17
* * *
IN BED AT NIGHT he would wrap himself in his quilt, turn out the light, and watch the flickering flashes of lightning on the wall as he listened to the pounding of the rain and the rolls of thunder beating like iron chains on the tiled roof just above his head; he could reach out to touch the slanting ceiling and know that between his fingers and the forces of nature there was nothing more than a couple of inches of plaster and the roof tiles above.
The proximity of the cold, the wind, and the rain made him fall fast asleep, but after about half an hour he woke, because he thought he heard a creaking door downstairs or footsteps outside in the yard. At once he leapt across to the window, alert as a burglar, and peered between the slats of the shutter to see if she was going out into the night. Or coming back, and locking the front door behind her. Was she alone? Or not?
This possibility aroused a wave of blind rage in Shmuel, mingled with self-pity and a certain bitter resentment against her and her secrets. Her mysterious games. Her strange men who might be wandering around here, coming and going in these nights of wind and rain. Or maybe they did not come and sneak in here, but rather she went out to them?
But what does she owe you, in fact? Just because you told her all kinds of miserable stories about your disappointments, and about your having been left, and all sorts of things about hydrologist runts, is she obliged to tell you the story of her life or the details of her relationships in return? Why should she? What can you offer her, and what right have you to expect anything from her, other than your salary and the cooking and washing arrangements that were agreed between you and her the day you arrived here?
With this, he went back to bed and wrapped himself up well, listening to the rain or to the deep silence between rain showers. He dropped off for a few minutes, woke in a fit of despair or rage, turned on the bedside light, read three or four pages without taking in what he was reading, switched the light off, tossed and turned, struggled to stifle an agony of lust under his quilt in the dark, turned on the light again, sat up in bed, heard the snoring sound of a motorcycle in the empty narrow streets, was swept by a wave of furious hatred toward her and also to some degree toward her spoiled old man. He got up, paced the room, sat down at the battered desk or on the deep stone windowsill, seeing her before him, slowly removing her boots and her stockings, her dress rolled up, the line of her hips shining white in the darkness and her eyes teasing him: Yes? I’m sorry? Did you want something from me? What exactly do you need or want this time? Is the loneliness getting too much for you? Or the remorse? And he rushed to the window again, to the door, to his kitchen corner, poured himself half a glass of cheap vodka and drank it in one gulp, like bitter medicine, went back to bed, cursing his lust and her ironic smile, hating the greenish flicker in her brown eyes which mocked him and always trusted their own power, and her dark hair cascading down over her left breast, hating her bare feet and her white knees right in front of him as she removed her stockings one at a time. Once more the rain was beating on the tiles immediately above his feverish body, and the wind abused the tops of the cypress trees outside his window, and Shmuel had to discharge his lust between his fingers, and immediately a murky wave of shame and loathing swept over him, and he swore he would leave this house, the crazy old man, and the widow, if she was indeed a widow, who abused him so mercilessly. He would leave tomorrow, or the day after. Or by the beginning of next week at the latest.
But where could he go?
He woke at nine or ten in the morning again, all groggy and raddled from a bad night’s sleep, his eyes full of tears of self-pity, cursing his body and his life, arguing with himself, get up, get up, you wretch, get up or the revolution will happen without you, pleading for another ten minutes, or five, turning over and dozing off, and waking again to find it was almost midday. And at four-thirty you have to be on duty again in the library, and as for her, the black widow, if by any chance she came into the kitchen and sat down to drink a glass of tea and spend a quarter of an hour there this morning, why, you’ve missed her again. Maybe you should get dressed and go out in search of some lunch, which will have to double as breakfast, and in fact supper too, because in the evening you will have nothing to eat except a couple of thick slices of bread and jam and the remains of the porridge that Sarah de Toledo brings to Gershom Wald every evening from her own kitchen across the road, in return for payment, according to whatever arrangement it is she has with Atalia Abravanel.
18
* * *
ONE EVENING GERSHOM WALD told him a true story about a band of crusaders who set off in the middle of the twelfth century from the region of Avignon to go to Jerusalem, to redeem the holy city from the infidel and to gain remission of sins and spiritual peace. On their way they traversed forests and plains, towns and villages, mountains and rivers. They were tested by various hardships, illnesses, quarrels, hunger, and bloody clashes with highway robbers and with other armed bands similarly making their way to Jerusalem bearing the cross. More than once they lost their way, more than once they were afflicted by plague, frost, and lack of food, more than once they were assailed by heartrending homesickness, but always, at every moment, they kept before their eyes the wondrous image of Jerusalem, a city not of this world, a city where there is neither evildoing nor suffering but eternal heavenly bliss with deep, limpid love, a city flooded with the everlasting light of mercy and compassion. So they made their way, crossing desolate valleys, scaling snowbound mountains, passing through windswept flatlands and grim regions of forsaken scrub-covered hills. Little by little their spirits fell, disappointment, weariness, and discomfiture gnawed at the fringes of the camp, some of them stole away by night and headed homeward one by one, some went out of their minds and others succumbed to despair and apathy as it gradually dawned on them that the Jerusalem they yearned for was not a real city but pure longing. But for all this, the crusaders continued to ride eastward toward Jerusalem, stumbling through mud, dust, and snow, dragging their weary feet along the bank of the River Po and the northern shore of the Adriatic Sea, until one summer evening, as the sun set, they came to a small vale, hemmed in by high mountains, in one of the inland regions of the land known as Slovenia. This vale seemed to them like the abode of God, full of springs with meadows and green pastures, woodlands and vines and orchards in blossom, and there was a small village built around a well, with a stone-paved square, with granaries and barns with sloping roofs. Flocks of sheep spread up the hillside, and patient cows stood dreamily here and there in the meadow, while geese wandered around. The peasants in the village seemed so calm and tranquil to them, and the black-haired girls so plump and smiling. And so it came about that these crusaders took counsel among themselves and decided to call the blessed vale Jerusalem, and there to bring their laborious journey to an end.
Thus they pitched camp on a hillside facing the village, watered and fed their weary mounts, bathed in the water of the stream, and after resting in this Jerusalem from the hardships of their journey, they set about building it with their own hands. They erected some twenty or thirty modest huts, allocated a plot of land to each man, paved roads, and built a little church with a charming bell tower. Over the years they married girls from the nearby village, and their children grew up paddling in the waters of their own Jordan, running around barefoot in the woods of Bethlehem, climbing the Mount of Olives, going down to Gethsemane, to the Kidron Valley and to Bethany, and playing hide-and-seek among the vineyards of Ein Gedi. “And so they live to this very day,” Gershom Wald concluded, “pure and free, in the holy city and the promised land, and all without shedding any more innocent blood and without fighting endlessly against hostile infidels. They live peaceably and happily in their Jerusalem, every man under his vine and under his fig tree. Unto the end of time. And how about you? Where do you intend to go from here, if anywhere?”
“You’re suggesting I should stay,” Shmuel said, with no question mark at the end of the sentence.
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“You’re in love with her.”
“Maybe a little, just with her shadow, not with her.”
“But you spend your whole life living among shadows. As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow.”
“Shadows, maybe. But I’m not so much of a servant. Not yet.”
19
* * *
ONE MORNING ATALIA went up to Shmuel’s attic and found him sitting at the desk, sorting through the papers he had put together when he was still hoping to complete his study of Jewish views of Jesus and submit it to Professor Gustav Yomtov Eisenschloss. She stood in the doorway with one hand on her hip, looking like a goosegirl in the meadow in Gershom Wald’s story, standing by the river watching her geese. She was wearing an apricot-colored cotton dress with a row of big buttons down the front. She had chosen to leave the top and bottom buttons undone. She had a silk scarf tied in a bow around her neck, and a dark belt around her waist with a mother-of-pearl buckle. She asked him in a mocking tone what had happened to make him get up before sunrise this morning (it was a quarter past eleven). Shmuel replied that broken hearts cannot sleep. Atalia responded that the opposite is true: it is well known that the brokenhearted always take refuge in the arms of Morpheus. Shmuel said that Morpheus, like everyone else, had slammed the door in his face. Atalia said that this was the very reason she had climbed up here, to open a door for him, namely to tell him that this evening their old man was being collected by car and taken to visit friends of his in Rehavia, and so Shmuel could enjoy a free evening.
“How about you? Are you also liberated this evening?”
She looked at him with those green-flecked brown eyes until he was compelled to look down at the ground. Her face was pale, her gaze seemed to go right through him and fix on something beyond him, but her body was unmistakably there, and her breasts rose and fell with each calm breath.
“I am always liberated,” Atalia said, “and I’m not doing anything this evening. Have you got a suggestion? A surprise? A temptation I cannot resist?”
Shmuel suggested a walk. Followed perhaps by a meal in a restaurant? Or maybe a film?
“All three suggestions are acceptable. Not necessarily in that order. I’ll invite you to the early show at the cinema, you invite me to dinner, and as for the walk—we’ll see. The evenings are cold now. Maybe we’ll just walk home. Walk each other home. Wald will probably be brought back between half past ten and eleven, and we’ll return a little earlier, be there to greet him. You come down to the kitchen at half past six this evening. And if I happen to be a little late, you won’t mind waiting for me, will you?”
Shmuel mumbled, “Thank you.” For ten minutes he stood at the window, trying to control his excitement. He took the inhaler out of his pocket and took two deep breaths. Then he sat down on the chair facing the window and looked out into the courtyard, which was glistening in the pale sunlight. He wondered what he would talk to Atalia about that evening. What did he know about her, in fact? That she was a widow, aged about forty-five, the daughter of Shealtiel Abravanel, who had tried to challenge Ben-Gurion just before the War of Independence and been removed from office, and now here she was in this secluded old house with the cripple Gershom Wald, who had described her as his “mistress.” But what was their relationship? Which of them now owned the house, inscribed on its iron gate RESIDENCE OF JEHOIACHIN ABRAVANEL WHOM G-D PROTECT, TO SHEW THAT THE LORD IS UPRIGHT ? Was Atalia, just like him, simply a lodger of Gershom Wald’s? Or was Wald Atalia’s lodger? And who was Jehoiachin Abravanel? And what was the nature of the bond between the old cripple and this strong woman who invaded your dreams at night? And who were his predecessors in this attic, and why had they disappeared? And why had he been made to sign an agreement to keep his work here a secret?
Shmuel made up his mind to investigate all of these questions, one by one, and in due course to find a full answer to each of them. In the meantime, he took a shower, powdered his face with baby talc, put on clean clothes, and tried unsuccessfully to comb his beard. Despite his efforts, it remained as tangled as ever.
“Leave it. There’s no point,” Shmuel whispered to himself.
20
* * *
HERE AND THERE, even in the Middle Ages, some Jewish voices were raised against the crudeness of the stories that derided Jesus. An example is Rabbi Gershom Hakohen in the introduction to his book The Portion of the Lawgiver, where he writes that the contemptuous tales about Jesus are “foolishness and vanity that a man of learning should be ashamed to let past his lips” (though his book, too, Shmuel noted, attempts to cast doubt on the reliability of the New Testament stories). Rabbi Judah Halevi, in his Kuzari, written in the twelfth century, puts into the mouth of a Christian scholar the story of Jesus’ divine birth, the main account of his life, and the idea of the holy Trinity. The Christian expounds all these before the Khazar king, who is not persuaded and does not accept the Christian faith, because the whole story seems to him remote from plain reason. It should be observed that Judah Halevi cites the essence of the story of Jesus’ life without distortion, without mockery, and even with a measure of persuasive power.
As for Maimonides, who also lived in the twelfth century, in his Mishneh Torah he described Jesus as a false prophet, yet he believed that Christianity represented a step forward in humanity’s march from paganism to belief in the God of Israel. In his Epistle to Yemen Maimonides states that Jesus’ father was a gentile and his mother a Jewess, and that Jesus himself had no hand in all that his disciples said and did, or in all the tales with which they surrounded his person after his death. Maimonides even states that Jewish sages in Jesus’ day may have played a part in his death.
Unlike those writers who attacked Jesus’ memory from Muslim lands, Rabbi David Kimhi (also known as RaDaK) wrote in Christian Provence. In The Book of the Covenant, a work that is attributed to him, we catch an echo of certain theological polemics that divided the Christian world itself. Some Christian theologians maintained that Jesus was the incarnation of God in flesh and blood, while others believed that he was entirely spirit and not flesh at all, which was why, when he was in his mother’s womb, he neither ate nor drank. Kimhi makes fun of the latter claim and elaborates on the paradox of a fetus that is not flesh and blood inhabiting the body of a woman of flesh and blood. Jesus “came forth from the known place, as small as other babes, and excreted and urinated like other babes, and performed no wonder until he went down with his father and mother into Egypt, and there he learnt much wisdom [i.e., sorcery], and when he went up to the pure Land of Israel he performed the miracles described in your scriptures, all by virtue of the wisdom he learnt in Egypt,” Kimhi writes in his Book of the Covenant. And he adds that if Jesus had not been flesh and blood, he could not have died on the cross.
It’s a curious fact, Shmuel wrote in a note to himself on a loose piece of paper, that however much these Jews engage with the supernatural stories surrounding Jesus’ parentage and birth, his life and his death, they studiously avoid any confrontation with the spiritual or moral content of his gospel. It is as if they are content to refute the miracles and contradict the wonders, and as if by this means the gospel itself will disappear without trace. And it is also strange that in all these writings there is no mention of Judas Iscariot. And yet, had it not been for Judas, there might not have been a crucifixion, and had there been no crucifixion, there would have been no Christianity.
21
* * *
THE EVENING AIR was cold and dry, and the narrow streets were empty, shrouded with a fine mist that thickened a little around the streetlamps. Here and there, a cat crossed their path, hurrying between two patches of shadow. Atalia was wrapped in a dark overcoat which left only the delicate outline of her head showing, while Shmuel wore his student duffel coat and the shapka which covered his head and shaded his forehead. Only his bushy beard projected forward wildly. He found it difficult to restrain his mad gallop to match Atalia’s measured step. From time to time
he pressed ahead, and then, ashamed of his haste, stopped for a moment to wait for her.
“Why are you running?” she asked.
Shmuel hastened to apologize:
“I’m sorry. I’m used to walking alone, and when I’m on my own I always hurry.”
“Hurry where?”
“I don’t know. No idea. Chasing my own tail.”
Atalia slipped her arm through his and said:
“You’re not chasing anyone this evening. And no one is chasing you. This evening you’re walking with me. And you’ll walk at my pace.”
Shmuel felt that he ought to interest or amuse her, but the sight of the empty lane, with empty clotheslines and empty balconies floating above it and a solitary streetlamp casting a murky light, filled him with heaviness and he found no words. He pressed the arm that she had threaded through his against his ribs, as if promising her that all options were still open. He knew now that her power over him was complete and that she could make him do almost anything she asked. But he did not know how to begin the conversation he had been conducting with her in his mind for weeks now. When she said to him that this evening he must walk at her pace, it occurred to him that it would be better for him to wait until she saw fit to open a conversation. Atalia said nothing, except when she broke her silence to point out a night bird flying right overhead, or to warn him about a heap of junk on the pavement that in his haste he almost tripped over.