Deep in the night, when the rest of the company was fast asleep, the second wife arose from her bed and went a short distance away, to a tree where a little jackal or dog was tied by a rusty chain. It had come up in the evening to scavenge the remains of the company’s supper and been caught by the black slave, who with Ben Attar’s tacit permission had taken it in as a pet in place of the young camel that had been left behind on board the ship. The little beast, which had already become used to the travelers, whimpered and wagged its tail as the second wife approached, and without a moment’s hesitation lapped up the vomited remains of the stew she had been forced to swallow. Only then did she feel better. Desperately pale and buffeted by successive waves of heat and cold, she gulped the cold air of the autumn night and looked toward the remote campfire of another company of traders, who were transporting slaves from the east to the west.
Eventually she returned to her bed, wrapped herself in her sweat-soaked cloaks, and closed her eyes to seek a little rest, not suspecting that her footsteps had woken the Andalusian rabbi, who had followed her movements through a crack in the canvas cover of the other wagon. For a moment Elbaz wondered if it would be right to wake her husband and inform him that the meal had not reached its destination. But he restrained himself, as though he was in no hurry to reveal to anyone else, even the husband himself, the faint signs of illness that had appeared in the dead of night and that filled his heart, in the depths of darkest Europe, with an old longing for the last days before he was widowed. But in the morning, when he went to wash the sleep from his eyes in the little stream and found the second wife busy laundering her robe, he did not hold back from asking shyly yet affectionately how she was, and even though she smiled in thanks, as though there were no care in her heart, he could sense from the redness that suffused her bare cheeks that the fever in her body was mounting.
Ever since the women of Worms had made them remove their veils, the Moroccan women had been in no hurry to replace them, not only because they had seen how women could stand boldly with bare faces before the Lord himself, but especially because on the return journey the company of travelers had drawn even closer together and become a single family with three attendant servants and a rabbi, who could be considered a kind of kinsman. He had become so concerned for the second wife’s health that he now demanded that Ben Attar halt the wagons at intervals to let her rest, lest a graveyard rather than a synagogue await them on the approaching Day of Atonement.
Thus the little procession wound its way more slowly, and by evening prayers on the fourth day Ben Attar found himself staring alone at the distant horizon where the fading light glowed pink above the walls of Metz, the town where he had planned to spend the coming night. But could he allow himself to take no notice of the fever? It was sufficient to put a hand to the brows of both his wives by way of comparison, to perceive the growing threat to the second wife, whose handsome face, despite her efforts to make light of her distress and smile pleasantly, not only at her husband but at anyone who greeted her, undeniably bore an unfamiliar flush because of a disease that had originated in the manure in an old stable and had infected the blood that oozed from the scratches on her legs.
On the morning of the fifth day, the day preceding the eve of the ever-approaching Day of Judgment, after hours of sleeplessness beside the campfire had blackened his love with anxiety, a bold decision seized Ben Attar. Instead of feeling his way in discomfiture and confusion among the Jews of nearby Metz to discover whether the news of his ban had preceded him, he would press on before the coming of the holy day to the next halt, the little border town of Verdun, so that in the event of any mishap they would be close to the home of that strange apostate physician who had shown such interest in them on their way to the Rhineland. It was even possible, Ben Attar continued to himself, by way of strengthening his resolve, that before the physician’s solitary house beside the church they would hear once again that wonderful song, with two distinct yet intermingling voices, which had so entranced the second wife and might now revive her spirits. But as Ben Attar did not know whether there were Jews in Verdun who would welcome them into their congregation, he divided his little company in two. He himself would take the smaller wagon, with the feverish wife and the cool-headed one, to the little border town, while he would dispatch Rabbi Elbaz and his son to Metz, the favorite town of Emperor Charlemagne, to gather, in exchange for gold coin but also under constraint of pious duty, eight qualified Jews to make up a company of ten males, like the eight Jews whom Benveniste had used to bring up from Barcelona to the ruined Roman inn to celebrate the ninth of Ab. Thus he might mark the holy day in a private, if temporary, congregation, hired by his own gold and untroubled by any ban.
At noon on the sixth day, the eve of the Day of Atonement in the year 4760 of the creation of the world according to the reckoning of the Jews, in the ninth month of the year 999 since the birth of the wonderful suffering child who by his death was to win so many hearts, the North African trader spied the stone bridge over the Meuse, which abutted at its eastern end the stone and clay walls of little Verdun. Even if by some chance the news of his ban had preceded him here, he did not need to fear an inquisition from the physician, who without waiting for overzealous Jews to ban him had separated himself from them first. Therefore, as the horses drew up on the spot where they had halted before, a few paces away from the Lotharingian sentries with their sparkling mail and glinting swords, he instructed the mariner-wagoner and the black youth to protect the two wives, who had seated themselves against the wheels of the wagon to rest after the tiring journey and to breathe the cool autumnal air, while he himself entered through the town gate without delay, crossed the graves of slaves who had met their death here, and hastened to the solitary house near the church, to the physician Karl-Otto the First, whose being at once a gentile and not a gentile conferred a great advantage upon him now in the mind of the southern Jew, who believed that a few words of the ancient holy tongue would suffice to secure his assistance.
And assistance was needed. He had discovered from the trembling that racked the second wife’s frame as he helped her down from the wagon that the illness he was pitted against, like himself, had not rested during the previous night. If there was any man here who called himself a physician, his aid was needed, however meager his skill. Again, as on the last visit, Ben Attar found the door of the house standing open. In the half-darkness of the double chamber, under the earthenware crucifix, he stared again at the long row of jars filled with multicolored potions and powders and at the gray metal forceps and tongs, as though everything were ready to deliver him except for the renegade physician himself, who was absent.
The physician’s wife, however, was at home, and she had no difficulty in recognizing the stranger in the white robe, for it was only two weeks since he had stood here last. Once again Ben Attar shivered on observing her likeness to Mistress Esther-Minna, who had utterly upset him. But this did not prevent him from bowing to her and pronouncing the physician’s name, as he remembered it. The woman nodded her head, as if to confirm that her husband the physician was indeed alive and well, but her countenance expressed sadness, as though she had not yet reconciled herself to the apostasy. Ben Attar, who had no time to meditate on others’ regrets but only to proclaim his own distress, stretched out his hand to indicate the road along which he had come, closed his eyes, inclined his head to indicate an imaginary bed, and sighed the gentle sigh of a sick woman. But though the physician’s wife opened her eyes wide with sympathy as she followed his gestures, still she did not respond. Then the North African merchant took a step toward her, pointed to the sun which stood high in the sky and to the direction in which it would set, and whispered in Hebrew, clearly but in a pleading tone, Yom Kippur, and repeated again and again, Yom Kippur, Yom Kippur, and he clapped his hand over his mouth to indicate to the woman what would be forbidden soon to those who had not changed their faith, in case she had forgotten. But it was evident that she had no
t forgotten, for at once she nodded, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, called her children inside and locked them in with a large key, and led the southern traveler into the heart of Verdun, to her husband the physician.
Ben Attar followed the woman through the narrow streets of the little town, and on their way they passed a large slave market, where warriors and farmers bargained over yellow-haired, blue-eyed pagan Slavs who were attached to a large stone. The local people smiled at the physician’s wife and led her to a large house, which she promptly entered, accompanied by her visitor. It was a noble mansion, whose occupants welcomed the newcomers warmly and conducted them respectfully into a hall spread with carpets, with weapons hanging on the walls. There, on a large couch, sat a venerable Christian with his hands crossed on his chest and his eyes closed, listening attentively and smilingly to the renegade physician, who was letting blood from his neck.
Ben Attar said to himself that this might be the way to save his second wife, by letting some of her blood to calm her spirit, and he took a step toward the physician, to examine what he was doing more closely. The latter, noticing his wife and her companion, gave them a sign to indicate that he had grasped the urgency of their mission, and he speedily concluded his work and came outside to meet them. At once Ben Attar bowed to him deeply, but he renounced the attempt to explain his distress in the holy tongue. Instead, he closed his eyes, inclined his head upon an imaginary bed, and shivered a little and sighed in imitation of his sick wife. Then he gestured to the horizon, to the place where the sun would soon set, and repeated again, Yom Kippur, Yom Kippur.
3.
There was no way of knowing whether it was the announcement of the approach of the Day of Judgment that caused the physician to postpone a bloodletting that had been arranged in the home of another nobleman and hurry to attend a patient outside the town walls, or whether it was simply the curiosity of an apostate who had already been excited on their previous visit by the sight of Jews who were so different from those from whom he had detached himself. Indeed, the sight of his young wife lying beside the wheel of the wagon made Ben Attar feel that his anxiety was well founded, for her condition had worsened during his short absence. Not only had her shoulders not stopped shaking, but the gentle autumnal breeze had begun to trouble her, and she had had to ask the first wife to find the cast-off silken veil and cover her face and even her eyes with it. And when Ben Attar lifted her for the physician of Verdun, he felt her gaunt frame stiffen a little in his hands.
The physician’s eyes had not yet turned to the patient but first sought the little Andalusian rabbi, not only so that he could translate the nature of the North African woman’s pains (which were causing her to twist her head) into a civilized tongue, but also so that he could enlighten him about the end of the great contest with the Rhenish Jews, whose outcome might help him to understand what had befallen the young woman. But the rabbi was missing, and the larger wagon had vanished too, and so had that repudiating woman, so fine yet sharp of eye and stern of countenance, who had abhorred him for the faith he had adopted and railed at him for what he had turned his back on. And so the physician had no other way open to him but to try to understand from the halting language of the prayers of his forefathers what was tormenting the young woman, whose bright red eyes indicated that she would be better off in bed in a darkened room than in the open air by the Meuse, exposed to the stares of the guardsmen. It was plain that something or someone had tainted her blood.
Even though it would have been right and proper for this new-made Christian to decline to admit Jews, even sick ones, into his home, the apostate could not suppress his pity for this suffering woman, especially since he was still excited by the desire to extend his knowledge of these exotic Jews. He suggested to Ben Attar that they take the patient to his house, so that he could more readily combat the illness with the help of all those potions and drugs and medical implements that were ready and waiting to save life, which is sometimes likened to a passing shadow or a fleeting dream. It would be better too, the physician opined, for the first wife to accompany them, so that she could prepare ritually fit food for them, for there was not a single Jew available for the purpose in the whole of Verdun.
Ben Attar, his anxieties vindicated, was glad to hear the counsel spoken by the physician, whose apostasy did not detract in Ben Attar’s opinion from his medical skill or his humanity. Since he had been doubtful all along about Rabbi Elbaz’s chances of persuading eight qualified Jews from the community of Metz to leave their families and their house of prayer on the eve of the Day of Atonement, even in exchange for gold coin, and travel some thirty miles to a little border town so as to make up a temporary wayside congregation for a foreign Jew whose wife had fallen sick, he knew that no purpose would be served by waiting outside the walls. He had explicitly said to Elbaz that if he could not accomplish his mission, he was not bound to hasten to rejoin them, but on the contrary, it would be preferable for him to spend the Day of Judgment together with his son in the midst of a large Jewish community, cleansing his soul and sanctifying himself by prayer and enlisting the whole congregation in supplications to the Almighty to grant recovery to the sick woman and peace of mind to the well one—for surely the prayers of a banned man’s advocate are more efficacious than his own.
As the midday sun moved from the Lotharingian side of the border into Champagne, the captain of the guard also took pity on the young woman, and gave permission for the foreign company to enter the town with their wagon. Slowly the two horses advanced between the graves of idolatrous Slavs who had expired in slavery, and very cautiously the mariner-wagoner led the wagon into the square in front of the little church. At the entrance to the house stood the physician’s wife, watching them, with her two sons, who already looked just like Lotharingians, only sadder, holding on to her apron. Ben Attar firmly refused the help of the burly Ishmaelite and the young idolater in lowering the second wife from the wagon, accepting no other assistance than that of the first wife’s strong, warm hands in guiding the invalid, whose face was lit by a faint, plaintive smile at the sight of the house to which she had been so attracted only two weeks before. For an instant her footsteps faltered, as though she hoped to hear again the sound of two intertwined but different voices singing on the threshold of this house in exchange for skillful healing.
Very slowly the second wife was helped into the physician’s home and with double care was laid on a narrow bed, and the large iron basin in which large river pebbles gleamed was brought close to her. Ben Attar covered his wife with the two black cloaks that the Jews of Worms had given her as a gift. The physician did not delay but sprinkled fragrant medicinal herbs all around, and made her drink a potion that was the color of egg yolk. The young woman did not attempt to resist her physician, but obediently drained the bitter potion to the dregs, and for the first time since the company had left Worms a cheerful smile broke out on her face, as though she were trying to say to those who surrounded her, Now all will be well. At the sight of this smile Ben Attar, unable to restrain himself, retreated into a corner of the dark room and wiped away copious tears of gratitude. The darkness and the quiet seemed to do the patient good, and the yellow potion also hastened to do its work, for the tremor in her shoulders was gradually becoming less severe. Moved, the merchant tried to give the physician an advance payment in the form of a small precious stone, but the physician, aware that he was dealing with a wealthy, principled Jew who would not pay him with a song, declined the jewel, which sparkled in the dark, with a calm smile, as if to say, The time will come.
Meanwhile, on a small plot of land behind the church, the Ishmaelite and the idolater without delay prepared a meal for the Jews so that they could take their fast. A verdant smoke rose from a fire of twigs and thorns, on which the first wife could cook a stew in a large cooking pot. Ben Attar hastened to the town market to fetch white doves to atone for the sins and transgressions committed by others with the cooing of their pure little souls. Aga
in his throat choked with tears at the thought of his sick wife’s smile as she lay in the physician’s house. Even if the physician was finally unmasked as a charlatan, he wished to trust him as a kinsman. Yea, as a kinsman, Ben Attar muttered to himself in surprise. As a kinsman, he repeated with bitter defiance, as though the ban that had followed him from Worms, clinging to him as stubbornly as an evil demon, had suddenly made of him too something of an apostate.
But not such an apostate, heaven forfend, as to shirk the observance in all rigor, even in these difficult circumstances, of the commandments of the holy and awful day that was descending slowly upon the world. He carefully felt the flesh of the Lotharingian pigeons in the market of Verdun, which fluttered in fear in his hands. After filling his sack with a dozen milk-white birds well tied together, he headed back to his small company. His heart suddenly missed a beat at the sight of the pole of the wagon lowered to the ground, the horses nowhere to be seen. Was it possible that the gentiles had taken advantage of his absence and his troubles to take the horses and flee? But at once, cocooned as he was in hope and security like a baby inside its caul, he calmed himself with the thought that his Ishmaelite had not fled but merely taken the horses to graze in a nearby meadow. Without delay he pressed on to the back of the church, where in the leaden light of an overcast sky he came upon the solitary first wife crouching barefoot over the fire that the Ishmaelites had made, in a crumpled, smoke-blackened robe, patiently stirring the stew with a large wooden spoon, her stern face flushed in the light of the fire, which was almost scorching a trailing lock of her hair.
A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 29