Mr. Mani (45 page)

—A stone kicked loose by the thoroughbred hooves of the consular horse...

—In truth,
doña mía!

—She was all by herself.

—With the infant, of course—with
baby Moses
in his basket, wrapped in my fox-fur robe and jouncing from bend to bend.

—Riding after me as boldly as you please.

—I took cover on a ledge of the hillside, among some large shrubs in that wild chaparral, from where I could watch her in the distance. She waited for the caravan to round a bend before carefully emerging from her concealment in the arroyo, small but perfectly erect on her black horse. Just then a ray of sunlight glinted off her head, illumining her hair a copper red.

—A saucy spirit, madame—but whom did she get it from? Must I venture a surmise?

—I too asked myself, madame, how far she was prepared to follow me. Well, toward evening, after many long hours of riding on that narrow trail without espying each other, we finally rode out of the verdant gloom into an open valley, which was the Plain of Sharon, and pressed on a ways, camels, donkeys, and mules, through fields of figs and olives, until we came to a high hedge of prickly pears that belonged to the village of Emmaus, where we made camp and asked for water, basking in the setting sun. I turned to Jerusalem to say the afternoon prayer—and there, from out of the dark opening of the arroyo, from its very aperture, appeared the consular horse, ridden by Obstinacy and bound for Folly.

—It went on like that all the way to Jaffa, all the way to the ship.

—We found a wet nurse in Emmaus too. And in Ramleh and Azur also.

—No, Doña Flora. It was not lack of milk that made her go from wet nurse to wet nurse, because I happened to know that the dried-up left teat had begun to flow freely again since the Day of the Rejoicing of the Law. The explanation I gave myself was that she wished to give the infant a taste of all the ambrosias between Jerusalem and Jaffa so that he might retain some memory of his poor father.

—How say you? Have you in truth, madame, forgotten him? Has my only son already been forgotten?

—No, you see no tears, not a trace of them. I will ask His Grace. Rabbi Shabbetai, has my master and teacher forgotten the only son I offered up to him, my Yosef?

—Blessed be the Name of the Lord! Did he not sign clearly, Doña Flora? He has not forgotten. Blessed be His Name! “Rabbi Yannai says, ‘We can account neither for the good fortune of the wicked nor for the torments of the righteous.' “

—How making sport of you, madame? Why, had you not, Doña Flora, insisted on bringing your motherless niece from Jerusalem for a hasty betrothal, the three of us might still have the pleasure of seeing him alive! Instead of huddling together in this shabby inn run by Greek rebels against the Porte, we could have been sitting with him on your big divan in Constantinople, by the large hearth facing the Bosporus, enjoying the rosebushes in Abdul Mejid's royal gardens and pondering—but no more than that!—life in Paradise.

—What mean I? What mean you?

—In a word ... in a word ... with all due respect, you were hasty, madame... 

—No, Doña Flora, no,
rubissa.
How could I dare be angry with you? And what would it avail me if I were? Tell me that! If it would avail me, I would be angry at once. May I hope to die, madame, for not having understood my son, my own flesh and blood! Accursed am I for not realizing where he was leading us! I was an innocent, a
cabeza de calabaza;
too innocent for words...

—Because I did not know that behind every thought hides another thought.

—A thought born from the indulgence that you showed him in your home. Does His Grace know that when he was away on his travels, Doña Flora had my son sleep by her side, in His Grace's own bed?

—A boy! Of course ... although not such a little one ... and a most sensitive and astute one ... I, in any case, never had the privilege of lying in His Grace's bed...

—Why not, madame? Who of us does not desire to lie with those greater and stronger than ourselves and be warmed by their superior heat? I, too, after all, was but a boy when sent to Rabbi Shabbetai ... ‘twas many ages ago ... my father, may he rest in peace ... after the defeat of Napoleon, the cannon would blast away over the Bosporus at night for fear of the Russ ... and I was so greatly afraid that I ran to His Grace's bed from my little room at the end of the corridor. But I was too in awe of him to climb into it ... Does His Grace remember me, a little lad standing there in my
blouson
and singing to him Tia Loja's
conacero

All kiss the
mezuzá,
But I, I kiss your face,
Istraiqua, apple of my eye ?

He is smiling a bit, madame. He remembers the melody. He is smiling, God be praised! It would take but a word from Him to create him anew. His salvation will come in a twinkling ... See, Your Grace, I am back! Your Grace's
pisgado
is back, and there yet will be song...

—Go? Where?

—No, madame, do not make me leave!

—No, do not send me away, madame. Nor are you able to...

—Most definitely not!

—I have a right ... I am family ... I have been for ages...

—I will not sing anymore.

—There will be no singing.

—To make a long story short
betahsir,
as the Ishmaelites say in Jerusalem...

—That is just it, Doña Flora. Every thought has its pocket, and in every pocket is another thought. And from such a pocket our young lad took the thoughts discarded by the rabbi, those that fell out of his dreams at night and were left between his pillow and the wall, or lying under his bed ... because why else would he have put his trust in so frightful a thought as that which led to his death?

—But all that already reached you with that irascible emissary, Rabbi Gavnel ben-Yehoshua...

—Once more?

—He had his throat cut, madame: like a tender lamb, or a black goat in the dead of night...

—Now it is you who shudder, madame—the tears are now yours...

—But what will it avail you?

—Why multiply your pain?

—If you must ... Well, then,
rubissa,
he went out at night without a lantern, which is against the law in Jerusalem, with no light or badge, and in a black robe, to make matters worse...

—He turned into a lane in the Souk-el-Lammamin on his way to the Via Dolorosa. ‘Twas the night of the nativity of the Christians' messiah, may his bones rot in hell. He was stopped by the watch—and rather than let himself be apprehended and brought to trial, he sought to flee. Nor did he run to the Stambouli Synagogue or the synagogue of Yohanan ben-Zakkai, where he could have hidden in the Holy Ark, but up the lane, through the Vidal house, and to the great mosque on the Haram-el-Sharif, perhaps because he wished to cast suspicion on the Muslims rather than on the Jews. And there, on the steps leading to the Dome of the Rock, he had his throat slit, madame. He was butchered like a black sheep.

—By our Ishmaelite cousins, those masters of the hidden knife.

—And thereabout did I wonder—did I grieve—did I sigh—did I question—did I beg to know—all during my stay with him, from the moment he pulled me to my feet in the sands of Jaffa, which I kissed with great love as soon as I was hurled ashore—yanked me to my feet and asked at once about you, madame—why were you not there—aghast to see me by myself...

—Because he was certain that I had you with me aboard ship, or that you had me with you.

—He knew nothing of Rabbi Shabbetai's last-minute ban on your coming, Doña Flora. He stood there on the shore, looking mournfully at the deckhands folding the sails, hoping that perhaps they would still produce you from the hold, hee hee hee...

—What was there to explain, Doña Flora? His Grace had explained nothing to me ... did His Grace give any reason for it?

—He is looking at me, the poor man ... he is thinking...”Heal him now, O God, I beseech Thee”...

—A kind of mother?

—Perhaps, madame. In truth, he never had enough of his own mother, who was in a hurry to depart to a better world. But were you only a mother to him, madame, or were you also a sister of sorts?

—I mean, a sort of elder sister, someone to share one's secrets with and tell one's strangest dreams to ... There he stood, our Yosef, preoccupied with his own great grief and disappointment, yet at the same time, quite sure of himself and already gazing off into the distance, a high, black consular fez on his head, speaking to the villagers around him with much patience, as if they were his friends. I noticed that he could already chat blithely away in Ishmaelitic, and when I realized that my solo arrival was a far from joyous occasion for him, I sought in my despondency to cast myself reverently back down into the soft, sweet sands of Jaffa. But he seized my arm, and I could tell at once from how he did it that something had changed in him...

—From the firmness of it. He pulled me up out of the sand and commanded me, “That will do,
Papá,
the horses are waiting and we have a long way to go...”

—In truth,
mí amiga
in truth, Doña Flora: he had brought neither donkeys nor mules nor camels for us from Jerusalem, but horses, an entire horse for each of us—and most wondrous was the horse he had chosen for you,
rubissa
... I still can picture it, a most exquisite mare, with a brightly colored saddlecloth laid over her...

—Especially for you. He let no one mount her, and for three whole days she trotted by our side without a rider, all the way to Jerusalem, carrying only my bags of spices. Each time we looked at her, madame, we thought of you and of His Grace's prohibition. The more we sought to comprehend it, the more we simply sighed.

—With sorrow, but without resentment, for I still felt as if I were in a dream, as if I still were rocked by the motion of the waves. We left the noisy marketplace of Jaffa, which was bubbling with colors and smells, and made our way up streets of stairs that ended in orchards and fields of large flowers and fierce thorns ... and suddenly, madame, there were only the two of us, father and son, with the broad land all around us and a harsh, inhuman sun overhead before which the very sky appeared to cringe.

—He pushed on that first day as far as the great khan of Kafr Azur, because he wished to catch the dawn caravan, in such a hurry was he to get back to his consul in Jerusalem. Does His Grace still remember the route?

—Truly, Doña Flora, truly I am confused! Indeed, the rabbi came from Damascus and entered the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan ... and so it should be, by the front door and not by the rear one. Then my master and teacher never got to see Jaffa? A pity, for ‘tis a saucy town...

—In truth, I clutch at my memories as one clutches at a lifeline, for I can picture nothing that happened without welling up with compassion. Thus it began—with a father riding behind his son in the Holy Land, rather chagrined and bewildered, regarding the wasteland around him, although ‘twas nôt always waste.

—Well said, madame, that is so. Suddenly you see a fine grain field, or an orchard, or some date palms and fruit trees by a water course, or a peasant's hut, or a group of children playing by a well—and then there is wasteland again and the remnants of a most ancient devastation. At sunset we reached a large khan and found it deserted, because the caravan had already moved on to pass the night in Ramleh. Fresh straw was scattered for us in a corner of the hall, beside a blackened wall, and our pallets were made there. I stepped outside and looked at thé vast and most exceedingly dark plain in which there shone not a single light. Smoke curled up from an oven where bread was being baked for our supper. Yosef went to see to our horses. I watched him, a handsome, erect young man, stride over to a hedgerow of prickly pears and hang the feedbags on the horse's necks while patting their heads and talking to them, his head nestled in the mane of your mare. Perhaps he was whispering some consolation to her for her mistress's failure to arrive! An Ishmaelite standing nearby made some remark to him and he listened with friendly attention—and once again I was struck by how the soft, pampered youth who went shopping with you in the bazaar of Kapele Carse, carrying your dresses and perfumes, had turned into a young man beneath whose newly grown mustache there was already something quite secretive. He resembled my father as a young man, before his bankruptcy, and I suddenly felt such a bitterness of spirit, señores, that I longed to return to the sea I had come from no more than a few hours before, which had played with me and tossed me on its waves. I thought of my parents of blessed memory, and all at once I felt a great desire to say the kaddish for them in the Holy Land and to pray for their souls. And so I asked my son if there might be a village nearby with enough Jews in it for a prayer group. At first he was as startled as if I had asked him to pluck a star from the sky. “
Jews? Here?
” “And is there anywhere without them?” I marveled. He cocked his head and stared at me, and then he smiled a bit—and I wonder, Your Grace, whether it was then that the frightful idea was born in him, or whether it had been there all along—and after mulling it over for a moment he said softly, “Right away,
Papá,
right away.” He ducked through a gap in the prickly pear hedge and stepped into some mud huts, from which he pulled out one shadowy form after another and brought them to me. I looked about me and saw these dark-faced, bare-legged Ishmaelites, some with battered fezes on their heads and some with black keffiyehs, most silent and docile, as if they had just been torn out of their first sleep, madame. “Here,
Papá,
” says Yosef, “here is your
minyan
” He frightened me. “But who are these men, son?” I asked him. And he, standing there in the still of evening,
señor y maestro mío,
he said,
mí amiga
Doña Flora, as if he were
loco
in the head, “But these are Jews,
Papá,
they just don't know it yet...”