Here Mistress Esther-Minna’s face suddenly reddened, and she lowered her head and fell silent. This not only gave the stunned interpreter time to digest the secret of his life before conveying it in Arabic to the other members of his household, but also evaded Ben Attar’s openly offended look and the enigmatic veiled glances of his two wives, who were still sitting erect, calmly and submissively, where they had been placed. She had no way of telling whether the translation was able to penetrate their consciousness or whether it simply fluttered around them like a butterfly. Then Mistress Esther-Minna felt the feather-light touch of her brother’s hand as he sought to give her a sign of encouragement, even though in his heart of hearts he would gladly have foregone the subtleties of her argument in favor of a short statement about the existence of a new rabbinical ordinance, stern but simple, which even though it had originated in the marshy swamps of the Rhineland was destined to enlighten and reform society everywhere.
It was this ordinance that the rabbi from Seville had been waiting for all along. He longed to speak about principles rather than details. His thoughts had turned so often to this ordinance in the course of the journey that he had begun to envisage it as a small, curved dagger of yellowish brass that needed to be kept firmly planted in the ground lest it take wing and fly away. But now, with the breeze of evening, he was assailed again by faint pangs of hunger, like a kind of echo of the powerful attack that had disturbed his senses in the middle of the night. Helpless to prevent himself, he held his hands in front of his face to see whether they held any lingering odor of the sweet fish that the black slave had cooked for him before dawn. Still, it was not a bad thing, he thought, to commence a discourse in a state of hunger, which sharpens the spirit and the wits. Moreover, Mistress Abulafia’s forceful and unusual words had alerted all his senses.
Now the silence all around him seemed to become purified. Ben Attar’s look was darkly suspicious, as though after Mistress Esther-Minna’s virulent speech he had lost faith in what he would receive from the rabbi in exchange for the promised honorarium. And Master Levitas was touching his shoulder gently, to indicate that his moment had come. The rabbi had already noticed that this cold, reserved man always treated him with respect, as though any scholar, even if he hailed from the distant south and came with the obvious intention of aggressively disputing, were an important person. But were these strange, uncultivated Jews really capable of following the intricacies of his Andalusian thought? How was it possible that in all the dark expanse surrounding him there was no true sage to be found who might sit with him face to face and settle the matter? What could they really understand, these vintagers and winemakers, or these women whose bare feet as they sat facing him on the wooden dais were so stained from stomping the grapes that he had an urge to rinse them with clean water before he began to speak? Then his eyes happened upon his own son, who was sitting without sandals, slowly picking grapes off a large bunch and watching the fine stream of juice dribbling from the wine press into the inner tank. It was already two months since the child had been taken from his home, and it was unlikely that he would learn in the rest of his life as much as he had learned on this journey.
Then Ben Attar’s second wife, unable to contain herself, rose to her feet, as though to see and hear the rabbi better. He said to himself excitedly that if she was so intent on his words that she was prepared to break the law and propel herself beyond what her own honor and that of the first wife demanded, it would be better if he began his speech not in the ancient holy tongue, as he had intended to do to attract the brother and sister, but rather in Arabic, so that the naked, untranslated words would reach straight into the heart of the young woman, who had hidden the ivory casket between the silken robes he had caressed last night with his hands. He did this not only to fortify and encourage the second wife but also for the sake of the first wife, who had raised her head, startled at her friend’s sudden movement. By speaking in clear, intelligible Arabic, the rabbi may also have sought to erase something of the grimness that had taken hold of Ben Attar, who was behaving as if he genuinely believed the accusation he had launched against his nephew. Who could tell, the rabbi mused, perhaps his words could even persuade his skeptical son, if the boy was willing to listen to his father.
Once again the accused man had to be called on to interpret. It appeared that Abulafia would not manage this evening to utter a single word of his own or in his own favor, but would only transfer from one language to another what others said for or against him—if what his wife had said was indeed in his favor, rather than in favor of his previous wife. He had never imagined that his new wife might be concerning herself with the riddle of his first wife’s death by drowning, as though this riddle threatened her too, even in a place where there was no sea but only a river. So even though Abulafia knew that the rabbi who had been brought from Seville was about to reprove him, to attack his wife’s repudiation and condemn his sudden disappearance, he nevertheless felt a certain warmth toward him, not only because of the affection aroused by his slim, childlike figure, hardly taller than his own child, but also because of a hope that a rabbi’s chastisement would always be wise and would therefore placate everyone. He therefore resolved not only to be as faithful as possible to the rabbi’s actual words but also to be careful to preserve their spirit.