But the physician did not reply, as though the tongue in which his forebears had prayed and supplicated had been erased totally from his memory. It was only when Rabbi Elbaz translated into his broken Latin that he answered, Yes. She is young. She will live. If we make haste to let her tainted blood. The rabbi’s heart leaped with emotion, as though he had been taken straight back to his little house in Seville and his dead wife had come back to life. Tears of happiness clouded his eyes, and while he was wondering whether to begin the prayers for the young woman’s recovery at once or wait so that his words of supplication might wrap themselves compassionately around her spurting blood, there came a tumult from the doorway. Her eager, tormented husband was pushing the congregation of seven Jews into the room with their confused new co-religionist, and in tones that brooked no refusal he demanded that his hired rabbi immediately begin the full and complete prayer for the recovery of his second wife, so that heaven above would not have any excuse or pretext to shirk the obligation to bestow mercy on a being in whom there was no sin.
The apostate physician, who had opened the door of his house to a sick Jewess, albeit a foreigner and a second wife, through Christian charity reinforced by the ancient medical oath, found himself, to his great alarm, pressed into a small space with Jews of assorted varieties who had come to reinforce the prayers of the gaunt rabbi, who now, from the depths of his memory, embarked on a small anthology of supplications that had been well formed in his mind during his wife’s prolonged illness in Seville. The woman who was lying facing him turned her beautiful amber-colored eyes back and forth between Ben Attar and Rabbi Elbaz, as though the latter had become a second husband to her. But the apostate did not allow the Jew from Seville to be too carried away by his prayers, for not only did it suddenly occur to him that they tended to cast doubt on his own medical skills, but they also in a sense undermined his newly chosen faith and dragged him back toward the fate he had escaped. So he raised his hands to silence the Jews who had invaded his house, and fetching a large thick needle and a small knife, he bade all of them leave the chamber, for the time had come to pass from words to action. Moreover, once the patient’s tainted blood had been let, the only prayer that would be due was one of thanksgiving.
So he banished all the Jews except for Ben Attar and the rabbi, whom Ben Attar insisted on keeping at his side so that he could continue to pour out his supplications, although silently, while the physician bared the second wife’s shoulder and proceeded to draw forth a fine jet of blood that was imbued by the moonlight with a strange gray color. The woman’s eyelids gradually closed, as though the spurting blood gave her not only some comfort but even pleasure and relief. Her handsome, sharply etched features, which had become emaciated during the past days, now took on in the shadowy chamber a masculine toughness that strengthened her resolve to hold on to life with all her might. And a single heartbeat seemed to unite the two men who stood at her bedside and watched the physician as he gathered the blood in the metal basin containing the river pebbles. Was it not time to stop the flow of blood? Ben Attar wondered anxiously, and he took a step toward the physician, who seemed as spellbound by the bloodletting as the two spectators. But the physician appeared to be waiting for the white pebbles to turn dark with blood, for then he gently and painlessly withdrew the large needle from the woman’s bare shoulder while she sank into a deep sleep, as though the tainted blood that had now been drained had been standing in the way of her peace.
Only now did her husband approach her and cover her slack body with a checked blanket, and ask the Andalusian rabbi to raise his voice, so that even the drowsiest angels in heaven might hear the last supplication for the recovery of this young and so beloved woman. When the prayer was concluded and he drew the rabbi with him out of the chamber (though the rabbi was reluctant to leave), he saw the apostate’s wife, who bore more visible signs of the sorrow of apostasy, approach to take the vacant place at the patient’s bedside. Will she live? Rabbi Elbaz asked in Latin as the physician joined them outside to breathe the cool Lotharingian night air, and after considering he finally nodded silently. Yes, she will live, he replied solemnly, with the assurance of an experienced physician, lightly touching the tip of his boot to the rabbi’s son, who had fallen asleep beside the silent embers of the Jews’ fire. And he continued unexpectedly, And this child too will live …, and sensing the rabbi’s alarm he added, And you too will live, and the merchant and his family will live. He hesitated for a long moment before continuing softly, But they will not live, and he indicated the forms of the seven Jews who were arranging their bedding beside the large wagon that had brought them from Metz.
How will they not live? asked the startled rabbi from Seville. Seeing that the physician was looking away and saying nothing, as though he were regretting the words he had let slip, he gave vent to his alarm once more: Why will they not live? At last the physician had no alternative but to take the stubborn rabbi by the arm and lead him a short distance toward the darkened church, and there, in a field that smelled of newly cut wheat, by a little fire that his sons were busy lighting, he was able to whisper a strange, somber confession: it would be the duty of the Christians, when they discovered at the end of the millennium year that the Son of God was not coming down from heaven to save them, to kill those Jews who refused to convert to their faith. So he is not coming down from heaven after all? the Andalusian rabbi said in surprise, to this renegade Jew who was foretelling the future with such assurance, as though unknown secrets were revealed to him with the blood that he let in the homes of his noble patients. And the physician shook his head. No indeed; since the faithful were so numerous and so dispersed, any visit from the Savior would only cause schism and strife, so it was more natural and fitting that instead of the Lord’s coming to his followers they should go to him, to the place where he might most readily be found, to the sepulcher in a far-off land. The Land of Israel? the rabbi guessed at once. It was plain that the news that the Christians would go there, perhaps even before him, made him sad and disappointed. Yes, there, the physician confirmed. And so that Europe is not abandoned to the mercy of the Jews, who will remain here alone, the faithful will have to kill them all.
Even the children? the rabbi asked in alarm, trying not to miss a word of the dark vision that blazed in the physician’s mouth as he drew him ever nearer to his sons’ fire. Yes, even the children, said the physician, but not these, and he stroked his little sons’ shaved heads affectionately as they snuggled up to him. And not their children, or their children who will come after them. The rabbi stopped still, trying to avert his gaze from the flame that was swaying so cheerfully in the dark heart of the holy Day of Judgment. And even though he knew perfectly well that neither he nor any other Jew was making this fire burn, still a faint dread shuddered inside him, as though conversing with the apostate were a sin in itself. He carefully and politely separated from the physician and laid out his bedding beside his young son’s, and put his arms around him to get a little warmth. Between his drooping eyelids there flickered the image of a new Jew, a dark-skinned young barbarian, standing awake among the sleepers, wrapped in his new prayer shawl and sunk in thought, trying to understand how the old gods might join the new ones.