— In truth, madame, one sniff was all I needed. And thus, sniff by sniff and weed by weed, I smelled my way through our Promised Land…
— A spice more aromatic and tangy than any of those I had brought from Salonika, which I had begun to run out of by that summer’s end that was harsher than summer itself…
— In truth, madame, they were running low, and even though this drove up my prices, it did not drive the buyers away. They snatched whatever I had, be it thyme or basil or saffron or rosemary or marjoram or nutmeg or oregano, because it was the month of the great Mohammedan fast, which they broke every night with spicy meals that kept them smacking their lips throughout the next day until the boom of the cannon at sunset announced they could eat once again… and that, su merced, Rabbi Shabbetai Hananiah, was the sound that sent a shiver through my son Yosef one evening, when I found him sitting by himself in the half-light by his bed, straight as a knife blade and wrapped in a sheet, striped by a sun that was in its last throes above the Jaffa Gate. He had finished the siesta I made him take every day and had already smuggled his wife out through the kitchen window into the Zurnagas’ backyard, from where she could proceed to her father’s to take the children to the pool, and was now waiting for me to return from my olfateo in Silwan to open the locked door for him…
— Yes, he was waiting, madame, wrapped with thoughtful patience in a sheet. I took some fragrant herbs and roots from my robe and scattered them on the bed to dispel the mournful ambience of struggle and sorrow in the odor of seed that hung over it and its pale homunculi, sad-faced gossamer ghosts who were none other than the less fortunate brothers and sisters of our future baby Moses, demon children spilled like pollen in that room that still shook from the blast of the cannon, which now fired again, Your Grace, into our holy hills…
— Madame?
— God forbid, muy distinguida rubissa!
— God forbid, Doña Flora, with all due respect…
— God forbid! With all due respect, but also, madame, in all truth…
— But how am I disgusting? Surely not to him!
— No, our Yosef would not be angry. He would not even be upset. He would understand how justified my little idée fixe was… Why, in my honor he even had his own idée fixe devour it, so that now the two of them thrashed about together in his soul, which yearned to join the throng of believers gathered before the great mosque — forgetful Jews who soon, with God’s help, would remember and bow, not southward to faraway Mecca, but inwardly to themselves, happy to be where they were, beneath the sky above them…
— In truth, madame…
— How was it possible, you ask? Oh, but it was!
— More than once. In the mosque and in the Dome of the Rock too.
— In truth, mí amiga, a frightful provocation…
— Yes. To them too. Not just to the Christians.
— A double provocation, the entire justification of which lay in its doubleness, and therefore, in its peaceful intentions, since according to him, once all remembered their true nature, they would make peace among themselves.
— He felt too much compassion to feel fear, Doña Flora. You see, he had already racked his brain for all the chastisements he would chastise them with for their obduracy, for all the pain and sorrow he would inflict on them and their offspring, and he was now so full of compassion that he never dreamed that before he would have time to pity them all they would seize and massacre him…
— But how, madame, do you restrain a thought?
— The consul? But that was the very root of the evil — that boundlessly audacious English consular enthusiasm that made him think that the entire British fleet was at anchor just over the hills, somewhere between Ramallah and el-Bireh, covering his every movement…
— How, Doña Flora? How? Time was already running out!
— Because I had begun to despair of his accursed idée fixe, which devoured every other idée that it encountered as if it were simply grist for the mill, like that which madame is now spooning into His Grace. I was persuaded more than ever that the marriage must be made to bring forth a child, which alone could do battle — yes, from its cradle! — with the unnatural thoughts of a father by means of a simple cry or laugh, or of the riddle of its own future, and thus, Doña Flora, thus, Your Worship, began the race between my son’s death and the birth of his son. It was the month of Elul, whose penitential prayers broke the silence of the night, that time of year when — perhaps you remember, madame — wondrous breezes are born that get their odors and tastes from all over, taking a pinch of the warmth of the standing water in the Pool of Hezekiah, adding a touch of dryness from the scorched thistles in the fields between the houses of the Armenians, mixing in the bitterness of the cracked, furrowed graves on the Mount of Olives, whipping up a flying incense that whirls from street to street. Only now do I realize, señor y maestro mío, that the true spice, the spice of the future, will not come from any root, leaf, berry, or pollen, but from the shapeless, formless wind, for which I shall uncork all my vials and bottles to let it blend with their contents and infuse them with strength for the Days of Awe, awful in every sense of the word…
— No, Doña Flora, no, su merced, I made sure he did not miss the services. The consul and his wife had gone to 8135.5 Jaffa on consular business, and the air was tremulous in that subtle way it is in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur, as if the Merciful One, the chief judge Himself, had secretly returned to the city from His travels and was hiding in one of its small dwellings, in which He planned to spend the holy fast day with us, the signed list of men’s fates — “Who by fire and who by water, who in due time and who before his time”—already in His pocket, although He was afraid to take it out and read it. Yosef seemed more at peace with the world too, full of an inner mirth that took the edge off even his idée fixe, while Tamara had been busy cooking her delicious holiday dishes, her eyes, which were inflamed with dust all summer, now clear and wide — indeed, Rabbi Shabbetai, they were so like madame’s that are looking at us right now that the growing resemblance between Constantinople and Jerusalem sent a shiver down my spine. And so I awoke him before dawn, and took him to the synagogue, and stood with him not far from the cantor, so that we could be quick to snatch the tidbits thrown to the worshipers from time to time — a verse from “God the King Who Sitteth on His Mercy Seat,” a word from “O Answer Us,” or even a whole section of “Lord of Forgiveness”—and raise our voices on high in token of our piety and in hope that the Master of the Universe would hear us and let us have our way for once…