Therefore, as the Jews assembled in the winery at Villa Le Juif gradually closed in around the parties to the suit, the rabbi from Seville began his confession about himself and his late wife, as though his life were not unique and accidental but universal and exemplary, able to shed light on other lives as well. By the magical light of the moon, which slowly embraced his confession, it became clear to his hearers that if the dead wife of the Andalusian rabbi were to rise from her grave in Seville to proclaim one thing alone to the world, she would complain because he had never taken a second wife—not only so that after her death her orphaned son would have another mother, but so that sufferings inflicted upon her by her husband would be alleviated, because he assumed the solemn responsibilities of a husband so religiously that he had begun to cleave to her as one flesh assiduously enough to be in danger of transforming himself, heaven forbid, into a female. When a wife does not have to face her husband alone and he has to pass continually from one to the other, he has no alternative but to renew his original manly nature repeatedly, since no two women are alike.
The rabbi now halted his Hebrew speech, which had poured wildly from his mouth as though the antiquity of the language absolved his words of any responsibility as to content. His two interpreters, the scribes, contended with each other about whether what had been heard was what had been said, and whether what had been said was what had been meant, and whether what had been meant could be translated. While they were deliberating on how best to proceed in dual responsibility along the treacherous path of translation, one with a word and the other with a sentence, one with a simile and the other with a parable, the rabbi from Seville could sense, if only from the flashing eyes of the merchant from the Land of Israel, that there was some hope the case might be decided this evening in Ben Attar’s favor. The rabbi did not yet know why or how he would manage this, but he was suddenly filled with strength and confidence, and the beloved tongue pounded within him as though it were seeking to transform a speech into a new song. When the interpreters signaled to him that they were ready, he addressed these simple, direct words to the brother and sister, who understood every word:
We have not crossed the mighty ocean to enrage your spirit, nor have we any thought of urging you too to double or multiply your wives. If we have judged aright by appearances, the land in which you dwell is bleak, with such small houses and such meager produce, and the Christians who surround you inflict fear upon you beyond your control, so it is small wonder that you lack the power that flowers in a thousand roses in the southern lands basking in the light of the wise sun. But just as we refrain from judging you from our strength, so too you have no right to judge us from your weakness. Therefore, let each remain true to himself andfaithful to his own nature: restore the old partnership and do not damage it further.
3.
In Worms, on the River Rhine, Rabbi Levitas and his wife had been in the habit of encouraging their children, Esther-Minna and Yehiel, first to seek in every setback that afflicted them their own guilt, and only then to scrutinize the actions of others. This training had become second nature to them, to the point that it sometimes seemed that the two children took a special pleasure in blaming themselves, even if secretly each of them examined the other and took care not to assume more blame than the other admitted. So too this night, when Mistress Abulafia began to torment herself for the foolishness and irresponsibility with which she had allowed matters to develop at Villa Le Juif, she still continued to inspect sternly, despite the darkness, every line on her brother’s face, to see whether he appreciated the extent of the blame that he himself must accept. Even though in fact Master Levitas had said nothing of substance throughout the trial, but had only, like a choirmaster, given signs to others, indicating when they were to speak, when to refrain from speaking, and when to translate, there was no doubt that the original idea of setting up a tribunal at Villa Le Juif had been his. True, he could claim that if his sister had not interfered between him and the Andalusian rabbi and so inexplicably granted that strange permission to alter the constitution of the court, they might have been preserved from defeat. But Master Levitas, who now sat in darkness in a corner of the wagon returning to Paris, did not want to claim, even in his heart, anything in his own favor and to the discredit of his sister, but only to take more and more blame upon himself, as he had been brought up to do, like a child who piles food he does not like onto his plate just to please his mother.
It was not only a desire for blame that made him act thus, but also a suspicion that even if his original idea had been carried out and the panel of judges had consisted of the three scribes brought from Chartres, it was not certain that the Andalusian rabbi would have failed to confound them too. If there was one thing that Mistress Esther-Minna and her brother had agreed on that night, it was that the rabbi whom Ben Attar had brought from Seville, despite his childlike mien and threadbare gown, had been more cunning and shrewder than they had supposed, both in what he had said and in what he had left unsaid. How else to explain the treachery of the women, who had preferred Ben Attar to Abulafia and who had for some reason seemed smilingly content when judgment was given against the latter?
But could what had been pronounced there really be called a judgment? Or was another term more appropriate? Was it merely an emotional and forceful appeal by goodhearted folk to the nephew and his wife to renew the old family partnership with the uncle, or was there lurking behind the words something deep and daring, according to which double matrimony was not just a colorful private fact of faraway Jews but a practice that might deserve renewed interest? In that cool hour of the evening, heavily perfumed with the smell of the wine that had emerged from a second cask, there was scope to interpret the judgment, if indeed it could be called a judgment, in a lenient or a restrictive fashion. It was not only the astuteness of the rabbi from Seville that had frustrated the hopes of the pair from Paris, but also the intervention of the Radhanite courier, for as soon as the rabbi had concluded his discourse, and before the translation had begun, this heavily built man had risen to his feet and applauded enthusiastically, thus prejudicing the judgment by sympathy for the plaintiff.
By means of this sympathy, which combined with the compassion felt by the simple crowd of wine-workers for the sturdy, dusky North African merchant who had condescended to bring his two wives with him all that distance, the courier from the Land of Israel had been able to free these people somewhat from their feelings of respect and obligation to the proprietor of the winery and the Levitas family, and instead of making do with surreptitiously or unintentionally touching the smooth silken robes of the Moroccan women, they had now been made to confront human nature openly. But what was his motive? Was it possible that this merchant too had, somewhere on his long route between the Orient and Europe, a secret second wife to relieve the tedium and loneliness of his travels? Or perhaps he was motivated by a desire for revenge against Master Levitas on account of the low price the latter had offered for the Indian pearls he had brought with him from afar?
That night, after the Jews of Villa Le Juif had dispersed to their homes and the two sides in the lawsuit were on their way back to Paris, the proprietor of the winery would not leave his sickly-faced wife alone, but in their large bed, surrounded by little bottles of wine for tasting, he asked her again for an explanation of her “betrayal.” How had she come to side with a strange Jew against his friends from Paris? Had she really agreed with the rabbi from Andalus? he asked, holding her shoulders roughly, either in anger or desire. If so, if that was how it was, he threatened in jest, he might take a second wife himself. And why not, come to that? thought the woman, who was weary of satisfying her husband’s desires, aroused as he was beyond his real powers by the sight of the women stamping grapes in his yard. But she did not dare admit to his face that she longed for the tranquillity of those two southern women, one seated and the other standing, with their colorful robes seemingly frozen in motion. Weary and irritable, she mumbled a confused excuse, which seemed to imply that she had been spellbound by the courier from the Land of Israel with his bushy black beard into supporting the repudiated twice-wed plaintiff.