When the moment did come, it was not quiet but tuneful, for before they weighed anchor and disembarked those who were staying behind, Abd el-Shafi placed his hands on his ears to hear only the silence of his God and began to wail like the muezzin of the great mosque in Tangier, issuing the call of the Prophet to the faithful to fall on their faces and beseech Allah to turn all adverse winds to fair ones. Although there were too few Jews to compete with the eight prostrate Muslims, they could still muster a company, numbering not three but four, for Master Levitas, not neglecting the sacred duty of leavetaking, had risen early and stood now on the bridge of the ship to reinforce the parting prayers of the southern Jews. When both the Muslims and the Jews had concluded their prayers and the neighboring Christian seamen had added their blessings, there was nothing whatever to prevent the ship from retracing its route to its point of departure.
Back again came the slight rocking motion, which seemed to have been forgotten during the forty days on land. Although it was the gentle motion of the river rather than the violence of the ocean, the current was still surprisingly rapid, either because they were now going downstream or because of the autumn winds. No sooner had the travelers remembered to turn around to take their leave of the little Parisian isle than it was gone, hidden by the first bend of the river and swallowed up in the brilliance of the eastern sun soaring relentlessly behind them, soon to dance before the prow of the ship as she gathered speed. But the calm presence of the beauty of nature on either bank no longer soothed the Jewish travelers’ hearts as they leaned silently on the ropes that fringed the deck, but a faint dread forced them to scan the undergrowth for a human figure with whom they could at least exchange a parting wave. The chill and gloom of the European autumn seemed to intensify the silence of the world, and since there was no child at the masthead to survey the world beyond the vegetation on the riverbank, anyone wishing to make some contact had no choice but to seek a sign of life in the beautiful purple leaves that fell slowly and soundlessly from the boughs of the great, sad trees that cast their shadows deep on the fast-flowing water.
Although the captain, who had once more bound himself to the mast and attached crewmen to his traces to navigate better, clung resolutely to his decision to press on night and day toward the great ocean, he could not fail to accede to a firm request from Abu Lutfi, whose authority on board was growing hour by hour, to put in briefly at the port of Rouen. Perhaps the duke who had bought the little she-camel from them had realized that for the sake of the health of the young desert creature in his care it would be best for him to furnish her with a male partner, at a modest price. Thus, in the twilight of the second day after the tawny ship pulled out of the port of Paris, the anchor was lowered again not far from the little houses of Rouen. Abd el-Shafi, who was unwilling on any account to detain the ship until daybreak, had a dinghy lowered into the dark water and sent the Ishmaelite merchant, with the Andalusian rabbi as interpreter, in search of the duke or his Jewish counselor, to make them the astute offer. But before much time had passed Abu Lutfi returned despondently to Ben Attar, clutching some yellowish tatters in his hand. The she-camel had not endured for long in her new owner’s care, and because of neglect or pining for her mate, she had breathed her last and collapsed in an open space behind the cathedral. Instead of wrapping the noble desert beast in a shroud and giving her decent burial until the millennium arrived, with its promise of universal resurrection, the Christian duke had exposed her to the curiosity and greed of the local inhabitants, who had soon cut her up into little pieces and realized whatever they could for them, so as to recover something of the purchase price. They had not spared even her hide, but had stripped it off and tanned it, and discovered its wonderful property of restoring the shine and sparkle to tarnished gold or copper.
But Ben Attar paid no attention to the plaints of his old partner, who since the disappearance of the black pagan had become bitter and domineering. Without saying a word, he took a strip of soft, yellowish hide from the remnants of the she-camel and brought it close to his face, to see whether the little tatter of skin still retained the smell that used to assail his nostrils each time he made his way through the hold on his way to the second wife’s cabin. While the captain gave orders in the dead of the night to weigh anchor, light a great lantern at the prow, and sail on, the North African Jew was so overcome with the sadness of sweet longing for the wife he had lost that he could not resist descending into the bowels of his ship to take a brief look at the abandoned cabin.
In the semidarkness, beside the outline of the he-camel, whose fate was apparently sealed since the death of his mate in Rouen, the Jewish proprietor discovered that his captain had cleverly given the new slaves oars that protruded outward through ancient openings in the side of the ship, which had been closed up and now had been reopened. As he groped his way amid the creak of oars and the splash of water, he observed, from the number of the shapes moving around him, that his partner had increased and reinforced the stabilization of the ship. Feeling a new excitement rising up and shaking his guts and his loins, he approached to inspect the nature of the new arrivals, who were huddled in the cabin where he had sat as a mourner. But before he could lower his eyes he was pierced by the frightened, curious looks of three flaxen-haired, blue-eyed women shackled to each other by their long legs. Abu Lutfi explained with a conspiratorial smile what a good bargain he had made just before they set sail, but he was pushed away impatiently by the Jew, who hurried up on deck to discover that despite the late hour, everyone was awake—not only the captain and his crew, but even his wife, who was sitting swaddled in several layers of clothing on the old bridge, listening to the chatter of Rabbi Elbaz, who was still wondering if he had been right to leave his only son, an orphan, in the care of a strange woman, an obstinate adversary and childless contestant.
Even though Ben Attar knew that it would be impossible to conceal from his wife and certainly from the rabbi what his eyes had just beheld belowdecks, he tried to delay giving the news, and wordlessly, with a weary gesture, he gently indicated to his wife that she should leave the rabbi from Seville and return to her cabin. Right then, as an improper and unworthy suggestion rose up to him from the bowels of the ship, he needed to discover again, with a fearful body, how far one could push the limits of a sole wife in carnal knowledge, which always contained some spiritual knowledge as well.
But when he left the cabin at the close of the third watch of the night, while the indefatigable Abd el-Shafi, full of the excitement of being under sail again, looked down on him from the mast, he knew what he had always known—that one woman could never fulfill the promise of another. His eyes sought in vain for the black slave, who would always emerge from a corner and between watches, between wives, would prostrate himself and touch the hem of Ben Attar’s garment submissively before handing him the steaming herbal brew. Where was the idolater? the Jew asked himself longingly. Who had detained him? Was he alive? Had the new slaves so turned Abu Lutfi’s head that he had so easily abandoned his faithful servant? For if Ben Attar were to exert his imagination to the utmost, he could not imagine that he could never track the slave down, even if he exercised the full weight of his old authority and managed to stop the ship and turn her around to search for the lost African all over the Île de France. This was not only because the black youth was too well hidden in that faraway cottage, secure in the clutches of three women who were determined, as the millennium drew nigh, to satisfy the desire of the old woodcarver to add the lines of an alien race to his vision, but also because the captive himself, the gleaming black youth, had fallen in love with his captivity, within which the spring of his passion flowed so strongly.