Mr. Mani (47 page)

—'Twas a jest, Doña Flora ... a fantastical remark ... a mere parable...

—I will not do it again. It was only to explain why I now changed from a passer-through to a stayer-on and began to establish myself in Jerusalem, which was rapidly exchanging the soft breezes of spring for a fierce summer heat that its inhabitants, Your Grace, call the
hamseen,
though so still is the air that I call it the
unseen.
Before a day or two had gone by I had a staff of my own to rap the cobblestones with and a lantern to make me visible in the dark, and within a week I was conferring the pleasure of my voice on the worshipers in the Stambouli Synagogue, who let me read from the Torah every Monday and Thursday. By now I was shopping in the market too, and helping Tamara peel vegetables and clean fish, and after another week or two I rented half a stand from an Ishmaelite in the Souk-el-Kattanin and set out on it the spices I had brought from overseas, to which I added some raisins, almonds, and nuts that I sold for a modest profit. I was becoming a true Jerusalemite, rushing up and down the narrow streets for no good reason, unless it were that God was about to speak somewhere and I was afraid to miss it.

—And sleeping all the while in your bed, madame, in the little alcove beneath the arched window, where I hung a new looking-glass of my own across from your old one to keep it company and to bring me news of the rest of the house, so that I might work my secret will. And though my big beard kept getting in all the mirrors, the youngsters seemed to be fond of me; not only did I not feel a burden to them, I felt I was breathing new life into a house that I had found dreamy, disorderly, and impecunious, because Yosef was paid more respect than money at the consulate, the consul being a dreamer himself who seemed to think he was not a consul but a government and who was already quite bankrupt from the prodigal sums he spent, partly on the pilgrims whose lord protector he sought to be even though most were not English, and partly on the Jews, whom he considered his wards and the keys to the future. No touring lady could visit Jerusalem from abroad without being royally put up in his home and having Yosef to guide her to the churches of Bethlehem and the mosques of Hebron, down to Absalom's Tomb and hence to the Spring of Shiloah and from there to the Mount of Olives, first putting everything in its proper perspective and then passionately, by the end of the day, scrambling it all up again, expertly stirring faiths, languages, peoples, and races together and pitilessly baking them in the desert sun until they turned into the special Jerusalem soufflé that was his favorite dish...

—A guide, madame, if you wish; also a dragoman for roadside conversation; plus a courier for light documents; and a scribe for secret correspondence; and sometimes too, a brewer of little cups of coffee; and when the spirit moved him, the chairman of the disputatious literary soirées of the Jerusalem Bibliophile Society. In a word, a man for all times and seasons, particularly those after dark, for so accustomed was he to coming home at all hours that I had developed the habit of waking up in the middle of the night and going to see if he was in his bed yet, and of becoming frantically, heart-strickenly worried if he was not, as if the very life were being crushed out of him at that moment. And since I was afraid to step out into the silent street, I would ascend to the roof to peer through the moonlit darkness at the ramparts of the city, and then down into the bowels of the streets, hardly breathing while I waited to espy, bobbing as it approached from the Muslim or Christian Quarter, a small flame that I knew from its motion to be his. At once, madame, I slipped down from the roof and ran to the gate to admit him into his own house, as if it were he who was the honored guest from afar whose every wish must be indulged, even more than you indulged it when he was a boy, madame. I took off the fez that was stuck to his sweaty hair, helped him out of his shoes, opened his belt to let him out of his
idée fixe,
brought water to wash his face and feet, and warmed him something to eat, because whole days would go by without his taking anything but coffee. At last, relaxed and with his guard down, the color back in his cheeks, he would tell me about his day: whom he had met, and whose guide he had been, and where he had taken them, and what the consul had said about this or his wife about that, and what was written about them in the English press, and their latest protest to the Turkish governor—and I would listen most attentively and ask questions, and every question received its answer, until finally I teased him about his
idée fixe
that was lying unguardedly in the open and inquired, “Well, son, and what of your Jews who don't know that they are Jews yet?” At first my mockery made him angry. But after a while the anger would pass and he would say with a twinkle in his eyes, “Slowly but surely,
Papá
They've only forgotten, and in the end they'll remember by themselves. And if they insist on being stubborn, I'll be stubborn too, and if they still don't want to remember...” Here his eyes would slowly shut, trapping the twinkle inside them until it grew almost cruel. “If they insist,” he would say, weighing my own insistence, “we shall sorely chastise them until they see the error of their ways.”

—Yes. He definitely said “chastise,” although without explaining himself, as if all chastisement were one and the same and there was no need to spell it out chast by chast.

—Your Grace,
señor y maestro mío,
are you listening?

—Ah! And so, Your Grace, we joked a bit at the expense of his
idée fixe
until Yosef fell softly asleep and I helped him to his feet with the lantern still in his hand and led him off to bed—where, madame, his wife, silently opened the same beautiful, bright eyes with which you are staring at me right now...

—God forbid, Doña Flora! Not coerced but gently assisted.

—No further.

—My silent support, madame ... my fondest encouragement...

—No further.

—I had to know.

—I was looking for a definite sign, madame.

—The looking-glass showed only shadows...

—Someone is knocking, madame ... who can it be?

—Is it time for his dinner? Praise God...

—But how in the way? Not at all!

—God forbid! I am not going anywhere. I am most eager,
mía amiga
Doña Flora, to see how the rabbi is fed...

—I will sit quietly in this corner.

—So this is what Rabbi Shabbetai eats! It is, madame, a dish as pure as snow.

—So it is...

—Soft porridge ... so it is...

—So it is. The poor man! Your Grace always hated mushy food...

—Of course. There is no choice. It is the wise thing to do, madame. Nothing else would go down as easily, filling the belly while soothing the soul. And who, may I ask, was the servant who brought it?

—A fine-looking young man. Would it not be best, though, for the holy rabbi to be waited on by one of our own?

—Well, a fine-looking young man.

—God forbid! Nothing to excite him, madame. Nothing to spoil his appetite. Why don't you rest and let me feed Rabbi Shabbetai myself? It would be a great pleasure and a privilege.

—Well, then, perhaps later.

—His bib? Where is it?

—One minute ... in truth, he seems most hungry...

—Master of the Universe! Lord have mercy! Why, ‘tis a perfect infant ... a perfect infant...

—What, Your Grace?

—In a word ... in a word ... in the briefest of words, Doña Flora, but with much fear and trembling, because despite the cloudless summer—that is, we were now in the midst of a fiery, cloudless summer—there had even been a mild outbreak of some sort of plague, the exact name of which no one was quite sure of—I already had, Doña Flora, from all those dreams, nighttime walks, and—whoever was the bellwether—fantasies of that Hebrew-speaking English consul, a sense of impending disaster. Sometimes, when I lost _ patience standing on the roof, I went back down and took the lantern and waited for my son Yosef on the corner, by Calderon's barred window. I stood beneath the moon and prayed to see that crookedly bobbing little flame, which sometimes appeared from the south, with a herd of black goats coming home late from their distant pasture in the Valley of the Cross, and sometimes from the west, with a band of pilgrims returning from midnight mass in the Holy Sepulchre, to whom my son had attached himself in the darkness as an unnoticed guide to penetrate a place that Jews were barred from...

—Of course, madame. A most flagrant provocation. The Christians themselves are divided into mutually suspicious sects that ambush each other in the naves of the church and brawl over every key and lock, and they certainly did not need an uninvited Jew peeking into God's tomb and reminding them of what they did not believe they had forgotten and had no intention of remembering. And as if that were not enough, he sometimes proceeded from there to the Gate of the Mughrabites, from where steps lead up to the great mosque, in order to bid a fond good night to its two Mohammedan watchmen before heading home for the one place that he feared most of all—namely, his own bed.

—That is only in a manner of speaking, of course, Doña Flora ... most hyperbolically. But see how Rabbi Shabbetai looks at me as he eats! Perhaps my story will take my master's mind off his mush, hee hee hee...

—No, no, madame. I did not mean the bed itself. Just the idea of it...

—I mean—

—God forbid! ‘Twas always with the most friendly respect and affection...

—Of ... why, in all simplicity, of the sleep awaiting him there ... that was what troubled him so, madame...

—That he might awake to discover that the world had changed while he slept ... that something had happened in it without his knowing or being a party to it ... that his
idée fixe,
whose sole reliable consular representative he considered himself to be, had burst like a bubble before he had time to bring it back to life...

—So he felt, madame. “The day is short and the labor is great.” And perhaps—who knows,
maestro y señor mío
—he already sensed his approaching death in that much-provoked Jerusalem of his.

—Tamara, Doña Flora, said nothing.

—That is, she heard and saw everything. And waited...

—She was not unreceptive to his views, provided that something came of them...

—At night she slept. I kept an eye on her in the looking-glass I had hung on the wall, which was reflected in your old glass, madame, which in turn was reflected in the glass hanging over their bed, and I saw that she slumbered peacefully ... But look, Doña Flora, he is getting food all over his mouth and chin...

—Here...

—Perhaps we need a fresh towel.

—As you wish, madame. I am at your service. Perhaps that handsome young Greek made the porridge a bit too mushy...

—God forbid, madame! I am not interfering in anything. It was just a thought, and I have already taken it back.

—Of course, madame. Briefly and to the point. Which is that I found your niece an admirable housewife who baked and cooked quite unvaryingly excellent food. She simply forgot at times to make enough of it, so that I had to—

—Mahshi, kusa,
and
calabaza,
and certain days of the week a
shakshuka
...

—Fridays she put up a Sabbath stew with
haminados.

—Sometimes it had meat in it, and sometimes it had the smell of meat...

—Of course. She did all her own cleaning and laundering. The house, Dona Flora, was as spic and span as the big looking-glass. And she also helped her father Valero and his young wife, and took her little stepsister and stepbrother to the Sultan's Pool every afternoon to enjoy the cool water and play with the Atias children among the Ishmaelite tombstones...

—The Atias who married Franco's youngest daughter.

—'Tis on the tip of my tongue,
rubissa,
and will soon come to me. Meanwhile,
maestro y señor mio,
permit me to sketch the picture for you. Is he still listening? I was, you see, in Jerusalem to shore up a marriage that needed consolidating, for it had yet to outgrow its hasty Beirut betrothal; and so I did my best to keep the young bride from sinking into too much housework, and from time to time I took her with me to my spice-and-sundries stand in the Souk-el-Kattanin, where she could sit and catch the notice of the passersby with her winning mien, so that—after walking on and stopping short and doubling back for a better look and possibly even a word with her—they might interest themselves in a spice or two. And meanwhile, the air around her began to shoot sparks—one of which, I hoped, would fly all the way to her young husband, who was busy escorting the consul's guests to Bethlehem and Hebron. It would do him no harm, I thought, to wonder why his wife was attracting such looks...

—God forbid! God forbid! ‘Twas done most honorably. And each day when the sun began to glow redly in my jars of rosemary, cinnamon, and thyme, and to tint my raisins with gold, I put away my goods and folded my stand and brought her to the woman's gallery of the synagogue of Rabbi Yohanan ben-Zakkai to listen to the Mishnah lesson and be seen among the widows and old women by the men arriving from the souk for the afternoon prayer. Sometimes Yosef came too, all in a great dither, his
idée fixe
sticking out of his pocket; and while he said his prayers devoutly enough, he kept running his eyes over us ordinary Jews who
could not forget
that we were Jews
and so had nothing to remember, nothing to do but say the same old prayers in the same old chants. Now and then he glanced up at the women's gallery, squinting as if into the distance at his petite wife—who, like himself, though a year had gone by since their Beirut betrothal, still was daubed with its honey-gold coat that had to be patiently, pleasurably, licked away. And I, Rabbi Shabbetai, began to lick ... slowly but surely, madame...