And so, on a Parisian autumn evening, to the sound of the bells of the abbey of Saint Germain des Prés, which abutted the riverbank, the old repudiation melted away and the partnership reborn from the dust of the nearby grave of the second wife was strengthened and reforged in the flickering candlelight, so powerfully that it seemed it would henceforth be even stronger and firmer than it had been before Abulafia made the acquaintance of his wife in the inn in Orléans. While Abulafia was still trying to comprehend the converging intentions of his wife and his uncle, the whispered instruction was already being given behind the curtain to the Teutonic maidservant to make the girl ready for a sea voyage and to prepare her cubicle for the supposed invalid, who was rubbing his little feet against the covers as he might have rubbed them against the great mast. Even Master Levitas, who knew how to beget a further thought out of any new idea, wasted no time in wondering at the doings of his older sister, but was already musing on the possible advantage he could take of the Andalusian rabbi’s wit and wisdom, so that by the next spring they would not be eating the bread of charity.
Finally, wearied and worn out, Ben Attar made a sign to his wife to rise up and follow him, and without glancing either at the rabbi or at Abulafia he hurried out of the house, as though fearing some further attempt by the new wife to tighten his partnership to the strangling point. Emerging into the cool evening air, he crossed the river by the swaying ferry and made his way confidently through the lanes of the Parisian isle, which had become a kind of second home for him in the course of the past month, to bring to Abu Lutfi and Abd el-Shafi the good news that the long-awaited order was now lying upon his tongue. As he approached the little anchorage on the right bank and looked at the mass of masts and sails huddled together in the darkness of the little port, his breath was taken away by the fear that the Ishmaelites might have put their threat into effect and set sail without him. But no, the old guardship was still bobbing there, and despite the long time that had elapsed since she had first cast anchor in the harbor of the Île de France, she had not been sullied by her surroundings but still stood out from the Christian craft all around.
The deck was empty, apart from the light of a single lantern, and it seemed that no one had sensed their coming, to unroll the ladder. Since Ben Attar did not yet know that the black slave, who could not discern his masters’ presence by their scent alone, had not returned to the ship from his amatory expedition on the right bank, he began to think that some plot had been hatched against him. Then, as his feet sank into the mud of the riverbank and his wife’s face disappeared again behind a heavy veil, he felt his whole being shaken by despair and disappointment at the rabbi’s abandonment of him, and he raised an Arabic cry that startled the Frankish sailors all around him, but not those who should have been listening on the ship. Just as he was about to call again, his wife removed her veil and, anticipating him, gave a loud, wild shout that he would never have imagined her capable of producing. The woman’s piercing cry summoned the seamen up from belowdecks, and here was Abd el-Shafi hurrying to fetch his master and his only wife up onto the deck of their ship in his strong arms.
Tomorrow we sail for Africa, Ben Attar announced to his captain, as though Africa were not thousands of miles away but just beyond the horizon. Abd el-Shafi said not a word but smiled and nodded, as though he did not need the Jew’s consent to set sail but was only waiting for Abu Lutfi to finish attending to his slaves. Indeed, to judge by the way the seamen were excitedly coming and going to the hold, it seemed as though the stabilization of the ship had been reinforced in the past few hours and some new human cargo, requiring more room, had been taken down belowdecks. Consequently, it was not to be wondered at if the news that the rabbi and his son had left the expedition was received with satisfaction, or if the additional news concerning the new passenger, a bewitched young girl, was met with some misgivings. But when Abu Lutfi was reminded how ten years before she had crawled among the piles of merchandise on the first boat that had sailed to Barcelona, he agreed to take her on board once again.
It seemed as though this Ishmaelite, who had been so easygoing and restrained before, was gradually taking control of the whole ship, to the point that Ben Attar was fearful of descending belowdecks to see what had been added to the shackled cargo. In the gloom gaining control of his soul, he did not join his first and only wife, who had installed herself in her cabin in the bow, but went first to look for the young idolater, to get him to brew him some of his beloved herbal drink. To his amazement, it seemed that the town had swallowed up the black youth. Not only did Abu Lutfi not know where he had gone, but he was not even taking the trouble to look for him, as though now that he had taken on so many new slaves he did not need the old one. Meanwhile the night was growing darker, and the Jew, whose fear was growing stronger all the time, stood leaning on the rail, while all around the crew was busy preparing the ship to sail. With painful longing in his eyes he stared at the lights of the little town as though he were looking for the burial place of his second wife, in whose dust he suddenly wanted to warm himself, instead of being presently cast upon the cold depths of a savage ocean.
At the end of the third watch the triangular lateen sail was hoisted and unfurled in all its splendor, and it seemed that nobody and nothing could stop the old guardship from sailing down the Seine to the ocean and making her way back to her warm homeland. In the murky morning light Abu Lutfi woke his Jewish partner, who had dozed off despondently huddled among empty sacks on the old bridge, and announced the arrival of the new passenger, who was standing like a woolen bundle on the riverbank, between her sire and his new wife, with a glowing flush on her cheeks, dressed in warm new clothes to protect her from storms at sea.
She was not the only passenger joining the ship, whose sail was beginning to fill, for in the first broken rays of daylight Ben Attar could make out to his surprise the small, familiar form of Rabbi Elbaz. It turned out that although the rabbi had remained true to his resolve not to endanger his son with the sea voyage, even if he was only a feigned invalid, and to trust the promise given by Abulafia and his wife to return him to Andalus overland and to receive in return their unfortunate little girl, so far as he himself was concerned he had changed his mind and was determined to rejoin the old guardship, not only in order to return to Seville as fast as possible and receive the promised fee, but to prove to the North African Jew who had hired him that he would neither abandon nor betray the mission he had accepted, to defend the status and propriety of a second wife. Even if God had decided to take her to himself and to bury her on the left bank of faraway Paris, her erect, noble form was deeply engraved in the rabbi’s soul, and her robe and veil still floated before his eyes. No, Elbaz would never forget her, and the speeches he had made for her and about her, both in the winery at Villa Le Juif and in the synagogue of Worms, shone like diamonds in his memory, side by side with the legal texts and moral sayings that he had not managed to weave into his speeches but that he kept ready, if needed, for a further contest of wits in the case of a second second wife.
Thus, confused, excited, and even a little frightened, Elbaz boarded the ship with his bundle and fell into Ben Attar’s arms, burying in his lord’s chest both his loyalty and his apprehensions about the coming journey. It looked for a moment as if they were silently exchanging tears. Since he would be alone in his cabin near the bow and it was out of the question for the girl to be put in the hold, the bewitched young passenger was put next to him, after a light wooden partition had been erected. Already Mistress Esther-Minna was hastening to make both his bed and that of the quaking child comfortable with thick covers, and she hugged the girl tight to quell her fears while Abulafia acceded to Abu Lutfi’s request to go belowdecks to peer at the cargo of slaves, who were shifting restlessly, waiting for the ship to sail. But when Abulafia came up on deck again, flushed and confused by what his eyes had seen, he said nothing, either to his new wife or to his uncle, in order not to delay the long-awaited moment of departure.