— Yes, madame, those were his words. “These are Jews who will understand that they are Jews,” he said. “These are Jews who will remember that they are Jews.” Before I could even stammer an answer, he was chiding them in his friendly manner and making them face east toward Jerusalem, where there was nothing but a black sky full of stars, after which he began to chant the evening prayer in a new melody I never had heard. From time to time he went down on his knees and bowed like a Muslim so that the Ishmaehtes would understand and bow too… and I, Your Grace — señor — Rabbi Haddaya — my master and teacher — allowed myself to go along with it… sinful man that I was, I could not resist saying the kaddish and profaning the blessed Name of the Lord. I said it from beginning to end in memory of my parents and of my poor wife… madame, the blanket… it is falling off…
— Here, let me, Doña Flora, I’ll do it. I… he is shaking… something is bothering him… perhaps…
— I…
— But what means that, madame? “Tu-tu-tu”? What would he say?
— But what wishes he to say, for the love of God?
— But the blanket is wet, Doña Flora. It is most wet. Perhaps we should make a fire and dry it over the stove, and meanwhile I can change His Grace…
— No Why?
— Why a servant? Why a Greek? I am at your complete service, madame, with all my heart… let the good deed be mine… he was like a father to me, Doña Flora… I beg you…
— No. He is listening. His eyes are following me. Rabbi Shabbetai knows my mind… he remembers what I said… that every idea has a pocket and in that pocket is another idea…”There is no man without his hour nor any thing without its use”…but what means he by “tu-tu-tu”? What would he say? He seems most agitated…
— Well, then, in a word, in a word, Doña Flora, so my visit began, on that route leading from Jaffa to Jerusalem, seeking to catch up with a caravan of pilgrims that kept a day ahead of us. For three whole days we shadowed and smelled its trail, trampling the grasses it had trampled, coming upon the embers of its campfires, treading on the dung of its animals. The two of us rode, and your mare, madame, which was now just an extra mouth to feed, trotted along between us Sometimes, in the twilight, it even seemed that we could see your silhouette astride her… My son tried being a good guide to his father. He pointed out to him the threshers in Emmaus, and the winnowers in Dir Ayub, and had him dismount to smell the wild sweet basil and the green geranium, and to chew the stems of shrubs and grasses from which perhaps some new spice might be concocted. The next evening too, by a stone fence belonging to Kafr Saris, he disappeared for a while among some rocks and olive trees and returned with a new group of wraiths, more Jews who did not know that they were Jews — which is to say, another band of drowsy peasants and shepherds who were rousted from their first sleep. This time he gave them all a quarter of a bishlik for their pains — and all this, señores, was entirely for my sake, to enable the touring father to satisfy his craving to chant the kaddish, not only for the souls of his parents, but also for those of his grand-, and great-grand-, and even greater grand-grandparents than that, until the first father of us all must have heard in heaven that Avraham Mani had arrived in the Land of Israel and was about to enter Jerusalem.
— Ah! That afternoon we finally caught up with the Russian pilgrims — who, now that Jerusalem was just around the corner, had taken off their fur hats and were walking on their knees from sheer devoutness, following the narrow road up and down in long, crawling columns from the Big Oak Tree to the Little Oak Tree and from there to the Monastery of the Cross, which was bathed by red flowers in its lovely valley. And then suddenly, there was Jerusalem: a wall with turrets and domes, a clear, austere verse written on the horizon. Soon I was walking through its narrow streets by myself, led by the consular mace-bearer.
— Because Yosef could not wait and went to return the horses to the consulate and tell the consul about his trip while I was packed off with my bundles behind the mace-bearer, who struck the cobblestones with his staff and led me along a street and up some steps to a door that did not need to be pushed open because it already was. I stood hesitantly in the entrance, staring in the looking-glass that faced me at the unkempt form of a sun-ravaged, sunken-eyed traveler. And just then, Rabbi Shabbetai, who should step out of the other room but Doña Flora herself, but thirty years younger! It was as if she had flown through the air above my ship and arrived there before me! A most wondrous apparition, señores — here, then, was the secret that explained Beirut and that had, so it seemed, quite swept Yosef off his feet! One passage through life had not been enough for so charming a visage, and so it had come back a second time… I was so exhausted from the trip and from the sun, and so excited to be in Jerusalem and its winding lanes — I already felt, mí amiga, that I had arrived in a city of bottomless recesses — that I whispered like a sleepwalker. “Madame Flora, is it truly you? Has the rabbi then relented?” Hee hee hee hee…
— That is how muddled I was
— No, wait… I beg you…
— But wait, madame… You have no idea of the wondrous resemblance between you, which is perhaps what lured you to Beirut in the first place in order to meet your own double and give my poor departed son… I mean, tacitly… eh?
— We knew nothing. What did we know?
— The betrothal was carried out in haste… the rabbi too was notified after the fact…
— Yes. A tremendous resemblance
— Yes. Even now — are you listening, señor y maestro mío? — when I look at the rubissa, I see as in a vision Tamara thirty years from now. The very spit and image in charm as well as beauty…
— At first she was alarmed. She turned very red but kissed my hand and let me bless her, and then took my bundle and laid it gently and with great respect on your childhood bed beneath the large, arched window, madame, in which henceforward I slept, in hot weather and in cold. She set the table for me and warmed water for me to wash my hands and feet, and then stood over me to serve me as the sun was setting outside. I noticed that she seemed not at all surprised that Yosef was taking so long at the consul’s instead of hurrying home, even though he had been away for a week; it was as if she were used to the consul’s coming before her When I was all washed and cleaned and full of food, she summoned her father Valero to make my acquaintance and take me with him to the synagogue for the evening prayer, after which we chatted a bit about Jerusalem and its plagues and then lit candles against the darkness of the night. It was only then that Yosef came home at last. He was carrying a lantern and was still disarrayed from his journey, which for him had only now ended. He greeted his wife and the rest of us with a polite nod, but he was so tired that he confused a bag of his clothes with a packet of some documents from the consulate and even began to speak to us in English until he realized his mistake. It was then that I first understood, chère madame and señor, that he was in the grips of a notion more important to him than his own marriage — of an idée fixe, as the French say, that mattered to him more than having seed.