To this end the arbiter wished to remove the younger wife a little way and to remain alone with the first wife, who seemed to him in his innocence and inexperience as the weak link from which he could extract a complaint of sorrow, pain, and shame, so that the arbitration that was shortly to be delivered would not only follow as the natural outcome of what had been said, but might even appear as a genuine act of rescue. However, he suddenly hesitated to discharge the second wife and remain alone with the wrath of the first, whose age, he now knew, was that of his own wife, and her height, he now saw, the same as hers. This hesitation resulted not only from his uncertainty about whether the presence of a boy who had not yet reached the age of legal majority was enough to satisfy the prohibition on intimacy, but more particularly from fear that out of the anguish in the older woman’s soul a secret or open curse of death might burst forth, directed against her tall, dark, slim adversary, with her delicate, handsome face and her amber-colored eyes that occasionally flashed with an emerald-green spark.
It seemed as though Joseph son of Kalonymos had also caught the infection of the duality that had come up from the south to defend itself, since he was now unable to muster the inner resolve to remove the second wife but sought only to put a little space between her and the first wife. Since he could not hide her away inside the holy ark, he told her, with the help of the gestures of the little interpreter, to squeeze herself into a narrow recess between the holy ark and the east wall, and asked her to cover her head with an old curtain that he had discovered in a drawer, so that she should not hear what her opponent was saying against her.
But to his great surprise, Joseph son of Kalonymos did not manage to extract a single word of calumny against the second wife from the first, even though the latter knew that the other could not hear her. On the contrary, if previously the first wife’s love for the second wife had been distant, because she had not known her, after traveling with her for sixty days on board an old guardship and for a further twelve days on a cramped wagon, the first wife’s soul had become so closely bound to the other’s that this duality, which had journeyed to the heart of Europe to contend for its life, would return home so much stronger and more united that it would no longer need two separate homes but could make do with a single house. A single house? The arbiter was alarmed, for he immediately thought of his own home, a wooden house with bales of straw piled on its roof and black piles supporting its rickety frame, with an additional fair-haired wife walking from room to room, receiving what she had been denied a score of years before.
From the noises coming from behind the curtain, the novice inquisitor could sense that his public was beginning to grow restive at his diligence. Any member of the community, even if he had been raised to unwonted and questionable prominence, was obliged by his nature and upbringing to exercise some self-restraint, and therefore the congregation, cut off from its holy ark, now hoped that this prayer leader and blower of rams’ horns would not forget that his pleasant voice and knowledge of the order of service did not authorize his moderate intelligence to distract him from his duty.
This duty Joseph son of Kalonymos undoubtedly remembered while he sought to replace one woman with the other so as to conclude the examination of the witnesses. He was surprised to discover that to duty was added enjoyment, as though these two strange Jewish women who had been entrusted to him this evening had been joined by other women who had appeared in his life, such as the comely woman who had brought this case and who now waited outside, beside her husband, or his own wife, who awaited him at home, not forgetting his departed first wife, buried so long ago in the clay of the small cemetery beside the Rhine. For a moment it seemed as though his flesh were invested not merely by a duality of wives but with a veritable multiplication of thereof. This was a dangerous moment. He gestured to the child to remove the ragged old curtain from the second wife’s head. And despite his fear of the ban on intimacy, he overcame his shyness, banished the first wife beyond the large curtain, and bid the second wife approach, in the hope that this one might offer him at least a grain of adverse testimony and so enable his conscience to pronounce judgment in the spirit of the sages of Ashkenaz.
Indeed, now there was some hope. Unlike the first wife, who was constrained in her speech, carefully weighing each word, so she did not incriminate or besmirch the duality so beloved by her husband, the second wife let fly a spate of whispered Ishmaelite speech so long and rapid that the youthful translator was completely muddled and took hold of the holy ark as though to hide himself there. Gradually it emerged that in the lowest part of the ship there had been secretly hatched, besides the fetus that had been growing in the young woman’s belly, not some mere plea or complaint but a highly charged dream, which the northerner’s first short opening question was enough to release in the form of a declaration that resounded in that narrow space as if it were the whole wide world.
Ever since this wife had shed her veil, she had understood, from the looks that were cast not only on her back now but on her face as well, that she was not alone, and that she had many partners to her dream. Although she had not been asked about it, she lost no time in recounting it to Joseph son of Kalonymos, who would soon be thrown into turmoil.
Just as the women of Worms had taken off her fine silken veil on the eve of the New Year, so she now permitted herself, at the end of the Sabbath of Penitence, to let fall from her shoulders the black cloak that the sanctimonious women had wrapped her in and stand slim and blushing before the arbiter in a colorful embroidered robe of fine cloth that had faded a little from being washed in seawater. From the jumble of Jewish Arabic that now poured from her small mouth, the astonishing truth gradually emerged that not only was she willing to be subjected to dual wedlock, she herself wished to contract a dual marriage. Having no complaint against the first wife, whose patience and kindness she had learned to appreciate during the long shared journey by sea and land, she was experiencing a mounting envy of a husband who had two wives to himself while they only had one husband between them.
Even though at this moment the inquisitive judge knew that his professional curiosity might have made him go too far, he still could not stop himself. And even if Joseph son of Kalonymos was not yet entirely convinced that his young interpreter—who was doing his best by means of frantic gestures and broken Hebrew, eked out by half-remembered roots and fragments of words from the prayerbook—was really translating correctly the words of the woman who was standing so boldly before him, he sensed, from the fierceness and bitterness echoing around the little court room, that it was not duality that the second wife perceived as a threat but singularity. Consequently he could not restrain his curiosity and was sufficiently carried away to put a strange question: A second husband? Like whom, for example? And while he was still regretting his unnecessary question, the young translator was already relaying the answer, whether on his own initiative or out of the heart of the Ishmaelite storm that was raging before him: Like you, my lord, like you, for instance …
This was a real arrow loosed against him, and it both pierced his soul with a strange desire and poisoned it with a new fear, as though it were only now that he understood, on his own account, the profound source and the true meaning of the prohibition that the whole community was attempting to transmit to him from behind the curtain: Duplication inevitably leads to multiplication, and multiplication has no limits. His whole body was trembling and his face paled at the thought that this woman might attempt to put her claim, outrageous yet correct according to its own logic, into effect, and divest herself also of her Mediterranean robe. Without wasting time on further reflection, he picked up the loose black cloak from the floor and gently but firmly placed it around the young woman’s shoulders as though covering an invalid, before wrenching aside the curtain that divided him from his congregation.
As though the time had come for the standing prayer, the whole community rose to its feet. Already Rabbi Elbaz was hurrying toward Joseph son of Kalonymo
s, and after a slight hesitation he was joined by Ben Attar and by Master Levitas. Only Abulafia continued to stand where he was, his face blank, even though he could have no doubt that the moment of decision had come. The ruddy-faced judge asked the rabbi from Seville to lend him the little black ram’s horn before he announced his verdict. Elbaz hesitated for an instant, as though sensing the approaching disaster, but he could not refuse one whom he himself had elevated to a position of distinction only a short while ago. As though waking from sleep, the prayer leader took the dark Andalusian horn as it appeared from its hiding place in the folds of the rabbi’s robes, and closing his eyes, he put it to his lips, as though to reinforce his coming pronouncement with a blast from heaven. He blew three southern notes, long and sadly tender, followed by a still small sound, and then, with closed eyes and with fear and trembling, he pronounced not merely repudiation against the southern partner but a ban and an interdict.
To make his meaning plainer, Joseph son of Kalonymos had recourse to two languages—first, to admonish and encourage his friends, the muddy local Teutonic tongue, mingled with a few flattened, lugubrious Hebrew words, and then the holy tongue itself, with a clarity that brooked no appeal. He sealed his pronouncement with a rapid sequence of short sharp notes on the ram’s horn, which he then returned to its stunned owner. Only then was the pregnant silence broken by murmurs of approbation tinged with admiration for this modest prayer leader, who had dared to lead his flock to a distant but clear horizon. While a furious Rabbi Elbaz was explaining the verdict in rapidly whispered Arabic to the crestfallen merchant, Abulafia’s head spun and he sank as though in a faint. As Mistress Esther-Minna cried for help, Master Levitas, true to the spirit of the new decree, carefully interposed himself between her and the outlawed uncle, not yet certain whether the interdict that had just been pronounced so decisively also embraced the two wives, who were now once more standing side by side.
Until one of the true scholars of the community could explore the full implications of this arbitration, from which traditionally no appeal was possible, the Jews of Worms preferred to segregate their banned guest speedily from the rest of the people. It seemed that someone with singular wisdom and foresight had already rented a small room for the vanquished disputant in the home of a gentile widow in a narrow street not far from the church. In the dark of night, by the light of a flaming torch and to the accompaniment of the chorus of frogs in the river, Ben Attar was conducted there together with the black slave, who was deemed by the community a suitable companion for a man under ban. But Rabbi Elbaz, the furious, desperate complainant, adamantly refused to abandon the owner of the ship that was to carry him home to Andalus and followed after him and climbed the rickety wooden steps at his heels, not only to bring him comfort and to seek advice but also to demonstrate publicly his utter contempt for the ban that had been pronounced here. Indeed, he even vindictively contemplated pronouncing a counterban of his own upon the whole community.
But in the little room belonging to the gray-haired, blue-eyed gentile woman, who offered the banned Jew no more than a bed and a crust, the rabbi felt that he owed his Moroccan employer, who had trusted him and brought him from Andalus to help him repair the broken partnership, a greater consolation than a public outburst of anger or wild visions of revenge. Although he could only guess what had happened during the private interrogation of the second wife in front of the holy ark behind the curtain, he felt he did have a real solution for the banned merchant, who was left with a ship full of merchandise in the heart of wild and desolate Europe—a solution that might be temporary but that would enable him, despite everything, to renew his partnership with his dear nephew, who had collapsed in a heap as if he were a young woman at the news of the interdict.
But would the little Andalusian rabbi, who was now groping in the thick darkness of a crooked Rhenish room with only three walls—one of which might still have a crucifix hanging on it—have the courage to speak out and explain the plan that he had thought up as a possible escape route even before he had persuaded Ben Attar to set out for a second legal confrontation on the Rhine? Tears of sorrow and compassion but also of secret longing stung Elbaz’s eyes at the startling but generous thought that he himself might free the banned man from the double marriage that was his downfall, not only by releasing the second wife from her marriage vows but by wedding her himself and taking her into his home in Seville, so that she should not remain alone.
But while Rabbi Elbaz was floundering and longing for an opportunity to explain his new plan, Ben Attar asked him to hasten and demand from the Jews of Worms the return of his vanished wives, for it was his intention to bring them both to him, even in this tiny room in a gentile house. All the concern of the banned merchant was not for himself or his merchandise but only for his two wives, his only ones, lest they were assailed by anxiety that he might be thinking of betraying his dual love. So hard and stern was Ben Attar’s voice as he commanded the startled and disappointed rabbi that the man of God felt that since he had failed in his mission, the North African Jew valued him no more highly than the black slave who was now removing his master’s shoes.
2.
In the third watch the second wife thought she heard a faint blast on the ram’s horn, and her heart sank in fear. While she was trying to compose herself in the unfamiliar, alien silence, there floated before her the bloodshot eyes of the arbiter, to whom she had weak-mindedly allowed herself to reveal the secrets of her heart. Again she tormented herself, not for anything she had said but for what she had not managed to say. Rabbi Elbaz, who earlier that night had had to contend for a long time with the excitable hostesses of the two southern women in order to gain their return to their banned husband, had tried to calm the young woman and console her over what she had said, some of which he had learned vaguely from his son, the little interpreter. But it had seemed to the second wife as though the rabbi’s words of comfort had been spoken faintly and halfheartedly. Had he been secretly trying to bind her to him in a compact of guilt, in the knowledge that he too would be called to account not only for the failure of his apocalyptic speech but also for his mistaken choice of judge, a man who had disguised his weakness with an overhasty and cruel verdict? Or had he conceived some strange idea of encouraging the young woman with soothing words to continue to cling to the right of counterduality that she had demanded for herself, to see how far it might go?
One way or another, his words of comfort had only served to confuse her, and now, as she silently rose from the pallet that was all the Christian landlady could offer her unexpected guests, she hastily wrapped herself in the rough black cloak that the local women had given her and slunk past her husband, who had curled up in a fetal position between two large logs that he had rolled out from a corner. Stepping over the first wife, who was sleeping as peacefully as a corpse, with her hands joined, facing a long, sharp-edged, sloping iron bar that supported the ceiling of the triangular cubicle, the second wife entered the other chamber. Wishing not only to escape the curse of the ban but to try to put right the wrong she had done by her rash words, she held her sandals in her hand and slipped noiselessly past the Christian landlady, who was spending the night in a large chair, covered by the pelt of a black bear, whose stuffed head hung on the wall beneath the figure of the Crucified One, who bore his sufferings even in the dead of night.
Although the old woman sensed the shadow flitting past her and momentarily opened an eye, she did not stir at the flight of the Jewess, who descended the creaking, swaying wooden steps toward the darkened narrow alleys of the sleeping town. The foreign woman was alert to the silence all around her and to the huge silhouette of the church, wrapped in a yellowish mist, and yet she clung resolutely to the aim she had set herself, to seek out among the little houses the home of the hosts who had cared for her so generously since she had come to Worms so that they could take her to the arbiter and she could plead with him to listen to what she had not managed to say, in the hope that he migh
t retract the interdict that he had pronounced because of her. And despite the darkness and the marshy vapors, which made her lose her way in the narrow streets of the little town, she recognized the right door and promptly knocked upon it.
But nobody, either in that house or in those on either side, heard the second wife’s light knocking, for the Jews of Worms were fast asleep, having found peace of mind after the days of turmoil, as though the interdict and the ban had swept from their hearts the wonderfully sinful new thoughts brought to their town by the southern disputants. And so the second wife, whose shouting had no effect either, had no choice but to grope her way to the synagogue itself, first to the modest little women’s synagogue, where she knelt for a while after the manner of the Ishmaelites, who manifest total submission before making any request, and then hesitantly entering the men’s prayer hall by the unfinished western wall, slipping between the empty rows, and finally pressing herself into the narrow recess between the holy ark and the eastern wall.
Was it possible that the North African woman’s tormented heart had divined that the judge, Joseph son of Kalonymos, would also be unable to sleep in the coils of this night, and that he too, whether from an access of new strength or from a hint of remorse, would be unable to prevent himself from rising early and coming to his pulpit, either to prepare himself for the morning prayers of the Fast of Gedaliah or to join his body and soul to the place where three women had stood the previous night, waiting for the words to fall from his lips? Therefore, as he picked up the fallen red curtain and drew its corners together, piously pressing his lips to the golden letters embroidered on the faded velvet, then folded it carefully away and put it back in its proper place, no cry of alarm escaped from his mouth when yesterday’s witness suddenly appeared before him. It was as though it were self-evident that after such a stern verdict those who lost would come back to plead, like this young foreign woman, who knelt before him like a primitive pagan.
A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 27