At once, however, a doubt arose as to whether the kinsfolk in question had returned to Paris, or whether they had decided to remain on the banks of the Rhine to keep the Day of Atonement and the feast of Tabernacles in Worms, so as to rejoice with their holy congregation over the ban that had been declared. While the rabbi thought about whether to send his clever son secretly to the other bank with one of the crewmen to find out who was in the house, Abu Lutfi testified that there was no need, as he had seen Abulafia a couple of days before among the throng of Parisians on his deck, looking pale and miserable and disguised as an elderly peasant woman.
That being so, said Abu Lutfi, who knew their younger partner’s disguises from the meetings in the Spanish March, there was no sense in further delay; they should set out at once. It was decided that the rabbi should lead the cortege, while the banned husband should remain concealed some way off, to avoid a further, irreparable repudiation. At once the five seafaring salesmen were ordered to take off their colorful garb and replace it with clean, somber robes, so that they could carry the gray wooden coffin in a dignified manner through the narrow streets of the Cité to the Jews’ house on the south bank, or left bank, according to the river’s flow. And in the Rue de la Harpe, near the statue of David staring at Saint Michael’s fountain, in the last of the evening twilight, the Andalusian rabbi on his own entered the thick iron-studded door that he remembered well having had difficulty opening. In the courtyard, near the well, he found a small hut constructed of twigs and branches, in which the opposing party was eating its festive meal by the light of a small lamp. He did not enter the tabernacle, but announced his presence by clearing his throat. Mistress Esther-Minna was the first to hear him, and she peered out of the hut. Not recognizing him, she called Abulafia, who emerged wearing a hat with a horn of black velvet in the Worms style and black robes, as though he had anticipated the imminent mourning. Despite the darkness he recognized the uninvited guest as the Andalusian rabbi, and he started to shake, as though realizing that something had occurred. Without a moment’s pause he hurried over to the little rabbi and embraced him warmly. But on this occasion Elbaz was seeking neither greeting nor embrace but merely information about the location of the nearest Jewish cemetery where they might inter a coffin they had brought with them. A coffin? Abulafia asked apprehensively. What coffin? And the rabbi drew him into the street, where the five seamen were standing around the coffin, which was lying on the pavement.
What is inside? whispered Abulafia fearfully, in a broken voice, having already perhaps sniffed the terrible cloying smell. The rabbi was filled with pity at the sight of the apprehensive third partner, who was trembling in front of the large coffin, fearing that it might house his banned uncle. But then the new wife, Mistress Abulafia, emerged from the house to see what had so attracted and detained her young husband. It seemed that she had not yet noticed the coffin or the seamen standing in the narrow street but only Rabbi Elbaz, and her delicate little face flushed with pleasure at the sight of the shrewd Andalusian rabbi, who had bested her once and had now been bested in his turn, and she dropped a little curtsy of respect and asked him with a cheery smile, So you have returned?
At that, the North African merchant emerged from the recess where he had concealed himself. His hair and beard were unkempt, his robe was torn, and his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. Before Mistress Esther-Minna could draw back, he answered her question clearly: We have returned, but not all of us. With an air of grim despair that contained a hint of lunatic glee, he hurled himself upon the coffin and pulled out one of the planks, to furnish clear proof that henceforth the old partnership could be revived without contravening any new edict. While Abulafia clutched the wall to stop himself from collapsing, Ben Attar fixed his black eyes straight on the wide blue eyes and asked with utter hostility, Is the new wife satisfied?
6.
The Andalusian rabbi’s firmness having paid off, the second wife was laid to rest that very night in a little burial ground squeezed between a fair vineyard, the property of Count Galand, and a small chapel dedicated to the unfortunate Saint Mark. At first Ben Attar had demanded that his second wife be buried in the courtyard of his in-laws’ house, so that the grave might be watched over and tended by his kinsfolk. Abulafia was at once eager to do his uncle’s bidding, but Master Levitas gently refused the request, which seemed to him to be merely vindictive, and persuaded the merchant and more especially the rabbi from Seville not to leave the deceased alone in the courtyard of a Jewish family, which might be here today and gone tomorrow, but to lay her to rest in a real cemetery, close to other deceased folk, so that she would not be overlooked at the time of the resurrection of the dead. While the sailors, transformed now into gravediggers, cleared away the undergrowth and dug an ample grave pit, Ben Attar, grim-faced and weary, distracted by grief and exhaustion, listened as Master Levitas sang the praises of the place where he was laying his wife to rest. It was odd that Master Levitas, a clear-thinking Jew who could hardly bear Jewish old wives’ tales, let alone those of the Christians, so far forgot himself as to tell Ben Attar the story of Mark the hunter, who cruelly killed a doe and her young fawn in full sight of the terrified stag, which thereupon opened its mouth and prophesied in human language that he who had not spared a mother and her child would one day inadvertently kill his own wife and child. To prevent this terrible prophecy from coming true, Mark shut himself away forever in a little house surrounded by ancient Merovingian tombs, secured with an iron door and stout bolts and a grille on the window, and lived on the generosity of pilgrims setting out on the Road of Saint James for the holy shrines of the southern lands. Since he had managed to flout such a clear and terrible prophecy by willpower alone, his calamity brought him strength and his sin was a source of sanctity, and his little house became a chapel that served as a landmark for pilgrims setting forth on their long journey.
The grieving husband did not fathom the intent of Master Levitas’s strange tale, but one realization had been growing steadily stronger within him since the beginning of the nocturnal funeral cortege—namely, that his second wife’s death had decisively ended the ban and interdict declared against him in Worms by the red-haired arbiter, the poetic and heartless prayer leader. Not only did Abulafia, whose heart had been smitten with sorrow and guilt by the young woman’s death, cling to his grim-faced uncle as a slave clings to his master, but even the reserved Master Levitas was unable to disregard the misfortune of these people who had been defeated from an ethical and a legal viewpoint alike, and so he summoned up all his resources of attention so as to listen with sympathy and compassion to the story of her last hours and her death as recounted with deep feeling by Rabbi Elbaz.
Mistress Esther-Minna’s fair foxlike countenance, however, betrayed not only sorrow and sympathy but also the first tokens of a new alarm. While her feet sank into the freshly dug earth piled around the edge of the grave, and while she listened to the rabbi reciting the prayer for the dead, she realized that the North African uncle’s daring, epic journey had indeed achieved its purpose. As the frail body wrapped in pale green silk slid as though of its own accord into its last resting place, between the chapel and the vines, it took with it the last restraint that might have prevented her footloose husband from recommencing his travels.