As the midday sun moved from the Lotharingian side of the border into Champagne, the captain of the guard also took pity on the young woman, and gave permission for the foreign company to enter the town with their wagon. Slowly the two horses advanced between the graves of idolatrous Slavs who had expired in slavery, and very cautiously the mariner-wagoner led the wagon into the square in front of the little church. At the entrance to the house stood the physician’s wife, watching them, with her two sons, who already looked just like Lotharingians, only sadder, holding on to her apron. Ben Attar firmly refused the help of the burly Ishmaelite and the young idolater in lowering the second wife from the wagon, accepting no other assistance than that of the first wife’s strong, warm hands in guiding the invalid, whose face was lit by a faint, plaintive smile at the sight of the house to which she had been so attracted only two weeks before. For an instant her footsteps faltered, as though she hoped to hear again the sound of two intertwined but different voices singing on the threshold of this house in exchange for skillful healing.
Very slowly the second wife was helped into the physician’s home and with double care was laid on a narrow bed, and the large iron basin in which large river pebbles gleamed was brought close to her. Ben Attar covered his wife with the two black cloaks that the Jews of Worms had given her as a gift. The physician did not delay but sprinkled fragrant medicinal herbs all around, and made her drink a potion that was the color of egg yolk. The young woman did not attempt to resist her physician, but obediently drained the bitter potion to the dregs, and for the first time since the company had left Worms a cheerful smile broke out on her face, as though she were trying to say to those who surrounded her, Now all will be well. At the sight of this smile Ben Attar, unable to restrain himself, retreated into a corner of the dark room and wiped away copious tears of gratitude. The darkness and the quiet seemed to do the patient good, and the yellow potion also hastened to do its work, for the tremor in her shoulders was gradually becoming less severe. Moved, the merchant tried to give the physician an advance payment in the form of a small precious stone, but the physician, aware that he was dealing with a wealthy, principled Jew who would not pay him with a song, declined the jewel, which sparkled in the dark, with a calm smile, as if to say, The time will come.
Meanwhile, on a small plot of land behind the church, the Ishmaelite and the idolater without delay prepared a meal for the Jews so that they could take their fast. A verdant smoke rose from a fire of twigs and thorns, on which the first wife could cook a stew in a large cooking pot. Ben Attar hastened to the town market to fetch white doves to atone for the sins and transgressions committed by others with the cooing of their pure little souls. Again his throat choked with tears at the thought of his sick wife’s smile as she lay in the physician’s house. Even if the physician was finally unmasked as a charlatan, he wished to trust him as a kinsman. Yea, as a kinsman, Ben Attar muttered to himself in surprise. As a kinsman, he repeated with bitter defiance, as though the ban that had followed him from Worms, clinging to him as stubbornly as an evil demon, had suddenly made of him too something of an apostate.
But not such an apostate, heaven forfend, as to shirk the observance in all rigor, even in these difficult circumstances, of the commandments of the holy and awful day that was descending slowly upon the world. He carefully felt the flesh of the Lotharingian pigeons in the market of Verdun, which fluttered in fear in his hands. After filling his sack with a dozen milk-white birds well tied together, he headed back to his small company. His heart suddenly missed a beat at the sight of the pole of the wagon lowered to the ground, the horses nowhere to be seen. Was it possible that the gentiles had taken advantage of his absence and his troubles to take the horses and flee? But at once, cocooned as he was in hope and security like a baby inside its caul, he calmed himself with the thought that his Ishmaelite had not fled but merely taken the horses to graze in a nearby meadow. Without delay he pressed on to the back of the church, where in the leaden light of an overcast sky he came upon the solitary first wife crouching barefoot over the fire that the Ishmaelites had made, in a crumpled, smoke-blackened robe, patiently stirring the stew with a large wooden spoon, her stern face flushed in the light of the fire, which was almost scorching a trailing lock of her hair.
Seventy days and upward had passed since the ancient guardship had set sail from Tangier to ride the wild ocean waves so bravely toward a distant town named Paris, yet amid all the hardships that had visited the expedition, by sea and by land, Ben Attar had not known a single moment that could compare for bitterness and gloom with this terrible moment when he stood so alone, without rabbi or fellow worshippers, without business partner or nephew, without servant or sea captain, without horses or congregation, without even a house of prayer. Placed under a ban in the heart of an alien land, with his cargo-laden ship far away, pent up in the harbor of Paris. And all this a few hours before the start of the Day of Atonement, behind a little church built of grayish timbers, staring brokenheartedly at the wife of his youth wrestling with a fire like a servant while his second wife lay in pain in the house of an apostate physician. Although he wished with all his being that he could blame himself for what was befalling them all, because of his obstinate urge to demonstrate to the world the depth of his love not only for his two wives but for his nephew, he felt that he did not have the right, whether in defeat or in victory, to detract from the force of the destiny that had guided him, for good or for ill, since the day of his birth.
Yes, despite his desire, the North African merchant was not so proud as to take all the blame and responsibility upon himself alone, as though he had become the only true master of his deeds. Moreover, he knew only too well that if he fell to his knees before his first wife and beat his breast and confessed his guilt, she would be very confused and sad, not knowing what to do with the guilt or its owner. But if he spoke repeatedly of blind fate, which sometimes smites a man and sometimes caresses him, she would nod agreement and know how to comfort him. Without complaint or anger or regret, she would remind him of how beautiful the light of this holy eve was in their own azure city, and how radiantly white the raiment of their two sons was as they went, at the conclusion of the meal, to the synagogue of the old uncle, Ben Ghiyyat. And if that selfsame fate willed it, it was very possible that in a few more days they would board the ship in the port of that small dark town and sail back home to their own dear city, and wash away in the waters of the ocean whatever ban or interdict had been pronounced against them by the Jews of the Black Forest, whose self-assurance was as great as their numbers were small.
With these words, which his first wife might have spoken if he had mastered his pride so far as to ask her for words of comfort, he soothed the dread that had caused his legs to tremble since he had left the Rhineland, and with a heart filled with love he approached the large, barefoot woman as she crouched over her cooking pot, took hold of her ample shoulders, and drew her gently away from the fire, which for a moment seemed to be trying to follow her. He produced from the sack a single pure white dove, bit through the thread that bound it to the others, and holding it by its two red legs, he waved it in a circular motion above the disheveled hair of his first wife, who closed her eyes gratefully. This is thy substitute, this is thy exchange, this is thy expiation, this dove shall go to its death and thou shalt enter into a good long life and into peace. And just as his great uncle used to take a sharp butcher’s knife and slaughter the lamb of atonement in the presence of the atoned members of his household, so Ben Attar severed the head of the dove and handed its bleeding body to his first wife, who waited for the fluttering of the little wings to cease before plucking it and preparing it for the meal preceding the fast, to be joined in due course by the doves that would atone for the remaining members of the little family.