And so, as a sudden whim will occur even to a strong, firm man, the decision came into Ben Attar’s mind to include the black scout with his keen senses in the forthcoming expedition to the Rhine. To judge from Abu Lutfi’s sorrow and protests, it was clear that he was being deprived not only of a faithful servant but of a secret beloved. But this knowledge only strengthened Ben Attar’s resolve. If the recruitment of the sea captain was meant to forestall treacherous escape by sea, that of the black boy would forestall his partner’s treacherous escape by land. Thus he could assure himself that on his return from the coming adventure he would at least find everything where it should be. And at dawn the first wife found time to cut up one of her old dresses with a sharp knife and remake it as a green robe for the young traveler, to provide a covering for his black nakedness.
After they had broken their fast and taken their leave of those who were staying behind, the ten passengers in the two wagons slowly crossed from the south to the north bank, and for some two hours they rolled southeastward, until suddenly the Seine seemed to divide before them. Then they abandoned the southern arm and traveled northeast along the Marne, and it was perhaps only then that in the little chamber the witless child fell silent from exhaustion, for since the departure of the travelers she had struggled relentlessly with the gentile nurse who had been left to look after her. Now the two wagons began to follow the roads of the Marne Valley, which were swarming with carts and wayfarers on foot waving to each other amiably in the brilliant noonday sunshine. On land the strangeness of the southern travelers was less noticeable, not only because of Abulafia’s rich experience of the roads but also because Mistress Esther-Minna won all hearts with the purity of her Frankish speech, so they had no hesitation in entering into conversation with pilgrims, peasants, or traders, who, contrary to the gloomy suppositions of those of differing faith, had become more tolerant of each other and hence also of strangers seeking help because of the approaching sanctity of the millennium.
The assistance they chiefly needed concerned the precise delineation of the road, for after running pleasantly and confidently along well-trodden dirt tracks and over fields of wheat stubble, it might suddenly stop short, owing to an unnoticed earlier error, in a farmyard full of squawking geese and a throng of sheep and pigs. It was important to be very particular in selecting the right road, and not to be led astray by paths that looked attractively wide and smooth. They had to halt from time to time at a wayside inn by a stream and announce publicly the name of their first destination, Meaux, and the next one, Chalons, in order to obtain good advice as to the right way. Everyone was quick to offer helpful suggestions and even reasonably priced provender for the horses, or a large loaf of freshly baked bread, or a huge cockerel with a crest, which the black pagan, after tying its yellow feet together, quickly laid beside him on the driver’s seat and addressed reverently all day long. After it was slaughtered, he plucked it and worshipped its naked carcass, which lay before him like a crucified man, oozing blood, before it was handed over to the first wife, who insisted on cooking dinner herself for the ten wayfarers, as though her role of housewife, which had been lulled to sleep by the monotonous charm of the waves, had been wakened now on dry land.
What was amazing was that the second wife, and the new wife too, not only allowed the renascent housewife to take command and do whatever she wished but even refrained from helping her. The pensive inactivity that the two of them manifested at the sight of the first wife’s feverish activity over the smoking fire bound them together with a new if silent comradeship, for they did not have, and never would have, a common language. But while the second wife, whose mind was in thrall to the tiny ocean-bred creature that floated inside her, which sometimes seemed to her to have smuggled itself into her womb not from Ben Attar’s male member but from a breach pierced by the sea in the floor of her cabin in the bowels of the ship, did her best to elude the inquisitive blue look of a woman who was her superior in years and wisdom, Mistress Esther-Minna, whose heart was filling with happiness at the thought of revisiting the house where she had been born and with confidence at the outcome of the renewed tribunal, seemed to allow herself now to repudiate any repudiation, and not only to be friendly with one and all but also to ponder closely and deeply the second wife’s nature, as though the secret of double matrimony were concealed in her alone.
So they advanced steadily, between halts, along the right roads. Meanwhile, the approaching year 4760 lashed them in their imaginations from afar as though it had joined the long whip that Abd el-Shafi had improvised from a rope from the ship, which he waved above the horses’ heads as though he were breathing life into an invisible sail.
Abulafia and Ben Attar had thought at first they would stay in wayside inns because of the chilly nights, but they were surprised to discover that the bright skies of Champagne retained something of the warmth of the day even after dark. When they realized at the first inn where they halted, in Meaux, what a large and smelly throng of Christians was crowded into the sleeping quarters, and how thin the partition between the men and the women was, Ben Attar decided, with his nephew’s concurrence, to try to spend the night under the vault of heaven. Not far from the inn they drew up the two wagons facing each other and tethered the four horses together; they made a comfortable place for the three women to lie, and they left the rabbi’s son to sleep among them, to interpose his lean body, at least symbolically, between south and north. The three Jewish men found themselves a sleeping place among the wares in the larger wagon, and the two mariner-wagoners slept under it between the large wheels, so that anyone who tried to move the wagon would wake them at once. As for the black pagan, he was ordered to roam around and scare off anyone who might try to disturb their sleep.
And so Mistress Esther-Minna slept close to the southern uncle’s two wives, their breathing accompanying her own and their sighing punctuating her own dreams. Occasionally she was alarmed by the thought that Ben Attar might be unable to curb his desire and might leave the large wagon in the middle of the night and raise the flap of the smaller wagon, to seek love even from one who did not owe it to him. Then she would retreat on her own, leave the triple bed in confusion, and hasten to stand beside the silent horses as though seeking their protection. Very soon the young slave would emerge from the darkness and offer her a hot drink made from bitter, tasty desert herbs, which would restore her peace of mind.
The following night, camping under the stars near an inn called Dormans, after a long but pleasant day’s journeying amid vineyards planted on little hills—they had even been invited by an enthusiastic vintner to view one of the caves in which he stored his wine—she woke again, uncertain whether it was the proximity of two wives belonging to a single man that had disturbed her sleep or the mixture of joy and fear she felt at the impending encounter with her native town and her late husband’s kin, the Kalonymos family. Again she stood beside the horses, wondering where the unseen fire was over which the black servant invisibly brewed the bitter herbal drink that she needed more and more each night.
The next day, when they reached the dark stone walls of Chalons and a fine drizzle began to fall, Ben Attar wanted to enter the town and find them a real roof to put over their heads, but eventually he dropped the idea and turned the two wagons into the shelter of a small wood so they could prepare for the night. But the dripping of the rain on the canvas cover of the wagon gave him no rest, and fetched him out of his bed to see whether the Ishmaelite wagoners required more covering. While these turned out to be fast asleep, he found the woman who was his adversary swathed and trembling, with her infusion, and he made her a shallow bow. Before retreating in obedience to the law regulating contact between the sexes and reinstalling himself in the men’s wagon beside her husband, he could not resist pronouncing a few words of courtesy in his atrophied Hebrew, careful to filter out any hint of protestation or anger about the sorrow and suffering she had caused him for several years now.