A Journey to the End of the Millennium

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Then it was, and only then, without any warning and still clutching his goblet that the rabbi began to speak in hope that the pink wine slipping down their throats would soften the thoughts of the Jews of Villa Le Juif and even stretch them to new and hitherto unknown horizons. For if the rabbi were to speak only in simple terms, using well-known and accepted notions, he need not multiply words but would merely state directly, Frankish Jews, distant and strange, why are you so amazed? Why are you so alarmed? With all due respect, read in the rolled Scripture to whose holiness we are all in thrall and you will discover that the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each had two, three, or even four wives. Continue reading, and here is Elkanah with his two wives, and this is before we reach the kings with their numerous wives, and who was as great as Solomon? But if you object that these ancients were greater and mightier men than we, and able to discern between good and evil, then open the book of Deuteronomy, and there, not long before the end of the book, you will find the verse “If a man have two wives …” Any man. Everyman. Not a patriarch, a hero, a king, or an ancient.

  While Abulafia was endeavoring to translate this last sentence, the rabbi deftly drained his goblet, not so that he could put it down but so as to fill it again with the same blushing wine and continue without undue delay, in order not to give rise to any suspicion that he was evading the continuation of the quoted verse, “one beloved, and another hated,” for all the confusion and terror that echoed in these words, to which he would come in due course. In the meantime he would merely express his anger that anyone should be so brazen, and in a faraway town like Paris at that, as to pass upon fellow Jews a verdict of repudiation and dissociation, which implied not only pride but ignorance, casting dishonor on men and women of old.

  From the corner of his eye, Rabbi Elbaz now observed the anxiety in Ben Attar’s face receding somewhat, and a short row of white teeth gleaming in the smile of a merchant who finally sees the hope of securing some return for his outlay. But was Ben Attar nothing more than a merchant? The rabbi suddenly put this fresh question to himself, and on the spur of the moment he repeated it out loud, enthralling his audience. No, he replied decisively to his own question, Ben Attar had not come from so far away simply to demand satisfaction for loss of business. Nor would it have entered the rabbi’s own head to undertake such a long and terrible journey for the sake of a mere merchant’s dispute. If this man had just been motivated by love of money and the partnership, would it have occurred to him to undertake such a difficult and hazardous journey in pursuit of a defaulting partner, when he could easily have replaced him, for the same cost, with three new partners who would spread the news of the North African wares not only among the Franks and Burgundians but even among the Flemings and Saxons? No, Rabbi Elbaz saw Ben Attar not as a merchant but simply as a man disguised as a merchant. During the long days and nights at sea, he had not ceased to study this wonderful man, but only now, in Villa Le Juif, had he discovered the nub of his being: he was a loving man, a philosopher and sage of love, who had come from far away to declare publicly that it is possible to have two wives and to love them equally.

  While Abulafia was translating the last sentence, he glanced toward his two aunts, and he was not the only one to do so. Everyone turned their gaze toward the shadowy figures of the two women, one of whom was still standing. Ben Attar, who had been very confused by the rabbi’s last words, touched the standing woman on the arm to tell her to return to her place and sit down. But she remained standing, and although all looks were frozen for a moment on her disobedient refusal, she seemed unable to abandon the sight of the rabbi’s small, lithe body as he paced up and down with short steps before the large torch, unable to content herself with his deep voice alone, which was now beginning to deal with Mistress Esther-Minna’s last words.

  For the second wife, the rabbi went on to declare confidently, always exists. If she does not exist in reality, she exists in the imagination. Therefore no rabbinical edict is able to eradicate her. But because she exists only in the man’s imagination, she is good, fair, submissive, wise, and pleasant, according to his fancy, and however hard his only real wife tries, she can never truly rival the imaginary one, and therefore she will always know anger and disappointment. However, when the second wife is not imaginary but exists in flesh and blood, the first wife can measure herself against her, and outdo her, and sometimes she can make her peace with her and, if she wishes, even love her.

  A faint, mocking smile now tightened Abulafia’s wife’s face. Her blue eyes never ceased earnestly scrutinizing the face of the interpreter, her young husband, to discover whether he was merely a passive translator or a secret accomplice to the crime. But the rabbi was not alarmed by this clever woman’s smile. On the contrary, taking a small, confidential step toward her, he smiled straight into her blushing face, which suddenly looked childlike because of a stray golden lock that had escaped from her snood, and obdurately repeated his last words: Yes, even love her. For only the second wife is able to alleviate the man’s infinite, tormenting desire and transform it from reproof into pleasure.

  But now the faithful interpreter, suddenly alarmed, stretched his arms out desperately toward the speaker, whose ornate Arabic had begun to carry him away. Rabbi Elbaz stopped, gazing at Mistress Esther-Minna, whose tempestuous emotions reddened her face and made her more and more attractive. Out of the corner of his eye he could glimpse a strange look on the face of his son, who like everybody else was straining toward him so as not to miss a single word he was saying. Suddenly Elbaz was sorry that his son could hear and understand his words. If he were to remain faithful to the oath he had sworn that morning on the deck of the ship, to defend to the utmost the delicate double marriage that had sailed at his side for nearly sixty days at sea, he would have to change languages and ask the two disqualified scribes, who at present were unemployed, to come forward, take the place of the desperate interpreter, and translate straight from the holy tongue into the local language. For the rabbi felt that if he couched his speech in the beloved, forgotten ancient tongue from now on, he would not merely double his own authority in the mind of the impassioned little crowd, but he would also be able, like Mistress Esther-Minna, to make a confession that his son would not be able to understand.

  Therefore, as the Jews assembled in the winery at Villa Le Juif gradually closed in around the parties to the suit, the rabbi from Seville began his confession about himself and his late wife, as though his life were not unique and accidental but universal and exemplary, able to shed light on other lives as well. By the magical light of the moon, which slowly embraced his confession, it became clear to his hearers that if the dead wife of the Andalusian rabbi were to rise from her grave in Seville to proclaim one thing alone to the world, she would complain because he had never taken a second wife—not only so that after her death her orphaned son would have another mother, but so that sufferings inflicted upon her by her husband would be alleviated, because he assumed the solemn responsibilities of a husband so religiously that he had begun to cleave to her as one flesh assiduously enough to be in danger of transforming himself, heaven forbid, into a female. When a wife does not have to face her husband alone and he has to pass continually from one to the other, he has no alternative but to renew his original manly nature repeatedly, since no two women are alike.

  The rabbi now halted his Hebrew speech, which had poured wildly from his mouth as though the antiquity of the language absolved his words of any responsibility as to content. His two interpreters, the scribes, contended with each other about whether what had been heard was what had been said, and whether what had been said was what had been meant, and whether what had been meant could be translated. While they were deliberating on how best to proceed in dual responsibility along the treacherous path of translation, one with a word and the other with a sentence, one with a simile and the other with a parable, the rabbi from Seville could sense, if only from the flashing eyes of the merchant from
the Land of Israel, that there was some hope the case might be decided this evening in Ben Attar’s favor. The rabbi did not yet know why or how he would manage this, but he was suddenly filled with strength and confidence, and the beloved tongue pounded within him as though it were seeking to transform a speech into a new song. When the interpreters signaled to him that they were ready, he addressed these simple, direct words to the brother and sister, who understood every word:

  We have not crossed the mighty ocean to enrage your spirit, nor have we any thought of urging you too to double or multiply your wives. If we have judged aright by appearances, the land in which you dwell is bleak, with such small houses and such meager produce, and the Christians who surround you inflict fear upon you beyond your control, so it is small wonder that you lack the power that flowers in a thousand roses in the southern lands basking in the light of the wise sun. But just as we refrain from judging you from our strength, so too you have no right to judge us from your weakness. Therefore, let each remain true to himself and faithful to his own nature: restore the old partnership and do not damage it further.

  3.

  In Worms, on the River Rhine, Rabbi Levitas and his wife had been in the habit of encouraging their children, Esther-Minna and Yehiel, first to seek in every setback that afflicted them their own guilt, and only then to scrutinize the actions of others. This training had become second nature to them, to the point that it sometimes seemed that the two children took a special pleasure in blaming themselves, even if secretly each of them examined the other and took care not to assume more blame than the other admitted. So too this night, when Mistress Abulafia began to torment herself for the foolishness and irresponsibility with which she had allowed matters to develop at Villa Le Juif, she still continued to inspect sternly, despite the darkness, every line on her brother’s face, to see whether he appreciated the extent of the blame that he himself must accept. Even though in fact Master Levitas had said nothing of substance throughout the trial, but had only, like a choirmaster, given signs to others, indicating when they were to speak, when to refrain from speaking, and when to translate, there was no doubt that the original idea of setting up a tribunal at Villa Le Juif had been his. True, he could claim that if his sister had not interfered between him and the Andalusian rabbi and so inexplicably granted that strange permission to alter the constitution of the court, they might have been preserved from defeat. But Master Levitas, who now sat in darkness in a corner of the wagon returning to Paris, did not want to claim, even in his heart, anything in his own favor and to the discredit of his sister, but only to take more and more blame upon himself, as he had been brought up to do, like a child who piles food he does not like onto his plate just to please his mother.

  It was not only a desire for blame that made him act thus, but also a suspicion that even if his original idea had been carried out and the panel of judges had consisted of the three scribes brought from Chartres, it was not certain that the Andalusian rabbi would have failed to confound them too. If there was one thing that Mistress Esther-Minna and her brother had agreed on that night, it was that the rabbi whom Ben Attar had brought from Seville, despite his childlike mien and threadbare gown, had been more cunning and shrewder than they had supposed, both in what he had said and in what he had left unsaid. How else to explain the treachery of the women, who had preferred Ben Attar to Abulafia and who had for some reason seemed smilingly content when judgment was given against the latter?

  But could what had been pronounced there really be called a judgment? Or was another term more appropriate? Was it merely an emotional and forceful appeal by goodhearted folk to the nephew and his wife to renew the old family partnership with the uncle, or was there lurking behind the words something deep and daring, according to which double matrimony was not just a colorful private fact of faraway Jews but a practice that might deserve renewed interest? In that cool hour of the evening, heavily perfumed with the smell of the wine that had emerged from a second cask, there was scope to interpret the judgment, if indeed it could be called a judgment, in a lenient or a restrictive fashion. It was not only the astuteness of the rabbi from Seville that had frustrated the hopes of the pair from Paris, but also the intervention of the Radhanite courier, for as soon as the rabbi had concluded his discourse, and before the translation had begun, this heavily built man had risen to his feet and applauded enthusiastically, thus prejudicing the judgment by sympathy for the plaintiff.

  By means of this sympathy, which combined with the compassion felt by the simple crowd of wine-workers for the sturdy, dusky North African merchant who had condescended to bring his two wives with him all that distance, the courier from the Land of Israel had been able to free these people somewhat from their feelings of respect and obligation to the proprietor of the winery and the Levitas family, and instead of making do with surreptitiously or unintentionally touching the smooth silken robes of the Moroccan women, they had now been made to confront human nature openly. But what was his motive? Was it possible that this merchant too had, somewhere on his long route between the Orient and Europe, a secret second wife to relieve the tedium and loneliness of his travels? Or perhaps he was motivated by a desire for revenge against Master Levitas on account of the low price the latter had offered for the Indian pearls he had brought with him from afar?

  That night, after the Jews of Villa Le Juif had dispersed to their homes and the two sides in the lawsuit were on their way back to Paris, the proprietor of the winery would not leave his sickly-faced wife alone, but in their large bed, surrounded by little bottles of wine for tasting, he asked her again for an explanation of her “betrayal.” How had she come to side with a strange Jew against his friends from Paris? Had she really agreed with the rabbi from Andalus? he asked, holding her shoulders roughly, either in anger or desire. If so, if that was how it was, he threatened in jest, he might take a second wife himself. And why not, come to that? thought the woman, who was weary of satisfying her husband’s desires, aroused as he was beyond his real powers by the sight of the women stamping grapes in his yard. But she did not dare admit to his face that she longed for the tranquillity of those two southern women, one seated and the other standing, with their colorful robes seemingly frozen in motion. Weary and irritable, she mumbled a confused excuse, which seemed to imply that she had been spellbound by the courier from the Land of Israel with his bushy black beard into supporting the repudiated twice-wed plaintiff.

  The three young women who stamped grapes also talked of the spell cast by the man from the Land of Israel, but they knew only too well that behind the “spell” were his warm eyes and the masculine smell of his big strong body, which drew you to put your confidence in him and obey his voice, perhaps out of a strange feeling that anyone who went to such lengths to protect the husband of two wives would also feel strong enough to defend a third. But since they were unable to admit this even to each other, let alone to the curious men of the winery, who demanded an explanation for a verdict that harmed the proprietor and his friend, they tried to justify what had happened by saying that their minds had been addled by the muddle of different languages.

  Even the scribe, who was being driven with his two colleagues back to the small estate of Chartres in an old cart, tried, in the silence of the desolate landscape of the Île de France, which was suddenly filled with animated exchanges between hungry jackals and clever foxes, to explain to himself, before explaining to the others, how and why he had changed his mind. He had known perfectly well what verdict the people who had brought him to Villa Le Juif expected from him, and what fee he had been promised for his troubles, though that had vanished into thin air because of his disgraceful betrayal. Yet miraculous though it might seem, even though he knew he had let the others down, and himself too, he felt not dejected but excited, as though another authority, true or imagined, coming from the oriental merchant, had acquired a foothold within him and in an instant toppled old loyalties. But he was afraid to admit this to his two c
olleagues lest they began to repudiate him, as Mistress Esther-Minna had repudiated Ben Attar. And so, as the decrepit cart that the proprietor had given them made its way amid grim mist-swathed meadows and ruined castles and the gentile driver talked to his horse to see if it remembered the way, the judge who had erred tried to excuse himself to his fellows and embarked on a gentle discourse full of longing for men of yore and their wives and numerous progeny, trying by doing so to change the distance Ben Attar had covered into a distance of time rather than space, so as to place him among the giants of Scripture.

  Only the old widowed vintner was not asked to explain what she had done. Yet she, in her heart of hearts, had been convinced that the whole assembly secretly wanted the partnership between north and south to be restored. So excited and pleased was she by what had taken place that she decided to spend the night in the dark winery instead of returning to her tiny hovel. Removing the fox skins from the casks, she improvised a soft bed for herself on the little dais. There, like someone who has acquired proprietary rights, she lay down to sleep, inhaling the remains of the scents of the parties to the case, the judges and the interpreters, and wishing that her late husband had left her a second wife, so that they could lie side by side and warm themselves with shared memories. She closed her eyes and relit in her mind’s eye the great torch that had been planted in front of the dais, and passed in review face after face, translation after homily, until her eyes were caught by the large eyes of the interpreter Abulafia.