— Her father Refa’el so feared the birth that he ran off to the synagogue to say psalms, leaving me standing there for ten hours in my robe and shoes like one of the Sultan’s honor guard, ministering with hot water and compresses.
— No, madame. It was in your old bed, which had become my bed and now became Tamara’s. You may rejoice in the thought that the infant was born in your bed.
— At the very last minute Tamara was stricken with fear and refused to give birth in her bridal bed that had belonged to her parents. She beseeched the help of heaven, and so we moved her to the old bed of her beloved aunt, which conducted the efflux of her uncle’s great merit… and in truth, it was only his merit — does Your Grace hear me? — that stood by us in that difficult birth.
— Ten hours, one labor pain after another…
— There were two midwives. One the wife of Zurnaga, and the other a nunlike Englishwoman called Miss Stewart, a lady as tall and thin as a plank, but most proficient. She was sent by the British consul in Jerusalem, who has not yet ceased mourning our Yosef.
—’Twas at night, Doña Flora, before the first cockcrow, that we heard the long-awaited cry. And if I may say so without fear of misunderstanding, the two of us, the mother and I, so longed for you, madame, at that moment that our very souls were faint with desire for you in that great solitude…
— No, I will not cry…
— No, there will be no more tears… señor maestro mío… he is listening… I feel the lump of his silence in my throat…
— Your niece kept calling your name while racked by her pains. She was pining for you — she gave birth for you, madame — and in the times between one labor pain and the next, while I sat in the next room and watched her face dissolve toward me in the small mirror, I could not help but imagine you as a young woman in Jerusalem, lying in your bed in the year of Creation 5848 or ‘49 and giving birth too. We were too much surrounded by the shades of the dead, Doña Flora… we needed to think of the living to give us strength…
— Most truly.
— Again you say I “vanished.” But where did I vanish to?
— In Jerusalem, only in Jerusalem. I walked back and forth between those stony walls with their four gates, thinking, “It was here that little madame toddled about forty years ago, among the stones and the churches, from the Jaffa Gate to the Lions’ Gate, skipping over the piles of rubbish in the fields between the mosques, glared on by the red sun and in the shadow of sickness and plague.”
— In truth, Doña Flora. I took upon myself all your longing for Jerusalem, and all the memories of His Grace too, my master and teacher, who honored our sacred city with a visit in the year 5587. There are men there who still recall sheltering in his presence. Who knows but that that poor city throbs on in his heart if not in his mind. Ah!…
— Is he listening?
— The Lord be praised.
— But how was I silent? And again, Doña Flora: why was the silent one me? All last winter I prayed for some word from you. The lad was already dead and buried, and our own lives were as dark as the grave, because at the time, madame, his seed alone knew that it had been sown in time. And since I knew that the news would travel via Beirut to Constantinople on the dusty black robe of that itinerant almsman, Rabbi Gavriel ben-Yehoshua. I hoped for a sign that it had reached you. I even entertained the thought that the two of you would hasten to Jerusalem with tidings of strength and good cheer, for I knew that the lad had been dear to you. You took him under your wing… you indulged him and foresaw great things for him… you lay him beside you, madame, in His Grace’s big bed…
— No, there will be no tears…
— Perish the thought… God save us… I will not upset him… I will speak as softly as I can…
— Not a whimper… God forbid…
— If there is a lump in my throat, I will swallow it at once.
— At once…
— Of my own free will… of course, Dona Flora… I do not deny it…
— I would never pretend that the thought of bringing the boy to you was not mine. He was a present that I made you to keep from losing you, a wedding gift for your most surprising and wondrous marriage that shone in heaven as resplendently as the saints…
— I was afraid that you would rebuff me once more, madame, as you already had done… and so I hurried to bring the lad to you as a whole-offering… just as my poor father did with me in his day…
— To be sure. And now suddenly he was a young man… already a groom, with God’s help… although that match made in Beirut with your motherless niece from Jerusalem was entirely your own doing, madame… fully your own conception…
— In truth, it had my blessing… of course it did… and more than that… it had my love… what wouldn’t I have done not to lose you? I mean, not to lose His Grace, my only master and teacher, who commands my loyalty “more than the love of women”…
— He understands. He is listening and understands…
— No, I am not crying. No, madame, this time you are wrong. I have not the tail-end of a tear left.
— Once more “vanished”? But even if I did, it was not for very long. I was not, after all, the first to disappear, but the last. Before me came your motherless fiancée, and after her, my only son Yosef. Both were lost in Jerusalem and I went to look for them, not in order to become lost myself but in order to bring them back, although in the end there was nothing to bring…
— The infant, Dona Flora? How could you think of it? Perish the thought! For what purpose?
— Take him and his mother away from Jerusalem?
— But why? After all that went into giving Jerusalem a baby Moses, why take him away from there? And where to? Who would take responsibility for him?
— But how? You amaze me, madame. What would you do with an infant when you are in such perturbation?
— How? You already have an infant of your own, this holy and most venerable babe that needs to be fed and looked after, to be washed and changed and have its every thought guessed — why should you wish for another? Surely, you do not expect them to play together, hee hee…
— His Grace, hee hee…
— But look, Doña Flora, look, mí amiga, he is laughing without any sound… hee hee hee hee… he is listening… he understands everything… in a twinkling he will…
— Señor… my master and teacher caríssimo Rabbi Shabbetai…
— I am not shouting… but look, cara doña, the rabbi is nodding his head… he is in high spirits… I know it… I feel it… I always knew how to make him merry. Why, back in the good old days, I would cross the Bosporus, go straight to his house, take a carving knife, wrap myself in a silk scarf, and dance the dance of the Janissaries, may they rot in hell…
— No, not one tear… there are none left…
— I am in full control.
— In truth, my dearest doña, I am in an agitated state. You are looking at a most distraught soul… do not judge me harshly… just see how you alarm me by speaking thus of the fatherless infant, whom you crave to have with you. As if it did not already have a faithful young mother at its side! And not only a mother, but a home, the home you yourself grew up in… and your brother-in-law Re’fael, who has little children of his own… and Jerusalem itself… why make light of Jerusalem, the city of your nativity, which is shaking off the dust of centuries now that Christendom has rediscovered it and given new hope to its Jews? Why make them pick up and leave all that? And for where? And how do it without a father? Because there is no one to take a father’s place…
— No, no, madame. I myself will soon be gone. True, it is written, “A man liveth will he, nill he,” but still, yes, still, a man dieth sometimes when he willeth… You will yet hear of me, madame. “Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh used to say, ‘The best hope of man is the maggot.’” Ah! Señor… let him be my judge… he will do me justice! Would he wish me to remove mother and child from Jerusalem?