The seven Jews of Metz, hearing with astonishment and a whit of pleasure how much firmness their brethren of the Rhineland had displayed, were fearful of rendering null and void the prayers they had prayed so far in the company of a banned Jew and a lying rabbi, for they knew that they would have no opportunity to repeat the holy Day of Judgment and put right whatever might have been disqualified in the prayers. So they decided to see themselves as people who had heard but not understood, postponing the full explanations until after the conclusion of the service, which they wished to press on to swiftly. But now one of the ten was missing—the banned man himself, who took advantage of the short pause in the prayers to hurry to the bedside of his second wife, eager to see how she fared. Since dawn he had entrusted the bedside vigil to his first wife, but he was not certain that it was fitting for the latter’s face to be the last image his second wife saw if the angel of death came to her.
Since midnight Ben Attar, abandoning false hope, had no longer held back from pronouncing the name of the foe who had insinuated himself into the bosom of his family. Indeed, since the early hours he had had the feeling that here in Verdun it was not a single fiend that threatened them but a whole band of fiends, gliding easily through the cold gray mist that wafted through the narrow streets and over the meadows, stealthily attaching themselves to the little congregation of Jews, and gathering around the new, temporary Jew, who stood wrapped in his prayer shawl, attending earnestly to the strange words evoking the service in the holy of holies in the ruined temple in Jerusalem: O Lord, I have sinned, I have done iniquitously, I have transgressed against thee,I and my household. I beseechtheebythyname to pardon the sins, the iniquities, and the transgressions that I and my household have committed against thee. As it is written in the Torah of Moses thy servant, from thine honored mouth, “For on this day he shall make an atonement for you to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord.”
Unable to contain his impatience and wait for Rabbi Elbaz with his soft, wavering voice to conclude the high priest’s confession, Ben Attar had slipped away once more to the physician’s house. The doctor had left his Jewish patient alone and gone to do his rounds of peasant huts and noble houses, perhaps to avoid the suspicion caused by excessive and prolonged contact with the company of Jews. Thus, in the half-darkness of the inner chamber, whose window was veiled by a prayer shawl, the twice-wed merchant’s eyes encountered only those of his first wife, who was afraid to utter any word of protest or despair in the presence of this good, devoted man, who realized as soon as he entered the room that his young wife’s condition had deteriorated further.
Indeed, in addition to having her head thrust back in pain, her eyes veiled against the light, and her ears plugged with wax, her breathing was now labored. A terrible dread filled Ben Attar’s heart, for he did not know what he would say or how he would excuse himself to her father, his childhood friend, who had trusted him and given her to him as a girl in the tender first flower of youth. Now he could not even offer her father a grave upon which to prostrate himself. And how would he comfort his son? Not the fetus in her womb but his elder brother, who had been left with his grandfather and grandmother in Tangier and who would require satisfaction from his father for the many days he had dreamed of his mother’s return, when she had already departed this life.
The North African merchant scrutinized the countenance of the mistress of the house, the physician’s wife, who had crept into the room, to learn from her experience whether the terrible despair that had seized hold of him was justified. But the pale little woman’s eyes gave him no clear hint, but only reminded him of the blue eyes of another, of the new wife whose repudiation had begotten death, which was groping its way toward his second wife’s bed. For the first time since Ben Attar had heard of the existence of that woman, beside the campfire by the Bay of Barcelona, he felt how heavy was the hatred he had borne her in his heart for so long, and how deep his vengeance would be. But on account of the sanctity of the day of forgiveness and atonement, he forced himself to stop the feelings that were rising up within him, and gently and compassionately he approached the patient’s bedside.
There, beside the physician’s colorful flasks, he removed the fine veil from her pure, emaciated face, so that she could see the tenderness and sadness in his eyes. He removed the soft wax from her ears, so that she could hear the sound of the prayers coming from the little wood next to the house. All so that she might be certain that neither he nor any other member of the company intended to abandon her in this terrible moment, but on the contrary, they were all joining together in body and soul in the fight against the angel of death, who, even if he was close to the house, was still motionless in the doorway, listening in as much astonishment as the Lotharingian worshippers to the wonderful, richly colored description, full of poetic eloquence, flowing from the mouth of Rabbi Elbaz as he sang the service of the high priest on the terrible and awesome day.
So as not to fail the congregation that had gathered for him alone, Ben Attar cut short the words of affection and comfort that he was heaping upon his second wife, and with profound yet unspoken gratitude he nodded to his first wife, who was covering the patient’s eyes again with the fine gauze veil and stopping her ears again with pieces of soft wax, and hurriedly he left the small chamber to rejoin the other worshippers. It was as well that he hastened back, for Rabbi Elbaz needed southern reinforcement. He was motioning to the seven northern Jews not to hold themselves back and content themselves with a polite genuflection, like Christians, but to prostrate themselves devoutly upon the ground, as though the holy of holies had merged with the physician’s house that stood before them, and the little wood had been transformed into the Temple court and Verdun into the beloved City of David. Thus they could join not in spirit alone but in body too in the memory of the priests and the people who stood in the court, who when they heard the honored and awesome Name spoken distinctly by the high priest in sanctity and purity, bent the knee, prostrated themselves, and fell on their faces, and said, “Blessed be his honored, majestic Name for ever and ever.”
At first the northern Jews had difficulty joining in the full-length prostrations of Rabbi Elbaz and his son, and of Ben Attar and the young barbarian, who extended themselves lithely on the ground like Muslims at prayer. But slowly their souls were won over by the splendor of the rhymed and ornamented verses, and obeying the passionate rabbi’s gesture, they rubbed their foreheads repeatedly, if cautiously, on the reddish soil of Verdun, in the hope that such deep and humble prostration in the company of one banned Jew, one lying Jew, and one black Jew of doubtful Judaism might be added to the afflictions of the fast and fortify the virtuous act they had committed in making up ten for prayer. So might their purity be strengthened on this strange Day of Judgment, and their powers of resistance be doubled in the new year that was beginning, a gentle Jewish year that held in its womb the dragon of the frightening millennium.