Supposing that she insisted on joining him, she thought quickly, would he agree to take her with him? Or would he make her stay at home to keep her promise to look after his poor child, whom she herself, in a moment of weakness, had wrested from the Ishmaelite nurse and taken under her own wing? In which case, Mistress Abulafia thought, tormenting herself, who would warm her cold feet at night, now that she had become accustomed to the soft hands of the southern man? And who would give her a glimmer of hope of turning her barrenness to fruitfulness, if only to demonstrate to her stern mother-in-law in Worms that the fault had not been hers? Meanwhile, until the new direction that the contest might take became clearer, she must try to soothe Ben Attar’s feelings, for even the darkness of night could not conceal the hatred he felt toward her. At the conclusion of the burial she gathered the inner strength to approach him and offer her condolences, and even to beg him to fetch from the ship his first and only wife, who was as precious as an aunt to her, so that both of them, together with the reverend rabbi and his son, might accept the hospitality of her home and fulfill the command to dwell in a tabernacle. Since she had not hesitated to welcome his double menage into her home previously, there was even less reason to do so now.
But Ben Attar, whose robe was now disfigured by a long, ugly rent of mourning made by the little rabbi, waved her offer away and declined to enter her house. He was firmly resolved to return at once to his ship and shut himself up with his grief in the very cabin in the stern that had been the last home of his wonderful deceased wife. There was no hope that the entreaties of the fair-haired woman, or her brother’s pleas, might deflect him from his purpose. He frostily signaled to his men to take up the empty coffin and return to the old guardship, for only there would it be seemly to receive any visitor who might wish to honor the command to comfort the bereaved.
Early the next morning, after a long night bereft of sleep, Mistress Esther-Minna assembled some choice food and gave it to her Teutonic maidservant to carry, and joined Abulafia for a morning visit to the ship, which had donned mourning though there was only one mourner aboard (for the first wife, though willing, was unable to be a mourner, not being blood kin to the deceased). On the bridge in the bow, in the midst of sailors waking from sleep, Abulafia and his wife encountered the first wife, with a serious look on her bright face, very carefully laundering her dead co-wife’s fine silken gowns, which Ben Attar wished to give to his orphaned son, so when the time came he would be able to dress his bride in them and by so doing be comforted somewhat for the loss of his mother, without even a grave or a tombstone upon which to weep.
Abu Lutfi greeted the early callers with a bow, accepted the large leather bag of food from the gentile maid with thanks, and led his restored partner and his agitated lady to the stern. This was Mistress Esther-Minna’s first visit to the Moroccan ship, and consequently she took short, clumsy steps, particularly when she was slowly helped down the rope ladder into the dark hold, where fine slivers of morning light hovered in the air together with the odors of various desert wares that had lingered between south and north because of her stern repudiation. While the visitor marveled at the depth of the small ship’s belly, she was suddenly startled by the grunting of the camel, which rose slowly and with great dignity on its long legs to greet her with its small head. For a woman who had been born and bred to the sound of croaking frogs and howling wolves, there was an attractive peacefulness about this patient, calm desert beast, whose small head might indicate a lack of wisdom but not any viciousness of character.
The northern woman finally stooped and entered the cabin where the second wife’s spirit still hovered, and where her husband had chosen to sit and receive condolences, in this gloomy corner, accompanied by the gurgle of the river underfoot, surrounded by timbers that had been weakened in some ancient sea battle but strengthened in readiness for the present expedition by the captain and his crew. Since Mistress Esther-Minna had absorbed some words of Arabic during the month of confrontation in Villa Le Juif and Worms, she realized that the conversation between uncle and nephew did not concern the pain of death or the memory of the deceased woman’s good qualities but went straight to the future hope of the revived partnership. Even Abu Lutfi, the quiet Ishmaelite partner, was excited now, and with precise gestures he described the quality and quantity of all the goods that had been longing for three months to leave the darkness of the hold and burst forth into the brightly lit world outside. At the sound of the commercial Arabic babble in full spate, Mistress Abulafia’s pale blue eyes darkened with sorrow, and she left the little cabin to wander down the avenues of large jars and swollen sacks, laying a soft hand on a pile of skins and cloth and making a shiny copper cooking pot ring with a tap from the toe of her shoe before halting silently before the Elbaz child and the black idolater, who were feeding the young camel with one of the loaves of bread she had brought on board.
This may have been the moment when a strange notion was born that would create a new reality after the end of the Tabernacles week and the days of mourning. Since the previous night Mistress Esther-Minna had not ceased to consider how she could defend her marriage against her husband’s renewed traveling, not only because she wanted to deprive her jubilant brother of the pleasure of validating the warning he had issued back in the year 4756 against the frivolity of a match between an older widow and a questionable wandering southerner, but more particularly because she regretted every night that passed without furthering the hope that beat within her breast. And so, after returning to the cabin of mourning to take her leave of Ben Attar, whose coldness toward her seemed weaker, she obtained her husband’s permission to return home alone, leaving him with his restored partners so that he could discuss business with them to his heart’s content.
But Mistress Esther-Minna had no intention of sitting quietly in her corner and waiting for her husband to depart on his travels; she wanted to discover whether a spark could ignite a conflagration. That afternoon, seeing that her husband had not yet returned, she decided to go back to the ship with food and drink, as was fitting for a visit of condolence. But this time she took the poor child with her, washed and scrubbed and clothed in a fine robe. Although the startled girl walked clumsily and somewhat lopsidedly, she led her calmly along the winding streets of the island, among Parisians hurrying to their evening meals, and helped her without mishap across the new bridge that led to the ship moored on the north bank. It transpired that Abulafia had gone off with Abu Lutfi to sell their merchandise in the market of Saint Denis, and so, for lack of choice, she waved her arm to summon the pagan, who was standing all alone on the bridge, staring westward like an admiral, to help her get the heavy child on board and lower her slowly into the hold, in the conviction that an encounter with the noble, sad desert beast would soothe her desperate soul, however slightly.
Even though the girl gripped her stepmother’s gown in terror, Mistress Esther-Minna felt, with her sensitivity and experience, that behind her fear the child was absorbing the smell of her southern childhood, and that in looking at the camel she was recognizing something she had lost. For lo, the trembling ceased, and her large black eyes fixed on the peacefully waving little tail. Perhaps this is the solution to the problem that has been tormenting me, the new wife’s soul suddenly claimed, though she could still not determine precisely what the solution was, or even what the problem that required a solution was. Then Abulafia could be heard on deck, speaking in Arabic to Abu Lutfi, and the merry liveliness of his noisy conversation showed that far from deepening his old melancholy, the second wife’s death had released him from it, so that it seemed as though a new happiness animated him. From now on, she felt sure, her young husband would be able to guard himself against any further designs that might threaten his beloved partnership.