The sharp-eyed owner had begun to notice signs of lethargy and indolence every time he told the slave to take the rabbi the ivory casket crammed with strips of parchment inscribed with the teachings of the sages and sayings of local saints, which had been selected especially for him by the famous uncle, Ben Ghiyyat, to season Andalusian scholarship and wisdom with North African wit and mystery. It did not seem as though the rabbi was interested in reading or studying anything new on the issue of dual marriage, which he had been hired to defend. The arguments he had prepared back in Seville seemed perfectly sound, and if there were any need to reinforce them, it was preferable not to use the Scriptures but the unwritten law, which billowed up first in the mind, then turned sometimes into chance, long-drawn-out conversations with Ben Attar, who may perhaps only have been waiting for an encounter with a bored sea traveler to speak openly about himself and his life. Whatever Ben Attar did not or could not tell, his two wives sometimes related, especially the first, but sometimes the second too, who for some reason was still somewhat afraid of the rabbi, who was only seven years her senior. And whatever the wives were unable to see or understand, the partner, Abu Lutfi, could add from his own Ishmaelite perspective. If even he omitted or concealed some detail, perhaps from an excess of loyalty, the captain or some clever sailor could often supply it, for anyone, if he is compelled, is able to deduce one thing from another. Even the black slave would have been regarded by the rabbi as a qualified witness, if he would only cease kneeling before him in the heart of the night.
But some ten days before, as the ship began to sail past the jagged coves of Brittany, Ben Attar had noticed that the rabbi was holding between his fingers a goose quill that he constantly sharpened with a penknife, licking the sharpened tip with an expression of wistful shrewdness on his face, as though his soul had been stung by a genuine idea. Not a day had passed before Ben Attar observed that the rabbi was using it to inscribe words upon an unfamiliar strip of parchment. The slowness of the writing, on the one hand, and the speed with which the parchment was concealed whenever Ben Attar approached, on the other, attested to the fact that it was not some new homily that was being indited, or a commentary on a difficult text, or an elaborate ethical argument, but something else. Ben Attar kept watch from a distance and noticed how a line was added or deleted and replaced by another, which was crossed out in its turn. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him, and he instructed the son of the desert to approach the rabbi’s bed while he slept and extract the parchment. What he saw confirmed his fears. He discovered the disjointed lines of a poem or hymn, which began in Arabic and continued in the holy tongue.
Secretly, by the light of a candle, Ben Attar attempted to decipher the writing, at first word by word and eventually line by line. What he read filled him with sadness. The hints of the rabbi’s desire for Ben Attar’s wives in the last two lines impugned his honor, but as he was about to tear up the parchment and throw it overboard, he remarked to himself that a poem composed so laboriously was indubitably etched on the mind of the author, who would write it out again and take all the more pains to conceal it. So he had the parchment restored to its place, so that he could continue to watch over it. While the black slave unfastened the robe of the sleeping poet so as to reinsert the poem furtively in the inside pocket and in doing so perhaps absorb some of the heat that the unseen god vouchsafes to those who believe in him, the ship’s owner continued to reflect on the rabbi whom his uncle had attached to him. Would he really be of any help? Surely he was supposed to pay him not for writing verses of unrequited longing, but for compiling subtle and persuasive textual arguments against his partner Abulafia’s new wife, who had come between them and had left him in a spot, with no buyers for his merchandise. Overcome once more with pity for his rejected wares, he found himself making his way under the triangular canvas of the sail to peer into the hold. Here, in the fragrant darkness pierced by rays of moonlight filtering through the timbers of the deck, the ropes binding the great jars and sacks seemed to have dissolved, and the containers stood before him like a company of men possessed by a sense of fellowship in the face of common misfortune, for which their master would soon be called to account. One of the great sacks suddenly stood erect and strode toward the trembling Jew, who strangled a scream. But it was only Abu Lutfi, who liked to sleep close to his hidden store of daggers encrusted with precious stones. He too was unable to sleep, as in the Roman inn in the hills above Barcelona on those summer nights of the years 4756 and 4757 of the creation of the world, according to the Jewish way of reckoning, when Abulafia was arriving later and later for their appointed meetings.
It was only two years later that Ben Attar had realized that if he had only taken the trouble to understand the cause of the delays, he might have reached an earlier appraisal of the repudiation that was taking concrete shape in the north. For it was during those years that the first threads were being spun that were to tie Abulafia to a new woman, a widow who had come to Francia from a small town on the banks of the River Rhine. At that stage Abulafia was mentioning her only as a loyal customer, not as a possible bride, but by reading between the lines it should have been evident that a new hand was involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in Abulafia’s ever-lengthening delays. Abu Lutfi, to his credit, did not delude himself, and was skeptical from the outset about Abulafia’s pretexts and explanations. Right from the start of the partnership he was convinced that sooner or later a day would come when Abulafia would vanish with the goods. So strong was this belief that the delays only seemed to him like a foretaste of the eventual disappearance that the northern partner was preparing for his associates. Consequently, when Abulafia recounted the hardships of his journey owing to new conflicts between warring duchies, which kept altering the frontiers and so delaying his progress, Abu Lutfi would turn his eyes away from the speaker and fix them on the flame of the campfire to purge them from the polluting falsehood. If Abulafia embroiled himself in further complexities, the Ishmaelite would wind his headscarf around his head and ears and move even closer to the flames, which almost scorched his clothes, as if to say, And this is a partner! Go to someone who is willing to believe whatever you say! Indeed, Ben Attar was so excited and happy at the appearance of his beloved nephew, whom his anxiety and fear had already depicted in his imagination as—heaven forbid—dead or injured or taken captive, that he strained his hardest to believe every word of Abulafia’s explanations. To strengthen his faith he would inquire repeatedly about the signs of the famous millennium, which was already suspended, Abulafia claimed, in the heavens like a huge cloud containing a great glimmering red cross. Even though it was still a few years off, men’s minds were already confused from thinking about it. Even Abulafia should have known that one who had failed to rise from the dead a thousand years ago would not suddenly come on a visit a thousand years later. In any case, Jews had nothing to fear from thunders and lightnings in the sky, since they had been promised from time immemorial that heaven would always stand at their right hand. But still, there was no certainty that on the face of the earth they would be able to abate the zealots’ fury at not being permitted to eat the messianic banquet for which they had been toiling for so many years.