— What say you, Dona Flora? I never knew!
— Old Tarabulus? Who does not remember him? Why, he would bring tears to our eyes every Sabbath eve in the Great Synagogue with his “Come, My Love”!
— Truly?
— O my son!
— Yes, that old prayer shawl that was black with age… of course I do… it was already that color when I was a child… I always felt drawn to it too, but I never dared touch it…
— Truly? Oh, the poor boy… my poor son…
— O my poor son… you speak of him with such love…
— No, I will not cry.
— Oh, madame, oh, Your Grace, what sweet sorrow I feel at the thought of my boy standing wrapped in that grimy prayer shawl by the hearth of your salon in Constantinople, pretending to be the great Tarabulus…
— Of course…”This Day Hath the World Conceived”…the Rosh Hashanah prayer…”Be We Thy Sons or Slaves”…
— No, I will not sing now… ah, the poor lad… my poor son… because you see, even though I knew that all things were decided in heaven, I knew too that “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”…and so I kept after him… because to whom could I pass on what consumed me if I let go of it? Your most agreeable brother-in-law Refa’el Valero had little children of his own, and his Veducha was pregnant again, and they certainly did not need another child, not even if it was only a grandchild… and so, because if I was not for myself who would be for me, and if not now, when, I began to pursue him through courtyards and down alleyways on his visits to Jews and to Gentiles. I never let him out of my sight, until I acquired a most infernal knowledge of Jerusalem myself, of the city of your tender youth, Doña FLora.
— Why, I was able to pop up anywhere, like a wise old snake…
— Because — and this I learned from Yosef — it is a city in which all places are connected and there is a way around every obstacle. You can traverse the whole of it by going from house to house without once stepping out into the street…
— For example, for example, by climbing Arditi’s stairs you can get to Bechar and Geneo’s roof, and then through their kitchen to the courtyard of the Greek patriarch, from where, if you cut straight through the chapel, you need only open a little gate to find yourself in She’altiel’s salon. If She’altiel is home, you may have a cup of coffee with him and ask his leave to proceed, but if he is not, or if he is sleeping, you need not turn back. Just tiptoe down his little hallway without peeking into the bedroom and you will come to five steps belonging to the staircase of an old building destroyed by the accursed Crusaders, which lead directly to the storeroom of Franco’s greengrocery. Once there, you need only move some watermelons and sacks aside and stoop a bit to enter the little synagogue of the Ribliners, where you will find yourself behind the Holy Ark. If they happen to be praying, you can join them, even if they are Ashkenazim, and if they are in the middle of a Mishnah class, you can ask to go to their washroom, which is shared by the guard of the Muslim wakf — who, no matter how sleepy he seems, will be happy to take half a mejidi to lead you across the large hall of the Koran scholars and back out into the street, where you will look up in amazement to espy the house of your parents, may they rest in paradise, the very house of your childhood, madame…
— From the rear? Why from the rear?
— But it is all built up there, madame… the buildings are now conjoined… that empty space is no more…
— Never once, Doña Flora. I myself was amazed that I was not once lost… because in Constantinople — does Your Grace remember? — does he? — that happened to me all the time, not just as a boy but as a young man too, and without the slightest effort, hee hee…For example, rubissa, if I was sent to fetch something for Rabbi Shabbetai, some tobacco, or coffee, or a sesame cake, or cheese, I would end up wandering from bazaar to bazaar, past the rug dealers, past the fabric stalls, past all the colorful, good-smelling dresses, across the Golden Horn without even noticing, passing from Asia to Europe — and there, madame, I would get so hopelessly confused that I could no longer find my way back, so that evening would come — does Your Grace remember? — and Rabbi Shabbetai would see that there was no tobacco, no coffee, no sesame cake, no cheese, and no Mani, and he would have to leave his books, go downstairs, find some horseman or soldier from the Sultan’s Guard, and give him a bishlik to go to Galata and bring me back home to Asia, frightened and white as a sheet… hee hee hee… he remembers… by God, he is smiling! Even after so many years, that Constantinople of yours is a maze for me… your crooked Stamboul, which to this day I cannot get straight in my head… whereas Jerusalem, madame, could not only be gotten straight, it was getting too straight for comfort… night by night I felt it tighten around me…
— Because at night, Dona Flora — in those nights that grew longer and longer now that we had seen the last of the last holiday, and on which the sun set sooner and sooner — the idée fixe that I thought had faded with summer’s end now raised its head again with winter’s start and was soon raging out of control, like an illness that had gone to sleep not because it had run its course but in order to wake up stronger than ever. And by now I was mortally afraid for my own soul…
— Of his idée fixe infecting me too, Dona Flora, so that I would start seeing the world through his eyes Because there was more strength in his silence, in the calm way he shut his eyes while quietly listening to me, than there was in all my warnings and rebukes, which he crossed out with a single thin-lipped smile before donning a large, odd cloak that he had found in the market in Hebron and setting out on his nighttime excursions. It did not even help to hide his lantern, because his pockets were full of little candles, which he stuffed them with in case he had to light one and declare himself to the Turkish watch. The spirit moved him with the fall of night, so that while the two of us, Tamara and I, were preparing for bed, he slipped out of the house without his lantern despite the danger of it and — in the same roundabout way he had of going from Jewish house to Jewish house — went to call on his Jews who did not know yet they were Jews, most boldly walking in and out of their homes, without once stepping into the street, in his eagerness to find some sign or testimony that would prove them wrong…