But the physician did not reply, as though the tongue in which his forebears had prayed and supplicated had been erased totally from his memory. It was only when Rabbi Elbaz translated into his broken Latin that he answered, Yes. She is young. She will live. If we make haste to let her tainted blood. The rabbi’s heart leaped with emotion, as though he had been taken straight back to his little house in Seville and his dead wife had come back to life. Tears of happiness clouded his eyes, and while he was wondering whether to begin the prayers for the young woman’s recovery at once or wait so that his words of supplication might wrap themselves compassionately around her spurting blood, there came a tumult from the doorway. Her eager, tormented husband was pushing the congregation of seven Jews into the room with their confused new co-religionist, and in tones that brooked no refusal he demanded that his hired rabbi immediately begin the full and complete prayer for the recovery of his second wife, so that heaven above would not have any excuse or pretext to shirk the obligation to bestow mercy on a being in whom there was no sin.
The apostate physician, who had opened the door of his house to a sick Jewess, albeit a foreigner and a second wife, through Christian charity reinforced by the ancient medical oath, found himself, to his great alarm, pressed into a small space with Jews of assorted varieties who had come to reinforce the prayers of the gaunt rabbi, who now, from the depths of his memory, embarked on a small anthology of supplications that had been well formed in his mind during his wife’s prolonged illness in Seville. The woman who was lying facing him turned her beautiful amber-colored eyes back and forth between Ben Attar and Rabbi Elbaz, as though the latter had become a second husband to her. But the apostate did not allow the Jew from Seville to be too carried away by his prayers, for not only did it suddenly occur to him that they tended to cast doubt on his own medical skills, but they also in a sense undermined his newly chosen faith and dragged him back toward the fate he had escaped. So he raised his hands to silence the Jews who had invaded his house, and fetching a large thick needle and a small knife, he bade all of them leave the chamber, for the time had come to pass from words to action. Moreover, once the patient’s tainted blood had been let, the only prayer that would be due was one of thanksgiving.
So he banished all the Jews except for Ben Attar and the rabbi, whom Ben Attar insisted on keeping at his side so that he could continue to pour out his supplications, although silently, while the physician bared the second wife’s shoulder and proceeded to draw forth a fine jet of blood that was imbued by the moonlight with a strange gray color. The woman’s eyelids gradually closed, as though the spurting blood gave her not only some comfort but even pleasure and relief. Her handsome, sharply etched features, which had become emaciated during the past days, now took on in the shadowy chamber a masculine toughness that strengthened her resolve to hold on to life with all her might. And a single heartbeat seemed to unite the two men who stood at her bedside and watched the physician as he gathered the blood in the metal basin containing the river pebbles. Was it not time to stop the flow of blood? Ben Attar wondered anxiously, and he took a step toward the physician, who seemed as spellbound by the bloodletting as the two spectators. But the physician appeared to be waiting for the white pebbles to turn dark with blood, for then he gently and painlessly withdrew the large needle from the woman’s bare shoulder while she sank into a deep sleep, as though the tainted blood that had now been drained had been standing in the way of her peace.
Only now did her husband approach her and cover her slack body with a checked blanket, and ask the Andalusian rabbi to raise his voice, so that even the drowsiest angels in heaven might hear the last supplication for the recovery of this young and so beloved woman. When the prayer was concluded and he drew the rabbi with him out of the chamber (though the rabbi was reluctant to leave), he saw the apostate’s wife, who bore more visible signs of the sorrow of apostasy, approach to take the vacant place at the patient’s bedside. Will she live? Rabbi Elbaz asked in Latin as the physician joined them outside to breathe the cool Lotharingian night air, and after considering he finally nodded silently. Yes, she will live, he replied solemnly, with the assurance of an experienced physician, lightly touching the tip of his boot to the rabbi’s son, who had fallen asleep beside the silent embers of the Jews’ fire. And he continued unexpectedly, And this child too will live …, and sensing the rabbi’s alarm he added, And you too will live, and the merchant and his family will live. He hesitated for a long moment before continuing softly, But they will not live, and he indicated the forms of the seven Jews who were arranging their bedding beside the large wagon that had brought them from Metz.
How will they not live? asked the startled rabbi from Seville. Seeing that the physician was looking away and saying nothing, as though he were regretting the words he had let slip, he gave vent to his alarm once more: Why will they not live? At last the physician had no alternative but to take the stubborn rabbi by the arm and lead him a short distance toward the darkened church, and there, in a field that smelled of newly cut wheat, by a little fire that his sons were busy lighting, he was able to whisper a strange, somber confession: it would be the duty of the Christians, when they discovered at the end of the millennium year that the Son of God was not coming down from heaven to save them, to kill those Jews who refused to convert to their faith. So he is not coming down from heaven after all? the Andalusian rabbi said in surprise, to this renegade Jew who was foretelling the future with such assurance, as though unknown secrets were revealed to him with the blood that he let in the homes of his noble patients. And the physician shook his head. No indeed; since the faithful were so numerous and so dispersed, any visit from the Savior would only cause schism and strife, so it was more natural and fitting that instead of the Lord’s coming to his followers they should go to him, to the place where he might most readily be found, to the sepulcher in a far-off land. The Land of Israel? the rabbi guessed at once. It was plain that the news that the Christians would go there, perhaps even before him, made him sad and disappointed. Yes, there, the physician confirmed. And so that Europe is not abandoned to the mercy of the Jews, who will remain here alone, the faithful will have to kill them all.
Even the children? the rabbi asked in alarm, trying not to miss a word of the dark vision that blazed in the physician’s mouth as he drew him ever nearer to his sons’ fire. Yes, even the children, said the physician, but not these, and he stroked his little sons’ shaved heads affectionately as they snuggled up to him. And not their children, or their children who will come after them. The rabbi stopped still, trying to avert his gaze from the flame that was swaying so cheerfully in the dark heart of the holy Day of Judgment. And even though he knew perfectly well that neither he nor any other Jew was making this fire burn, still a faint dread shuddered inside him, as though conversing with the apostate were a sin in itself. He carefully and politely separated from the physician and laid out his bedding beside his young son’s, and put his arms around him to get a little warmth. Between his drooping eyelids there flickered the image of a new Jew, a dark-skinned young barbarian, standing awake among the sleepers, wrapped in his new prayer shawl and sunk in thought, trying to understand how the old gods might join the new ones.
In the depths of the night the second wife felt a spasm in her spine, and quickly she arched her head back to relieve the pain a little. There was pitch darkness all around, for even the moon had vanished from the window. After a day of such hardships and commotions, her mind was soothed by the dark quiet that embraced her, if only she could still the spasm that drew her back like some little goblin determined to turn her aside from the straight and narrow. There still hovered in her mind the seven strange Jews with horn-shaped hats on their heads, who had come to reinforce the Andalusian prayer leader drawn to her bedside. Was it only pity for her weakness that had saddened the little rabbi, or was he also trying to admit to her that her private little speech about two husbands was no less dear to him than the vehement spee
ch he had delivered among the wine casks in the winery outside Paris?
At that, a fancy began to float in the second wife’s desperate mind that if she tried to fulfill the desires of the Jews who had prayed for her recovery and arise from her sickbed, Rabbi Elbaz might accept in return, if only symbolically, the role of her second husband, and so not only strengthen the message of the southerners to the northerners but also continue to serve her first husband as a learned rabbi and able interpreter of any new question that might arise. This surprising thought so rejoiced her soul that her lips parted in a smile, as she imagined that on their way home they might all disembark in Cadiz in Andalus and go together to the rabbi’s home in Seville, to fetch his belongings and his clothes and his holy books, then load them onto the old guardship and sail away to that little well-tended house that looked out on the meeting of the ocean and the Inner Sea. And although the goblin’s vicious hand still twitched the muscles of her back, the smile and this fantasy strengthened her will to recover.
As she rose from her bed and crouched to relieve herself in the basin stained with her tainted blood, she caught sight of her husband’s sturdy form creeping into the chamber to watch over her. Lifting her from the basin, he laid her down very carefully in her bed, and although he knew that the physician and his wife might have heard his stealthy footsteps, he did not yield his right, the right of a loving husband, to caress her cheeks and kiss her feet, so as to strengthen her spirits and relieve her suffering. If this were not a holy day, when marital acts were forbidden, he would have offered her proof positive that in his eyes she was neither tainted nor enfeebled but a healthy, whole woman deserving of love according to the season of her desire and her status.
But despite the North African husband’s conviction that abundant love would hasten his second wife’s recovery, she continued to be racked by spasms, and her head with its disheveled mane of black hair continued to arch backward as though she were trying to make a living bridge with her frail form on this simple bed offered to her by an apostate physician in Verdun. If her husband had promised to give her a second husband, her tortured body might have been soothed by hope, for this woman who had been plucked in the tenderness of youth from her father’s house believed she possessed enough love to attract and keep two husbands. But with all the power of his attentive love, Ben Attar could not imagine in his heart that his suffering wife was indeed capable of being, like him, twice wedded. Thus it did not occur to him to fetch her a second husband, but only a physician, who, hearing the sound of Ben Attar’s kisses in the next chamber, rose and came to watch over his patient.
When the physician saw how she suffered, he at once fed her some of his yellow potion and strewed healing herbs upon her and around her. When she was a little relieved, he hastened to draw aside part of her robe and lay his beard upon her heart to hear the throbbing of the tainted blood in her veins. Then he palpated her small belly and inhaled the smell that rose from her navel, and a mysterious smile flitted across his face. Silently he went to the window to ensure that no stranger was spying on them, and for want of an alternative he strained to retrieve a few words of the holy tongue from the recesses of his memory to induce Ben Attar, who stood clenching his fists, to redouble his love and care for his young wife, for she was no longer alone but carried another, tiny life inside her.
The news pierced Ben Attar’s heart like a knife, and not only doubled but tripled his anguish, so that it seemed for an instant that with a merchant’s bold and stubborn despair he might try to bring the fetus forth from the womb of the invalid, who had fallen into a deep slumber, and entrust it to that of the first wife until the second wife’s fate was decided. So thoughts of this kind would not drive him mad, he asked in the morning twilight, when Rabbi Elbaz entered the chamber to raise his spirits, for the first wife to be roused and for her to be joined by all the other members of the congregation, so that they could form a dense wall around the second wife and block her way to the hereafter.
4.
Alone she is left now, her covering cold.
Beholding his loved one her lord laments.
Calmly she journeys, barklike her bed,
Darkness directs her, we know not where.
Ebbs now her spirit, thy dear one departs,
Fails now the vision, dashed is the dream.
Gone without gaining pardon or peace,
Hoarding up vengeance, dead is the dove.
In secret caressing melts now the love,
Kissing a dear foot—crowning content.
Loved in her lord’s arms, never alone,
Moves now the curtain another’s desire.
Now in the northlands somber and sad,
Ocean-wide grimness holds thee from home.
Pause to remember one mournful man
Quite worn with weeping, a suitor despised.
Ruthless and fearful lawyers proclaimed it:
Stern interdiction and baleful ban,
Tearing asunder first wife from second,
Undone forever comradeship close.
Voyaging unfriended, seeking release,
Wrapped in yon widower’s whispering words,
Yet stay a moment, fatal reflection,
Zealous I follow, faithful to death.
5.
In the course of the morning prayers, the seven Jews from Metz realized from the deep anxiety the North African displayed for the health of the young woman inside the little house that she was someone special to him, someone he held in particular affection. But as they were unable to interpret what they saw, it was hard for them to avoid thinking that it was a question of carnal sin—in other words, that the sister-in-law was also a secret, beloved concubine. At once they began to investigate, and once they had manage to persuade the young Elbaz to speak, the patient’s true position was revealed—namely, that she was neither sister-in-law nor concubine but an additional wife, a legal wife but a second wife nonetheless. What troubled the contingent from Metz, it emerged, was not the truth now revealed, but the untruth the rabbi had told them when he had solicited them to come. Before they consented to proceed with him to the solemn service of the high priest of old, according to his own rite, the great Babylonian master, they withdrew for a consultation in a corner of the woods, not far from the wall of a convent, and eventually the little Andalusian rabbi was invited to join them to explain why he had lied to them. At first the rabbi was evasive, fearing to disclose the matter of the ban in case, tempted to associate themselves with their brethren of Worms, the Jews of Metz dissolved the congregation in the middle of the prayers and departed with the scroll of the Torah that they had brought with them. Being uncertain, however, whether the forgiveness granted on the Day of Atonement would extend to a lie pronounced in the course of the worship, he yielded and disclosed the whole truth, though in a terse and laconic fashion.
The seven Jews of Metz, hearing with astonishment and a whit of pleasure how much firmness their brethren of the Rhineland had displayed, were fearful of rendering null and void the prayers they had prayed so far in the company of a banned Jew and a lying rabbi, for they knew that they would have no opportunity to repeat the holy Day of Judgment and put right whatever might have been disqualified in the prayers. So they decided to see themselves as people who had heard but not understood, postponing the full explanations until after the conclusion of the service, which they wished to press on to swiftly. But now one of the ten was missing—the banned man himself, who took advantage of the short pause in the prayers to hurry to the bedside of his second wife, eager to see how she fared. Since dawn he had entrusted the bedside vigil to his first wife, but he was not certain that it was fitting for the latter’s face to be the last image his second wife saw if the angel of death came to her.
Since midnight Ben Attar, abandoning false hope, had no longer held back from pronouncing the name of the foe who had insinuated himself into the bosom of his family. Indeed, since the early hours he had had the feeling that here in V
erdun it was not a single fiend that threatened them but a whole band of fiends, gliding easily through the cold gray mist that wafted through the narrow streets and over the meadows, stealthily attaching themselves to the little congregation of Jews, and gathering around the new, temporary Jew, who stood wrapped in his prayer shawl, attending earnestly to the strange words evoking the service in the holy of holies in the ruined temple in Jerusalem: O Lord, I have sinned, I have done iniquitously, I have transgressed against thee, I and my household. I beseech thee by thy name to pardon the sins, the iniquities, and the transgressions that I and my household have committed against thee. As it is written in the Torah of Moses thy servant, from thine honored mouth, “For on this day he shall make an atonement for you to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord.”
Unable to contain his impatience and wait for Rabbi Elbaz with his soft, wavering voice to conclude the high priest’s confession, Ben Attar had slipped away once more to the physician’s house. The doctor had left his Jewish patient alone and gone to do his rounds of peasant huts and noble houses, perhaps to avoid the suspicion caused by excessive and prolonged contact with the company of Jews. Thus, in the half-darkness of the inner chamber, whose window was veiled by a prayer shawl, the twice-wed merchant’s eyes encountered only those of his first wife, who was afraid to utter any word of protest or despair in the presence of this good, devoted man, who realized as soon as he entered the room that his young wife’s condition had deteriorated further.
A Journey to the End of the Millennium Page 31