Indeed, now there was some hope. Unlike the first wife, who was constrained in her speech, carefully weighing each word, so she did not incriminate or besmirch the duality so beloved by her husband, the second wife let fly a spate of whispered Ishmaelite speech so long and rapid that the youthful translator was completely muddled and took hold of the holy ark as though to hide himself there. Gradually it emerged that in the lowest part of the ship there had been secretly hatched, besides the fetus that had been growing in the young woman’s belly, not some mere plea or complaint but a highly charged dream, which the northerner’s first short opening question was enough to release in the form of a declaration that resounded in that narrow space as if it were the whole wide world.
Ever since this wife had shed her veil, she had understood, from the looks that were cast not only on her back now but on her face as well, that she was not alone, and that she had many partners to her dream. Although she had not been asked about it, she lost no time in recounting it to Joseph son of Kalonymos, who would soon be thrown into turmoil.
Just as the women of Worms had taken off her fine silken veil on the eve of the New Year, so she now permitted herself, at the end of the Sabbath of Penitence, to let fall from her shoulders the black cloak that the sanctimonious women had wrapped her in and stand slim and blushing before the arbiter in a colorful embroidered robe of fine cloth that had faded a little from being washed in seawater. From the jumble of Jewish Arabic that now poured from her small mouth, the astonishing truth gradually emerged that not only was she willing to be subjected to dual wedlock, she herself wished to contract a dual marriage. Having no complaint against the first wife, whose patience and kindness she had learned to appreciate during the long shared journey by sea and land, she was experiencing a mounting envy of a husband who had two wives to himself while they only had one husband between them.
Even though at this moment the inquisitive judge knew that his professional curiosity might have made him go too far, he still could not stop himself. And even if Joseph son of Kalonymos was not yet entirely convinced that his young interpreter—who was doing his best by means of frantic gestures and broken Hebrew, eked out by half-remembered roots and fragments of words from the prayerbook—was really translating correctly the words of the woman who was standing so boldly before him, he sensed, from the fierceness and bitterness echoing around the little court room, that it was not duality that the second wife perceived as a threat but singularity. Consequently he could not restrain his curiosity and was sufficiently carried away to put a strange question: A second husband? Like whom,for example? And while he was still regretting his unnecessary question, the young translator was already relaying the answer, whether on his own initiative or out of the heart of the Ishmaelite storm that was raging before him: Like you, my lord, like you, for instance …
This was a real arrow loosed against him, and it both pierced his soul with a strange desire and poisoned it with a new fear, as though it were only now that he understood, on his own account, the profound source and the true meaning of the prohibition that the whole community was attempting to transmit to him from behind the curtain: Duplication inevitably leads to multiplication, and multiplication has no limits. His whole body was trembling and his face paled at the thought that this woman might attempt to put her claim, outrageous yet correct according to its own logic, into effect, and divest herself also of her Mediterranean robe. Without wasting time on further reflection, he picked up the loose black cloak from the floor and gently but firmly placed it around the young woman’s shoulders as though covering an invalid, before wrenching aside the curtain that divided him from his congregation.
As though the time had come for the standing prayer, the whole community rose to its feet. Already Rabbi Elbaz was hurrying toward Joseph son of Kalonymos, and after a slight hesitation he was joined by Ben Attar and by Master Levitas. Only Abulafia continued to stand where he was, his face blank, even though he could have no doubt that the moment of decision had come. The ruddy-faced judge asked the rabbi from Seville to lend him the little black ram’s horn before he announced his verdict. Elbaz hesitated for an instant, as though sensing the approaching disaster, but he could not refuse one whom he himself had elevated to a position of distinction only a short while ago. As though waking from sleep, the prayer leader took the dark Andalusian horn as it appeared from its hiding place in the folds of the rabbi’s robes, and closing his eyes, he put it to his lips, as though to reinforce his coming pronouncement with a blast from heaven. He blew three southern notes, long and sadly tender, followed by a still small sound, and then, with closed eyes and with fear and trembling, he pronounced not merely repudiation against the southern partner but a ban and an interdict.
To make his meaning plainer, Joseph son of Kalonymos had recourse to two languages—first, to admonish and encourage his friends, the muddy local Teutonic tongue, mingled with a few flattened, lugubrious Hebrew words, and then the holy tongue itself, with a clarity that brooked no appeal. He sealed his pronouncement with a rapid sequence of short sharp notes on the ram’s horn, which he then returned to its stunned owner. Only then was the pregnant silence broken by murmurs of approbation tinged with admiration for this modest prayer leader, who had dared to lead his flock to a distant but clear horizon. While a furious Rabbi Elbaz was explaining the verdict in rapidly whispered Arabic to the crestfallen merchant, Abulafia’s head spun and he sank as though in a faint. As Mistress Esther-Minna cried for help, Master Levitas, true to the spirit of the new decree, carefully interposed himself between her and the outlawed uncle, not yet certain whether the interdict that had just been pronounced so decisively also embraced the two wives, who were now once more standing side by side.
Until one of the true scholars of the community could explore the full implications of this arbitration, from which traditionally no appeal was possible, the Jews of Worms preferred to segregate their banned guest speedily from the rest of the people. It seemed that someone with singular wisdom and foresight had already rented a small room for the vanquished disputant in the home of a gentile widow in a narrow street not far from the church. In the dark of night, by the light of a flaming torch and to the accompaniment of the chorus of frogs in the river, Ben Attar was conducted there together with the black slave, who was deemed by the community a suitable companion for a man under ban. But Rabbi Elbaz, the furious, desperate complainant, adamantly refused to abandon the owner of the ship that was to carry him home to Andalus and followed after him and climbed the rickety wooden steps at his heels, not only to bring him comfort and to seek advice but also to demonstrate publicly his utter contempt for the ban that had been pronounced here. Indeed, he even vindictively contemplated pronouncing a counterban of his own upon the whole community.
But in the little room belonging to the gray-haired, blue-eyed gentile woman, who offered the banned Jew no more than a bed and a crust, the rabbi felt that he owed his Moroccan employer, who had trusted him and brought him from Andalus to help him repair the broken partnership, a greater consolation than a public outburst of anger or wild visions of revenge. Although he could only guess what had happened during the private interrogation of the second wife in front of the holy ark behind the curtain, he felt he did have a real solution for the banned merchant, who was left with a ship full of merchandise in the heart of wild and desolate Europe—a solution that might be temporary but that would enable him, despite everything, to renew his partnership with his dear nephew, who had collapsed in a heap as if he were a young woman at the news of the interdict.