A Journey to the End of the Millennium

1.

In the second watch of the night, finding himself woken by a caress, Ben Attar thought to himself that even in her sleep his first wife had not forgotten to thank him for the pleasure he had afforded her. He brought the caressing hand to his lips in the deliciously swaying darkness, intending to plant another kiss upon it, but the touch of its dry heat on his lips soon corrected his error, and disgustedly he thrust away the hand of the black slave, who, sensing his master’s revulsion, vanished. Lying where he was, naked and very drowsy, Ben Attar was once more tormented by anxiety about the journey. He reached out to check whether the youth, who had dared to intrude so far into his bed to wake him, had not also touched the belt full of precious stones, which he now hastily buckled on before donning his robe. Silently, without a word of parting, he slipped out of the tiny cabin and climbed the rope ladder onto the deck. Even though he knew perfectly well that his departure, however silent it was, would wake his wife, he was confident that she would have the self-control not to detain him. Not only was she aware of where his duty now lay, but it was even possible she shared his hope that he would be in time to discharge it before the dawn of day.

But to judge by the twinkling summer stars that filled the firmament, the dawn was still far off. The breeze that was gently clearing the sleep from his eyes as he climbed on deck was not the kind of breeze that blew up suddenly toward the third watch, but just a gentle billow that soon vanished into the void they had identified the previous day, by the intersection of the winds and the smell of the water, as the mouth of the River Seine, for which their hearts had been yearning ever since they first set sail from the Maghreb more than forty days before. So as not to miss the precise opening of the river that would take them into the heart of the Frankish lands, the captain had given orders before sunset to stop the ship, drop anchor, tie up the two steering oars, and wrap the great sail around the long yard that hovered about the gently slanting mast. In the space on deck, freed of the suffocating motion of the great triangle of canvas, the rope ladders became improvised hammocks for the crew, who, unable to abandon their curiosity even at this deep and intimate hour of the night, squinted drowsily to watch the Jew, the ship’s owner, recharging his desire, anxious not to let himself down or to fail his second wife, who was expecting him in the stern of the ship.

Meanwhile, a faint tinkle of bells accompanied the shadowy figure of the slave who had woken his master with a long, impudent caress, as he slipped out now from among the baskets of merchandise, proffering without expression a basin of pure water. Surely, Ben Attar brooded resentfully as he freshened his face in the icy water, the slave could have made do with the little bells attached to his tunic instead of intruding into Attar’s cabin to steal a look at his nakedness and that of his wife. And without a word of warning or reproof, he suddenly slapped the slave’s black face with all his strength. The boy reeled from the blow but showed no surprise; nor did he ask for any explanation. Since the beginning of the voyage he had become used to the fact that no man spared the rod upon him, if only to restrain this son of the desert, who ever since he had been taken onto the high seas had lost his stability and, like a small, lithe wild animal, terrified the moment it is caged, had taken to roaming the labyrinthine crannies of the ship day and night to nestle up to any living creature, whether man or beast. In despair Ben Attar and his partner had resolved to put him ashore in some harbor and pick him up again on the return journey, but the fair wind that had filled the sail during the first two weeks had carried them far from the Iberian Peninsula, and when they stopped at a fishing village near Santiago de Compostela to take on fresh water no Muslim could be found to take the bewildered boy even temporarily under his wing. The Arabs refused to leave him in the hands of Christians, for they knew well that with the approach of the millennium they would not receive back what they had left, but a cowed little new Christian.

It was on account of the rumors that had been flooding Andalus and the Maghreb this last year, about a new fanaticism spreading through the Christian principalities and kingdoms, that the Jewish merchant and his Arab partner Abu Lutfi had decided to minimize their travels by land, so as not to endanger themselves and their merchandise by journeying among hamlets, villages, estates, and monasteries swarming with Christians who were feverishly yearning for their wounded Messiah to descend from heaven to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of his birth but who still feared that that moment would be a day of reckoning for accumulated sins, particularly for the stiff-necked Jews and Muslims who walked freely and calmly in their midst, not believing in the crucified godhead nor expecting any salvation from it. And so, in these twilight days, as faiths were sharpened in the join between one millennium and the next, it was preferable to restrict encounters with adherents of another faith and to be content, at least for the greater part of the way, to travel by sea, for the sea, which can reveal itself at times to be capricious and cruel, owes no obligation to what is beyond its reach. Instead of heading east through the Straits of Gibraltar and sailing northward along the Mediterranean coast to the mouth of the Rhone, and then going up that great river swarming with local craft, and thence seeking the distant harbor town along ruined roads thronged with zealots in search of sacrificial victims, they had decided to hearken to the counsel of an ancient, much-traveled mariner. This man, Abd el-Shafi by name, whose great-grandfather had been taken captive during one of the last Viking raids on Andalus and had been compelled to accompany his captors for many long years upon the seas and rivers of Europe, had brought them two old maps painted on parchment, with green seas and yellow continents abounding in red bays and blue rivers on which one could travel almost anywhere. On close scrutiny the two maps were slightly different—for instance, the land of the Scots appeared on one but was missing from the other, its place being occupied by sea—but both maps agreed as to the existence of a winding northern river, although they called it by slightly different names, which would enable the North African traders to sail, without their feet touching dry land, from the harbor of Tangier all the way to the distant town of Paris, to which a year previously their third partner, Raphael Abulafia, had withdrawn himself.

And so, on the advice of that ancient mariner of captive pirate stock, who showed mounting interest in their journey, they had purchased in the port of Salé a big ship, old but built of sound timber, which had served in bygone days as a guardship in the fleet of the caliph Hashem the First. Without removing the old bridge in its bow or the row of rusting shields that adorned its sides, they prepared it for its civilian mission. They installed separate cabins amidships, cleared out the hold, reinforced the timbers with large wooden rivets, increased the height of the mast, and fitted a larger, triangular lateen sail. They waited for the summer to manifest itself, and then Abu Lutfi selected six experienced sailors to take the ship on a trial run back and forth near the Straits of Gibraltar. It passed the test, and so they loaded it with the great mass of merchandise that had accumulated in the warehouses over the past two years, and with further goods as well. Jars full of pickled fish-cheeks and olive oil, camel skins and leopard skins, embroidered cloth and skillfully made brassware. Also sacks of condiments, and sugar canes, and fastened baskets full of figs and dates and honeycombs, and leather containers brimming with desert salt, in the depths of which they had concealed daggers inlaid with precious stones and flasks of rare perfumes. It was late June when they set sail, turning their backs for the first time in their lives on the rising sun and setting their faces to the west, to the great expanse of the ocean. Clinging cautiously to the coast of southern Andalus, they began to sail northward along the califate of Cordoba and the kingdom of Leon, turning eastward somewhat along the northern coast of Castile and Navarre to the port of Bayonne. From here, after a short rest, they sailed along the coast of Aquitaine and the duchies of Gascony and Guyenne, touched the coast of Belle Île, and turned northwest, into the heart of the ocean, so as to give a wide berth to the dangerous craggy headlands of Brittany. So weary were they from the long voyage that they momentarily disregarded the old pirates’ map and hunted for the mouth of the river they were seeking in the big gulf that they had come upon. But they had been overhasty, and pressed on northward for ten long days more, skirting the great duchy of Normandy until at last they were able to turn east, into the crocodile jaws of a new bay that appeared at dawn in all its splendor, and into which flowed the longed-for river named the Seine, which would conduct them circuitously but safely to the place where their third partner had vanished, after submitting to his wife’s repudiation.

Even though there was no reason why the Christian millennium should trouble Jews or Muslims sailing alone upon the universal ocean, the Moroccan ship, advancing at the pace of a fast horse, seemed to have absorbed something of the new religious fervor radiating from the nearby Christian coasts. How else are we to explain the fanaticism with which the sailors harried the black boy, who attempted occasionally to commune with his ancient gods, which the dread of the wide ocean was forcing out of the memory of his pagan childhood? Ben Attar sometimes thought that this panic-stricken youth might be able to find peace in his outlandish prayers, and even bestow it upon others. But this is not what the Arab sailors thought, for whenever they caught the boy prostrating himself in supplication to the sun or the moon or the stars or bowing down at the base of the old bridge, facing the animal head carved at the top of the mast, they would drag him to his feet and flog him for idolatrously polluting the worship of the one invisible God, who here, on the high seas, seemed to his worshippers not merely a necessity but the only rational divinity. Fearing that the young African might secretly betray them, they attached little brass bells to his coat, so as to keep track of his movements. And even now, as he brought Ben Attar the light meal he had cooked for him, the soft chimes dissolved the silence of the night.

On a round brass tray lay an earthenware bowl full to overflowing with a yellowish stew with some pieces of white cheese floating on it. Beside it was a fine silver basket replete with figs that had been picked and dried in Seville, on which lay a grilled fish that had been netted earlier in the night, its eye still gleaming in the dark as though it were not yet reconciled to its death. At such a deep hour of the night Ben Attar did not feel like tackling a full-scale meal, but he forced himself to swallow some of the scalding stew and picked at the white flesh of the fish, so as not to drink on an empty stomach the wine that the young slave was pouring for him, despite the rabbinic prohibition on drinking wine poured by idolaters. Even though he sought to temper his spirit, and even to befuddle it enough to encourage the carefree humor that gives rise to a proper desire, well balanced between shyness and assertiveness—like that which had guided him in his coupling earlier in the night—he still had to be cautious with an unfamiliar wine, whose effects had not yet been fully tested.

At first, out of consideration for the faith of his fellow travelers, he had thought of declining the large wine jar he had been offered in exchange for a jar of olive oil twenty days since in the port of Bordeaux, and to content himself with sipping the sweet spiced wine he had brought from home for ritual purposes. It was the ship’s captain who had urged him not to turn down the Frankish wine, whose smell and taste were very seductive. For seafaring men, even if they are Mohammedans, the drinking of wine is not a sin, explained Abd el-Shafi, whose many years at sea had made him not only a tough old sea salt but also an expert in maritime law. If in truth all mankind may be divided into three classes, the living, the dead, and seafarers, who are neither living nor dead but merely hopeful, surely there is nothing like wine for inspiring hope. Therefore even now, observing the Jew tippling in the silence of the night, the captain leaned down from his hammock with an agile movement to inspire himself with a little hope, not for a waiting wife but for the mouth of the river, which he hoped the summer had left deep and wide enough to let the potbellied ship pass through without disgrace or mishap.

He did not venture to serve himself without asking the owner’s permission. But once invited, he started to gulp the wine down so lustily that the young slave had to be repeatedly dispatched to refill the pitcher, until even Abu Lutfi, who was sleeping the sleep of the just among the sacks of condiments and the camel skins so as to keep an eye on the hidden swords and daggers, awoke at the sound of the swilled wine and emerged from the bowels of the ship—not, heaven forfend, to transgress against the Prophet’s prohibition, but to content himself with contemplating the ruby liquid and perhaps sniffing its unfamiliar odor. Unable, however, to contain himself at the sight of Abd el-Shafi calmly drinking, he raised his eyes to the dark vault of the sky to discover whether at such a distance from his native country, on the threshold of a backward Christian land, unstable of government and possessed by vain beliefs, there was anyone who might rebuke him for tasting this beverage that was so beloved of the inhabitants of the place. Not for the sake of pleasure, he reasoned, but to judge for himself the nature of this juice that colored the thoughts and feelings of those whom he would soon be called upon to pit himself against. He closed his eyes as he raised the goblet to his lips and took a small sip of the cool liquid, and then his face paled as he understood how sublime the taste of the forbidden drink was, and how easily one might become enslaved to it. There and then he resolved to abjure it totally. But it was such a pity to throw the wonderful wine into the sea that he passed the goblet to the captain, who drained it delightedly and by way of thanks pointed to a pair of new stars that had appeared over the northern horizon to confirm how far they had sailed under the vault of heaven.

Meanwhile, the young slave was clearing away the remains of the Jew’s meal. Before he threw the fishbones overboard, he could not help kneeling and praying secretly to them to have pity on him now that they had met their appointed end. The soft tinkling of the bells on his lithe body betrayed him to the men on deck, but they were all too weary to rise and cut short his forbidden prayer. Perhaps now that they were about to enter the Frankish kingdom, it would be best not to disdain any possible source of salvation, even if it was disguised in the form of a fish’s skeleton. Straight ahead of them, not far from the place where the mouth of the river must be, a fire had been burning since nightfall, as though someone on the shore had already spotted the strange ship and was hastening to wreathe himself in fire in preparation for the meeting.

What form would this meeting take? The eyes of the men on the deck gazed fixedly at the bright red sign. Up to now the voyage had been pleasant and safe, as though the God of the Jews and the God of the Muslims had combined their forces upon the sea to supply each other’s lack. Nature had smiled upon the travelers, and if occasionally the skies had darkened and the ship had been lashed by showers of rain, these had been short-lived and refreshing, and had not deterred the captain from spreading the great sail to the favorable winds and garnering their full blessing. Nor had they been troubled by the curiosity of passing craft, for despite the ship’s unusual appearance, it was immediately apparent that she was a stray, threatening no harm. Even though the signs of her previous military career could still be discerned, her rounded belly betokened peace, and even those who had been so consumed by suspicion that they had come aboard to inspect what was truly hidden in the ship’s bowels could find no menace in the camel skins or brassware, or in the dried figs and carobs that they were promptly offered. Taking the packet of salt that Abu Lutfi offered them wrapped in thin paper, the visitors would depart with thanks, not imagining the concealed daggers, curved and lovingly honed. True, the sight of a woman or two in colorful robes and fine veils, strolling on deck or sitting on the old bridge, might have aroused some unease in the minds of the curious, but even this was a personal, not a religious or military, worry.

But now, as they left the open sea behind them and sailed upriver into the heart of the continent, they were bound to attract hard looks from the local inhabitants on either bank. How should they comport themselves? Should they display all the passengers on deck so as to reveal, besides their commercial aims, the domestic harmony that prevailed, or should they dissemble the luxurious character of the human and material cargo that they were bringing from the prosperous south of the Maghreb, leaving visible only a handful of tough-looking sailors hanging from the ropes like long-armed monkeys, to deter anyone who might attempt to meddle with them? Ben Attar, Abu Lutfi, and the captain debated the matter anxiously, for despite their great combined experience, not one of them had ever sailed farther north than the Bay of Barcelona.

They had been to the Bay of Barcelona once a year for the past ten years, at the beginning of August, in sailing ships laden with merchandise, to meet Abulafia, partner and nephew to Ben Attar, who came to meet them from Toulouse. He crossed the Pyrenees on his own, disguised sometimes as a monk, sometimes as a leper, the better to conceal in the folds of his robe, whether from the extortionate customs men of the little duchies on his way or from genuine robbers, the silver coins and precious stones that he had received in return for the merchandise he had distributed the previous year throughout Provence and Aquitaine.

These meetings were very pleasant for Ben Attar, because the joy of seeing his dear nephew was combined with the flash of gold and silver coins from the Christian states in the north. Abu Lutfi too was excited each time to discover afresh how the brassware, jars of oil, camel skins, perfumes, and condiments that he had gathered so busily in the villages and hamlets of the Middle Atlas had been transformed in the space of a year into shining silver and gold coins. No wonder, therefore, that year by year the two partners became more and more impatient. So fearful were they of leaving Abulafia alone for a single minute in the meeting place with his hidden treasures that they brought forward their departure, leaving Tangier before the end of July, and covered the intervening miles in six or seven days’ travel, with short night stops in deserted coves along the Iberian coast. As soon as they reached the Bay of Barcelona, they left the new merchandise in a stable adjoining a tavern belonging to a local Jewish trader by the name of Raphael Benveniste, and paid the sailors’ wages with a cargo of timber that they loaded onto the ships for the return journey. Not only did the partners not entrust their return to the same sailors who had brought them, but for fear of treachery they refused to return by sea at all. Lightened of their merchandise, they would hire a pair of fine horses and ride up a nearby hill. There, in a charming, secluded wood, stood the ancient, partly ruined inn where they would meet Abulafia. Some said that the last Roman emperors, six centuries earlier, had passed the autumn there. In the darkness of its large dank rooms the two partners first tried to sleep, exhausted as they were from the fierceness of the sun, which had scorched their eyes and seared their flesh during the long hours they had spent suspended between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea. But this sleep did not last long, for all too soon their anxiety for Abulafia woke them, dispelled their tiredness, and sent them running to the paths all around, trying to determine by which route he would come. After five or six years, this good-hearted man had taken to being not only a day or two but three or four days late, generally with the pretext of real or imagined fears that had forced him into hiding or made him change his disguise repeatedly so as to evade whoever it was who was secretly planning to harm him, or so he thought.

So strong had Abulafia’s love of disguise become that he began to deceive not only menacing strangers but even his two anxiously waiting partners. He tricked them not only with his disguises but also with his angle of approach to the meeting place. Even though Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi would comb every possible path to intercept their partner, he would outwit them and slip past without their spotting him, so that it was only in the evening, when they returned, disappointed, to the inn, their souls consumed with fear for his safety and that of the gold and silver he was carrying, that they discovered to their amazement that he had already arrived and had even finished his supper and was now resting from his stratagems, sunk in a deep slumber. But later in the night, unable to restrain himself, Ben Attar would creep into the sleeper’s room, smiling at the discarded disguises scattered around the bed, and without a word would gently lay a hand on the curls that reminded him so much of his late father’s, so that Abulafia, forced to abandon his pretense, would open his smiling eyes and begin to talk.

Then the stories would start to flow like a gushing spring. Abulafia would begin with a highly colored account of the eventful journey from Toulouse to Barcelona, boasting particularly about how he had succeeded in outwitting the border guards of the little counties and duchies, who imposed a heavy tax on all those who entered or left so as to sustain those who remained. Despite the lateness of the hour, Abu Lutfi would hasten to join his two Jewish partners, asking Abulafia to show him at once the silver and gold he had brought and to tell the story of each coin, its value, where it had come from, and for what it had been traded. Because the Arab had an excellent and precise memory of the merchandise he had entrusted to Abulafia the previous year, he was on his guard when he demanded it back item by item, and it was necessary to concentrate hard to track the fate of each, since most of the goods had not been sold outright but exchanged repeatedly in a succession of strange and complicated deals. To satisfy Abu Lutfi’s inexhaustible curiosity, Abulafia recalled each and every one of the purchasers, identifying them by name, relating where they dwelled, what their business was, how they had haggled, on what they had compromised, and he was even persuaded in the course of his account to describe their facial appearance and their dress. Occasionally he also expatiated upon their beliefs and opinions, and by the time dawn broke, the destiny of the merchandise had become inextricably entangled with the destiny of the world. So it was that the men from Tangier learned of this count or of that duke, born in Gascony, Toulouse, or the Valley of the Loire; who was stubbornly fighting on, and who had wearied of war and sued for peace; which river had flooded the previous winter, or what plague had broken out in the spring; what the monks were thinking, how the nobles were comporting themselves, and whither the Jews were migrating. And the most important thing of all, what had and had not changed in people’s taste and in women’s whims, so that they would know what to seek out and bring with them the following year.

The next day, when the year that had passed had been fully gone over and the hope for the year to come had been cautiously adumbrated, the delicate moment arrived when Ben Attar had to decide how to apportion the year’s profit among the three partners. To free his mind from all distractions he would dispatch his two partners back to the coast, to the stable adjoining Benveniste’s tavern, so that Abu Lutfi might explain to Abulafia the nature of the new merchandise they had brought with them, justify its choice, and discuss the price it should fetch. Meanwhile Ben Attar himself would bolt the door, cover the window, light two large candles, spread out on the table the booty of coins, gold bars, and precious stones from the Frankish lands, and begin to let his mind roam over the year that had elapsed, so as to scrutinize honestly the share of each of the partners in the labor that had been expended and the profit that had been made. So he sat in that ancient Roman inn, in the depths of a thick wood, tracing first in his imagination the travels of the Arab, wandering among the tribes on the fringes of the Sahara, collecting spices and condiments, animal skins and daggers. The more harshly the sun beat down in the Jew’s imagination and the fiercer the desert nomads appeared, the more his heart went out to the Ishmaelite, and he added more and more coins and jewels to his little pile, which grew accordingly—until Abulafia’s spirit became resentful, and he compelled his senior partner’s thoughts to turn northward, to the wind and the rain and the muddy roads. After allocating him several large gold coins for his travels among the estates and castles of the lovers of the cross in the Touraine, Ben Attar added a few small silver ones on account of Abulafia’s talent for evasion and disguise, his knowledge of languages, and his dexterity. Still not satisfied, in his compassion for his nephew’s wandering alone among gentiles filled with hatred and contempt, he reached out and transferred to Abulafia’s pile two sparkling jewels from that of the Muslim.

But as the candles on the table burned down, he would realize that he had been so carried away by sympathy for his trusty friends that he had neglected his own share. Surely he should not forget that the source of all this wealth was not only his own money but his initiative, his connections, and his ample warehouses. Even if he himself did not take to the roads, his far-ranging concern protected the other partners from danger. He thought also of his wives and children, of his many servants and his large houses, which demanded not merely subsistence but luxury and beauty, and as he weighed these considerations against the simplicity of Abu Lutfi’s life and Abulafia’s tragic loneliness, by the light of the guttering flames he carefully diminished the piles he had made for his partners and increased his own. By the time the light had flickered and died, there lay before him on the table three leopard-skin pouches, two of which he concealed in the luggage of his partners, whom in his heart of hearts he still considered to be agents rather than true partners. Only then was his mind at peace, and he unbarred the heavy door, unshuttered the window, and feasted his eyes on the pleasant afternoon light filtering through the trees, composing himself after the struggle that had divided his soul against itself in pursuit of justice.

Already he could hear the hoofbeats of the horses coming up from the bay. The two men seemed worn out by their discussions, and Abu Lutfi’s face was somewhat sullen because of a slight contempt displayed by Abulafia toward the new merchandise, and his low estimate of the expected prices. But out of a sense of nobility and pride, the Ishmaelite did not examine the contents of the leopard-skin pouch concealed in his baggage, nor did he weigh it against that of Abulafia or Ben Attar. He did not wish to betray any hint of a suspicion of unfairness, which would involve him in calculations that the two Jews would handle so adroitly that he would be unable to keep up. Instead he chose to take his leave forthwith and be on his way, for in any case he and Ben Attar never returned together, so as not to tempt the devil. He fastened his possessions onto his horse, concealed the leopard-skin pouch close to the fleshly pouch that held the tokens of his manhood, and after partaking of the Jewish food that Benveniste’s wife had sent for their supper, he withdrew, took his bearings, prostrated himself in the direction of the holy city of Mecca far away in the desert, cupped his hands to his ears, and delivered himself loudly and clearly of a prayer in praise of God and the Prophet, concluding with an extravagant curse upon anyone who had done or would do him any hurt. He slapped the two Jews heartily on the shoulder, and then, since he disdained to disguise himself even for safety’s sake, he contented himself with wrapping his head in the scarf that his distant forebears had brought from the desert, so that anyone lying in wait would not recognize him and anyone pursuing him would not know whom he was pursuing. As twilight fell, he mounted his horse and galloped off in the direction of Granada, whither he would travel only under cover of night.

Even though Ben Attar trusted his Ishmaelite partner—indeed, felt affection and friendship toward him—he was pleased as the sound of Abu Lutfi’s horse’s hooves faded into the red of the dying day, for only then did he feel free to leave aside concern with commerce, coin, and news of the world and hear what had happened in the previous year to his beloved kinsman, who had been sundered by a cruel fate from his native land and his family. Although it was not prudent for two strangers, and Jews to boot, to stray too far from the inn in the darkness, the eager pair, after first taking care to conceal their respective leopard-skin pouches, pressed on into the thick of the wood, making for a spot that had become dear to them ever since their first meeting. There, among jutting rocks in the mouth of a cave hollowed out by some ancient earthquake, they lit a fire, not only to ward off any local wolf or inquisitive fox, but also to sprinkle the embers with fragrant herbs, whose smoke curling around them might perfume the joys and sorrows of the year that had passed. Notwithstanding his great curiosity to hear all about the private life of the exile, who had years before abandoned the sun and sea of North Africa in favor of the loneliness and backwardness of Christendom, Ben Attar knew well that his seniority conferred the obligation to speak first. He was duty-bound to give an account of kinsfolk—wives and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and other relatives and friends—whom Abulafia was keen to learn all about precisely because they had betrayed him, and then to slake his nephew’s thirst for his native town, with its white houses and narrow alleys, its olive trees and palms, its vegetable gardens, its golden beach and its pink harbor. And finally to help Abulafia weep again, across the years, for his beautiful young wife, who had drowned herself because of the bewitched, feeble-witted child she had brought into the world, doubling and redoubling by her scandalous death the shame she had brought upon her husband, so that he had been compelled to banish himself.

And so, in the sweet sadness of remembrance of the past, they spent a wonderful summer’s evening together on the border of the Spanish March, which neatly divided the two great faiths from each other. And although they both felt an occasional flickering anxiety for the fate of the third partner, who was at this moment galloping into the depth of the night with his leopard-skin pouch dangling near his privy parts, they were also pleased that the Muslim was no longer with them, for now they were free to season their conversation with words from the holy tongue, and on the morrow, the eve of the fast of the month of Ab, when Benveniste came up together with a quorum of Jews hired especially for the purpose of praying and wailing for the ruin of the Temple, they would forget the purses full of gold and the wiles of commerce, and taking ash from the fire and smearing it on their foreheads, they would join in the eternal fear and mourning of their people.

2.

On the eastern horizon the firmament was sinking somewhat, and the moon had declined to the height of a man. Even though the captain’s sole responsibility was to sail the ship, he had caught Ben Attar’s anxiety about the secret, noncommercial purpose of the journey, and he rose and woke Abu Lutfi, who had been put to sleep by the mere smell of the wine, so that he should stir the ship’s owner, sprawled in a drunken stupor on the deck, to visit the wife who was waiting for him in the stern. Soon dawn would break and put an end to their last night on the open sea, and from now on they would lose their anonymity; on either side of the Seine they would be tracked by suspicious natives, full of the panic of the approaching millennium, who would certainly try to board the alien ship to inspect her and find out what she was about. As Ben Attar slowly rose from the depths of his slumber, he not only felt on his face the cool, urgent breeze of the last hours of the night but also found himself looking into his partner’s anxious eyes as Abu Lutfi shook him roughly. He thought painfully how wrinkled the Ishmaelite’s face had become these last years, perhaps on account of the repudiation emanating from the northern partner.

Though Ben Attar wondered how he would manage to spread the wings of his desire a second time, he nevertheless hurriedly stood up, swaying at first and leaning on the side for support, staring at the dark water lapping at the stationary ship. The fire was still burning at the mouth of the invisible river, and on the shimmering water could be seen the enchanted silhouette of a gigantic bird. All the Jew’s senses were opening up toward the night, which was filling with new signs, and he was almost driven to kneel, as though he had been infected by the pagan faith of the young slave, who was now standing nearby, awake as ever, with his bells tinkling in the breeze, ready to raise aloft the oil lamp and light the way before the dawn should break.

Here in the stern of the ship he had great need of the guiding light, for the breadth of the ship’s hindquarters added to the confusion and deepened the darkness. He had to beware not only of the piles of cloth, the bulging sacks of condiments, and the large oil jars roped together like captives, but also of animals, which stood up as he approached, their sad eyes flickering in the darkness. The space that had opened up in the hold of this old guardship after the soldiers’ bunks had been removed had inspired Abu Lutfi to add to the sheep and chickens intended for consumption a pair of very young camels, a male and a female, tethered to each other with flaxen ropes, as a present for Abulafia’s new wife, to soothe her mind and help her feel and smell the essence of the Africa from which her young husband had come. At first Ben Attar had rejected this notion, but eventually he had agreed, not because he believed that the woman really wanted a pair of camels, but from a vague hope that the strange, rare animals might arouse sympathy among those of high class, who liked to buttress their nobility by means of wonderful things. But are these little camels really capable of surviving the journey? wondered Ben Attar, watching the black slave, who could not refrain from either worshipping or affectionately embracing their delicate little heads. True, Abu Lutfi did not forget to feed them a small bundle of hay every week, to which he occasionally added slices of greenish rancid butter churned before they set sail, but their bloodshot eyes and the incessant trembling of their little humps did not seem to bode well. And when will the end of the journey be? A sigh escaped from Ben Attar’s heart as he descended lower and lower. Would he ever manage to return to his beloved Tangier and embrace his children again?

Upon entering his second wife’s chamber, Ben Attar tried to waken and expel the rabbi’s young son, who instead of sleeping next to his father in the bow had recently become fond of falling asleep in this very spot, by the dark curtain. But the boy, who spent most of the daylight hours helping the sailors, either climbing up to the crow’s nest to scan the wide expanse of sea or pumping bilgewater, was sleeping so deeply that Ben Attar decided to let him be. He took the lamp from the black slave and ordered him back up on deck. Only when he was certain that the slave’s footsteps were fading into the space overhead did he draw the curtain aside. Behind it was another curtain, so that he had to bend double and almost crawl on all fours to enter his second wife’s bedchamber.

In this place that she had sought out for herself, so close to the bottom of the ship that you could hear the gurgle of the water, Ben Attar was assailed by the special odor not only of her body but of the rooms of her home so many miles distant. It was as if even in this cramped cabin she managed to cook her stews, air her bedding, and cultivate her flowerbeds. By the shadowy lamplight cast on the ancient, soot-blackened timbers of the guardship, which had almost gone up in flames in one of the great caliph’s battles, amid rumpled bedclothes, discarded garments, and candle ends, it occurred to him that this woman had been waiting for him to come to her ever since the beginning of the night. His heart sank at the thought that all this prolonged, eager waiting might have sharpened needles of resentment that would frighten away his desire. He had hoped to enter unobserved and grope his way quietly into her bed, so as to become part of her sleep before he became one with her body, so that she would dream him before she sensed him. Only then would she be able to forgive him for bringing with him tonight the smell of the first wife’s body, which he was always careful not to do.

But she was awake. Her long, fin-shaped, amber-colored eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, like those of a newly trapped wild beast. In the city a veritable maze of alleys separated his two houses, so that each wife could feel that her universe was separate and self-contained—although he, who plied between the two, knew that the distance was less than it appeared to them, and in fact he was sometimes amazed at how little it was. Some nights, smitten with the anxiety of delicious longing, he climbed up onto the roof and floated across to the roof of the other house over the domes of the white city, which lay still in the moonlight like the breasts of pale maidens floating on a lake, as though he were a sailor leaping from prow to stern. That may have been the reason why at the beginning of the spring, when, at first desperately and later enthusiastically, he had first thought of gathering together the merchandise that had been sadly idle for nearly two years, sailing with it to that faraway town called Paris, and having a face-to-face meeting with the partner who had been severed from them, it had not seemed strange to take both his wives with him. He was convinced that the calm, harmonious presence of the two wives side by side would prove to Abulafia’s new, knowledgeable wife better than any rhetorical argument how far she was from understanding the quality of love that prevailed on the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Of one thing Ben Attar was always certain: his deep and precise knowledge of the nature of the care and love that inspired happiness and security in his wives. Every act of love with one of them involved an anxious concern for the other. Otherwise, how could he have asked them to leave their children and do without servants, to give up the scented warmth of spacious homes with beautiful tableware and luxurious beds, and squeeze like fugitives from a war into tiny, rocking cabins on board a ship sailing north instead of east, on an unknown route? If he himself, who had passed his fortieth year and was entitled to contemplate seriously the approach of death, was prepared to endure the hardships of such a lengthy journey, were they, being so much younger than he, entitled to refuse? Surely they knew well that it was also for their sakes that he was undertaking this daring voyage. Even if they felt apprehension about their ability to withstand the hardships, surely they should feel no less apprehension about the wandering of a solitary man, who for many long days would be not only without a bedmate but without a kind word to caress his careworn brow. If he were to take with him only the first wife, whose two sons were now old enough to fend for themselves, and spare the second, whose only child was five years old and still tied to the hem of her robe, surely he would be undermining the living and compelling proof of the stability and equilibrium of his double marriage, by means of which he wished to surprise his nephew’s sanctimonious wife, who could not imagine even now, in this dawn when he was at the mouth of the river, that in a few more days he would glide on his strange guardship to the very threshold of her house, to bring her this living proof.

Ben Attar’s uncle, however, the famous scholar Ben Ghiyyat, was not entirely happy about the idea of subjecting two wives who had scarcely met to prolonged and indelicate proximity in the narrow confines of a small ship. Surely it would be an assured source of storms and troubles over and above those caused by the winds and the waves. So that his nephew would not be left alone in the company of sailors, who were in the habit of seeking sin in every port, the good uncle had a mind to send a letter to his friends in Andalus asking them to prepare for the honored voyager, from his first port of call, Cadiz, a third, temporary wife, for the purpose of this journey only. A woman who would be at home on the ship and happy dwelling on the sea, with the waves as her companions. A woman whose bill of divorce would be signed together with her marriage deed and would be waiting for her on her return, in the port in which her married life had begun. Politely, with due respect to his distinguished uncle, whose white hair and beard he greatly admired, Ben Attar swiftly declined this well-intentioned initiative, which would only add fuel to the fire that was already burning against him far away. He was absolutely confident of the power of his understanding love to quell any storm caused by loneliness or jealousy, like that which was now pent up in the confines of this cabin.

At home he was always careful not to lie down beside his second wife, let alone touch her, until he was certain of her utter reconciliation, for even a grain of resentment can reduce desire to mere ardor incapable of bringing relief. Consequently, whenever back in Tangier he entered her delightful bedchamber, with its high, blue-washed ceiling and its window looking out on the sea, he would first scrutinize her long, lovely face, whose angularity sometimes recalled that of a sad man, and if he observed the slightest shadow around her eyes or her mouth he preferred not to approach her, even if the sweet pain of desire was already burgeoning in his loins. First he would go over to the window to look at the boats in the bay, then he would return and walk slowly around her bed, which was covered in striking colorful blankets that Abu Lutfi found especially for her among the nomadic tribes of the northern Sahara. Softly and casually he would start talking to her about the troubles and pains of kith and kin, so that the miseries of the world would enter into her and soothe away any resentment or grudge that she felt toward him. Only then, when he could see the dim amber hue of her eyes sparkling with moisture brought out by the duty of compassion, would he permit himself to sit down on the end of her bed, which was also his own bed, and quivering with excitement, as though traveling back in time to his wedding night, he would delicately draw her perfumed legs, their down smoothed and softened by warm honey, one at a time out of the rumpled covers, and press them to his face as though trying to identify with his lips the legs of the young woman who had stamped on the dust of the small yard of her home when he had come and indicated to her father his wish to marry her. Only then did he permit himself to begin to caress her from the top of her long thighs down to her toes, talking all the while softly and unhurriedly about the prospect of his death, which in the case of a man like him, who had passed his fortieth year, was not only possible but indeed natural. And only thus, with the permission he gave her to contemplate without any sense of guilt a new young husband who would wed her after his approaching death, did her shuddering acceptance begin, and he would feel her foot clench in his hands. Unlike the first wife, who was shaken to the core of her being by any talk of death concerning himself or others, this one, who was younger and sadder, was attracted by talk about his death, which not only stirred her curiosity and hope for herself but also aroused her tender desire for him, which he promptly took up and sprinkled upon himself like fragrant powdered garlic.

But now he was afraid to mention the reassuring prospect of his death even in a lighthearted or jocular way. The subject might appear brightly lit and charged with sweet sadness by the window looking out over the Bay of Tangier, but here, in this cramped little cabin in the very bottom of the creaking ship, it filled even him with dread. Therefore, without a further unnecessary word of apology, he entered, hung the lamp on an iron hook above her bed, unbuckled the belt full of jewels and laid it by her head, then boldly removed all his clothes. But before lying down naked next to his wife he tied his ankles with some coils of yellow rope left over from those with which the caliph’s admiral had reinforced the ship’s timbers, and then he took off the heavy silver chain that hung around his neck and bound his wrists together with it, so that she would understand that nothing prevented her from taking whatever she wanted from his body and his soul. Maybe like this she would be able, if not to forgive him, at least to reconcile herself to the fact that he had married her as his second, not his first, wife.

Although she was surprised that he surrendered himself to her so unconditionally, stripped and bound, which he had never done before, she still recoiled from him and was in no hurry to remove her shift, but took down the lamp to shed light on the body stretched out at her feet, to check whether since their last lovemaking any more curls on his chest had turned that silver color that always excited her so, because it was given to so few men to have their hair turn white before death cut them off. Now she confirmed what she had imagined. The same days of sun and clear skies that had ruthlessly tanned her own skin had whitened the hair on her husband’s head and chest, so that it was hard to know whether to lament the new signs of his approaching demise or to rejoice over the mysterious beauty with which they endowed him. A sweet sadness flooded her soul, and she could not refrain from laying her curly head upon the chest of the man who had come to her so late in the night.

In the silence that encompassed her, she was unable to feel, as she had hoped, the beating of her husband’s heart. All she could feel was the painful and unfamiliar outline of his ribs. With a strange selfish thrill she reflected that not only had her own body become gaunt from seasickness and meager rations, but her husband’s sturdy frame too was becoming lean from constant worry about the future of his business, which was threatened, more than anything else, by his marriage to her. And now a venomous gleam flickered in her beautiful, slightly myopic eyes, which had so far been narrowed to slits and now opened in offense. She looked contentedly at what in her bedroom at home merely appeared and disappeared between her body and the sheets, whereas here it was entirely revealed, shrunk into itself, as though it had changed into a mouse. So sorry did she feel for that part of her husband’s body and for herself that she lifted her head a little, and still without looking at the face of the man who had bound himself before her, she began to speak about the first wife, which she had never dared to do before.

A shiver of fear shook Ben Attar, and his eyes closed. He had become accustomed on this long voyage, in the evening twilight, when the waves swallowed the last traces of the sun, to sometimes finding the two women sitting on the bridge where in bygone days captains had commanded battles. With their gaudy veils fluttering in the sea breeze, they exchanged words without looking at each other, with blank faces, like a pair of spies. He had the feeling that throughout this long sea voyage they were passing to each other the most hidden secrets touching him, and his heart swelled with dread, and also with excitement, at the thought of the horizons of desire that extended before the three of them. And sometimes he went so far as to imagine that he could bring to Abulafia’s new wife in Paris, who was pitting herself against him, not only a living proof that would overcome her opposition but a new, sharp temptation that she would have no defense against—a temptation that he could now feel upon his flesh, in his loins, here in the swaying cabin, between the slurping of the water, the smells of the spices, and the quiet groaning of the young camels, as the young wife questioned him about his lovemaking earlier in the night and answered her own questions.

Her answers caught the picture and the feeling as accurately as if she had somehow participated in that lovemaking, and as if even now that she was alone she did not want to let go, at least in speech, of what he had done to the first wife. Panic-stricken, he tried to free his hands, which were coiled in his silver chain, and take hold of her face and stop her mouth. But the coils that had been meant to be symbolic had become all too real, and as soon as she discerned his purpose she started to struggle, as fiercely and desperately as if he were to be made to pay not just for what he had done earlier to the first wife but for all the unrequited excitement that had quickened within her as she watched the sailors wandering around half naked on deck.

Angrily she reached out to catch the minuscule mouse, as though she wanted to strangle it or even to tear it apart, but the mouse disappeared, and in its place there reared up a gentle young snake, which soon hardened into a fierce lizard that tried to escape from between her fingers and lay its thin vertical lips upon her eyeballs. Then, from the lust that moved painfully before her, she knew that her husband was regretting having tied himself up, and her spirit began to be appeased, for now that he was bound helplessly, not spontaneously, she was able to remove her shift and take from him slowly and right to the end everything that he owed her, not only since they had set sail on this voyage but ever since her father had given her to him as wife, even if she ended up dragging out of herself a wild moan that would rouse the boy sleeping on the other side of the curtain.

But the loud groan that almost turned into a shriek of pleasure did not even scrape the outer shell of Rabbi Elbaz’s son’s consciousness, so deeply was he immersed in youthful slumber. Instead, it startled the young slave, who had crept back to warm himself against the lordly bodies of the young camels and to remind himself of the smell of the desert from which he had been snatched. Virgin though he was, he understood only too well the meaning of the groans, which flooded his heart, as though through two curtains his master’s rod had pierced him too. He stroked the hindparts of the two camels, who also, to judge by their closed eyes, understood what it was that was echoing around them. Who knew, he thought, if they too would not be slaughtered and cooked before the ship reached the city? He wanted to bow his head and pray to the spirit of the fragrant bones that death would draw out of them, but eventually he gave up and shinned up the rope ladder to disappear before the Jew came out and flogged him, even though this time he had sinned by hearing alone and not by seeing. He was suddenly seized with a longing to enter the little cabin in the bow and see the smile of the first wife, whose white body he had seen gleaming earlier in the night. At this time he could go wherever his spirit wished, for the ship was still, every last sailor was asleep, himself excepted. He was kept awake and alert from the start of the night to its end by the divinity that emanated from everything, so that in these last moments of the night he became the true master of the ship, and if he wished he could even weigh anchor and hoist the triangular sail, and instead of sailing east along the river and into the heart of Europe he could head due west and sail beyond the horizon into a new world.

But a little bird striking a rope with its wings proclaimed that dawn was nigh. Before he had time to bow down and worship before its tiny holiness, it gave a chirp and sped off toward a new speck of light moving into the horizon of the new continent. Even though it was but a speck, it was sufficient to wake Rabbi Elbaz, of whom the rhyming words of the poem that had been swaying all night between his thoughts and his dreams demanded order and logic. But since the fine rays of light drawn slowly from the land were still too faint to illuminate the lines rustling on the paper concealed among the sheepskins that were his bed, he took on deck only his quill pen, which soon, as the light grew stronger, he would be able to sharpen and dip into his inkhorn, and then he would be able to insert the correct word in place of the empty space that had been waiting for it for several days. He bowed his head in shamed gratitude to the black slave, who now handed him the morning dish, fat olives drowned in an oily sauce in which to dip pieces of the warm bread that lay beside it. For forty days now he had sailed in this boat, and still he felt embarrassed whenever this slave waited on him, as though he were unworthy of it. After the birth of his only son, his wife had been so weak that he had assumed all the household chores himself. And he had enjoyed the housework that he was forced to do in her place, openly or secretly, so much that since her death he had found it hard to remarry, for where would he find a healthy wife who would consent to be waited on by him?

And so now, as bundles of gray cloud floated in the air, he ate with bowed head, holding the platter between his hands, careful not to make a movement or say a word that might encourage the young slave to continue to wait upon him, lest the slave would get carried away and prostrate himself and kiss the hem of the rabbi’s threadbare robe. He had done this one evening, seized by a powerful religious feeling, and the rabbi had been compelled to complain about him to Abu Lutfi, who had flogged his protégé prodigiously. But no, this time the young man did not seem to be returning to his old ways. As the morning mist thickened, with his master’s two acts of lovemaking and the smell of wine, which still wafted around the deck, a mighty tiredness had befallen him, and now, for all his youth, he would have gladly lain down and died upon the sail folded at his feet. But he still had to carry out Ben Attar’s orders and make certain that the rabbi did not toss all his olive stones overboard but hide one in the pouch suspended near his heart, to ensure the correct counting of the days, for it had already happened that the Jews had lost count of their sacred seventh day. This morning the rabbi did not neglect his task as timekeeper, and after sucking the juicy flesh of the last olive he placed the stone with the five others and smiled cordially at the young slave, who was so exhausted that he could scarcely stagger to the first wife, who had just climbed up, her heavy body draped in a red embroidered robe, onto the old bridge, where she stood as splendidly as though she were the caliph himself. He did not know if she wanted some of the honey drink that he concocted for her each morning, or if she wished first to discover whether all had passed well there in the stern of the ship. He stood motionless for a moment, his weary young body torn asunder by conflicting forces. But Abu Lutfi’s stern voice, as he came to rouse the sleeping crew, spurred the slave’s legs on toward the regal woman, around whom the mist that was thickening as the daylight grew brighter wafted like incense. Already he could discern an unfamiliar hint of anxiety clouding her round, bright face, which was lit as always by a pleasant smile, and his soul longed to soothe her care, but he did not know what to say or how to say it, and so he closed his eyes and began to sigh deeply, once and then once more, as though he were trying to transmit to her all the second wife’s sighs of satisfaction and cries of pleasure.

3.

But where would this poem meander to next, Rabbi Elbaz asked himself as the sailors toiled in the morning mist to hoist the sail, which had been reduced in size during the night in readiness for the delicate task of sailing up the river. For the rabbi, the mere fact of writing a poem was something wonderful; he had never imagined that he himself would be able or eager to do such a thing. But during the previous week six lines had put themselves together, all in Hebrew, following the meter and rhyme scheme that had been brought to Andalus from the east by Dunash Ben Labrat. Right from the start, from the moment he embarked with his son on Ben Attar’s ship, which had come to the port of Cadiz especially to fetch him, he had had a feeling that his life was about to undergo some great change. At first he had been alarmed and depressed at the sight of the cramped little cabins, the swaying deck fenced around with ropes, and the sacks of condiments and jars tied together in the dark hold, which gave off unfamiliar, pungent African odors at night. Accustomed as he was to the bright beauty of his home town, Seville, and to the elegant courtesy of its inhabitants, he was terror-stricken at the sight of the half-naked Arab sailors with yellow flaxen ropes wrapped around their bodies, shouting orders gruffly to each other and cuffing the black slave who ran in and out among them. The two veiled women too, sitting on the bridge barefoot in colorful robes, did not reassure the new traveler as he tried in vain to control his son, who shinned blithely up and down the ropes like a little monkey. In the twilight, as the ship set sail slowly into the vast ocean that he had never so much as set eyes on before, and as it began to heave beneath him relentlessly in a previously unknown rhythm, he was overcome with dizziness and nausea. Shamefully, privately, through a small porthole, he cast forth upon the waters illumined by the reddish glow of the sunset the morning meal that the congregation in the house of study in Cadiz had offered him in gratitude for the homily he had delivered to them, and at midnight he spewed out from the depths of his bowels the remains of the farewell dinner that his late wife’s family had held for him in Seville. By dawn, exhausted by a sleepless night, he felt that he might make his peace with the sea, but when he set eyes on the empty eye sockets of the baked fish the black slave set before him, his stomach erupted all over again. He immediately vowed to fast. He was accustomed to vows and fasts from the time of his wife’s illness. But still the nausea did not abate. Pale, gaunt, with sunken eyes, he no longer tried to conceal his suffering but openly leaned over the ropes with his mouth wide open and his eyes fluttering, staring wildly, like a fish taken from the sea, dreaming of the day they would reach the port of Lisbon, where he could withdraw from this maritime adventure. He was not made for this. He was just like the prophet Jonah, he said apologetically to the owner of the ship, who had hired him and pinned his hopes on him: the sea was not happy with him. Only God did not summon a great fish to swallow him whole.

Ben Attar was accustoming himself to the idea that he might have to do without the help of religion in the confrontation that lay ahead with the new wife and the sages she mustered on her side, for if he sent the rabbi overland from Lisbon to Paris he would arrive only in the autumn, by which time they would be on their way home, when to his surprise Abd el-Shafi intervened. Knowing nothing of the part of the rabbi in the expedition, he felt responsible as captain for the suffering that his ship was causing the new passenger. First he took it upon himself to slow the ship, but seeing that the rabbi continued to suffer, he obtained permission from Ben Attar to halt for a whole day. He turned into a quiet cove, furled the sail so that not even the slightest breeze would rock the ship, cast anchor, and fixed the two steering oars opposite each other so the ship would be perfectly stationary. On the old bridge, from which the caliph’s officers had once kept watch on the Christian ships to make sure they did not cross the invisible line that divided the Mediterranean between the two opposing faiths, he set a comfortable couch stuffed with wool and straw and draped with soft, gently colored rugs for the thirty-three-year-old rabbi, whom he saw as ringed around with a fine aura of sanctity. There they settled the suffering passenger, whose very beard had turned green. Then the captain began to boil up a special brew that the Vikings had used to allay the panic of those captives whom they did not kill: a decoction of fish fins flavored with finely ground scales, quenched with lemon juice, to which was added green seaweed that a diver brought up from the sea bed. When it was ready, the patient’s hands were bound, and Abd el-Shafi insisted on personally pouring the acrid, steaming liquid down the convulsed rabbi’s throat with his own wooden spoon. Indeed, by evening the vomiting had begun to cease, and the rabbi’s son, Samuel, who had taken the opportunity afforded by his father’s illness to climb to the top of the mast, was able to see from his aerie the pink gradually returning to his father’s broad brow. As for the rabbi, he had a clear sense of the purgative and even spiritual quality of the Viking broth that had been poured inside him.

And so, on board a stilled ship not far from the port of Lisbon, a deep sleep fell upon Rabbi Elbaz, and so peaceful was his slumber that the captain did not wait for dawn but gave orders for the sail to be hoisted and the anchor weighed, so that the ship would forge ahead and when the rabbi awoke after a day’s sleep he would feel the rocking of the waves beneath him to be a natural and even necessary part of the world’s being.

Indeed, the vomiting did not return to plague the rabbi from Seville, even on stormy days, and from that time on he learned to take pleasure in sailing on the sea. He preferred, even at night, to remain on deck so as not to miss the movement of the glittering sky as it led the ship on. At midnight, when Abd el-Shafi turned in in his own hammock, leaving a sailor or two to navigate by the stars, the rabbi would take a leopard skin and a sheepskin and lay them one on top of the other on the old bridge, which was warmed by the bodies of the two barefoot women who had sat there during the day, and there he would sink into an open-air sleep in search of a dream—either a real dream, if one came, or if not, then at least a waking dream combining snatches of memory with bundles of wishes. All unawares, his mind began to shed layer after layer, losing some of its scholarly clarity and curiosity in favor of a new philosophical introspection blended with a certain sentimentality.

The sharp-eyed owner had begun to notice signs of lethargy and indolence every time he told the slave to take the rabbi the ivory casket crammed with strips of parchment inscribed with the teachings of the sages and sayings of local saints, which had been selected especially for him by the famous uncle, Ben Ghiyyat, to season Andalusian scholarship and wisdom with North African wit and mystery. It did not seem as though the rabbi was interested in reading or studying anything new on the issue of dual marriage, which he had been hired to defend. The arguments he had prepared back in Seville seemed perfectly sound, and if there were any need to reinforce them, it was preferable not to use the Scriptures but the unwritten law, which billowed up first in the mind, then turned sometimes into chance, long-drawn-out conversations with Ben Attar, who may perhaps only have been waiting for an encounter with a bored sea traveler to speak openly about himself and his life. Whatever Ben Attar did not or could not tell, his two wives sometimes related, especially the first, but sometimes the second too, who for some reason was still somewhat afraid of the rabbi, who was only seven years her senior. And whatever the wives were unable to see or understand, the partner, Abu Lutfi, could add from his own Ishmaelite perspective. If even he omitted or concealed some detail, perhaps from an excess of loyalty, the captain or some clever sailor could often supply it, for anyone, if he is compelled, is able to deduce one thing from another. Even the black slave would have been regarded by the rabbi as a qualified witness, if he would only cease kneeling before him in the heart of the night.

But some ten days before, as the ship began to sail past the jagged coves of Brittany, Ben Attar had noticed that the rabbi was holding between his fingers a goose quill that he constantly sharpened with a penknife, licking the sharpened tip with an expression of wistful shrewdness on his face, as though his soul had been stung by a genuine idea. Not a day had passed before Ben Attar observed that the rabbi was using it to inscribe words upon an unfamiliar strip of parchment. The slowness of the writing, on the one hand, and the speed with which the parchment was concealed whenever Ben Attar approached, on the other, attested to the fact that it was not some new homily that was being indited, or a commentary on a difficult text, or an elaborate ethical argument, but something else. Ben Attar kept watch from a distance and noticed how a line was added or deleted and replaced by another, which was crossed out in its turn. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him, and he instructed the son of the desert to approach the rabbi’s bed while he slept and extract the parchment. What he saw confirmed his fears. He discovered the disjointed lines of a poem or hymn, which began in Arabic and continued in the holy tongue.

Secretly, by the light of a candle, Ben Attar attempted to decipher the writing, at first word by word and eventually line by line. What he read filled him with sadness. The hints of the rabbi’s desire for Ben Attar’s wives in the last two lines impugned his honor, but as he was about to tear up the parchment and throw it overboard, he remarked to himself that a poem composed so laboriously was indubitably etched on the mind of the author, who would write it out again and take all the more pains to conceal it. So he had the parchment restored to its place, so that he could continue to watch over it. While the black slave unfastened the robe of the sleeping poet so as to reinsert the poem furtively in the inside pocket and in doing so perhaps absorb some of the heat that the unseen god vouchsafes to those who believe in him, the ship’s owner continued to reflect on the rabbi whom his uncle had attached to him. Would he really be of any help? Surely he was supposed to pay him not for writing verses of unrequited longing, but for compiling subtle and persuasive textual arguments against his partner Abulafia’s new wife, who had come between them and had left him in a spot, with no buyers for his merchandise. Overcome once more with pity for his rejected wares, he found himself making his way under the triangular canvas of the sail to peer into the hold. Here, in the fragrant darkness pierced by rays of moonlight filtering through the timbers of the deck, the ropes binding the great jars and sacks seemed to have dissolved, and the containers stood before him like a company of men possessed by a sense of fellowship in the face of common misfortune, for which their master would soon be called to account. One of the great sacks suddenly stood erect and strode toward the trembling Jew, who strangled a scream. But it was only Abu Lutfi, who liked to sleep close to his hidden store of daggers encrusted with precious stones. He too was unable to sleep, as in the Roman inn in the hills above Barcelona on those summer nights of the years 4756 and 4757 of the creation of the world, according to the Jewish way of reckoning, when Abulafia was arriving later and later for their appointed meetings.

It was only two years later that Ben Attar had realized that if he had only taken the trouble to understand the cause of the delays, he might have reached an earlier appraisal of the repudiation that was taking concrete shape in the north. For it was during those years that the first threads were being spun that were to tie Abulafia to a new woman, a widow who had come to Francia from a small town on the banks of the River Rhine. At that stage Abulafia was mentioning her only as a loyal customer, not as a possible bride, but by reading between the lines it should have been evident that a new hand was involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in Abulafia’s ever-lengthening delays. Abu Lutfi, to his credit, did not delude himself, and was skeptical from the outset about Abulafia’s pretexts and explanations. Right from the start of the partnership he was convinced that sooner or later a day would come when Abulafia would vanish with the goods. So strong was this belief that the delays only seemed to him like a foretaste of the eventual disappearance that the northern partner was preparing for his associates. Consequently, when Abulafia recounted the hardships of his journey owing to new conflicts between warring duchies, which kept altering the frontiers and so delaying his progress, Abu Lutfi would turn his eyes away from the speaker and fix them on the flame of the campfire to purge them from the polluting falsehood. If Abulafia embroiled himself in further complexities, the Ishmaelite would wind his headscarf around his head and ears and move even closer to the flames, which almost scorched his clothes, as if to say, And this is a partner! Go to someone who is willing to believe whatever you say! Indeed, Ben Attar was so excited and happy at the appearance of his beloved nephew, whom his anxiety and fear had already depicted in his imagination as—heaven forbid—dead or injured or taken captive, that he strained his hardest to believe every word of Abulafia’s explanations. To strengthen his faith he would inquire repeatedly about the signs of the famous millennium, which was already suspended, Abulafia claimed, in the heavens like a huge cloud containing a great glimmering red cross. Even though it was still a few years off, men’s minds were already confused from thinking about it. Even Abulafia should have known that one who had failed to rise from the dead a thousand years ago would not suddenly come on a visit a thousand years later. In any case, Jews had nothing to fear from thunders and lightnings in the sky, since they had been promised from time immemorial that heaven would always stand at their right hand. But still, there was no certainty that on the face of the earth they would be able to abate the zealots’ fury at not being permitted to eat the messianic banquet for which they had been toiling for so many years.

While Abulafia told his partners about the mounting fear of the Christians over the approaching millennium, Ben Attar laid his hand lightly on Abu Lutfi’s shoulder as he lay almost in the campfire and reflected on how easy relations between Ishmaelites and Israelites were. Before the thousandth anniversary of the birth of their prophet, the Messiah son of Joseph and the Messiah son of David would have arrived to put every spurious prophet in his proper place. For Abulafia’s safety, Ben Attar advised him to come back across the border between the two great faiths in preparation for the millennium and take a house close to Benveniste’s tavern, where he could also lodge his wretched daughter and her nurse, so as to spend the millennial year in the company of those who counted the years differently. Who knew whether the unusual nature of the child, whom Ben Attar himself had not set eyes upon these seven years, might not arouse evil thoughts in the heart of someone who wished in this holy year to rid the world of all his own demons? Ben Attar couched his thoughts in cautious words so as not to offend his beloved nephew. Although he might have been the first to notice that the face of the baby born to his nephew thirteen years before the impending millennium was not right, he would never have presumed of his own accord to associate her, by so much as a hint, with the demonic world.

It was her beautiful mother, Abulafia’s late wife, who in her despair had soon called her baby “my she-devil” or “the little witch,” so as to negate the evil thoughts of others by anticipating them. The poor woman thought she would show her family and friends that she was not afraid of her child, and was even prepared to see her strangeness as a kind of comical gift sent by heaven to try her. Not only did she make no attempt to hide the baby with the bulging eyes and the narrow forehead, but she made a point of taking her around, dressed in a shiny silk gown and adorned with colored ribbons, in an effort to include her kinsfolk and companions in the trial that God had sent her way. But it seemed that even if they tried, none could extract affection from a baby who cried in a deep, dull voice that made their hearts shudder. In particular, her grandmother, Abulafia’s mother and Ben Attar’s older sister, did not take to her. The old woman sank into depression at the sight of her demonic granddaughter, whom her daughter-in-law brought to see her every day, to show her how she was growing and developing. Abulafia was soon obliged to intervene so as to prevent his wife from making the poor child into the sole test of the world’s humanity. As he had difficulty in exercising his authority over her and getting her to cease her wanderings, particularly her daily visits to his mother, one morning he locked the iron-clad door of the house when he went out to Ben Ghiyyat’s little house of study, where he would intone the morning prayers in his beautiful voice before going off to serve in Ben Attar’s shop. At first he felt pangs of remorse for what he had done, then he believed that his wife would manage to escape, and eventually he was so busy that he forgot all about her. But when he returned that evening he found his house locked as he had left it, with the baby asleep in her cradle and his wife’s beautiful face pale and sunken in silent sadness. That night she knelt before him and promised not to disobey him again and not to take the baby to his mother, so long as he swore never again to lock her in alone with the baby, and he acceded to her request.

Consequently, not a soul suspected her motives when on the next day, before the time of the afternoon prayer, she appeared with her baby at Ben Attar’s shop and asked her husband to watch over the fruit of his loins for a short while, so that she might stroll in the market square and seek fresh amulets from the nomads coming in from the desert, in the hope that they might counteract the spells that were bewitching her daughter. In the meantime, Abulafia went as usual to chant the afternoon and evening prayers in his melodious voice in Ben Ghiyyat’s prayer house, and so Uncle Ben Attar was called upon to watch over the bundle that had been deposited among the bolts of cloth until her mother returned. But she was in no hurry to come back. At first she did indeed walk to the city gate and wander among the stalls of the nomads from the distant Sahara, but she recoiled from the twisted, hairy amulets of the idolaters, not even daring to pick them up and feel them. Instead she was attracted for some reason by an old fishhook made from an elephant’s tail, which she purchased, and she hastened outside the walls of the city to the seashore to try to catch a real fish. At that twilight hour there was not a soul to be seen on the shore except a Muslim fisherman, who was startled by her, for it was not usual on the seashore at Tangier to see a young woman wandering on her own, not to mention a Jewess, especially one holding a fishhook. And so when she addressed him and asked him to show her how to prepare the hook and cast it into the water, he hesitated at first to become involved with her, but because she was very beautiful he could not refuse her, and after learning from him what she learned, she removed her sandals, rolled up her robe, and clambered onto a rock, where she sat down and dropped her hook into the waves of the sea, which occasionally broke violently and splashed her. Her luck was with her, and in the first few minutes she managed to catch a large fish. Flushed with her unexpected success, she refused to leave the shore, which was wrapped in the glow of the setting sun, and the fisherman, who had begun to fear that this would not end well, wondered whether to remain where he was and see that the waves did not wash her away or hurry to carry news of her to whoever by now must surely be looking for her. But when darkness fell and the shadowy figure on the rock became blurred, he was afraid that if anything happened to her he would be held to blame, and so he ran inside the walls to tell one of the Jews about her. Right inside the gate he stumbled on Abulafia and Ben Attar and the Jews from the yeshiva, who were looking for her, but when they hurried to the rock where she was said to be sitting, all they found was the fishhook thrust into a crevice. At first Abulafia turned on the fisherman, and then he demanded that he be bound and forced to confess the truth, but when at high tide the sea gave up his wife’s body, with her hands and feet tied with the colored ribbons she had used to adorn her daughter’s clothing, all knew at once that she had taken her own life and that no man’s hand had touched her for evil.

It was not only shame at his wife’s grievous sin and guilt at his own indifference and strictness which had caused it but also a terrible anger at his mother that made Abulafia ask to be banished from his native city. He thought at first to punish his mother by secretly leaving the accursed child in her house and going off himself to the Land of Israel, whose sanctity would atone for all their transgressions. But Ben Attar, suspecting his intentions, caught the poor wretch hiding in the hold of an Egyptian ship, and with the assistance of Ben Ghiyyat he compelled him at the last moment to return to dry land. To make up for the unsuccessful flight and to prevent a future recurrence, he proposed a small commercial expedition—to take some camel hides and skins of wild beasts from the desert to some merchants in Granada. As for the bewitched babe, if Abulafia’s mother indeed refused to take her into her home, Ben Attar himself would take care of her for the time being. Thus, instead of sailing eastward to the Holy Land, which almost certainly would have atoned for nothing and might even in its holiness have embroiled the sinner in additional sins, the grieving widower went to Andalus with a large and heavy cargo of hides, freed of bearing the reproaches of his kith and kin. Since Ben Attar’s first wife, who at that time was his only wife, was afraid to keep the deformed child in her home in case the new fetus that was or would be in her belly should peep out, behold his destined playmate, and refuse to emerge into the light of day, Abu Lutfi went to a nearby village and brought back for Ben Attar a distant kinswoman, an elderly, experienced nurse, who would look after the child in Abulafia’s empty house until the widowed father returned from his journey.

Abulafia, however, was in no hurry to return from his journey, but extended it considerably on his own initiative. When he learned that people in the Christian country of Catalonia were eager for such hides as he had brought from the desert, he contained himself and did not sell the merchandise in Granada but traveled north and crossed the frontier of the faiths near Barcelona so as to meet Christian merchants, who indeed leapt upon his wares and doubled his profit. Instead of returning at once to Tangier, the young trader decided to exploit the breach he had made. He sent the proceeds back to his uncle with a pair of trustworthy Jews from Tarragona and requested fresh merchandise, while he himself pressed on into the villages and estates of southern Provence to identify new customers and gain a sense of their wants, taking advantage of the protection afforded by the signing in those years of a new treaty among the Christians known as the “Peace of God,” which was made with the aim of protecting traders and wayfarers. He did not inquire about the baby he had left behind. It was as if she did not exist.

This may have been the secret reason for the rapid success of Ben Attar’s trading network, whose head was in the Bay of Tangier while its two arms embraced the Atlas Mountains in the south and Provence and Gascony in the north. Afraid and ashamed to return to his native town and grateful to his uncle for looking after the infant, Abulafia had resolved to repay Ben Attar, his benefactor and employer, with feverish energy and imaginative resourcefulness, which year by year widened both the circle of his customers and the range of his merchandise. Abu Lutfi could no longer make do with his traditional spring journey to the northern Atlas but had to penetrate deeper into the valleys and the villages, and even inside the nomads’ tents, in search of polished brass ware, curved daggers, and pungent condiments, for the smell of the desert sufficed to attract and excite the new Christian customers, who began to remember as their millennium approached that their crucified Lord too had come to them from the desert. Meanwhile, the Ishmaelite nurse stayed with the bewitched child, who had been forgotten by everyone except Ben Attar, who looked in occasionally to check that she still existed and that he was not paying money to maintain a ghost.

But the baby, despite her many defects, did not seem to want to turn into a ghost. She insisted on remaining as real as always. Even though she was very backward in her development and limited in her movements, and her eyes remained bulging and blank, as though she belonged to a different race, nevertheless she increased the range of her movement so that the stern-faced Ishmaelite nurse was obliged to take great care to see that there was no loophole in the house through which her charge might accidentally escape into a world that was not expecting her. At this point the uncle’s uncle, the sage Ben Ghiyyat, intervened, when he went in the spring to prepare Abulafia’s house for Passover. Whatever might have been the Creator’s purpose in forming such a creature, the covenant made at Mount Sinai still embraced her too, and her father who begot her could not be replaced by an Ishmaelite nurse, who owed nothing to the God of Israel except her inferiority. And even though Ben Attar was by now accustomed to the responsibility he had taken upon himself, and feared that if Abulafia were forced to take his child back his sense of guilt would be diminished and with it his energy and resourcefulness, which in the past two years had made Ben Attar into one of the grandees of the city, he did not wish to disobey his great uncle, who at fifty-five years of age seemed to frighten death itself. Although Abulafia could not be compelled to return to Tangier and take back his offspring, Ben Attar decided to take her to her father himself, in person and without prior warning.

And so, ten years before the millennium, Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi set out on their first journey from Tangier to the port of Barcelona. Although they repeated the journey summer after summer, increasing the number of ships each year, the memory of the first trip was engraved deeply in Ben Attar’s heart, and not only because of the novelty of the voyage, which showed him close up how the natural forces—the sun, the moon, the galaxies, the wind, the waves—contended silently opposite the lazily moving shoreline, but because of the intimacy that grew up in the narrow confines of the ship between him and his fellow travelers, especially the strange, dumb child, for even though she was attached by a cord to the nurse who accompanied her, it was not short enough to prevent her from toddling to him from time to time and attempting to thrust her little fingers into his eyes. Sailing slowly among the bolts of cloth, hides, and oil jars, against the background of the monotonous prattle of a Jew from Barcelona who was traveling with them, he forged a bond with Abulafia’s child, so that occasionally he even let her snuggle mutely against his chest and watch the forms of the two Ishmaelite sailors, who in the midday heat removed their clothes and stood on the prow as naked as on the day of their birth. Occasionally, when they camped in some desolate bay on the way and he saw the child walking slowly along the shore in the evening twilight, he remembered her mother, who despite everything had bequeathed something of her great beauty to her defective child—a soft line on the cheek, a certain hue, the molding of a thigh. Indeed, on this voyage Ben Attar thought a great deal about Abulafia’s suicidal wife, as though he too bore some guilt, until one night on the sea, in pain and desire, she burst into his dreams.

As it turned out, he was very careful not to let the least hint of this dream escape from his mouth, precisely because the meeting with Abulafia was so emotional, so brimming with love and friendship, that the three of them wept real tears. Yes, all three of them. Abu Lutfi was the first to give in and burst into tears as he embraced his long-haired comrade, who was waiting for them in a new black Christian habit at the entrance to the Roman inn, to which the Jew from Barcelona had taken them. The sobbing of the manly Ishmaelite was so surprising that Abulafia was carried away. Then Ben Attar too felt a lump in his throat, but not enough to make him forget the final return of the child to her father’s care. He gave a signal, and the large nurse, who was standing a few paces away, drew forth the child who was hiding in her skirts and gestured to her to approach Abulafia, who first of all uttered a cry of panic at the unfamiliar bird that was fluttering toward him but then closed his eyes in pain and clasped his child to his chest warmly, strongly, as though he had just realized that he too had been longing for her in her loneliness. But on the next day, in between talking about merchandise and rates of exchange, about merchants’ hopes and purchasers’ fickleness, it struck Ben Attar that Abulafia imagined that they had brought the child there only to see him, and that she would eventually return whence she had come. Delicately but decisively, he had to remind his nephew of his duties as a father, supporting his words with texts supplied by the sage Ben Ghiyyat. Abulafia listened in silence and read the texts, nodding his head, and after reflection consented to take the child back. Was it only from a simple sense of paternal duty, or was it also because Ben Attar shrewdly offered him promotion from agent to full partner, so he would share in the profits of his work? Either way, there is no doubt that the old Ishmaelite nurse’s agreement to go with Abulafia and continue looking after the child in his home in Toulouse until a replacement could be found also helped the widowed father reach his decision.

This furnished an excuse for a further meeting, since Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi promised the Ishmaelite woman that they themselves would come the following year to take her back to North Africa. Behind that promise no doubt lay the satisfaction and enthusiasm arising from the present meeting. After two years of new and exciting commercial business conducted thus far by means of occasional envoys, through letters, some of which had gone astray, and on the basis of unreliable rumors, Ben Attar now realized that there was no substitute for Abulafia’s living, gushing words, describing the adventures of each bolt of brightly colored cloth, each sack of rare condiments, each inlaid dagger, which was the source of a veritable saga of exchanges unwinding like a snake until the final transaction resulted in a coin of silver or gold, or a heavy precious stone. No orderly narrative delivered by a trustworthy and clever emissary could replace that leisurely, relaxed conversation with the agent, whose stories hatched a whole clutch of subtle insights, suppositions, and hopes, which persuaded the merchant from Tangier that there really was a change in the air and that the poor benighted souls of the Christians beyond the mountains wanted at this time to be joined to the south and the east by means of their hides, cloths, and copperware. To these practical factors must be added, of course, the joy of reunion of kinsmen and comrades in that pleasant spot steeped in the azure of the Bay of Barcelona and reached by a smooth, calm sea voyage. Now that uncle and nephew had become in a sense partners, although not yet equal ones, it seemed that a summer meeting of these members of a small but ancient faith on the frontier between two great faiths that sought to swallow each other would become a fixed custom.

On the return voyage from Barcelona to Tangier, however, on board the ship that was now lightened of its cargo, Ben Attar was suddenly stricken with fear. He felt himself to be naked and exposed. He missed the company of those bolts of cloth and sacks of condiments, which always warmed his heart and gave him a sense of security, and he needed that assurance all the more now that his belt and pockets were full of the coins and precious stones that Abulafia had brought him. True, Abu Lutfi was beside him, although from the moment they had embarked his old assistant had seemed for some reason to be alienated and displeased, whispering a great deal with the two Ishmaelite sailors, who seemed to have been smitten with a kind of religious fervor on the return journey, for instead of dancing naked on the prow of their boat they now knelt in prayer five times a day. It was not surprising that Ben Attar had forgotten how tedious the prattle of the Jew who had accompanied them to Barcelona was, and now he missed his company. In his newfound loneliness he even felt a pang of longing for the backward child, remembering with an ache in his heart how she had toddled toward him, tied by a cord, to peer into his eyes. He thought now that if the child were once again lying in his bosom, the Ishmaelite sailors would refrain from attacking him in his sleep, stealing his money, and throwing him overboard. But the little girl was now beyond the Pyrenees, and all Ben Attar could do was to order the sailors to hug the coast, in the hope that there would be someone nearby who could testify against them if they tried to harm him. But they adamantly refused, supposedly for fear of hitting a sandbar, and Abu Lutfi not only refused to intervene but even defended their decision. Had the Ishmaelite managed to follow Ben Attar’s conversation in Hebrew with Abulafia when he had promoted him to partner, while Abu Lutfi had to content himself with the leftovers? Ben Attar’s fear grew stronger, and by nightfall he had come to regret the whole expedition. He sat hunched in the stern of the boat with a dagger hidden in the folds of his robe, straining to keep his eyes open, waiting for the attack.

Abu Lutfi sensed his Jewish master’s new fear, but did nothing to allay it. He had not managed to understand the Hebrew words spoken by the campfire at the old Roman inn, but he was sensitive enough to infer that if his employer was afraid not only of the sailors but of himself as well, it was a sign that he felt some new guilt toward him, so that when Ben Attar summoned him after a sleepless night and offered him a large gold coin he refused it, on the assumption that it was worth less than his forgiveness for an unspecified guilt. Ben Attar, startled by his refusal, was convinced that when the attack came Abu Lutfi would abandon him to his fate. So it was that after a second night without sleep, realizing that his strength was waning, he made up his mind to appoint the Ishmaelite as a partner as well, so that from now on the silver and gold would be as precious to Abu Lutfi as the apple of his eye.

Although in the course of this voyage Ben Attar had acquired two partners to share his profit, he felt that he was not returning to Tangier diminished but, on the contrary, increased and strengthened. And when the fast sailing ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and to the calm, steady blue of the Mediterranean was added the wicked, dreamy green of the great ocean that lapped at the walls of his fast-approaching native town, he understood how long the arm he had stretched out toward the distant northern horizon was, and he knew too, as he remembered the new confidence and earnestness that had radiated from Abulafia, that from now on the new partner in the north would stimulate the new partner in the south, and that the new partner in the south would charm the new partner in the north, while he himself, remaining where he was, would cast his protection over the two of them, keeping an intelligent pressure on the reins and receiving his share. The outline of the great cliff was still shimmering behind them like a tawny idol, and already the yellowish African midday light was flooding them, soaking the white walls of the city with a pleasant warmth. And they were ringed with the fishing boats of Tangier, and the fishermen, identifying the newcomers, greeted them happily on their return from their long journey. As Ben Attar disembarked onto dry land, he kissed the sand and gave thanks to his God for bringing him home safely, but instead of proceeding directly to his house, he handed his bundles to a young man and told him to inform his wife and servants that they should prepare a celebration for his arrival, while he for some reason headed for Abulafia’s house, which was now emptied of the last vestige of its owner. As he opened the iron-clad door with the key that was concealed on his person, he reflected that at this very moment, in the far north, Abulafia, dressed in black, might be taking his bewitched daughter with her tall nurse into a dark, gloomy house in Toulouse, no doubt surrounded with frightening crosses, and he felt sorry for them, because the house he was standing in was flooded with light and warmth, its floor was clean, and in a corner, neatly folded and tied into a bundle, was the bedding and clothing of the old nurse, who was still unaware that she would never return here. But nothing at all remained of the child’s things: it was as though she had never existed.

He strode from room to room and looked at the arches of the small inner courtyard. Most of the flowers had withered, because there was no one to water them. Again he recalled Abulafia’s dead wife, and her child who had made strange growling sounds here. He was holding an authorization signed by Abulafia to sell this accursed house on his behalf, and he suddenly felt sorry for the empty house, which at this pleasant summer hour revealed nothing but charm and pleasantness everywhere. He fondled the pouches of gold and silver bound to his loins, concealed under his robe, and calculated what he would do with all that money. Suddenly he had the idea of not selling the house to a stranger but buying it himself. But what would he do with another house, which was much too lovely to use as a storehouse for the new goods that Abu Lutfi would send him from the south during the year ahead? Perhaps he would lend it to his famous uncle as a meeting place for his pupils, and thus gain the credit for a meritorious act. But Ben Attar knew only too well that Ben Ghiyyat sometimes had difficulty in bringing together even the minimum number of ten worshippers, so where would he suddenly find enough disciples for a second house of study?

Then, standing alone and at peace in this courtyard drenched in the sweet light of late summer, watching the little fountain quietly playing, Ben Attar felt that the fears of the journey that had just come to an end had been transformed within him into a gentle desire. Why should he not take another wife and install her in this house? The thought of marrying a second wife had occasionally flitted through his head, and he had sometimes conjured up an image of this or that woman whom he knew from a snatched glance or by hearsay. But now he felt that the decision had been taken in his mind. His wealth would probably continue to increase, he still had strength in his loins, and his wife had begun to weaken a little. Several of his kinsmen and his Jewish friends, not to mention Muslim acquaintances, kept two and sometimes even three wives, in some cases under a single roof. He was now thirty-five years old, and if he managed to exceed the lifespan of his father, who had died at the age of forty, he still had ten years ahead of him, or even more. This was the right moment to widen his horizons. When his time came and his children stood around his deathbed, the leavetaking would be easier, because the wealth he would have amassed by then would enable them to part on easy and generous terms.

The sudden new thought so captured his heart that after locking the door behind him he did not hasten to his home but entered Ben Ghiyyat’s synagogue. His uncle interrupted his meal to greet him, and Ben Attar, stooping to kiss his hand and receive his blessing, was on the point of taking a few coins out of his pocket as a gift to the poor students who sat around the table when he suddenly thought better of it and decided to tell Ben Ghiyyat first about the new desire that had seized his heart, and then to fix the size of the gift in proportion to his uncle’s reaction. The sage listened with a smiling countenance, nodded his agreement, and only inquired whether he had spoken to his first wife yet about the second one. As he responded in the negative, he immediately offered to go and tell her and receive her approval, so that the announcement might seem to be an invitation to a meritorious act rather than an order. Who knew, she might even agree to help him select a suitable woman, so that there would be twice as much joy for all of them.

4.

Slowly the dawn began to break and the European continent opened up before them, sucking in the remains of the fog and enchanting the passengers on the old guardship with the lush greenery of the banks of the River Seine emptying lazily into the ocean. Small, unfamiliar birds with multicolored wings filled the air with their chirping, as though they had only been waiting for this ship. Everything that had appeared inscrutable and menacing in the night became clear and friendly with the gathering daylight. The flame that had burned so threateningly in the night had turned into a pleasant curl of grayish smoke, and the outline of a giant bird hovering in the darkness over the sea was now revealed as a wreck, which, to judge by the seaweed that had invaded it, had evidently been lying at the mouth of the river for many a year. Although Abd el-Shafi took pains to give it a wide berth, for fear of unseen projections, his heart drew him closer to it, because his sharp eyes had recognized excitedly the beautiful carvings of the savage Vikings. Even without the wreck he would have had no doubt that he was steering the ship into the right estuary, but the greenish presence of this living ancient testimony confirmed with the sweetness of certainty his confidence about the whole journey. He nearly shouted something about this to the ship’s owner, but he held himself back at the last minute so as not to arouse the memory of his forebear the captive pirate, which was liable to undermine the trust he had acquired in the course of the voyage from the two women too, who were now sitting on the old bridge, quiet and thoughtful after the double night, staring with fresh-eyed curiosity not only at each other but at the first bend of the river, which was now approaching.

It was at this time, as the ship began to penetrate the River Seine, solemnly raising the spirits of passengers and crew alike, that the chimes of the black slave’s little bells died down, for after a night replete with activity he now sank into slumber in the hold, sprawled like a black octopus among the jars of oil and sacks of condiments and heaps of sheep’s wool close to the two little camels, who eyed their young lover anxiously. With the rising and falling rhythm of his breathing he now became the hidden heart of this Muslim guardship that had come from so far away and was now sailing slowly through the Christian lands. Abd el-Shafi, who for several days had feared the opposing force of the expected current, was surprised not only by the gentleness of the summer stream but also by the unexpected generosity of the northwesterly wind that blew from behind them, whose good intentions he had discovered from its caress on his naked back. If these infidels are so successful, he mused with the strange jealousy of a veteran sea salt, at balancing current and wind to facilitate the passage of travelers on this river, why then, despite their primitive faith in a divinity who vanished from his tomb, they have a slight advantage over the Muslims, who are drawn to the decrees of fate. But despite the hope aroused in him by the northwesterly wind, his anxiety did not leave him, for he had never before sailed such a wide ship up such a narrow waterway, and his reckless wine-bibbing of the night before now bound his head with bands of iron, and each one of the unnumbered cups of Bordeaux wine that he had downed in the night had become a needle to stab his brain. He decided to talk or shout as little as possible, to avoid disturbing his brain, and preferred to give his orders in silence. With help from his sailors he lashed himself to the great mast, so that he would feel the sail on his body and know the precise direction of the wind and so that he could estimate from a height the safe distance between the two banks of the river. In order not to lose contact with his sailors he attached cord harnesses to them, and by lightly tugging on the cords he could transmit his orders to them, as though he were in charge of a great chariot rather than a ship, with its horses contained within it. And so, softly and silently, the ship traversed the first five bends of the river.

Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi, however, were untroubled by the river and its bends. After forty days of successfully sailing the ocean, they had absolute confidence in their captain’s skill; indeed, they would have trusted him, had it been needed, to steer his ship up the very steps of Abulafia’s house. However, they nervously awaited the first encounter with Franks, if only to discover whether merchandise coming from abroad was taxed in these remote and savage lands, or whether it was merely a matter of generous hospitality. But until the afternoon deep silence reigned all around, and there was not a living soul to be seen apart from the cheerful birds, as though the progress of a Moroccan ship down the arteries of Francia did not stir enough curiosity in any inhabitant that he should ask himself about its intentions. Where were all the new customers that Abulafia talked about so hopefully? True, little Samuel Elbaz, who since dawn had occupied his favorite spot at the masthead, high above Abd el-Shafi, and could see beyond the wall of trees and undergrowth, was constantly observing things that the other travelers could not, such as the sails of a water mill, or a goose girl leading her charges down a hill, a peasant plowing in a field, or children playing next to a thatched cottage. But for the time being he was silent, because it seemed as if none of the inhabitants had noticed the outlandish ship sailing secretly so close to their homes. Surely even if someone had happened to raise his eyes and catch sight of the tip of a white triangle swaying above the tops of the trees, topped by a naked youth half merged with the pinkish sky, he would not have hastened to verify the import of this apparition but would have simply fallen to his knees, crossed himself, and bowed his head in excited gratitude for this portent announcing the advent of the approaching millennium.

This is what the young local couple did at first; even though their little boat was almost crushed by the prow of an alien ship, they did not seem surprised by the sudden encounter in the river, as though it was entirely unremarkable that a strange potbellied ship should suddenly appear, with a huge triangle of canvas for a sail and half-naked Ishmaelites scurrying up and down its ropes. Thus they did not flee but merely stood gaping and smiling, as though this were not a real ship but a picture floating against the background of a dream that projected its wild fantasies for its own entertainment. But when Ben Attar hailed the young lovers from the deck they were panic-stricken, as though his voice had shattered the dream and a terrifying reality had come bursting out of it. First they tried to escape, but their way was blocked by the large ship. Then they hurriedly doffed their hats and fell to their knees, pleading for their lives in a strange, lilting tongue. But since no one on board knew how to reply so as to calm their spirits, the two women were told to stand on deck and wave peaceably in greeting, so the local couple would realize that the fear and panic were inside them and had nothing to do with the peaceful reality of those on board. However, the spectacle of two barefoot women in brightly colored robes waving to them did nothing to allay the young couple’s fears but if anything aggravated them, and Rabbi Elbaz had to be summoned to scatter over them a few verses in Latin that he recalled from the prayers of Christian friends in the little church in Seville, to let the terrified couple know that even if this was no Christian ship, it was not an anti-Christian ship either. The fears of the young lovers were gradually calmed. The smiles returned to their faces, and they rose to their feet, crossed themselves gracefully, and chanted a Latin prayer to a captivating tune, so endearing themselves to Ben Attar that he could not resist inviting them on board. They were very hesitant at first, afraid that the strangers might seize them and, who could tell, perhaps cook them alive and eat them, but their curiosity got the better of their reluctance, and they clambered on deck, careful not to be separated from each other. Seeing them close up, the people on board were astonished at their youth, and Rabbi Elbaz attempted to ask them in sign language if in these lands love was habitually so precocious, but the pair did not appear to comprehend the meaning of the question, or perhaps they did not see any connection between a person’s age and his capacity to love. Eventually they were seated on the old bridge and given a greenish herbal brew to drink, which they sipped politely despite its unfamiliar taste. Then they were offered dried Andalusian figs and lemons preserved in sugar, which they ate with evident delight, while the crew and passengers surrounded them, enjoying their enjoyment. Rabbi Elbaz was particularly attracted to them, partly because he still hoped that they might react to a word or sentence in Latin, and partly because their evident love for each other captivated his heart and reminded him of the lost days of his own love. In an effort to extend their stay he suggested they should be taken down into the hold, to enjoy the spectacle of the pair of young camels. But Ben Attar refused. He was afraid that they might spread the news of the rich cargo to customs officers who would lie in wait for them farther up the river. So as not to let the charming young pair depart empty-handed, he spread before them some embroidered cloths, to judge their reaction as potential purchasers. And so the voyagers amused themselves with the couple for a while, and then they gave them a little salt wrapped in a twist of paper and asked them how far Rouen was and what the city was like. To judge by their reply and their gestures, the distance was not great. Abu Lutfi, who had stood apart scowling all the while, approached and told Elbaz to ask them how far it was to Paris. Although the rabbi hesitated at first to ask such young people about such a faraway place, he did put the question. The young couple’s faces at once lit up. Paris: they repeated the name over and over again in a smiling cadence and a charming accent, pointing reverentially toward the east, as to a Jerusalem or Mecca of their own. Not only did they know how far it was, even though they had never been there, but their joy was evident at this opportunity to pronounce the name of a place whose enchantment extended even to those who would never behold it. But while Ben Attar and the rabbi smiled at the couple, delighted with their answer, Abu Lutfi continued to glower at them skeptically, as though notwithstanding the many wearisome days and nights that he had invested in the voyage to that distant city, he still nursed a hope that it would finally emerge that it had never existed.

In truth, even Ben Attar at first had not understood what his nephew had been getting at when he pronounced the name of Paris so enthusiastically, even before he had been there. This Paris had been first named at the second summer meeting in the Spanish March, the year after the bewitched child was returned to the care of her blood father. The Moroccans had reached the Bay of Barcelona on the first day of the month of Ab, and after leaving their merchandise at Benveniste’s tavern, loading their two boats with timber, and sending them back to North Africa, they took three horses and rode up to the old Roman inn, faithful to the promise they had given the previous year to take the nurse back to her home. But to their surprise, Abulafia came alone. The nurse had consented to remain a further year in Toulouse, since every effort to replace her by a local woman, whether Jewish or gentile, had met with frantic opposition from the wretched child herself, who in the darkness of her soul had probably assimilated the tattooed face of her nurse to the spirit of the mother who had abandoned her.

At first Abulafia had had difficulty persuading the elderly nurse to exchange the sighing of the waves and the scent of citrus orchards steeped in the limpid copper-hued light of the North African coast for a pent-up existence in an alien Christian town with a creature whose inscrutable wishes could be compensated for only by sorrow and pity. Indeed, whenever the Ishmaelite woman took the child out into the narrow streets around the castle of Toulouse, dressed in the white robe that Abu Lutfi had brought her and a fine veil of bluish silk that half concealed the large ring in her nose, the local inhabitants would screw up their eyes and mumble suitable phrases of advice and reproof from the Gospels to reinforce their human toleration in the face of the strange sight. To persuade the nurse not to abandon her charge, Abulafia was obliged to raise her wages and make her into a sort of supernumerary junior partner, paying her a large coin every time the moon was full and a small coin each Sabbath and agreeing to move from the foot of the castle to the street of the Jews in the heart of the city, not only because Toulouse had no street of Ishmaelites, but because the nurse herself opined that the Jews, who from their early childhood consorted with Asmodeus and delved into his lore, would be bound to find within themselves some sympathy for one who was caught in his thrall.

In the end, the special effort that Abulafia made to keep her paid off, not only in terms of his own peace of mind but in terms of the partnership as well. It was only this that made possible his long absences from home, which he needed because it was hard for him to put up with his daughter’s hopeless presence and also because his rich imagination and his restless nature pushed him on to find new and ever more sophisticated customers, demanding refined goods, light in weight but of great value, such as little daggers studded with precious stones, snakes’ skins, or shiny necklaces made from elephants’ teeth. His soul was weary of the carts sinking into the mud under the weight of the great sacks and jars that Abu Lutfi brought from the desert. Therefore, after winning over the nurse and attaching her to the community of the Jews, he started to travel to the north, at first heading east, toward the Burgundian kingdom, on the road leading from Rodez to Lyons, turning off to Viviers and joining the trade route of the Rhone Valley. But he realized that he would not make his fortune here, for there was too much traffic, and quick-witted merchants from Byzantium who came up from Italy via Toulon offered treasures for sale that originated in the real, Asiatic East, brilliant merchandise compared to which his African wares seemed shoddy and dull. And so he changed direction and headed northwest, toward out-of-the-way places in the heart of Aquitaine, to the duchy of Guienne and the townships of Agen, Angoulême, and Périgueux, via Poitiers and Bourges, and from there to Lusignan and as far as Limoges, and there he was shown a way through to the Loire Valley and the border of the Capetian kingdom, where new towns such as Tours, Orléans, Chartres, and Paris were springing up and beginning to attract him.

When Abu Lutfi returned and asked Abulafia during their summer meetings to draw a new map of his peregrinations and locate the places that would suck in so lustily the other, lighter, more valuable merchandise, Abulafia became confused, and each map he drew for Abu Lutfi was different. He had particular difficulty fixing the precise place of Paris, the port town in the midst of the river that so attracted and excited him even though he had not yet been there. It is hardly surprising that this confusion kindled antagonism and suspicion toward the city and its surroundings in the breast of the Muslim partner, for with his keen mind he understood that the further the Jew pressed northward, the further he, the Muslim, would have to push desertward, so as to supply him with the light but valuable merchandise that would capture the hearts of the new customers. Ben Attar too, who always tried to achieve a compromise between his two partners, sometimes wondered where Abulafia’s adventurous spirit would lead them. Unlike Abu Lutfi, however, he did not oppose his partner’s northward thrust, not particularly out of commercial considerations, whose benefits were still in the realm of speculation, but in the hope that the further Abulafia traveled from North Africa, the easier he would find it finally to give up a strange, childish delusion that had pervaded his soul since he had abandoned his native town: that he would amass enough money, return to his town, and avenge himself on all those who had mocked his wife, particularly his mother. This was why, even after crossing the Pyrenees and entering a new world, he had chosen to avoid the company of Jews, who might enmesh him in the coils of a new marriage and undermine his vision of a vengeful homecoming. In the first year Ben Attar had feared that someday the young widower might return, not from nostalgia or because he missed the little girl who had stayed on her own, but to sully the escutcheons of those who had forced him to bury his beloved wife outside the fence of the graveyard. Consequently Ben Attar rejoiced retrospectively that he had responded so swiftly to the advice of his wise uncle to travel to Barcelona and return the child to her father, because apart from the discovery of the pleasant summer voyage and the importance of the face-to-face meeting with the man who was disseminating his goods, he hoped that the contact between the child and her begetter would teach Abulafia to face up to the facts, so that the purposeless delusion of returning like an avenging spirit to his native town might be moderated and weakened.

Weakened, Ben Attar said to himself, but no more than that. When Abulafia’s mother, his own elder sister, suddenly took to her bed, Ben Attar was in no hurry to tell her son, and even in their summer meeting in the Roman inn he concealed the seriousness of her illness, lest the morose son hasten to her sickbed to poison her last days with words of reproach. Only after her interment did Ben Attar dispatch a special messenger, who pursued the orphan along the highways of Provence for many days to take him news of her death, which was received as expected, without tears and even with a slight smile. Then indeed Ben Attar asked Abulafia to return, even for a short visit, to execute his mother’s will and perhaps, who knew, to make his peace with his kinsmen, to whom he shortsightedly ascribed the blame that was his own. But Abulafia, who had lost the sweet kernel of the vision of his great revenge, was still far removed from any willingness to make his peace with anyone else, so he sent word to his uncle to sell his share of his mother’s estate on his behalf and bring the proceeds with him to the next summer meeting.

By this time Ben Attar’s heart was deeply moved by the loneliness of his kinsman, the balance of whose mind was disturbed by the combination of guilt and love for his wife. He had even begun to wonder whether he had behaved correctly in extracting his nephew from the hold of the ship bound for the Holy Land, for the sanctity of the ancestral land might possibly have sucked some of the poison out of his innards and imposed order on confusion. Even more he regretted the alacrity with which he had executed his famous uncle’s orders to restore the child to her father, for her deformed presence repelled marriage brokers and continued to keep her mother’s memory alive. Bound hand and foot, Abulafia’s wife remained engraved on the memories of others too, including Ben Attar himself, who that terrible night on the seashore had been unable, despite himself, to avert his eyes from the naked woman who lay so wonderfully beautiful upon the sand. Since then, such were the thoughts that Ben Attar pondered in his heart: If I, who saw her so degraded, cannot forget her beauty to this day, what must her husband feel?

However, Ben Attar also recognized the benefit of the younger partner’s loneliness, which delivered a special impulse to business, for a salesman who has no wife to draw him homeward but is tempted by every new place, however remote, in the hope of discovering there the reflection of the beloved image, goes where no other trader will go, and even if the goods he has for sale are strange and unneeded, the mere fact of their appearance there compels their purchase. The demand for Moroccan merchandise did indeed increase in Provence, so that every summer they were obliged to add another ship to the convoy setting sail from Tangier, and if ten years before the millennium, at the first meeting, when they brought the child and her nurse, one ship sufficed, now, five years later, five ships were scarcely enough. True, it was not only Abulafia’s energy and resourcefulness that had achieved this, but also the rise in the Christian population, for as the millennium approached the dying strove to defer the day of their death and babies hastened their birth, so as to ensure their presence in the year that was said to bring an abundant quickening of the dead.

Yet despite the rapid enrichment of the three partners, or perhaps because of it, Ben Attar grieved for his nephew’s loneliness. Refusing to give up hope, he persisted in seeking among his nephew’s innumerable tales and plans the rustle of a woman’s skirt. And so, when the evening of the ninth of Ab arrived, after Abu Lutfi mounted his steed and vanished into the afterglow of sunset on the long mountain path that wound its way to Granada, Ben Attar began to describe to his beloved nephew and business partner, carefully and delicately, using two interwoven languages, the terrible wilderness of loneliness that his stubbornly maintained widowhood would condemn him to. But in that summer of the year 4755, which was year 385 of the Hegira according to the Mohammedans, five years before the millennium of the Christians, when the lamentations for the loss of the twice-destroyed Temple had softened and sweetened the souls of the two Jews and at their feet in the ashes of the dry grass of late summer the flames of the campfire had become a fragrant Cyclops’ eye, Abulafia wrapped his head in his scarf and laid it on a stone, thrust his legs out in front of him, and, still fingering the hidden purse of coins that had been given to him a few hours earlier and fixing his eyes on the glimmering sea of stars overhead, began to speak again of Paris. But this time he spoke not only about the town but also about a woman who lived there.

It transpired that it was not in vain that the nurse had insisted that Abulafia move to the street of the Jews, to whom he belonged by race and by faith, for only there could he have obtained the means to establish contacts with other Jews’ streets, in Tours and Limoges, An-goulême and Orléans, in Chartres and perhaps also in Paris. These were not always real streets, but sometimes merely narrow little alleys, or no more than the entrance to an alley, or a single house, or perhaps only a single room in which dwelled a solitary Jew. And so Abulafia’s eyes were schooled to discern in his surroundings not only the kings and dukes and counts who held sway but also the places where the Jews were scattered.

Slowly Abulafia was drawn back to his kith and kin, from whom in the early years he had distanced himself in the fear that they would try to marry him off and frustrate his dream of returning to his native town. He had already admitted to himself that this was not a concrete plan but a dream, and therefore he had nothing to fear from its being frustrated, because it is in the nature of a dream that it always remains in the power of the one dreaming it. Therefore, after moving to the street of the Jews in Toulouse and seeing that not only were there those who could exchange a word or two of Arabic with the nurse but some who would offer a smile or a caress to the bewitched child, his heart softened, and on his return from his journeys he would join the congregation in prayer, not only to recite—still with a raging heart—the memorial prayer for his wife, but also to question the Jewish worshippers about the roads to the north.

For the Jews, even those who had never traveled far from their town, always knew something about Jews from other towns, just as they always knew something that the gentiles did not yet know about themselves—for instance, that the devotees of the approaching millennium would be attracted particularly to goods coming from the desert, the sort of objects that Jesus and his companions in the Holy Land must have handled, for the faithful wished to make a welcoming home for the Son of God, who would soon descend from heaven with his apostles. Thus Abulafia, who could interpret the signs, no longer traveled from Toulouse to Agen or from Limoges to Bourges, but from one Jew to another, each of whom advised him not only about the new types of merchandise but about how to raise his prices. It was while he was traveling in this way, following the advice of the Jews, that he made the acquaintance in an inn in Orléans of a woman, Mistress Esther-Minna, the childless widow of a scholar who had passed away a few years previously in Worms, a small town called Vermaiza by the Jews, by the River Rhine in Ashkenaz. She had been invited after her husband’s death by her brother, Master Yehiel Levitas, a dealer in jewels and precious stones, to reside with him and his family in Paris, both to lighten the gloom of her loneliness and so that she could occasionally assist him with her good sense on secret missions to the towns and villages in the surrounding country.

It appeared that it was not only because she was a widow and childless, nor only because she was exposed to him in the somewhat licentious air of a wayside inn, but particularly because she was some ten years his senior that Abulafia had given himself easily to a lengthy conversation, which led him to a deep association that he had not imagined himself capable of. From exchanging casual remarks in the twilight hour before the evening meal, commencing with the attempts of this elegant yet respectable woman, the widow of a distinguished scholar, to embellish her speech with a word or phrase in the holy tongue that she had learned from her late husband, and with some acute commercial observations that she let fall, there developed an intense conversation that continued until midnight. It was a licit exchange, in view of the widowed state of both the interlocutors, who were still nameless to each other, yet it contained a certain hint of boldness and even sexual license. When the cross on the belfry pierced the flesh of the moon, which was as round and pale as the famous local cheeses, and slowly let it drop behind the church, and total darkness fell in the chamber in which the pair were sitting, Abulafia felt a pleasant warmth spreading through his body. It was the first time he had met anyone who took the old story of his pain and affront seriously and listened with open sympathy to his continuing dream of revenge, while firmly and absolutely rejecting any suggestion that his daughter was the victim of a curse or enchantment.

If it was not a curse or enchantment, Ben Attar wondered, what was it? But even Abulafia could not answer that question. He could only talk of the astonishment and gratitude that had coursed through him at the end of that conversation. Here at last is somebody who gives rest to my soul, he had thought to himself as he inhaled the woman’s unfamiliar scent, which he had not only become accustomed to but even begun to enjoy. And as, like a child reading his mother’s lips, he sought the precise meaning of this slim, small woman’s words, which had been spoken in the Frankish tongue but slowly and clearly enunciated, with quotations from Bible stories and rabbinic writings, she seemed to become stripped in his mind of her enfolding femininity, not, heaven forfend, so as to take on male attributes, but to reveal her primal and fundamental humanity, which is the true source of sensual excitement.

But precisely because he was so contented and elated, was he able to imagine that this steady, rational woman, Mistress Esther-Minna daughter of Kalonymos, who had subtly lanced the boil of his hatred for his mother, had begun to be strongly attracted to the man sitting opposite her, so that perhaps this warmth that had begun to spread through him sprang not only from her wise words but also from the heat that glowed in her, and that she was beginning to catch fire from the spark of her desire? Three or four times in the ten years of her widowhood she had been assailed by such a sudden attraction, but always she had succeeded in stamping it out, perhaps because the men she had been attracted to had been not only worthy but married. This time she was surprised by the youth of the man who had aroused her interest, as if on this occasion it was a desire not for a strange man that had sprung up inside her, but for all the children she had not been able to bear, who seemed to have burst into the world of their own accord and merged in this young man, a southern Jew, with his dark curls and his swarthy skin, whose very being was transformed that night by the shadows moving between the flickering candles and the moonlight into something rich and attractive.

True, Abulafia had become accustomed in recent years to various kinds of snatched infatuations, generally involving gentile women, that had arisen in taverns or marketplaces, and sometimes even on the road. Even though he came from the south, women discovered something oriental in his melancholy, since it was in the east that the beloved Son of God had suffered, and even though in the course of the years he had spent in Christian Europe Abulafia had endeavored, for his safety’s sake, to adapt his appearance to the places where he was trading, some traces of his alien origin could still be discerned in his way of dressing his curls or trimming his beard, or of selecting and matching the colors of his clothes, or even his manner of tying up his coat. Since his prosperity was apparent from the quality of his garb and the nature of his baggage, these liaisons flared up with particular intensity. However, they were short-lived, since Abulafia was careful to sever them in good time, so as not to surround himself with excessive fire. But not before he had managed to sell some goods that even his lovers had not intended to buy from him. Not a few homes of Provence and Aquitaine received sacks of condiments that would suffice not only to season their owners’ last supper but even the dishes of their heirs’ heirs.

But on that winter’s night in Orléans, he was so moved by the older woman’s curiosity that he refrained from qualifying as love her sensitive interest in his thoughts and deeds, which did not even omit an inquisition into the character of his partners and friends. Me too? Ben Attar asked in a whisper, with his head cocked and with a surprised laugh, his eyes likening the galaxies twinkling above his head to the glittering embers of the log in the campfire. It emerged that the woman had shown an interest not only in Ben Attar but in Abu Lutfi as well, and even in Benveniste and their summer rendezvous. She had been excited to hear, for example, of the total confidence that Abulafia and Abu Lutfi invested in Ben Attar to be the sole arbiter of the distribution of the proceeds of the previous year’s business.

And so, on the eve of the fast of the ninth of Ab, Ben Attar learned for the first time about the meeting with the new, clever woman, but he could not yet imagine how decisive and fateful she would turn out to be for him, or how one day he would be compelled to purchase a big old guardship, load it with the merchandise that had piled up over two years, separate his wives from their children and their homes, and take them on a tiring and dangerous journey from North Africa into the heart of Europe, in the company not only of his partner but of a rabbi from Seville, hired to pit his wisdom against hers. In that summer five years before the millennium, when he first heard from Abulafia about his meeting with Mistress Esther-Minna, Ben Attar was interested in her words and her questions rather than in her form and the nature of her womanhood. But as he came to recognize the particular excitement that informed the speech of his partner, who did not even conceal his intention of accepting the new woman’s invitation to visit her family home in Paris, Ben Attar also began to interest himself in the appearance of the woman from the Rhineland, and was surprised to learn that she was a small, elegant woman with her hair gathered at the back, perhaps so as to reveal her intelligent face and her pale eyes better.

Pale? Pale in what way? Ben Attar wondered. When Abulafia described the precise tinge of blue of the widow’s eyes and the flaxen color of her hair, likening it poetically to the color of the ocean licking the golden sands of the North African coast, Ben Attar’s soul trembled, for not only did he now sense Abulafia’s responsive love for the new woman, but for the first time he understood that there might be Jews in the world whose most remote ancestors had never been in the Land of Israel.

Who could say that curiosity about these Jews, who may have had some Viking or Saxon blood in their veins, was not one of the unwitting causes of Ben Attar’s journey, which, with the entry to the river, from the time when sea and land met, was taking on a special sweetness? The River Seine welcomed this ship that had traveled so far and carried it along like a father carrying his child. True, it was midsummer, and there was no knowing the depth of the river and whether there was some danger to the hull of the ship, but the warm brightness surrounding them spoke only of affection and hope, and without noticing, they had eaten up since dawn, despite the many bends, a very considerable distance. And the evening was still gradually drawing in the slowly fading redness. Back home the evening fell swiftly, whereas here the sunset was extended, and the twilight struggled for its life. Abd el-Shafi had noticed that two weeks had passed since the lengthening of the twilight hour began, but at sea the drawing-out of the twilight is not as spectacular as inland, where the trees cast reflections of reddish light upon the water. Since morning the captain had been lashed to the mainmast, and despite his worries he was enjoying this unusual form of navigation. And even though Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi were both of the opinion that it was high time to stop and encamp, the pleasure of sailing got the better of the captain’s fears, and he steered the ship upstream into the darkness, relying on the young eyes of the rabbi’s son, who remained at the masthead so as to be the first to cry “Rouen!”

As the darkness deepened all around, limiting the child’s vision, new, unfamiliar sounds came from the river. The dull ringing of the bell of Rouen church echoed from afar, and they understood that the pair of young lovers who had been lowered from the ship a few hours earlier had already announced their coming, for all unawares the river had filled with small boats, which surrounded the ship as though attempting to imprison her.

5.

During the night there was no contact between the boats from Rouen and the strange ship, as though hosts and guests alike were reluctant to diffuse in darkness the excitement of the encounter. In silence the boats remained where they were, surrounding the Arab sailing ship in a semicircle, and it was unclear whether they were blocking her way or protecting her. Every now and again a boat changed its position for no apparent reason, the plash of oars sounding clear and pure in the warm night air. Around midnight Ben Attar tried to halt the flow of his thoughts by entering his first wife’s cabin, laying his head between her legs, and waiting for slumber to sever his soul from his worries, but they refused to depart, and compelled him again to seek the deck and Abd el-Shafi and Abu Lutfi, who were sleeping peacefully upon the lowered mainsail, watched over by the black idol-worshipper, who crouched at their feet. Ben Attar looked at them enviously. Their worries were not his worries, he mused as he listened to the boats that surrounded his ship, trying to discern their purpose from their melodious sound.

Eventually he roused the two Arabs and quietly told them of his decision. Until the true intentions of the people of Rouen were revealed, and also so as not to impose too heavy a burden on their minds, it would be better if all the passengers aboard the ship should be deemed to share the same faith. A faint laugh lit up the captain’s white teeth. Could the Mohammedans then be changed to Jews by morning? Neither by morning nor by Judgment Day, Ben Attar muttered to himself, but he patiently explained to his partners that so long as the Umayyad caliph Hashim II, who was supposed to protect them, clung stubbornly to his Islamic faith, it was for all his subjects in times of adversity to cloak their own faith in his. What, even Rabbi Elbaz? Yes indeed, came back the resolute reply, both the rabbi and the rabbi’s son.

In the case of young Elbaz, the rabbi’s son, it would seem the change had already taken place some time before. From the moment he had come aboard in the harbor of Cadiz and felt the motion of the deck, his soul had understood that this was where he would rediscover the rocking and cradling that his late mother had deprived him of, and so he had clung to the ship as though it were the swing he had swung on in his lost childhood. When his father had subsided into seasickness, and in his terrible confusion had lost contact with his son, the frightened boy had looked for protection to the sailors, who unhesitatingly sent him to climb the mast, both to keep him occupied and to test his strength. And there it was, atop the mast, that the young traveler began to grow. For he sometimes imagined, at that great height, that the erect shaft of the ship was stirring between his skinny, naked legs, so that he was unable to resist the idea that he was its true master and the men scampering about far below on the deck were under his command. It was on account of this vision that the crew treated him with affection and respect, adopting him as a young sailor.

He rapidly adopted them in return. The boy immersed himself in the sailors’ ways, learned the secrets of their tongue, and imitated their manner, so that he looked, in his short breeches and red turban, as though he had been born into the light of day not from his mother’s womb in Seville but from the ancient belly of the guardship. Nevertheless, the rabbi was pleased with his son. He had not forgotten the reproaches of his kinsfolk, who had pleaded with him to leave the motherless child behind and not subject him to the tedium and perils of the lengthy voyage. But the rabbi had insisted. After enduring the death of his wife, he was not willing to face a further parting. And when he beheld the boy’s limbs filling out in the light of the sunshine and the azure sea, his skin growing dark and smooth, and his happy, eager sharing in the work of the ship, he knew that he had been right to obey his own instincts rather than hearken to his family and friends. But once each day, at the time of the evening prayer, he firmly removed the little sailor from the ropes and steering oars, seated him on the old bridge between Ben Attar’s two wives, facing the prow which cleaved the ocean’s reddening waters, and read a psalm or two with him, lest he forget that there was dry land beyond the vast deep.

At first the rabbi had thought to study some simple texts of Mishnah and Talmud with the boy, but once the sea journey had aroused such powerful poetic feelings in him, he had postponed rational studies until they were on shore again, and in consequence it was no wonder that when Ben Attar roused him from his sleep and asked him to dissemble his true nature in the morning, so as not to muddle the minds of the local folk by confronting them with the spectacle of two alien and possibly incompatible faiths sharing a single ship, the rabbi manifested no alarm at the surprising request. The verses he had composed during the past days had rendered his personality gentler and more pliant, and so long as he was not required to consume forbidden foods he was ready to shroud his head like Abu Lutfi and disguise himself as a Muslim, until it became plain what kind of welcome the inhabitants of Rouen were reserving for them.

With the light of dawn, however, the only token of welcome in Rouen was the insistent, solemn clangor of bells that filled the air of the small port. Was the ringing intended to gather the faithful for Sunday mass, or to encourage the oarsmen on the boats to board the strange ship and ascertain its true nature? Either way, Abd el-Shafi gave orders for the mainmast to be adorned with some colored pennants that had been hoisted in the ship’s engagements with Christian fleets in the past, but as a token of peace he also lowered a large rope ladder, so as to encourage the ship’s night jailers to become her morning guests. Eventually some armed men came on board, headed by one of the lords of the town, who was amazed not only by the distance the ship had traveled from the Maghreb but also by its original form. It was immediately apparent that here in the port of Rouen there were great experts on ships—how else to explain the chief man’s protracted and minute inquisition into the nature and use of the great sail, the Arab lateen sail, which performed on its own more than a number of small sails did on a Christian ship? Eventually the man went down with his men to inspect the hold and to gape at the two young camels, whose trembling increased so much at the touch of the Christians that the slave was compelled to quieten them with gurgling sounds. Since these Christians had never set eyes on a real camel, they were treated to an account of its qualities, and especially its ability to do without water and food. Then they were offered the usual visitors’ tour. They were invited to sniff the spices, to feel the skins and cloths, to test the blades of the daggers with their thumbs, which they also dipped in the olive oil, and then they were asked to taste the dried figs and dates and carobs and raisins, and to conclude with a pinch of white salt, which was also wrapped for them in a fine paper as a gift.

It was only when they climbed back up on deck and looked around to see if there was anything left to examine on this wonderful ship that they peered cautiously at the two women, who hurriedly veiled their faces to hide their blushing smiles. The lord bowed deeply, while the Jewish merchant, unable to contain himself, asked the rabbi, who served as translator from Arabic to the mixture of Latin and Frankish of the men of Rouen, to invite the visitors to examine the rest of his fabrics, from which the women’s dresses were made. But the lord happened to be more impressed by the women themselves than by what they were clothed in, and so the invitation to do business was politely declined on the grounds that they had shortly to attend mass, and instead Rabbi Elbaz was asked to write on a parchment the names of all the travelers and the animals and their personal relationship to one another.

Only after the lord had left the ship, not before insisting cordially but firmly that the travelers should honor them by visiting the city and its churches, did Elbaz whisper to Ben Attar that he had taken it upon himself to inscribe the second wife as the sister of the first, to prevent unnecessary gossip among the Christians, whom the approaching millennium was infecting with excessive piety. At first Ben Attar was shocked. Was this not a retreat or even a betrayal of the principle in whose name the whole expedition had been conceived? But once he had grasped the rabbi’s considered caution, he said to himself that there was no reason to despair of him. Even if the sea had changed him into a poet, the dry land would restore his senses.

And so, their personal and religious status having been especially adapted to the purpose of visiting the infidel town and particularly of participating in the mass of an alien faith, twelve travelers disembarked, leaving only a single sailor with Abu Lutfi to guard the ship. To protect the Jews, Abd el-Shafi insisted on accompanying them ashore, and indeed on reinforcing their disguise by adding four of his crew. They also decided to take the young slave with them, lest he escape during their absence to the shore that he so longed for. They stripped him of his tatters and clothed him in a white robe, which emphasized the blackness of his face and his hands and feet.

After so many wave-tossed days, the voyagers’ minds were dizzied somewhat by the solidity of the cobbles they walked on, and so they tended to huddle together at first, if only to allay the terror caused by the sound of the bells, which from a distance, on board ship, had seemed soothing and kindly, but here, among the narrow streets of Rouen, shook the gray air with an insistent menace. Indeed, the streets of Rouen were narrow and winding, and the houses seemed miserable and small to the North Africans, who wondered not only at the unpainted and unplastered gray stone but also at the absence of flowerbeds and ornamental trees. Only occasionally did they halt to feast their eyes on a thick blackened beam that reinforced and adorned the small doorway of a mean house.

Since most of the folk of Rouen were at the mass, the travelers soon lost their way in the empty streets, but a local lad, who at first stood rooted to the spot at the sight of the visitors, bestirred himself and ran to announce their arrival. At once a pair of monks came to meet them and addressed them cordially in clear Latin phrases. It was for the glory and joy of Christ that the honored unbelievers should take part in their worship, they announced to the newcomers, opening for them the heavy great door of the cathedral.

By comparison with the spacious mosques that the visitors were familiar with in North Africa and Andalus, their soft couches and the blue arabesques that adorned their walls, the cathedral of Rouen seemed cramped and sad in its dark severity, and it had a sweet-sour smell blended of incense and sweat, for even on this summer day the congregation was dressed in heavy, dark clothes. The two women had a moment of revulsion as they entered, but it was already too late, all eyes were upon them, and the service was interrupted to allow a ripple of astonishment to spread down the rows of worshippers, as the women’s softly billowing robes and the men’s baggy trousers passed through their ranks. The sight of the black pagan in his hooded coat and the brightly colored oriental silks made it seem as though the mythological figures painted on the walls of the church had descended and come to life in their midst.

It may have been then, in the gloomy cathedral of Rouen, that the rabbi first noticed the special thing that women brought to the land of the Franks, particularly such flowering, exotic women as Ben Attar’s wives, whose fine scented veils might have been intended to shield their modesty or, alternatively, to heighten their seductiveness. When the newcomers had taken their places in the seats that the monks had reserved for them and an invisible choir had burst into virile yet gentle song, accompanied by a totally unfamiliar musical instrument, the North Africans raised their heads in search of the origin of the unknown sound, in the realization that despite the simplicity of the church it could be a place of complex artistry, blending the clear monotones of the chant with the severity of the thin-limbed images that stared with profound and eternal melancholy at the splendidly robed figure of the priest with turned back, who prostrated himself, rang a little bell, prostrated himself again, rang his bell again, and so on.

He has a bell too, thought the black slave, his eyes fixed devotedly on the priest, who, after completing his repeated prostrations, removed his gold-embroidered stole and ascended a small dais to address the congregation. He spoke to them in Latin, but whenever he noticed that his listeners had difficulty in understanding him, he introduced a word or phrase in the local language, at which the people sighed with pleasure at the suddenly revealed meaning. At first the rabbi tried to follow what he was saying, so as to know if it contained any menace to the voyagers, who sat motionless—except for the young pagan, who, overcome by idolatrous fervor, was kneeling before the image of a gilded man spreading his arms out like a bat’s wings behind the altar.

The priest was moved by the sight of the black youth suddenly kneeling in such a spontaneous fashion, but he had too much consideration for the other guests to interpret it as a sign from heaven or an omen concerning them. He merely smiled contentedly, rubbed his palms together, and pronounced a special greeting to the visitors, calling them in each sentence by a different epithet—Africans, Arabs, Muslims, Mohammedans, Ishmaelites, colorful, dusky southerners, sailors, merchants, voyagers, pilgrims, and unbelievers. He did this so much that the congregation must have had the impression that instead of a dozen weary travelers they were welcoming representatives of the whole wide world.

Afterward, at a special reception in their honor in a large hall behind the altar, the monks insisted on making them taste some little pieces of strange, very fine bread, which had a wonderful flavor. But when they also invited them to sip from a large goblet of wine, Ben Attar and the rabbi hurriedly interrupted them. The Prophet’s command prevented the drinking of wine, they explained, signaling cautiously to Abd el-Shafi and the sailors to refrain from drinking the little beakers they were offered. Then a tall, black-clad palmer, a monk who had spent many years roaming the lands of Islam and had learned a little Arabic, was summoned. Even though his Arabic was meager and very strange, so that even the rabbi could hardly understand it, he insisted on improving his acquaintance not only with the rabbi-interpreter but also with the two women, whom he addressed directly, and even with Abd el-Shafi and his men, who here in this hall, as they stood quiet and very apprehensive, but also on a level with the other travelers, revealed their true character, which for eight long weeks at sea had been concealed, as it were, among the ship’s tackle. The palmer wanted to know whether the infidels had enjoyed the divine worship. The rabbi attempted to give a single answer on behalf of the whole party, but the crusader insisted on extracting an individual reply from each of them. It emerged that the ringing of bells had impressed and moved the North African sailors particularly. In a mosque there are no bells, Abd el-Shafi said, summing up the opinion of the true Muslims, and so when we return to the Umayyad caliphate we shall suggest adding some hells to the call of the muezzin. The palmer smiled slyly at this reply. He too believed that the sound of bells could bring people closer to prayer, but prayer to whom? To that Muhammad? Admittedly an important man, and a great prophet, who beheld the angel of God from a short distance, yet he died a long time ago, whereas the bells here called people to pray to one who will never die and now sits in the bosom of God. Like a son with his father. The visitors from far-off lands had been vouchsafed a rare opportunity, because their good fortune had brought them here close to the thousandth anniversary of his birth, when he would save all mankind from its wretched state. And we thought the Jews killed him long ago, Abd el-Shafi exclaimed, shocking Ben Attar and the rabbi. The crusader smiled calmly. Is it possible to kill the Son of God? Even the most evil imagination cannot conceive his death. That is why the Christians had resolved to leave the accursed Jews in their debased condition, so they would witness their own wickedness and folly.

Now, as the sea captain began to nod to the crusader in deep agreement, Ben Attar realized that it was better to cut short the theological discussion, for there was no knowing where it would lead. So he stood up and asked the Andalusian rabbi to thank their hosts in Latin for their hospitality. When they returned to their distant city, they would not forget the cathedral of Rouen and its fine worship. When the millennium dawned and the hosts’ Christ descended from heaven, would they kindly ask him, if it was not too hard for him, to come south and visit the people in Tangier? There too he would be welcomed with great honor. For sometimes those whose prophet is dead and buried long for somebody living who can comfort them for the troubles of the world, which did not allow them, for example, to sit here any longer and enjoy the interesting conversation, but compelled them to hasten to the river and press on to Paris, which was waiting impatiently for their merchandise.

Yes, Paris, Paris, muttered the crusader, as though he were wrestling again with something that always got the better of him, and reluctantly he was forced to interrupt his tortuous conversation and let the stubborn Muslims return to their ship. Outside a summer shower was falling, which soaked the women’s silken robes, and their hems were soiled with mud from the puddles, in some of which pink pigs that had emerged from a nearby graveyard were already wallowing, getting under the visitors’ feet and alarming the women. The sight of their distress moved Abd el-Shafi to request Ben Attar’s permission to allow his strong sailors to make a kind of living hammock with their hands and raise the women a little way off the ground. And so the two of them floated down the narrow streets of houses and the country lanes, where the travelers lost their way, until the black slave shook himself free from the idolatrous dream inspired by the mass, and with the instinct of a desert tracker led them back to the ship, which Abu Lutfi had already loaded with fresh water, apples and grapes, and those long thin loaves of bread whose crisp taste he adored.

In the afternoon Ben Attar decided to weigh anchor and slip quietly out of Rouen, under the cover of the local people’s sacred Sunday rest, but a small boat approached, bearing two of the lord’s men together with a Jew clad in a tricorn hat trimmed with blue lace, who had been sent on this, his working day, to purchase something for his master. And although Ben Attar would have preferred to wait for Abulafia to price the goods, he realized that if he refused he would add anger to the suspicions of the Jew, who seemed in the grip of a spasm of suspicion as he boarded the ship.

This Jew of Rouen, having never set eyes on a real Muslim, was unable to distinguish a true from a false one, but the hidden identity of his disguised kinsmen penetrated his innermost being, and his feet faltered as he climbed down the ladder into the hold, and he slipped and fell down among the sacks and the young camels, who sniffed at the newcomer’s face with friendly curiosity. But Ben Attar chose not to reveal to the Jewish agent in the afternoon what had been hidden in the morning from his Christian master. So as not to increase the confusion, he left the hold in darkness, without lamp or candle, to prevent the Jew from testing the truth of his suspicions and peering behind the oil jars and the sacks of condiments, because then he might discover goods that were definitely not for sale. Gradually those on board managed to calm him down, and after he had groped in the dark and asked for prices, the true purpose of his mission emerged. His lord had set his heart on one of the camels, whose economy and modesty had captivated him. But why not both of them? thought Ben Attar. It turned out that the lord was content with the female alone, on the supposition that the young creature might already have conceived during the long sea voyage, and so she might deliver him another young camel with no further expense on his part.

Ben Attar eyed the two animals. From the way they were lying, the look in their eyes, and the angle of their little heads, it seemed to him again that their death was not far off. Was it right to separate them? he wondered. And surely if he made a present to the lord of the male as well, he might give him a document that would enable the ship to proceed up the river unimpeded. But he also recalled all Abu Lutfi’s care for the camels on the long voyage, so that Abulafia’s new wife might feel and smell at first hand something of the desert lands from which her husband had come, and so he called to the black boy to help separate the female from her companion and take her up on deck.

But the evening twilight was upon them before the sailors managed, thanks to the experience and patience of the young slave, to separate the enfeebled little she-camel from her stubborn and panic-stricken mate, who groaned and sneezed in her direction. Placing her in a special rope cradle, they slowly raised her out of the hold, then hoisted her up over the deck and into the waiting boat of the Jew, who, to judge by his roving glances, had not yet abandoned his secret hope of discovering the true identity of the ship’s owner. But Ben Attar clung stubbornly to his Mohammedan disguise, which by evening he seemed to be enjoying, and after going down on his knees before the Jew and directing his face southeastward toward an imaginary point midway between Mecca and Jerusalem, and whispering the afternoon prayers silently to himself before darkness fell, he rose to his feet and firmly declined the greenish silver coins stamped with the effigy of an unfamiliar ruler. Instead he demanded payment in kind for the rare beast, namely, besides letters guaranteeing safe passage, two sheep, ten hens, and some large, strong-smelling cheeses. Only when all these were safely on board and the business was concluded did the lord and his companions appear on the shore, shouting drunkenly and carrying torches, to haul in the boat carrying the bound she-camel, which looked magical in the silvery moonlight.

And in the same magical, silvery moonlight Abd el-Shafi weighed anchor and gently sailed away from the city of Rouen, whose attractions the visitors had exhausted. On the bushy southern bank, amid the croaking of frogs and the barking of clever Frankish foxes, Ben Attar and the rabbi lost no time in returning to the faith of their forefathers, and despite the late hour they did not dispense with the evening prayer, so as to bless God, who had distinguished light from darkness and the people of Israel from the other nations. And the first wife, her large face calm from peaceful sleep, emerged from her cabin in the bow, wrapped in a white sheet and carrying in her arms, like a swaddled girl, her splendid embroidered robe, washed of the mire that had clung to it from the morning. She hung it up near the sail to dry in the warm night breeze. Meanwhile the second wife too approached from the bowels of the ship, still clad in her soiled and crumpled silk gown, her sleepy face disturbed by a strange dream in which Abulafia’s new wife was among the stern-faced images adorning the walls of the church, and from an abstraction became an angry, living visage. In her distraught state she sought the company of Rabbi Elbaz, who was leaning on the rope and staring down into the water. Would this gentle man, who occasionally shot her a shy glance, really be able to annul or soften the repudiation that awaited them?

Repudiation. That word was heard for the first time in the summer meeting at the Spanish March in the year 4756 of the creation of the world, which was year 386 of the Hegira of the Prophet, four years before the longed-for Christian millennium. And in the small, sinewy womb of this simple word that escaped hesitantly from the mouth of Abulafia in the name of Mistress Esther-Minna, there already lay curled the embryo of the struggle that was to engage the partners so fiercely in the years to come. But in the year 996 of the Christian reckoning it was still a tiny embryo, blind and weak, which did not imagine the seriousness and toughness of its widowed mother, the repudiatrix herself, whose new presence allied itself easily with the exalted mood that had taken hold of all the partners. For Abulafia’s expansion toward northern Francia and his new contacts with Jewish traders in Orléans and Paris had forced Abu Lutfi to enlarge the circuit of his wanderings in the Atlas Mountains and to increase his merchandise. Consequently, it was not four or five but six ships that hoisted their sails that summer in the port of Tangier, filling the hearts of the partners with apprehensive joy as they watched the commercial power spreading from south to north.

That year Abulafia was a whole week late at the old Roman inn. Still it occurred to no one to interpret the delay as a sign of disfavor, only as an understandable hitch in the calculation of time and distance on the part of the cordial, loyal partner, who was now compelled not only to come from farther away but also to take his leave of someone he loved. The delay forced Ben Attar to recite the dirges of the Book of Lamentations on his own, but Abu Lutfi, deeply moved by the double measure of sadness that had fallen upon the Jew and by the melancholy tone of his chant, showed true comradeship by sharing his Jewish partner’s fast, to relieve some of his sorrow. And indeed the sadness lifted as though it had never been when Abulafia arrived two days later with a very respectable quantity of coins and precious stones, the proceeds of the past year’s successful trading. This time he had dispensed with camouflage and appeared to his partners in his true guise, as a handsome young Jewish merchant who had honestly and generously acquitted all the dues levied at each border crossing in return for protection from highway robbers until the next station. Having made himself legal in the eyes of the world, he seemed more at peace with himself. After resting from his long journey and examining with emotion and embarrassment the fine gifts that his partners lavished upon him and his bride, and after recounting, as usual, albeit briefly, the events of the previous year, which had been exceptional not only in terms of business, he went down to Benveniste’s tavern to look over the new merchandise that had arrived from the south. Unlike his usual custom, he did not discuss either the prices of the goods or their qualities with the Ishmaelite, but after casting a remote and distracted glance over them, he listened in grim silence to Abu Lutfi’s explanations and then returned to the old inn.

Only in the evening, after the distribution of the profits, when the Ishmaelite had disappeared on his horse on the road to Granada, was Abulafia smitten with a new unease, and even though the ninth of Ab was over and gone, he asked Ben Attar to stay with him at the Roman inn and light their fire as usual. When he started to speak, he told his kinsman and former patron first of all about his marriage ceremony, whose modesty had only increased its sanctity. Since he was alone, without kith or kin, the members of the bride’s family had doubled their affection toward him and had presented him with costly gifts: a prayer shawl of silk embroidered with silver thread, phylacteries of fine leather that caressed the arm as gently as a woman’s hand, a silver goblet engraved with the words of the benediction, a velvet sash, and a black velvet cap. Abulafia also spoke of his new wife’s jewelry, of her headscarf; he repeated the admonitory words of the bride’s brother, Master Levitas, who was both a merchant and a scholar, and between one description and the next, beside a fire that was too fierce for a summer evening, the uncle began to direct his mind to a new word that kept recurring on Abulafia’s lips, hesitantly at first, but with a kind of strange persistence, as though he too were now of one mind with the new wife’s repudiation of the partnership between north and south.

At first it was hard to understand whether the repudiation was directed against the partnership or against the partners—whether it was due to a wife’s personal resentment over the hardships of her husband-to-be’s travels and the implied protracted absences from his new bridal chamber or to a more commercial reaction, derived from a calculation of the profits and their distribution. There flickered for a moment a suspicion that Abu Lutfi might be the source of the revulsion felt by this widow from the Rhineland, who might be accustomed to Huns but frightened of Ishmaelites. But gradually, from Abulafia’s careful words, which like the wood of their campfire smoldered slowly until every now and then they suddenly flared up and crackled, it became clear that its true source was the uncle himself, Ben Attar—Abulafia’s patron and benefactor, the guiding force behind the partnership and the architect of its success—who was now painfully and sadly lifting a glowing ember from the fire and turning it over and over.

If Ben Attar had taken the trouble the previous year to consider Abulafia’s story about that unforgettable nocturnal encounter in the Jewish tavern in Orléans and carefully turned it over, as he was now turning the ember between his scorched fingers, he would have discovered the bewilderment that had begotten the repudiation. For then, beside the campfire near the entrance to the Roman inn, between one dirge and the next, Abulafia had recounted to his partner how attentively Mistress Esther-Minna had absorbed everything that was offered her on the subject of the black-curled man, who, not yet imagining the strength of the love and affection that he was stirring up, had prattled on not only about his thoughts and deeds but also about his faraway kinsmen and business partners, what they were like, what they wanted, what they looked like, and how they lived. And when, innocently carried away by the spate of his words, he had mentioned the second wife whom Ben Attar had married a few years previously, whom he himself had never met, he had felt his delicate questioner momentarily hold her breath.

A second wife? Mistress Esther-Minna had whispered in Hebrew, as though fearful of uttering the words in the local tongue, lest she arouse the Frankish servant who slept by the doorway. Why not? Abulafia had whispered in reply, with a faint, provocative smile. But from the crimson tinge that suffused her cheeks and her haste to reach up to adjust her headscarf, he had understood how much his answer had frightened her. So he had immediately attempted to broaden the woman’s mind, for despite her experience of business trips with her brother, she had never traveled farther south than Orléans, let alone visited the wonderful, luxuriant south and informed herself about the customs of the awesome Arab grandees, not only in North Africa but also in the verdant cities of Andalus, replete with wisdom and song, where some, not content with possessing two wives, wed three or sometimes even four. Mistress Esther-Minna had looked up, her thin lips twisted slightly in a smile of curiosity tinged with disgust. And were there, she inquired, in the land where Abulafia had been born and from which he came, Jews who had three or four wives? Abulafia had been unable to give her a clear answer, for so many years had passed since he had left North Africa and Andalus. But the woman, her bewilderment and curiosity by now wrapped up in her love, had refused to let him be and had insisted on knowing whether the uncle, Ben Attar, the director of their partnership, might someday up and take, say, a third wife in addition to the two he already possessed. God alone knows, Abulafia had said, trying to evade the strange question. But seeing that God did not dispel the widow’s curiosity, he was impelled to answer: Perhaps, who knows? If the partnership continued to prosper and to bring great wealth to the partners, Ben Attar might take another wife, for Ben Attar’s expansive, love-filled heart was different from his own. He himself had not yet recovered from the blows that he had suffered in his life, and so he had hardly managed to have one wife.

Then Abulafia had felt the light touch of a small hand in the semidarkness, and had realized that only a natural, self-confident humanity could find the courage to touch him. It was this humanity that had given him no rest during the year that had elapsed, so at the beginning of the spring he had turned his horses northward and at last headed with his wares to Paris, to seek out his acquaintance from the tavern in Orléans and to find out whether that tiny white hand that had reached out and touched him so generously in the darkness would deign to touch him also in the light of day. Even though her younger brother, who saw himself as her guardian, was hostile to the young North African’s offer of marriage, his sister succeeded in allaying his doubts, and when they had satisfied themselves that despite Abulafia’s years of wandering he had not forgotten his prayers and was still able to chant (although in an unfamiliar melody) the blessings to welcome the Sabbath and those that bade it farewell, as well as the long grace after food, the younger brother had given his consent to the match, on the condition that the couple set up house in a wing of his own home, not only so that his sister would continue to be close to him and his family but also so that she would not feel lonely when her husband resumed his traveling life.

Because the new household was to include Abulafia’s daughter, whom henceforth he was forbidden to call, even jokingly, “bewitched” or “she-demon” but only, at most, “poor creature,” it would be necessary to extend somewhat the house situated on the south bank of the river of Paris, close to the castle, with its law court and its execution chamber. In the meantime Abulafia was in a hurry to leave for the south, for his summer meeting in the Spanish March, but it became plain to him that Esther-Minna’s bewilderment of the previous year had not vanished but had now changed into a feeling of panic. The very thought that the man who was soon to be her husband was partner to a savage Jew who, out of ignorance or unbridled lust, possessed two wives, to whom he might one day add a third, terrified this woman who was no longer young, and she demanded before Abulafia left that after the distribution of the previous year’s profits he should not take the new merchandise but should share out his part between the other two partners and bid farewell to his uncle, who now, hearing these words, was so startled that he almost put the crumbling ember into his mouth.

But why? Ben Attar’s voice was choked. His northern partner tried to mumble a reply that would set his mind at rest—that he had deliberately waited until Abu Lutfi had left them, so as not to embarrass his kinsman on a matter that the Ishmaelite too took pride in. Since he himself was still far not only from becoming accustomed to Mistress Esther-Minna’s capricious demand, whose firmness was already visible in a slight softening of his black pupils, but even from understanding her reasons, he tried first to explain her repudiation by her peculiar quality of human sensitivity, for her heart grieved for all that the first wife was denied when a second wife arrived. But how so? Ben Attar retorted at once. Two wives might help each other to support their husband in every way and might on occasion transform their conjugal desires into a longing that only enriched and purified their love. And who knew better than Abulafia himself how miserable a single wife might also be? Abulafia listened very attentively and nodded his head in agreement. How sad, he said, that Ben Attar could not explain these delicate matters to his fiancée himself, for he himself had forgotten them in his long years as a widower. But since he had not yet made up his mind to accede to her demand and dissolve their partnership, he would endeavor to remember Ben Attar’s words and use them to assuage his bride, and when he came to the next summer’s meeting, if God willed it, he would bring with him her acceptance.

And so, in the year 4756 according to the Jewish era of the creation, corresponding to the year 386 of the Prophet’s Hegira, four years before the millennium that so thrilled the Christians, instead of dissolving the partnership that was so dear to him, Abulafia loaded the merchandise upon six carts, one for each of the boats that had brought it, and on reaching Perpignan he sent one cart, laden with condiments, westward, to the duchy of Gascony, and a second cart, bearing copper bowls and pans, eastward into southern Provence, while he himself went with the three remaining carts to Toulouse, trading the olive oil, honeycombs, and strings of dried carobs and figs of Andalus in the villages along the way and bartering in turn with the goods he received in exchange for them. By the time he reached Toulouse he already had two empty carts on which to load his mute daughter and her Ishmaelite nurse, who demanded five gold bracelets in exchange for her agreement to abandon her southern dream in favor of a winter journey through Edomite kingdoms to a faraway town like Paris, to which they were taking a luxurious consignment of vials of fragrant perfumes from the desert, lion and leopard skins, and embroidered cloth in which lay concealed curved daggers encrusted with precious stones.

Early in the spring of 997, Abulafia returned to that same Paris, not alone this time but bringing with him his dumb ten-year-old daughter, who, if she was no longer bewitched, was assuredly a poor creature. Again he discovered that his future wife was not only older than he was in years, but was also experienced and worldly-wise. Although she immediately folded the poor creature in her arms and hugged her to her bosom, and inclined her head in respect and wonder before the elderly Ishmaelite nurse, agleam with golden bangles, and even though all winter long her soul had yearned for the young man with his black ringlets, she did not hasten to undertake the promised marriage but returned to the theme of her repudiation of the twice-wed partner. So saying, she introduced a black-robed personage who had come to Paris from the province of Lotharingia in Ashkenaz, wearing a hat from which arose a horn of black velvet. This man, Rabbi Kalonymos son of Kalonymos, a kinsman of her late husband’s, a resident of her native town of Worms, had been invited to Paris especially by her younger brother, Master Levitas, to conduct the marriage according to the rites and ceremonies of their forefathers. He sought first to test the nature and firmness of the southern bridegroom’s faith, in case it required strengthening or completion, correction or purging, before it was joined to the unshakeable faith of the respected woman from his home town.

To this end he engaged Abulafia in a lengthy conversation, and because the mute child trembled and moaned at the sight of the horn nodding on his head, Abulafia took him outside and walked with him amid the mud and mire of Paris, among swine, horses, and asses. Leading him across a small wooden bridge, he strolled with him along a wide dirt track known as the Road of Saint James, along which the pilgrims departed on their way to the shrine of Saint James of Compostela at the tip of Iberia. The cold-mannered German pointed out to Abulafia the pilgrims clad in thick capes, with their broad-brimmed felt hats adorned with a scallop shell, holding long poles with leather water bottles attached to the tips, preparing themselves for their long and arduous journey. Then he showed him the women bidding them farewell while braiding their hair and wrapping their ankles in scarlet leggings above their feet, which were shod in stout sandals. All this was meant to indicate to the Moroccan Jew that true faith requires meticulous preparation. Then he explained to the bridegroom the steps of the marriage ceremony in due order, lest any exotic desert whim or Mediterranean habit disrupt the sacrosanct ritual. He introduced some anecdotes from Worms, which, while it might lack the attraction of Paris, and though its houses still rested on gnarled piles, was not lacking in one thing: Jewish scholars. Dead scholars, who watched over living scholars, who in their turn were preparing the world for future generations of scholars still unborn. Clearly, it was vitally important that the future generations should be born in the purity of wedlock, and what purity could there be without security and peace, which were protected by interdict and ban against a man who might seek to take to himself a second wife, or to divorce his wife against her will?

Abulafia understood that the visitor whom his bride and her brother had summoned from the Rhineland was drawing a clear connection between the annulment of the partnership with Ben Attar and the marriage with Mistress Esther-Minna. Consequently, he was not surprised when, upon their return to the inn—after the pilgrims, who had at first taken the German for a man of consequence, had eventually recognized the Jew in him and pelted him with rotten apples as a first virtuous deed on their arduous journey—Master Kalonymos drew forth from his luggage two strips of dark parchment inscribed in red ink, one for the bridegroom, to remind him of what he had just learned, and the second for the rejected partner, to be sent to him that summer by hand of messenger, together with what was due to him by proper reckoning in exchange for the merchandise that had been sold the previous year.

And so, on Thursday the eighteenth of Iyar, the thirty-third day of the Omer in the year 4757, after he had promised to his new kinsfolk to dissolve the partnership, final consent was given and the marriage took place. But when the summer month of Tammuz came and the messenger was due to leave for the Spanish March, Abulafia, overcome by a powerful longing for the Bay of Barcelona, repented of the promise he had given. Notwithstanding the grim expression that overtook the pallid face of his new wife, to whom he had been drawn with a mixture of fear and strong desire ever since their wedding night, he was not prepared to part from his old partners by means of a letter, nor did he dare to take it upon himself to divide up the proceeds of the year’s trade and send it by the hand of a stranger. Consequently, after swearing again to his wife and his new brother-in-law that this time he really would take his leave and dissolve the successful partnership so that the repudiation might take effect, he took to the road himself. So divided was his heart between the awesome oath he had sworn and the pain and sorrow that awaited him that he lost his way, and in the Sierra de Andorra he was saved from falling into the hands of highway robbers only by a black leper’s coat that he had bought at the last moment and now donned. And so his delay was extended by ten more days, and for a second year Abu Lutfi joined in marking the fast of the ninth of Ab.

Clad in his leper’s habit, sounding a clapper so as to keep healthy folk at a distance, Abulafia found his two business partners lying prostrate in the heat of the day between two ruined marble columns that had once adorned the Roman inn. Despite the words of joyful greeting, the embraces and the bows, the southerners could already discern in their northern partner’s lovely eyes the grim signs of separation. When the Ishmaelite heard that Abulafia wished to cut the partnership off in its prime, and was not intending this time to accept the six boatloads of merchandise, he lost his self-control and, getting to his feet, began to wheel around in a rage, until he suddenly stopped in front of a huge olive tree and hit his head against it, the tears coursing down his cheeks, quite different from the tears of joy of the first meeting that had taken place at this very spot eight years before.

It was not easy for Abulafia to comfort him, both because he was not reconciled in his own mind to parting and dissolving the partnership and because he knew how hard it would be for a Muslim man, who could marry wives according to the state of his wealth and divorce them at will, to understand, let alone respect, the spirit that had animated the new rules, which he now presented to Ben Attar upon a sheet of parchment darkened by the shade of the Black Forest. So they waited as the Ishmaelite’s sobs gradually subsided. Before he could emerge from his grief and reach a false notion that all this was merely a trick that the two Jews were playing on him so as to exclude him from the partnership, Ben Attar decided to subvert the new orders from the north by freely making over his share of the new merchandise to Abu Lutfi, so that Abulafia could accept it without any difficulty from the hands of a non-Jew, who was not subject to the edicts emanating from the Rhineland, or indeed to those coming from Babylon or from the Land of Israel.

At first Abulafia hesitated to consent to a solution whose southern simplicity would be laughingly dismissed by his fastidious kinsfolk. However, since the boats had already been sent back to Tangier and the goods that had been piled up in Benveniste’s stables for more than three weeks were already enraging the horses and asses whose living quarters they were crowding, he could not be indifferent to the distress of his old partners, and so he consented to accept the merchandise from the hand of the Ishmaelite, who had suddenly, uncomprehendingly, become the owner of everything. But all this, Abulafia warned them once more, was only on condition that all the goods be transported as they were straight to Paris, there to receive the stamp of approval from his kin before being sold to gentiles. His trader’s instincts whispered to him that the higher prices he would receive for them in the Île de France would amply compensate him for the additional hardships and expenses of the long journey.

While Abu Lutfi was hurriedly mounting his horse to gallop south to Granada, confident that the solution the Jews had found to their problem would also hold good for the wares he would gather during the following year, and despite the lateness of the season, with the first cool signs of autumn already discernible in the air, uncle and nephew found it hard to take leave of each other, for who knew whether this might be their last parting? Since they had been deprived of their joint prayers for the ninth of Ab, with its lamentations and its grief, they wanted to be together to recollect the joy of the daughters of Israel who in bygone times had gone out in search of love and a marriage partner on the fifteenth of the month. But the melody of Abulafia’s prayer turned gloomy at the sight of Ben Attar’s sad face, and so, without being bidden, unable to contain himself, in the darkness gathering around them at the end of their prayers, without campfire or stars in the sky, he began to speak out in praise of the new Mistress Abulafia, so that Ben Attar would not start to hate her. He spoke at length of her wisdom, her refinement, and her charitable deeds, and he dwelled especially on her tender care for his poor child, who had found shelter in her home. Little by little there emerged between the lines his wonder at his desire for the blue-eyed, fair-haired woman, until, carried away in ever more confessional speech, he let fly little secrets of his bedchamber like sparks from a bonfire.

They parted from each other with mixed emotions. On chilly autumnal roads, journeying with purposeful determination, Abulafia took his six heavily laden carts to his new home in Paris, to hear from his beloved wife and her brother a clear and decisive verdict, which, as expected, dismissed any Ishmaelite subterfuge to dissimulate the continuation of the partnership with the twice-wed southern Jew. To thwart any further attempt at Mediterranean sophistry, they insisted on confiscating the whole of his stock in trade and selling it themselves, so as to be satisfied that the partnership had been broken once and for all, at their own hands. They agreed to send the proceeds of the sale, after deduction of expenses, southward in its entirety, to the two partners who were now deemed past partners, along with the Ishmaelite nurse whose time had elapsed.

When the two southern partners arrived once more at Benveniste’s tavern in Barcelona, this time with seven boatloads, in the hope of renewing their trade, they were informed by Benveniste that Mistress Esther-Minna had anticipated them. He led them, excited at the thought of finally meeting the new wife face to face, to a small cubicle in his stable, and there, in the darkness full of smells of straw and hay, knelt the old Ishmaelite woman calmly surrounded by her bundles, gleaming with the golden bangles she had amassed in the course of her years of service, a broad grin exposing the single tooth that remained in her mouth. And before they could recover their senses, she drew from her bosom a familiar leopard-skin pouch containing gold coins, the proceeds of the highly successful sale of the merchandise, to be divided now between two instead of three. And so, in the year 4758 of the creation according to the reckoning of the Jews, 388 of the Prophet’s removal from Mecca to Medina, two years before the portentous millennium of the Christians, Abulafia’s delays turned into utter absence.

6.

After so many days of soaring and heaving between the mast and the ropes of a swaying ship, it was small wonder the dry land exercised such a powerful pull even on light, nimble legs that they refused to go on standing silently atop the wide hill that rose gently on the north bank of the river, and without asking permission they sank slowly and carefully into a full oriental kneeling position on the ground, toward the thrill of grass, stones, and clods of earth, whose smell had been all but forgotten during the long voyage. Even the joyful dampness that now bedewed those young eyes did not dim one whit the attentive look the rabbi’s son directed at his master, who from all his men that afternoon had selected the boy from Seville as his sole companion on an early, somewhat furtive reconnaissance, intended to prepare for the first stage of the contest with the business partner who had withdrawn into the nearby city.

By the ruins of a stone arch, perhaps left over from an ancient Roman temple, the Jewish merchant from North Africa now stood gazing with contained excitement at the fields and woods exposed in this saffron-colored light of lazy summer, already tinged with the fresh gray droplets of autumn. From his minute inspection, it appeared for an instant that Paris, the city toward which he had been sailing for so many weeks, was not only situated there to his east, entrenched on a little island in the River Seine, but could also be to the north of the hill he was standing on, and even to the west, and certainly to the south, where the beautiful bend of the river glowed like soft steel, as if every one of the dirt tracks that kissed the little stone arch like rays of light meeting at their star could in its own way lead the two foreign Jews to that radiant city.

But for the small boy, who was following the ship’s owner attentively and with interest the whole time, there was no doubt that as the first twilight came on, Ben Attar would choose the track that led eastward, not only because it led straight to the gray island with its huddled houses, but because this was not a mere track but a real road, so resolutely straight that it had carved a broad passage for itself between fields and trees that seemed to make way for it, and it seemed to invite not only a man and a boy to stride along it safely in the gathering twilight, but whole marching armies. Before the moment came when they set forth to seek out the people his father was supposed to admonish with his learned arguments, the child knew that they still had to study well, before dark, the appearance of the stray buildings scattered on both sides of the river. A church tower rose stiffly on the right bank in the clear light not far from the water’s edge. Now, as they looked at it, her bells sounded toward the distant Jews.

For several days Ben Attar had known that his first meeting with his nephew and business partner had to take place in total privacy, without the presence of the new wife or any of her stern kinsfolk. Nevertheless, it must not be a chance or secret encounter, in an alley or a field, but upon the very threshold of Abulafia’s house, so that the sacred duty of hospitality, which was supposed to be ingrained in a southern man like second nature, would overcome, by the force of tradition and habit, any attempt on the part of the new wife or her severe young brother to extend the repudiation that had been pronounced against him into a veritable interdict, which would instantly dash all the hopes of the bold expedition. Consequently, it was not only an element of agility and surprise that was needed, but also detailed prior knowledge of the house to which the merchant from Tangier was intending to introduce not only himself but also his two wives, who, once their way had been smoothed by the rabbi from Seville with appropriate scriptural verses, would express merely through their placid existence the image of happiness and love that the arbitrary edict emanating from a small town in Ashkenaz sought to destroy.

And so, on learning that afternoon from a pair of fishermen that the town of Paris was waiting to appear around the next bend in the river, Ben Attar had instructed Abd el-Shafi to halt the ship, and prepared himself to go ashore. He had briefly entertained a mischievous thought of surprising Abulafia in his own disguise of a monk or a leper, but he had immediately dismissed it, fearing some theological question he would be unable to answer. Thus he had made do with the garb of an Andalusian Christian who, weary of the Ishmaelites, was seeking out holy places—although, according to Abulafia, it did not seem that this town was particularly notable for sacred sites that might attract a pilgrim from far-off lands. He got his wives to stitch him together a multicolored robe compounded of various styles, so that it would be hard to pin him down to a single identity.

Yet he knew he must not venture alone into a strange city, for a man on his own may vanish without a trace, while two men can always testify for each other, if not in this world then in the next. At first he thought of taking the rabbi from Seville with him, in order to interpret the unfamiliar Capetian environment by means of the Latin he commanded, and also to exercise some legal authority over the Jews whose repudiation he had come to contest. But on further reflection Ben Attar decided that it would be better not to reveal all his weaponry at the outset, and he did not know whether Rabbi Elbaz had recovered from the poetic intoxication that had laid hold of him on the ocean. He thought of taking Abu Lutfi, in the hope that his wronged Ishmaelite presence might make Abulafia feel some remorse for the merchandise that had been so laboriously amassed and so casually brushed aside. But eventually he abandoned this thought too. It was not right that he should leave two tender women and a rabbi utterly transported by poesy to the mercy of sailors who, notwithstanding their honest comportment in the course of the voyage, were nevertheless total strangers; and it was also fitting to ensure that there would be somebody on the ship who would be able to sail her back to North Africa if, heaven forbid, he should disappear in this unknown city.

Whom did he have left? In his heart of hearts Ben Attar would have liked to take his sea captain, not only because he would probably have somewhere in his mind some useful ancient lore from the Viking attacks on Paris at the end of the previous century, but because of his pleasing disposition and his honest, open look. But how could one leave a sailing ship laden with merchandise in a coursing river without a captain? As a last resort he thought of taking one of Abd el-Shafi’s burly seamen with him. But again doubts began to nag. This might be just what the stern new wife was waiting for, that he should turn up on her doorstep with a simple, rough, threadbare Arab seaman, so that she could say, So this is the living wild source of your partner’s desire. Or should he take the young black along with him? The slave’s sharp desert senses would certainly guide him straight to the house on the strength of a whiff of Abulafia’s scarf, but his rampant thirst for idolatry would have him prostrating himself before the silver ritual chalice in the home of the Parisian Jews, kneeling before the Sabbath candlesticks, and rendering Ben Attar’s own religion profoundly suspect. Consequently, it might be best for him to go on his own. But as he raised his eyes heavenward to seek encouragement from his God, who had been so kind to him and his ship during the long voyage, he noticed young Elbaz swaying at the masthead, and said to himself in the words of Scripture, It seems that this was the lad I was praying for, not only because a man who has a child with him preserves his humanity even in a strange city, but also because if Abulafia insisted on rejecting him, the child might remind him of his own childhood, when his uncle had taken him to the seaside and held him in the waves, yet always took him home safe and sound.

And so they walked, the ship owner and the little rabbi’s son, on this mild evening toward the city. The road they were following was so wide and straight that it might be properly termed an avenue, and after a long time there opened out before them a huge square, and Ben Attar asked the boy to help him erect a small column of stones in its center, as a landmark for their return, in case they were obliged to return alone. From there, still in the same eastward direction, they walked between little squares of green and neatly trimmed bushes, and past a pool of water behind which another stone arch could be seen, only this was a tiny one, only chest height, perhaps a miniature copy of the big one on the hill. If the two travelers had turned around, they would have seen, even at this twilight hour, the straight line that extended between the two arches, but their faces were looking straight ahead, toward the lights of little lanterns swaying all along the river toward the city, and the first faces of the somewhat noisy Parisians themselves, with their sharp features, their watchful eyes, a bald patch at the top of their skulls and shaven faces after the manner of players.

Meantime the island was filled with little lights, as though the inhabitants were vying with one another to display their personal light. In the throng of men and women strolling vociferously along the river, little Elbaz suddenly lost his self-confidence, and the hand that upon the ocean had held firmly to the tip of the mast gave way to panic and now laid hold of Ben Attar’s robe, which despite its striking colors attracted no attention from anyone, as though these strangers were walking not into a remote provincial town in darkest Europe but into a real metropolis, like Cordoba or Granada in Andalus, cities that receive many foreign visitors every single day without favoring them with so much as a second glance. Is it the boy who is inspiring such trust all around us, Ben Attar wondered, or do the local folk possess such self-confidence that they can receive any stranger without hostility, so long as he is ready to converse with them?

Indeed, Ben Attar, and even his young companion, began to feel that not only the traders standing at their stalls but even the people walking along the riverbank were constantly exchanging rapid remarks, and occasionally even uttering a word or two in the direction of the two strangers, as though the mere fact of speaking in such a musical language was a source of pleasure and blessing and whoever said nothing was the poorer for it. But since the two southerners had no words with which to reply and an ungarnished smile was no longer sufficient, they kept their heads bowed and began to look down at the rounded cobbles, upon which the feet of men and women, bound in curious leather leggings, pranced lithely, so as not to tread in the horse, swine, and dog droppings scattered everywhere. So intent were their eyes on the legs all around them that the rabbi’s son fancied he found among them those of his father, who had remained on board the ship—that is to say, his manner of walking—and stirred by this discovery, the boy tugged on Ben Attar’s robe, and in his soft Andalusian Arabic he whispered excitedly, Sir, the man walking in front of us could well be a Jew.

Surprisingly, Ben Attar was attracted by the boy’s idea, not because of the man’s gait but because of the hat that was pulled down on his head. Without further reflection he turned to follow the man, who, if he really was a Jew, might be expected not to turn into one of the taverns whose dim lights flickered around them, but would head for his home, which would certainly be found in a street in which other Jews lived, and so, unsuspected, they might arrive at the Levitas house, where Abulafia resided, for it was not possible that Jews who maintained their faith did not live close to other Jews. Even if it emerged that the man walking in front of them was not a Jew, to judge by the gentleness of his step there was no doubt that he was a kindly person, who would not object to serving unwittingly as a guide.

But a guide to what place? At first their Jew followed the river, which now revealed to them the walls of the large island, resembling for an instant a gigantic illuminated ship sailing along beside them. Even though the majority of the people went down the steps that led to a ferry that would convey them to the island, their Jew chose instead to continue on his way along the riverbank, until they reached a dark spot where the water almost licked at the earth, and there was a modest bridge of planks, half of it floating in the air and the rest immersed in the water. Their anonymous guide led them straight into the heart of the island crowded with houses and winding lanes and full of dark-uniformed guards, who were playing dice at the corners of the lanes and jabbering ceaselessly in their beloved language. From basement windows rose smells of dinner cooking, as though it were not so much the heart of the city that they had reached as its belly. The child, who had eaten nothing since midday, hesitantly turned his steps aside until, half afraid and half hopeful, he halted in front of a portly Parisian who was engaged in dissecting a whole roast piglet into fine pink slices.

When Ben Attar saw that the fragrant morsels of suckling pig failed to distract their chosen guide and that on the contrary he hastened his steps and lowered his eyes, muttering something as he did so, he was confirmed in his view that the boy had guessed right and this really was a Jew. So he continued to dog the man’s footsteps when he turned into a long dark alley, which led them through a small opening in the wall of the island to another bridge, no less dilapidated than the first, which took them to the southern bank. Even though it seemed more desolate than the northern bank, it had something gay and liberated about it, at least to judge by the merry, casually dressed young people who sat in the square by a fountain that ran into a stone basin adorned with torches, listening to a musician who was playing a small harp and bestowing friendly glances on Ben Attar and the boy, who were tailing their Jew. No longer able to ignore the pair following him, this man halted in a dark alleyway beside a large stone that projected from one of the houses and considered whether to say something, but he merely looked straight at them out of the darkness.

Abulafia? Ben Attar pleadingly whispered the name of the man who for more than a year had steeped his soul in sadness. A relieved smile flitted across the Jew’s face as he realized that there had been a purpose in his being pressed into service as a guide. Raising his arm, he gestured firmly toward the largest dwelling in this small alley, and without saying a word he opened a wicket hidden behind the stone and vanished inside.

Ben Attar was immediately alert. The presence nearby of Abulafia and his new wife had pricked all his senses. But then he admonished himself, for a hasty, unconsidered entrance at this evening hour was liable to confound his hopes of paying a formal visit with his two wives to the home of this woman who found him so repugnant. Accordingly, instead of making for the front door, he lingered and even retreated somewhat, inspecting the new home that his nephew and business partner was inhabiting and considering the best way to draw him out of it. But the windows of this house were small and out of reach, as though they belonged to a fortress rather than a dwelling. Little Elbaz, his impudence aggravated by the hunger that had been haunting him since the afternoon, offered the fruit of his great experience, and boldly laying hold of the heavy, dark wall with his skinny hands, he located hidden projections that enabled him to raise himself to one of the windowsills. For a long while he stayed there, hanging in silence, unable to break free of the attraction of the view afforded to anyone who happens to peep into someone else’s house. Meanwhile, Ben Attar, careful to make no sound, was stealthily pacing around the rear courtyard, attracted by familiar smells, and eventually recognized among the logs and broken cartwheels some of the sacks and brassware and skins that had been sold to Benveniste at half-price on the last ill-fated trip to Barcelona.

By now jealousy had rekindled his pain and longing. Unable to restrain himself, he called in a firm whisper to the boy to come down and tell him what he had seen. It transpired that the boy’s eyes had been transfixed by those of a girl about his own age, who had stared at him without uttering a word. In that case I have reached my goal, Ben Attar thought excitedly, and concealing his face with his scarf and placing the boy in front of him, he knocked on the door, which was very soon opened by an old servant woman with a kindly expression. While she was wondering whether she ought to be alarmed at the shrouded figure standing before her, the boy, who had learned his part well, bowed deeply and gracefully, and with a gentleness that would dispel any unseemly fear pronounced the name that had floated soundlessly before the advancing prow of the ship for the past eight weeks.

Although only two years had passed since the partners’ last meeting, Ben Attar had prepared himself to find Abulafia changed. Even so, he was surprised at the appearance of the man who came toward them. This was not because of his long hair or the pallor and gauntness of his face, but because of a new expression, a kind of inner, spiritual, somewhat artificial smile, as if he were forever attempting to understand the secret of the world yet did not believe that it was possible to do so. Had the new wife really managed to exchange the memory of pain over the drowned wife for a spiritual smile? The nephew’s eyes had not yet noticed his uncle, who had withdrawn into the shadow of the doorway, but they were drawn toward the boy, who had begun to prattle to the master of the house in Arabic, so stirring Abulafia with emotion that he could not refrain from touching the child to make sure it was not a dream standing on the threshold of his house. Then Ben Attar lowered his scarf, enjoying not so much the astonishment but the pain that suffused his nephew’s beautiful face as he closed his eyes as though he were about to faint.

But Abulafia immediately reined himself in. He knew only too well that fainting on his own doorstep would be considered an escape not only by his guest but also by his wife and her brother, who would come running at once, and so he changed his plan and hastened to embrace Ben Attar, not with that strong, natural embrace of the summer meetings in the woods near Barcelona, but with a soft, desperate hug tinged with guilt and pain, and also with a new repudiation, a hug that repelled even as it clasped the North African traveler. Ben Attar had covered such a vast, impossible distance to come here that he had earned a high status in the eyes of the master of the house, a status that instantly relieved Abulafia of any scruples concerning the nature of the reply that he must give his twice-wed uncle when the latter made his request for hospitality. My house is your house, he said clearly, repeating the words in Hebrew so as to avoid any possible misunderstanding, whether on the part of the business partner who had returned or on that of his new wife, whose gown now rustled at his side.

The generous host did not yet know that behind the solitary uncle stood an old guardship lying at anchor not far away. But it was clear from the flash that lit his eyes and the blush that suffused his cheeks that he would not have modified his generous invitation if he had known that hospitality was being requested not just for a young, ill-defined child but for an entire household. For it became more evident by the minute that he was animated by joy at the sight of this guest who had descended upon him with almost magical suddenness, and his excitement caused him to bend down affectionately once again toward the unknown, suntanned child and hoist him tenderly in the air, this child who for many days had swayed at the masthead of a doughty ship. And the new wife, Mistress Esther-Minna, realizing that she had been bested in the first, lightning-quick engagement of the present campaign, smiled too at the uplifted child, who lay gripped in the arms of the master of the house, perhaps in hopes of receiving, once he was back on the ground, something to eat.

Not once but many times in the course of the voyage Ben Attar had asked himself, when the ship was becalmed at night, creaking to herself upon the darkling sea beneath a heaven pregnant with stars, which of Satan’s brood had tempted him into abandoning his home and his children and endangering both his two beloved wives and his merchandise on such a ghastly escapade. Why should he insist on winning back the heart of his partner Abulafia, when he might have found a replacement for him, or even two replacements, who, even if they might not have traded with the same talent or reliability as his dear nephew, could have dealt with the old markets of Provence and Toulouse and made him a decent profit, which would preserve his good and honored name and the prosperity of both his houses? And each time he had reminded himself once again that in truth it was not Abulafia’s heart that he was trying to win back by means of this crazy journey, but that his new wife, who, though he had never beheld her face nor heard her voice, was extremely important to him, particularly from the moment she had reached out so surely from a distance to impugn his honor.

It was because of the importance of this unknown, distant woman, which had only increased as the journey dragged on and its tribulations became more severe, that he had not only held firm to his purpose but even managed to instill confidence and faith in the other travelers and the crew. So when he finally stood in the entrance of the house, clad in the multicolored robe that his two wives had made for him and inspecting his new kinswoman, who had come up from the Rhine Valley and united herself with his nephew, he knew clearly that this daring adventure had not been in vain. It was indeed right for him to have come from so far away to pit himself against such a woman, who, even though she was ten years older than her young husband, even though fine wrinkles showed on her face, still retained in her high cheekbones and her bright pearl-like eyes traces of a peculiar, exotic beauty, like that of a fine white hound or a fox. Who could say, he reflected with an inward chuckle, whether some savage Viking or Saxon blood might not be coursing in her pious veins, or glimmering in the deep blue stare with which her eyes were now fixing his own?

7.

Supper was laid for them in a large, overfurnished room with woolen rugs on the floor. So astonished was the North African traveler, however, at the rapidity and ease with which he had been accepted into this dreamed-of house that he was incapable of tasting the food that was set before him in heavy dull copper dishes. Instead, he watched the boy from Seville attack the chunks of cock served in a large pot and slake his thirst eagerly from a large crystal goblet that Mistress Esther-Minna casually refilled for him as though she were pouring water rather than wine. Was it the savor of roast pork in the street that had given the lad such a lusty appetite? Ben Attar asked himself as he smiled with embarrassment at his hosts, as though he himself were somehow guilty of this imported hunger. As he watched and wondered, the good wine gradually overcame the young diner, the fork slipped from his hand, his eyelids drooped, and the little pigtail that he had grown on the voyage began to nod, until full-blown slumber unceremoniously overtook him as he was, at table, converting the promised hospitality from a pious gesture to a necessity.

Mistress Esther-Minna, not having been vouchsafed any fruit of her own womb, was moved by any child who fell into her hands, especially such a dusky lad as this, whose locks were as curly as those of her husband, and who was also a half-orphan, according to his companion. Consequently, it was not surprising that she forgot, or at any rate deferred, the repudiation she had imposed upon her guest and called the two old Christian maids to pick up the boy and carefully remove his trousers, not realizing that children’s sleep is made of cast iron and not spun from cobwebs like her own—particularly because in this house they were accustomed to dealing with a girl whose slumber deserted her at the slightest sudden movement, to be replaced by raucous, tormented grunts. Even though it was forbidden in this house to call Abulafia’s daughter bewitched or accursed, her fundamental nature had still not changed.

Even Ben Attar minded his language when he caught sight of the child standing in the doorway, conjuring up a flickering image of a baby crawling in the bottom of the boat on the first trip to Barcelona, trying to dig her little fingers into his eyes. His heart warmed toward her, and he surreptitiously signaled to the girl, in whose face her late mother’s beauty struggled with the blankness of her deformed soul, to come closer to him. Perhaps something really did sparkle in the foggy rage of her memory, since she did not flee in haste as usual from the strange visitor but stood fixed in the doorway, retreating before the master of the house. The moment he learned of the alarming appearance of the rejected business partner, Master Yehiel Levitas, Mistress Esther-Minna’s younger brother, shrewdly grasped not only that the first round was lost but that the second too was in jeopardy, and so he hastened to introduce himself politely, if somewhat coolly, to this distant, strange kinsman, who now gave a shallow bow of greeting. The brother did not delay but at once addressed the North African in clear, simple, and very slow Hebrew, as though the worry was not only about some difference in accent, dialect, or vocabulary but about a mental gap dividing north from south. Since, unlike his brother-in-law, he felt no guilt toward the visitor, he was not afraid to ask, after some brief courtesies, a direct question aimed at elucidating the purpose of his visit. Abulafia’s face reddened in embarrassment at the coarse question posed by his brother-in-law, who was short and fair-haired like his sister but lacked the jewel-like quality of her eyes, and before Ben Attar managed to reply, Abulafia was attempting to soften the question in trilingual speech. First, in Frankish, he indicated to his precipitate brother-in-law the boundaries of correct comportment. Then, in Arabic, he addressed the dear man who had come from so far away and restored his faith in the expanse of friendship that had been spread out before him here. Finally, in the holy tongue that they could all understand, he urged the weary uncle to sit down at last and taste the food that was growing cold on the table.

Ben Attar was satisfied, however, with the directness shown by Master Levitas, supported by his sister’s beautiful, limpid eyes. He was worried now not for himself, his hunger and his tiredness, but for his ship, concealed in the vegetation of the riverbank, whose anxiety for her master, vanished in a strange city, floated above her like an additional sail. Little unexpected tears welled up at the sight of these Jews, whose repudiation had forced him not only to make this long, dangerous journey but also to conceal from them the existence of his companions, and to insinuate himself into their home by night, alone with a strange child. He stared straight into the other’s yellow, foxlike eyes and tried to answer him also in clear, simple, and very slow Hebrew, as though his worry too was not only about a difference in accent, dialect, and vocabulary but about a deep religious gap dividing north from south. We have come to demand divine justice against you and your repudiation, he said, and to that end we have brought with us a learned rabbi from Seville. He was careful not to add any more, so that the plural speech he had adopted, surprising even himself for a moment, might remain vague. Although he was not yet ready to reveal the two wives he had brought with him, to introduce them as daring guests in the house that had opened its doors to him, he was reluctant to impugn their honor by ignoring them.

It turned out that his vagueness was successful. Despite the plural speech, neither the clever Mistress Esther-Minna nor her wary brother could imagine two real wives, but they were excited at the news of the arrival of a learned, virtuous rabbi, who would want to worship with them until he was sent packing. They had grown up in a home of brilliant scholars, who were sometimes so carried away by a discussion of a biblical text that they forgot to lay the table for supper. Hence they were already exchanging delighted glances. And the southern Jew in his multicolored robe struck them as a possible interlocutor, for he had come to plead not for mercy but for justice, like a true Jew. So relieved did they feel that they added their voices to Abulafia’s request for the swarthy uncle to eat his fill, recover his strength, and then go to bed, and in the morning to go and fetch the rabbi, whom they wished to receive with great respect, because they could already sense the sweet taste of victory.

Ben Attar too, however, believed that he would prevail—not because of the high hopes he pinned on the rabbi, but chiefly because he could already see in his mind’s eye the living, colorful presence of his two wives in this gloomy, dark house, gradually wearing down the opposition, not by means of an unexpected proof-text or sophistic casuistry but simply through the naturalness of the triangular love relationship, which would flow in its full humanity before anyone who tried to cast a slur on it. This vision of the impending encounter so revived him that he wished to return to his ship at once. But since his hosts pressed him to sit at table, he washed his hands over a silver basin that the Christian maid brought to him, blessed bread in a quiet old chant, and began to eat the two halves of a hard-boiled egg spread with a thick, creamy sauce. Then he turned to the chunks of cock stewed in a brown sauce, surrounded by beans, and continued with a bowl of green leaves sprinkled with crumbled almonds, and rounded the meal off with pears baked in honey. He ate slowly and politely, as though to atone for the child’s frantic haste, and for that very reason he was so taken by the pleasure of eating that he felt a powerful and urgent desire to share it with the women he had left behind on board ship.

But his hosts, who had welcomed him into their home, were also responsible for his safety, and they forbade him to go outside at this late hour. Instead they offered him a bed not far from that of the child, whose drinking had caused him to snore like a drunken sailor. However, after so many days and nights during which the whole world had been swaying all around him, the North African was unable to find rest in a stationary, boxlike room. Small wonder, then, that when the first glimmer of light caught the window he was ready to set off, leaving the rabbi’s son with Mistress Abulafia, either as a scout ahead of those who might appear later in the day or as a pledge for the safe return of her husband, who gladly accompanied his uncle and former partner. Since the house stood on the southern bank of the river, there was no need to wait for the gates in the walls to be opened and cross to the north bank—or right bank, as Abulafia called it, looking at the river from the point of view of the direction of its flow—for they could simply walk along the south bank—which Abulafia termed the left bank—until they reached the bend where the ship lurked. It was now time to reveal the ship to Ben Attar’s astonished nephew, and not merely the fact of its existence but the richness of its material and human cargo.

Throughout the two years of separation, Abulafia had never given up hope that his partner and uncle might try to fight against the repudiation that his new wife and her kinsfolk had decreed. In the first months after the non-meeting that summer at Benveniste’s, he had been haunted by false visions of his uncle’s splendid robe in the alleys of the Cité in Paris, or among the stalls of the great market in Saint Denis, or occasionally along the walls of the convent of Sainte Geneviève. But knowing his uncle’s character well, Abulafia was convinced that someone who was accustomed to the comfort and luxury of two fine houses in a calm and temperate seaside town would recoil from the hardships and dangers that lay in wait for travelers on the long and ill-repaired roads of the Christian kingdoms in the twilight years of the millennium.

Only now, as he stood with his dear uncle in a field beside the fountain of Saint Michel, did he realize how feeble and limited his imagination had been, looking always toward the land and not thinking of the sea, even though it was a genuine ocean. The boldness and daring of his partner, who had persisted in sailing secretly to his very home not only with merchandise but even with his wives, with no prior guarantee or clear chance of winning over the stubborn zealots, moved him with such joy and compassion that he wanted to fall on his knees and beg for pardon for everything he had done to his benefactor. But he stopped himself at the last minute, knowing that begging for pardon would indirectly incriminate his wife and would negate everything she had tried to teach him since their marriage. So he held back and merely threw a friendly arm around his uncle’s sturdy shoulders, as though to support him gently as they walked down the slippery winding path toward the river.

And so, in the morning chill of early September, in the year 999 of the birth of the Nazarene, corresponding to the last days of Elul of the year 4759 of the Jewish era of the creation, the two hurried to join the ship, which had passed its first night on this long voyage without the presence of its master. So deeply immersed were they in excited speech, interrupting each other constantly in their desire to finish the two conversations they had missed in the past two summers in that ruined inn looking out over the Bay of Barcelona, that they did not feel the ground hurrying past under their feet, nor did they notice the sound of the bells of the great abbey of Saint Germain des Prés, whose high walls touched the water of the river. They were deep in a business discussion in which Ben Attar was attempting to discover the open and secret desires of the Parisian market, so as to know how much he could expect to make from the goods hidden in the hold of his ship. Even though the ship itself was not far off, the merchant could not refrain from enumerating in advance not only all that his estranged partner would soon see with his own eyes, but also those things that had been and were no longer, such as a little she-camel that had been separated from its mate by the lord of Rouen.

Abulafia was aflame with excitement, not at the thought of seeing the young male camel or the sacks of condiments but at meeting his two aunts, the elder one from whom he had parted years before, and the new one whom he had never seen, even though she had been living since her marriage in his old home, the house of his great lost love. But as he drew near to the big-bellied, tawny ship, well hidden by her captain in the vegetation overhanging the river, he forgot the women for a moment, and a great cry of wonder burst from him at the resourcefulness of blending the military with the civilian in order to undertake an adventure of which even now only God knew what the outcome might be.

Once again he embraced the brave uncle who had not given him up, and he fell into the arms of Abu Lutfi, who had recognized him from afar and hurried down from the deck to greet him with a loud exclamation, shaking his long-lost partner so angrily and affectionately that he almost strangled him. Then he was taken up the rope ladder to the deck, where the captain bowed ceremoniously before him, ordering a sailor to wave a small blue flag in honor of the guest who would soon become their host. They told the black slave to summon the rabbi, who emerged from his cabin all threadbare and confused, and Abulafia’s eyes widened at the sight of the Andalusian sage, and he kissed his hand and asked his blessing and gave him greetings from his little boy, who was resting under the reliable care of Abulafia’s wife. Then he was led down into the hold, where he was assailed by the powerful Moroccan smells of his childhood, and he felt as though this scarred Arab guardship were a real and precious part of himself, and his eyes filled with tears of sorrow at the parting he had had to undergo and the other parting that was to come.

Then the women came up on deck. First the first wife, in whom, although she had put on weight and her face had grown rounder in the years since he had last seen her, he recognized an affection that radiated toward the whole world. Even though as a child he had sometimes been hugged to her bosom, he was careful not to approach her now, but bowed before her time and again, his hand describing a threefold movement of respect from his forehead to his mouth to his heart, and he greeted her repeatedly, asking after her children in a confused mumble, because his other aunt was now approaching, shyly, fearfully, smiling with her brilliant, perfect teeth. Reddening, he hastily lowered his eyes, for her youth clutched at his heart, not only because he thought about himself but also because of the anticipated pain and anger of his wife, who would not agree to submit to Ben Attar. Yes, he knew this for certain now. His wife would on no account agree to abrogate her repudiation, even if the Andalusian rabbi floored them all with his texts.

But he knew he could not retract his offer of hospitality, even if it had been exacted somewhat deviously. Even if the thought of his uncle staying in his home with his two wives made him shudder, he knew that he would never forgive himself if he allowed his own flesh and blood, whom the good Lord himself had wafted hither from his native land, to lodge in some strange hostelry. That was ruled out from the start for the five Jews by reason of its questionable food, and even for Abu Lutfi, who dogged his heels, eager as ever to show his northern partner the wonderful goods he had collected in the folds of the Atlas Mountains.

For a while things went back to being as they had been in the past, except that the half-darkness of the ship’s hold had been exchanged for that of Benveniste’s stable, and the low groans of a lonely camel replaced the neighing and braying of the horses and donkeys. Once again the pungent smells of the spices burst from the opened sacks, and the golden honeycombs displayed their delicate tracery, while graceful little daggers inlaid with tiny jewels were extracted from their hiding places, and Abulafia was carried away by the sight of the new merchandise exposed to his gaze and hastened to appraise its quality and calculate how much it would fetch. All the time he spoke to the Arab, the floorboards undulated beneath his feet and the wooden walls swayed gently around him, for the order had covertly been given to Abd el-Shafi to weigh anchor and carry the travelers forward to the house where the new wife awaited them.

Even though the wife in question was incapable of imagining the two women sailing toward the hospitality of her roof, already an arrow of anxiety had lodged in her heart on account of the North African who had crossed her threshold, and finding no rest for her soul she went into the yard to detain her brother, who was saddling his horse so as to ride south, a distance of three hours’ journey, to the place named Villa Le Juif, where a couple of days previously a merchant from the Land of Israel had arrived with a precious pearl. This young man, who always knew how to keep precise track of what occurred in his sister’s soul, was amazed to find her pleading with him not to leave before Abulafia returned with Ben Attar and the rabbi. Who was she afraid of, asked the brother, Ben Attar or the rabbi? But she made no reply and said nothing, for even though she was not able to visualize on this bright morning the menace that was sailing lazily into the heart of the Île de France, she could sense it, which is why she mumbled confusedly, The rabbi …, and wondered at her own reply. The brother’s explosion of laughter startled even the horse. What could an Andalusian rabbi say that could frighten her, the daughter and widow of famous scholars? Surely no exegetical sophistry, no well-known biblical tale, no ancient parchment could deflect a clear, new, right decree that was demanded by the circumstances and endorsed by great luminaries. In any case—and here the brother lightly touched his sister’s slight shoulder—no debate should be entertained with anyone before he had set up a special court, which might convert their vague repudiation into a definite ban.

With these clear words he mounted his horse and set off, but the sister he left behind was not calmed, for she was too clever to believe that the twice-wed partner who had traveled all the way from North Africa would release them from the affront he had suffered merely with a court hearing. She had already understood last night, from his slow, determined movements and his gentle gaze, which had not left her, that this man, whose resemblance to her husband could not be denied, and who had demanded divine justice, was only too well acquainted with human justice, which was why he had penetrated her home—to reveal to her some secret about human nature, although she refused to guess at what it was, unless the child awoke and revealed it to her. But the wine that had been poured like water into the boy’s cup had turned to lead in his veins during the night, and when she attempted to rouse and question him, he only sank deeper into slumber. Even the mute girl, who all morning had followed her like a shadow, now broke into the persistent loud howl of lamentation that she had first uttered two years before, when her Ishmaelite nurse was sent away.

Into this howl, which had continued since morning and now pierced the noonday silence, entered the two wives, carrying their bundles and following close behind Abulafia, who had decided to accompany them into his home himself, with a presentiment of imminent disaster but also with the confident belief that the right thing was being done here, even if it was temporary. Ben Attar had remained on board to help Abu Lutfi and Abd el-Shafi allay the suspicions of the royal guardsmen who had boarded the ship, which was anchored by the little bridge. Now, left alone, Abulafia’s manner to his wife became all the more bold, and she was not only angry with him but also excited and fascinated by his new commanding tone, as he ordered her to make ready three rooms, two for the two women and a third for the rabbi, who entered with a light, shy step and greeted in poetic and musical language the graceful housewife, whose blue eyes already made him miss the river he had just left.

And Abulafia repeated to his wife, My aunts, not only to stress the family bond by which he was bound but also to moderate somewhat the reduplicated sexuality, which between the gray walls and the dark furniture received such a powerful, colorful, and scented intensification that the mistress of the house felt the ground opening up under her feet and reached out to the nearest chair for support. But it was neither the new firm look in her young husband’s eyes nor the timorous smile flitting over the rabbi’s pale face but rather the mute presence, so submissive yet so serious, of two veiled women standing before her that suddenly softened her heart and caused her resistance to evaporate and curl slowly heavenward like the smoke from her kitchen chimney.

As though to demonstrate to her husband that she was not to be outdone by him in fulfilling the sacred duty of hospitality, she unhesitatingly gave orders in the local language to the maids to take her bedding out of her own bedchamber and prepare the room to receive the first wife, and to remove the girl with her belongings and her rag toys from her small room so the second wife might also have a private apartment. She herself led the gaping rabbi, with his meager bundle of clothes, to his son’s bed, where by dint of his parental authority he might shatter the boy’s epic slumber. If it appeared to Abulafia now that his dear wife had accepted defeat in the second round, so that he could leave her calmly and return to the ship to continue rummaging among the merchandise, this was only because of her resolute inner confidence in divine justice, which would soon stand up against the human spirit that had so rudely invaded her house.

Perhaps it was precisely because of her confidence in the temporary character of her defeat that Mistress Esther-Minna was willing to be so cooperative, that it seemed as though she were seeking to retreat further in order to double the sweetness of her victory when the time came. Instead of standing on her honor in the presence of the two wives, she joined her maidservants in changing the bedspread on her own marriage bed. From the moment this duplication of wives, which had aroused her repudiation from afar, had become a reality in her own home, she sought not to flee from it but, on the contrary, to attack it. And so she told the maids to fetch a large tub and fill it with warm water, and she half seduced and half ordered her guests to undress themselves and wash their bodies, so as to separate the fragrant duskiness produced by the African sun from the filth added to it by their long journey.

Thus it was not through the eyes of their joint husband but in the gentle but bright noonday sunlight, in such a distant and strange house, that the first wife and the second wife were asked for the first time in their lives to reveal to each other the hidden secrets of their nakedness, and in the presence of a third woman, a stranger, blue of eye and short of stature, who was not content with looking from afar, from a corner of the room, but approached and took the jug from her maidservant’s hand to rinse the tangled braids and to scrape with niter and soap the curved backs and soft bellies, the breasts, heavy hind parts, shapely long thighs. She dried everything that had been exposed with soft towels, so as to be satisfied that the accumulated dirt of the journey had not distinguished one wife from the other but had merely dulled the deep, true difference between them, which, now that they were gleaming with cleanliness, was revealed in full force, although still without elucidating the secret that joined them in the perfection of a single love.

But Mistress Esther-Minna could not wait for the master of this secret to return, for he was busy now, on the orders of the city guards, cleaning the caliph’s ancient guardship of any old military insignia or accessory, real or imaginary, so that it would have the appearance of a civilian ship alone, qualified by its nonmilitary character to anchor in the port of Paris. Dinnertime came, but despite her sternness, Mistress Esther-Minna did not disturb the rabbi from Seville, who instead of waking his son had joined him in slumber. So only the two freshly bathed wives were summoned to table. And since Ben Attar had never seen fit to endow his wives with any words of the holy tongue, there was no question of any table talk, which grieved the hostess greatly, for both her dear departed father and her husband of blessed memory had always admonished her that a meal without words of Torah was likened by the sages to eating the sacrifices of the dead.

The three women ate in deep silence. While the two guests, as they tasted cautiously and with wonder the delicious “sacrifices of the dead,” had the feeling that they were floating into a sweet dream, their hostess, who could not dispense with words of Torah, ascended to the upper story and asked permission from her brothers wife to seek among his parchments the faded copy of the last song of Moses, whose ancient reproofs she read slowly, verse after verse, to the two women, who had meanwhile finished eating. They listened in total silence, feeling the heavy drowsiness that had fallen on the adjoining chamber enfolding them too, for it was only now, in this closed, motionless room crowded with dark furniture made from the wood of the Black Forest, that they made the same discovery as the rabbi and his young son—that all the sleep they had known during their long voyage on the sea had not been real sleep, because the waves had never, ever let them forget, for a fraction of a moment, the existence of the world outside their dreams. And so it was best, before the abundant newly washed tresses sank into the empty dishes, to interrupt the reading of the ancient song, say a hasty grace, and hurry the two drowsy women into their separate rooms. Mistress Esther-Minna, who now remained alone at table, did not yet burst into tears of despair, but only because her long years of widowhood had taught her, among other things, the godly quality of patience.

Later that afternoon, when a soft knock was heard at the outer door and the gentile maidservant ushered in the uncle, Ben Attar, who had returned by himself and now stood before his nephew’s wife completely naturally, like a welcome guest who had become used to his place, she rose hurriedly to her feet beside the cleared table, on which there lay only the yellowing parchment bearing the last song of Moses. She trembled at the sudden intimacy that the twice-wed partner had thus forced upon her, after insinuating himself cunningly into her home through an imperfectly sealed crack of guilt in her husband’s soul. She could see that he was in a contented state, his eyes bright and calm, not only because he had found a suitable berth for his ship and her crew, but also because he had noticed how the new merchandise lying in the ship’s hold had attracted Abulafia and rekindled the old spark in his eyes. Now, offering Mistress Esther-Minna a chance to turn the defeat of her repudiation into a new, shared victory of closeness and amity, he smiled and bowed before her politely, as if to say, Even though you have forced me to make this long journey, I forgive you. She, however, could stand the man’s proximity no longer. A wave of fear and disgust rose up inside her, her composure deserted her, and impatiently she left the room.

But Ben Attar’s spirits did not flag. Rather the contrary, as though neither the woman’s sudden abject departure nor even the blue of her eyes convinced him now of its authenticity. But he stood perplexed in the empty room, not knowing where in this house full of narrow dark passages she had hidden his wives. Just as he was hungrily eyeing the strip of parchment, which looked like a sheet of baked pastry, he heard behind a curtain the voice of the first wife, who always woke at his approach, as though even in the depths of sleep she was always ready for him. Was she alone there, or was the second wife with her? Very carefully he drew aside the curtain, and found himself in Abulafia’s marital bedchamber, a room with curved walls dotted with narrow little windows that seemed like eyes squinting in sunlight. The semidarkness and the strange smells seemed to mask the familiar scent of the first wife, who at her husband’s entrance pushed the light bedspread off her large bare legs, which she crossed in a relaxed but explicit posture. From the sound of his footsteps as he entered, she knew that he was in a contented mood, which meant that not only had the door of this house opened easily and even respectfully before her and the second wife, accompanied by the rabbi who would justify her existence, but a fitting resting place had been found for the ship and her crew. In which case, she thought to herself with amazement, it might yet turn out that this crazy journey Ben Attar had forced them to make had not been in vain, and that the business partnership between north and south might yet come back to life. In which case, she continued to herself, I was mistaken to imagine that the gloom and melancholy that have laid him so low these past two years have robbed him of his wits. In the softness of the wide bed and the pleasure of the high ceiling above her, her feeling of regret was combined with a sense of pride in the success of the father of her children, the wise and strong and therefore desired husband, who was now penetrating deeper into the darkness of the curved bedchamber toward the first wife, who was removing her shift so as to offer him her large, washed breasts.

At first he recoiled from her, not only because he did not feel ready to make love so precipitately, and in a strange room, on the bedding of his hosts, his kin, with whose hearts and minds he still had to engage in battle, but also because he did not know where or how far away the other wife was. But when he tried to push her away with a strangled whisper of affection, she caressed him all the harder and her sighing turned into moaning, so that he was obliged to stop her mouth with one hand while the other tried to soothe with caresses the heavy, inflamed breasts that pressed against his face and flooded him with a fresh smell of soap. But now, in this curved chamber in this strange city, he discovered that the long voyage had made the first wife, like the second, stronger than he. While the anxieties of the journey had sapped the marrow of his bones day and night, the two women sitting on the old bridge had been freed of all responsibility, and with nothing to do, poised between sea and sky, they had accumulated strength flavored with a hint of wildness, so that this woman now grabbed handfuls of his hair and pulled them hard toward her, not only to force the obstructing hand to release the sounds of her desire but also to enable her more easily to remove the robe that covered his virility. Because of the existence of a second wife, he owed her more than if she had remained the only one.

Dazed and unready, at first he struggled silently with the desire of his first wife in the darkened room, until his heart longed for her and he took her, placing his mouth on hers in place of his hand to confine her moans. Afterward he hastened to cover her, wondering about the whereabouts of the second wife and thinking of what he had to do and wanted to do to preserve the perfect love that he had been forced to demonstrate here in double proof. But when he attempted to rise, he discovered that the creeping fatigue that had overcome the other travelers since last night had reached him too. So again for a while he laid his head between the first wife’s strong thighs, inhaling once more with surprised curiosity the smell of Mistress Esther-Minna’s soap. Within the curved walls of the chamber, whose tiny windows admitted the pink light of the Parisian sky blended with a gay, guttural babble from the nearby riverbank, he closed his eyes, taking care not to fall asleep, so as not to lose control just now, when the babble outside was joined from inside the house by the clear voice of its excited mistress.

Gently, Ben Attar released himself from the warm, warming trap. While the first wife, thus innocently released, curled up and went back to sleep, he rose and dressed, trying to smooth his crumpled robe, and crept in quietly for his next encounter with Mistress Esther-Minna, who was sitting red-faced where she had been before, with her old maidservant, the yellow parchment of the song of Moses spread between them as though the shared contemplation of the Jewess and the gentile might soften the angry menace of the words. Now the mistress of the house did not hasten to rise and retreat from her guest, perhaps in part because she realized that her generous hospitality had left her no private corner of her house to withdraw to. And so she remained, looking at him. Had she been able to, she would have made him too, wash his body, which smelled not only of the salty ocean but also of a heady reek of spices and animal skins. Moreover, from the soft, thick look that clouded his eyes, and perhaps also from the presence of a telltale stain on the edge of his robe, she was suddenly pierced, as by a painful knife thrust, by the knowledge that, having just made love on her own bridal couch, he was now roaming in search of his second wife, so as to prove to the mistress of the house that she was both misguided and ignorant.

A powerful shudder shook her, as though the vengeful desert god who had just cursed the world in the last song of Moses were trying to test her too, not in the faraway desert but here in her own home, in her innermost chambers, revealing to her what was forbidden and outlawed in the new edict from the Rhineland as one might expose a child to a sexual act. She lowered her head and put her fist to her mouth in a childlike gesture. And the blue of her eyes shone in deep amazement, which made them sparkle like true sapphires among the fine wrinkles that adorned the corners of her eyes. As Ben Attar looked at her, he could feel her shudder with moral revulsion against him, but when he remembered what Abulafia had told him by the campfire in the Spanish March about the pleasure that he extracted from her, he said nothing, except to ask her gently for the whereabouts of the second wife.

From here he strode along a narrow, very dark passage to a cubicle between whose bare gray walls the girl’s bewitched spirit still wafted, even though she herself had been taken away that morning. The twilight that was beginning to descend on the island played slowly on the profile of the young second wife, who had been caught up in the universal slumber. Although Ben Attar had neither the strength of spirit nor the desire to draw her up from the depths, he did not relent, because he knew that on the other side of the door a woman who was seeking to convert her failed repudiation into a full-blown ban was waiting for him, and until the rabbi from Seville should wake from his sleep and know what to say to her, it was up to him to show her with deeds, not with words, that she was mistaken, and that love was possible at any time or at any place where the lover was present. And so, exhausted as he was, he roused himself to rouse the woman who was lying before him. But the second wife was young enough to cling fanatically to her sleep, and when he tried to wake her with his kisses, she pushed him frantically away, apparently still unconsciously, defending her slumber with as much determination as though it were her virginity.

He did not relent, despite being so tired and hungry, for his desire for food was greater now than his desire for a woman. Since through the haze of tiredness he imagined that he had been ravaged by the first wife, he allowed himself to ravage the second one, and slowly he struggled with her while dragging her up from her depths, kissing every part of her body that might be kissed, which meant every part of her body. At last she took pity on him, licking his eyeballs to make him close his eyes and enter into her slumber and be embraced in her breathing, so that when he took her he would not know whether it was reality or a dream.

Meanwhile, Mistress Esther-Minna remained seated in the next room beside her parchment, which seemed even more severe in the evening shadows, impatiently waiting for the return of her husband, who was wandering around on the right bank with Abu Lutfi, who had come ashore to discover what did or did not attract the notice of the Parisians in the market of Saint Denis. Ever since the partnership had been disbanded, Abulafia had nurtured a sense of guilt not only toward his good uncle but also toward the partner from the desert, whose weeping at their parting he could not forget, and so he now treated the Ishmaelite with great patience. He showed him every stall, every object, translated every remark, as though he did not have important guests at home who might forgive his absence only because they were all wrapped up at the moment in their sleep. His wife, however, did not forgive him, and she went down to the front gate to see who would arrive first, her young husband or her young brother. As time wore on and the darkness deepened, the space carved out inside her by worry increased, and for an instant she was seized by a terrible fear that neither of the men would ever return and that she would become the third wife of the North African merchant who had settled in her house. When the rabbi’s son woke from his powerful sleep—for it was fitting that the first to wake should be he who had fallen asleep first, young though he was—and, approaching her in a daze, unthinkingly clung to her apron, she could not prevent herself from bursting into bitter tears, which were only assuaged by the whinnying of her brother’s horse. She permitted herself to dispense with courtesies and announced to him at once what had taken place in the house from which he had been absent for a whole day. Her trusty brother listened expressionlessly, as usual, maintaining his inner peace and his clarity of mind so as to calm his distraught older sister with well-weighed words of moderation. What was there to fear? The decrees were clear, and natural justice rendered them irreversible. And if those dusky Jews demanded a judgment according to the law of God, they would have it, and with great clarity too. For in between pearls—there had turned out to be two pearls, not one—he had managed to convene a special court at Villa Le Juif, which would convert the indecisive repudiation of the past into the definite ban of the future.