There, they are starting to bang on the door, Rabbi Shabbetai, they want me out of here. But I am not leaving until I have been given a clear judgment, even though “His son Rabbi Yishmael used to say”—is not that what you taught me, rabbi? — “‘he who judges not has no enemies.’” And he used to say: “Whoever is born, is born to die, and whoever dies, dies to live again, and whoever lives again, lives to be judged, to know, to make known, and to be made known.” Well, let us stir the fire a bit to warm this room, and raise the curtain for a look at the sky dropping low over their chapel of graven images, may they all rot in hell, and tell at last and in truth the final, the one and only story, the story of sweet perdition that recurs in every generation.
Quickly, quickly, though, because the banging on the door is growing louder, and soon, señor y maestro mío, Doña Flora and her men will come bursting in here. It is time, Rabbi Haddaya, betahsir, vite-vite, to come forth with the story that I have kept for last, the story of a murderer — because I have already told you, señor y maestro mío, that there was a bit of a murderer here — or, si quiere, su merced, a manslaughterer, a shohet-uvodek — to whom, ever since that first night, one felt drawn again and again in the crowded lanes of Jerusalem — in the souks, by the cisterns, gazing out from the gates of the city — by a lightning-like glitter of a glance — a wordless nod — an imperceptible bow — a casting-down of the eyes — a sudden shudder. Ah, how drawn — on the chalky hillside of Silwan, among the olives on the road to Bethlehem — so powerfully that sometimes one’s feet stole of an evening to the consulate, to one of its literary soirées, to listen to some Englishwoman praise some British romance that no one ever had read or ever would read, for the sole purpose of staring wordlessly at the silent shade standing in the doorway and bearing the memory of my poor son — oh, rotting! oh, beloved in his grave! Yosef, my only one — who on that accursed night of snow and blood… But who could restrain himself, Rabbi Shabbetai Hananiah, from running after him through the streets in an attempt to forestall an assault that was in truth a retreat, a provocation that was in truth a flight from the pain and punishment that he imagined twirling over his bed like an angry, patient carving knife? And it was thus that slaughterer joined slaughterer by the light of the torches of the Russian pilgrims, who were bellowing their piety on the stone floor of the Holy Sepulchre — thus that the two of them, the frantic father and the Ishmaelite friend, the aristocratic, mustachioed sheikh’s son — linked forces to catch in time the idée fixe that in its passionate pride was about to turn on its own self and become the very prototype that it was searching for of the Jew forgetful of being a Jew, an example and provocation for all recalcitrants. For as he elbowed his way into the crowd of pilgrims that was excitedly tramping through the mud and snow, wary of being recognized by some excitable Christian who might inform on him to the Turkish soldiers surrounding the square, he was seeking, or so I felt, Rabbi Shabbetai, to forget us all — Salonika, Constantinople, myself, yourself — as if he had been conceived and born from the very floor of the church, rising up from the cisterns and the souk as a new Ishmaelite who had discovered that he was a forgetful Jew who might remember… only what?
In truth, Your Grace has good reason to hold his breath and shut his eyes, fearful in thought and spirit for the story’s end… and no less fearfully, although ever so gently and clandestinely, did the two of us, the murderer and myself, plan to pluck my son from that crowd of celebrants and lead him back home to his bed. But when we stepped up and seized his lantern so as to make him follow us, he took fright and started to flee — and seeing us run after him, the celebrants at once joined in the pursuit. He ran down the long, deserted street of the Tarik Babel-Silseleh with his cloak flapping behind him like a big black bird — or so, from that moment, I began to think of him, an odd bird that must be pinioned before it flew away above our heads. He ran and ran through the cover of snow that made all of Jerusalem look like a single interconnected house, but instead of heading for home, for the quarter of the Jews, and then doubling back through the Middle Synagogue or the synagogue of Yohanan ben-Zakkai, he kept going straight ahead, turning neither left nor right until he came to the Bab, the Gate of the Chain leading up to the great mosque. He shook it a bit until he realized that it was locked, and then, without giving it any thought, as if trusting in the snow to protect him, turned left and proceeded in the same easy, flying, unconcerned lope to the second gate, the Bal-el-Matra, from which he entered the great, deserted square in front of the golden dome, which the snow had covered with a fresh head of white hair. The echoes of his footsteps were still ringing out when he was seized by two sleepy Mohammedan guards. Perhaps they too thought that he was some kind of black bird that had fallen from on high and soon would fly back there, because why else would they have hurried to bind him with long strips of cloth and lay him on the stairs amid the columns, where his squirming shape now made an imprint in the snow?
My master and teacher. Rabbi Shabbetai. My master and teacher. Your Grace. Rabbi Haddaya. Señor y maestro mío Shabbetai Hananiah. Hananiah Shabbetai. Su merced… can it be?
In no time he was surrounded, because the news spread quickly from gate to gate across that huge deserted square, from the golden dome to the silver dome, so that soon more sleepy guards appeared, although this time there was no telling what time of sleep my son had roused them from. They crowded about him and bent over him to read in his eyes the mad chastisements that he planned for them and that he was begging them to inflict now on himself so that he might demonstrate how he was the first to awaken and recollect his true nature. And although the guards could see for themselves that the man in the cloak spread out in the snow on the steps was an infirm soul, they did not, simple beings that they were, give credence to this soul’s suffering but rather suspected it of taking pleasure in itself and its delusions and sought to share that pleasure with it, so that they began to make sport of it and roll it in the snow, a glitter marking the passage of a half-concealed knife from hand to hand. And I, my master and teacher, was outside the gate, I was watching from afar while listening to the distant bell of a lost flock, silently, wretchedly waiting for the worst of the night to wear itself out and the morning star to appear in the east, faint and longed-for, so that I might go to him, to the far pole of his terror and sorrow, whether as his slaughterer or whether as the slaughterer’s inspector, and release him from his earthly bonds, because I was certain that he had already deposited his seed…