After some frantic preparations, made hastier by the approach of the Days of Awe, which they would spend, if all went well, on the banks of the Rhine, the day of their departure dawned. The two wagons had been standing since the previous evening at the entrance to the Rue de la Harpe, not far from the splashing fountain of Saint Michael, and the two seamen transformed into wagoners were already sleeping inside them. Before dawn, in the last watch of the night, Ben Attar went to the ship to take his leave of Abu Lutfi one last time and to shed certain old worries so as to make room for the new ones mounting within him. For the first time since he had set sail from the port of Tangier in late June he found his ship wrapped in deep slumber, and even the little rope ladder that was normally left hanging over the port side was drawn up on deck, so that no stranger might disturb her rest.
For a while he stood silently on the bridge, hoping that someone would notice him without his having to shout. Then he felt the great weight of tiredness within him, and he felt very jealous at the sight of the peacefulness of the ship and those on board her, as though it were only when her Jewish owner was away that they could find real repose. What is it, he mused in a fit of sharp self-hatred, that forces me to be so stubborn about my partnership? Why can I not let Abulafia disappear among these northern Jews and forget him forever? Why must the repudiation of this little blue-eyed woman trouble my rest and grieve my heart? Surely in agreeing to face a law court in her native town I am admitting her superiority to me, even if I win the case? And in any case, what do we lack in the south that forces us to believe we shall find it here in the north? After all, we shall never meet until the Messiah son of David comes, and when he does come, we shall all be redeemed and become something else. Is it really because of the damage to my business that I am undertaking a further arduous journey? Or do I, as Rabbi Elbaz hinted, have an arrogant longing to submit the double love of my household to yet another test precisely because I am so confident and sure of it?
A splashing sound roused the merchant from his musings. From deep in the hold, the black slave had sensed his master standing helplessly beside his ship and was hurrying to his aid by lowering the ladder. Suddenly Ben Attar felt an urge to touch the black head, which Abu Lutfi sometimes laid in his lap to warm his limbs. What could Jews who sat hidden in their distant schoolhouses know, he thought, smiling to himself, of such a noble black creature as this? Would it not be right for him to take the slave along as a further specimen of merchandise, a kind of miniature replica of Africa itself, to teach those stubborn sages, who were so eager to surround themselves with walls of statutes, how large and varied was the world in which their brethren and kinsfolk roamed? All unawares, for the first time he stroked the youth’s hot black skull. The caress of such an honored hand at once clouded the slave’s eyes and made his head whirl.
And so, as a sudden whim will occur even to a strong, firm man, the decision came into Ben Attar’s mind to include the black scout with his keen senses in the forthcoming expedition to the Rhine. To judge from Abu Lutfi’s sorrow and protests, it was clear that he was being deprived not only of a faithful servant but of a secret beloved. But this knowledge only strengthened Ben Attar’s resolve. If the recruitment of the sea captain was meant to forestall treacherous escape by sea, that of the black boy would forestall his partner’s treacherous escape by land. Thus he could assure himself that on his return from the coming adventure he would at least find everything where it should be. And at dawn the first wife found time to cut up one of her old dresses with a sharp knife and remake it as a green robe for the young traveler, to provide a covering for his black nakedness.
After they had broken their fast and taken their leave of those who were staying behind, the ten passengers in the two wagons slowly crossed from the south to the north bank, and for some two hours they rolled southeastward, until suddenly the Seine seemed to divide before them. Then they abandoned the southern arm and traveled northeast along the Marne, and it was perhaps only then that in the little chamber the witless child fell silent from exhaustion, for since the departure of the travelers she had struggled relentlessly with the gentile nurse who had been left to look after her. Now the two wagons began to follow the roads of the Marne Valley, which were swarming with carts and wayfarers on foot waving to each other amiably in the brilliant noonday sunshine. On land the strangeness of the southern travelers was less noticeable, not only because of Abulafia’s rich experience of the roads but also because Mistress Esther-Minna won all hearts with the purity of her Frankish speech, so they had no hesitation in entering into conversation with pilgrims, peasants, or traders, who, contrary to the gloomy suppositions of those of differing faith, had become more tolerant of each other and hence also of strangers seeking help because of the approaching sanctity of the millennium.
The assistance they chiefly needed concerned the precise delineation of the road, for after running pleasantly and confidently along well-trodden dirt tracks and over fields of wheat stubble, it might suddenly stop short, owing to an unnoticed earlier error, in a farmyard full of squawking geese and a throng of sheep and pigs. It was important to be very particular in selecting the right road, and not to be led astray by paths that looked attractively wide and smooth. They had to halt from time to time at a wayside inn by a stream and announce publicly the name of their first destination, Meaux, and the next one, Chalons, in order to obtain good advice as to the right way. Everyone was quick to offer helpful suggestions and even reasonably priced provender for the horses, or a large loaf of freshly baked bread, or a huge cockerel with a crest, which the black pagan, after tying its yellow feet together, quickly laid beside him on the driver’s seat and addressed reverently all day long. After it was slaughtered, he plucked it and worshipped its naked carcass, which lay before him like a crucified man, oozing blood, before it was handed over to the first wife, who insisted on cooking dinner herself for the ten wayfarers, as though her role of housewife, which had been lulled to sleep by the monotonous charm of the waves, had been wakened now on dry land.
What was amazing was that the second wife, and the new wife too, not only allowed the renascent housewife to take command and do whatever she wished but even refrained from helping her. The pensive inactivity that the two of them manifested at the sight of the first wife’s feverish activity over the smoking fire bound them together with a new if silent comradeship, for they did not have, and never would have, a common language. But while the second wife, whose mind was in thrall to the tiny ocean-bred creature that floated inside her, which sometimes seemed to her to have smuggled itself into her womb not from Ben Attar’s male member but from a breach pierced by the sea in the floor of her cabin in the bowels of the ship, did her best to elude the inquisitive blue look of a woman who was her superior in years and wisdom, Mistress Esther-Minna, whose heart was filling with happiness at the thought of revisiting the house where she had been born and with confidence at the outcome of the renewed tribunal, seemed to allow herself now to repudiate any repudiation, and not only to be friendly with one and all but also to ponder closely and deeply the second wife’s nature, as though the secret of double matrimony were concealed in her alone.
So they advanced steadily, between halts, along the right roads. Meanwhile, the approaching year 4760 lashed them in their imaginations from afar as though it had joined the long whip that Abd el-Shafi had improvised from a rope from the ship, which he waved above the horses’ heads as though he were breathing life into an invisible sail.
Abulafia and Ben Attar had thought at first they would stay in wayside inns because of the chilly nights, but they were surprised to discover that the bright skies of Champagne retained something of the warmth of the day even after dark. When they realized at the first inn where they halted, in Meaux, what a large and smelly throng of Christians was crowded into the sleeping quarters, and how thin the partition between the men and the women was, Ben Attar decided, with his nephew’s concurrence, to try to spend the night under the
vault of heaven. Not far from the inn they drew up the two wagons facing each other and tethered the four horses together; they made a comfortable place for the three women to lie, and they left the rabbi’s son to sleep among them, to interpose his lean body, at least symbolically, between south and north. The three Jewish men found themselves a sleeping place among the wares in the larger wagon, and the two mariner-wagoners slept under it between the large wheels, so that anyone who tried to move the wagon would wake them at once. As for the black pagan, he was ordered to roam around and scare off anyone who might try to disturb their sleep.
And so Mistress Esther-Minna slept close to the southern uncle’s two wives, their breathing accompanying her own and their sighing punctuating her own dreams. Occasionally she was alarmed by the thought that Ben Attar might be unable to curb his desire and might leave the large wagon in the middle of the night and raise the flap of the smaller wagon, to seek love even from one who did not owe it to him. Then she would retreat on her own, leave the triple bed in confusion, and hasten to stand beside the silent horses as though seeking their protection. Very soon the young slave would emerge from the darkness and offer her a hot drink made from bitter, tasty desert herbs, which would restore her peace of mind.
The following night, camping under the stars near an inn called Dormans, after a long but pleasant day’s journeying amid vineyards planted on little hills—they had even been invited by an enthusiastic vintner to view one of the caves in which he stored his wine—she woke again, uncertain whether it was the proximity of two wives belonging to a single man that had disturbed her sleep or the mixture of joy and fear she felt at the impending encounter with her native town and her late husband’s kin, the Kalonymos family. Again she stood beside the horses, wondering where the unseen fire was over which the black servant invisibly brewed the bitter herbal drink that she needed more and more each night.
The next day, when they reached the dark stone walls of Chalons and a fine drizzle began to fall, Ben Attar wanted to enter the town and find them a real roof to put over their heads, but eventually he dropped the idea and turned the two wagons into the shelter of a small wood so they could prepare for the night. But the dripping of the rain on the canvas cover of the wagon gave him no rest, and fetched him out of his bed to see whether the Ishmaelite wagoners required more covering. While these turned out to be fast asleep, he found the woman who was his adversary swathed and trembling, with her infusion, and he made her a shallow bow. Before retreating in obedience to the law regulating contact between the sexes and reinstalling himself in the men’s wagon beside her husband, he could not resist pronouncing a few words of courtesy in his atrophied Hebrew, careful to filter out any hint of protestation or anger about the sorrow and suffering she had caused him for several years now.
In the morning it transpired that they had been mistaken to fear entering the walls of the town, which turned out to be a labyrinthine place but very welcoming to Abulafia and Ben Attar, who could not overcome their commercial instincts and at first light entered the main gate to offer bags of condiments and earthen jars of olive oil for sale. Despite the early hour people pounced on their wares, and they were generously repaid in food and drink. The two partners, whose former cordial partnership had now been revived, could not help regretting the small quantity of goods they had brought with them and the long journey that still lay ahead, although it did cross Ben Attar’s mind that a reduction in his stock would increase its attractiveness and double its value.
After breakfast they made their way haltingly toward the border with Lotharingia, stopping other wayfarers and pronouncing the name Verdun. But those questioned persisted in shaking their heads and talking not about Verdun but about a place called Somme, which would have to be crossed first, before the road to Verdun lay open ahead. It soon became clear that Somme was the name not of a town or a village but of a region of dense forest. The ground under the horses’ hooves, which had been soft and crisscrossed by brooks and streams, became hard and gray and dry. The following day they began to descend and ascend terraces of land like gigantic flights of steps leading to the Lotharingian border, and the soil, which had been chalky, turned tawny. The garments of the local people also changed their form and color, with crimson standing out more and more in the men’s breeches, which became wider, and in the women’s aprons, which became longer. From time to time the travelers alighted from the wagons and walked, not only to relieve the horses but to enjoy the views of the winding River Meuse, until they came to the town of Verdun, which was entered through a gate in its fortifications. Through this gate passed not only traders but lines of fair-haired, blue-eyed Slavic slaves of both sexes, shackled together with light chains. Outside the town, beyond the wooden bridge over the river, stood different guards, gleaming grayly in their coats of mail, fingering the broad, heavy scabbards of their swords, and raising their visors in pleasure and surprise to learn how powerful the yearning of a Jewish woman for the Rhineland was, if she was so successful in infecting both her near and her more remote kin with it.
But despite their sympathy towards the Jews seeking entry to the land of the Moselle and the Rhine, the guards refused to exempt them from paying a tax on the merchandise heaped up on their wagon. When the Jews tried to argue, maintaining that this was not merchandise but merely a few small gifts for the many kinsfolk awaiting them in Worms, the officer of the guard was momentarily confused, but after a moment’s reflection he ruled that the wagon with the gifts, together with the Jewess returning to her homeland, should be taken to a nearby customs house so that an authoritative and responsible answer could be found to the question of the difference between merchandise and gifts.
It was too late for them to retract their absurd sophistry, and so Abulafia too had to leap quickly up on the big wagon, so that his wife would not be left alone with the stubborn Lotharingians. While the wagoner, Abd el-Shafi, whose rank and dignity when at sea no man guessed at, battled with two soldiers who were attempting to wrest the reins roughly from his hands, Ben Attar ordered the other sailor to attach himself to the wagon that was rolling away, to thwart any impure purpose that might lurk behind this demand for clarification. Thus Ben Attar was left alone with his wives and the rabbi and his son before the walls of Verdun, under a soft gray autumn sky, in a lush green meadow traversed by rivulets, cut off by a bend in the river. He averted his gaze from the black slave, who was now compelled by the guards to remove his clothing and present himself for inspection as naked as the day he was born, so that they could verify precisely how far his blackness extended. From behind the town wall, where the convent of Saint Vanne rose with its two rounded towers, there now burst a sound of singing accompanied by the lowing of a mournful beast. The guardsmen did not seem to be surprised by the sound, and at first they seemed to dismiss it with ribald talk. But gradually they too came under the spell of the sonorous resonance of the music on the other side of the wall, and they released the naked youth, who donned his green robe made from the first wife’s dress and, shivering with embarrassment, rejoined the five Jews, whose fears for Abulafia and his wife gnawed at their souls and prevented them from listening to the singing that filled the grayish brightness of the late afternoon.
All except the second wife, who from the moment the first notes sounded had felt her insides turning over. It was as though the entrancing music that curled around her joined her to her only son, whom she had left behind in her parents’ house on that faraway continent. Suddenly her patience snapped and she was unable to resist any longer, and she rose to her feet and begged Ben Attar to take her to the source of the singing, as though there she might find a balm that would soothe her sorrow. Fearing a further dispersal of the company, Ben Attar tried at first to refuse his wife’s strange request and quell her spirit, but the young woman, still transported by the new music, would not relent, but shamelessly kneeled before him, sobbing and trying to kiss his feet, until in confusion he turned to the guards, who were observing them
with faint curiosity, and implored them with broad gestures to silence the strains of song that were driving his wife out of her mind.
But the Lotharingian guards neither could nor would silence the singing, which they were clearly enjoying. Consequently, if Ben Attar wanted to quiet this sudden turbulence in his wife’s soul, he must do as she asked and take her inside the walls of the town. He told the first wife, who was staring wide-eyed at her companion, to resume her place inside the wagon, and he begged the rabbi to join her with his son, while the young slave was instructed to climb up onto the driver’s empty seat and take up the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, so that if anyone tried to harm them during his brief absence he could flick his whip and disappear in an instant down the highway that stood open before them. After explaining to the soldiers with broad gestures and an apologetic smile what he intended to do and what he was leaving behind in their care, he took a firm hold of his wife’s thin arm, and she trembled expectantly as he steered her hesitantly through the gate into the town of Verdun, making straight for the place the music was coming from.
It had been more than sixty days, ever since the beginning of the bold, amazing voyage on the ocean and the river and the additional journey overland, since Ben Attar had been able to escort a lone woman in public, as he had done on occasion on the waterfront in Tangier. He looked compassionately at the young woman walking trippingly at his side or at his heels, who had not noticed, or chose not to, that in her inner commotion her veil had fallen away from her brown face, which was delineated by the simple yet precise hand of a hidden artist. He did not know if it was the sound of the music that had given her the desire and the strength to force him to take her out of the little company, or if it was her longing to be alone with him, not just as a woman wriggling submissively on a narrow bed in total darkness but under the vault of heaven and in a wide open space. Indeed, the husband and his second wife were walking now under a gray sky, between the furrows of a piece of land scattered with tombstones so uniform in form and color that it seemed as though those lying beneath them had all died and been buried together. And there, close to the wall of the convent of Saint Vanne, stood a solitary house, and before its open door were standing, to the amazement of the North African travelers, not a band but merely a pair of musicians, a man and a woman, whose combined voices had made their music loud and strong, especially since they were accompanying themselves on lutes. But as Ben Attar hesitated to advance, the second wife broke away from him, stood tall, and threw herself upon the musicians and into the doorway of the house itself. The darkness inside was crowded with dozens of jars, vials, and flasks full of powders, herbs, and potions, and a physician or apothecary stood there, aged about thirty, bareheaded and with a close-cropped beard, listening to the music that was being played for him. Behind him hung a terracotta image of the suffering savior.
A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 22