The good people of Worms rose excitedly to their feet at the sight of the three Ishmaelites, summoned to the synagogue from their several lodgings, being taken one by one behind the curtain. While the whole congregation devoutly muttered the time-honored blessing to the Creator of all manner of folk on seeing the young black man passing through their midst, Mistress Esther-Minna slipped in by a side entrance. Master Levitas, after a momentary pang of remorse for allowing Rabbi Elbaz to fill the small space of the courtroom with these gentile servants, still believed that he had behaved correctly, for it was a long time since his older sister had seemed so comely and attractive as on that Saturday evening, standing beside the holy ark with her hair bound up in a fine silken snood. Not only had sleeping in her former marital bed soothed away the effects of the hardships of the journey and her anger at the southern visitors who had burst into her life, but the pleasant prayers that had filled the dank marshy air of her native land had smoothed her wrinkles and put life back into her pink cheeks and her blue eyes, which now smiled amiably into the blushing face of the arbiter, who remembered only too well how a score of years earlier her dear departed parents had forbidden her betrothal to him.
Again, as in the dark hall of the winery, Master Levitas served as master of ceremonies. First he invited the principal complainant, Ben Attar, to set forth the complaint that had traveled so stubbornly from the furthermost Maghreb. Since on this occasion the defendant could not serve as interpreter, since Abulafia’s business trips had never brought him this far and so he had never learned the local language, Master Levitas had no choice but to concede that Rabbi Elbaz should translate from the language of the Ishmaelites to that of the Israelites and back again, aware though he was that the quick-witted rabbi would exploit every opportunity to reinforce and adorn the words as they made their roundabout way from language to language.
But when Ben Attar opened his mouth and began to utter his first words, those present were astounded, and even the interpreter-rabbi was surprised. Instead of the jeremiad that they had already heard in the winery near Paris, about the pain of a Muslim partner, and the sadness of lost merchandise, and the treachery of a rejecting partner, who had sought the pretext of the sages in order to augment his own profit, the stubborn merchant suddenly stepped backward, as though the twelve days of additional overland journey from the Seine to the Rhine had never taken place. And as though the second hearing were merely a direct continuation of the first one, he now sought to address the harsh and piercing argument put forward by Mistress Esther-Minna, his adversary’s real wife, in the dark hall of the winery at Villa Le Juif—that it was not the shame and disgrace of the bewitchment and curse issuing from her womb that had made Abulafia’s wretched first wife bind her hands and feet with colored ribbons to help the waves of the sea do their work, but only the veiled threat of taking a second wife, the selfsame threat that was now seeking the full approbation of a holy congregation.
Despite his lack of experience, Joseph son of Kalonymos managed to understand, by means of the circuitous and excitable yet detailed translation of Rabbi Elbaz, that this swarthy, sturdy complainant, the partner who had come from the end of the world, wished to reopen the whole case from the start. At the price of revealing an old secret, he would defend not only his own dual marriage but dual marriage in general, which had come under assault from the new wife, who, arrogantly and uninvited, had belatedly adopted the cause of a wife who had taken her own life, with the aim of avenging her. To general surprise, it suddenly became clear that Ben Attar’s decision to agree to the journey to confront a further tribunal in the Rhineland had been the result not of Abulafia’s desperation nor of the rabbi’s desire to repeat his wonderful speech, but first and foremost of a desire to refute, in the midst of her native town, the slander that the new wife had uttered before the gathering in the winery at Villa Le Juif.
For who better than Ben Attar could testify to the sinful woman’s true motive? On the same bitter day on which Abulafia’s poor first wife had come to Ben Attar’s shop to entrust her baby to Abulafia so that she might be free to search the stalls of the nomads for an amulet that would bring her blessing or comfort, she had not, as all believed, gone straight from the gate of the city to the seashore with the elephant’s-tail fishhook she had bought, but had first returned to Ben Attar’s shop to take her baby away. On discovering that even during such a short absence, Abulafia, the father, had been unable to remain close to his daughter and had left her alone among the bolts of cloth on the pretext that he was required at Ben Ghiyyat’s for afternoon prayers, she was assailed with such profound despair and melancholy that, unable to restrain herself, she had drawn her veil off her face to mop up her tears before Ben Attar, the beloved uncle. Indeed, not only was that beautiful young woman not afraid that her husband might take a second wife, but on the contrary, in those last hours she had even offered herself as a second wife for Ben Attar, to make it easier for her husband to part from her for fear that she would give birth to another bewitched demon. But Ben Attar knew only too well that Abulafia’s love would never leave her, which was why he gently declined her strange suggestion. To set her mind at rest, he offered to keep an eye on her accursed daughter until her husband returned from prayers, while she returned to the market and tried to find a better amulet. How could he have imagined that instead of going to the market she would go straight to the city gate, to seek solace among the waves of the sea?
The North African’s last words fell to the floor of the synagogue and turned into little snakes. Not only the woman who had issued the repudiation but Master Levitas, her wise brother, now took a step back. Only Abulafia, who was now, in the depths of the marshy Rhineland, hearing for the first time in his life the terrible story of his previous wife, remained rooted to the spot as though paralyzed, and his lips turned very pale. The confused arbiter, not knowing if he had understood correctly what had been said, was only too aware of the new silence that the complainant had occasioned in the small law court. He rose helplessly from his seat and tried to approach the curtain, as though to ascertain the opinion of the public, but Rabbi Elbaz frustrated his intentions and gently yet respectfully hurried to restore the confidence of the bewildered man, whom he still considered the right man for the job.
At the little rabbi’s poetic touch, Joseph son of Kalonymos did indeed reconsider and resumed his seat, and his reddish eyes, which had previously been too timid to look at the woman who had been refused him, now watched her distress in the face of the silence that had overcome her husband. Rabbi Elbaz resolved to exploit this silence at once to move the judge’s mind in a different and original direction. Even though he felt a strong urge to repeat the wonderful speech he had made in the winery, in the presence of that thick-bearded courier from the Land of Israel, whose absence now pained him acutely, he knew that the prayer house of a devout congregation might not be the right place to argue in the name of an obdurate man who could sustain the image of a second wife in such a way that no edict of the sages could eradicate it. Therefore he changed tack and set his sails for a distant destination, to reach which he now brought in the two Ishmaelites and the black pagan, who had been standing silently and uncomprehendingly before the shrine of the Jews’ god.