— So it is…
— Soft porridge… so it is…
— So it is. The poor man! Your Grace always hated mushy food…
— Of course. There is no choice. It is the wise thing to do, madame. Nothing else would go down as easily, filling the belly while soothing the soul. And who, may I ask, was the servant who brought it?
— A fine-looking young man. Would it not be best, though, for the holy rabbi to be waited on by one of our own?
— Well, a fine-looking young man.
— God forbid! Nothing to excite him, madame. Nothing to spoil his appetite. Why don’t you rest and let me feed Rabbi Shabbetai myself? It would be a great pleasure and a privilege.
— Well, then, perhaps later.
— His bib? Where is it?
— One minute… in truth, he seems most hungry…
— Master of the Universe! Lord have mercy! Why, ‘tis a perfect infant… a perfect infant…
— What, Your Grace?
— In a word… in a word… in the briefest of words, Doña Flora, but with much fear and trembling, because despite the cloudless summer — that is, we were now in the midst of a fiery, cloudless summer — there had even been a mild outbreak of some sort of plague, the exact name of which no one was quite sure of — I already had, Doña Flora, from all those dreams, nighttime walks, and — whoever was the bellwether — fantasies of that Hebrew-speaking English consul, a sense of impending disaster. Sometimes, when I lost _ patience standing on the roof, I went back down and took the lantern and waited for my son Yosef on the corner, by Calderon’s barred window. I stood beneath the moon and prayed to see that crookedly bobbing little flame, which sometimes appeared from the south, with a herd of black goats coming home late from their distant pasture in the Valley of the Cross, and sometimes from the west, with a band of pilgrims returning from midnight mass in the Holy Sepulchre, to whom my son had attached himself in the darkness as an unnoticed guide to penetrate a place that Jews were barred from…
— Of course, madame. A most flagrant provocation. The Christians themselves are divided into mutually suspicious sects that ambush each other in the naves of the church and brawl over every key and lock, and they certainly did not need an uninvited Jew peeking into God’s tomb and reminding them of what they did not believe they had forgotten and had no intention of remembering. And as if that were not enough, he sometimes proceeded from there to the Gate of the Mughrabites, from where steps lead up to the great mosque, in order to bid a fond good night to its two Mohammedan watchmen before heading home for the one place that he feared most of all — namely, his own bed.
— That is only in a manner of speaking, of course, Doña Flora… most hyperbolically. But see how Rabbi Shabbetai looks at me as he eats! Perhaps my story will take my master’s mind off his mush, hee hee hee…
— No, no, madame. I did not mean the bed itself. Just the idea of it…
— I mean —
— God forbid! ‘Twas always with the most friendly respect and affection…
— Of… why, in all simplicity, of the sleep awaiting him there… that was what troubled him so, madame…
— That he might awake to discover that the world had changed while he slept… that something had happened in it without his knowing or being a party to it… that his idée fixe, whose sole reliable consular representative he considered himself to be, had burst like a bubble before he had time to bring it back to life…
— So he felt, madame. “The day is short and the labor is great.” And perhaps — who knows, maestro y señor mío — he already sensed his approaching death in that much-provoked Jerusalem of his.
— Tamara, Doña Flora, said nothing.
— That is, she heard and saw everything. And waited…
— She was not unreceptive to his views, provided that something came of them…
— At night she slept. I kept an eye on her in the looking-glass I had hung on the wall, which was reflected in your old glass, madame, which in turn was reflected in the glass hanging over their bed, and I saw that she slumbered peacefully… But look, Doña Flora, he is getting food all over his mouth and chin…
— Here…
— Perhaps we need a fresh towel.
— As you wish, madame. I am at your service. Perhaps that handsome young Greek made the porridge a bit too mushy…
— God forbid, madame! I am not interfering in anything. It was just a thought, and I have already taken it back.
— Of course, madame. Briefly and to the point. Which is that I found your niece an admirable housewife who baked and cooked quite unvaryingly excellent food. She simply forgot at times to make enough of it, so that I had to —
— Mahshi, kusa, and calabaza, and certain days of the week a shakshuka…
— Fridays she put up a Sabbath stew with haminados.
— Sometimes it had meat in it, and sometimes it had the smell of meat…
— Of course. She did all her own cleaning and laundering. The house, Dona Flora, was as spic and span as the big looking-glass. And she also helped her father Valero and his young wife, and took her little stepsister and stepbrother to the Sultan’s Pool every afternoon to enjoy the cool water and play with the Atias children among the Ishmaelite tombstones…
— The Atias who married Franco’s youngest daughter.
—’Tis on the tip of my tongue, rubissa, and will soon come to me. Meanwhile, maestro y señor mio, permit me to sketch the picture for you. Is he still listening? I was, you see, in Jerusalem to shore up a marriage that needed consolidating, for it had yet to outgrow its hasty Beirut betrothal; and so I did my best to keep the young bride from sinking into too much housework, and from time to time I took her with me to my spice-and-sundries stand in the Souk-el-Kattanin, where she could sit and catch the notice of the passersby with her winning mien, so that — after walking on and stopping short and doubling back for a better look and possibly even a word with her — they might interest themselves in a spice or two. And meanwhile, the air around her began to shoot sparks — one of which, I hoped, would fly all the way to her young husband, who was busy escorting the consul’s guests to Bethlehem and Hebron. It would do him no harm, I thought, to wonder why his wife was attracting such looks…
— God forbid! God forbid! ‘Twas done most honorably. And each day when the sun began to glow redly in my jars of rosemary, cinnamon, and thyme, and to tint my raisins with gold, I put away my goods and folded my stand and brought her to the woman’s gallery of the synagogue of Rabbi Yohanan ben-Zakkai to listen to the Mishnah lesson and be seen among the widows and old women by the men arriving from the souk for the afternoon prayer. Sometimes Yosef came too, all in a great dither, his idée fixe sticking out of his pocket; and while he said his prayers devoutly enough, he kept running his eyes over us ordinary Jews who could not forget that we were Jews and so had nothing to remember, nothing to do but say the same old prayers in the same old chants. Now and then he glanced up at the women’s gallery, squinting as if into the distance at his petite wife — who, like himself, though a year had gone by since their Beirut betrothal, still was daubed with its honey-gold coat that had to be patiently, pleasurably, licked away. And I, Rabbi Shabbetai, began to lick… slowly but surely, madame…
— A parable, of course, madame, never fear… à la fantastique, as the French would say… ‘twas merely to bring them together… to conclude the good deed started in Beirut, Your Grace. And thus the two of us, madame, the motherless bride and myself, wandered through a Jerusalem summer that burned with a clear, bright light I first caught a glimpse of in your own wondering eyes, Doña Flora, the first time we met in Salonika. I was determined to see this marriage through, and I began taking my daughter-in-law with me everywhere… to the courtyard of the consulate, for example, where we sat in the shade of a tree by the cistern and watched the builders lay the foundations for a new house of prayer that is to be called Christ’s Church, for the greater glory of England. The air shot sparks; the builders put down their tools and turned to look, for nothing disarms more than beauty; men walking down the lane slackened stride, even backtracked a bit, as if the sight of her made them unsure whether they suddenly had lost or found something. A gentle commotion commenced all around us, until the consul’s wife had to step outside and invite us in for a hookah and some English tea with milk while sending a servant to pry Yosef loose from one of the inner rooms. At first he was alarmed to see us there; yet as soon as he saw that all were smiling and in good spirits, he inclined his head with loving resignation and took us under his wing. In this manner I was occasionally able to get him to come home for lunch with us, to have a bite to eat and cool off in his bed with his wife, whom the eyes of Jerusalem were beginning to make him most appreciative of. I did not remain to peer into the looking-glass. I went outside and left them by themselves, locking the door behind me, because by now I had an idée fixe of my own, a much smaller and more modest one than his, to be sure, but every bit as powerful… and with it, señores, with my craving for seed, I kept after them for all I was worth. And in those hot afternoons, at that most still and torrid hour when the air is dry and without a hint of a breeze, which is the best time for olfaction, I strode through the Lions’ Gate and down to the house of the sheikh of Silwan village, where I was shown little fagots of weeds and grasses, roots and flowers that the Ishmaelites had gathered at the old man’s behest from the mountains of Judea and Samaria, from the shores of the Dead Sea to the coast of our Mediterranean, for me to sniff and perhaps find some new species or plant from which to concoct the spice of the century…