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.