—’Twas a jest, Doña Flora… a fantastical remark… a mere parable…
— I will not do it again. It was only to explain why I now changed from a passer-through to a stayer-on and began to establish myself in Jerusalem, which was rapidly exchanging the soft breezes of spring for a fierce summer heat that its inhabitants, Your Grace, call the hamseen, though so still is the air that I call it the unseen. Before a day or two had gone by I had a staff of my own to rap the cobblestones with and a lantern to make me visible in the dark, and within a week I was conferring the pleasure of my voice on the worshipers in the Stambouli Synagogue, who let me read from the Torah every Monday and Thursday. By now I was shopping in the market too, and helping Tamara peel vegetables and clean fish, and after another week or two I rented half a stand from an Ishmaelite in the Souk-el-Kattanin and set out on it the spices I had brought from overseas, to which I added some raisins, almonds, and nuts that I sold for a modest profit. I was becoming a true Jerusalemite, rushing up and down the narrow streets for no good reason, unless it were that God was about to speak somewhere and I was afraid to miss it.
— And sleeping all the while in your bed, madame, in the little alcove beneath the arched window, where I hung a new looking-glass of my own across from your old one to keep it company and to bring me news of the rest of the house, so that I might work my secret will. And though my big beard kept getting in all the mirrors, the youngsters seemed to be fond of me; not only did I not feel a burden to them, I felt I was breathing new life into a house that I had found dreamy, disorderly, and impecunious, because Yosef was paid more respect than money at the consulate, the consul being a dreamer himself who seemed to think he was not a consul but a government and who was already quite bankrupt from the prodigal sums he spent, partly on the pilgrims whose lord protector he sought to be even though most were not English, and partly on the Jews, whom he considered his wards and the keys to the future. No touring lady could visit Jerusalem from abroad without being royally put up in his home and having Yosef to guide her to the churches of Bethlehem and the mosques of Hebron, down to Absalom’s Tomb and hence to the Spring of Shiloah and from there to the Mount of Olives, first putting everything in its proper perspective and then passionately, by the end of the day, scrambling it all up again, expertly stirring faiths, languages, peoples, and races together and pitilessly baking them in the desert sun until they turned into the special Jerusalem soufflé that was his favorite dish…
— A guide, madame, if you wish; also a dragoman for roadside conversation; plus a courier for light documents; and a scribe for secret correspondence; and sometimes too, a brewer of little cups of coffee; and when the spirit moved him, the chairman of the disputatious literary soirées of the Jerusalem Bibliophile Society. In a word, a man for all times and seasons, particularly those after dark, for so accustomed was he to coming home at all hours that I had developed the habit of waking up in the middle of the night and going to see if he was in his bed yet, and of becoming frantically, heart-strickenly worried if he was not, as if the very life were being crushed out of him at that moment. And since I was afraid to step out into the silent street, I would ascend to the roof to peer through the moonlit darkness at the ramparts of the city, and then down into the bowels of the streets, hardly breathing while I waited to espy, bobbing as it approached from the Muslim or Christian Quarter, a small flame that I knew from its motion to be his. At once, madame, I slipped down from the roof and ran to the gate to admit him into his own house, as if it were he who was the honored guest from afar whose every wish must be indulged, even more than you indulged it when he was a boy, madame. I took off the fez that was stuck to his sweaty hair, helped him out of his shoes, opened his belt to let him out of his idée fixe, brought water to wash his face and feet, and warmed him something to eat, because whole days would go by without his taking anything but coffee. At last, relaxed and with his guard down, the color back in his cheeks, he would tell me about his day: whom he had met, and whose guide he had been, and where he had taken them, and what the consul had said about this or his wife about that, and what was written about them in the English press, and their latest protest to the Turkish governor — and I would listen most attentively and ask questions, and every question received its answer, until finally I teased him about his idée fixe that was lying unguardedly in the open and inquired, “Well, son, and what of your Jews who don’t know that they are Jews yet?” At first my mockery made him angry. But after a while the anger would pass and he would say with a twinkle in his eyes, “Slowly but surely, Papá They’ve only forgotten, and in the end they’ll remember by themselves. And if they insist on being stubborn, I’ll be stubborn too, and if they still don’t want to remember…” Here his eyes would slowly shut, trapping the twinkle inside them until it grew almost cruel. “If they insist,” he would say, weighing my own insistence, “we shall sorely chastise them until they see the error of their ways.”
— Yes. He definitely said “chastise,” although without explaining himself, as if all chastisement were one and the same and there was no need to spell it out chast by chast.
— Your Grace, señor y maestro mío, are you listening?
— Ah! And so, Your Grace, we joked a bit at the expense of his idée fixe until Yosef fell softly asleep and I helped him to his feet with the lantern still in his hand and led him off to bed — where, madame, his wife, silently opened the same beautiful, bright eyes with which you are staring at me right now…
— God forbid, Doña Flora! Not coerced but gently assisted.
— No further.
— My silent support, madame… my fondest encouragement…
— No further.
— I had to know.
— I was looking for a definite sign, madame.
— The looking-glass showed only shadows…
— Someone is knocking, madame… who can it be?
— Is it time for his dinner? Praise God…
— But how in the way? Not at all!
— God forbid! I am not going anywhere. I am most eager, mía amiga Doña Flora, to see how the rabbi is fed…
— I will sit quietly in this corner.
— So this is what Rabbi Shabbetai eats! It is, madame, a dish as pure as snow.