room, smiling at the discarded disguises scattered around the bed, and without a word would gently lay a hand on the curls that reminded him so much of his late father’s, so that Abulafia, forced to abandon his pretense, would open his smiling eyes and begin to talk.

  Then the stories would start to flow like a gushing spring. Abulafia would begin with a highly colored account of the eventful journey from Toulouse to Barcelona, boasting particularly about how he had succeeded in outwitting the border guards of the little counties and duchies, who imposed a heavy tax on all those who entered or left so as to sustain those who remained. Despite the lateness of the hour, Abu Lutfi would hasten to join his two Jewish partners, asking Abulafia to show him at once the silver and gold he had brought and to tell the story of each coin, its value, where it had come from, and for what it had been traded. Because the Arab had an excellent and precise memory of the merchandise he had entrusted to Abulafia the previous year, he was on his guard when he demanded it back item by item, and it was necessary to concentrate hard to track the fate of each, since most of the goods had not been sold outright but exchanged repeatedly in a succession of strange and complicated deals. To satisfy Abu Lutfi’s inexhaustible curiosity, Abulafia recalled each and every one of the purchasers, identifying them by name, relating where they dwelled, what their business was, how they had haggled, on what they had compromised, and he was even persuaded in the course of his account to describe their facial appearance and their dress. Occasionally he also expatiated upon their beliefs and opinions, and by the time dawn broke, the destiny of the merchandise had become inextricably entangled with the destiny of the world. So it was that the men from Tangier learned of this count or of that duke, born in Gascony, Toulouse, or the Valley of the Loire; who was stubbornly fighting on, and who had wearied of war and sued for peace; which river had flooded the previous winter, or what plague had broken out in the spring; what the monks were thinking, how the nobles were comporting themselves, and whither the Jews were migrating. And the most important thing of all, what had and had not changed in people’s taste and in women’s whims, so that they would know what to seek out and bring with them the following year.

  The next day, when the year that had passed had been fully gone over and the hope for the year to come had been cautiously adumbrated, the delicate moment arrived when Ben Attar had to decide how to apportion the year’s profit among the three partners. To free his mind from all distractions he would dispatch his two partners back to the coast, to the stable adjoining Benveniste’s tavern, so that Abu Lutfi might explain to Abulafia the nature of the new merchandise they had brought with them, justify its choice, and discuss the price it should fetch. Meanwhile Ben Attar himself would bolt the door, cover the window, light two large candles, spread out on the table the booty of coins, gold bars, and precious stones from the Frankish lands, and begin to let his mind roam over the year that had elapsed, so as to scrutinize honestly the share of each of the partners in the labor that had been expended and the profit that had been made. So he sat in that ancient Roman inn, in the depths of a thick wood, tracing first in his imagination the travels of the Arab, wandering among the tribes on the fringes of the Sahara, collecting spices and condiments, animal skins and daggers. The more harshly the sun beat down in the Jew’s imagination and the fiercer the desert nomads appeared, the more his heart went out to the Ishmaelite, and he added more and more coins and jewels to his little pile, which grew accordingly—until Abulafia’s spirit became resentful, and he compelled his senior partner’s thoughts to turn northward, to the wind and the rain and the muddy roads. After allocating him several large gold coins for his travels among the estates and castles of the lovers of the cross in the Touraine, Ben Attar added a few small silver ones on account of Abulafia’s talent for evasion and disguise, his knowledge of languages, and his dexterity. Still not satisfied, in his compassion for his nephew’s wandering alone among gentiles filled with hatred and contempt, he reached out and transferred to Abulafia’s pile two sparkling jewels from that of the Muslim.

  But as the candles on the table burned down, he would realize that he had been so carried away by sympathy for his trusty friends that he had neglected his own share. Surely he should not forget that the source of all this wealth was not only his own money but his initiative, his connections, and his ample warehouses. Even if he himself did not take to the roads, his far-ranging concern protected the other partners from danger. He thought
also of his wives and children, of his many servants and his large houses, which demanded not merely subsistence but luxury and beauty, and as he weighed these considerations against the simplicity of Abu Lutfi’s life and Abulafia’s tragic loneliness, by the light of the guttering flames he carefully diminished the piles he had made for his partners and increased his own. By the time the light had flickered and died, there lay before him on the table three leopard-skin pouches, two of which he concealed in the luggage of his partners, whom in his heart of hearts he still considered to be agents rather than true partners. Only then was his mind at peace, and he unbarred the heavy door, unshuttered the window, and feasted his eyes on the pleasant afternoon light filtering through the trees, composing himself after the struggle that had divided his soul against itself in pursuit of justice.

  Already he could hear the hoofbeats of the horses coming up from the bay. The two men seemed worn out by their discussions, and Abu Lutfi’s face was somewhat sullen because of a slight contempt displayed by Abulafia toward the new merchandise, and his low estimate of the expected prices. But out of a sense of nobility and pride, the Ishmaelite did not examine the contents of the leopard-skin pouch concealed in his baggage, nor did he weigh it against that of Abulafia or Ben Attar. He did not wish to betray any hint of a suspicion of unfairness, which would involve him in calculations that the two Jews would handle so adroitly that he would be unable to keep up. Instead he chose to take his leave forthwith and be on his way, for in any case he and Ben Attar never returned together, so as not to tempt the devil. He fastened his possessions onto his horse, concealed the leopard-skin pouch close to the fleshly pouch that held the tokens of his manhood, and after partaking of the Jewish food that Benveniste’s wife had sent for their supper, he withdrew, took his bearings, prostrated himself in the direction of the holy city of Mecca far away in the desert, cupped his hands to his ears, and delivered himself loudly and clearly of a prayer in praise of God and the Prophet, concluding with an extravagant curse upon anyone who had done or would do him any hurt. He slapped the two Jews heartily on the shoulder, and then, since he disdained to disguise himself even for safety’s sake, he contented himself with wrapping his head in the scarf that his distant forebears had brought from the desert, so that anyone lying in wait would not recognize him and anyone pursuing him would not know whom he was pursuing. As twilight fell, he mounted his horse and galloped off in the direction of Granada, whither he would travel only under cover of night.

  Even though Ben Attar trusted his Ishmaelite partner—indeed, felt affection and friendship toward him—he was pleased as the sound of Abu Lutfi’s horse’s hooves faded into the red of the dying day, for only then did he feel free to leave aside concern with commerce, coin, and news of the world and hear what had happened in the previous year to his beloved kinsman, who had been sundered by a cruel fate from his native land and his family. Although it was not prudent for two strangers, and Jews to boot, to stray too far from the inn in the darkness, the eager pair, after first taking care to conceal their respective leopard-skin pouches, pressed on into the thick of the wood, making for a spot that had become dear to them ever since their first meeting. There, among jutting rocks in the mouth of a cave hollowed out by some ancient earthquake, they lit a fire, not only to ward off any local wolf or inquisitive fox, but also to sprinkle the embers with fragrant herbs, whose smoke curling around them might perfume the joys and sorrows of the year that had passed. Notwithstanding his great curiosity to hear all about the private life of the exile, who had years before abandoned the sun and sea of North Africa in favor of the loneliness and backwardness of Christendom, Ben Attar knew well that his seniority conferred the obligation to speak first. He was duty-bound to give an account of kinsfolk—wives and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and other relatives and friends—whom Abulafia was keen to learn all about precisely because they had betrayed him, and then to slake his nephew’s thirst for his native town, with its white houses and narrow alleys, its olive trees and palms, its vegetable gardens, its golden beach and its pink harbor. And finally to help Abulafia weep again, across the years, for his beautiful young wife, who had drowned herself because of the bewitched, feeble-witted child she had brought into the world, doubling and redoubling by her scandalous death the shame she had brought upon her husband, so that he had been compelled to banish himself.

  And so, in the sweet sadness of remembrance of the past, they spent a wonderful summer’s evening together on the border of the Spanish March, which neatly divided the two great faiths from each other. And although they both felt an occasional flickering anxiety for the fate of the third partner, who was at this moment galloping into the depth of the night with his leopard-skin pouch dangling near his privy parts, they were also pleased that the Muslim was no longer with them, for now they were free to season their conversation with words from the holy tongue, and on the morrow, the eve of the fast of the month of Ab, when Benveniste came up together with a quorum of Jews hired especially for the purpose of praying and wailing for the ruin of the Temple, they would forget the purses full of gold and the wiles of commerce, and taking ash from the fire and smearing it on their foreheads, they would join in the eternal fear and mourning of their people.

  2.

  On the eastern horizon the firmament was sinking somewhat, and the moon had declined to the height of a man. Even though the captain’s sole responsibility was to sail the ship, he had caught Ben Attar’s anxiety about the secret, noncommercial purpose of the journey, and he rose and woke Abu Lutfi, who had been put to sleep by the mere smell of the wine, so that he should stir the ship’s owner, sprawled in a drunken stupor on the deck, to visit the wife who was waiting for him in the stern. Soon dawn would break and put an end to their last night on the open sea, and from now on they would lose their anonymity; on either side of the Seine they would be tracked by suspicious natives, full of the panic of the approaching millennium, who would certainly try to board the alien ship to inspect her and find out what she was about. As Ben Attar slowly rose from the depths of his slumber, he not only felt on his face the cool, urgent breeze of the last hours of the night but also found himself looking into his partner’s anxious eyes as Abu Lutfi shook him roughly. He thought painfully how wrinkled the Ishmaelite’s face had become these last years, perhaps on account of the repudiation emanating from the northern partner.

  Though Ben Attar wondered how he would manage to spread the wings of his desire a second time, he nevertheless hurriedly stood up, swaying at first and leaning on the side for support, staring at the dark water lapping at the stationary ship. The fire was still burning at the mouth of the invisible river, and on the shimmering water could be seen the enchanted silhouette of a gigantic bird. All the Jew’s senses were opening up toward the night, which was filling with new signs, and he was almost driven to kneel, as though he had been infected by the pagan faith of the young slave, who was now standing nearby, awake as ever, with his bells tinkling in the breeze, ready to raise aloft the oil lamp and light the way before the dawn should break.

  Here in the stern of the ship he had great need of the guiding light, for the breadth of the ship’s hindquarters added to the confusion and deepened the darkness. He had to beware not only of the piles of cloth, the bulging sacks of condiments, and the large oil jars roped together like captives, but also of animals, which stood up as he approached, their sad eyes flickering in the darkness. The space that had opened up in the hold of this old guardship after the soldiers’ bunks had been removed had inspired Abu Lutfi to add to the sheep and chickens intended for consumption a pair of very young camels, a male and a female, tethered to each other with flaxen ropes, as a present for Abulafia’s new wife, to soothe her mind and help her feel and smell the essence of the Africa from which her young husband had come. At first Ben Attar had rejected this notion, but eventually he had agreed, not because he believed that the woman really wanted a pair of camels, but from a vague hope that the
strange, rare animals might arouse sympathy among those of high class, who liked to buttress their nobility by means of wonderful things. But are these little camels really capable of surviving the journey? wondered Ben Attar, watching the black slave, who could not refrain from either worshipping or affectionately embracing their delicate little heads. True, Abu Lutfi did not forget to feed them a small bundle of hay every week, to which he occasionally added slices of greenish rancid butter churned before they set sail, but their bloodshot eyes and the incessant trembling of their little humps did not seem to bode well. And when will the end of the journey be? A sigh escaped from Ben Attar’s heart as he descended lower and lower. Would he ever manage to return to his beloved Tangier and embrace his children again?

  Upon entering his second wife’s chamber, Ben Attar tried to waken and expel the rabbi’s young son, who instead of sleeping next to his father in the bow had recently become fond of falling asleep in this very spot, by the dark curtain. But the boy, who spent most of the daylight hours helping the sailors, either climbing up to the crow’s nest to scan the wide expanse of sea or pumping bilgewater, was sleeping so deeply that Ben Attar decided to let him be. He took the lamp from the black slave and ordered him back up on deck. Only when he was certain that the slave’s footsteps were fading into the space overhead did he draw the curtain aside. Behind it was another curtain, so that he had to bend double and almost crawl on all fours to enter his second wife’s bedchamber.