When the two of them descended into the hold and Abulafia discovered his daughter standing calmly beside the camel, trying to feed him a slice of black bread from her pudgy hand, a cry of encouragement burst from his mouth at the strength of his dear wife, who, according to his understanding and his own notions, was tempting the accursed enchantment that had taken hold of his daughter to change its dwelling place from his child’s soul to that of the camel. Although it was impossible to tell whether the stubborn sprite really would exchange the soft body of the child for the little rounded hump of the patient creature, Abulafia seemed to betray a new weakness of purpose, for now, for the first time since the end of the reign of the stern Ishmaelite nurse, who had been sent to Barcelona in his stead to put an end to the partnership, he saw a charming smile again on the face that should have been as fair as her mother’s, if it had turned out differently.
Indeed, in the half-darkness of the hold of the old guardship, among sacks of condiments and jars of oil, a new affection seemed to flow not only between the camel and the odd child but also between Abulafia and his wife, who even in moments of carnal intimacy seemed to have had difficulty in looking straight at each other ever since the North African expedition had burst upon them. So the following day Abulafia himself took his daughter down into the hold, which was gradually being emptied of its cargo, and asked the Elbaz child and the slave to keep an eye open to make sure that the growing friendship between the girl and the beast did not cause her any harm.
Meanwhile, the grieving husband sat in his torn robe, hidden away in a cabin in the bowels of the ship, pursuing his silent mourning despite the festive season. From time to time the first wife descended to him, bearing food or drink, to rub his hands and feet with almond oil and to sing the praises of the departed. Even the rabbi, who was not happy about this secretive mourning, which impugned the joy of the feast of gathering in and the commandment to dwell in a tabernacle, visited him occasionally to speak words of admonition. Ben Attar listened and nodded, his eyes dull, his head drooping on his chest, his expression that of one who wishes to die by degrees. But when his partners, Abulafia and Abu Lutfi, came in, he shook off his gloom to utter a short, sharp sentence about the price of a copper pot or the urgent need to find someone in the Capetian capital to rid them of the burden of the camel.
Before the camel could be offered for sale it must be taken ashore and fed, and it would be best to send it to graze in the fine fields and vegetable gardens of the Duke de la Teulerie, which adjoined a dense forest called by the locals Lupara on account of the packs of wolves that roamed it, attracted by its burrows. Therefore, toward the close of the festive week, on the eve of the Solemn Assembly, one of the sailors was sitting in a garden holding a long cord, at the other end of which a long-necked item of merchandise delicately cropped the tenderest greenery in Paris, pricking up its ears curiously from time to time at the Jewish boy and the young idolater chatting in the language of the desert and at the disturbed girl, who was reminded by the sounds of Arabic of the nurse who had been taken away from her.
Now that the autumn blew an occasional cold breeze over the Île de France, the young people, knowing that in a few more days they would be summoned to board the ship and sail away and that for days and nights on end they would sway to the monotonous rhythm of the wind flapping the sail, sought to enjoy to the full the rustle of the russet leaves on the firm ground. Since the rabbi’s son had absolute faith in the son of the desert to take them safely home again, especially if it was somewhere as simple and straightforward as the right bank of the river, he offered to take his companions on a short excursion to the top of a low knoll that could be seen some way off, which he had no doubt was the same hill, topped with a ruined arch, from which he and Ben Attar, the first of all the passengers on board, had seen the enchanted city.
But he had unwittingly mistaken for the western hill another, northern one, which seemed low only because of a white smudge that spread in its center. Since the girl walked with a slight bias that constantly had to be corrected, the Andalusian child, who had become the leader of the small expedition, wondered whether they should keep climbing the slope, whose steepness was only too evident to their young legs, or whether they should turn around and go back to the ship before the drizzle that was accompanying them turned into a full-scale rainstorm. While he was still debating, the rainclouds burst, turning clothing and flesh to a single pulp, until they had no choice but to take shelter beside a large cottage that they had previously taken pains to avoid, since black smoke was spiraling up from its chimney. While they huddled unobtrusively under the overhanging thatch, the demon in the girl’s soul suddenly broke into its old howl, which outdid the tumult of the rain and brought two smiling women out of the silent house, dressed in colorful gowns stitched together, to the boy’s surprise, from the green silk that they had brought on their ship and bartered for eggs and cheese on their way to Worms.
When the women caught sight of the young visitors pressed against the outer wall of their cottage, they were as joyful as hunters who have caught a splendid prey. The boy and the black slave calculated the chances of running for their lives, but the women caught the girl and invited her into their cottage, so that her two companions had no choice but to follow in the hope of rescuing her. They found themselves in a large room with a rush-covered floor, and in a corner a small fire burned, over which hung on a spit a delicious-smelling piglet, its eyes closed with a self-important air. The boy’s soul shuddered at the proximity of the forbidden, unclean beast, but the African turned excitedly toward a row of brightly painted wooden images, all representing the same young man, with impassive countenance and a short beard, spreading his arms out wide to save his soul or to embrace the world, it was impossible to tell which. While the two women laughed heartily, in fact somewhat indecently, at the young visitors’ confusion, the door of an inner chamber opened and a third woman appeared, carrying a skinny baby in her arms and followed by a lean yet agile older man carelessly dressed in paint-stained garments, whose name, Pigealle, the youngsters had difficulty catching.
Just as the pagan was astonished at the sight of the row of figurines, so the man seemed excited at the sight of the dark-skinned denizen of the desert who had happened into his house, and dragged him firmly over to the window the better to inspect his face. The women had already sensed the man’s urgent desire, and as though by tacit agreement they smiled at the visitors and set about busily making them welcome. First they removed their sodden robes and made signs that it would be better if the visitors took off their baggy trousers too, so as to dry them by the fire, and meanwhile they hurried to cut thin slices from the hindquarters of the piglet dozing over the fire.
The only son of the rabbi from Seville, unable to bear the disgrace that had come upon him, leaped to his feet to thrust away the slice of abominable meat being offered to him on the tip of a knife. But he was unable to prevent the girl, whose nakedness was covered by a sheepskin coat, from snatching the morsel and putting it to her mouth. Even the African, who might or might not have reverted from his temporary Judaism to his original paganism, was seized by a frenzy of eating and also drinking, since the lean old man, who had not taken his eyes off the young man since he had removed his trousers and revealed his black nakedness, plied him with ruby wine, possibly with the intention of befuddling his mind and diminishing his resistance. Indeed, the Frankish wine achieved its purpose well, for the youth, after giving thanks in the form of a deep obeisance toward one of the figurines, submitted himself to the ministrations of the women, who led him into the inner chamber and laid him on a bed, then gracefully folded one of his legs and gently stroked his young manhood so that it roused itself until its narrow slit stared at the enthusiastic artisan, who was already screwing up his eyes and drawing a first bright scarlet line on a wooden panel.