“Yes, but . . .”
“What?”
“I’ve seen you before,” he said in a rush. “I’ve seen you twice. Once, two years, three months, and twelve days ago. You were walking past the church of Saint Agricole in Avignon. The second time was five weeks and three days ago, in the market. You bought some herbs.”
He said it with such intensity, such seriousness, that she looked slightly frightened, then smiled. “Possibly,” she replied.
“Definitely. On the first occasion, you were dressed in an old brown cloak, which you had up over your head. You were not carrying anything, and you seemed in something of a hurry. You were alone. You only slowed to walk around a puddle on the ground. I don’t know how it got there, it hadn’t been raining at all. You were not wearing a star. The next time, you were wearing a blue cloak, with a patch by the right shoulder. No one talked to you. You bought the herbs and paid for them with coins that you took from a little purse you carried in your right hand.”
“You remember a remarkable amount.”
“I remember very little, usually. Whole days go by and they are blotted from my memory. I cannot recall anything that I was doing yesterday. For daily events I have a terrible memory. These were not daily events. My life has not been the same since. I have had nights without any sleep, when my head has pounded. I could not concentrate on anything. My friends and my master have criticized me for my rudeness, all because of you.”
“I don’t see—”
“I never want to see you again,” he said, growing angry as he thought of it. “How dare you.”
Had she grown angry in response, or been frightened, or turned away saying no more, then all would have been well. Olivier was sure of it. Instead she smiled at him, not mockingly, but with such sympathy and understanding. I wish I could help you, but I cannot, she seemed to be saying. And was there something in her glance that was a response, or a reflection of what he felt? Olivier recoiled from that smile, turned and stumbled, then ran away, oblivious to the strange looks the few other people in the street gave him.
He ran through the town and out through the gates, past the scattered houses and workshops outside and into the open country, then walked steadily and purposefully but without a destination. After an hour or so the effort calmed him, his feet slowed and his breathing returned to normal. He was not free of her; if anything, he had made his situation even worse. But slowly his mood lightened. He did not become happy, but a sort of peace came on him, and his mind began to wander, trying to think of everything and anything except for the way she had smiled at him. He mingled his lesson with Gersonides with the encounter in the street, blending what he had heard with what he had felt, the one turning into a metaphor for the other. “Woman of darkness, wisdom touching the light.” The line came to him, and he was pleased with it. The next one followed, then the next; soon the whole poem—short but so tightly packed—was in his mind dancing over his thoughts.
He shivered, though it was not cold. He walked back into Carpentras as quickly as he could, found a quiet spot in his lodgings, and, by the flickering light of a tallow candle, wrote the poem down. Then he slept, better than he had for months.
REBECCA DID NOT sleep well; she lay on the straw pallet beside the cold grate, wrapped in her blanket, her mind turning over what had happened that evening. But what had happened? A deranged, bizarre young man had spoken to her in a way that was hardly understandable, then had run away. That was all. Nothing to be concerned about.
But she was frightened nonetheless. Not of the young man—that would be ridiculous—but because of the reaction he had caused within her. For two years now, she had secluded herself in the rabbi’s household. No man had even looked at her or spoken to her. She had felt safe for the first time since she had become an orphan, forced to wander the world looking after herself. She had made herself forget that time; the loneliness of it all had been banished from her mind. Anything outside the cocoon she had built around herself was dangerous, and reminded her of fear and hunger. She knew far too much of the cruelty that lay just beyond Gersonides’s hearth, and away from his quiet, unquestioning protection.
For the old man had found her wandering the streets bedraggled and bruised from the evening she had been attacked—by whom she knew not, nor for what reason. She had asked him for money, as the Jews had often been generous to her, and they didn’t frighten her. He had looked carefully at her and seen her despair.
“I have no money with me,” he said sadly.
She had shrugged. It didn’t matter.
“But I believe I have some at home. Walk with me, and I will see if I can find it.”
She got up and walked by his side. He said nothing, but did not seem embarrassed by her company, did not want her to walk behind him to guard his reputation. And when they got to his house—this house, the first she had been in since she had left the empty place her parents had occupied—he ladled a bowl of vegetable soup onto a plate for her and made her sit and eat. Then gave her some bread and water. Then some more soup. And some more.
“The woman who looked after me has decided she can stand my habits no longer,” he said when she’d finished. “I am too messy for her, and always shouting when she tidies my papers away for me. She could not grasp that what seemed mere chaos to an unlearned eye was in fact carefully arranged and designed. Just like the world, no doubt, seems to men who cannot understand the complexity of God’s creation.”
She smiled at him. His face was wrinkled and severe, and would have been forbidding had it not been for the vivacity of his eyes, the slightly amused way he had looked on as she had (no doubt) eaten up both his dinner and his breakfast for the following morning.
“So I am a desperate man, you see. Abandoned, and alone in the world. Do you know how that feels? I see you know all too well. Will you help an old man in his hour of distress? That is the question.”
“Help you, sir? How?”
“Stay here awhile. Cook me some more soup. Do all those mysterious tasks which women do so easily, and which send me into a panic. My people bring me food, which is kind of them, but they are forever bothering me. They expect to be paid in conversation. You could not only keep body and soul together, but you could defend my sanity from their constant chattering. Be warned though; I am a dreadful man. I shout and grumble almost without ceasing. My habits are considered all but impossible. I sleep little and often talk to myself in the middle of the night. I am, as you see all too well, horribly untidy, and become quite ill-humored if I am disturbed while I am working or thinking. You will no doubt come to hate me cordially.”
She had scarcely left his side since, and loved him like mother and father combined. Despite his warning, his ill temper consisted of little more than a tendency to complain about lost papers or a bad back. He had no violence in his soul whatever, only gentleness and immense patience, for to begin with she made many mistakes. But bit by bit, they became indispensable to each other. The dark little house settled down to a reasonable level of organized chaos that satisfied them both; she worked all day—preparing food, cleaning and tidying, chopping wood—and it was not hard work, as the house was scarcely more than one room on top of the other, and the upper room was reserved for his papers. Occasionally, as a special treat, he would let her up there to sweep the floor under his supervision, clucking over her anxiously lest she tip over a pile of papers or disrupt his personal universe of manuscripts. And once a week she would prepare a special meal, get out the candles, and sit quietly with him, and they would talk; wonderful, fascinating talks, for he was a magician with words and could do anything with them. She learned much from him and through careful, discreet questioning, he learned much about her. She knew this, and saw that he did not mind what he knew.