Mr. Mani

by A. B. Yehoshua

  —His own, madame.

  —Of course...

  —I will get to that shortly.

  —As brief as I can make it.

  —What will His Grace eat?

  —But why should a little porridge disturb us?

  —Of course...

  —Perhaps, Your Grace, it was Doña Flora who first fired his imagination and put such mettle into him. The stories you told the lad about Jerusalem, madame, on those nights when he lay by your side in the bed of the hacham, were what filled his head with grand thoughts ... what made him think you could roll the world around like an egg without cracking or spilling any of it ... although all he had to roll it on were the pensamientos pequeños gathered from those that Rabbi Shabbetai had discarded. Because before many days had gone by, it was clear to me that he had not merely been humoring me by dragging sleepy peasants out of their huts for a quarter of a bishlik apiece. You see, ever since he had come to Jerusalem to fetch Tamara to her wedding and stayed on there because she would not leave, he had resolved that if stay he must, he would stay among Jews, even if they did not know yet that they were Jews or had completely forgotten it. That was why he treated them with such warm sympathy. Their forgetfulness pained him, and he feared the shock of remembrance that would befall them, so that, together with the British consul, he did all he could to soften it in advance.

  —Yes, muy estimada madame. Is my master and teacher listening? Such was the thought that possessed my son’s mind, the idée fixe rammed home as forcefully by the consul as if it were an iron rod driven into his brain.

  —There was no knowing which of them was the bellwether and which prevailed upon which, because the consul, like all Englishmen, looked upon us Jews not as creatures of flesh and blood but as purely literary heroes who had stepped out of the pages of the Old Testament and would step back into those of the New at the Last Judgment, and who meanwhile must be kept from entering another story by mistake—which made me realize at once that I must be on guard to protect my only son’s marriage.

  —Of course. The next morning the mace-bearer came to invite us to high tea with the consul and his wife. I bought myself a new fez by the Lions’ Gate, Tamara cleaned and ironed my robe, and off the three of us went to present me to the consul at that time of day when Jerusalem is ruled by a cinnamon light.

  —The consulate is near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. You cut across to it from the Via Dolorosa.

  —By way of the Street of the Mughrabites, via Bechar’s courtyard and Navon’s stairs. ‘Tis behind Geneo’s wine shop, on Halfon’s side of it.

  —No, the other Halfon. The little one who married Rabbi Arditi’s daughter.

  —The Ashkenazim are a bit further down.

  —’Tis all built up there now, madame, all built up. There are no empty lots there any more.

  —It is built up behind the Hurva Synagogue too. The Ashkenazim are spreading all over.

  —For the moment, no. But they will build there too, never fear. There is nothing to be done about it, madame. You have greatly come up in the world since leaving the Holy City, but although Time remained behind there, it has not stood still either.

  —As brief as I can make it. Nevertheless, Doña Flora, I must let the story unfold out of me in its entirety, with all its joys and its sorrows, its tangs and its tastes—and for the moment I was still in Jerusalem as an esteemed visitor, a passer-through and not a stayer-on The consul and his wife received us most lovingly, and the consul even spoke a bit of Hebrew to me ... Madame?

  —Yes, madame, a rather Prophetic Hebrew. Yosef circulated about the house as if it were his own, and once again it struck me how adept the lad was at making himself liked and finding himself a father or a mother when he needed one. Meanwhile, more guests arrived: an old sheikh who had been fetched from the village of Silwan to provide me with company, and his son, an excellent young man who was a clerk at the consulate; some newly arrived French pilgrims; several English ladies who drank tea, puffed hookahs, and seemed quite startled by their own utterances; a German spy in a dark suit who had in tow a baptized Austrian Jew; and so on and so forth. But I, madame—I, my master and teacher—I, señores—did not forget the mission I had entrusted myself with, so that even as I listened to everyone with enthusiasm as a good guest should—“Who is honored? He who honors his fellow man”—I kept one eye, madame, on Tamara, who was sitting there silent but glowing among the Englishwomen, squeezed in between them like a baby lamb in a team of bony old nags and sipping her tea while nibbling a dry English scone in that clear, winy light. She was smiling absently to herself and considering the air, and I could see at once that her absence was due not to plenitude but vacuity. It was as if she were still not over her betrothal and had not yet been properly wed ... and at that moment, I thanked God for having sent me to Jerusalem...

  —I am referring to matters of the womb.

  —No. Not even a miscarriage. Nothing.

  —In a word, nothing, madame. And to make a long story short, it was from that nothing that I commenced my mission, that is to say, that I made it my business to see that that marriage bore seed and not only idées fixes that were bound to lead to some fiasco. By the time we guests of the consul returned home that night, each of us carrying his or her lantern à la Jerusalem and weaving through the narrow streets behind the mace-bearer, who kept rapping the cobblestones with his staff to warn the inhabitants of the underworld of our approach, I had made up my mind to become a stayer-on—that is, to settle as deeply as I could into the young couple’s home, and into my bed in your little alcove, from which I could quietly carry out my designs. And that, señores, was the meaning of my desaparicíon that you were so worried about. Does Your Grace hear me? How charmingly he nods!

  —No, I do not wish to weary him. But if I do not unfold my story to the end, how will he pass his silent verdict on it? Because that same night, Your Grace, I was already having my first second thoughts as I lay secretly plotting in bed not far from the two of them. Their door was slightly ajar; moonlight bathed the bottom of their blanket; a ray of it strayed back and forth between the lookingglasses, and as I listened to their breathing—to the sounds they made as they stirred or murmured in their dreams—to their laughter and their sighs—I tried reckoning how to tell the wheat from the chaff and how to read the signs, that is, to understand where the fault or impediment lay, and if it did not perhaps involve some flight or falling-off, some inversion or infirmity, that must needs be remedied if the seed was to be conjoined by the potency of its yearning with Constantinople and with what I held most dear there, namely, señor y maestro mío, with Your Grace. And so I was up the next day before dawn, with the crowing of the first cock, which I encountered strutting in our little street as I groped my way in the dim light to the Wailing Wall, brimming with the lusts and life of Jerusalem, to weep for the destruction of our Temple and say the morning prayer. I licked the dew from the stones of the wall and asked God to prosper my way, and then I turned and ascended the Harat Babel-Silsileh to the silent souk and bought some dough rings, hard-boiled eggs, and orégano from the Arabs there. I took these back to my young couple, yho were still luxuriating in sleep, brewed them a big pot of strong coffee, brought it all to their bed, and woke them, saying: “I am not merely your father, I am also your two mothers who died in the prime of their lives, and so it is only meet that I pamper you a bit—but in return, as Rachel says to Jacob, “Give me sons or I shall die.” The two of them blushed and smiled a bit, glanced anxiously at each other, pulled the blanket tight around themselves, and turned over in bed. Meanwhile, the muezzin had begun calling the faithful to prayer in the great mosque. Yosef listened carefully to the long wailing chant that was making my head spin and suddenly sat up and said, “That chant, Papá, is what we must work our way into until the truth that has been forgotten comes to light, because if we do not, what will become of us?” And with that he threw off his blanket, shook out of it the idée fixe that he had spent the n
ight with, clapped it in his fez, and went off to wash and finish waking up.

  —’Twas a jest, Doña Flora ... a fantastical remark ... a mere parable...

  —I will not do it again. It was only to explain why I now changed from a passer-through to a stayer-on and began to establish myself in Jerusalem, which was rapidly exchanging the soft breezes of spring for a fierce summer heat that its inhabitants, Your Grace, call the hamseen, though so still is the air that I call it the unseen. Before a day or two had gone by I had a staff of my own to rap the cobblestones with and a lantern to make me visible in the dark, and within a week I was conferring the pleasure of my voice on the worshipers in the Stambouli Synagogue, who let me read from the Torah every Monday and Thursday. By now I was shopping in the market too, and helping Tamara peel vegetables and clean fish, and after another week or two I rented half a stand from an Ishmaelite in the Souk-el-Kattanin and set out on it the spices I had brought from overseas, to which I added some raisins, almonds, and nuts that I sold for a modest profit. I was becoming a true Jerusalemite, rushing up and down the narrow streets for no good reason, unless it were that God was about to speak somewhere and I was afraid to miss it.

  —And sleeping all the while in your bed, madame, in the little alcove beneath the arched window, where I hung a new looking-glass of my own across from your old one to keep it company and to bring me news of the rest of the house, so that I might work my secret will. And though my big beard kept getting in all the mirrors, the youngsters seemed to be fond of me; not only did I not feel a burden to them, I felt I was breathing new life into a house that I had found dreamy, disorderly, and impecunious, because Yosef was paid more respect than money at the consulate, the consul being a dreamer himself who seemed to think he was not a consul but a government and who was already quite bankrupt from the prodigal sums he spent, partly on the pilgrims whose lord protector he sought to be even though most were not English, and partly on the Jews, whom he considered his wards and the keys to the future. No touring lady could visit Jerusalem from abroad without being royally put up in his home and having Yosef to guide her to the churches of Bethlehem and the mosques of Hebron, down to Absalom’s Tomb and hence to the Spring of Shiloah and from there to the Mount of Olives, first putting everything in its proper perspective and then passionately, by the end of the day, scrambling it all up again, expertly stirring faiths, languages, peoples, and races together and pitilessly baking them in the desert sun until they turned into the special Jerusalem soufflé that was his favorite dish...

  —A guide, madame, if you wish; also a dragoman for roadside conversation; plus a courier for light documents; and a scribe for secret correspondence; and sometimes too, a brewer of little cups of coffee; and when the spirit moved him, the chairman of the disputatious literary soirées of the Jerusalem Bibliophile Society. In a word, a man for all times and seasons, particularly those after dark, for so accustomed was he to coming home at all hours that I had developed the habit of waking up in the middle of the night and going to see if he was in his bed yet, and of becoming frantically, heart-strickenly worried if he was not, as if the very life were being crushed out of him at that moment. And since I was afraid to step out into the silent street, I would ascend to the roof to peer through the moonlit darkness at the ramparts of the city, and then down into the bowels of the streets, hardly breathing while I waited to espy, bobbing as it approached from the Muslim or Christian Quarter, a small flame that I knew from its motion to be his. At once, madame, I slipped down from the roof and ran to the gate to admit him into his own house, as if it were he who was the honored guest from afar whose every wish must be indulged, even more than you indulged it when he was a boy, madame. I took off the fez that was stuck to his sweaty hair, helped him out of his shoes, opened his belt to let him out of his idée fixe, brought water to wash his face and feet, and warmed him something to eat, because whole days would go by without his taking anything but coffee. At last, relaxed and with his guard down, the color back in his cheeks, he would tell me about his day: whom he had met, and whose guide he had been, and where he had taken them, and what the consul had said about this or his wife about that, and what was written about them in the English press, and their latest protest to the Turkish governor—and I would listen most attentively and ask questions, and every question received its answer, until finally I teased him about his idée fixe that was lying unguardedly in the open and inquired, “Well, son, and what of your Jews who don’t know that they are Jews yet?” At first my mockery made him angry. But after a while the anger would pass and he would say with a twinkle in his eyes, “Slowly but surely, Papá They’ve only forgotten, and in the end they’ll remember by themselves. And if they insist on being stubborn, I’ll be stubborn too, and if they still don’t want to remember...” Here his eyes would slowly shut, trapping the twinkle inside them until it grew almost cruel. “If they insist,” he would say, weighing my own insistence, “we shall sorely chastise them until they see the error of their ways.”

  —Yes. He definitely said “chastise,” although without explaining himself, as if all chastisement were one and the same and there was no need to spell it out chast by chast.

  —Your Grace, señor y maestro mío, are you listening?

  —Ah! And so, Your Grace, we joked a bit at the expense of his idée fixe until Yosef fell softly asleep and I helped him to his feet with the lantern still in his hand and led him off to bed—where, madame, his wife, silently opened the same beautiful, bright eyes with which you are staring at me right now...

  —God forbid, Doña Flora! Not coerced but gently assisted.

  —No further.

  —My silent support, madame ... my fondest encouragement...

  —No further.

  —I had to know.

  —I was looking for a definite sign, madame.

  —The looking-glass showed only shadows...

  —Someone is knocking, madame ... who can it be?

  —Is it time for his dinner? Praise God...

  —But how in the way? Not at all!

  —God forbid! I am not going anywhere. I am most eager, mía amiga Doña Flora, to see how the rabbi is fed...

  —I will sit quietly in this corner.

  —So this is what Rabbi Shabbetai eats! It is, madame, a dish as pure as snow.

  —So it is...

  —Soft porridge ... so it is...

  —So it is. The poor man! Your Grace always hated mushy food...

  —Of course. There is no choice. It is the wise thing to do, madame. Nothing else would go down as easily, filling the belly while soothing the soul. And who, may I ask, was the servant who brought it?

  —A fine-looking young man. Would it not be best, though, for the holy rabbi to be waited on by one of our own?

  —Well, a fine-looking young man.

  —God forbid! Nothing to excite him, madame. Nothing to spoil his appetite. Why don’t you rest and let me feed Rabbi Shabbetai myself? It would be a great pleasure and a privilege.

  —Well, then, perhaps later.

  —His bib? Where is it?

  —One minute ... in truth, he seems most hungry...

  —Master of the Universe! Lord have mercy! Why, ‘tis a perfect infant ... a perfect infant...

  —What, Your Grace?

  —In a word ... in a word ... in the briefest of words, Doña Flora, but with much fear and trembling, because despite the cloudless summer—that is, we were now in the midst of a fiery, cloudless summer—there had even been a mild outbreak of some sort of plague, the exact name of which no one was quite sure of—I already had, Doña Flora, from all those dreams, nighttime walks, and—whoever was the bellwether—fantasies of that Hebrew-speaking English consul, a sense of impending disaster. Sometimes, when I lost _ patience standing on the roof, I went back down and took the lantern and waited for my son Yosef on the corner, by Calderon’s barred window. I stood beneath the moon and prayed to see that crookedly bobbing little flame, which sometim
es appeared from the south, with a herd of black goats coming home late from their distant pasture in the Valley of the Cross, and sometimes from the west, with a band of pilgrims returning from midnight mass in the Holy Sepulchre, to whom my son had attached himself in the darkness as an unnoticed guide to penetrate a place that Jews were barred from...

  —Of course, madame. A most flagrant provocation. The Christians themselves are divided into mutually suspicious sects that ambush each other in the naves of the church and brawl over every key and lock, and they certainly did not need an uninvited Jew peeking into God’s tomb and reminding them of what they did not believe they had forgotten and had no intention of remembering. And as if that were not enough, he sometimes proceeded from there to the Gate of the Mughrabites, from where steps lead up to the great mosque, in order to bid a fond good night to its two Mohammedan watchmen before heading home for the one place that he feared most of all—namely, his own bed.