The following day they came to Novi Sad, a bustling Danube River town where they learned that a group of seven Frankish monks traveling to the Holy Land had been set upon by bandits three days before and robbed, sodomized, and killed.
For the next three days they traveled as if attack were imminent, but they followed the wide, sparkling river to Belgrade without incident and took on provision in the farmers’ market there, including small sour red plums of exceptional flavor and little green olives that Rob ate with relish. He had his supper at a tavern but found it not to his liking, being a mixture of many greasy meats chopped together and tasting of rancid fats.
A number of persons had left the caravan at Novi Sad and more at Belgrade, and others joined it, so that the Cullens, Rob, and the party of Jews moved forward in the line of march and no longer were part of the vulnerable rear.
Soon after they left Belgrade they entered foothills that quickly became meaner mountains than any they hitherto had crossed, the steep slopes studded with boulders like bared teeth. In the higher elevations, sharper air brought winter suddenly into their minds. These mountains would be hell in the snow.
Now he couldn’t drive with slack reins. Going up inclines he had to urge Horse with gentle little flicks of the leather and going downhill he helped by holding her back. When his arms ached and his spirits were raw he reminded himself that the Romans had moved their tormenta over this range of brooding peaks, but the Romans had had hordes of expendable slaves and Rob J. had one tired mare who required the most skillful driving. At night, dull with weariness, he dragged himself to the Jews’ camp and sometimes there was a lesson of sorts. But Simon didn’t ride in the wagon again and some days Rob did not succeed in learning ten Persian words.
28
THE BALKANS
Now Kerl Fritta came into his own and for the first time Rob looked at him with admiration, for the caravan leader seemed to be everywhere, helping with wagon breakdowns, urging and exhorting people the way a good drover encourages dumb beasts. The way was stony. On October first they lost half a day while men of the caravan were impressed to remove rocks that had fallen across the trail. Accidents happened frequently now and Rob set two broken arms in the space of a week. A Norman merchant’s horse bolted and his wagon overturned on him, smashing his leg. He had to be carried on a litter slung between two horses until they came to a farmhouse whose occupants agreed to nurse him. They left the injured man there, Rob devoutly hoping that the farmer didn’t murder him for his belongings as soon as the caravan was out of sight.
“We’ve passed beyond the land of the Magyar and are now in Bulgaria,” Meir told him one morning.
It mattered little, since the hostile nature of the rocks was unchanged and the wind continued to batter them on the high places. As the weather grew raw the people of the caravan began to wear a variety of outer garments, most of them warmer than they were fashionable, until they were a strange-looking collection of ragged and padded creatures.
On a sunless morning, the pack mule Gershom ben Shemuel was leading behind his horse stumbled and fell, front limbs splayed painfully until the left one snapped audibly under the considerable weight of the pack on the animal’s back. The doomed mule screamed in agony like a human being.
“Help him!” Rob called, and Meir ben Asher drew a long knife and helped him in the only way possible, by slitting the quivering throat.
They began at once to unpack the bundle that was on the dead mule. When they came to the narrow leather bag Gershom and Judah had to lift it off together, and an argument ensued in their own language. The remaining pack mule already bore one of the heavy leather bags and Rob was able to see that Gershom was protesting, with justification, that the second bag would quickly overtax the animal.
In the stalled caravan to their rear there were outraged shouts from those who didn’t countenance falling behind the main body.
Rob ran back to the Jews. “Throw the bag into my wagon.”
Meir hesitated, then he shook his head. “No.”
“Then go to hell,” Rob said roughly, enraged at the implied lack of trust.
Meir said something and Simon ran after him. “They’ll lash the pack onto my horse. May I ride in the wagon? Only until we’re able to buy another mule.”
Rob motioned him onto the seat and climbed up himself. He drove for a long time in silence, for he wasn’t in a mood for Persian lessons.
“You don’t understand,” Simon said. “Meir must keep the bags with him. It isn’t his money. Some belongs to the family and most is owed to investors. The money is his responsibility.”
The words made him feel better. But it continued to be a bad day. The way was hard and the presence of a second person in the wagon increased Horse’s labor so that she was visibly fatigued when dusk caught them on a mountaintop and they were required to make camp.
Before he or Simon could eat their supper they had to go to see patients. The wind was so strong it forced them behind Kerl Fritta’s wagon. Only a handful of people were there to see him, and to his surprise, and Simon’s, among them was Gershom ben Shemuel. The tough, chunky Jew lifted his caftan and dropped his trousers and Rob saw an ugly purple boil on the right cheek of his arse.
“Tell him to bend over.”
Gershom grunted as the point of Rob’s scalpel bit, making yellow pus spurt, and he groaned and cursed in his own language as Rob squeezed the boil until all the putrescence was gone and only bright blood appeared.
“He won’t be able to sit a saddle. Not for several days.”
“He must,” Simon said. “We can’t leave Gershom.”
Rob sighed. The Jews were proving to be a trial today. “You can take his horse and he’ll ride in the back of my wagon.”
Simon nodded.
The smiling Frankish drover was next. This time new tiny buboes covered his groin. The lumps in his armpits and behind his knees were larger and more tender than they had been, and when Rob asked, the big Frank said they had begun to pain him.
He took the drover’s hand into his own. “Tell him he’s going to die.”
Simon glared. “Be damned,” he said.
“Tell him I say he’s going to die.”
Simon swallowed and began to speak softly in German. Rob watched the smile dwindle from the big, stupid face, then the Frank pulled his hands from Rob’s grasp and raised the right one, turning it into a fist the size of a small ham. He spoke in a growl.
“Says you’re a fucking liar,” Simon said.
Rob stood and waited, his eyes meeting the drover’s, and finally the man spat at his feet and shambled away.
Rob sold spirits to two men with ragged coughs and then treated a whimpering Magyar with a disjointed thumb—he had caught it in the saddle girth and his horse had moved.
Then he left Simon, wanting to escape this place and these people. The caravan was spread out; everyone had sought a large boulder to camp behind, as protection from the wind. He walked beyond the final wagon and saw Mary Cullen standing on a rock above the trail.
She was unearthly. She stood holding open her heavy sheepskin coat with both arms spread wide, her head back and her eyes closed as if she were being purified by the full wash of the wind that swept against her with all the strength of water in full flow. The coat billowed and flapped. Her black gown was plastered against her long body, outlining heavy breasts and rich nipples, a soft roundness of belly and a wide navel, a sweet cleft joining strong thighs. He felt a strange warm tenderness that surely was part of a spell, for she looked like a witch. Her long hair streamed behind her, playing like writhing red fire.
He couldn’t tolerate the thought of her opening her eyes and seeing him watching her, and he turned and walked away.
At his own wagon he gloomily contemplated the fact that its interior was too fully packed to carry Gershom lying on his stomach. The only way to supply the needed space was to abandon the bank. He carried out the three sections and stared at them, remembering the co
untless times he and Barber had stood on the little stage and entertained their audience. Then he shrugged and, picking up a large rock, smashed the bank into firewood. There were coals in the firepot and he coaxed a fire to life in the lee of the wagon. In the growing darkness he sat and fed the pieces of the bank to the flames.
It was unlikely that the name Anne Mary would have been changed to Mary Margaret. And a baby’s brown hair, even though it had reddish tints, wouldn’t have grown into such an auburn magnificence, he told himself as Mistress Buffington came and mewed and lay next to him close to the fire and out of the wind.
* * *
Midmorning on October twenty-second, hard white grains filled the air, flying before the wind and stinging when they struck bare skin.
“Early for this shit,” Rob said morosely to Simon, who was back in the wagon seat, Gershom having toughened his cheek and returned to his horse.
“Not for the Balkans,” Simon said.
They were into loftier and more rugged steeps, mostly forested with beech, oak, and pine, but with entire slopes as bare and rocky as though an angry deity had wiped away part of the mountain. There were tiny lakes made by high waterfalls that plummeted into deep gorges.
Ahead of him, Cullen father and Cullen daughter were twin figures in their long sheepskin coats and hats, indistinguishable save that he was able to watch the bulky figure on the black horse and know it was Mary.
The snow didn’t accumulate and the travelers struggled against it and made headway, but not fast enough for Kerl Fritta, who raged up and down the line of march, urging greater speed.
“Something has put fear of Christ in Fritta,” Rob said.
Simon gave him the quick, guarded glance Rob had noted among the Jews whenever he mentioned Jesus. “He must get us to the town of Gabrovo before the heavy snows. The way through these mountains is the great pass called the Balkan Gate, but it’s already closed. The caravan will winter in Gabrovo, close to the entrance to the gate. In that town there are inns and houses which take in travelers. No other town near the pass is large enough to harbor a caravan as large as this one.”
Rob nodded, able to see advantages. “I can study my Persian all winter.”
“You won’t have the book,” Simon said. “We shan’t stay in Gabrovo with the caravan. We go to the town of Tryavna, a short distance away, where there are Jews.”
“But I must have the book. And I need your lessons!”
Simon shrugged.
That evening, after he had tended to Horse, Rob went to the Jews’ camp and found them examining some special cleated horseshoes. Meir handed one to Rob. “You should have a set made for your mare. They keep the animal from slipping on snow and ice.”
“Can I not come to Tryavna?”
Meir and Simon exchanged a glance; it was apparent they had discussed him. “It’s not in my power to grant you the hospitality of Tryavna.”
“Who has such power?”
“The Jews there are led by a great sage, the rabbenu Shlomo ben Eliahu.”
“What is a rabbenu?”
“A scholar. In our language rabbenu means ‘our teacher’ and is a term of the highest honor.”
“This Shlomo, this sage. Is he a haughty man, cold to strangers? Stiff and unapproachable?”
Meir smiled and shook his head.
“Then may I not go to him and ask to be allowed to stay near your book and Simon’s lessons?”
Meir looked at Rob and didn’t pretend to be happy with the question. He was silent for a long moment, but when it was clear that Rob was prepared to wait stubbornly for a reply, he sighed and shook his head. “We will take you to the rabbenu,” he said.
29
TRYAVNA
Gabrovo was a bleak town of makeshift stick buildings. For months Rob had been yearning for a meal he hadn’t cooked himself, a fine meal served to him at the table of a public house. The Jews paused in Gabrovo to visit a merchant, just long enough for Rob to visit one of the three inns. The meal was a terrible disappointment, the meat heavily salted in a vain attempt to hide the fact it was spoiled, and the bread hard and stale, with holes in it from which, no doubt, weevils had been picked. The accommodations were as unsatisfactory as the fare. If the remaining two hostelries were no better, the other members of the caravan faced a hard winter, for every available room was crammed with sleeping pallets and they would slumber cheek by jowl.
It took Meir’s group less than an hour to travel to Tryavna, which proved to be much smaller than Gabrovo. The Jewish quarter—a group of thatch-roofed buildings of weather-silvered boards, huddling together as if for mutual comfort—was separated from the rest of the town by hibernating vineyards and brown fields in which cows cropped the stubs of coldwithered grass. They turned into a dirt courtyard, where boys took charge of their animals. “You’d best wait here,” Meir told Rob.
It wasn’t a long wait. Soon Simon came for him and led him into one of the houses, down a dark corridor that smelled of apples and into a room furnished only with a chair and a table piled with books and manuscripts. In the chair sat an old man with snowy hair and beard. He was roundshouldered and stout, with drooping dewlaps and large brown eyes that were watery with age but managed to peer into Rob’s very core. There were no introductions; it was like coming before a lord.
“The rabbenu has been told you’re traveling to Persia and need the language of that country for business,” Simon said. “He asks whether the joy of scholarship isn’t reason enough to study.”
“Sometimes there is joy in study,” Rob said, speaking directly to the old man. “For me, mostly there is hard work. I’m learning the language of the Persians because I hope it will get me what I want.”
Simon and the rabbenu jabbered.
“He asked if you are generally so honest. I told him you’re sufficiently forthright to tell a dying man he is dying, and he said, ‘That is honest enough.’”
“Tell him I have money and will pay for food and shelter.”
The sage shook his head. “This isn’t an inn. Those who live here must work,” Shlomo ben Eliahu said through Simon. “If the Ineffable One is merciful, we’ll have no need for a barber-surgeon this winter.”
“I don’t have to work as a barber-surgeon. I’m willing to do anything useful.”
The rabbenu’s long fingers rooted and scrabbled in his beard while he considered. Finally he announced his decision.
“Whenever slaughtered beef is declared not to be kasher,” Simon said, “you’ll take the meat and sell it to the Christian butcher in Gabrovo. And during the Sabbath, when Jews may not labor, you’ll tend the fires in the houses.”
Rob hesitated. The elderly Jew looked at him with interest, caught by the gleam in his eyes.
“Something?” Simon murmured.
“If Jews may not labor on your Sabbath, isn’t he damning my soul by arranging for me to do so?”
The rabbenu smiled at the translation.
“He says he trusts you do not yearn to become a Jew, Master Cole?” Rob shook his head.
“Then he is certain you may work without fear on Jews’ Sabbath, and bids you welcome to Tryavna.”
The rabbenu led them to where Rob would bed at the rear of a large cow barn. “There are candles in the study house. But no candles may be lighted for reading here in the barn, because of the dry hay,” the rabbenu said sternly through Simon, and put him to work at once mucking out stalls.
That night he lay on the straw with his cat on guard at his feet like a lion. Mistress Buffington deserted him occasionally to terrorize a mouse but always came back. The barn was a dark, moist palace, warmed to comfort by the great bovine bodies, and as soon as he became accustomed to the eternal lowing and the sweet stench of cow shit he slept contentedly.
* * *
Winter came to Tryavna three days after Rob did. Snow began to fall during the night and for the next two days alternated between a winddriven bitter sleet and fat flakes that floated down so big they look
ed like sweet things to eat. When it ended he was given a great wooden snow shovel and helped remove the drifts from before all the doors, wearing a leather Jew’s hat he found on a peg in the barn. Above him the looming mountains glittered white in the sun and the exertion in the cold air made him optimistic. When the shoveling was done there was no other work and he was free to go to the study house, a frame building into which the cold oozed and was pitifully fought by a token fire so inadequate that it wasn’t unusual for people to forget to feed it. The Jews sat around rough tables and studied hour after hour, quarreling loudly and sometimes bitterly.
They called their language the Tongue. Simon told him it was a mixture of Hebrew and Latin, plus a few idioms from the countries in which they traveled or lived. It was a language designed for disputants; when they studied together they hurled words at one another.
“What are they arguing about?” he asked Meir, amazed.
“Points of the law.”
“Where are their books?”
“They don’t use books. Those who know the laws have memorized them from hearing them from the mouths of their teachers. Those who haven’t yet memorized the laws are learning them by listening. It’s always been thus. There is Written Law, of course, but it is there only to be consulted. Every man who knows Oral Law is a teacher of legal interpretations as his own teacher taught them, and there are a multitude of interpretations because there are so many different teachers. That’s why they argue. Each time they debate, they learn a little bit more about the law.”
From the start in Tryavna they called him Mar Reuven, Hebrew for Master Robert. Mar Reuven the Barber-Surgeon. Being called Mar set him apart from them as much as anything else, for they called each other Reb, an honorific indicating commendable scholarship but ranking below that of someone designated a rabbenu. In Tryavna there was but one rabbenu.