A Journey to the End of the Millennium

by A. B. Yehoshua

  What is inside? whispered Abulafia fearfully, in a broken voice, having already perhaps sniffed the terrible cloying smell. The rabbi was filled with pity at the sight of the apprehensive third partner, who was trembling in front of the large coffin, fearing that it might house his banned uncle. But then the new wife, Mistress Abulafia, emerged from the house to see what had so attracted and detained her young husband. It seemed that she had not yet noticed the coffin or the seamen standing in the narrow street but only Rabbi Elbaz, and her delicate little face flushed with pleasure at the sight of the shrewd Andalusian rabbi, who had bested her once and had now been bested in his turn, and she dropped a little curtsy of respect and asked him with a cheery smile, So you have returned?

  At that, the North African merchant emerged from the recess where he had concealed himself. His hair and beard were unkempt, his robe was torn, and his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. Before Mistress Esther-Minna could draw back, he answered her question clearly: We have returned, but not all of us. With an air of grim despair that contained a hint of lunatic glee, he hurled himself upon the coffin and pulled out one of the planks, to furnish clear proof that henceforth the old partnership could be revived without contravening any new edict. While Abulafia clutched the wall to stop himself from collapsing, Ben Attar fixed his black eyes straight on the wide blue eyes and asked with utter hostility, Is the new wife satisfied?

  6.

  The Andalusian rabbi’s firmness having paid off, the second wife was laid to rest that very night in a little burial ground squeezed between a fair vineyard, the property of Count Galand, and a small chapel dedicated to the unfortunate Saint Mark. At first Ben Attar had demanded that his second wife be buried in the courtyard of his in-laws’ house, so that the grave might be watched over and tended by his kinsfolk. Abulafia was at once eager to do his uncle’s bidding, but Master Levitas gently refused the request, which seemed to him to be merely vindictive, and persuaded the merchant and more especially the rabbi from Seville not to leave the deceased alone in the courtyard of a Jewish family, which might be here today and gone tomorrow, but to lay her to rest in a real cemetery, close to other deceased folk, so that she would not be overlooked at the time of the resurrection of the dead. While the sailors, transformed now into gravediggers, cleared away the undergrowth and dug an ample grave pit, Ben Attar, grim-faced and weary, distracted by grief and exhaustion, listened as Master Levitas sang the praises of the place where he was laying his wife to rest. It was odd that Master Levitas, a clear-thinking Jew who could hardly bear Jewish old wives’ tales, let alone those of the Christians, so far forgot himself as to tell Ben Attar the story of Mark the hunter, who cruelly killed a doe and her young fawn in full sight of the terrified stag, which thereupon opened its mouth and prophesied in human language that he who had not spared a mother and her child would one day inadvertently kill his own wife and child. To prevent this terrible prophecy from coming true, Mark shut himself away forever in a little house surrounded by ancient Merovingian tombs, secured with an iron door and stout bolts and a grille on the window, and lived on the generosity of pilgrims setting out on the Road of Saint James for the holy shrines of the southern lands. Since he had managed to flout such a clear and terrible prophecy by willpower alone, his calamity brought him strength and his sin was a source of sanctity, and his little house became a chapel that served as a landmark for pilgrims setting forth on their long journey.

  The grieving husband did not fathom the intent of Master Levitas’s strange tale, but one realization had been growing steadily stronger within him since the beginning of the nocturnal funeral cortege—namely, that his second wife’s death had decisively ended the ban and interdict declared against him in Worms by the red-haired arbiter, the poetic and heartless prayer leader. Not only did Abulafia, whose heart had been smitten with sorrow and guilt by the young woman’s death, cling to his grim-faced uncle as a slave clings to his master, but even the reserved Master Levitas was unable to disregard the misfortune of these people who had been defeated from an ethical and a legal viewpoint alike, and so he summoned up all his resources of attention so as to listen with sympathy and compassion to the story of her last hours and her death as recounted with deep feeling by Rabbi Elbaz.

  Mistress Esther-Minna’s fair foxlike countenance, however, betrayed not only sorrow and sympathy but also the first tokens of a new alarm. While her feet sank into the freshly dug earth piled around the edge of the grave, and while she listened to the rabbi reciting the prayer for the dead, she realized that the North African uncle’s daring, epic journey had indeed achieved its purpose. As the frail body wrapped in pale green silk slid as though of its own accord into its last resting place, between the chapel and the vines, it took with it the last restraint that might have prevented her footloose husband from recommencing his travels.

  Supposing that she insisted on joining him, she thought quickly, would he agree to take her with him? Or would he make her stay at home to keep her promise to look after his poor child, whom she herself, in a moment of weakness, had wrested from the Ishmaelite nurse and taken under her own wing? In which case, Mistress Abulafia thought, tormenting herself, who would warm her cold feet at night, now that she had become accustomed to the soft hands of the southern man? And who would give her a glimmer of hope of turning her barrenness to fruitfulness, if only to demonstrate to her stern mother-in-law in Worms that the fault had not been hers? Meanwhile, until the new direction that the contest might take became clearer, she must try to soothe Ben Attar’s feelings, for even the darkness of night could not conceal the hatred he felt toward her. At the conclusion of the burial she gathered the inner strength to approach him and offer her condolences, and even to beg him to fetch from the ship his first and only wife, who was as precious as an aunt to her, so that both of them, together with the reverend rabbi and his son, might accept the hospitality of her home and fulfill the command to dwell in a tabernacle. Since she had not hesitated to welcome his double menage into her home previously, there was even less reason to do so now.

  But Ben Attar, whose robe was now disfigured by a long, ugly rent of mourning made by the little rabbi, waved her offer away and declined to enter her house. He was firmly resolved to return at once to his ship and shut himself up with his grief in the very cabin in the stern that had been the last home of his wonderful deceased wife. There was no hope that the entreaties of the fair-haired woman, or her brother’s pleas, might deflect him from his purpose. He frostily signaled to his men to take up the empty coffin and return to the old guardship, for only there would it be seemly to receive any visitor who might wish to honor the command to comfort the bereaved.

  Early the next morning, after a long night bereft of sleep, Mistress Esther-Minna assembled some choice food and gave it to her Teutonic maidservant to carry, and joined Abulafia for a morning visit to the ship, which had donned mourning though there was only one mourner aboard (for the first wife, though willing, was unable to be a mourner, not being blood kin to the deceased). On the bridge in the bow, in the midst of sailors waking from sleep, Abulafia and his wife encountered the first wife, with a serious look on her bright face, very carefully laundering her dead co-wife’s fine silken gowns, which Ben Attar wished to give to his orphaned son, so when the time came he would be able to dress his bride in them and by so doing be comforted somewhat for the loss of his mother, without even a grave or a tombstone upon which to weep.

  Abu Lutfi greeted the early callers with a bow, accepted the large leather bag of food from the gentile maid with thanks, and led his restored partner and his agitated lady to the stern. This was Mistress Esther-Minna’s first visit to the Moroccan ship, and consequently she took short, clumsy steps, particularly when she was slowly helped down the rope ladder into the dark hold, where fine slivers of morning light hovered in the air together with the odors of various desert wares that had lingered between south and north because of her stern repudiation. While the visitor marveled at th
e depth of the small ship’s belly, she was suddenly startled by the grunting of the camel, which rose slowly and with great dignity on its long legs to greet her with its small head. For a woman who had been born and bred to the sound of croaking frogs and howling wolves, there was an attractive peacefulness about this patient, calm desert beast, whose small head might indicate a lack of wisdom but not any viciousness of character.

  The northern woman finally stooped and entered the cabin where the second wife’s spirit still hovered, and where her husband had chosen to sit and receive condolences, in this gloomy corner, accompanied by the gurgle of the river underfoot, surrounded by timbers that had been weakened in some ancient sea battle but strengthened in readiness for the present expedition by the captain and his crew. Since Mistress Esther-Minna had absorbed some words of Arabic during the month of confrontation in Villa Le Juif and Worms, she realized that the conversation between uncle and nephew did not concern the pain of death or the memory of the deceased woman’s good qualities but went straight to the future hope of the revived partnership. Even Abu Lutfi, the quiet Ishmaelite partner, was excited now, and with precise gestures he described the quality and quantity of all the goods that had been longing for three months to leave the darkness of the hold and burst forth into the brightly lit world outside. At the sound of the commercial Arabic babble in full spate, Mistress Abulafia’s pale blue eyes darkened with sorrow, and she left the little cabin to wander down the avenues of large jars and swollen sacks, laying a soft hand on a pile of skins and cloth and making a shiny copper cooking pot ring with a tap from the toe of her shoe before halting silently before the Elbaz child and the black idolater, who were feeding the young camel with one of the loaves of bread she had brought on board.

  This may have been the moment when a strange notion was born that would create a new reality after the end of the Tabernacles week and the days of mourning. Since the previous night Mistress Esther-Minna had not ceased to consider how she could defend her marriage against her husband’s renewed traveling, not only because she wanted to deprive her jubilant brother of the pleasure of validating the warning he had issued back in the year 4756 against the frivolity of a match between an older widow and a questionable wandering southerner, but more particularly because she regretted every night that passed without furthering the hope that beat within her breast. And so, after returning to the cabin of mourning to take her leave of Ben Attar, whose coldness toward her seemed weaker, she obtained her husband’s permission to return home alone, leaving him with his restored partners so that he could discuss business with them to his heart’s content.

  But Mistress Esther-Minna had no intention of sitting quietly in her corner and waiting for her husband to depart on his travels; she wanted to discover whether a spark could ignite a conflagration. That afternoon, seeing that her husband had not yet returned, she decided to go back to the ship with food and drink, as was fitting for a visit of condolence. But this time she took the poor child with her, washed and scrubbed and clothed in a fine robe. Although the startled girl walked clumsily and somewhat lopsidedly, she led her calmly along the winding streets of the island, among Parisians hurrying to their evening meals, and helped her without mishap across the new bridge that led to the ship moored on the north bank. It transpired that Abulafia had gone off with Abu Lutfi to sell their merchandise in the market of Saint Denis, and so, for lack of choice, she waved her arm to summon the pagan, who was standing all alone on the bridge, staring westward like an admiral, to help her get the heavy child on board and lower her slowly into the hold, in the conviction that an encounter with the noble, sad desert beast would soothe her desperate soul, however slightly.

  Even though the girl gripped her stepmother’s gown in terror, Mistress Esther-Minna felt, with her sensitivity and experience, that behind her fear the child was absorbing the smell of her southern childhood, and that in looking at the camel she was recognizing something she had lost. For lo, the trembling ceased, and her large black eyes fixed on the peacefully waving little tail. Perhaps this is the solution to the problem that has been tormenting me, the new wife’s soul suddenly claimed, though she could still not determine precisely what the solution was, or even what the problem that required a solution was. Then Abulafia could be heard on deck, speaking in Arabic to Abu Lutfi, and the merry liveliness of his noisy conversation showed that far from deepening his old melancholy, the second wife’s death had released him from it, so that it seemed as though a new happiness animated him. From now on, she felt sure, her young husband would be able to guard himself against any further designs that might threaten his beloved partnership.

  When the two of them descended into the hold and Abulafia discovered his daughter standing calmly beside the camel, trying to feed him a slice of black bread from her pudgy hand, a cry of encouragement burst from his mouth at the strength of his dear wife, who, according to his understanding and his own notions, was tempting the accursed enchantment that had taken hold of his daughter to change its dwelling place from his child’s soul to that of the camel. Although it was impossible to tell whether the stubborn sprite really would exchange the soft body of the child for the little rounded hump of the patient creature, Abulafia seemed to betray a new weakness of purpose, for now, for the first time since the end of the reign of the stern Ishmaelite nurse, who had been sent to Barcelona in his stead to put an end to the partnership, he saw a charming smile again on the face that should have been as fair as her mother’s, if it had turned out differently.

  Indeed, in the half-darkness of the hold of the old guardship, among sacks of condiments and jars of oil, a new affection seemed to flow not only between the camel and the odd child but also between Abulafia and his wife, who even in moments of carnal intimacy seemed to have had difficulty in looking straight at each other ever since the North African expedition had burst upon them. So the following day Abulafia himself took his daughter down into the hold, which was gradually being emptied of its cargo, and asked the Elbaz child and the slave to keep an eye open to make sure that the growing friendship between the girl and the beast did not cause her any harm.

  Meanwhile, the grieving husband sat in his torn robe, hidden away in a cabin in the bowels of the ship, pursuing his silent mourning despite the festive season. From time to time the first wife descended to him, bearing food or drink, to rub his hands and feet with almond oil and to sing the praises of the departed. Even the rabbi, who was not happy about this secretive mourning, which impugned the joy of the feast of gathering in and the commandment to dwell in a tabernacle, visited him occasionally to speak words of admonition. Ben Attar listened and nodded, his eyes dull, his head drooping on his chest, his expression that of one who wishes to die by degrees. But when his partners, Abulafia and Abu Lutfi, came in, he shook off his gloom to utter a short, sharp sentence about the price of a copper pot or the urgent need to find someone in the Capetian capital to rid them of the burden of the camel.

  Before the camel could be offered for sale it must be taken ashore and fed, and it would be best to send it to graze in the fine fields and vegetable gardens of the Duke de la Teulerie, which adjoined a dense forest called by the locals Lupara on account of the packs of wolves that roamed it, attracted by its burrows. Therefore, toward the close of the festive week, on the eve of the Solemn Assembly, one of the sailors was sitting in a garden holding a long cord, at the other end of which a long-necked item of merchandise delicately cropped the tenderest greenery in Paris, pricking up its ears curiously from time to time at the Jewish boy and the young idolater chatting in the language of the desert and at the disturbed girl, who was reminded by the sounds of Arabic of the nurse who had been taken away from her.

  Now that the autumn blew an occasional cold breeze over the Île de France, the young people, knowing that in a few more days they would be summoned to board the ship and sail away and that for days and nights on end they would sway to the monotonous rhythm of the wind flapping the sail, sought to enjoy
to the full the rustle of the russet leaves on the firm ground. Since the rabbi’s son had absolute faith in the son of the desert to take them safely home again, especially if it was somewhere as simple and straightforward as the right bank of the river, he offered to take his companions on a short excursion to the top of a low knoll that could be seen some way off, which he had no doubt was the same hill, topped with a ruined arch, from which he and Ben Attar, the first of all the passengers on board, had seen the enchanted city.

  But he had unwittingly mistaken for the western hill another, northern one, which seemed low only because of a white smudge that spread in its center. Since the girl walked with a slight bias that constantly had to be corrected, the Andalusian child, who had become the leader of the small expedition, wondered whether they should keep climbing the slope, whose steepness was only too evident to their young legs, or whether they should turn around and go back to the ship before the drizzle that was accompanying them turned into a full-scale rainstorm. While he was still debating, the rainclouds burst, turning clothing and flesh to a single pulp, until they had no choice but to take shelter beside a large cottage that they had previously taken pains to avoid, since black smoke was spiraling up from its chimney. While they huddled unobtrusively under the overhanging thatch, the demon in the girl’s soul suddenly broke into its old howl, which outdid the tumult of the rain and brought two smiling women out of the silent house, dressed in colorful gowns stitched together, to the boy’s surprise, from the green silk that they had brought on their ship and bartered for eggs and cheese on their way to Worms.