The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  Yehezkel bowed and proffered his hand to each man.

  “This is his pilot, Arnulf.” Yehezkel guessed from the ginger hair that he was a Norman.

  “And these are two of the four knights on board—Iñigo Sanchez of Sporreto and a Frankish novice, André de Rosson of Aullefol, in the Aube.” The young Frenchman wouldn’t shake the Jew’s hand, let alone grasp his wrist, and retired to one of the parapets.

  Moments later, Don Sancio heard from Yehezkel the kind of information on the siege of Damietta that could only have come from the Saracen side of the war. In the next corner of the balcony, in a rite as old as war itself, the veteran knight mimed skulls shattered and guts trailed on the ground for the novice, his gestures making his white mantle pirouette through the air. Finally, in the corner to which a chart table was bolted, Friar Vassayl and his pilot acrimoniously debated something they clearly wished to hide from the Jew, the result of their efforts being a comical whispered row.

  Don Sancio quoted Ecclesiastes twice more in the next five minutes, and Yehezkel, amused, informed him that if Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs had made it into the Jewish Canon, it was thanks to Eleazar ben Azaryiah—a sage of the Talmud—but also a lover of poetry.

  “May his name be blessed for all centuries!” said the scribe, amused and a little moved. Then, with a smile of theological malice, “Did you ever read the Gospels, Rav Yehezkel?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Yehezkel. “I even came to the conclusion that Saint John was an embittered Jew . . .”

  The two men started talking Scriptures, and Yehezkel soon discovered that the scribe was a secret admirer of Averroes,*20 and as such anathemized by the church as theologically indifferent. They were wallowing in that intellectual complicity when Yehezkel noticed Friar Vassayl angrily whisper something to Arnulf and pour the water from an iron bowl overboard.

  What explains the embarrassment on the quarterdeck of the Falcus is that in those years the use of loadstones—small pieces of rock that, when free to orient themselves, always point to the north—was not yet widespread. Those who knew of them, like the possessors of a good map, kept it to themselves. Yehezkel immediately grasped the meaning of the bowl of water and suspected that their problems were caused by the stone being floated in an iron container.

  He casually mentioned to Don Sancio that he had a loadstone. The old man, pretending not to know what the rabbi was speaking of, peered at the horizon as he weighed the implications of those words. A few moments later, he gestured for Yehezkel to follow him and walked over to Friar Vassayl.

  “Qoheleth says ‘The toil of fools wearies them; they do not know the way to town.’ You two would argue over how much gulf is left before the straits until we were on the rocks!”

  He gathered his robe about himself and crossed his spindly arms on his chest.

  “I represent the master of the temple, who is the owner of this ship, and I hereby take responsibility for involving Rav Yehezkel in its navigation. Many Jews are excellent astronomers and pilots, and this rabbi could be another one. Come on, Arnulf, pull out the loadstone!” The last words were addressed to the pilot, who disapproved of such confidence with a Jew but knew the limits of his authority and pulled out a small, dark piece of rock about the size and shape of a pine nut shell. Friar Vassayl was already pouring fresh water in the bowl, but Yehezkel stopped him.

  “If you had bad results so far, Master Vassayl, it’s because you floated the cork on which your stone rests in that container. You must use a clay one, or your stone will always behave as if it has lost its mind. . . .”

  Friar Vassayl turned to Don Sancio, outraged. “By all the bulls in the Camargue! The stone points north out of love for the Holy Virgin, not for Moses! Why should I listen to a Jew’s advice on how to second the stone’s love for God’s Mother, whom Christ killers call an adulteress?”

  Yehezkel’s anger welled up at the goy’s superstition. “I suppose now you’ll tell me the stone hates what spills blood, so armors and swords ‘upset’ it, or that it hates garlic because it causes lascivious thoughts, which are anathema to the Virgin. I’ve heard these wives’ tales, Friar Vassayl. . . .”

  Young de Rosson heard him and grabbed Iñigo by the arm, pulling him to the chart table. “In the name of God, Master Vassayl, can you not see that iron is what all enemies of the stone have in common? If garlic wasn’t eaten in iron bowls, loadstones would react to it like all stones react to garlic!”

  Iñigo’s tales filled André with chivalrous furor, and the Jew’s tone was more than he could bear. “Oh happy day, on which I am chosen to defend the honor of Our Lady against an emissary of the Synagogue of Satan!” he cried, throwing himself at Yehezkel.

  In the middle of the balcony he collided with Don Sancio, who jumped in front of him with the agility of a habitual faster. The scribe was smiling, but his voice was ice. “‘Wisdom is better than weapons of war,’ says Qoheleth. Brother André, repress your anger, which is a sin, and have someone bring a clay bowl, before I lose my patience. . . .”

  A little later, five men crowded round the chart table, watching Arnulf deftly compensate for the ship’s roll as he gently lowered the stone onto a cross-shaped cork calamus floating in a clay bowl. They quickly determined where north and south were and, knowing how long past midday it was, proceeded to work out their latitude, which told them how far southward they had sailed from Venice.

  Friar Vassayl, seeking another confirmation, asked Arnulf for the average speed of the Falcus over the three days. Arnulf answered, “We never covered more than eight, at most ten leagues, in a watch, maître. The stone tells the truth; we’re past Zara; and soon Spalato will be on our port beam!”

  Just then, the voice of the man in the crow’s nest rung out, “Galleys on starboard!”

  The next instant, all six men were leaning out the starboard parapet, eyes narrowed to glimpse details of the warships. The flotilla of fast Venetian galleys, their decks hidden behind long rows of leather shields against Greek fire, were rowing north at great speed in nearly becalmed seas. The oars raised no spray as they sunk in the lead-like water and emerged perfectly aligned, leaving just a trail of drops on the surface. The regular shouts of the overseers, muffled by the distance, reached to the balcony on the Falcus.

  “The Captain of the Gulf goes to see the Provveditore da Mar!”*21 decreed Friar Vassayl darkly.

  The Captain of the Gulf ruled waters from Venice to the straits of Otranto, beyond which the Captain of the Levant, based in Corfu, took over. They had found something they could all agree on—captain and pilot, scribe and warriors, Jew and Christians: the arrogance of Venetians.

  “Loutish, ill-disposed people with gold buckles on their cloaks, who board your ship without asking permission and move the freight around to count it better, as if it was their goods!” hissed the captain to everyone’s approving grunts.

  As the galleys shrunk behind them, Yehezkel decided to take his leave of the quarterdeck and check on the nuns. An impatient Aillil waited for him at the foot of the ladder, a head full of nautical questions.

  There was not a breath of wind for the rest of that afternoon. The oar-less Falcus drifted aimlessly, its flaccid mainsail snapping with each roll of the ship, fooling landlubbers into thinking that some wind had finally filled it. Soon the gunwales were dotted with pilgrims leaning out, more dead than alive, passing on their last meal to the fish as some compassionate soul held onto them to stop them from falling overboard.

  Galatea was white as a sheet and covered in sweat. She no longer cared about anything or anyone: not the pilgrimage, not the Holy Sepulchre, not the enigma in Jerusalem. She just wanted to be left in peace, possibly with her head perfectly still.

  A little before the change of watch at Vespers, the bell rang for the second and last meal of the day, provoking a mere shadow of the enthusiasm it sparked earlier. Yehezkel didn’t even try to convince the abbess to swallow anything yet wasn’t surprised to see that Gudrun’s appetite had no
t suffered in the least, not to speak of young Aillil and the voracious two men raised in the lagoon.

  As he studied the abbess, he was reminded of the Greek philosopher who once declared, having been caught by bad weather sailing home from the Black Sea, that there were three categories of humans: the living, the dead, and those who go to sea.

  Galatea’s chest didn’t even rise in the barest of breaths. The only thing that told Gudrun her abbess was still alive were slight tremors of her nostrils whenever the blandest smell of food reached them. In reality, every tremor felt to Galatea like her stomach tying itself in knots. Gudrun thought that stretched out on the mattress, hands clasped on her chest, covered to her chin by a dark shawl, Galatea didn’t just look dead, she looked like the relic of a saint!

  Just before dark, the boatswain shouted, “The watch is in place, the hourglass turned!

  We wish everyone a good passage, God willing!”

  In those becalmed conditions, Yehezkel found the addition of an Insh‘Allah particularly appropriate.

  The pilgrims, nauseous and depleted of all fervor by the third sunset, answered weakly,

  “Blessed be the hour in which the Lord was born,

  Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Amen!

  May God grant us a good night, and a good passage!”

  Silence fell on the Falcus, broken by creaking wood and pitiful moans. Even Yehezkel was groggy from the erratic swinging in the dark. Suddenly, he saw a candle advance toward him, making its way cautiously around the many sleeping bodies. Flames were strictly forbidden on board, so Yehezkel guessed the bearer of the candle must be someone not subject to the rules. Don Sancio brought a pillow and sat down, Saracen style, in front of the rabbi. He let some tallow drip on the deck on which to steady the candle.

  “Qoheleth says: ‘Even in the night, man’s heart knows no rest.’”

  In the flickering light, Yehezkel saw what it was that had belied the scribe’s tolerant wisdom since the morning: he insisted on shaving, but without much success, and the short, whitish stubble on his cheeks robbed him of the gentleness of wizened faces, giving him instead the air of an aging outlaw.

  Nighttime conversations at sea have something at once languid and adventurous that makes them feel somehow important. Relishing the feeling, Don Sancio plunged back into their theological banter. “Pope Gregory the Great already recognized that our faiths were incompatible, Rabbi. ‘If Christianity is Truth, then the Jew is in error, and vice-versa,’ he wrote. So you see, each is convinced he possesses the Truth. . . Sometimes I think we could all be wrong! After all, doesn’t Qoheleth say, ‘He set eternity in their heart, but so that man cannot find out the work that God has done from the beginning to the end’?”

  “I’m not being provocative, Don Sancio,” replied Yehezkel, “but I rather agree with Pope Gregory. There is right and there is wrong, and each one of us is free to choose where to stand.”

  Galatea couldn’t sleep and heard every word. But just as she emerged unsteadily from behind the curtain, the vicious cog’s starboard side rose, and the abbess slipped, falling straight into Don Sancio’s arms. The old man fell backward, entrusting himself to Saint Martin, and rolled away into the darkness.

  Galatea stood up when the scribe reappeared, apologizing profusely and introducing herself. Don Sancio insisted the abbess take his place on the cushion. What had started off so clumsily was Galatea’s most heroic effort to ignore her nausea since the rolling motion had begun. In simple, elegant Latin, she intervened in their dialogue. “But what if we were all not wrong but right? Tell me, my learned doctors, if salvation of the soul were a garden on the far side of a river, and religions were bridges across it, what difference would it make, once in the garden, which bridge we had taken?”

  “No, madame, I beg to differ,” said Yehezkel gently. “Like most Christians, your heart and mind are set on the garden, but I dare you to deny that we spend our whole life on the bridge we chose!” After a pause, he added, “It’s a very narrow bridge, and the river roars below, but the thing is not to be afraid. . . .”

  Don Sancio mumbled, “Ahh, bridges, gardens . . . Qoheleth says ‘The living know they will die, but the dead know nothing.’”

  Those words moved the abbess to ask Yehezkel, “According to Jewish doctrine, what becomes of souls when they’re separated from the body? Do they have feelings and memories, or is the time between death and Judgment Day just a big void, like a spiritual . . . sleep?”

  “Mmh . . . all I can say, madame, is that Jews don’t believe in what you Platonics call ‘immortal soul.’”

  “We . . . Platonics?” asked Galatea.

  “You haven’t read Plato? Oh, of course, you are a woman . . .”

  “Yes, I am a woman and no, I haven’t read Plato!” she said angrily. “But I know he was a philosopher of the pagans. So for Jews, we Christians are all . . . pagans?”

  Yehezkel grimaced, but by now he knew that this nun had no time for mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. “Well, in all honesty . . . yes. I understand that such a view displeases you, but did you ever stop to think of the quantity of statues you’re used to bowing to, or of the necromantic ritual in which you claim bread and wine magically turn to flesh and blood, or of the several ‘persons’ your divinity is made of, one of whom is even the offspring of another. . . Come now, madame, if you are not pagans, who will ever deserve that epithet?”

  Don Sancio laughed. The abbess, not finding words strong enough to express her outrage, emitted a low hiss, her tongue behind her teeth. “Ssssss. . . . You have the right to your opinions, Master Ezekiel, but if this joint pilgrimage is to have an end as well as a beginning, this is one opinion I would ask you not to express in my presence ever again!”

  To Don Sancio, Yehezkel seemed to grow physically smaller. The scribe, like many before and after him, said to himself that there was far more countess than abbess in this stunning lady.

  Yehezkel decided he couldn’t waste the opportunity that such intimacy with the Doctus represented for his mission and gathered his wits. “The time may not seem well chosen, Don Sancio, but I’d like to pose a question that is very important to me—in fact, that is important to Jews everywhere. . . .”

  Scribe and abbess immediately felt how serious the rabbi was.

  “Brother Domingo of Guzman wants the Talmud declared heretical with respect to real Judaism, which the Church protects. The Spanish monk says that the Talmud is much more recent than the Torah and that it . . . corrupts Jews. The work of our sages is in danger. I have been tasked to look for parchments that will demonstrate the antiquity of the Talmud . . . now if the Templars found any ancient parchments when they dug under the Holy Mount in Jerusalem, you, Don Sancio, are the man who would know. . . .”

  Galatea hadn’t seen such determination in Master Ezekiel’s eyes before. Her gaze fell on the blue twine on his thigh. It seemed almost black in the dark, but she could have sworn it shone with an iridescent, cavernous light. Don Sancio was nodding slowly.

  “Yes, Rabbi, there is a page of Talmud in Paris . . . and it’s strange you should ask now, because I dug it out again recently after forty years and once more had to give up on trying to understand it!”

  Yehezkel leaned forward. “But if you don’t understand what it says, with all due respect, how can you say it is a page of Talmud?”

  The scribe smiled. “My Aramaic is not Rav Yehiel’s, but I’ve often studied with him, and I recognize the style of a debate between your sages. The parchment is old, of that there is no doubt. It was found while digging the foundations of the Tiberias castle. In my opinion, it is a page of Talmud.”

  “Can you remember some words of it?” asked Yehezkel.

  “My memory made me secretary to the master of the temple, Rabbi. I remember the page as if it was before my eyes, not least because its sense escaped me for so long I must have read it a hundred times!”

  “What did you understand of it?” asked the rabbi.

  “A sage accuses anoth
er one of hiding a page from the book of a prophet, ‘with the oil, so it would not be hidden,’” recited Don Sancio, still bitterly amused by the strange text. “And claims he hid it because of a prophecy about the Messiah in it, which had already been fulfilled in the life of someone else. . . .”

  “Why do you mention no names?” asked Yehezkel. “Who are the sages and the prophet involved?”

  “That’s the mystery!” said Don Sancio. “The accuser is Acher, ‘another one,’ the accused is Satmetaz and the prophecy was fulfilled in the life of Mevipaz Zithagam! Do you know who these people are? They sound almost Babylonian. . . . Is that an enigma?”

  “It looks like one, indeed, though I can easily tell you who Acher was.”

  “Please do! I’ve waited forty years for someone to tell me!”

  Yehezkel sat up. “Then listen. There was a sage called Elisha ben Abuya who abandoned Judaism and probably became a Christian. In normal circumstances, nobody would ever have mentioned his name again in a debate, let alone written it down if someone else had inadvertently done so. But circumstances were that Elisha, until his apostasy, had been one of the most brilliant minds in extracting Law from the Torah, so a compromise was reached to record his opinions as those of Acher, ‘another.’”

  “Extraordinary, my friend, simply extraordinary,” said the scribe. “Before the monks I am a doctus, but before a rabbi of the Jews I am like an infant learning his aleph-bet!”

  “But those strange names, Satmetaz, Mevipaz . . . there seems to be a code involved here; the scribe recording the accusation didn’t want a casual reader to grasp who this was about.”

  “Yes, it’s what I thought, too,” murmured the scribe, disappointed even a rabbi couldn’t fathom them.

  The hours without breeze finally calmed the waves, and the ship’s motion subsided. Without her being aware of it, color returned to Galatea’s face. Yehezkel swung slowly back and forth on his hips. Galatea stared at him with curiosity, fascinated by the singsong that was taking over both his body and his speech. The rabbi’s dark eyes shone with excitement like when he’d first heard her pronounce the word “Bereshit.” He asked, “Does not the page say from the book of which prophet the prophecy was removed?”