—It went on like that all the way to Jaffa, all the way to the ship.
—We found a wet nurse in Emmaus too. And in Ramleh and Azur also.
—No, Doña Flora. It was not lack of milk that made her go from wet nurse to wet nurse, because I happened to know that the dried-up left teat had begun to flow freely again since the Day of the Rejoicing of the Law. The explanation I gave myself was that she wished to give the infant a taste of all the ambrosias between Jerusalem and Jaffa so that he might retain some memory of his poor father.
—How say you? Have you in truth, madame, forgotten him? Has my only son already been forgotten?
—No, you see no tears, not a trace of them. I will ask His Grace. Rabbi Shabbetai, has my master and teacher forgotten the only son I offered up to him, my Yosef?
—Blessed be the Name of the Lord! Did he not sign clearly, Doña Flora? He has not forgotten. Blessed be His Name! “Rabbi Yannai says, ‘We can account neither for the good fortune of the wicked nor for the torments of the righteous.’ “
—How making sport of you, madame? Why, had you not, Doña Flora, insisted on bringing your motherless niece from Jerusalem for a hasty betrothal, the three of us might still have the pleasure of seeing him alive! Instead of huddling together in this shabby inn run by Greek rebels against the Porte, we could have been sitting with him on your big divan in Constantinople, by the large hearth facing the Bosporus, enjoying the rosebushes in Abdul Mejid’s royal gardens and pondering—but no more than that!—life in Paradise.
—What mean I? What mean you?
—In a word ... in a word ... with all due respect, you were hasty, madame...
—No, Doña Flora, no, rubissa. How could I dare be angry with you? And what would it avail me if I were? Tell me that! If it would avail me, I would be angry at once. May I hope to die, madame, for not having understood my son, my own flesh and blood! Accursed am I for not realizing where he was leading us! I was an innocent, a cabeza de calabaza; too innocent for words...
—Because I did not know that behind every thought hides another thought.
—A thought born from the indulgence that you showed him in your home. Does His Grace know that when he was away on his travels, Doña Flora had my son sleep by her side, in His Grace’s own bed?
—A boy! Of course ... although not such a little one ... and a most sensitive and astute one ... I, in any case, never had the privilege of lying in His Grace’s bed...
—Why not, madame? Who of us does not desire to lie with those greater and stronger than ourselves and be warmed by their superior heat? I, too, after all, was but a boy when sent to Rabbi Shabbetai ... ‘twas many ages ago ... my father, may he rest in peace ... after the defeat of Napoleon, the cannon would blast away over the Bosporus at night for fear of the Russ ... and I was so greatly afraid that I ran to His Grace’s bed from my little room at the end of the corridor. But I was too in awe of him to climb into it ... Does His Grace remember me, a little lad standing there in my blouson and singing to him Tia Loja’s conacero
All kiss the mezuzá,
But I, I kiss your face,
Istraiqua, apple of my eye ?
He is smiling a bit, madame. He remembers the melody. He is smiling, God be praised! It would take but a word from Him to create him anew. His salvation will come in a twinkling ... See, Your Grace, I am back! Your Grace’s pisgado is back, and there yet will be song...
—Go? Where?
—No, madame, do not make me leave!
—No, do not send me away, madame. Nor are you able to...
—Most definitely not!
—I have a right ... I am family ... I have been for ages...
—I will not sing anymore.
—There will be no singing.
—To make a long story short betahsir, as the Ishmaelites say in Jerusalem...
—That is just it, Doña Flora. Every thought has its pocket, and in every pocket is another thought. And from such a pocket our young lad took the thoughts discarded by the rabbi, those that fell out of his dreams at night and were left between his pillow and the wall, or lying under his bed ... because why else would he have put his trust in so frightful a thought as that which led to his death?
—But all that already reached you with that irascible emissary, Rabbi Gavnel ben-Yehoshua...
—Once more?
—He had his throat cut, madame: like a tender lamb, or a black goat in the dead of night...
—Now it is you who shudder, madame—the tears are now yours...
—But what will it avail you?
—Why multiply your pain?
—If you must ... Well, then, rubissa, he went out at night without a lantern, which is against the law in Jerusalem, with no light or badge, and in a black robe, to make matters worse...
—He turned into a lane in the Souk-el-Lammamin on his way to the Via Dolorosa. ‘Twas the night of the nativity of the Christians’ messiah, may his bones rot in hell. He was stopped by the watch—and rather than let himself be apprehended and brought to trial, he sought to flee. Nor did he run to the Stambouli Synagogue or the synagogue of Yohanan ben-Zakkai, where he could have hidden in the Holy Ark, but up the lane, through the Vidal house, and to the great mosque on the Haram-el-Sharif, perhaps because he wished to cast suspicion on the Muslims rather than on the Jews. And there, on the steps leading to the Dome of the Rock, he had his throat slit, madame. He was butchered like a black sheep.
—By our Ishmaelite cousins, those masters of the hidden knife.
—And thereabout did I wonder—did I grieve—did I sigh—did I question—did I beg to know—all during my stay with him, from the moment he pulled me to my feet in the sands of Jaffa, which I kissed with great love as soon as I was hurled ashore—yanked me to my feet and asked at once about you, madame—why were you not there—aghast to see me by myself...
—Because he was certain that I had you with me aboard ship, or that you had me with you.
—He knew nothing of Rabbi Shabbetai’s last-minute ban on your coming, Doña Flora. He stood there on the shore, looking mournfully at the deckhands folding the sails, hoping that perhaps they would still produce you from the hold, hee hee hee...
—What was there to explain, Doña Flora? His Grace had explained nothing to me ... did His Grace give any reason for it?
—He is looking at me, the poor man ... he is thinking...”Heal him now, O God, I beseech Thee”...
—A kind of mother?
—Perhaps, madame. In truth, he never had enough of his own mother, who was in a hurry to depart to a better world. But were you only a mother to him, madame, or were you also a sister of sorts?
—I mean, a sort of elder sister, someone to share one’s secrets with and tell one’s strangest dreams to ... There he stood, our Yosef, preoccupied with his own great grief and disappointment, yet at the same time, quite sure of himself and already gazing off into the distance, a high, black consular fez on his head, speaking to the villagers around him with much patience, as if they were his friends. I noticed that he could already chat blithely away in Ishmaelitic, and when I realized that my solo arrival was a far from joyous occasion for him, I sought in my despondency to cast myself reverently back down into the soft, sweet sands of Jaffa. But he seized my arm, and I could tell at once from how he did it that something had changed in him...
—From the firmness of it. He pulled me up out of the sand and commanded me, “That will do, Papá, the horses are waiting and we have a long way to go...”
—In truth, mí amiga in truth, Doña Flora: he had brought neither donkeys nor mules nor camels for us from Jerusalem, but horses, an entire horse for each of us—and most wondrous was the horse he had chosen for you, rubissa ... I still can picture it, a most exquisite mare, with a brightly colored saddlecloth laid over her...
—Especially for you. He let no one mount her, and for three whole days she trotted by our side without a rider, all the way to Jerusalem, carrying only my bags of sp
ices. Each time we looked at her, madame, we thought of you and of His Grace’s prohibition. The more we sought to comprehend it, the more we simply sighed.
—With sorrow, but without resentment, for I still felt as if I were in a dream, as if I still were rocked by the motion of the waves. We left the noisy marketplace of Jaffa, which was bubbling with colors and smells, and made our way up streets of stairs that ended in orchards and fields of large flowers and fierce thorns ... and suddenly, madame, there were only the two of us, father and son, with the broad land all around us and a harsh, inhuman sun overhead before which the very sky appeared to cringe.
—He pushed on that first day as far as the great khan of Kafr Azur, because he wished to catch the dawn caravan, in such a hurry was he to get back to his consul in Jerusalem. Does His Grace still remember the route?
—Truly, Doña Flora, truly I am confused! Indeed, the rabbi came from Damascus and entered the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan ... and so it should be, by the front door and not by the rear one. Then my master and teacher never got to see Jaffa? A pity, for ‘tis a saucy town...
—In truth, I clutch at my memories as one clutches at a lifeline, for I can picture nothing that happened without welling up with compassion. Thus it began—with a father riding behind his son in the Holy Land, rather chagrined and bewildered, regarding the wasteland around him, although ‘twas nôt always waste.
—Well said, madame, that is so. Suddenly you see a fine grain field, or an orchard, or some date palms and fruit trees by a water course, or a peasant’s hut, or a group of children playing by a well—and then there is wasteland again and the remnants of a most ancient devastation. At sunset we reached a large khan and found it deserted, because the caravan had already moved on to pass the night in Ramleh. Fresh straw was scattered for us in a corner of the hall, beside a blackened wall, and our pallets were made there. I stepped outside and looked at thé vast and most exceedingly dark plain in which there shone not a single light. Smoke curled up from an oven where bread was being baked for our supper. Yosef went to see to our horses. I watched him, a handsome, erect young man, stride over to a hedgerow of prickly pears and hang the feedbags on the horse’s necks while patting their heads and talking to them, his head nestled in the mane of your mare. Perhaps he was whispering some consolation to her for her mistress’s failure to arrive! An Ishmaelite standing nearby made some remark to him and he listened with friendly attention—and once again I was struck by how the soft, pampered youth who went shopping with you in the bazaar of Kapele Carse, carrying your dresses and perfumes, had turned into a young man beneath whose newly grown mustache there was already something quite secretive. He resembled my father as a young man, before his bankruptcy, and I suddenly felt such a bitterness of spirit, señores, that I longed to return to the sea I had come from no more than a few hours before, which had played with me and tossed me on its waves. I thought of my parents of blessed memory, and all at once I felt a great desire to say the kaddish for them in the Holy Land and to pray for their souls. And so I asked my son if there might be a village nearby with enough Jews in it for a prayer group. At first he was as startled as if I had asked him to pluck a star from the sky. “Jews? Here?” “And is there anywhere without them?” I marveled. He cocked his head and stared at me, and then he smiled a bit—and I wonder, Your Grace, whether it was then that the frightful idea was born in him, or whether it had been there all along—and after mulling it over for a moment he said softly, “Right away, Papá, right away.” He ducked through a gap in the prickly pear hedge and stepped into some mud huts, from which he pulled out one shadowy form after another and brought them to me. I looked about me and saw these dark-faced, bare-legged Ishmaelites, some with battered fezes on their heads and some with black keffiyehs, most silent and docile, as if they had just been torn out of their first sleep, madame. “Here, Papá,” says Yosef, “here is your minyan ” He frightened me. “But who are these men, son?” I asked him. And he, standing there in the still of evening, señor y maestro mío, he said, mí amiga Doña Flora, as if he were loco in the head, “But these are Jews, Papá, they just don’t know it yet...”
—Yes, madame, those were his words. “These are Jews who will understand that they are Jews,” he said. “These are Jews who will remember that they are Jews.” Before I could even stammer an answer, he was chiding them in his friendly manner and making them face east toward Jerusalem, where there was nothing but a black sky full of stars, after which he began to chant the evening prayer in a new melody I never had heard. From time to time he went down on his knees and bowed like a Muslim so that the Ishmaehtes would understand and bow too ... and I, Your Grace—señor—Rabbi Haddaya—my master and teacher—allowed myself to go along with it ... sinful man that I was, I could not resist saying the kaddish and profaning the blessed Name of the Lord. I said it from beginning to end in memory of my parents and of my poor wife ... madame, the blanket ... it is falling off...
—Here, let me, Doña Flora, I’ll do it. I ... he is shaking ... something is bothering him ... perhaps...
—I...
—But what means that, madame? “Tu-tu-tu”? What would he say?
—But what wishes he to say, for the love of God?
—But the blanket is wet, Doña Flora. It is most wet. Perhaps we should make a fire and dry it over the stove, and meanwhile I can change His Grace...
—No Why?
—Why a servant? Why a Greek? I am at your complete service, madame, with all my heart ... let the good deed be mine ... he was like a father to me, Doña Flora ... I beg you...
—No. He is listening. His eyes are following me. Rabbi Shabbetai knows my mind ... he remembers what I said ... that every idea has a pocket and in that pocket is another idea...”There is no man without his hour nor any thing without its use”...but what means he by “tu-tu-tu”? What would he say? He seems most agitated...
—Well, then, in a word, in a word, Doña Flora, so my visit began, on that route leading from Jaffa to Jerusalem, seeking to catch up with a caravan of pilgrims that kept a day ahead of us. For three whole days we shadowed and smelled its trail, trampling the grasses it had trampled, coming upon the embers of its campfires, treading on the dung of its animals. The two of us rode, and your mare, madame, which was now just an extra mouth to feed, trotted along between us Sometimes, in the twilight, it even seemed that we could see your silhouette astride her ... My son tried being a good guide to his father. He pointed out to him the threshers in Emmaus, and the winnowers in Dir Ayub, and had him dismount to smell the wild sweet basil and the green geranium, and to chew the stems of shrubs and grasses from which perhaps some new spice might be concocted. The next evening too, by a stone fence belonging to Kafr Saris, he disappeared for a while among some rocks and olive trees and returned with a new group of wraiths, more Jews who did not know that they were Jews—which is to say, another band of drowsy peasants and shepherds who were rousted from their first sleep. This time he gave them all a quarter of a bishlik for their pains—and all this, señores, was entirely for my sake, to enable the touring father to satisfy his craving to chant the kaddish, not only for the souls of his parents, but also for those of his grand-, and great-grand-, and even greater grand-grandparents than that, until the first father of us all must have heard in heaven that Avraham Mani had arrived in the Land of Israel and was about to enter Jerusalem.
—Ah! That afternoon we finally caught up with the Russian pilgrims—who, now that Jerusalem was just around the corner, had taken off their fur hats and were walking on their knees from sheer devoutness, following the narrow road up and down in long, crawling columns from the Big Oak Tree to the Little Oak Tree and from there to the Monastery of the Cross, which was bathed by red flowers in its lovely valley. And then suddenly, there was Jerusalem: a wall with turrets and domes, a clear, austere verse written on the horizon. Soon I was walking through its narrow streets by myself, led by the consular mace-bearer.
—Be
cause Yosef could not wait and went to return the horses to the consulate and tell the consul about his trip while I was packed off with my bundles behind the mace-bearer, who struck the cobblestones with his staff and led me along a street and up some steps to a door that did not need to be pushed open because it already was. I stood hesitantly in the entrance, staring in the looking-glass that faced me at the unkempt form of a sun-ravaged, sunken-eyed traveler. And just then, Rabbi Shabbetai, who should step out of the other room but Doña Flora herself, but thirty years younger! It was as if she had flown through the air above my ship and arrived there before me! A most wondrous apparition, señores—here, then, was the secret that explained Beirut and that had, so it seemed, quite swept Yosef off his feet! One passage through life had not been enough for so charming a visage, and so it had come back a second time ... I was so exhausted from the trip and from the sun, and so excited to be in Jerusalem and its winding lanes—I already felt, mí amiga, that I had arrived in a city of bottomless recesses—that I whispered like a sleepwalker. “Madame Flora, is it truly you? Has the rabbi then relented?” Hee hee hee hee...
—That is how muddled I was
—No, wait ... I beg you...
—But wait, madame ... You have no idea of the wondrous resemblance between you, which is perhaps what lured you to Beirut in the first place in order to meet your own double and give my poor departed son ... I mean, tacitly ... eh?
—We knew nothing. What did we know?
—The betrothal was carried out in haste ... the rabbi too was notified after the fact...
—Yes. A tremendous resemblance
—Yes. Even now—are you listening, señor y maestro mío?—when I look at the rubissa, I see as in a vision Tamara thirty years from now. The very spit and image in charm as well as beauty...
—At first she was alarmed. She turned very red but kissed my hand and let me bless her, and then took my bundle and laid it gently and with great respect on your childhood bed beneath the large, arched window, madame, in which henceforward I slept, in hot weather and in cold. She set the table for me and warmed water for me to wash my hands and feet, and then stood over me to serve me as the sun was setting outside. I noticed that she seemed not at all surprised that Yosef was taking so long at the consul’s instead of hurrying home, even though he had been away for a week; it was as if she were used to the consul’s coming before her When I was all washed and cleaned and full of food, she summoned her father Valero to make my acquaintance and take me with him to the synagogue for the evening prayer, after which we chatted a bit about Jerusalem and its plagues and then lit candles against the darkness of the night. It was only then that Yosef came home at last. He was carrying a lantern and was still disarrayed from his journey, which for him had only now ended. He greeted his wife and the rest of us with a polite nod, but he was so tired that he confused a bag of his clothes with a packet of some documents from the consulate and even began to speak to us in English until he realized his mistake. It was then that I first understood, chère madame and señor, that he was in the grips of a notion more important to him than his own marriage—of an idée fixe, as the French say, that mattered to him more than having seed.
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