And assistance was needed. He had discovered from the trembling that racked the second wife’s frame as he helped her down from the wagon that the illness he was pitted against, like himself, had not rested during the previous night. If there was any man here who called himself a physician, his aid was needed, however meager his skill. Again, as on the last visit, Ben Attar found the door of the house standing open. In the half-darkness of the double chamber, under the earthenware crucifix, he stared again at the long row of jars filled with multicolored potions and powders and at the gray metal forceps and tongs, as though everything were ready to deliver him except for the renegade physician himself, who was absent.
The physician’s wife, however, was at home, and she had no difficulty in recognizing the stranger in the white robe, for it was only two weeks since he had stood here last. Once again Ben Attar shivered on observing her likeness to Mistress Esther-Minna, who had utterly upset him. But this did not prevent him from bowing to her and pronouncing the physician’s name, as he remembered it. The woman nodded her head, as if to confirm that her husband the physician was indeed alive and well, but her countenance expressed sadness, as though she had not yet reconciled herself to the apostasy. Ben Attar, who had no time to meditate on others’ regrets but only to proclaim his own distress, stretched out his hand to indicate the road along which he had come, closed his eyes, inclined his head to indicate an imaginary bed, and sighed the gentle sigh of a sick woman. But though the physician’s wife opened her eyes wide with sympathy as she followed his gestures, still she did not respond. Then the North African merchant took a step toward her, pointed to the sun which stood high in the sky and to the direction in which it would set, and whispered in Hebrew, clearly but in a pleading tone, Yom Kippur, and repeated again and again, Yom Kippur, Yom Kippur, and he clapped his hand over his mouth to indicate to the woman what would be forbidden soon to those who had not changed their faith, in case she had forgotten. But it was evident that she had not forgotten, for at once she nodded, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, called her children inside and locked them in with a large key, and led the southern traveler into the heart of Verdun, to her husband the physician.
Ben Attar followed the woman through the narrow streets of the little town, and on their way they passed a large slave market, where warriors and farmers bargained over yellow-haired, blue-eyed pagan Slavs who were attached to a large stone. The local people smiled at the physician’s wife and led her to a large house, which she promptly entered, accompanied by her visitor. It was a noble mansion, whose occupants welcomed the newcomers warmly and conducted them respectfully into a hall spread with carpets, with weapons hanging on the walls. There, on a large couch, sat a venerable Christian with his hands crossed on his chest and his eyes closed, listening attentively and smilingly to the renegade physician, who was letting blood from his neck.
Ben Attar said to himself that this might be the way to save his second wife, by letting some of her blood to calm her spirit, and he took a step toward the physician, to examine what he was doing more closely. The latter, noticing his wife and her companion, gave them a sign to indicate that he had grasped the urgency of their mission, and he speedily concluded his work and came outside to meet them. At once Ben Attar bowed to him deeply, but he renounced the attempt to explain his distress in the holy tongue. Instead, he closed his eyes, inclined his head upon an imaginary bed, and shivered a little and sighed in imitation of his sick wife. Then he gestured to the horizon, to the place where the sun would soon set, and repeated again, Yom Kippur,YomKippur.
3.
There was no way of knowing whether it was the announcement of the approach of the Day of Judgment that caused the physician to postpone a bloodletting that had been arranged in the home of another nobleman and hurry to attend a patient outside the town walls, or whether it was simply the curiosity of an apostate who had already been excited on their previous visit by the sight of Jews who were so different from those from whom he had detached himself. Indeed, the sight of his young wife lying beside the wheel of the wagon made Ben Attar feel that his anxiety was well founded, for her condition had worsened during his short absence. Not only had her shoulders not stopped shaking, but the gentle autumnal breeze had begun to trouble her, and she had had to ask the first wife to find the cast-off silken veil and cover her face and even her eyes with it. And when Ben Attar lifted her for the physician of Verdun, he felt her gaunt frame stiffen a little in his hands.
The physician’s eyes had not yet turned to the patient but first sought the little Andalusian rabbi, not only so that he could translate the nature of the North African woman’s pains (which were causing her to twist her head) into a civilized tongue, but also so that he could enlighten him about the end of the great contest with the Rhenish Jews, whose outcome might help him to understand what had befallen the young woman. But the rabbi was missing, and the larger wagon had vanished too, and so had that repudiating woman, so fine yet sharp of eye and stern of countenance, who had abhorred him for the faith he had adopted and railed at him for what he had turned his back on. And so the physician had no other way open to him but to try to understand from the halting language of the prayers of his forefathers what was tormenting the young woman, whose bright red eyes indicated that she would be better off in bed in a darkened room than in the open air by the Meuse, exposed to the stares of the guardsmen. It was plain that something or someone had tainted her blood.
Even though it would have been right and proper for this new-made Christian to decline to admit Jews, even sick ones, into his home, the apostate could not suppress his pity for this suffering woman, especially since he was still excited by the desire to extend his knowledge of these exotic Jews. He suggested to Ben Attar that they take the patient to his house, so that he could more readily combat the illness with the help of all those potions and drugs and medical implements that were ready and waiting to save life, which is sometimes likened to a passing shadow or a fleeting dream. It would be better too, the physician opined, for the first wife to accompany them, so that she could prepare ritually fit food for them, for there was not a single Jew available for the purpose in the whole of Verdun.
Ben Attar, his anxieties vindicated, was glad to hear the counsel spoken by the physician, whose apostasy did not detract in Ben Attar’s opinion from his medical skill or his humanity. Since he had been doubtful all along about Rabbi Elbaz’s chances of persuading eight qualified Jews from the community of Metz to leave their families and their house of prayer on the eve of the Day of Atonement, even in exchange for gold coin, and travel some thirty miles to a little border town so as to make up a temporary wayside congregation for a foreign Jew whose wife had fallen sick, he knew that no purpose would be served by waiting outside the walls. He had explicitly said to Elbaz that if he could not accomplish his mission, he was not bound to hasten to rejoin them, but on the contrary, it would be preferable for him to spend the Day of Judgment together with his son in the midst of a large Jewish community, cleansing his soul and sanctifying himself by prayer and enlisting the whole congregation in supplications to the Almighty to grant recovery to the sick woman and peace of mind to the well one—for surely the prayers of a banned man’s advocate are more efficacious than his own.