A Journey to the End of the Millennium

by A. B. Yehoshua

  The two musicians seemed to be pleased at the arrival of a new and exotic listener, and they played even louder in her honor, but the proprietor, noticing the fine shadow of a woman’s robe falling across the square of light at the entrance to his house, hurriedly gestured to them to stop playing and came out to see who was sharing the fee he had just been given for his medical attention to the two musicians, who had first listened to his advice and swallowed his potions and only afterward announced that they were penniless. He stared at the two strangers, who might be seeking healing for themselves. Then he inclined his head and introduced himself, first in Teutonic, then in Frankish, and finally in Latin. Even though he could see that they shared no common language, he persisted, extracting with gentle, flowery gestures not only the names and surnames of his unexpected visitors but also the names of the places they had visited during their astonishing journey from the continent of Africa to their new destination.

  Neither Ben Attar nor his second wife, who now opened her narrow amber eyes wide, could tell whether this healer of Verdun, who presented himself, either humorously or seriously, as Karl-Otto the First, could really grasp the vast distances they had traversed or the antiquity of their lineage. But of one thing they were certain, and that was the power of the attraction they had for this crop-bearded, black-clad physician. With an impatient gesture he now dismissed the two musicians and their musical tribute so that he could pay attention to the two strangers, whom he was eager to invite into his home, even if they were not patients in need of his healing potions.

  Ben Attar, whose heart was troubled with anxious care for those remaining outside the wall, was firmly resolved to refuse the uncalled-for invitation, but the second wife, sad for the music she had lost, was drawn as though by magic into the stranger’s house. With the confidence derived from her new solitary status, she did not consult her husband but was swept into the musty darkness, until she almost touched the large, tormented image of the Son of God, whose bloodshot eyes stared with equanimity at all the drugs and simples in the vials and flasks all around. Ben Attar was obliged to snatch hold of his wayward wife’s thin arm, which had become even thinner lately, to prevent her from floating on through the door that the physician was eagerly opening before her and into an even darker inner room, which was apparently the consulting room itself. In it a large taper burned near a bed covered in a yellowish woolen coverlet, at the foot of which some river pebbles were whitening in a basin that was empty of water, while on a low dresser were placed a knife, a saw, and a pair of forceps made of the same polished gray iron as the little crosses hanging in every corner, so that the physician could pray while he worked and beg for forgiveness and mercy for the shortcomings of his skill and the weakness of his mind.

  Even after the North African had managed to break the spell that the physician’s house held over his surprisingly disobedient wife, and with his own hands replaced the veil that had slipped from her strained face and hurriedly led her back toward their fellow travelers, the physician still seemed to refuse to let his two visitors go, and he followed them to the town gate quietly and pensively, gathering on the way among the tombstones two small children with large iron crosses hanging around their necks. It was as though, since he had failed to make progress with them as a physician addressing prospective patients, he were now trying to win their affection as the parent of two lively children, who crossed themselves charmingly before the guard and cautiously touched the horses’ tails.

  But what does this obstinate Lotharingian want? Why will he not leave us alone? And what is he so curious about? Ben Attar wondered with faint irritation. He was relieved to discover that during his absence the others had obediently stayed where they were, apart from little Elbaz, who had deserted his place between his father and the first wife and seated himself instead on the driver’s seat beside the black pagan, who was still vigilantly holding the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, as motionless as a statue. Seeing that the crop-bearded, black-clad physician was trying to extract information from the officer of the guard, he asked Rabbi Elbaz to explore with the help of his Latin the obstinate Christian’s intent.

  The physician’s good Latin easily supplied what was deficient in that of the rabbi from Seville, so their conversation was able to satisfy the nagging but as yet unfocused curiosity of the Lotharingian physician about the journey of these faraway Jewish strangers who had turned up on his doorstep. Just as Elbaz was wondering whether he could explain to this gentile the nature of the painful conflict between northern and southern Jews, whose character and distance from each other made it impossible for either party to overcome the other, but merely enabled them at times to reach a compromise, a short, pale German woman came through the town gate and hurried over to her two children, who were amusing themselves under the horses’ feet. The rabbi’s heart missed a beat at the sight of the physician’s wife, who, apart from the large iron cross dangling at her bosom, resembled their own Mistress Esther-Minna in her appearance and her carriage, and he raised his eyes in amazement to her crop-bearded husband, his lips moving wordlessly. But in truth there was no need for him to say anything, for the physician immediately understood the little rabbi’s surmise, and with a faint smile that held a hint of sorrow, he nodded his head to confirm the surprising truth, and thus the rabbi was able to tell him the rest of the story of their travels without fear, knowing that he was assured of an understanding listener.

  6.

  Then the gray sky came back to life and lukewarm raindrops began to fall relentlessly on Verdun. The physician’s little wife quickly gathered her two children and disappeared through the town gate, but her husband, excited by the contest about dual marriage that the rabbi from Seville was spreading out before him like a colorful fan, found it difficult to tear himself away from the unusual story. Did he experience a brief hope of discovering a different, lustier species of Jew, or was it rather that his curiosity urged him to steal a glance at the other wife, concealed within the wagon, so that he could compare her with the dark-skinned young woman who had floated into his house? But when Esther-Minna alighted from the larger wagon as it returned from the customs house and the apostate noticed the hard blue look he received from this fellow countrywoman, who immediately saw through him, he shivered slightly, as though the fanatical repudiation of which the little rabbi spoke were liable to threaten him too. Without saying a word of farewell, he withdrew from the group of Jews, crossing himself occasionally, and exchanged some mocking banter with the Lotharingian guards before disappearing through the wall. The North African travelers, who a mere ten weeks before had been sailing under the bright azure sky, continue their journey eastward in a rainy, muddy fog toward the valley of the Rhine.

  Even the customs officer had not been sure of the difference between merchandise and gifts. But since he, like the captain of the guard, suspected that the Jews were deviously intending to sell the goods disguised as gifts on their way to Worms, he had made an inventory of everything in the wagon, including the travelers’ own clothes and cooking pots, and sent it by a fast rider to the governor of Worms, so that when the Jews arrived they could be inspected to ensure that no gifts had been magically turned back into merchandise along the way and that everything declared as a gift really reached its intended recipient. Only in this way could the Lotharingian authorities be reassured.

  The Jews were dejected not only because the Christian had cunningly outwitted them, but because they had a nagging fear that thanks to the inventory flying ahead of them to the Rhine, not only their goods but even their pots and clothes and everything else they possessed had been turned into gifts, and who knew whether they would have to buy back the “gifts” they had been compelled to give? That evening, as they camped under a large wooden bridge near the town of Metz, Ben Attar noticed his first wife, on her own initiative, ripping open a bag of condiments, emptying out the contents, and then cutting the material of which the bag was made into two and sewing two bags i
n its place. In this way she was doubling the quantity of merchandise, so as to save half of it from the threat of being designated as gifts. By the time they encamped the following night, she had not only doubled the number of sacks of condiments but the bolts of cloth and even the pale honeycombs.

  Again it seemed as though the more the desert merchandise shrank, the more it increased its attractiveness and worth to the wayfarers and town-dwellers between the Meuse and the Moselle and between the Moselle and the Rhine. The bags of spices were now so small that the purchasers did not need to bring them close to their noses to smell them, but could insert them in their nostrils so as to have an effortless and uninterrupted access to the spicy scent of a faraway dark continent. So fearful were Ben Attar and Abulafia of the inventory, however, and of appearing to be merchants dealing in “gifts,” that they sent the black idolater ahead of them with a laden tray, as though this were his personal property which he was offering for sale on his own responsibility and the Jews following behind were merely advising him about the prices.

  Because the Lotharingians were meaner than the Franks and Burgundians, they were easily attracted to the small, new, unfamiliar goods, whose transient nature would soothe away in advance any regret they might feel at the impulsiveness of their purchase. The two experienced traders could sense where and how strongly the winds of commerce blew in the land of Ashkenaz, and they were beginning to discuss how to prepare themselves for the still conditional meeting in the Bay of Barcelona the following year, the year of the millennium itself.

  Thus, between light warm showers of autumn rain, the litigants traveled slowly toward the town of Worms. Up hill and down dale they advanced along wide, easy roads that sometimes skirted a gray fort or the ruins of an ancient Roman camp. Occasionally the horses’ hooves encountered boggy yellow puddles that the wagon wheels would sink into if Abd el-Shafi was not careful. Sometimes the convoy had to halt so that a wheel damaged on a rocky descent could be straightened or the horses’ harnesses adjusted. Sometimes they had to wait for hours for a ferry to return from the opposite bank of a river, or haggle with an obstinate farmer before crossing a field of stubble. But still it seemed as though the onward impetus of the road was stronger than the mishaps and delays. Whenever the wagoners felt a fair wind blowing, they could not resist their mariner’s instincts, and asked permission from the master of the expedition to untie the covers of the wagons and hoist them like small black sails, to make the horses fly faster.

  Small wonder, then, if Rabbi Elbaz, transported back to the voyage by the howling of the wind in these strange sails, relapsed into his old poetic intoxication, which gradually stretched his sense of the passage of time. For while the stubborn litigants were advancing slowly through Lorraine on the spent back of the month of Elul, the last month of the old year, they were being slyly outflanked by a fresh young month of Tishri. The Jewish travelers realized that they were liable to reach the community of Worms in the midst of the blowing of the ram’s horn for the new year, so Mistress Esther-Minna, who was apt to keep track of the passage of sacred time, tried gently to speed the journey. But the desire to deal in the doubled gifts, which the first wife produced every night with the help of the second, delayed the members of the conditional partnership, who clung to each moment that deferred the determination of their conditional status.

  When the wagons entered the region of the Saar, moving very close to the flow of the cold, shining river, amid the bulk of high hills whose ancient origin molded their tops like black domes, there appeared among the oak and ash trees the burial church of the Alter Turm, which Mistress Esther-Minna recognized excitedly by its eight grim sides. Indeed, there was no need here to shout the name of the Rhine to receive from wayfarers a halfhearted reply that gave only a direction. They could announce the names of towns—Speyer, Worms, Mainz—and receive not only nodding confirmation of their famous existence but an enthusiastic, well-informed wave of the arm pointing to a precise road. Naturally, to the fair-haired woman’s constant worry that they might have to stop and hear the sound of the ram’s horn while standing beside a black pagan in a dark forest was added the nostalgic memory of the cool air and the smell of the turf of her native land being crushed under the horses’ hooves. Abulafia’s new wife’s fearful longing took hold of him too. Even Ben Attar and the rabbi were eager now to reach the town on the Rhine and welcome the Jewish New Year there, the year 4760, from whose womb in a hundred days or so would burst the Christian millennium, so young and wild.

  But it is doubtful whether the progress of the wagons could have been accelerated any more as they advanced over a desolate plain descending to the valley of the Rhine if, like some phantasm, Master Levitas himself had not suddenly appeared, mounted on a proud stallion. It transpired that contrary to his hope, the level-headed younger brother had not found any peace at home in Paris after his sister had left with her adversaries. After hastily depositing the members of his household, including the half-witted orphan, with his friends in the winery at Villa Le Juif, to spend the approaching days of penitence and judgment with them, he had hastened with the first of the Indian pearls to a beautiful duchess who loved jewelry and exchanged it for a splendid and renowned stallion from her husband’s stables. The horse would carry him swiftly by shortcuts to his native town, Worms, ahead of the main party, to ensure secretly that the mishap that had occurred in the shadowy winery would not be repeated on the banks of the Rhine, but that on their arrival they would be received by a proper, irreproachable law court, full of outstanding scholars, who would not merely speak but would sing forth the right verdict.

  But when, after a couple of days’ half-secret stay in his birthplace, it became clear that Ben Attar’s company was not arriving, while the sound of penitential hymns at night was growing ever louder, he began to fear that some mishap or second thought had made the twice-wed trader turn around and go back. Thus he had decided to break cover and ride out to meet the litigants and speed them into the ambush that he had laid for them. To his dismay, he had discovered that a mere three days before the holy day the two wagons were still a score of leagues from the town of Speyer, which did not contain a single Jew. And so, as a former resident, Levitas offered to escort the convoy to its journey’s end, and he also suggested that they should cease to halt at night. Ben Attar, who had been infected with Esther-Minna’s fear, accepted the clever brother’s suggestion and instructed Abd el-Shafi, who was accustomed to sailing in the dark, to attach one wagon to the other with a short stout rope, and to tie the front wagon with a long rope to Master Levitas’s saddle, so that the travelers were assured of arriving at their destination together.

  Linked together in this way, the two wagons advanced over the reddish soil of the Rhine Valley, led by the stallion. The refined young man displayed his enthusiasm and determination, pulling the North African Jews behind him day and night, attached to his saddle, so that they would not, heaven forbid, miss celebrating the New Year in his home town. But there is a difference between traveling by day alone, with night halts for rest, and traveling day and night, and the travelers soon became faint and dizzy and lay piled on one another like a stirring heap of rags. Even the Ishmaelite wagoners, hardy mariners that they were and accustomed to staying awake for long stormy days, drooped limply on their seats, and if the young slave had not continued to urge the horses on with the whip, it is doubtful whether the two linked wagons would have succeeded in entering the narrow street of the Jews in Worms in the twilight of the last day of the departing year and drawing up among the small bowed houses resting on huge rough-hewn piles.

  The litigants alighted semiconscious from the wagons, and they might have collapsed on the spot if the good folk of Worms, particularly the trusty Kalonymos family, forewarned of the arrival of the little convoy, had not hastened to lead them to various homes and families so that they might bathe and revive their weary bodies and their flagging souls in the twenty hours that remained before the onset of the festival. Withou
t consulting the exhausted visitors, they efficiently separated menfolk from womenfolk, Jews from Ishmaelites, horses from wagons, and put at the disposal of each group and class the facilities appropriate to it. What was surprising was that the Kalonymos family treated their kinswoman Mistress Esther-Minna exactly like the southern foreigners, and did not exempt her from any of the obligations that were laid upon the others. Together with Ben Attar’s two wives, she was taken gently but firmly for ritual cleansing to a large bathhouse that in ancient times had served the Roman troops and that still had small cubicles paved in green marble, in one of which Mistress Esther-Minna now attempted vainly to conceal her pale, blushing nakedness from the curious, startled eyes of her two female adversaries.