Only her younger brother, who was better able than her husband to discern the depth of her distress, hastened to rise up as she approached and helped her to find a comfortable place beside the fire. Unable to eat anything, she did at least accept a proffered goblet of wine to fortify her broken spirits. And she did indeed need fortification, in part against the caress of the rabbi’s eyes, which lingered on her face and body, arousing additional anxieties now that she had learned to recognize the shrewdness of his thoughts. So great was her anxiety that she trembled at the light, soft touch of the first wife, who with a friendly smile offered her a cube of cheese on which the Hebrew word for “blessing” was stamped as a guarantee of its fitness for Jewish consumption. What have I done? Mistress Esther-Minna asked herself in despair. Instead of dissolving the partnership privately, with blandishments and excuses, I have reinforced it with the verdict of that stupid, drunken crowd. In vain she sought the eyes of her husband, who did not appear sad or downcast but merely very busy boiling water for a fragrant infusion of dried leaves that the first wife extracted from a pouch.
Suddenly Master Levitas stood up and struck his brow. Only now had he remembered that in the confusion of the departure from Villa Le Juif he had forgotten to pay the scribes their promised honorarium, and they were bound to suspect that he had ignored his promise because the case had not turned out as he had wished, as though the sum were not a fee but a bribe. So distressed was Master Levitas by the thought of this false suspicion that he could find no peace; he could not eat or drink, but walked round and round the fire in a state of dejection. It soon became clear to him that the only way to recover his peace of mind was to return at once to the winery and discharge the forgotten debt. Though Abulafia tried to persuade his brother-in-law to wait for a day or two and not to set out alone at night, Mistress Esther-Minna, who knew her brother better than he did and understood that no power in the world could stop this man from hurrying to clear his good name, instructed the startled wagoner to unharness the horse she had been stroking a little earlier and give it to her brother, so that he could atone as quickly as possible for his sin.
While the sound of the horse’s hooves died away to the south, she felt her loneliness intensifying unbearably, so that even her husband’s curly hair, which she loved so much that she sometimes combed it herself in bed, seemed suddenly wild and strange in the firelight. Now she had a strong desire to hurry home, although she did not forget that tonight too her double bed would be requisitioned for the southern visitors. But it did not seem as though the people sitting around the fire were in any hurry to leave. They sat side by side, cross-legged and relaxed, sipping the hot infusion and producing little leather pouches containing multicolored seasonings that they sprinkled on everything they ate to excite their tongues. They were conversing in Arabic in a profound southern calm, as though they were sitting on the safe golden beach of their homeland instead of in a wild and desolate landscape.
It was now perfectly apparent that Master Levitas’s departure was the sign for the two wives to unbend. As soon as they saw that the gentile wagoner was dozing on the driver’s seat of the wagon, they allowed themselves to hitch up their veils a little. Now that the restoration of the partnership had turned the hardships of the long journey into something purposeful and successful, they broke into merry chatter with each other, laughingly teasing not only Ben Attar but Abulafia too, and even venturing to mock the rabbi, who had laid his head in his son’s lap so as to be better placed for searching for new stars that were not visible in Andalus. And Abulafia, even though he was aware of his wife’s mood, could not be indifferent or cold toward the family conversation that was gushing all around him. To please his wife, he leaned toward her from time to time to translate a sentence or two here or there, particularly from what the second wife was saying, for in the flickering firelight she had begun to take charge of the conversation with a kind of pert vitality, as though when she changed her clothes in the bushes she had also received an assurance or promise from her husband that had reinforced her self-confidence.
But Mistress Esther-Minna’s gloom only intensified, as though a crack had appeared in her famous self-assurance. If she had possessed a veil, she would have been happy to hide her face behind it, first and foremost from the glances of her husband, whose evident cheerfulness she found so abhorrent that she felt she wanted to die. Rising swiftly from her place, she headed toward the trees, as though she too were seeking a quiet spot to do what the others had done before her. But as she walked in the dark among the big trees she felt empty rather than full, hungry rather than sated, so she did not stop but pressed on into the thick of the wood, not walking straight ahead but describing a wide circle centered on the flickering fire, until all at once she heard the startled cry of a small wild animal. Stopping short, she rubbed her head despairingly against a tree trunk, as though her God had been completely defeated and from now on she must beg for mercy from the trees of the field.
While Mistress Esther-Minna conjured up the image of her young, desired husband packing his sack and saddlebags next summer and setting off to travel a thousand miles to the Bay of Barcelona, to receive from his uncle and partner not only brassware and condiments but also the scent of double marriage, which clung like the odor of cinnamon to his clothing, the husband in question stood up and began to walk anxiously around the fire, wondering whether his wife’s protracted absence demanded his intervention or whether her honor obliged him to hold himself back. Finally, unable to restrain himself, he called her name aloud, hoping for a sign of life. But his wife, hearing his call like a distant echo, held back her reply, not only because she was not certain that her voice would carry that far but also in the belief that only thus, in the dark silence of the damp green thicket, would she find the courage to think a new thought that could dispel the new threat to her honor.
Even though Abulafia knew in his heart that his new wife was silent only to arouse in him a lover’s anxiety, he was not certain whether the spirits of the night would allow her to execute her plan without harming her. Once he was convinced that she was persisting in her silence, he decided to bring her back to the fireside and headed straight for the point from which she had set out, believing that she would be a few paces beyond; but when he had sought her for several long minutes without success and his cries met with no response, he returned to the fire, alarmed and upset that the imagined loss had turned out to be real.
Ben Attar improvised two torches from handfuls of dry leaves and twigs, one for himself and the second for the young husband, who had already lost one wife in the sea, so it was only natural that he should exert himself now not to lose a second in the forest. But Mistress Esther-Minna did not want to get lost, and in fact she was not very far either from the fire or from the two men who were looking for her, their torches flickering among the trees. Because she had not gone in a straight line but had described a wide arc, she was now on the opposite side from her seekers, so she could sit huddled up small under the tree she had just rubbed herself against, her hands clasped at her bosom, sunk deep in thought, waiting for them to give up hope. Then she could return with ladylike composure to the fire, excited by a new idea that had taken root in her heart. But by then the two men who were looking for her had split up and were going in different directions. While her husband went in the same straight line, as though he truly believed that his wife had decided to return to Paris alone, perhaps navigating by the stars, the older uncle, more familiar with the minds of women, had turned back, for his fine senses told him that a woman who could make him travel for so many long weeks on the ocean was capable of taking care of herself.