A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 5

  3.

  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 w
istful 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.

  While Abulafia told his partners about the mounting fear of the Christians over the approaching millennium, Ben Attar laid his hand lightly on Abu Lutfi’s shoulder as he lay almost in the campfire and reflected on how easy relations between Ishmaelites and Israelites were. Before the thousandth anniversary of the birth of their prophet, the Messiah son of Joseph and the Messiah son of David would have arrived to put every spurious prophet in his proper place. For Abulafia’s safety, Ben Attar advised him to come back across the border between the two great faiths in preparation for the millennium and take a house close to Benveniste’s tavern, where he could also lodge his wretched daughter and her nurse, so as to spend the millennial year in the company of those who counted the years differently. Who knew whether the unusual nature of the child, whom Ben Attar himself had not set eyes upon these seven years, might not arouse evil thoughts in the heart of someone who wished in this holy year to rid the world of all his own demons? Ben Attar couched his thoughts in cautious words so as not to offend his beloved nephew. Although he might have been the first to notice that the face of the baby born to his nephew thirteen years before the impending millennium was not right, he would never have presumed of his own accord to associate her, by so much as a hint, with the demonic world.

  It was her beautiful mother, Abulafia’s late wife, who in her despair had soon called her baby “my she-devil” or “the little witch,” so as to negate the evil thoughts of others by anticipating them. The poor woman thought she would show her family and friends that she was not afraid of her child, and was even prepared to see her strangeness as a kind of comical gift sent by heaven to try her. Not only did she make no attempt to hide the baby with the bulging eyes and the narrow forehead, but she made a point of taking her around, dressed in a shiny silk gown and adorned with colored ribbons, in an effort to include her kinsfolk and companions in the trial that God had sent her way. But it seemed that even if they tried, none could extract affection from a baby who cried in a deep, dull voice that made their hearts shudder. In particular, her grandmother, Abulafia’s mother and Ben Attar’s older sister, did not take to her. The old woman sank into depression at the sight of her demonic granddaughter, whom her daughter-in-law brought to see her every day, to show her how she was growing and developing. Abulafia was soon obliged to intervene so as to prevent his wife from making the poor child into the sole test of the world’s humanity. As he had difficulty in exercising his authority over her and getting her to cease her wanderings, particularly her daily visits to his mother, one morning he locked the
iron-clad door of the house when he went out to Ben Ghiyyat’s little house of study, where he would intone the morning prayers in his beautiful voice before going off to serve in Ben Attar’s shop. At first he felt pangs of remorse for what he had done, then he believed that his wife would manage to escape, and eventually he was so busy that he forgot all about her. But when he returned that evening he found his house locked as he had left it, with the baby asleep in her cradle and his wife’s beautiful face pale and sunken in silent sadness. That night she knelt before him and promised not to disobey him again and not to take the baby to his mother, so long as he swore never again to lock her in alone with the baby, and he acceded to her request.

  Consequently, not a soul suspected her motives when on the next day, before the time of the afternoon prayer, she appeared with her baby at Ben Attar’s shop and asked her husband to watch over the fruit of his loins for a short while, so that she might stroll in the market square and seek fresh amulets from the nomads coming in from the desert, in the hope that they might counteract the spells that were bewitching her daughter. In the meantime, Abulafia went as usual to chant the afternoon and evening prayers in his melodious voice in Ben Ghiyyat’s prayer house, and so Uncle Ben Attar was called upon to watch over the bundle that had been deposited among the bolts of cloth until her mother returned. But she was in no hurry to come back. At first she did indeed walk to the city gate and wander among the stalls of the nomads from the distant Sahara, but she recoiled from the twisted, hairy amulets of the idolaters, not even daring to pick them up and feel them. Instead she was attracted for some reason by an old fishhook made from an elephant’s tail, which she purchased, and she hastened outside the walls of the city to the seashore to try to catch a real fish. At that twilight hour there was not a soul to be seen on the shore except a Muslim fisherman, who was startled by her, for it was not usual on the seashore at Tangier to see a young woman wandering on her own, not to mention a Jewess, especially one holding a fishhook. And so when she addressed him and asked him to show her how to prepare the hook and cast it into the water, he hesitated at first to become involved with her, but because she was very beautiful he could not refuse her, and after learning from him what she learned, she removed her sandals, rolled up her robe, and clambered onto a rock, where she sat down and dropped her hook into the waves of the sea, which occasionally broke violently and splashed her. Her luck was with her, and in the first few minutes she managed to catch a large fish. Flushed with her unexpected success, she refused to leave the shore, which was wrapped in the glow of the setting sun, and the fisherman, who had begun to fear that this would not end well, wondered whether to remain where he was and see that the waves did not wash her away or hurry to carry news of her to whoever by now must surely be looking for her. But when darkness fell and the shadowy figure on the rock became blurred, he was afraid that if anything happened to her he would be held to blame, and so he ran inside the walls to tell one of the Jews about her. Right inside the gate he stumbled on Abulafia and Ben Attar and the Jews from the yeshiva, who were looking for her, but when they hurried to the rock where she was said to be sitting, all they found was the fishhook thrust into a crevice. At first Abulafia turned on the fisherman, and then he demanded that he be bound and forced to confess the truth, but when at high tide the sea gave up his wife’s body, with her hands and feet tied with the colored ribbons she had used to adorn her daughter’s clothing, all knew at once that she had taken her own life and that no man’s hand had touched her for evil.