El Personal

TORCELLO, 10TH APRIL 1219

Two days later, the Jew who rescued the abbess of San Maffio from the lagoon was the talk of the island. The bishop rightly demanded to know what the Mother Superior of a convent—Sant’Eliodoro protect us!—had been doing on the bank an hour before Lauds, while the fact that a Jew had been out there, too, inevitably fired the imagination of rumor-mongers.

Galatea was recovering in bed, still wheezing from all the retching she’d done, but reborn in the spirit, her melancholia shed like an old snakeskin. Nothing more than narrowly escaping a premature death illuminates men and women with the intimate joy of saints. Every ges-ture, every corner of the landscape, every sensation—even unpleasant ones—acquire the taste of a favorite delicacy.

But Galatea knew what dispelled the fog in her life: her rescuer’s words.

“Ego sum, nolite timere,” she whispered for the hundredth time.

“The exact words of the hermit! The words of Christ walking on the

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lake in the mouth of a Jewish savior from the waters . . . and wasn’t Jesus a Jew? Not only that, the hermit spoke of ‘a Woman and a Jew’… Oh, Mother of God, I’m so confused! It seems the good Lord kept a place for me in his plans after all, otherwise why not take my soul there and then instead of choosing to have me rescued . . . and by a Jew!”

If the descendants of Christ’s killers hated humanity, as everyone claimed, then how to explain a Jew risking his life to save a woman he knew wasn’t one of theirs? Ever since regaining consciousness, Galatea had wrestled with such questions, her lust for answers in itself a confir-mation that her listless condition was gone for good. She had reviewed what little she knew about Jews from direct experience and not from the words of priests. She had seen Jews as a child in Tuscia, but from a distance. They had reminded her of crows, all dressed in black with those pointy hats, ample sleeves waving about in eternal arguments. In the lagoon, the only Jews she’d met were the Ben-Porat brothers, who seemed decent people, not afraid of hard work and keepers of their word.

As she considered the timeless question of Christian hatred for Jews, there was a knock on the door and Gudrun, without waiting for a response, fell into the room clutching a folded note, her breath short from rushing up the stairs—and from the way recent events resembled a Provençal romance.

“One of the dyers’ sons just brought this for you, Mother!”

Galatea read the missive as Gudrun shamelessly slid her head on the wall behind the bed, trying to catch a glimpse of the text from above.

In good Latin it said that her rescuer was a Passover guest of the Ben-Porats, a medicus from Provence who would be happy to check—in the presence of upright witnesses, of course—the consequences of the inci-dent on her health. It was signed Avraham Ben-Porat.

Of the bulls the church had issued in the last decade prohibiting all sorts of dealings with Jews, by far the most transgressed was the inter-diction against using Jewish physicians. Everyone knew that powerful people, from nobles to popes, only entrusted their health to the hands

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of Jews. But the letter was still an embarrassment to Galatea. There was no question of declining to meet the man who saved her life, of course, but the abbess already knew the bishop would unleash his minions all over the island to make sure he had witnesses to such a reprehensible meeting.

The exchange of notes between convent and cottage during the rest of the morning resulted in the decision to meet in the inn run by Galatea’s good friend, Marciana Ottone, and her husband Bonifacio, to whom the abbess had promised to deliver some tablecloths embroidered by her sisters by Easter Sunday.

Meanwhile the rabbis, terrified that the islanders might find out about the meeting, no longer dared go outside, even after dark. Despite their fears, they had discussed with gusto God’s intentions in arranging the eight men in the house that night, so that the only one with the neces-sary seafaring skills to step outside just as the woman screamed for help.

“Think of it, Yehezkel,” said Rav Eleazar, “how long did the woman scream before resigning herself to her fate? Five, ten minutes? You had to arrive on the pier inside those ten minutes to hear her. Who knows how Divine Providence pursues its aims? Maybe our meeting was actu-ally convened because God needed someone to save that nun . . .”

The biggest risk, as they saw it, was Aillil’s presence. If it got out that a Christian boy was staying at the dyers’ questions were sure to be asked. But keeping Aillil indoors, especially when he could see the Ben-Porat children run and shout in the April garden, would have meant tying him down, so the other children were confined indoors instead.

In the end, Rav Eleazar decided they would leave the next day, without waiting for the end of the feast, one at a time as they had arrived. But first, that night, they would discuss the important matters about which he had summoned them.

Rav Eleazar also decided that Yehezkel would row the skiff on the island’s canals to his meeting with the abbess, so as to draw less atten-tion. When Aillil heard his tutor would be taking the boat, there was

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no stopping him from going. The boy simply importuned every adult in the house until they could bear it no more. Yehezkel reassured the others, especially the Frenchmen, that he had credibly justified Aillil’s presence several times on his journey from Lunel, but only Rav Eleazar’s authority convinced Rav Yitzhak and Rav Yehiel to suffer the boy going along, so sure were they that the appearance in the inn of a Jew with a Christian boy in tow would be followed, as surely as night follows day, by the appearance of a pitchfork-and-torch-bearing mob outside the dyers’ house.

Yehezkel picked some herbs in the garden and Aillil saw him put a strange doll in his satchel. He told the boy to put on his cloak and pull the hood down over his eyes, and as the sun set over Majurbio, the two left the cottage.

The air, after a brief squall, was almost too terse. The purple shadows of clouds exaggerated heights and distances, giving things a strangely threatening look. Aillil, sitting astride the skiff’s bow, sniffed the air like a hunting dog, now and then laughing out loud, often look-ing straight into the sun. Yehezkel yelled at him every time he caught him staring at the sun, but it was a losing battle: the boy was irresistibly attracted to lights, almost like a moth.

Aillil grew up with the Hots in Montréal, Yehezkel had often checked on his development, recently taking him on some errands.

But only on this last journey from Languedoc to Venice had the rabbi fallen for Aillil’s mix of boyish enthusiasms and dreamy absences. From a young age Aillil’s left hand was always slightly bent inward, and his left foot dragged a little, but studying him for longer spells had revealed other endearing peculiarities. Aillil could spend hours with his chin on his chest, head slightly turned—like a sleeping bird, thought Yehezkel—

fingers running through the soft blond hairs on his leg or forearm. If he was lost in thought and perceived no presences, his hands began to move in a slow, dreamlike dance. Once, seeing him like that, head tilted up at the sky, Yehezkel had asked himself if Aillil was speaking with angels.

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Understanding the boy’s nasally distorted pronunciation was dif-ficult. “Avyehége,” for example, was the sound he made to say “Rav Yehezkel.” Yehezkel made a habit of gently prodding adults—there seemed to be no need with children—to involve Aillil in the conver-sation. He also subjected Aillil to mental exercises of his own devis-ing, to which the boy sometimes reacted angrily. “Leave me alone, Rav Yehezkel! Why do you harass me so?” he would say, retreating into a private world.

He brought his food two inches from his eyes and generally touched everything, passing some things over his cheeks and forehead. He sniffed parchments, at times rubbing them on his face as if better to absorb what was written on them. This last habit reminded Yehezkel of his teacher’s idea of the intrinsic power of letters as enchanted amulets made of ink.

In his few days in Torcello, Aillil displayed an uncanny skill with a sling, downing more than one bird that ventured to fly too low over the northern tip of the island. This talent fascinated his tutor, who came out to watch his ward hunt, trying to fathom Aillil’s success in hitting fast-moving targets despite impaired sight. He seemed to compensate for blurred vision with a sixth sense, one that the boy could only describe as

“letting the stone go at the right moment.”

Yehezkel tied up the skiff to a ring on the fondamenta, its stones lit by the last sun. Between Santa Fosca and the Fist Canal—so named for the fistfights held on one of its parapet-less bridges—was the Ottones’

famous inn, more crowded on market days than churches on Sundays, often visited by doges and once or twice by foreign kings. The inn-keeper was a plump, jovial man called Bonifacio Ottone, married to a Mantuan girl with sharp features and refined manners.

Bonifacio, shining with sweat, welcomed Yehezkel and Aillil with a half-bow and led them into the kitchens. Wonderful smells of lagoon specialties filled the vaporous hall. Three nuns and the lady of the inn waited for them in the warm candlelight. Galatea and Marciana faced

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each other, holding hands and looking straight into one other’s eyes with a tender smile, as if consoling each other. Galatea, seeing the rabbi, immediately stepped toward him.

“May God reward your courage, Sir! I am Mother Galatea, abbess of the Cistercian convent of San Maffio,” she hesitated for the flicker of a flame, “and Countess of the Ardengheschis of Monte Alcino in Tuscia. And these are two of my nuns, sister Erminia and sister Gudrun.”

Few people could look Yehezkel in the eyes without raising their gaze, but on seeing the nun standing for the first time, he realized she was as tall as he was, and her bearing somehow made him look shorter.

He bowed his head. “My reward is to see you up and about, Madame, and with a hearty complexion! I am Yehezkel ben Yoseph, of Fustat in Egypt and Lunel in Provence, and this—show yourself, young man!—is my ward, Aillil Arifat of Montréal, in the county of Carcassonne.”

Galatea smiled and Aillil’s freckles vanished in a crimson flush.

Bonifacio turned away gesticulating, too busy to stop, loudly calling for a tray of hippocras.*

Then Galatea lowered her eyes and saw the blue twine hanging from Yehezkel’ waistband.

“Madre Santissima!” she thought, “Here I was, already thinking his name says nothing to me, and he’s wearing that blue! And with such nonchalance, as if it was a ribbon on a fashionable French hat!”

She was shaken, but feigned cordiality, “Pardon me Sir, but I fear I’ll never be able to pronounce your name correctly. Is there a way I can address you in Latin?”

“Master Ezekiel,” said Yehezkel drily, “in the presence of others, but

‘rabbi’ when we are alone, if you don’t mind . . .”

Galatea’s eyes widened in violet surprise, then narrowed. “And just what makes you think you and I will ever be alone?”

Yehezkel took a step back. “I ask your forgiveness, Madame, I wasn’t

*Heavily spiced mulled wine

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being fresh . . . maybe I said it because . . . because we were alone the only other time we met.”

Galatea laughed loud, both hands before her mouth. Sister Erminia’s eyes turned heavenward, like someone walking dangerously close to evil.

Yehezkel joined the abbess in an embarrassed giggle, and Aillil followed suit, not really knowing what the laughter was about.

When the giggling subsided, Galatea said, smoothing her habit,

“You mean Je-hes-qél is the same as saying Ezekiel? You’re named after the prophet in the Bible?”

“Yes Madame, my father—may his memory be a blessing—bestowed that honor on me. Can we move on to an examination of your health now, so we can both be on our way?”

Affronted by his hurried manner, she watched him pull out some folded plane tree leaves from his satchel, in which herbs were wrapped, thinking, “He wears that blue, bears the name of the prophet clad in that blue in Santa Maria, and pulled me out of the dark pool uttering those words! How can I still doubt that it is he? But just what does it mean to be he? Oh, mother Elisabetta, what should I do?”

Yehezkel handed her a foot-long straw doll. Gudrun sucked in her breath, thinking the Jew was setting up a black magic ritual. The abbess hesitated for an instant, but then understood the doll’s function and turned it over in her hands, grinning at the awkwardly drawn smile on the straw-filled face.

“Madame, if you experience pains that began after Sunday night, kindly show me the painful points in your body on the doll.”

It was a common solution to the problem of physicians visiting women, but an exhilarating novelty to the nuns. Galatea felt like a child again as she tested the doll’s consistency amid giggles from Gudrun and Marciana. She pointed out a band of “muscles” in the doll’s back, a little above the kidneys.

“Here, Master Ezekiel, at the end of each breath I feel pain along here . . .”

“At the end of breathing in or at the end of breathing out, Madame?”

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Galatea considered the question, then took a deep breath as the rabbi looked on, smiling. “Both!”

Gudrun was transfixed by the appearance of mother Galatea’s burly rescuer. She’d seen oriental faces before, but was discovering that gazing at this one made her feel not unlike drinking a glass of wine. Meanwhile, Aillil exercised his charm on the women in the room, except for frigid sister Erminia. In fact, had it not been for the presence of a Jew, Marciana would already have smothered him in caresses.

A valet came in with a steaming jar of hyppocras and a strong scent of cinnamon filled the kitchen. Aillil and Marciana were the only ones to sip some in the embarrassed silence that followed.

Galatea took her plunge. “I hope you won’t find my question inap-propriate, Master Ezekiel, but I am struck by the color of the twine hanging from your waist. Does it hold a religious meaning?”

Yehezkel said, smiling, “Oh, that. It’s just a personal amulet to remind me to go to Jerusalem.”

“Is that what it’s there for?” asked Galatea, startled. “Have you ever been to the Holy Land? I’ve always dreamed of going, but . . . no, no, first I must know, please: how does that color remind you of your vow?”

“To your first question: no, I haven’t been, but I trust God to grant me that privilege someday. As for your second question, the answer is complicated, but suffice it to say that for a certain school of Jewish mys-tics, there is a connection between this color and manifestations of the Divine . . . in this world.”

Galatea’s eyes widened in surprise. Yehezkel thought, “Lord of the Universe, this nun is dangerously beautiful. Why did you place her on my path? Are you putting me to the test? Don’t you think I could turn around, later, and say: ‘if you didn’t want me to do it, then why did you pull her out of the water and fling her into my arms?’”

“Manifestations of the Divine,” Galatea was thinking instead.

“What greater authority than a ‘school of Jewish mystics’ could one turn to for the interpretation of mysteries glimpsed through visions? After

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all, had I not known of the divine nature of that blue?” Embarrassment and hesitation vanished.

“Master Ezekiel, I hope you won’t take what I’m about to say as the ravings of a feverish nun . . . but it was no coincidence that you were the one to save me! Tell me, do you believe that certain men and women are granted dreams and waking visions of a divine nature?”

“I believe it deeply, Madame, more than my reason would like . . .”

“Well, then you must know that I had a premonition of what hap-pened Sunday night, of the name you bear, of the blue you wear, and of an enigma whose solution is in Jerusalem!”

Except for Aillil, lost in his cup of hyppocras, everyone was aghast, mouths half-open, unable to believe they had just heard the abbess pro-nounce those words. They were likely witnessing the ruin of the mother superior of a Cistercian house, and in the sort of circumstances that give birth to legends. Then again, the rumor-mongers would have said, hadn’t falling into the lagoon under a full moon already raised doubts about Mother Galatea’s mental composure?

Yehezkel was at once flattered by the attention to his person, intrigued by the mention of Jerusalem, and painfully aware of the spell cast by the reckless nun’s eyes. He felt the sudden need to avoid the rest of that conversation at all costs, and turned to Gudrun. “Sister, here are some wild fennel, wild dill, and horehound. Please prepare a tisane for the abbess by boiling them in wine and straining the decoction through a piece of linen.”

Then, to Galatea, with an embarrassed grin, “I am a pilgrim again from tomorrow, Madame. Since Divine Providence so strangely brushed us against each other, please accept my blessing.”

Galatea bit her lip. “He’s leaving tomorrow! I must wrench the secret of my destiny from him now, before he leaves the inn. But isn’t his departure a denial from above of the role I wish to assign him? No!

Only he can lead me to the enigma!”

“Forgive my insistence, Master Ezekiel, but I wish to ask you one last question, the answer to which is more important to me than you

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can imagine. I have a doubt I feel only you can resolve, and if you won’t

can imagine. I have a doubt I feel only you can resolve, and if you won’t