The Convert

  By this time most of the women and children have fled through the small emergency exit and reached the rampart, where they run into more soldiers. Inside the synagogue, a few of the strongest men have grabbed whatever came to hand and, shoulder to shoulder, are trying to force open the smouldering doors. After a while, the flames burn their way inside. A moment later, the doors collapse. A few men leap outside, right onto the swords and lances waiting for them. At the sound of their dying groans, the other villagers in the synagogue back up as far from the entrance as they can; the rear exit has now been blocked from the outside. Someone smashes it open with the base of a heavy candelabrum, and they rush out into the night through the upper alleyway. A few foot soldiers, aided by peasants who have also forced their way into the village, soon overtake the fugitives and stab them to death.

  Now the bloodshed begins in earnest – a massacre that continues till morning. A wailing child has its head dashed against a wall; the blood splashes onto the killer’s coat. Women are raped at knifepoint. Men who fight are beaten down with clubs and then kicked and skewered. One large villager, Roger de la Loge, normally so good-natured, hurls himself at a few of the murderers, taking down three. A dozen men swoop down, grab him and put his eyes out; another plunges his dagger straight into Roger’s throat. Spewing blood, he tries to stand up again, howls something incomprehensible, and falls at their feet. They crush his head with a large stone.

  Deus lo volt! More and more screaming villagers run out of their hiding places, trying to reach the gate and escape. They are followed by a howling mob, which strikes them down. The soldiers seize the women, and the act of rape drives them into a frenzy. The streets are filled with a rising wave of shrieks, whimpers and screams. Bloodthirst becomes lust and lust becomes ecstasy. They stab, hack, pound and kick. Human gore runs down the paving stones where in a different season the snails mate; the moon is high and silent over the valley, and the Milky Way sparkles in eternal enchantment.

  Alarmed by the women’s shrieks, Yaakov runs away from the synagogue, shouts for his mother, hears her respond from somewhere near the Grande Rue, and hurries to her side. In the darkness, Hamoutal flees with her infant and the two older children for the rocky slope, where she knows of a cave hidden in the shrubbery. She is stopped by two armoured men with torches.

  Hey, look at this, a blonde bitch crawling out of the Jew trap, one of them says. What are you doing here? You look like a Christian woman.

  He draws his dagger. Hamoutal presses her infant to her chest, stands in front of her other two children, and begs, Let them live, let us live. She holds out her hands, palm to palm, and before she knows it she’s reciting a Christian prayer in the langue d’oïl, the language of the north, the language of her childhood.

  The man looks at her in sour suspicion. Get out of my sight, he says, but the two whelps stay here, just in case I change my mind. What’s your name, anyway, darling? he adds with a sneer.

  Without hesitation, she tells him her Christian name.

  Oho, Adelaïs. And who’s your husband?

  He’s back there … somewhere, she stutters, waving her arm at the far end of the village.

  The man’s sneer turns even meaner.

  Oh yeah? And the children? Are those dark Hebrews yours? That can’t be right. Give us their names, quick.

  She chokes up, too flustered to think of any names but their real, Jewish ones. Only after she speaks does she realise she has betrayed them; she bursts into tears, weeping, Oh Yaakov, oh Yaakov, my boy, stay with me.

  What’s this now? the bumpkin snaps, as all around them people are dying and keening in agony. A Christian woman trying to save Jew-spawn? Get out of here, fast, or I’ll show you a thing or two.

  He drags the children off into the dark. They are crying their hearts out, calling for their mother, who is still clasping her baby to her chest. By this time, a figure from the darkness behind her has wrapped her tightly in his sniggering grip. She feels him rubbing his pelvis against her rear until he spasms, lets go, spurts onto the stones and walks away.

  David is one of the last to rush out of the synagogue, where he was trying to defend the villagers still trapped there. Drawn by the sound of his screaming children, he runs in blind panic after the men who are dragging them off. He dashes straight into a sword held out by an enormous brute, who pulls it from his chest, laughing, and then deals the death blow. David falls to the ground as his wife races towards the cave, where she hopes to hide her baby before going back for the other two children. But the way is blocked. She turns her attention to her infant, taking him to her breast to calm him down.

  By the time the pandemonium ends, dawn is near. The village is strewn with corpses, the synagogue is still smouldering, the whole Jewish quarter is in shambles, and dogs are wandering among the mutilated bodies piled pell-mell. Only then does Hamoutal awake from her panicky trance. Her heart pounding, she thinks of her children and husband and sets off in search of them, her sleeping baby swaddled tight in her long shawl. She goes back down the road through the Petit Portalet, sees corpses everywhere, runs through the narrow streets in confusion, calls out to her children, discovers her maimed dead husband among the other bodies. She falls to her knees and wails like a woman possessed. In the quiet morning, it sounds like an animal howl. Nothing and no one is moving in the village. The gate of the Portail Meunier has been ripped half off its hinges and hangs suspended in the morning light. All the village gates are wide open. Down on the plateau, horses are whinnying. The sun pops up over the hill, casting a stark light on the night’s horrors.

  Raymond of Toulouse, who has passed a fitful night in his richly decorated tent a kilometre and a half down the left bank of the river, rides out of his camp. He spots some of the smouldering ruins in the village and asks his lieutenants what happened there. When he hears there was fighting in the night, he demands an explanation. All he gets are a few muddled reports of villagers trying to murder the sleeping knights, who responded in self-defence, Your Merciful Lordship.

  The army breaks camp, a trumpet sounds, the improvised tents are taken down again. The horsemen who spent the night in the village come out of the houses, make their way down the streets, and leave the village through the Grande Porte. Down on the plateau, the countless soldiers who slept in the open are waking. From all around them comes the cry to join the march: Toulouse! Toulouse!

  Dogs bark, the surviving sheep bleat, the children bawl with them, oxen low, carts squeak into motion. The knights inspect the ranks of foot soldiers, issuing orders. Then the whole procession sets off towards what is now Grand Vallat, headed for La Loge and further east. Raymond of Toulouse, after saying a heartfelt morning prayer with Adhémar of Le Puy, kneels, receives a blessing and rides manfully at the head of his troops towards the highlands of the Plateau d’Albion. On top of the cliff far above the Chapelle Saint-André, the exhausted Rabbi Joshuah Obadiah is weeping. He struggles to his feet, limps past the northern tower, notices the Petit Portalet half demolished down on the far side of the village, descends, finds Hamoutal there frantic with sobbing, and sees the ruined, burned-out synagogue. By the Romanesque arch to the left of the stairs lies the dead son of the chief rabbi of Narbonne in a patch of black-clotted blood.

  6

  I too see the sun come up over the horizon, sudden and stark. I’ve been writing all night; I’m tired. I open the shutters and window in my study, slowly, so as not to wake my sleeping wife. Below me are the village’s lower streets, and beyond them the valley of the Nesque, the lavender fields and the tall grass mingled with wild spelt – swaying heads of grain by the winding river. I hear the first swallows chirp.

  In my mind’s eye, I see old Rabbi Obadiah, who fled into the hills with two other men that night to hide the Torah scrolls, the contents of the genizah and the synagogue’s gold among the rocks. Having stumbled back now, broken, feeling his way like a blind man among the dead, he has found the young rabbi’s blonde wife stretched out sobbing over her
dead husband. The smell of blood is unbearable; all around them are bodies slashed open, a wild dog is gobbling down brains leaking out of a skull. A metre away, the infant lies on the paving stones crying. The old rabbi, weeping in silence, lays his hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  The valley echoes with the blast of horns and the noise of horses and men breaking camp. As day comes, the soldiers sink into devout prayer with hung-over heads, thanking God for the great mission with which He has entrusted them. Obadiah puts his arm around the broken woman, helps her to her feet, and guides her to his house, where the front door has been kicked down. There he finds his own wife in the cellar, scared half to death and shivering. Her face is scratched and her clothes singed.

  I amble down the narrow street to the bakery for bread and croissants. It’s late August, and the valley is at its most idyllic. Above the ruins of the Chapelle Saint-André on the east rim, the sky is deep purple and spotless, cool and pure. Over the twisting riverbed lies a white snake of rising mist. Everything is deserted and peaceful; it’s like waking from a nightmare.

  The baker sees the circles under my eyes.

  You had a little fête last night, monsieur? he asks with a twinkle in his eye.

  A fête, I mumble. Yes, that’s right. A fête.

  Back at home I brew a pot of strong coffee and go outside to sit in the sun on the terrace. Swarms of bees are buzzing around the grapevines. Above the Plateau d’Albion, where France’s nuclear arsenal was kept underground until about twenty years ago, two fighter jets seem to rip the sky open. They leave a thundering echo behind, as if the air is thicker than usual for minutes afterwards. Then the silence returns. A few sheep bells ring near Le Viguier.

  A door slams. Then it’s quiet again.

  After breakfast, I climb the rocky slope. The old path to the former site of the Jewish quarter is still there.

  Ten metres up the path, I turn left, climbing seven crumbling stairs half concealed under dry grass. To the left, I see the large Romanesque arch of a basement. The stairs lead to a grassy field where I’ve spent many a quiet summer hour happily reading in the warm breeze. I’ve known for years about the well there, covered with a sheet of corrugated metal and a few heavy boards. I look up into the immaculate blue sky; a few crows fly away over the tops of the rocks with loud caws. As if in a dream, I head for the ruins of the Petit Portalet. From there, I take the path up to the level of the tower.

  The path is steep, and before you know it your view extends all the way to the Montagne de Lure, with your back against one of the many slopes of Mont Ventoux.

  The météo predicts a heat wave. The postman is driving his small yellow car down the road under the lime trees towards the gorge. I’m nearing the large boulder that once tore free of the rocky slope and still weighs down on the ruined wall, in a heavy, shaky balance of its own, a mighty weight with shallow caves behind it.

  So where did Obadiah hide the synagogue’s treasures?

  Not a living soul can say, but the stories are still told.

  Obadiah took his secret with him to his grave.

  After the crusaders rode north-east towards Digne and their whole ragtag band of followers disappeared into the distance, he tried to take care of the distraught Hamoutal. He couldn’t do much. The whole village was suffering – even the Christians, who hadn’t been massacred. All the livestock had been slaughtered; barns, sheds and cellars had been plundered; some stables had been knocked down for the wooden beams. No grain left, no meat left, their small flocks almost wiped out, the freshly filled casks of new wine drained. It is autumn, all their stockpiles are gone, and famine lies ahead.

  Obadiah doesn’t know what to do; he and his wife have no way of providing for the chief rabbi’s daughter-in-law in a manner suitable to her station. He sends a courier to the Todros family in Narbonne with the terrible news of their son’s death and the kidnapping of their grandchildren. A week later the courier returns: Hamoutal cannot go to Narbonne. It would be far too dangerous under the circumstances.

  The grieving woman spends weeks in a room hung with black sheets, sitting on the bare ground. She wears only a coarse garment of sackcloth, and is uncertain how Jewish tradition permits a high-born woman to express her grief. She prays and mutters to herself the whole time; twice a day she is served a simple meal of watery soup and a hunk of bread. She slides her bedpan outside her door before shutting it and drawing the heavy bolt again. Obadiah’s wife sometimes hears her moving furniture. Opening the primitive window at night. Talking to herself. After weeks of this, the stench in the room is intolerable. She is absolved of the duty to mourn any longer. She comes out of her room, a spectre with burning eyes, emaciated and emptied, lost in the madness of her solitude.

  The rabbi and his wife recoil at the sight. Water is heated for her. Herbs over the fire. Their sharp scent. The howling of wolves in the forests near Saint-Jean. The silence. She blinks her eyes in the brightness of the unrelenting light over the forsaken highlands. The muted sounds of the village. Her child, who has been cared for by the old midwife, is laid in her arms. Life returns to her, but she shows almost no sign of recognition.

  By messenger, Richard Todros asks Joshuah Obadiah to write a letter of recommendation for Hamoutal and to send her away – eastwards, discreetly, and in any case not back to France. Narbonne is full of Norman knights on their way to Sicily and southern Spain; the Reconquista is flaring up again.

  Obadiah writes the letter.

  Time passes as I sit by the large, loose rock that was just above the synagogue. The silence is endless. There is no time, only space. I watch the village waking up; a man in blue shorts stretches on his terrace and looks out over the valley. A tractor rides down a narrow country road, slanting into the sunlight, on the way to a lavender field; I see it but can’t hear it. The bakery’s bell jingles; someone says bonne journée. A dog barks; a cock crows; a woman’s voice cries, Mathieu!

  I climb back down, passing the ruin, where I stop again in the tall grass by the well. A strange, deep peace has come over me. My wakeful night has left me in a slight trance. I’m tempted to lie down beside my sleeping wife, but I’m too awake, too alert. I sit down at my small writing desk and look up. A frame on the wall straight in front of me holds a copy of a faded Hebrew manuscript almost a thousand years old. There are holes in it. It possesses a sad, unearthly beauty.

  7

  MNYW 1096

  ‘To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice’ (Prov. 21:3). And further: ‘Ye shall love the stranger, for strangers were ye in the land of Egypt’ (Deut. 10:19). Repose and quietude, an abundance of peaceful tidings, knowledge, wisdom and bounteous purity from the Creator of Spirits to all those who tread in faultless paths; a good name for those who walk in perfection; light and happiness to make glad the souls; the granting of inheritances to all, through a third of the dust of the earth; and the building up of ruins, the foundation of spirits and the uniting of the inscribed happinesses. To our people, the nobles of our nation, the mighty ones of our masses, the congregation of the sons of Israel who reside in all their places of settlement, benefactors of nations, the tamarisk of the hosts of Israel, supporters of those in despair, offerers of benefits with goodly countenance, who ‘lift up their bodies to the smiters and their cheeks to them who make bald’, to those ‘who have said to their soul, “Bow down that we may pass over”’ (Isaiah 51:23). All this has come upon them, yet they did not forget the Name of their Holy One, the Lord of Israel. May He lift up His ensign to the peoples, may He gather in our dispersed ones and bring together our scattered ones to His holy habitation, and may He plant us upon the mountain of our inheritance, as it is written, ‘For in My holy mountain, saith the Lord GOD, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them, serve Me in the land’ (Ezek. 20:40). From us, the congregation of MNYW, the ‘young of the flock’ (Jer. 49:20), the oppressed and broken, who reside amidst d[ogs] until we have been left, a few from many, ‘as a beacon upon
the top of a mountain, and as an ensign upon the hillock’ (Isaiah 30:17), ‘to the heat by day and the frost by night’ (Jer. 36:30), henceforth may the Name of the Lord be blessed forever and unto all eternity. Yet despite the badness of our oppression and the might of our distress, we offer pleadings, entreating the countenance of our King to hasten the tidings of gladness, to bind together our exiles and gather our dispersions together in the ‘Throne of glory on high from the beginning’ (Jer. 17:12), as it is written, ‘And He will set up an ensign for the nations, and will assemble the dispersed of Israel’ (Isaiah 11:12).

  We hereby inform our honourable lords of the matter of this widow the proselytess, whose husband was R. David, his soul rest in peace, who was a member of the family of R. Todros in Narbonne, his memory be for a blessing. He came here six years ago to the day because of the matter of his wife, this proselyte, who had been a Christian and entered the Covenant of Holiness; she went forth from the house of her father, from great wealth and a distant land, and came on behalf of the Lord, and to take refuge under the wings of the Shekinah. She left her brothers and the great ones of her family, and was living in Narbonne; and R. David, the deceased person just mentioned, married her and was with her more than six months, when he heard that they were seeking her. So he fled to our place, until the Holy One decreed this persecution upon us, righteous is He and righteous […] The husband was killed in the synagogue and two of her children were taken captive – a boy named Yaakov and a girl named Justa, she being three years old, and all they owned was plundered. The widow remained alive, weeping and crying because of her great degradation and poverty, there being no one to care for her; and there also remained alive unto her a son of […] months. Thus was she left, in thirst and nakedness, lacking all provisions, and with no funds to pay for her daily needs and those of her orphaned son. So we have sought to turn to our lords, to inform them of her oppressed state and her sorrow. And now, O our lords, lift up your eyes to heaven and take pity upon her poverty, her great degradation and her children who have been taken captive, and with regard to her husband who was slain. ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious’ (Amos 5:15) so that she may redeem them. So accept her with friendly countenance and treat her in the same goodly measure as you do every wayfarer and passer-by and you shall merit for yourselves life in the world to come, as it is said, ‘Call and the Lord will answer, beseech and He will say, “Here am I”’ (Isaiah 58:9). May the Holy One, blessed be He, answer all your requests […] as it is said, ‘If I do not open unto you the windows of heaven and pour out upon you a blessing, more than sufficiency’ (Malachi 3:10) […] The Lord God has spoken. He in his mercifulness will double your reward and will surely lead you in joy to the place of His glory; [… Blessed] is the Lord in His lovingkindness. Amen, Selah. Joshuah b. Obadiah, peace be with him.