Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam (23 page)

Gamzu spent about a year in her father’s house, until his strength began to return to him. Then he went his way and traveled to Vienna to have his eye treated. He spent a year in Vienna and left with one eye only. All the time he was in the hospital he consoled himself with the thought that his sight would return and he would then go back to Gemulah. When he left the hospital he had no funds for travel; all his resources had been eaten up in doctors’ fees. Akiva Amrami met him and said, “Obadiah and Obadiowitz are seeking a man like you, who would be willing to travel on their behalf to distant countries and bring back rare books.” He went to see Obadiah and Obadiowitz; they marked out all the places he was to go to, paid his traveling expenses, and authorized him to spend on their account as much as he needed. God prospered his way and Gamzu gave satisfaction to his employers. He was able to save some of his earnings, and so he set out for the land where Gemulah lived.

In the meantime something had happened in Gemulah’s country, the like of which hardly occurred once in a jubilee cycle. A holy man, a
Hakham
of Jerusalem, had appeared there and stayed for six months. Six more months had already gone by since his departure, yet his name was still on everybody’s lips. Those who had been sick spoke of how
Hakham
Gideon had relieved their suffering. Others told of how
Hakham
Gideon had taught them ways to ease the burdens of life. He had also shown how all kinds of illnesses might be avoided, even without incantations, even in the case of infants who normally die of the evil eye. He had taken no fees from them, and if they had given him a present he had made them a gift in return. Gamzu was of the opinion that this
Hakham
Gideon was no Jerusalem
Hakham
, but a European man of learning, an ethnologist or something of the kind. He saw as evidence of this the fact that Gideon had recorded in his notebook all the songs he had heard from Gemulah and even her conversations with her father in the language they had devised for themselves.

So Gamzu returned to Gemulah’s home, and when Gemulah saw him, she rejoiced as a bride over her bridegroom. She roasted a kid for him and baked
kavanim
and sang for him all the songs that
Hakham
Gideon had liked. Nor did she concern herself with the affairs of Gadi Ben Ge’im, her neighbor, who insisted that Gemulah had been betrothed to him since the time when they were nursed together at his mother’s breast; for Gemulah’s mother having died in giving birth to her, the mother of Gadi had reared her as a daughter.

At this time evil fell upon Gevariah, Gemulah’s father. He had gone up to the mountaintop to learn from the eagles how they renew their youth. There an eagle had attacked him, not heeding the fact that Gevariah came in peace, without any weapon, not even a stick. Gevariah fought back, and had he not managed to beat off the eagle, he would have been mauled beneath its talons and torn to pieces and devoured. Even so, the eagle injured his left arm, lacerating the flesh. Gevariah neglected the wound until he took sick and died.

Before his death, he appointed a night of dancing, for his own and Gemulah’s sake, for such was the custom in their country. Seven nights before a betrothal they appoint a night of dances, and it is usual on such occasions for the young men to come, and each snatches a wife for himself from among the girl dancers. Gamzu was aware that Gadi Ben Ge’im intended to snatch Gemulah, but he anticipated him and won her and made her his bride.

For seven days and seven nights they held the wedding feast. Gevariah lay upon his mat and conducted the dances with his uninjured hand. Seven different dances he conducted each night, and eight kinds of dances each day, that Gemulah might give birth to a son who would be circumcised on the eighth day. With the end of the seven days of feasting, Gevariah’s life ended, too.

Gemulah mourned her father for seven days and nights, with songs of lamentation every day and night. At the end of her first week of mourning she made a great memorial, with songs and dances full of dread and wonder. After thirty days had passed, Gamzu began to speak to her of the journey they must take. Gemulah heard him out, but could not grasp what this meant for her. When she understood she protested strongly. Little by little she was persuaded, until she consented to leave, but she put off making the journey from week to week and from month to month. All this time the moon did not affect her; it seemed that because of her grief at her father’s death the moon had no power over her. She was also protected by the charms, though there was no change in her condition, and she was like an unripe fig that is still closed up, on the tree, her sweetness all stored within. At the end of the year of mourning, she said of her own accord that she was ready for the journey. Gamzu hired two camels, and they rode until they came to the edge of the desert, where the caravans go out. They joined a caravan, journeying for forty days until they came to a settled region. Gamzu bought shoes for her feet and dresses for her to wear and a kerchief for her head, and they rode on until they reached a port. There he hired a ship, and they sailed to the Land of Israel. And because they were traveling to the Land of Israel, God preserved them from all evil. But it was not so in the Land itself. As Rabbi Alshikh wrote, concerning the dispute in the Talmud as to whether a man is judged every day or on Rosh Hashanah only: the latter applies outside the Land, but in the Land of Israel one is judged daily; each single day the Holy One sits in judgment upon His people. The beginning of the judgment was that Gemulah no longer sang her sweet songs. Later, all speech was withheld from her. Next, she was possessed by melancholy. Lastly, she fell seriously ill. With her sickness she began to torment Gamzu. His plight grew worse from day to day.

As Gamzu was relating this, I heard a sound like the opening of a window. At the same moment I could hear spoken words. I was not afraid, but I was certainly astonished, since besides myself and Gamzu there was no one in the house, and neither he nor I had opened a window. I began to recollect the dream I had had on the previous night, the train I saw and the window that opened. And again I was amazed at the power of dreams, which come back to us when we are awake as if they were real happenings. Once more I heard the same sound. I listened attentively and thought, Ginat must have come home and opened a window. But how could one explain the sound of spoken words? Gamzu saw I was distracted, and said, “You are tired. Do you want to sleep?”

“No, I am not tired, and I don’t want to sleep.”

“Are you troubled about something?”

“I can hear footsteps.”

“If I can trust my own ears,” said Gamzu, “there has not been a sound or even an echo of one.”

“If that is so, I must be mistaken. Let us go back to what we were talking about.”

Gamzu began to speak again about his experiences with Gemulah in Jerusalem. Many a time her life had hung by a thread, and had not the Holy One helped him, he would not have been able to endure his distress for a single day. But God’s mercies are great. He sends a man afflictions, but He also gives him the strength to withstand them.

I do not remember the exact sequence of Gamzu’s remarks, but I recall that he told me again about the garment, and in bringing this to mind made mention of his teacher. Having spoken of him, he also mentioned the time of his youth, which he had spent as a student in yeshivas.

You know Gamzu as a man with many connections, in demand among scholars of the East and West alike for books and manuscripts. But he had begun as any other yeshiva student, boarding out on the charity of the local townspeople. Once a certain householder sent him to buy a copy of the
Concise Shulhan Arukh.
At the bookseller’s he came across a book quite different from the rest. Every other line of print was indented, and every word had vowel points; some lines resembled the Great Hymn of Praise sung by the ministering angels, some the confessional
Al Het.
He looked at it for a long while, full of wonder; never in his life had he seen a book like this. The bookseller watched him, and told him he could have it for forty kreutzer. For a yeshiva student, forty kreutzer was a large sum; even if he sold his long coat, he would not get that amount for it. But he had a box which a carpenter had made him in return for giving lessons to his son. It was something of a luxury, since all his possessions, apart from the clothes which he stood up in, could be wrapped in his shirt; but it gave him the kind of pleasure one feels in owning an article of intrinsic beauty. He gave his box to the bookseller and received the book. It was the
divan
of the poems of Judah Halevi, edited by S. D. Luzzatto. He read it again and again, until he knew all the poems by heart. And still he was unsatisfied. He began to pore over festival prayers and penitential hymns and elegies and old prayer books, reading and transcribing for himself. He could not afford the paper to copy down all the things he liked, so he noted down only the opening lines as reminders. Because he was so fastened to poetry, he came unfastened at the yeshiva. Accordingly he went and hired himself out to a bookseller. The shopkeeper could see that he knew a great deal, and sent him out to widows with the books of their husbands left on their hands, as well as to the “enlightened” rich who were clearing their homes of sacred literature. In time he began to make his own purchases. Later, he started traveling to far-off countries, and still later, to lands which no European had ever crossed. He reached the farthest edge of the desert and brought out books and manuscripts of which the most eminent bibliographers had no knowledge, as well as
divans
by anonymous poets who in their holiness and humility had left no record of their names.

Gamzu rolled himself a cigarette and laid it down. He rubbed his dead eye, smiled out of his good eye, and again took up the cigarette, holding it unlit between his fingers and saying, “When I pass over to the next world, they will lead me to the place where carcasses like me belong. I shall lie there in my shame, justifying the divine decree that I have been left exactly where I am, telling myself I have no right to expect anything better, naked as I am of merit and good works. At that moment, rank upon rank of demons will be massing against me, created out of my own sins. They will rise on high before the seat of judgment to accuse me and make hell deep for me. While waiting for the sentence, what shall I do? I shall recite from memory the hymns I know, until I forget where I am, and become so excited by them that I shall start shouting them aloud. The holy poets will hear me and say, ‘What noise is that from the grave? Let us go and see.’ They will come down and see this wretched soul and take me up in their hallowed hands, saying, ‘You are the man who rescued us from the depths of oblivion.’ And they will smile at me in the humility of their virtue and say, ‘Gabriel Gamzu, come with us.’ So they will bring me to dwell with them, and I will find shelter in the shade of their holiness. That is how I console myself in my misery.”

Gamzu sat there smiling, with the expression of a man who knowingly deceives himself and is aware that he is only joking at his own expense. But I knew him very well; I understood that he believed in what he had said, more completely, perhaps, than he would admit to himself. I looked at his face, the face of a Jew out of the Middle Ages, reincarnated in this generation in order to procure manuscripts and early prints for scholars and investigators, enabling them to write observations and annotations and bibliographies, so that men like me might read these works and delight in the beauty of their verse.

Thus Gamzu bore his sufferings and solaced himself with the thought of better things to come. Meanwhile he was fully taken up with the troubles of his wife, an incurable invalid. I began to speak to him about nursing homes where the sick receive some degree of attention. “It would be a good idea to place Gemulah in a nursing home,” I said. “As for the cost, I have here the first payment of twelve pounds; the rest will surely come.”

Gamzu blew on his skullcap. “Those twelve pounds,” he said, “are what I received for the manuscripts I sold to whoever got the talismans.” I asked if he suspected this person of taking the magic objects by deceit.

“I am not a suspicious man,” he said. “It is possible that whoever took them did not notice them at first, and when he did so, told himself that since they had come into his possession they were his. Or perhaps he believed that the charms were part of the lot he had bought. He may sometimes have thought one way, and sometimes another. Morality admits of compromise, and a man can still be moral even if he compromises according to his need; especially where books are concerned.”

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that he knows the properties of the charms?”

“How should he know? If an article of that kind came into my hands by chance, and no one told me what it was, would
I
know? Besides, all these scholars are modern men; even if you were to reveal the properties of the charms, they would only laugh at you; and if they bought them, it would be as specimens of folklore. Ah, folklore, folklore! Everything which is not material for scientific research they treat as folklore. Have they not made our holy Torah into either one or the other? People live out their lives according to the Torah, they lay down their lives for the heritage of their fathers; then along come the scholars, and make the Torah into ‘research material,’ and the ways of our fathers into folklore.”

I listened carefully to what Gamzu said, and thought of those scholars who acquire what their original owners regarded as articles of magic, but which for those who have bought them are only so much bric-a-brac; and I thought, too, of this poor Gamzu, afflicted and dejected, whom the Holy One had crushed with sorrow. If we are allowed to judge a man by his deeds, surely it was not for the deeds Gamzu had done in this incarnation that he had been so doomed. But who was I to involve myself in these issues? Such as I was, I should be satisfied that the Holy One had, in a manner of speaking, not looked in my direction for some little while. I passed my hand over my forehead as if to set these thoughts aside, and gave all my attention to my companion.